A Final Word On Torture?

UPDATE: V: A "new report issued this morning by Amnesty International charges that the Obama administration has effectively granted impunity to the practitioners of torture, and that its reluctance to address the issue 'not only leaves the USA in serious violation of its international legal obligations, it increases the risk that history will repeat itself when a different president again deems the circumstances warrant resort to torture, enforced disappearance, abductions or other human rights violations.' . .

At this point, it certainly doesn’t seem inconceivable that in response to a major national security threat, the U.S. could once again decide it needs to 'torture some folks.'"

Read Slate, Could America Torture Again?

UPDATE IV:  "Dick Cheney gave an interview that illustrated why it was so imprudent to abandon the taboo against torture and indulge in implausible hypotheticals. 13 years ago, Americans were arguing over whether it should be legal to torture a known terrorist if we knew it could stop a mass casualty attack on a major city. Now a former vice-president is defending the torture of innocent people."

Read The Atlantic, Dick Cheney Defends the Torture of Innocents.  

UPDATE III:  "The Senate's report on torture describes the Central Intelligence Agency as not just nauseatingly brutal, but also dishonest and ineffective. The report finds that the agency lied to the Bush administration, Congress and the public to hide the fact that an incompetently managed program of torture was failing to produce useful intelligence."

Read the Washington Post, Rectal feeding is exactly what it sounds like.  

UPDATE II: Reading "the stomach-churning findings of the 500-page executive summary [of the the Senate intelligence committee’s report on torture], the only part cleared for declassification, reinforces its importance. No one can review this account without feeling horror and shame, and without feeling anger at the degree to which public officials and the public itself were misled about what was being done in the name of national security.

Among the conclusions: So-called enhanced interrogation was 'not an effective means of obtaining accurate information.' Instead, “multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence.”

Meanwhile, the interrogations 'were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.' The techniques included, in addition to waterboardings that amounted to near-drownings, detainees being kept awake for up to 180 hours, detainees subjected to 'rectal rehydration' and detainees kept shackled in total darkness in dungeon-like conditions.

Even as the CIA mistreated detainees, it submitted false claims about the effectiveness of the interrogation techniques and misled the Justice Department and others about what it was doing. Its claims of counterterrorism successes were 'wrong in fundamental respects,' at best corroborating information already available or acquired before the application of enhanced interrogation."

Read the Washington Post, Exposing the CIA’s stain on America.  

UPDATE: One shameful example of our "endless borderless war against an emotional state," and its constitutional travesty, the military tribunals "designed by President Bush, implemented by President Obama and inspired by President Kafka". 

Read Slate, The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, How the United States kept him silent for 12 years.

And read these previous posts:

Does the Star-Spangled Banner Wave Over the Land of the Torturers?

WWJT (Who Would Jesus Torture) and

Bush, the Hypocrite-in-Chief

Then read this article from the Washington Post, Treatment of Terror Suspects a 'Collective Failure.'

47 Traitorous Republi-CONs Just Gave Iran the Nuclear Bomb

UPDATE VI:  Read Slate, Why Is the U.S. Backing a War That’s Helping al-Qaida.

What a mess!

UPDATE V:  "If you study Republican behavior over the past quarter-century, you’ll find that the image of conservative lawmakers standing resolutely for American strength and unity is a myth. Republicans support wars launched by Republican presidents. When Democratic presidents undertake wars or negotiations, Republicans generally attempt to sabotage them. In fact, Republicans often side with our enemies. . .

If a political party wanted to tear America apart, weaken its position in the world, reduce our capacity to influence events, and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what the Republican Party has done under Democratic presidents. "

Read Slate,  Foreign Saboteurs.

UPDATE IV:  "More sanctions are unlikely to produce a better nuclear agreement."

Read The Atlantic, What's the Alternative to Obama's Iran Deal.  

UPDATE III:  "Should we be arming ISIS? Or let me ask that differently: Why are we, for the third time since 9/11, fighting a war on behalf of Iran?

In 2002, we destroyed Iran’s main Sunni foe in Afghanistan (the Taliban regime). In 2003, we destroyed Iran’s main Sunni foe in the Arab world (Saddam Hussein).  But because we failed to erect a self-sustaining pluralistic order, which could have been a durable counterbalance to Iran, we created a vacuum in both Iraq and the wider Sunni Arab world. That is why Tehran’s proxies now indirectly dominate four Arab capitals: Beirut, Damascus, Sana and Baghdad."

Read The New York Times, Go Ahead, Ruin My Day.

Read also, Was It Worth It?

UPDATE II:  Of course, there is always war, which the chickenhawks and warmongers want.

Beware though, "[i]f the United States attempts to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity by air, the mission would not be like Israel’s 1981 single-day strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor. A U.S. attack would have to target multiple complexes, and planners would need to prepare the battlefield by destroying air defense radars, interceptors and much of Iran’s air force. Such an operation could require hundreds of sorties over several days.

