Climate Sunday: Hey, "Galileo", there is no Planet B!

There are few things that are more irksome than watching someone do a job they are completely ill-suited for. Case in point for me,I find watching Fawlty Towers difficult. I understand it's a comedy show and the humor is based on the ill-suitedness of the character of Basil Fawlty for anything approaching a customer service or hospitality career whatsoever, but it irks me all the same. There are jobs for which some people are not capable.

Senator Ted Cruz is not suited to be the Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness . He's pretty well revealed he isn't. In fact, he's as brutally dumb as Sen. Inhofe.  And yet he's recently compared himself to Galileo, as if his "contrarianism" (not to say "denialism") is somehow a virtue of his more exact observation of what is going on with the climate.

Except no one could accuse Ted Cruz of making any cogent observations at all. 13 of 14 recent years were the hottest on this planet. Sea-level rise is observable. California, which grows about a quarter of our food, is running out of water. These are things that are happening now, and need to be addressed now. Which is why I agree with CA Gov. Brown on this one.

Boycott Mike Pence

Of course, this Move On petition sort of lacks a legal basis since Indiana does not have a recall for elected officials, but I think it at least identifies the problem with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed in Indiana, in that yes, this is a bit of signifying for social conservatives.  And I think it's the kind of thing a social conservative might push for specifically to look like he has a point if he were considering something bigger. My admiration for George Takei aside, I find that I side more with Melissa McEwan regarding not seeing this particular discrimination-sanctioning law as being a reason to discriminate against an entire state, including innocent people who never would support this kind of bill at all.

As an American, I just have a real problem writing off an entire state, you know? Thinking back to the various gay marriage bans, I never thought boycotting those states in particular would change hearts and minds--time and lawsuits and a gathering recognition that gay people are full citizens who should enjoy every right including the freedom to form a contract of marriage with another consenting adult would simply, over time, get acceptance of marriage equality over the finish line. Did I write California off over Prop. 8?

Is this Peak George Will?

So, this column makes me feel a little bit like I'm stuck in an absurdist sketch.

GW: When some people are living hand to mouth, we all do better.

VS: Well, except those living hand-to-mouth.

GW: But they get a raise when they shop at Walmart!

VS: With food stamps, that they hand over to employees who also qualify for food stamps.

GW: Low wages lower prices for all consumers.

VS: But wages obviously can go so low that one can't buy anything at all, no matter how cheap.

Just an odd reminder--

If you like how I write about politics, you might appreciate my poetry blog or my fiction and criticism blog,  Basically, I keep writing things. I'm pretty much always in the middle of some kind of composition. This is not to say my poetry is great or my strangely random thoughts are important. But I dunno. I do it for free anyway.

Heh, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers "Pulled a Ted"

One wonders what becomes of a political party when its learning curve flatlines. Anyhow, this little story from Daily Kos' Jen Hayden is a pretty funny catch.

Apparently, something moved the congressperson to solicit ACA horror stories on her Facebook page.  If you remember at all what happened when rookie Senator Ted Cruz made the same kind of attempt, you'd know what she got.

That's right. An Obamacare love-in.

So, right. Obamacare--it didn't kill jobs, as the current unemployment rate shows. It's actually encouraging entrepreneurship and saving jobs. It has greatly improved coverage. It costs less than it was projected to.  And there weren't that many cancelled policies at all, and the ones that were cancelled were basically crap.

It's almost like the haters were wrong all along and just doggedly persist without any basis in fact. Weird, that.

John Bolton is Still a Blood-thirsty Loon, I See

It doesn't really surprise me that Sen. Ted Cruz thinks that former UN Ambassador (R-Ironic) John Bolton is the apian patellas--that particular candidate is happy as an arsonist in a match factory when he's signifying for the dropped-knuckle set. But a moment's reflection on how this dumbass thinks should reflect back on Cruz.

