The Commentariat -- Dec. 29, 2012
Cliff Notes
The President's Weekly Address:
... The transcript is here.
Jonathan Weisman & Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "At the urging of President Obama, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate set to work Friday night to assemble a last-minute tax deal that could pass both chambers of Congress and avert large tax increases and budget cuts next year, or at least stop the worst of the economic punch from landing beginning Jan. 1.... Speaker John A. Boehner..., once seen as the linchpin for any agreement, essentially ceded final control to the Senate and said the House would act on whatever the Senate could produce." CW: ... in case anyone wondered if the Tea Party had weakened the power of the House. CW P.S. Two cheers to Weisman & Steinhauer for using the term "fiscal cliff" only once, & then placing it half-way through the article.
President Obama made a statement at about 5:50 pm ET Friday, saying that he was "modestly optimistic" that Senate leaders could work out a bill that at the very least would prevent middle-class taxes from rising January 1 & that would extend unemployment benefits for 2 million Americans. He said "ordinary folks" don't understand why Congress can never get its act together & does everything at the last minute, if it does anything at all:
... Michael O'Brien of NBC News: "President Barack Obama tasked the United States Senate with trying to resolve the 'fiscal cliff' in the waning hours before the New Year following a meeting between congressional leaders and the president. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will lead the last-minute effort to avert the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect on Jan. 1 unless Congress acts. And Obama said he is 'optimistic' they can reach an accord before midnight on New Year's Eve...."
Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "A person familiar with the details says President Barack Obama is not making a new 'fiscal cliff' offer at his high-stakes meeting with congressional leaders at the White House."
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) repeatedly pops Fox "News" anchor Greg Jarrett's claim that the President wasn't doing his job on the budget negotiations; Van Hollen again & again points the finger at Speaker John Boehner who "walked away" from the negotiations, then sent the House home. And who knew Fox had a "brain room"? Maybe it's like a cloakroom, where they store their brains while they're at work. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link:
Digby: "I see no reason [for Democrats] to capitulate on spending at this point. If that's what it takes, go over the cliff. Why should Democrats become the tax collectors for the austerity state?"
Andy Borowitz: "The international terror group known as Al Qaeda announced its dissolution today, saying that 'our mission of destroying the American economy is now in the capable hands of the U.S. Congress.' In an official statement published on the group's website, the current leader of Al Qaeda said that Congress's conduct during the so-called 'fiscal-cliff' showdown convinced the terrorists that they had been outdone."
Paul Krugman: "... the business leaders intervening in our economic debate are, for the most part, either predatory or hopelessly confused (or, I guess, both).... Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, exemplifies the hopeless confusion factor." Krugman counts the ways Schultz is wrong. "Republican extremism isn't the only source of our dysfunctional response to economic crisis, that the awesome inability of Very Serious People to come to grips with either political or economic reality is another huge source of our failure." ...
... Ezra Klein: "... at the elite level -- which encompasses everyone from CEOs to media professionals -- there's a desire to keep up good relations on both sides of the aisle. And so it's safer ... to offer an anodyne criticism that offends nobody -- 'both sides should come together!' ... That breaks the system. It hurts the basic mechanism of accountability, which is the public's ability to apportion blame.... If you want Washington to come together, you need to make it painful for those who are breaking it apart. Telling both sides to come together when it's predominantly one side breaking the negotiations apart actually makes it easier on those who're refusing to compromise."
Kelly O'Donnell of NBC News: apparently there's some progress on the "dairy cliff," too. "Without action by Congress, dairy prices would begin to soar to an estimated $8 dollars per gallon beginning in January. The pricing would revert to 1940s farm policy, when milk costs were tied to a more labor intensive production."
AND Plenty of Progress of Surveillance. Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Congress gave final approval on Friday to a bill extending the government's power to intercept electronic communications of spy and terrorism suspects, after the Senate voted down proposals from several Democrats and Republicans to increase protections of civil liberties and privacy." ...
... ** Glenn Greenwald: "Obama successfully relied on Senate Republicans (the ones his supporters depict as the Root of All Evil) along with a dozen of the most militaristic Democrats to ensure that he can continue to eavesdrop on Americans without any warrants, transparency or real oversight. That's the standard coalition that has spent the last four years extending Bush/Cheney theories, eroding core liberties and entrenching endless militarism: Obama + the GOP caucus + Feinstein-type Democrats. As Michelle Richardson, the ACLU's legislative counsel, put it to the Huffington Post: 'I bet [Bush] is laughing his ass off.' ... It's hard to put into words just how extreme was [Dianne] Feinstein's day-long fear-mongering tirade.... Here we find yet again a defining attribute of the Obama legacy: the transformation of what was until recently a symbol of right-wing radicalism -- warrantless eavesdropping -- into meekly accepted bipartisan consensus.... Anyone who stands in the way of the US Government's demands for unaccountable, secret power is helping the Terrorists." Read the whole post. ...