Iran would probably respond by threatening shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, potentially touching off a global oil crisis. The U.S. Navy would be forced to patrol the Persian Gulf and possibly undertake a lengthy operation to destroy Iran’s navy and its arsenal of anti-ship cruise missiles.

Iran would be unlikely to capitulate even with its air force and navy out of commission. It would probably turn to terrorism to strike at U.S. targets around the globe. If such attacks were successful, they would generate enormous public pressure to escalate the conflict, perhaps including demands for regime change in Tehran. That, in turn, could mean yet another U.S. ground war in the Middle East, this time against a nation of more than 80 million. As we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, the costs of such a conflict could be measured in decades, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties and trillions of dollars. Such escalation is not a certainty, but it is a real possibility."

Read the Washington Post, Don’t sugarcoat the costs of war with Iran.

UPDATE:  What the Senator Cotton did defied "the chain of command in what could be construed as an illegal act [see the Logan Act] . . . [It was a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, [Cotton] should know better. . . I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on, to succeed. . . The breach of discipline is extremely dangerous, because undermining our diplomatic efforts, at this moment, brings us another step closer to a very costly and perilous war with Iran."

So say retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, "now a senior advisor with National Security Network, a Washington, DC-based foreign policy think tank."

Read the Washington Post, Tom Cotton picked apart by Army general over ‘mutinous’ Iran letter.

Republ-cons sent a letter of support to their brother Iranian hardliners "in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation, with all the gravity and deliberation of a blog posting. In timing, tone and substance, it raises questions about the Republican majority’s capacity to govern." 

It weakened the U.S. and will undermine sanctions.

Read the Washington Post, The true scandal of the GOP senators’ letter to Iran. 

Read also Slate, An Open Letter to 47 Republican Senators of the United States of America from Iran’s Hard-Liners, stating they "look forward to working with [the Republ-cons] in the future on other matters of common interest, such as prayer, capital punishment, and troops in Iraq."

The Republi-CON "Obama Hates America" Myth

UPDATE:  "Conservatives will harrumph to the contrary, but relative to his peers, Obama has had a remarkably clean, scandal-free presidency."

Read Slate, Obama’s Gift to Hillary Clinton.  

"There is simply no question that, in his own telling, Barack Obama believes that the United States is an exceptional, great, splendiferous nation—the world's most powerful force for good. And he will be happy to explain to you, at great and occasionally repetitive length, why he holds that belief, as the video above indicates. (Among his America-themed speeches, some of which we took clips from: Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote in Boston, his March 2008 speech on race relations in Philadelphia, his 2008 nomination-acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, his election night remarks at Chicago's Grant Park in 2008, his inaugural address in 2009, his June 2009 speech in Cairo, his 2012 State of the Union address, his 2012 Democratic National Convention speech in Charlotte, his 2012 election-night speech in Washington D.C., his 2013 inaugural, his September 2013 address to the United Nations, his December 2013 speech on economic mobility in D.C., his 2014 State of the Union, his May 2014 commencement address at West Point, and his post-election press conference in November 2014; click links for transcripts.*)

. . . [N]no one could seriously read or watch Obama's remarks and come away with the overall impression that he is anything but relentlessly positive about the United States."

Read Slate, Watch Barack Obama Talk About How America Is the Greatest Country on Earth in 13 Different Speeches, or watch

The 2016 Republi-CON Primaries -- Time to Pledge Allegiance to Charlatans and Cranks

UPDATE II:  "The 2016 Republican candidates can already be sorted into roles that tell us a lot about their chances of winning the nomination."

Read The New York Times, The G.O.P Presidential Field Looks Chaotic. Its Not., which reviews the 'invisible primary leaders, mainstream alternatives, and factional favorites.'

UPDATE:  The Republi-con's first candidate is "a guy with a big mouth and no results . . . [h]e oversimplifies, he exaggerates ... he doesn't provide leadership and he has no real experience," and that according to his party comrade.

Let the circus begin!

Read CNN, GOP Rep. Peter King dismisses Ted Cruz as 'carnival barker'.  

And who will be next, possibly a deadbeat "publicity-hound billionaire and reality TV host"?  We can only hope.

"[W]hat does it say about the current state of the G.O.P. that discussion of economic policy is now monopolized by people who have been wrong about everything, have learned nothing from the experience, and can’t even get their numbers straight?

The answer, I’d suggest, runs deeper than economic doctrine. Across the board, the modern American right seems to have abandoned the idea that there is an objective reality out there, even if it’s not what your prejudices say should be happening. What are you going to believe, right-wing doctrine or your own lying eyes? These days, the doctrine wins.