After all, the call to bomb Iran in this recent op-ed is blatantly stupid, or, to put it in context, shamefully consistent with the rest of his mental work-product. But to put it mildly, if someone has been paying a bit of attention to nuclear proliferation, his mention of Israel's 1981 attack on Osirak as being particularly successful is just babbling. Because the attack on Osirak didn't end Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program. After the 1991 US invasion of Iraq, inspectors discovered a pretty active underground nuclear program which was, depending upon who you asked, months or scant years from having bombs. The military strike damaged material capacity, but as I've been banging on about--it doesn't destroy know-how, and likely increases the desirability of having such a weapon.

For that matter, in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, Bolton was one of the very wrong people who insisted that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear program. When, no. Hussein isn't alive now for us to ask him about it, but it looks kind of like having sanctions on and inspectors in was keeping him largely in check. So is there any earthly reason why anyone should listen to this yutz?

The Proxy War has Heated up in Yemen

I'm not sure how many people will be closely following what's going on in Yemen right now, but it's exactly the sort of tangle that should remind us of why dealing with foreign states, even if the US tries to keep it under the umbrella of "the war on terror" (whether we call it that anymore or not) is fraught with the potential for blowback.

So, imagine we're just doing our war on terror thing, trying to knock out AQAP in Yemen because this a failed state where training is happening--and it's almost like regional powers have an interest in where this is going. We now have some kind of obvious proxy-war looking thing going on, with the Shia militias (Houthi) who have basically taken over the major cities including Sanaa are likely backed by Iran (and as a consequence, any connection we had with the vacated government in Yemen can be considered totally shared with Iran, now). And now the very concerned Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia are striking the area.

I don't think any of this has much to do with US interests. My gut says that this is exactly where the US should call "We're out!" and let them slug it out and snuff any little old extremist groups in the way while they are at it. My head thinks my gut has a point. And I think this general feeling is applicable elsewhere in the region.

Stand With Rand and You'll Never Walk Alone?

There's a belief that Sen. Cruz jumped in a couple weeks before Sen. Rand Paul was about to launch his bid, which could be seen as an attempt to grab all the "being first" attention. I don't really know--I just found this image of Rand sweatshirts front and center at Cruz's announcement (on a college campus, y'know) sort of a reminder that he is likely to also announce soon, and unlike Jindal, Huckabee and Santorum, simply might have an appeal outside of the Christian Right (while still having bona fides with that group).

I know. Cruz and Paul both seem like ravers to people on my side of the political spectrum. The thing is, after going safe with McCain and Romney, I have a feeling that 2016 primary voters might want something new this time around. And that may very well include a high tolerance for shenanigans, of which Sens. Cruz and Paul are mostly full.

So yes, I am not actually counting either out for the ultimate nominee.

(Also--one is reminded that two years ago, Cruz did "stand with Rand". Later, he stood alone. And both were probably mostly standing then, to run now.)

Ted Cruz is Choosing His Terrain

Senator Ted Cruz's announcement tomorrow at Liberty University that he'll be officially running for president, I think actually makes a lot of sense for him. Forget having an "exploratory committee" or whatever. (I've often wondered about that formality, anyway--if you've actually, seriously wanted to run for president for awhile, wouldn't you already have a pretty good idea what your chances look like?) What does he need to know? He's more credible than Donald Trump. He's more consistently conservative than Jeb Bush or Mike Huckabee. And he's less of a snooze than Bobby Jindal. (And basically, what Kate Nocera says here.)

Choosing to announce the decision at Liberty University, one of the biggest evangelical learning institutions, makes a lot of sense, as well. He's not just the first in the race, he's going right after the attention of the religious right. (He's connections to the Dominionist Seven Mountains movement via his father work in his favor with this group. The potential promise of a Christianist theocracy gives me the willies, of course.)  He believes things that just ain't so and has a shaky history with the truth, but these things aren't necessarily drawbacks in modern politics. (Sigh.)

This should definitely be interesting.

