:: News From the Front - Fair and Balanced ::

Quote of the Moment: "Hillary is not demented. Her continuing an impossible race is all about trashing Obama as much as possible so that she does not have to run against a Democratic incumbent in 2012. At some point she will moderate her attack a bit, so as not to make it completely obvious. But she will stay in this race as long as she can, with any excuses that she can muster." -Mike "Mish" Shedlock [article link]

:: Sunday, May 11, 2008 ::

I am now a member of the Atheist Blogroll, home to over 680 blogs and counting maintained by atheists/agnostics/otherwise nonreligious folks. Click the image above for more information. You can find a rolling list of blogs from the blogroll on the sidebar.

And while I'm on the subject of blogrolls, I never properly mentioned this when I actually did it so now is as good a time as any. I'm also a member of the Union Label blogroll, represented by the "I <3 Unions" button on the sidebar. The purpose is to identify bloggers who are members of unions and/or who support trade unionism (I'm in the latter category, as an Associate Member).

:: Kevin 5/11/2008 04:34:00 PM [+] ::
...

I was just forwarded this piece of anti-atheist bigotry which occurred before a committee of the Illinois General Assembly. Atheist (and Green candidate for state rep. in the 53rd district) Rob Sherman was testifying against a plan to donate tax dollars to a church in Chicago. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) lashed out at Sherman, declaring that, as quoted in the title of the post, "it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!" Davis continues: "You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."

Follow the above link for both a transcript and audio of the exchange. Pretty disgusting stuff. More info can also be found on Rob Sherman's site in the April 4 post, but there's no permalink.

What Sherman encountered was not just some random fluke, but what anyone who publicly questions Christianity has probably encountered from the devout at some point. I still remember the right-wing chain email I got from my Catholic grandma (who doesn't know about my religious beliefs) saying that the nonreligious should just be told to "sit down and shut up." These kind of sentiments come not just from crazed fundamentalists, but from otherwise nice and well-intentioned people and/or in some cases relatively moderate believers.

Why do they view atheism as such a threat? I think it's because to anyone who believes that Christianity is the "one true way" and those who don't follow it will suffer for eternity, opposition is not merely a difference of opinion but is stupid and dangerous. They don't see why they should be expected to tolerate false beliefs, or why people should have the opportunity to be led astray. From this view, it makes perfect sense to force their beliefs on people, especially children.

Anyone who questions Christianity is tends to be seen by the Rep. Davis' of the world as a threat to society. Which begs the question: if their beliefs are so self-evidently true, then why are they so afraid criticism? Can't Christianity stand on its own? Is the outward show of piety just a mask for their own insecurity, a la Mother Teresa?

:: Kevin 4/06/2008 11:00:00 AM [+] ::
...

Seeing as today is Easter, I thought I would use my return from my apparent three month hiatus to share a routine from my favorite comedian, Bill Hicks:

They [Australians] celebrate Easter the exact same way we do: commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children a giant bunny rabbit … left chocolate eggs in the night. Now, I wonder why we're fucked up as a race. Anybody got any idea? You know, I've read the Bible. I can't find the word "bunny" or "chocolate" anywhere in the fucking book. Where do they come up with this shit? Why not goldfish left Lincoln logs in your sock drawer? As long as you're making shit up, you know, go hog-wild. At least the goldfish with a Lincoln log on its back going across your carpet has some miraculous connotations. [in faux British accent] "Mummy, I woke up today and there was a Lincoln log in me sock drawer." "That's the story of Jesus!"

:: Kevin 3/23/2008 01:40:00 PM [+] ::
...

Well, the Democrats blew it again. I just don't get what their thinking on this is. What could make a better campaign ad than "My opponent voted against funds for the troops because he was blinded by anti-gay bigotry"? On the contrary, now they're pandering to homophobes in order to maintain a bloated military budget. I just don't see the long-term gain here.

Once again, one can see a pattern of the Democrats backing down at the crucial moment. That doesn't encourage your opponents to compromise. Rather, it encourages them to hold out, no matter how unpopular their position is, because they know that despite the tough talk, you're just going to cave in the end.

:: Kevin 12/08/2007 12:20:00 AM [+] ::
...

Just when I was starting to like Barack Obama, he goes and shows everyone how completely full of shit he is and how little would really change under him. I already mentioned my thoughts on his position on the Israel/Palestine conflict, but I was seriously starting to consider voting for him, maybe even campaigning for him! (dun dun dunnnn *dramatic reverb*)

I'll admit, it was mostly because I really, really, REALLY don't like Hillary Clinton. The exact reasons why are a post for another time which I was planning on writing anyway [Robert Scheer sums it up pretty well: "So what that she is pro-choice and a woman if the price of proving her capacity to be commander in chief is that we end up with an American version of Margaret Thatcher?"]. Suffice it to say, I'm against her enough that I was seriously considering voting for Obama or John Edwards even in spite of their views on Israel (an issue on which Edwards is no better) if I thought it might help stop Hillary.