Look at another issue, health reform. Before the Affordable Care Act went into effect, conservatives predicted disaster: health costs would soar, the deficit would explode, more people would lose insurance than gain it. They were wrong on all counts. But, in their rhetoric, even in the alleged facts (none of them true) people like Mr. Moore put in their articles, they simply ignore this reality. Reading them, you’d think that the dismal failure they wrongly predicted had actually happened.

Then there’s foreign policy. This week Jeb Bush tried to demonstrate his chops in that area, unveiling his team of expert advisers — who are, sure enough, the very people who insisted that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators.

And don’t get me started on climate change.

Along with this denial of reality comes an absence of personal accountability. If anything, alleged experts seem to get points by showing that they’re willing to keep saying the same things no matter how embarrassingly wrong they’ve been in the past.

But let’s go back to those economic charlatans and cranks: Clearly, failure has only made them stronger, and now they are political kingmakers. Be very, very afraid."

Read The New York Times, Cranking Up for 2016.

As noted before, Republi-cons never let reality spoil a good delusion.

How Many Days Since Birther Fool's Day?

UPDATE IV:  Happy Second Birther Fool's Day! 

It has been more than a year since the first Birther Fool's Day, and still no  'universe-shattering' revelation(s).

UPDATE III:  Now we'll see if the Birthers were motivated by principle or race.

Read the Washington Post, Everything you need to know about the Ted Cruz ‘birther’ movement.

UPDATE II:  Two weeks until Birther Fool's Day, and still no  'universe-shattering' revelation(s).

Can you say sucker!!

UPDATE:  It has been almost a year since Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo Gang and Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) started the con, promising 'universe-shattering' revelation(s) soon.

On Fact-Free Friday, maybe the pastor will tells us when the 'universe-shattering' revelation(s) will be made.

Bwahahahaha!!!!

Birther Fool's Day was the first day after the month that the universe was to be 'shattered', as promised by the "Sheriff Joe’s Scooby Doo gang" to 'Gallups' gullibles' on 'fellatio Friday' in mid-December 2013 (the 'universe-shattering' twist was being promoted elsewhere in late November).

It is no coincidence that Birther Fool's Day was April 1st.

And how much time has past since the promised 'universe-shattering' revelations:


That sound you hear is the growing laughter at the Birther delusions.

The Republi-CON "Religious Freedom and Heritage" Myth

Slavery was "God’s will, desegregation was Satan’s work, and the federal government was the Antichrist [and the Confederate flag as a historic symbol] . . .

[So said] a hard-working, Christian man that loves God and wants to further (God’s) work throughout the world . . .

[Who could] doubt [his and other's] sincerity. Why wouldn’t they believe racism was God’s will? We white Southerners heard that message on weekends from the pulpit, on school days from our segregated schools, and every day from our governments. When Richard and Mildred Loving left Virginia to be married, a state trial judge convicted them of violating the Racial Integrity Act. That judge wrote that 'Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents … The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.'

That’s a good background against which to measure the uproar about the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was signed into law by Governor Mike Pence last week. I don’t question the religious sincerity of anyone involved in drafting and passing this law. But sincere and faithful people, when they feel the imprimatur of both the law and the Lord, can do very ugly things."

Read The Atlantic, What Makes Indiana's Religious-Freedom Law Different?

One man's so-called religion is another man's discrimination.

"The F--k Barrel": America's Modern Fuedalism

Learn how "excessive policing and municipal fines can ruin" the poor.

Watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Municipal Violations (HBO):

Find the #1 Song on the Day You Were Born

Enter your birthdate (or any date) and find the #1 song for that date here!

The results will include a link to the #1 song nine months earlier, if you know what I mean ;-) or care to know.

Rick Perry, R-Murderer and Believer of Junk Science

UPDATE VI:  "What happens in Texas when you get a man executed on the basis of bad testimony?"

Read Slate, Justice Deferred.


Perry, the former prosecutor John H. Jackson, and others should be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murder.

UPDATE V:  "In a major turn in one of the country’s most-noted death penalty cases, the State Bar of Texas has filed a formal accusation of misconduct against the county prosecutor who convicted Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man executed in 2004 for the arson murder of his three young daughters.

Following a preliminary inquiry that began last summer, the bar this month filed a disciplinary petition in Navarro County District Court accusing the former prosecutor, John H. Jackson, of obstruction of justice, making false statements and concealing evidence favorable to Willingham’s defense.

'Before, during, and after the 1992 trial, [Jackson] knew of the existence of evidence that tended to negate the guilt of Willingham and failed to disclose that evidence to defense counsel,' the bar investigators charged."

Read the Washington Post, Prosecutor accused of misconduct in disputed Texas execution case.

UPDATE IV:  "More than a decade after Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for the arson murder of his three young daughters, new evidence has emerged that indicates that a key prosecution witness testified in return for a secret promise to have his own criminal sentence reduced. . .

In two days of interviews recently with the Marshall Project, [the witness, Johnny E] Webb gave the most detailed account to date of how he came to testify against Willingham. He said that [the prosecutor, John H.] Jackson threatened him with a life sentence in the robbery case — a possibility under Texas law because Webb had several prior convictions — unless he testified. . .