Rep. Steve King is Kind of Weird

You know who has two thumbs and thinks US Jews should be Republicans? That's right, Iowa Republican Representative Steve King, who thinks he isn't a racist, probably.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) criticized "Jews in America" who, in an effort to align themselves with President Obama's stance on Israel, are "Democrats first and Jewish second," BuzzFeed reported on Friday.

King's comments were made during an interview on Friday with Boston Herald Radio about the members of Congress who refused to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress on March 3.

"Well, there were some 50 or so Democrats that, that decided they would boycott the president's speech," King said. "Here's what I don't understand, I don't understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their President."

I think he's kind of weird to assert that Jewish people in the US are basically anti-Semitic and in lockstep with the obviously Muslim-influenced Barack Obama, as if the weird result doesn't somehow suggest that his math is actually bad, there.

Problem with Iowa Republican Steve King being a racist? Presidential primaries start in Iowa, so presidential candidates are supposed to kiss his sorry ass.  Unless someone can explain to me why presidential candidates don't have to kiss his sorry ass. Show examples. This might actually help the GOP if there's a way to fix a problem like Steve.



Immanentizing the Eschaton for Fun and Profit

Rep. Louie Gohmert of TX is pretty much the epitome of "the crazy" aspect of the GOP. He does not care if he mentions demons or calls Obama an Ayatollah-lover, he'll just about say any damn thing that sends a tingle up the shaky legs of the codgers in Tyler TX who bother to vote. But he's servicing some ethos he finds out there--his audience, if you will. So I pay attention when he says something like--let's bomb Iran.

During an appearance on yesterday’s edition of “Washington Watch,” Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told host Tony Perkins that “we need to encourage this administration to go take out Iran’s nuclear capability” instead of pursuing negotiations: “I think it’s time to bomb Iran.”

“We need to make clear to Iran: You can play these silly games with our president that buys into them and our secretary of state, but the American people aren’t buying it and you’re going to pay a price,” Gohmert said.

“I’m hoping and praying the president will realize, despite the agenda he has that has put Christians in jeopardy around the world, that he will not want to leave the Democratic Party so devastated that they won’t recover for many decades,” Gohmert continued, “that maybe he’ll start being more helpful to Israel instead of slapping them around as an unwelcomed visitor and start treating them like a friend. And maybe once he starts doing that he’ll realize we do need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities that we know of and anything that they move to fix, we bomb that as well.”

 By facilities, I guess he means the centrifuges that we know about that are being used to develop nuclear energy, as was the peaceful intent behind their acquiring that technology under the Atoms for Peace initiative started under Eisenhower. Here's the funny old thing about knowledge--you can bomb materials, but you can't bomb knowledge. Taking out facilities postpones a problem that might be also postponed by diplomatic means, but you will never excise the know-how of enriching uranium to weapons-grade once it has been achieved. A diplomatic agreement can be extended. A material set-back is not an issue--in fact, a violent material set-back looks like a pretty good incentive to get a major enrichment program under way. In other words--diplomacy is the best thing we could do. Bombing would be double-plus ungood. They might take it some kind of way, and if anyone thinks activity to strike back would only occur in the vicinity of Iran, they are dumb. It could be a multi-faceted conflict.

Check out Rick Santorum, Everybody.

My former Senator, Rick Santorum, is probably going to try running for president again next year. In the above video, at a National Security-related to-do in South Carolina, he is being questioned by a lady who believes President Obama is not a citizen (so he is, presumably, a Muslim Kenyan) who tried to nuke Charleston.

He does not challenge the parts that are so far out there the buses do not connect to them. He changes the subject from nuking Charleston (has anyone checked on Charleston, lately!?) to immigration.

What I want to know is: while I can see where it's probably a safety concern to challenge someone who might not be fully tracking with reality, and there is such a thing as manners, is there not any very well-mannered way to tell this "former teacher" that her head has very misfortunately been stuffed with bovine waste?