... Adam Serwer of Mother Jones effectively rebuts Feinstein's fearmongering & aspersion-casting. ...
... CW: it's pretty obvious why the media have barely covered extension of warrantless wiretapping: very few of their readers feel even vaguely threatened by a law that could potentially ensnare -- theoretically, at least -- only Americans who talk to friends who are in foreign countries. Ironically, "telephoning foreigners" has a much higher incidence among the press -- percentage-wise -- than in the general population.
Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times: "The Senate approved $60.4 billion in emergency spending on Friday to pay for recovery efforts in states ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, at one point fending off a Republican bid to reduce the aid package by more than half. But it is unclear that the House will act on the measure before Congress adjourns for the year."
Ezra Klein again: "Sens. John McCain and Carl Levin -- backed up by a handful of senior senators from both parties -- have been prepping a filibuster proposal meant to undercut more significant reform of the Senate rules.... This is filibuster reform for people who don't want to reform the filibuster.... If you think the Senate is pretty much working well as is, and the biggest threat are the folks who want to change the rules, then this is the proposal for you." CW: what's the matter with Carl Levin? ...
... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Tom Udall (D-NM) promptly said the alternate proposal put forth by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) is too weak and does nothing to prevent senators from filibustering quietly and escaping public accountability for their obstruction -- the centerpiece of the Merkley-Udall 'talking filibuster' plan.... Udall and Merkley insisted that Democrats have the 51 votes necessary to pass their more robust plan and called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to take it up." ...
... Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a leading proponent of filibuster reform, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) has the 51 votes he needs to change Senate rules with the 'nuclear option.' The maneuver would be controversial, however.... Republicans say using 51 votes to change Senate procedures -- and to prevent the minority party in the Senate from blocking a majority-vote -- amounts to breaking the rules to change them."
Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed: "President Obama's chief environmental official departed in part over her opposition to a controversial plan to pipe oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas refineries, two sources familiar with the situation told BuzzFeed Thursday.... [Lisa] Jackson 'left as a matter of conscience,' said Jeff Tittel, the director of New Jersey's Sierra Club chapter and a longtime friend of Jackson's.... President Obama initially delayed Keystone's progress, but this March authorized the construction of its Southern portion over howls from his former allies in the movement to stop carbon emissions."
Michael Duss of the American Prospect: in a broad sense, neocons' "... attacks on [former Senator Chuck] Hagel represent an attempt by the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party to avoid a conversation over America's changing role in the world. Over the past years, and especially during the recent presidential election, this faction has seen their expansive (and expensive) view of American hegemony increasingly marginalized as U.S. leaders grapple with constrained budgets, an electorate that has soured on costly foreign adventurism, and an international environment that has proven to be far less malleable to American whims and preferences than neocons have theorized."
Emily Schultheis of Politico: "Democrats both nationally and in Massachusetts are throwing their support behind Rep. Ed Markey to replace Sen. John Kerry in Massachusetts, hoping to clear the field for him in what could become a crowded Democratic primary."
Oops! Missed This. Charles Babington of the AP: "Brian Schatz symbolized a generational change in Hawaii's Senate delegation, taking the hand of his new colleague, 88-year-old Sen. Daniel Akaka, moments before being sworn in Thursday as the successor to the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye. Vice President Joe Biden administered the oath of office in a chamber peopled by a dozen Democratic senators and a handful of Republicans. As he walked up the center aisle to meet Biden, Schatz, 40, took Akaka's hand and helped the frail Democratic senator, who is retiring, stay at his side. Schatz had flown to Washington hours earlier on Air Force One with President Barack Obama." ...
...Seung Min Kim of Politico on why Hawaii's Gov. Neil Abercrombie chose Schatz over Sen. Inouye's preferred choice to succeed him -- Rep. Colleen Hanabusa.
Joseph Pisani of the AP: "Demand for firearms, ammunition and bulletproof gear has surged since the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn.... The shooting sparked calls for tighter gun control measures, especially for military-style assault weapons like the ones used in Newtown and in the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting earlier this year. The prospect of a possible weapons ban has sent gun enthusiasts into a panic and sparked a frenzy of buying at stores and gun dealers nationwide. Assault rifles are sold out across the country. Rounds of .223 bullets, like those used in the AR-15 type Bushmaster rifle used in Newtown, are scarce. Stores are struggling to restock their shelves. Gun and ammunition makers are telling retailers they will have to wait months to get more." CW: I'm sure Wayne LaPierre's owners are delighted with his work. ...
... The Bushmaster "Man Card." New York Times Editors: "Gun owners once talked about the need for personal protection and sport hunting, but out-of-control ad campaigns like Bushmaster's have replaced revolvers and shotguns with highly lethal paramilitary fantasies.... The effect of these marketing campaigns on fragile minds is all too obvious, allowing deadly power in the wrong hands. But given their financial success, gun makers have apparently decided that the risk of an occasional massacre is part of the cost of doing business."