During Willingham’s three-day trial in August 1992, Jackson pointedly asked Webb on the witness stand whether he had been promised a lighter sentence or some other benefit for his cooperation. Webb told the judge and jury that he had not."

Read the Washington Post, Letter from witness casts further doubt on 2004 Texas execution. 

UPDATE III: For those Republi-cons who are reading challenged, a reminder that you can watch the PBS Frontline documentary on the Willingham case.


UPDATE II: Read the report of the Arson Review Committee, A Peer Review Panel Commissioned by the Innocence Project regarding Willingham’s case, and another case of alleged arson. One executed, but one not, based on junk science.


UPDATE: "There is little dispute that the arson evidence in Willingham’s case, based on myths that had permeated fire investigations for years, was invalid. Every independent expert, including the top experts in the country, has concluded that there was no evidence of arson." Read SSRN, The Execution of Cameron Todd Willingham: Junk Science, an Innocent Man, and the Politics of Death.

"Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive, but Perry makes you think they are." Read the Washington Post, Rick Perry, the Republicans’ Messiah?

And Perry's no messiah, he rushed to have the man executed for political reasons, his reelection.

Read a previous post, Executing an Innocent Man and Trying to Hide It.

More Pandering to Birther Buffoonery

UPDATE III:  He's back for 2016.

Read Slate, Donald Trump Will Save America From Boring Grownup GOP Primary, which notes that Republi-cons hoped "to avoid having such "eccentric" candidates this time around might be cringing at Trump's continued harping on President Obama's birth certificate, but there's not too much they can do to keep him under wraps."

UPDATE II:  Is your local congressman a birther?

It seems our congressman can't decide.  Read the Pensacola News Journal, Rep. Jeff Miller suspends Twitter account over 'birther poll'. 

UPDATE:  Donald Trump has helped Obamney win over the birthers, now all he needs is America's '9/11 truthers, alien abductees, doomsday preppers, Sasquatch hunters, and Sasquatches or Sasqui.'

Watch the Colbert Report, Donald Trump's Creative Truth & Mitt Romney's Poll Numbers:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Of course, some doubters think the Trump is bloviating ignoramus.  

Based upon the Pastor's self professed 10-year law enforcement background and experience, I'm waiting for the arrests that he claims are imminent.

In the meantime, the birthers are proving themselves buffoons again, with their racist lies.

Did you know that in 1990, "an obscure publication known as the New York Times had written about his election as head of the Harvard Law Review, and noted, 'His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.'"  (From the Washington Post, The birthers are back! The birthers are back!)

Yet in Arizona, the Arizona secretary of state, Ken Bennett and former Republican president of the Arizona Senate, who is planning to run for governor in two years, is 'pandering to crackpots — and humiliating himself in the bargain.' 

"Never mind that Hawaii has confirmed publicly and repeatedly, since before the 2008 presidential election, that Mr. Obama was born there; that the Hawaii Department of Health has released both the short and long forms of the president’s birth certificate; and that all this information, along with clear-as-a-bell explanations, is available to the public online. [To birther buffoons] none of that is sufficient proof for the Show Me Your Papers State. . .

Everyone knows that birthers — the few that remain against the overwhelming facts of documentary evidence — are half-baked clowns who live for their pet conspiracy theory. . .

Fine. Let the buffoonery play through its final act. We’re confident that, in the end, Mr. Bennett will ensure that Arizona’s ballot includes the name of the president of the United States, all the while insisting, disingenuously, that his actions were merely an instance of due diligence.

But by threatening to exclude Mr. Obama from the ballot, Mr. Bennett transformed what should have been a farcical sideshow of the 2012 election into an actual menace to democracy. He legitimized the lunatic leanings of the United States’, and his party’s, most extreme elements. He put it in the minds of radicals everywhere that elected officials, for the shabbiest reasons (or none at all), can float the idea of bending ballot rules and suffer no adverse consequence.

In the process, he shamed Arizona on the 100th anniversary of its statehood, giving it the appearance of a banana republic that’s come unhinged under the influence of partisan fever."  (From the Washington Post, In Arizona, more birther buffoonery.)

And while one would think that "[w]henever the “birther” movement rears its head, sensible people argue that the press should just ignore it, since it’s so far out on the lunacy spectrum. . .

Mr. Bennett is not just your ordinary, garden-variety birther. He is co-chairman of the Mitt Romney campaign in Arizona. "  (From The New York Times, The Romney Campaign Joins the Birther Brigade.)

Alas, after embarrassing Arizona once again (you may remember that a "bill requiring presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship in Arizona was vetoed last year by" the Republican governor), Bennett "received the 'verification in-lieu of certified copy' from officials within the Hawaii Department of Health that we requested in March . They have officially confirmed that the information in the copy of the Certificate of Live Birth for the President matches the original record in their files.'"  (From the Washington Post, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett satisfied Obama was born in United States.)