Netenyahu Hangs On

I'm a little thankful that I understand pretty well my limits at understanding what other countries' elections are supposed to look like, so I never bothered to prematurely speculate whether Netanyahu might lose.  It looks like his Likud party did pretty well and he has the office of Prime Minister once again to go ahead do his thing in, as he has been doing.

And we can ask how it's been working, or what he plans, but I just want to focus on what he's done the last couple days, because I am not qualified to actually discuss Israeli politics, but as for politics in general, I know some desperate when I'm looking at it. Using the speech he made to the US Congress in an ad was probably to be expected.  But a recorded spot from Chuck Norris is a little out-there.

Switching from supporting a two-state solution regarding Palestinians to being a one-state kind of guy was a pretty major thing, I would have thought. That looked like some really last-minute, grab the right wingers stuff, right there.

But this odd bit about thinking the Israeli-Arabs were messing with the vote by their lawful participation was just plain...racist? Would you call delegitimizing the votes of a bloc of people solely because you know they damn well won't vote for you and are of an ethnic and religious minority sort of racist? It's like he's saying that if he lost, it was because of some conspiracy--like ACORN in the Negev or something. But it looks like Israeli-Arabs didn't vote in a particularly above-par way. So that was some kind of...?

To me, he looked like a guy whose internal polling was saying "Are you sitting down?" But Likud did a little better than exit polling would have suggested. Not my country, so I know I don't understand everything, but will the kind of weird behavior he's displayed the past couple weeks leading up to the election pretty much negatively effect his current term? And overall, does it look like his coalition is a little weaker?

I guess this answer is still evolving.

(If not for the speech before Congress, I wouldn't have these questions at all.)

Rep. Aaron Schock is Miled Out

It's a sad thing when a relatively new model succumbs to high mileage, but that's what seems to have happened to the sporty, yet conservative young Congressman from Illinois. Although there seems to have been quite the list of expense-irregularities regarding the...

Look, I am not really sure why I'm covering this story except as a reason to use the ab picture and to caution other young politicians to really not fudge your records about the taxpayer money you are using for the things you are supposed to be doing in your elected office. This is part of my regular grouse about professionalism. Too many politicians seem to act like a kind of minor celebrity, and not as much like serious lawmakers. It's great to get publicity. It's better to do things that benefit your constituents and live up to what you ran for office for. Mascots are for the sidelines--we should elect people who get in the scrimmage. Once caught up in a mess like this, it's going to be that much harder for someone like Schock to get taken seriously and work his way back if that's what he has a mind to do.

Politics should be business. And it's hard to reconcile fiscal responsibility with this record.

Warmongo Only Pawn in Game of Life

I think it was when Sen. Cotton actually said that Vice-President Joe Biden had never been right in 40 years (more years than this punk has been alive) that I basically had it--when in the two months this arse has been a senator has he risen to the opportunity to be right?

There's a real question regarding where this stupor mundi came from, what with his senate run being well-funded by the usual neo-con suspects, and the hard-right economic Spartans--Club for Growth besides; to launching this letter with 46 GOP confederates and then having a nice little handshake to-do with defense contractors. (His confederates have varyingly dumb ideas of why they went along with this.)

Neidermeyer  Cotton is apparently a very driven sort of person. Made his way to Harvard as nothing less would do, and turned like Cincinnatus from the plow of his studies to war at the time of our nation's need. Quotes the Founders and philosophers. Comes off a little bit like Otto from A Fish Called Wanda, that last bit.

Rudy Guiliani has Slipped the Bonds of Decency and Touched the Face of Derp

Like, he's gone, man. Gone:

Speaking on AM970 Thursday morning, Giuliani said that the president isn't paying attention to "enormous amounts of crime" and that it's the obligation of the president to explain "that our police are the best in the world."

"I hate to mention it because of what happened afterwards, but [Obama should be saying] the kinds of stuff Bill Cosby used to say," Giuliani said on the radio station, according to The New York Daily News.

Obama, actually, praises police often, including in a major speech he delivered in Selma, Alabama recently.

Cosby had frequently argued that African Americans should avoid engaging in crime and focus on being better parents.