... CW: Several weeks ago a commenter said he belonged to the NRA and favored gun control. I asked him why he maintained his membership. He never did respond. If you belong to the NRA & don't think every man needs a Bushmaster, please do tell us why you continue to support an organization controlled by gun manufacturers & other commercial interests.
Greg Noth in Think Progress: "... histories of substance abuse and other socio-demographic and economic factors are stronger determinants of violent behavior than psychiatric disorders. The contribution of the mentally ill to overall crime rates is an extremely low 3 to 5 percent, a number much lower than that of substance abuse."
** Steven Greenhouse & Jim Yardley of the New York Times: "... even as the deadly Nov. 24 fire at the Tazreen factory has stirred soul-searching inside and outside the apparel industry about the effectiveness of its global factory monitoring system, some nonprofit groups say Walmart has been an important obstacle to efforts to upgrade fire safety. That is partly because it has shown little interest in changing the existing practice of demanding that the factories, often operating at razor-thin margins, meet fire safety standards at their own cost." ...
... Annie-Rose Strasser of Think Progress: "Craft store chain Hobby Lobby announced on Friday that it will ignore the ruling of U.S. courts and refuse to provide copay-free birth control access to its employees. It will do so despite whatever costs it may incur, even if they are higher than the cost of birth control itself." CW: if corporations are people, my friend, I guess it's safe to say that many corporations are evil, my friend.
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post picks the Top 10 Political Quotes of 2012. With videos.
Local News
Miranda Leitsinger of NBC News: "Arizona sheriffs and the state's attorney general are pushing controversial programs to allow school officials and volunteers to carry guns in the wake of the shootings at a Connecticut school that left 20 children dead. The latest proposal comes from Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-described toughest sheriff in America, who wants to station his 'posse' of volunteers outside of about 50 schools in Maricopa County within a week, according to KPNX, a local NBC station." CW: I suppose if the "posses" catch any suspected miscreants, then can hang 'em from the old oak tree. Yee-haw!
News Ledes
AP: "Former President George H.W. Bush's condition continued to improve Saturday, prompting doctors to move him out of intensive care, a spokesman said."
AP: "Three al-Qaida militants were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike in southern Yemen, Yemeni security officials said, the fourth such attack this week and a sign attacks from unmanned aircraft are on the upswing in the country."
AP: "The United Nations envoy for Syria warned Saturday that the country's civil war could plunge the entire region in chaos by sending an unbearable stream of refugees into neighboring countries, but his talks in Moscow brought no sign of progress toward settling the crisis. Lakhdar Brahimi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov both said after their meeting that the 21-month Syrian crisis can only be settled through talks, while admitting that the parties to the conflict have shown no desire for compromise."
AP: "Indian police charged six men with murder on Saturday, adding to accusations that they beat and gang-raped a woman on a New Delhi bus nearly two weeks ago in a case that shocked the country. The murder charges were laid after the woman died earlier Saturday in a Singapore hospital where she has been flown for treatment."
AP: "After waiting years and seeing marriage rights nearly awarded and then retracted, gay couples in Maine's largest city didn't have to wait a moment longer than necessary to wed, with licenses issued at the stroke of midnight as the law went into effect." ...
... The Bangor Daily News currently has quite a few related stories on its front page.
AP: "Embattled French President Francois Hollandethrew out a plan to tax the ultrawealthy at a 75 percent rate, saying it was unfair. In a stinging rebuke to one of Socialist Hollande's flagship campaign promises, the constitutional council ruled Saturday that the way the highly contentious tax was designed was unconstitutional." ...
... Reuters Update: "The French government will redraft a proposal for a 75 percent upper income tax band and resubmit it, the prime minister's office said on Saturday, after the Constitutional Council rejected the measure included in the 2013 budget."
Reuters: "A suburban New York newspaper that sparked an uproar among gun enthusiasts by publishing names and addresses of residents holding pistol permits is now planning to publish even more identities of permit-toting locals. Further names and addresses will be added as they become available to a map originally published on December 24 in the White Plains, New York-based Journal News, the newspaper said."
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Reader Comments (29)
The next time we elect a president I hope it is someone who a) is a certified experienced politician, b) knows how to play poker, and c) believes more or less what s/he says.
Note to Castrated Senate Democrats:
GO AHEAD, you wusses. Break the fuckin' rules! Vote for the Merkley/Udall Fillibuster bill. After all, it does not break new ground. It simply requires that senators show up on the Senate floor and TALK when they are fillibustering a bill--rather than "phone it in." What a novel idea! This is how it usta be--back when the Senate was semi-functional.
All Democratic senators should be granted time off to see "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (which will be shown in Harry Reid's spacious office) in HD/video. Attendance required. "Senior" senators will be fined $10,000 if they do not show. Junior senators: get your asses there if you want to be re-elected.