I can't wait to hear how our Resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators (AKA Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins)), who plagiarize lies to salvage his malicious fantasy campaign to brand Obama as an outsider, as un-American, as non-American, will explain it all to his sycophants on Friday.

For more on the birthers racists fantasies, see these prior posts:

This Post is For All You Birthers Out There

Republi-Cons Have No Shame, Judge Edition

The Spin of Pastor 2+2 Does Not = 4, AKA Pastor Dred Scott or Pastor Truthiness (Formerly Known as Pastor Poppins)

Don't Be Duped by the Birthers

The Republi-CON 'January 2014 Disproves Global Warming' Myth

UPDATE III:  So, because it is cold outside, global warming is a hoax.

"As Stephen Colbert wrote, brilliantly mocking this kind of ridiculosity, "Global warming isn't real because I was cold today! Also great news: World hunger is over because I just ate.'

Read Slate, Ted Cruz Goes Full Orwell.

UPDATE II:  Read USA Today, Earth had warmest winter on record.

Read also, So You Don't Believe in Global Warming, Then Explain What Happens to 35 Gigatons of CO2 Each Year.  

UPDATE:  "The climate numbers are in from January and, on a global perspective, it actually wasn’t that cold at all.

In fact, for the 347th month in a row, planet Earth was downright toasty.

Yep, the last month in which Earth’s average temperature was below the 20th-century average was during the Reagan administration. February 1985, to be exact: 'I Want to Know What Love Is' by Foreigner was the No. 1 song in the country. Sally Field had just been nominated for best actress for Places in the Heart. The author of this piece celebrated his fourth birthday party. That’s a long time for a planet to run a fever.

Since that moment 29 years ago, there’s been an unbroken stretch of planetary warmth. Almost as if the entire globe was warming. Hey, maybe we can call it 'global warming'".

Read Slate, Don't Let the Snow Fool You. January Wasn't Cold at All.  

In the continental U.S, the "average temperature of the U.S. was just 0.07°F below the 1981-2010 average according to NCDC. . .

[In fact Alaska] had its 3rd-warmest January, with temperatures 14.8°F above average. During a late January warm spell, the daily high reached 62°F in Port Alsworth, tying the highest January temperature recorded in the state."

Read Climate Central, Never-Ending Winter? Nah, January in U.S. Was Average.  

Happy π Day!

Today "is March 14, or, as it’s written in the U.S., 3/14. That makes it Pi Day, because the mathematical constant π is roughly equal to 3.14. Nerds celebrate this date every year, because, well, we’re nerds. Duh.

But this year’s π Day is special: It’s the year 2015, so the date is 3/14/15, giving us two more decimal places of the famous constant. In fact, if you celebrate it at 9:26:53 today, you get π to nine decimals: 3.141592653. Since the next digit is a 5, you can even round up and celebrate π Day for an extra second. Woohoo!"

Read Slate, 8 Things About Pi for Pi Day. 

Read also Slate, A Very Special Pi Day. 

Happy Friday the 13th!

"This year will see three Friday the 13ths, the most possible in a calendar year. Recently, the holiday has been mostly used for themed bar nights and marathons of a certain movie series. But what led people to associate this day and date with unfortunate fates in the first place?

In the video [below], some common explanations."

Watch Slate, What’s So Bad About Friday the 13th?:



FYI, paraskevidekatriaphobia is fear of Friday the 13th

The Repbli-CON Plan to Destroy the Economy

UPDATE IV:  Read Bloomberg View, Best State for Business? Yes, California.

Read also Slate, The States Where Second (and Third, and Fourth) Marriages Are Most Common. 

UPDATE III: More proof that God hates the South.

Read The Huffington Post, These 9 Maps Should Absolutely Outrage Southerners. 

UPDATE II:  "In perhaps the least shocking economic data point to be released this month, American consumers were sharply less confident about the economy in early October than they were in September. Turns out, shutting down the government for 16 days while using the threat of a government debt default to battle over the nation's budget isn't great for peoples' psyche."

Read the Washington Post, Consumer confidence collapsed this month. Thanks, Congress!

UPDATE:  Want proof that Republi-cons are bad for the economy?

"On average, the economy in the districts those Republicans represent is significantly worse than it is in the nation at large.

The median income in those districts last year was 7 percent lower than the national median, according to the Census Bureau. The unemployment rate averaged 10 percent. That was almost two percentage points higher than the national rate, and two percentage points higher than the overall rate in the states that contain each district."

Read the Washington Post, At the source of the shutdown, the economy falters — and anger at Barack Obama runs high.

Of course, it could be that God just hates the South (new link).