To be honest, though, I was actually starting to like Obama, especially after the whole "experience" thing between him and Clinton. It was then that I realized that he's a lot saner on foreign policy issues than the other non-Kucinich Dems running for president. I'll admit I was pretty underwhelmed by his health care proposal, but once again, at least he's not Clinton.

All of this just makes the ensuing disappointment hurt more. First, on Iraq - he was finally starting to come around on funding for the war, making it conditional on a withdrawal timetable. Then, as has been well publicized at this point, he was unable to promise that all of the troops would be withdrawn within his first term if elected. This makes all his anti-war talk a little bogus. All you're voting for with Obama, like with Kerry in 2004, is a Democratic version of the occupation of Iraq.

Second, trade. He's always waffled a bit on the subject. My thinking on reading the section on it in The Audacity of Hope was that he was trying to placate labor while not alienating any potential sources of campaign contributions. He has also supported anti-worker free trade agreements on occasion. He talks the talk of supporting workers, but once again isn't willing to back it up. It sort of begs the question of whether you can really trust anything he says.

What I'm referring to here specifically comes from David Sirota: Obama is planning on voting for the upcoming free trade agreement with Peru with its practically unenforceable labor and environmental protections. It amazes me that with support for fair trade at an all-time high, even among Republicans, (not to mention with less than a year having gone by since the Dems won an election based to a substantial degree on dissatisfaction with deals like these) a supposed "progressive" like Obama would even consider voting for this.

Just when I start getting a little hope, feeling like maybe things might finally change a little for the better in this country, someone like Obama comes along and reminds me that voting means jack shit, just a choice between the right and left-hand sock puppets.

:: Kevin 10/09/2007 09:55:00 PM [+] ::
...

This is a little bit in the "old news" category at this point, but the Peoria Area Peace Network marched in the 4th of July parade this year in West Peoria, evidently their third time doing so and my second. My wife took a video from the crowd of us going by:

:: Kevin 8/05/2007 12:45:00 AM [+] ::
...

So, between getting married last month and not having reliable internet access for several weeks after that, I haven't been able to do much work on the site lately. However, there have been a few changes. For those that check out the other sections of this site, there is now a listing on each page of when the last update was, so it will be a little easier to figure out what is new. (If a page doesn't have such a date on it, like the Pick-up Lines, that means it hasn't been updated in a long time.) The main piece of news in this regard is that the Jokes sections have come back from the dead, with most having been updated fairly recently. In that section, I recommend reading Rules for Being a Good Republican (scroll down for Rules for Being a Good Democrat).

Linked to from the Jokes page is another joke that I highly suggest reading: Hundreds of Proofs of God's Existence, a satirical look at Christian apologetics from the Atheists of Silicon Valley. If you've ever debated religion with a theist, you've probably heard a lot of these before. I giggled when I read this one:

MORAL ARGUMENT (II)
(1) In my younger days I was a cursing, drinking, smoking, gambling, child-molesting, thieving, murdering, bed-wetting bastard.
(2) That all changed once I became religious.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

Same goes for this one:

VANDERZYDEN'S ARGUMENT FROM SECRET KNOWLEDGE
(1) There is overwhelming evidence for the existence of God.
(2) No, I'm not going to tell you what it is.
(3) The only possible explanation for your lack of knowledge is that you haven't studied enough.
(4) Or maybe your Atheistic presupposition is blinding you to the truth.
(5) But trust me — it's overwhelming.
(6) It's so overwhelming that no reasonable person can honestly reach the conclusion that God does not exist.
(7) Therefore, God exists.

Both of those are almost verbatim from responses I got to my Blasphemy Challenge entry.

Speaking of which, after Rebecca read my comments in that post on the Blasphemy Challenge, she talked me into writing it up as an op-ed and trying to submit it to places, and in the process I lengthened it and updated it fairly significantly from the blog post. None of that worked out so well, though. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out, but it didn't occur to me until afterward that not many mainstream publications would want to risk pissing off their largely Christian audiences by publishing anything positive toward atheism. So, long story short, no one was exactly beating a path to my door to publish my essay, so I feel safe posting it here.