The people have spoken, are speaking and will continue to speak! We have had it. Fed up. Done. So over you. Get your act together. All of you--especially the Senator from Bank of America--Chuck Schumer.
Amen.
@Marie--It was PD Pepe, not me, who provided the quote about the difference between American and British "carols" (a quote which seemed to be comparing the music of two different periods of time). And, again, I didn't criticize your musical choices--rather, I took Kevin Fallon to task for his incorrect claims regarding "Christmas Shoes." I already explained this at length. I thought fact-checking was consistent with the editorial policy here.
Your take on religiosity, which is the popular take of our time, is circular, because it assumes that religiosity is a form of irrationality, which of course requires that any "explanation" for religiosity be of a clinical nature--such as common hallucinations, like the one you described. In fact, this Christian has had a number of hallucinations during his life (including bouts of so-called lucid dreaming) but never once believed he was seeing or hearing anything real. Not even when I was a wee lad. There must be some other clinical explanation for my delusional state.
Your characterization of hallucinations doesn't seem to gel with the science thereof. There are wide-awake hallucinations, for one thing, and a trigger is hardly a requirement for visions and the like, since many hallucinations, especially really elaborate ones, are generated in the absence of stimulus. They are often instances of the brain providing its own input.
The late, great neurologist, Norman Geschwind, used to say, "We are hard wired for religion," more as a teaching point than as a matter for belief. He emphasized that our understanding of this human characteristic (the tendency toward religion) was more on a level of Broca's understanding of language was in the 19th century: we can locate an anatomical structure in the brain (the medial cortical nucleus of the amygdala), and we can identify what goes wrong when this structure is damaged (multiple religious conversion experiences, lack of a sense of humor, etc), but more than that is beyond us at this point.
Geschwind used to say, "We are linked to the Cosmos," more as a teaching tool than as a religious statement, in order to get the student to lay aside assumptions about what things mean and to observe the clinical phenomena.
If one googles "golden light" or "blinding light" one can discover how very common this is in people now and in the past. Yes, people attach a lot of mumbo jumbo to this, but the phenomenon itself is very interesting even when not attached to any belief system.
@Raul. Billions of rational people hold/have held religious convictions without ever experiencing psychological anomalies or at least without taking them as any more than what they were. Of course it's impossible for me to "know" if some god pays visits to people's heads, but I strongly doubt it. I see a substantive difference between being a good Catholic girl & believing in & obeying the teachings of the church on the one hand, & being Teresa of Avila & having "miraculous" spontaneous orgasms on the other. (I suppose it is "reasonable" to consider orgasms "gifts from god" though if you've ever kept chickens, you might thing god was a misogynist.)
Similarly -- and here I'm skating on thin ice -- I think many of the millions of people who claim to have "a personal relationship with Jesus" might need to have their heads examined. I was a Christian when I was a child, & I did not have a personal relationship with Jesus. If I had seemed to think I did, I feel pretty sure my parents would have had me institutionalized till I got over it.
I don't see anything even slightly unreasonable about holding vague religious beliefs & participating in "traditional" religious rites. But, in my opinion, one moves into fantastic territory when he thinks he's received a "visit" from god. The hallucination itself is not at all odd; maintaining a sustained belief that it was any more than a dream or a psychological anomaly is, well, almost certainly a misinterpretation of what happened. We have many choices in life & believing or not believing in supernatural powers are two choices we make. I don't view one as "better" than the other.
As for "religiosity" being irrational, it is so by definition. Almost any priest would say so, although he would not put it in those terms: he would use the term "faith." Since there is no rational proof of god, one must have faith in him/her. That is, one must rely on "extra-rational" -- i.e., irrational -- "evidence." I don't see why anyone would find that premise even vaguely controversial. It's the way religious thinkers have always "explained" their theologies.
Marie
Thanks to James and Barbarossa for providing the name of the film yesterday–––had even forgotten it was first a novel by Lewis.
"As for "religiosity" being irrational, it is so by definition. Almost any priest would say so, although he would not put it in those terms: he would use the term "faith."
Eons ago when I was on my long quest for the "meaning of life" business I began a weekly meeting with a young priest. My father had just died and his death left me yearning for that "something" to fill the void. Father Obee and I had a jolly time cracking jokes while delving into "God's purpose." But we also had deep discussions about many issues and I found myself finding myself as time went on and the self I found was pretty much the sceptic I was right from the start. We finally ended these sessions with him saying, "You cannot reason this, it has to do with faith alone."
Father Obee came to dinner twice after that, met my family, and when he left the parish for another in a different state we corresponded by letters. The last I heard he had left the church and was going to Italy; maybe he fell in love.
Seems Marvin got Marie to talking about religion, and tho' it's only Saturday and not the day my childhood faith designated for religious observation, I'll jump in, because I've discovered some element of belief is never that far away from virtually any discussion people have about anything any day of the week.