As suggested by former Bush administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen, who urged Republi-cons (at the Washington Post, The GOP flunks Hostage Taking 101) "to release the government hostage and instead jack up its demand for the debt ceiling":

"'[O]ne of the first things they teach you in Hostage Taking 101 is that you have to choose a hostage the other side cares about saving' . . a debt-ceiling breach would potentially destroy millions of jobs, making it the perfect threat."

Read New York Magazine, Why the Shutdown Is Leading to Debt Default; or, What Happens When You Take Hostages Without a Plan.

The article states that "Boehner resembles William H. Macy’s character in Fargo, who concocts a simple plan to have his wife kidnapped and skim the proceeds, failing to think a step forward about what happens once she’s actually seized by violent criminals. He doesn’t intend for her to be harmed, but also has no ability to control the plan once he’s set it in motion. In the end, Boehner's Speakership is likely to end up in the wood chipper, anyway."

For a preview, watch the wood chipper scene:

The Republi-CONs Ugly Political Cynicism

"Questioning this affirmation involves a serious charge — an accusation of the worst sort of cynicism. And it is simply not the role of a Christian layman to publicly dispute the self-identification of other Christians, especially in a political context. It is a practice that can lead down ugly alleys of sectarianism."

Read the Washington Post, Scott Walker and judging the faith of another.

Republi-cons might also read the Constitution they claim to so dearly love. 

The End of the World is Near, Again

UPDATE VIII:  Read also Wikipedia, Apocalypticism.  

UPDATE VII:   FYI, "ISIS's interpretation of Islam is not literal. It is not serious."

Read The Atlantic, What Muslims Really Want, which notes that:

"The Quran is a single volume, roughly the length of the New Testament. It is a complex and nuanced text that deals with legal, moral, and metaphysical questions in a subtle and multifaceted way. Then there are the hadith, or records of sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad, which run into dozens of volumes spanning literally hundreds of thousands of texts, each on average a few sentences long. Then there is the juridical and theological literature about the Quran and the hadith, which consists of thousands of works written throughout Islamic history.

Does ISIS cite 'texts'? Yes, though its main method is to cite individual hadith that support its positions. But remember: The hadith consist of hundreds of thousands of discrete items that range from faithfully transmitted teachings to outright fabrications attributed to the prophet, and every gradation in between.

Over the centuries, jurists and theologians of every stripe, Sunni and Shiite, have devised rational, systematic methods for sifting through hadith, which are often difficult to understand or seem to say contrary things about the same questions. They have ranked and classified these texts according to how reliable they are, and have used them accordingly in law and theology. But ISIS does not do this. Its members search for text snippets that support their argument, claim that these fragments are reliable even if they are not, and disregard all contrary evidence—not to mention Islam’s vast and varied intellectual and legal tradition. Their so-called 'prophetic methodology' is nothing more than cherry-picking what they like and ignoring what they do not. . .

What distinguishes the interpretive approach of groups like ISIS from others is not its literalism (Sufis are indeed the most 'literal' of all such interpreters of the Quran) but its narrowness and rigidity; for the adherents of ISIS, the Quran means exactly one thing, and other levels of meaning or alternate interpretations are ruled out a priori. This is not literalism. It is exclusivism."

Imam Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Truthiness and Pastor Poppins) does the same, always claiming his interpretation of the Bible is inerrant. 

UPDATE VI:  Hallelujah, we are saved.  It appears that certain claims of the end times by our local Imam Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Truthiness and Pastor Poppins) are "completely off-the-wall . . . an exercise in imagination that is going to confuse many people," so says his "dear and valued friend."

Read Lamb & Lion Ministries Blog, A Confused Book About Revelation.

One commenter even said that Imam Truthiness "wrote this book, purely to make money." Another wrote that he "has been deceived by Satan."  And yet anothers write that he "has been caught up with demonic deceits, this has happened many times over the yrs" and he is "a false prophet. Or if you don't want to go that far...at least he has lost his way on the subject matter in his book."

 

UPDATE V:  After reading The Atlantic article, it is clear that ISIS is to Islam as David Koresh was to Christianity.  

UPDATE IV:  ISIS "is a religious group . . . [that believes] that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse."

Read The Atlantic, What ISIS Really Wants, which notes that for "certain true believers—the kind who long for epic good-versus-evil battles—visions of apocalyptic bloodbaths fulfill a deep psychological need."

And just how to advance the apocalypse -- with a religious war -- which it seems Imam Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Truthiness and Pastor Poppins) would also like.

UPDATE III:  As noted before, Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) is fond of citing current events as fulfillment of 'prophesy' of the soon-to-be apocalypse (in support of his personal religious myths of course). Why are people addicted to such 'predictions?'

It turns out his ideology is shared by Islamic fundamentalist.

Read CNN, Why does ISIS keep making enemies?, which notes that ISIS "ideology is that of an apocalyptic cult that believes that we are living in the end times and that ISIS' actions are hastening the moment when this will happen."