A Defense of Atheist "Fundamentalism"
Late last year, a project called The Blasphemy Challenge was started by the Rational Response Squad, an online atheist group, and Beyond Belief Media, makers of the antireligion documentary “The God Who Wasn't There.” The goal is for people to commit the one unforgivable sin and therefore condemn themselves to Hell.

As a participant in the Blasphemy Challenge, I, along with over 700 other people to date, posted a short video of myself on YouTube denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. The Bible identifies this as an unforgivable sin. "Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin," reads Mark 3:28. A similar statement can be found at Luke 12:10. Therefore, if the Bible is true, I have earned myself a one-way ticket to Hell for all eternity.

Why would anyone possibly want to do this? For me, part of the reason was to show the absurdity and injustice of a God that apparently forgives murder and child rape but not dissent. The main reason, though, was to show the faithful that, yes, I really am serious about my nonbelief in your God, and I am neither apathetic about nor ignorant of religion. I wanted to demonstrate, as participant Michael Lawson was quoted in Newsweek, that "we really mean it when we say we don't believe a single word in [the Bible]."

Even on a purely strategic level, I've never really agreed with the confrontational tactics of some prominent atheists like Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins. Putting religious people on the defensive often ends up being counterproductive; if anything it just makes us come off as arrogant and elitist. At the same time, though, that does not mean nonreligious people should be quiet about our beliefs. If we ever want to gain public acceptance in this country, then we need to start coming out of the closet and assuring people that we are, in fact, people too.

Part of the public venom for atheists could stem from the fact that few people actually know any, and are therefore free to resort to all sorts of stereotypes. According to a study released last year by the University of Minnesota Department of Sociology, atheists are by far the most disdained religious group in the country, even as tolerance for other minority groups is going up. Respondents frequently used atheists as symbols for perceived problems in American society, tending to link them with law-breaking and greed. Many failed to see any possible secular basis for a good society, and therefore viewed atheism as a threat to moral order in a way other beliefs are not.

It is unfortunate for atheists that stating our views on religion will necessarily involve offending some believers, as it is pretty much impossible for me not to say I think their beliefs are wrong in the process. After all, it is not like I just have a different take on the meaning of the Bible than Christians do; rather, I do not believe the Bible is a divinely inspired document.

When some theists hear this, they scream about atheistic intolerance. For instance, Lakshmi Chaudhry, a senior editor at In These Times, derides Dawkins and his followers as atheist fundamentalists who follow "a virulent form of atheism that mirrors the polarized worldview of the religious extremists it claims to oppose." But really, what else am I supposed to say? That God exists for you but not for me? To me, tolerance means not imposing ones views on others, provided that other views do not involve coercion or cause harm. It does not mean accepting all views as equally valid.

None of this should be understood as saying religious believers are stupid. I absolutely do not believe that. There is any number of reasons why a person might become religious besides stupidity or irrationality. Additionally, I have never claimed to have a monopoly on truth. I think my beliefs to be right, but I also admit the possibility that I could be wrong. In fact, half the point of the Blasphemy Challenge to me was admitting that I am prepared to deal with the consequences if my beliefs turn out to be mistaken. All I can do is conclude what I can from the information I have, which in the case of religion leads me to doubt the existence of God.

My point is that any comparison between atheistic "intolerance" and that of, say, right-wing Christian extremists trying to turn America into a de facto theocracy is completely without merit. Unlike them, we, for the most part, do not seek to shove our beliefs down anyone else's throat, nor do we even really seek converts in the usual sense. All we really want is for people to think things out for themselves and be able to justify their beliefs, instead of just accepting without question what they are taught. That might lead one to atheism, and it might not. Atheism is not some sort of monolithic movement in any case. Ask five atheists their views on morality, for example, and you will probably get five different answers. Free thinking is the whole point of the movement and, as the Blasphemy Challenge creators point out, "the opposite of fundamentalism."

:: Kevin 6/12/2007 02:12:00 PM [+] ::
...

Addendum to the previous post: I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but let us not forget that the partial-birth abortion ban passed in the first place, like all too many of this administration's other excesses, with significant Democratic support.

:: Kevin 4/22/2007 12:13:00 AM [+] ::
...