I say that because I have noticed that most people with strongly held beliefs (myself included) about anything are often indulging a kind of fundamentalism akin to the absolutism favored by the religious right.
My favorite example, because it is superficially so far removed from religion, from my own past is the "debate" that I suspect is still taking place between those who "believe" phonics is the key to the development of good reading skills and those who think simple memorization or "sight reading." as it used to be called, will do the trick. Without even the mention of God, educators have been happy to go to bloody war over this issue for generations.
A short lecture in two parts: To some degree phonics skills can be taught, but the inborn talent to recognize and distinguish sounds varies from person to person; that is, a phonetic approach to reading is a better fit for some than it is for others. Part the second: successful short term memory storage of reading vocabulary is also a useful reading skill and no one can read well without it. In other words, both "sides" in the "war" over reading fundamentalism are right, but that is not enough for a true believer in part because True Belief offers the attraction of rendering the believer smarter, better or somehow more special than the idiot on the other side who is bent on wrecking civilization or turning all our children into unknowing Communist dupes.
Psychologically, True Belief appeals to those who like the world easily and neatly divided into Right and Wrong, because if it were not True Believers could not so much enjoy being Right. (I marvel at the delicious coincidence of the way the French legislature of old was laid out and the psychology of so many of Rightists who know in their hearts that they are the only one who are really right. Sometimes reality does have a sense of humor.)
Because of that psychology and the comfort it offers our orphan souls human beings offer especially fertile ground for True Belief to root. That I consider any absolutist, fundamentalist stance a weed in the garden of the mind is not the point. That we are designed to be prone to True Belief about virtually anything ( the Second Amendment's absolute meaning, to take a wild swing at an example) is, and we should do all we can to guard against it.
So, there are really two levels to any discussion of religion. Religion's psychology, which tends to tinge almost everything we touch and which can be approached and understood rationally (and I would add, must be if we are to have any hope of understanding ourselves and why we behave as we do), and then the substance of the beliefs associated with the religions themselves, which cannot. As Marie says, they are by definition irrational. They are, as Krugman has often said lately in another connection, fairy dust.
Re: The big bang, black holes and fairy dust or "Oh fuck, there goes Jesus and Mohamed on a dinosaur."
But first a tip of the cap to Ken Winkes for his latest comment. I wish I was that clever. By the bye; I am one of those unfortunates that is a sight reader. I saw "Dick" and spotted "Spot" while sitting on my older sisters laps as they read to me. To this day I have a hard time pronouncing many multi-sylabic words and the dictionary is my fiend or friend.
Where was I? Oh, god. When I saw Marie's comment yesterday I reacted with interest because Marie writes with a "factfull" style and as I understand the world, religion and its root "god" are not "factfull". Religion and "god" are "Fancyfull".
(There's two words you're not going to see everyday, Ken. Phonetic that, Sister Zoe; and stop hitting me with a ruler just because I can't diphthong to yor satisfaction.)
The way I saw it, Marie was responding to Marvin, "Mr. Grumpy" (in a nice way) who was questioning how people living a delusional life can hold their beliefs in the face of reality.
Marie held up religious faith as an example of us humans willingness to "believe" damn near anything that gets us through the day. She wasn't negative, in fact, allowed that faith was a positive in many lives; but she did gently point out that religion demands faith over fact because, let's face it, nobody "knows" god and if you claim you do; you are; one, smarter than Ken Winkes two, more blasphemous than Ak, or three, in the words of Diane, "an asswipe".
OR four; just a simple soul who needs someone to lean on.
Personally I feel there's more threes than fours and the threes are leading the fours around by the noses; but that's just me.
That was long way through the woods to get to my point, but here we are. I think we all live lives of delusion because life would be unbearable if we did not.
As I get older I realize life itself is a spinning wheel of chance. Everyday events can change every aspect of of your world. Everyday chance can burst into your own personal "classroom" and shatter all of your well thought out plans. We can not live our lives on the thin ice of fate so we share the illusion of a "god". "God" fixes the spinning wheel of fate in our favor; or so we wish to believe. "God" explains the unexplainable, comforts the troubled and soothes the angry. "God" is the answer to the unanswerable question. Modern humans use science as a "God" lite but even science can't stop the nagging "what's goin' to happen to me?" in the back of our minds. "God" knows; that's why we have religion.
So there you have it according to me, we are all delusional in one faith or another. Some of us believe in the Blessed Virgin Mary on a tortilla, others believe in multiple spontaneous orgasms.
Me; I like both; specially with little whole made salsa.
JJG, "Mr. Grumpy" has advantages. People are frequently shocked when they find out how old I am. My explanation is that I have few of the aging lines on my face because I rarely use those muscles.
All this talk about religion and DC has me up to defend an organization I don't belong to: the NRA. The question was, 'why do people continue with their memberships to this arm of the Republican party? I think because no other organization covers its turf. What else competes with the NRA for gun ownership outreach? Nothing.