UPDATE II:  "Bigotry has always existed, and though its techniques may change, its goal is always largely the same. The bigot, Bronner writes, 'directs his hatred against those who threaten (or might threaten) his privileges, his existential self-worth' by challenging the prevailing prejudices of the day. His beliefs are unquestionably the right ones; he 'hears the Lord’s voice and he condemns those who don’t, or interpret it otherwise.' But if you criticize the bigot for his antediluvian views, he’ll scurry behind the shield of 'traditions' and 'established habits.' . . 

So while the bigot may be a 'true believer,' he is also a pragmatist. He can twist mythologies, including religion and imagined tradition, to fit his needs in a thousand different ways. But behind the bigot’s beliefs is an all-consuming fear of modernity. It was modernity, after all, that gave minorities the tools to combat their oppression—which, in turn, led to the increasing marginalization of prejudiced holdouts.

The bigot’s fight against modernity also allows him to disguise his biases as a principled conviction that minorities are, in Bronner’s words, 'fighting against the natural order of things.' We see this casuistry deployed repeatedly in the right’s strange quest to smear and dehumanize trans people: Because conservatives have always believed in strict adherence to an unbreakable gender binary, that binary must be accurate. 'Things are the way they are,' in Bronner’s succinct phrasing, 'and they are that way for a reason.' If trans people could go millennia without demanding respect, they have no right to demand it today.

Why are bigots so terrified of modernity and its enthusiasts? Simple: As minorities capitalize upon the 21st century’s enlightened cosmopolitanism, bigots feel their power slipping away. After anti-gay activists failed to pass a gay segregation bill in red-leaning Arizona, conservatives cried foul, arguing that the measure’s demise imperiled their own 'religious liberty.' Their conception of 'liberty'—the freedom to discriminate against gay customers—might not be shared by many mainstream Americans in 2014. But conservatives are desperate to cling to this 'liberty' nonetheless; their right to deny gay people basic dignity, so uncontroversial for so many years, is tantamount to an assertion of power over the oppressed in the public sphere. With it, conservatives can cling to a shred of their former cultural dominance. Without it, their cause is revealed as a fraud."

Read Slate, Are Anti-Gay Activists Bigots? A Brilliant, Disturbing New Book Says Yes.

UPDATE:  Does "[a]ll that talk of snake-inspired subterfuge, planet-cleansing floods, and apocalyptic horsemen might hamper [some people's] ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality—or even to think critically."

Read Slate, Is Religion Good for Children?, which noted that researchers have found that the division in perceptions of reality between religiously raised and secular children was striking. Religious teaching, "'especially exposure to miracle stories, leads children to a more generic receptivity toward the impossible, that is, a more wide-ranging acceptance that the impossible can happen in defiance of ordinary causal relations.'

If you’re surprised by these findings, you probably haven’t attended a church service lately. Religions tend to be founded on miracle stories—exactly the thing religious kids had trouble distinguishing from reality. When you’ve been told that a woman was created from a man’s rib, or that a man reawakened three days postmortem little worse for the wear, your grasp on reality is bound to take a hit. Religious children are told these stories from an early age, often as though they are unquestionably true. (Some are told that questioning them might lead to eternal damnation.) If you’re expected to believe two of every animal could fit on an ark made of gopher wood, wouldn’t you have trouble understanding that magical sails don’t exist? . .

The question of children and religion, then, is really just a small part of the broader dilemma of faith versus skepticism. In the United States, the vast majority of us choose the former and push our kids to do the same. That might make them docile, obliging, and credulous. But it doesn’t make them better people."

Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) says the end of the world is near.  But before you get swindled by this scam, or spend money on the conferences and books, get educated.

Read and/or watch PBS Frontline, Apocalypse.

There is a detailed chronology of end timers, through 1999 (when the program first aired).

You'll also understand that Pastor Truthiness (aka Huckster and Con Man) stands in the company of other end timers, like William Miller and David Koresh and other cultist, as well as Marx and Hitler.

He's just part of America's Doomsday Industry. 

Those Clueless Republi-CONs

UPDATE:  As noted before, Obama has fail to create the Republi-con's imaginary hyperinflation.

Is it because "[i]nflation is just a scare story [Republi-cons and] people old enough to remember the 1970s tell."

Read the Washington Post, Inflation is dead: It’s below 1 percent in the U.S., U.K., Europe, China, and Japan.

Rand Paul and the Republi-cons "have, for years, brayed about high inflation that didn't exist and currency depreciation that wasn't happening, even taking the unprecedented step of publicly warning the Fed off its stimulus efforts, all while the real problems were too-low inflation, and, more recently, a stronger dollar that's put a crimp on the recovery. But despite this, Paul wants these people who have been, to put it charitably, wrong about everything to have more of a say against the ones who haven't. And it's all in the name of 'transparency' that the Fed is already providing plenty of, which Paul would know if he actually read something about it anywhere other than the usual Austrian suspects. The worst part, though, is that we know what an economy with the kind of tight money that Republicans prefer looks like right now. It's called 'Europe,' and it has twice as much unemployment as we do. But hey, empirical evidence doesn't matter, right? Let them eat first principles!