Well, since what happened afterwards was that Cos was accused by 30-something women and counting of sexual assault, there may be something wanting about whether his pronouncements were honest or valid. And the funny old thing is, Obama is not at all short on the "pull up your pants" type of lectures.  Giuliani also blamed assorted crimes other people did on Obama, because, obviously, no one ever did crime before Obama got into office because...things. And stuff.

In 2007, this was the man the GOP field had to beat for the presidential nom, everyone. He is probably still wondering why his moment never happened--but between you and me? We all can figure it out.

Senator Rubio and the Foreign Policy Gap

Via ThinkProgress, an important moment in the discussion regarding US foreign policy with respects to Iran occurred between Senator Marco Rubio and Secretary of State John Kerry:

During a tense exchange with Kerry at a Senate Foreign Relations committee on Wednesday, Rubio confronted the former Massachusetts senator. “I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so they don’t walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you’re working on,” the potential GOP presidential candidate declared. “Tell me why I’m wrong.”

Kerry responded forcefully. “Because the facts completely contradict that,” he said, before offering to discuss more details in classified session with Rubio. But the likely GOP presidential contender didn’t take up the offer and pressed on with the line of questioning, claiming that the United States is going easy on terrorism because Iran does not support America’s campaign against ISIS.

But the two assumptions that he has are false--of course, the US is involved in fighting ISIL, whether Sen. Rubio thinks the response is adequate or not, and of course, Iran is also opposed to ISIL, because why in the world would a Shiite government want a radical Sunni Wahhabist caliphate in their backyard? To think, nay, insist, that the Obama Administration is soft-pedaling the fight with ISIL to please Iran would be weapons-grade ignorance. And that is precisely where Rubio is coming from.

Hillary Clinton's Email Issue isn't Relatable

I work in an office where email is EVERYTHING. We have regular back-and-forth emails between supervisors of different units to discuss procedures and save a lot of them to justify why we arrived at the procedures we have and how we arrived at them, so that if any question comes up, we can go back to the archives and understand what was going on at the time to generate whatever procedure we adopted or changed. Some supervisors have email archives that go back a decade or so.

If our email server ever goes down, we feel like amnesiacs, a little, with information we kind of recall, but are a little unsure of. It's stressful to have conversations that aren't written down so that they are transparent and available for later use.

47 Dumbass Ronin

I read about the open letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran last night and was just appalled. I couldn't put my finger on why, at first. They weren't offering aid and comfort to an enemy, per se, so you couldn't call it treason. They weren't in direct, private communications, solicited or otherwise, with the foreign government, so I don't know if you could consider it a violation of the Logan Act.  But is very unusual, and the tone was, I thought, disrespectful to the President, to other negotiators at the table, and disrespectful of their offices as US Senators. Because while this letter isn't necessarily treason or sedition--it's a political stunt over foreign policy made wide-open, which does not strengthen the President's hand in making a good executive deal, but rather aims at diluting the nation's effectiveness to carry out successful diplomacy.

I know this was the aim of the letter, because the freshman Senator who spear-headed the effort, Tom Cotton, has previously admitted he wanted to sabotage the negotiations. What astonished me is that he managed to get 46 other senators to go along with him. Not a one of them read the thing and thought it might be a bad idea?

While Obama was in Selma, GOP was in Iowa. Again.

It goes without saying that I think that Obama's speech in Selma is one for the ages, and cements his actual commitment to the experiment that is America. So it should also go without saying that while President Obama made his most excellent speech regarding the history and thrust of freedom and the arc of justice in this country, while his own brother sat mere feet away from the current president, Jeb Bush was displaying the very pandering reason why he has no business thinking about being president.

Obama, he said, is "the first president since World War II who does not believe that American power is a force for good" in the world. The president's approach, he added, has brought "uncertainty, instability and greater risk" to the nation.

In Selma, Obama reiterated his belief that America is perfectable and tries to improve upon the past. What in the world suggested to Jeb Bush that the Giuliani bill of goods was the most saleable? And what does he mean "since World War II"?!