Here is my addition to this NRA/Republican/Authoritarian lovefest. I think the people who continue these organizations are all the people who want to be chiefs in their own little burghs. The guns and powers attract little men (and women) who are tired of being indians. I observe the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. They started as a stewardship group centered around backcountry habitat for elk. Now they have become a wolf-hating, Democrat-hating outpost of gun nuts on ATVs. Their organization, much like the NRA and Republican have collapsed their tents around institutional orthodoxy. Sort of like the old apparachniks of the Soviet Union defended it no matter how ridiculous the defense.
Does this 'smaller tent' exclusionism have to do with old people who refuse to adjust being in charge of the purse strings? Or is it some universal-like human characteristic to do anything versus to do good? Lots of folks can't do nothing even if everything is fine.
They have to meddle as an expression of worth in their worthless existence. And they know it, too. That is their karma.
@Marie, I'm a little puzzled by your habit of dancing around the things you've said. It's too much like the "I didn't say that" ritual practiced (most notoriously) by Richard Dawkins. Since we're dealing in facts, the fact is that you offered a story of a man hallucinating in prison (and, later, attaching religious meaning to that hallucination) as your explanation for why people "believe." If that's not an instance of reducing religion/belief to hallucinations, irrational judgments, an inability to face the truth, etc., etc., then what is?
Then, in like fashion, you take a standard religious metaphor--a personal relationship with Jesus--and equate it to a delusion. People, like myself, who have (I'm sorry--who think we have) such a relationship, need to see a professional. Well, I'm thrilled to hear that. Since my Protestant Christianity reaches into the core of what I believe and how I live, obviously my religiosity violates the Marie Principle of being religious without actually being so. I'll call the local Happy Hatch and reserve a bed. Really. Right after I type this. Promise.
What can I say? You deny your positions even as you take them. Of course, a person can be religious AND rational, you declare, as if I had questioned that possibility. Meanwhile, you make it clear that anything beyond pretend religiosity is cause for booking a bed at the Happy Home. How can anyone argue with someone who won't even stick to her own statements? Answer: one can't.
Faith is an infinitely richer tradition than the blind obedience to dogma everyone keeps citing. I'm sorry for people reared in a believe-or-else environment, and I imagine if I had suffered the same fate, I might, too, be spending the rest of my intellectual life tossing grenades at True Belief. Thank the heavens I'm not in that rut. In fact, I was raised with no religion at all, save for my grandmother sneaking me in to a Catholic Mass on one occasion (my parents--the biological ones--were enraged).
From what I can gather here and elsewhere, people reared in unthinking, believer-or-else traditions often presume that the requirement for thinking and acting logically begins and ends with rejecting dogma. But that's only the beginning. Logic and reason are stern, painstaking disciplines, not policy positions. Just as gaining knowledge involves way more than merely rejecting ignorance (or not watching Fox News, or not shopping at Dollar General), living in the truth entails infinitely more than rejecting any single, flawed construct.
Too much of the modern left's activity is dedicated to declaring the other side hopelessly witless, deluded, etc. With that as our model for community, it's no wonder we end up kicking the bulk of the species out of our clubhouse. We need to stop doing that.
Your government in action- protecting you from domestic terrorism. http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html
IMHO, Mark Twain said it best:
" FAITH IS BELIEVIN' WHAT YOU KNOW AIN'T SO!"
@Raul: This is the third time you have referred to your "biological parents" and I'm curious––were they not the parents who raised you? You can tell me this is none of my business, but then why the reference?
As for the rest of your post, I refrain from commenting since it appears to be addressed to Marie, although your last paragraph lands a blow I think is undeserved.
Re: Defending Marie; she needs my help like Rusty the Pit needs help from Twiggy the chihuahua on polishing his food bowl; Raul; and I quote; "...personal relationship with Jesus--..." I've got a personal relationship with William Shakespeare or Shakespeire as he sometimes signed, but it's only in my head. Jesus and Will; they both be dead.
I think it's great that you have such a good friend, who wouldn't want a friend like Jesus?
Nobody claimed you're nuttier than last weeks fruit cake, I just said you can't prove your theory till you're knocking at them pearly gates. Jesus is on the main line, tell'm what you want.
Defending capitalism from home grown terrorists:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
As long as @Raul keeps throwing his verbal grenades at me & not at others, I'm fine with it. Raul wants to pick a fight where there is none, as far as I can tell, by criticizing me for my remarks in a dialog I was having with @Marvin Schwalb.
As far as I know, based on serious scholarship -- no, not the Richards Dawkins stuff or anything of its ilk -- there was no historical Jesus. It seems to me it's pretty difficult to have a "personal relationship" with a literary character. There are some literary characters I like, too, but I recognize them as fictions, not as people to get to know. It is of course possible to believe in a concept, like "goodness" or "purity" or something, & to anthropomorphize that concept. Still, I don't think that was the purpose of the gospels.