That's the kind of crazy that would make charlatans and cranks both say Rand Paul is giving them a bad name."

Read the Washington Post, Clueless in Kentucky: Rand Paul’s ideas about the Fed make absolutely no sense.  

An Example of The Fear, Anger, Hatred Industry

UPDATE III:  As noted before, the  Republi-con Party thrives on a fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'.  Nowhere is it more evident than "on the scientifically indisputable but ideologically fraught issue of vaccination."

Read the Washington Post, Seeking a vaccine for ignorance , which notes that the GOP base "tend to be litmus-test conservatives on social issues and place Scripture above science,"

Read also the Washington Post, A GOP outbreak of scientific illiteracy, which pointed out that Christie stated "that parents need to have some measure of choice" on vaccination, "the same Chris Christie who had no hesitation about imposing mandatory, and medically unnecessary, quarantines on health-care workers returning from Ebola-ravaged countries."

UPDATE II:  Thanks in part to vaccines, "[l]ife expectancy doubled in the past 150 years."

Read Slate, Why Are You Not Dead Yet? , which notes that "[t]here’s nothing like looking back at the history of death and dying in the United States to dispel any romantic notions you may have that people used to live in harmony with the land or be more in touch with their bodies. Life was miserable—full of contagious disease, spoiled food, malnutrition, exposure, and injuries."

Or play the "Wretched Fate game and risk dropsy, quinsy, consumption, and worms," also at Slate, How Would You Have Died in 1811?

UPDATE: "Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, roughly one in five Americans believes that vaccines cause autism — a disturbing fact that will probably hold true even after the publication this month, in a British medical journal, of a report thoroughly debunking the 1998 paper that began the vaccine-autism scare.

That’s because the public’s underlying fear of vaccines goes much deeper than a single paper. Until officials realize that, and learn how to counter such deep-seated concerns, the paranoia — and the public-health risk it poses — will remain. . .

America’s public health leaders need . . . to reclaim the town square with a candid national conversation about the real risks of vaccines, which are minuscule compared with their benefits."

Read The New York Times, Why Parents Fear the Needle.

The "disturbing and well-told chronicle of the childhood vaccine wars in the United States and England" and "the media's role is unsparing; he shows how ratings-hungry news and entertainment shows kept the debate alive [by 'parroting quack claims'], even as evidence for the safety and effectiveness of the shots became overwhelming."

Read the Washington Post, Seth Mnookin's 'The Panic Virus,' on the debate over vaccine use.

Read also an article by Mnookin from The Atlantic, What Drives Irrational Rhetoric? The Case of Childhood Vaccinations.

The Republi-CON "Hardscrabble, Up-By-Your-Bootstraps Ethos" Myth

"Delivering the official Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst related tales of a hardscrabble upbringing in which she 'worked construction' with her father, took a job in the fast food industry, and placed plastic bread bags over her one pair of shoes so as to keep them dry when it rained. 'Our parents may not have had much,' Ernst said of herself and her schoolmates’ families, 'but they worked hard for what they did have.'

The takeaway, of course, was that we should all be so self-reliant, not depending on government handouts to get by. In her speech, Ernst denounced 'wasteful spending' and vowed that Republicans would cut it. The new GOP Congress, Ernst said, would work toward an America in which 'you don’t need to come from wealth or privilege to make a difference.' . .

Here’s what the GOP rising star omitted from her paean to gritty self-reliance: Hard as her family may have worked, and fierce as Ernst may be in her opposition to big government spending, her family benefited more than $460,000 in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009, per the District Sentinel. Beneficiaries included Ernst’s father, Richard Culver, uncle Dallas Culver, and late grandfather Harold Culver. The Culvers’ subsidies hardly set them apart from their neighbors; as the District Sentinel notes, Iowa ranks second only to Texas in farm subsidies, with the largely rural and agricultural state receiving $24.9 billion in subsidies between 1995 and 2012.

The revelation comes three months after Salon reported that Richard Culver’s construction company received more than $200,000 in Montgomery County contracts while Ernst was the county auditor, despite a state conflict of interest law that voids contracts awarded to family members of any county employee.

Ernst isn’t the first Republican to lambaste government spending, even as her family feeds at the federal trough. Four House Republicans who voted in 2013 to drastically cut spending on food stamps had received farm subsidies worth at least $7,883,824 combined, BuzzFeed reported at the time."


Read Salon, Joni Ernst’s family received nearly half a million dollars in federal farm subsidies.  

You Don't Know Jack

From an email:

1) How long did the Hundred Years' War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get cat gut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7) What was King George VI's first name?
8) What color is a purple finch?
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?

See comments for the answers.