So, there's a lot of complaining from the liberal side of the blogosphere - rightfully - about the "judicial activism" of the majority in the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the federal "partial-birth" abortion ban, particularly in regard to Alito's role in it. Here's what the Center for American Progress has to say about it:

ELECTIONS MATTER: The most important vote yesterday was that of the newest justice, Samuel Alito, appointed by President Bush after he won reelection to a second term in office. As a member of the 3rd District Court of Appeals, Alito had voted in July 2000 to strike down New Jersey's ban on mid-term abortions. "The New Jersey statute," he wrote, "lacks an exception for the preservation of the health of the mother." When Alito was nominated by Bush to replace O'Connor, many of his supporters argued that his decision in this case "proved that he would not be reliably anti-choice." He earned support in his nomination process when he said he "would not bring a political agenda to the court" and would be "respectful of precedent." But once presented with the opportunity to impose new ideological law, Alito grasped it, parting ways with O'Connor and his own previous judgments. The Washington Post's Andrew Cohen writes, "You can spin this any other way you want but in the end it comes down to a simple matter of personnel. Justice Alito was willing and able to go in the law where his predecessor, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wasn't."

Left unsaid in all of this, though, is the complicity of Senate Democrats in the decision. They had the opportunity to derail Alito's nomination, but were more interested in political posturing than in actually doing something. They could have voted against cloture when the nomination was filibustered, but most Democrats chose not to. Now, I'm not naive enough to think Bush would have nominated a liberal or something if Alito had failed, but it's equally naive to paint the Democrats as innocent bystanders. They voted for cloture, and then patted themselves on the back for casting a completely meaningless vote against Alito the next day. As is increasingly the case with Iraq, they are more comfortable saying they tried but failed than with actually sticking their necks out.

:: Kevin 4/19/2007 12:45:00 PM [+] ::
...

I do have things to say occasionally, but I'm usually not within easy reach of my blog when I think of them, and they end up being forgotten. However, today something stuck out to me in an article about Barack Obama by Allan Hunt Badiner that I feel the need to sound off on:

A sizable percentage of the progressive sector may not be happy with any candidate who does not agree with them on every issue. They have already shown a surprising lack of concern for the political and practical consequences of their inflexibility. The following that Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader enjoyed are cases in point. Intractable liberal voters are like window shoppers who feel most comfortable going home empty-handed and later whining that they couldn't find something they liked. They may have been as responsible for reelecting Bush as his hard-core conservative base.

I'll admit, I do have a couple litmus tests for potential candidates. One is on the occupation of Iraq. Any candidate that does not support an end as soon as possible, not just in talk but in actions, will not be getting my vote. On this issue, I have no real problem with Obama, aside from the fact that he, like other Democrats, opposes the war while still embracing much of the foreign policy philosophy that led to it (particularly preemptive war, but more generally they have the same vision of America's role in the world as the neocons, with a few modifications). However, if this were the only sticking point then Obama would be good enough on this issue that I could grudgingly vote for him.

The problem is my other litmus test. As I regularly tell my Obama-supporting fiancee Rebecca, I absolutely have to insist that my leaders not be liars and murderers. Is that so much to ask for? To the Allan Hunt Badiners of the world, it apparently is.

The primary issue to which I refer here is the Israel/Palestine conflict, on which Obama is extremely regressive. I'm not "anti-Israel," as I've previously argued, but I frankly believe Israel to be a colonial occupier that should be treated as such. I'm really not inflexible on the issue, though; as long as a candidate supports a truly even-handed approach that recognizes the bad deeds done by both sides and is willing to put pressure on the Israeli government where need be, I can live with that person.

Unfortunately, the previous statement does not describe Barack Obama. Judging by his public statements, a President Obama would mean little if any change in the status quo in which the Palestinians are expected to make the most as well as the biggest compromises, the crimes of the Israeli government are ignored and we continue to give them the weapons, money and diplomatic cover to commit those crimes.

As Rebecca described to me from a constituent coffee in Washington, DC, that she attended, Obama expressed absolute support for the Israeli attack on Lebanon last summer, with nary a word about Israel's targeting of civilians there. In addition, there is little silver lining to be found in his recent speech to AIPAC. Here is a good article on the subject. My favorite quote:

"But in the end," he added, "we also know that we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli prime minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States."

You really can't get more clear than that on where Obama stands.

As some have noted, it was not always this way; Obama was previously at least mildly sympathetic to the Palestinians. This changed when he ran for national office. I guess how one interprets this is matter of opinion; Rebecca insists that this means that Obama's "pro-Israel" (for lack of a better term) stuff is just going through the motions to avoid having AIPAC goons come after him, and that if elected he'll give Palestinian concerns a fair shake. I look at it and see someone who is willing to sell out oppressed people for votes and money. Why should I trust this guy? Is it really so wrong of me to have qualms about supporting someone who knowingly sides with the oppressors over the oppressed? Shouldn't we insist on more from our leaders? Or should we, as Badiner seems to argue, passivly accept Obama's position as the best we can do even as people continue to suffer and die in the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the Occupied Territories?

:: Kevin 3/13/2007 12:15:00 PM [+] ::
...