Instead, the Christian gospels are some ancient Jewish guys' ideas of what a Jewish Messiah "would be" like; as such, the writers -- especially Mark, Matthew & Luke -- combined Jewish traditional views of messiahs/anointed kings with characteristics of other ancient god-men. They came up with pretty good stories, in my opinion, & as works of literature, the gospels hold up well. As historical documents -- well, they ain't.
Not surprisingly, and in keeping with my original remark to Schwalb, the first gospels written were responses to traumatic events in Judea-Israel -- the Jewish Wars -- which resulted in several Jewish diaspora. The fictional messiah of the gospels also provided a balance against the numerous real people who claimed to be messiahs & mounted various insurrections against the Roman authorities, none of which worked out well. The gospels were a way of beefing up the belief system and bolstering Jews without a country -- at the same time they mitigated against the need to fight yet another hopeless war against Roman forces. Unlike real-life messianic figures, the Jesus character -- as imagined by the gospel writers -- seeks to win the war of ideas, not wars comprised of physical battles. And guess what? He did. Otherwise, you might be a Mitraist!
Marie
@PD Pepe--I will answer for my foster son, Raul. He makes the distinction because it has been made public on this forum--through a computer glitch--that he is my son. Thus, when he refers to his birth family, he uses the term to distinguish them from us. We took him in at the age of 19, as he was leaving university to go into the Navy. We became his "significant parents," in every sense of the word. His parents were jazz musicians; he inherited the musical talent but developed different cultural interests.
Now that his parents are both gone, I am the "grandma" to the rest of his family, even living over the river and through the woods.
I don't mind your asking, of course.
@Marie
You wrote: Several weeks ago a commenter said he belonged to the NRA and favored gun control. I asked him why he maintained his membership. He never did respond.
In a way, I did respond by sending you my Christmas letter, with a forwarding email in which I said; I avoided writing about climate change, politics, the $6bn election, outliving younger siblings, our adulation of the MIC, gun control, or why I dropped my NRA membership.
I now know I should have been more forthright and less forwarding.
@JJG, I am not a fundie or evangelical. I fully, completely, utterly understand that Jesus may not have actually existed, and that, if he did, he's long gone. While I'm slightly miffed that you would so eagerly conclude otherwise, I'm so used to your type of reaction that it barely registers anymore. You're instance number, oh, 3,456. Give or take a few. For the record, I'm a yellow dog Dem and a great admirer of Barney Frank. A supporter of women's rights and someone who wants guns out of our culture, period.
But I'm also a hardcore leftie quite tired of navigating the left-wing say-you-like-religion-and-we'll-treat-you-like-a-rube minefield. Anymore, I just step on the mines and let them blow. Oddly enough, I'm still in one piece. Anyway, don't let me stop you from assuming that anyone who proudly claims religiosity isn't worthy of intellectual disdain. Please.
@Marie, please, please, please stop assuming that I'm a Bible-thumping fundie. Please, if only for courtesy's sake. I realize the Bible contains tons of mythology. I've never described or regarded religion as anything but. The difference between me and others at this site is that I have deep respect for myth--I find deep, hardly set in stone, meaning in myth. Because I choose unapologetically to accept (as myth) the mythology of my culture does not, no matter how much it excites anyone to assert otherwise, make me a fundie or someone who needs to have it explained, over and over, that myth and fact are two different things. I'm sorry that so many on this forum have subscribed, for whatever reason, to the fase dichotomy that one is either a flaming fundie or Dawkins atheist, with the only in-between option being a believer who merely makes the motions. It hurts me that anyone's experience of religion would be so constricted and negative, and saddens me further that anyone would reduce religion to their bad experience thereof. My experience of faith is not yours. Is that okay?
Bottom line, to me, is that you can't so aggressively push the Dawkins construct of faith and then insist there's no debate to be had. Your views are as open to criticism as anyone else's.
Rational thinking is all about NOT using the findings of science, current or otherwise, as support (or lack of support) for any cultural prejudice. To wit, it's not consistent with the goals of rational thinking to extract brain-science findings and use them as proof that religionists are fantasy-prone yee-haws. The findings of science tell what they tell; when we use them to buttress our worst suspicions about others we aren't working with science.
PD, nowhere I look can I find "religious" given the synonym of "irrational," so I can't agree with your "by definition" claim.
Yes, alphonsegaston is my real, though not biological, mother. As she's explained. She doesn't get nearly as annoyed by the believers-are-rubes festival so popular on the left these days; being more media centered and, age-wise, closer to the current craze of pop atheism, I find the sentiments thereof too hard to field without getting irked. Usually, I maintain a lovely sense of humor about pop notions, but not on the topic of faith. I'm aware of, and find hilarious, the Dawkins meme of treating "I'm religious" as a literal claim for a literal supernatural deity, and an excuse for assuming a rationality deficit in the maker of said statement. And a cause for "challenging" said claimant. This is nothing more than Dawkins selling a shallow pop-cultural ritual as a replacement for the hard work of objective, rational thinking. There is much more to hard, rational thinking than explaining to believers that myth is myth and eagerly jumping on any statement of faith as an admission of stupidity.