Also, Mike Huckabee thinks immigrants will steal his food. Oh, not if they don't want teeth marks in their arms, hoss. And Carly Fiorina was in the mix saying how Hillary Clinton never did shit like be one of history's worst tech CEO's or how she never had one of the worst ever Senate campaigns.

So, thanks again, Iowa.

Ahmed al-Jamaili never saw snow Before

The last day in the life of Ahmed al-Jumaili was supposed to be the first experience of an Iraqi in the US of snow. In Texas, which is not really the first state you think of when you think of snow.

For me, snow is a beautiful thing to sled on, make snowpeople with, lay down and make snow angels in. It's a clean and cold rain that stays on the ground.

For Ahmed al-Jumaili, it was what he saw in the minutes before he died. I don't know for what reason he died, but I am very sorry he did, before he ever really knew what fun snow was. Or how nice most of America could be, except that little part that killed him. And that little part is one I repudiate over and over again.

Selma's America is America for Barack Obama, and Me

The great poet Langston Hughes wrote "America was never America to me" in a poem about what America could be. The promise of America was a dream deferred or delayed or outright denied, but which laid before the pioneer, the slave, the rebel, the migrant, all, as a possible better world a-borning, a place where the love of that dream overcomes the adversity of every present moment to be remade new--a "more perfect union".

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Langston Hughes' America--newly-made, is what John Lewis and Martin Luther King and so many more marched for.  That "more perfect" and always infinitely perfectable union, is what President Obama has been talking about since he ever talked. This ability to get better, do better, be more and expect more, has been the very nature of our American exceptionalism. The revolutionaries that separated from their King, the fight that separated slave from master, and made them equals, that lifted woman from helpmeet to citizen--has been the best of America. We face adversity--and still we rise.

I'm Working on a Post Re: Selma, but for Now

I sometimes find writing fiction a useful way of working out ideas. So, until I make another topical post, I have a dark little tale set in a plague-ridden near-future for your consideration. Twilight Zone? Well, maybe a bit more like Tales from the Dark Side. (I'm not fully down with all these attractive-people vampire soap operas--Dark Shadows has already been done twice, three times if you count the Johnny Depp movie--which I haven't seen, yet. But if a show provides me with regular eerie tales to chew on, I will show up for that!)

I took a few bioethics courses in college and really enjoyed them. This type of thing was not covered. (It's a different plague-universe than this one. Both are permutations of an "entropy always encreaseth" worldview. Which actually isn't my main worldview at all. Really!)

Reading About Ferguson is Eyewatering

Via Daily Mail coverage of the MTV VMA's

I think it's necessary to take a look at what the DOJ has to say about Ferguson. They let Darren Wilson go, but he was just a cog in a wheel that ground down people of color. There are people who want to slough off claims about racism as being about a "few bad apples" as if racism was just a one on one problem where some handful of people get a "mad-on" about this other group. This isn't how Ferguson seems to have been. POC's were targeted, singled out, and subjected to the worst biases. It damaged lives, finances, careers. The systematic racism of the people who rose to be in charge of that area made what happened to the people who called Ferguson "home" a daily grind of evasion and punishment for stupid things. Some of them made-up.

There is no good reason a police department like this needed to exist by continuously punishing people for practically just being to collect the kind of "revenues" you never can otherwise off of the poor. All I can say is, the math of the bias on display is pretty convincing to me that that city had a huge problem. And if you can't call that problem racism, I don't know what you would call it.

Has This Really Been Netanyahu's Story for 25 Years?

At intervals, Benjamin Netanyahu has actually repeated the claim that Iran was just a year or so away from having nuclear weapons for twenty-five years.  I'm just saying, twenty-five years is very different from a year or so. If this keeps up, it could very well leave the impression that Iran isn't all that interested in pursuing a nuclear weapons program. It could also be the case that Netanyahu has been misunderstanding the level of the threat all this time. And if that's the case, it seems like maybe his voice isn't the most authoritative on the subject.