Re; It's in the words; Raul ; this are yours,"Then, in like fashion, you take a standard religious metaphor--a personal relationship with Jesus--and equate it to a delusion. ... I fully, completely, utterly understand that Jesus may not have actually existed, and that, if he did, he's long gone.People, like myself, who have (I'm sorry--who think we have) such a relationship, need to see a professional."
Kate? That is just mean; but I can't help myself. I'll seek professional help.
@ Raul: "I'm also a hardcore leftie quite tired of navigating the left-wing say-you-like-religion-and-we'll-treat-you-like-a-rube minefield."
I assume you're not referring to any writers here, because I've reviewed the comments, & no one here has made such a charge. Quite the opposite. If you do feel you're being "treated like a rube," it would appear you've misinterpreted what commenters wrote.
Please direct all your invective at me, not at other commenters. I'm letting stand the remark you made to @JJG, but it's close to the line. However, JJG answered in a way that I would interpret as not entirely respectful, so I guess you're even.
JJG did make a good point, though: your arguments are inconsistent to the point of incoherence: when you boil it down, as JJG insinuates, what you've said is that you have a personal relationship with a myth. In the finite world, I don't believe that is possible.
If you think we're wrong, re-read & analyze what you wrote. Maybe it would be a better use of your time than ascribing motives to me that frankly, just aren't there.
Marie
@Kate Madison: Every time I took a seminar through the collected stories of Mark Twain, I thought, "the poor son-of-a-bitch," and sometimes expressed it. Such an eager man, so desirous of success, so bitter and unhappy--I somehow don't see the triumphalism in his words which you quote. I see anger and despair. Now, I would not say the same of folks like Dawkins, Hitchens, et. al. But then, they do not let us see themselves as Twain did. Everything about him reveals the teenager's wail, there is no God, my dog has died.
@Marie, I won't bother with JJG's pathetic rejoinder, save to say that I'd personally be embarrassed to go on record with the same point of view. Yes, ideas and myths and concepts aren't living, breathing things in the literal sense, but to conclude that, because of that fact, one can't have a personal relationship with them... Well, to put it as kindly as possible, it's an inelegant conclusion. Literal-minded to an extreme that one wouldn't suspect was possible unless one came face-to-wall with such literal-mindedness every day on the Net.
Let's all thank fate, our maker, our non-maker, NPR, whoever, that human beings have evolved to have the ability TO maintain a personal relationship with concepts, themes, cultural lore, etc. We owe our intellectual existence to that fact. Well, some of us do.
Yes, Marie, I'm referring to all "writers here," of which I take it I'm not one? Good catch.
Invective, Marie? No, no invective. I simply presumed that, as a member of the site, I had a right to argue with other members. Invective describes your behavior, however--treating me as if I have no right to so much as respond to other members is, in effect, reducing me to a non-member/non-person. I would never do that to anyone else. You would, and have.
@ALL-
Whoa! I go out for Sushi and when I get back it seems the religious wars have broken out. @alphonsegaston: I do not care whether Mark Twain was a miserable soul. I resonate with his words about faith. There are many other miserable souls who think God is the answer, and you are not saved unless you have surrendered to Jesus. All nuts, IMHO. Who cares? One's choice of faith/no faith (in the religious sense) is a personal decision. None of us has the right to judge another's belief system--unless it is destructive and harmful to others. It is not a logical argument--but an emotional one.
I am with JJG--let us move on to more important topics of the day. Like: Are the Packers going to win tomorra? And will we actually go over the fiscal cliff? I am concerned about John Boehner's getting melanoma, since he spends so much time in the tanning parlor. I am sure he is doing double time there with all of this anxiety in the air--and on Marie's website. Let's get a massage, do some Yoga and/or take half an Ativan! 2013 is not going to be a less anxious time, for sure! Can we chill for the moment?
Sorry, Kate, I'm just a bleeding heart liberal. Feeling empathy for a great writer is not judgment on him, hardly that.
@all you religious warriors: http://www.possibilian.com/
Ya know, you are not the only ones who seek answers to questions of religiosity or spirituality, and y'all are not the only ones who use Religion to display your versatility with word bending and hair-splitting. Try Eagleman for a dose of reality.
Thanks for the link, wiswalt--fascinating article. Eagleman is an admirer and sometime colleague of Crick, I see. I would not classify his work as using religion to "display (his) versatility with word-bending," however--he's a scientist trying to see what the brain is capable of. If time can be understood through the discoveries of brain science, that is fantastic. I will want to read his book of stories, as I am a fan of Italo Calvino, one of the major magical realists along with Marquez and--yes--Selma Lagerlof.
I think, though, that he should be recommended as a dose of Magical reality.