After all, presenting a speech regarding this issue to the a joint meeting of the US Congress, for the most part, reminds me that it is sort of dangerous to play politics with intelligence regarding weapons programs as if the threat were imminent when it is not. And by indicating that he doesn't consider talks with Iran to ensure that they are not developing such a weapon, he seems to be implying that something more dire is required.

If he's of a mind that he wants conventional war for real over an imagined problem, and has not noticed that a certain war that was begun in 2003 did not actually stabilize the region and thinks we can do the same thing and get different results, I believe I may have found a possible existential threat a little closer to himself than he may have supposed.

Religious McCarthyism

In the above (h/t, TPM), Franklin Graham, son of seemingly ubiquitous and well-loved televangelist Billy Graham, is using his media access to discuss the people he believes to be surrounding the current president who are some kind of Israel-hating Muslims. About which he has no solid proof and can name no names, but he's pretty damn sure "radical Islamists" have infiltrated the US government.

I'll never not stop pointing put that there is a clear racialist component to the point of view alleged by Franklin Graham, because Franklin Graham has decided that crusading (ahem) is his appropriate legacy and because something about Obama just looks "Muslim-y". But it's also political in that he seems to want the President to agree with, say, Netanyahu regarding what to do about Iran, when the right answer may very well be continuing to try and get a diplomatic solution because a military solution is, actually, bonkers.  Which I think would be more apparent if this "what side are you on" game weren't being played.

Raif Badawi May be Facing a Death Sentence--Again

Just as thousands have begun to mourn the passing of Avijit Roy, a freethought blogger who was highly critical of the negative influence of the irrational in religious thought (and our sympathies at the Strangely Blogged household also go out to his spouse Rafida Ahmed Banna, who was also wounded in the attack), there's word that the Saudi Arabian blogger, Raif Badawi, who was sentenced a brutal and physically treacherous 1000 lashes, may be facing trial once again for the crime of apostasy,  which would mean death by beheading.

This is a reminder that if religious extremism in itself is bad, as it no doubt is when practiced by self-appointed judges and executioners, it can be equally terrible when the extremists actually are the government--except wholly lawful.

Religious Extremists Killed Avijit Roy

Avijit Roy was an atheist blogger who was brutally hacked to death for being an atheist blogger.

Being an atheist is not reason for being hacked to death--I hope.

Being a blogger is not reason to be hacked to death, I hope.

Being an American atheist and blogger a couple days younger than Roy, I realize I haven't challenged religion in the in-your-face way he did, but I feel no less like the kind of religious movement that would kill him, would kill me. And am, not surprisingly, very much against that kind of extremist--the same kind that made a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, that follows Lars Vilks to this day, and that slew several contributors to Charlie Hebdo magazine.

The willingness to slaughter people for words is the weakness that will make religious extremism collapse, because they lead people to the gallows, and there is, no kidding, a humor for that. And this little humor of mine, this bile....this little bile of mine, I'm going to let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

The CPAC 2015 Poll is in

I've really not made a big point of following CPAC this year because I finally get that I am not the audience this whole shindig is for. Of course, part of the deal is that the prominent voices of today's conservatism are supposed to be showcased. Yes, some of these people are running for POTUS. But that doesn't mean I have to take it totally seriously, because the likelihood that, for example, the CPAC straw poll actually ever meant anything would probably mean that we were experiencing Ron Paul's second term. And we are not. So, if Sen. Rand Paul has enjoyed his third CPAC poll win, this has more to do with inheriting his father's libertarian apparatus, and less to do with anything like being able to win in 2016. (I think.)

WI Gov, Scott Walker has come in a respectable second, despite or probably because he compared union workers to ISIS, which would no doubt haunt him if he made it to a general election. His claims that facing protesting union folks prepares him for foreign policy is kind of strained, I think. And making the "Reagan" connection is so obvi. Try harder, you try-hard!