The 110th Congress: The Congress that DIDN'T do Nothing

"I have bad news for you," Hoyer told reporters. "Those trips you had planned in January, forget 'em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th."

January 4th happens to be my birthday, and I can't think of a better gift -- save the impeachment and removal of Bush and Cheney -- that the 110th Congress could give me than sacrificing some vacation time to begin to fix what the 109th broke.

Republicans have been quick to bitch and moan about the new schedule, which will require them to work 5 days a week:

"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

This congress will have to work nearly as much as the majority of their constituents. How sad for them.

The 110th Congress has not even convened yet, and it already has a far better reputation than the 109th.

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Free Speech for the Terrorists in D.C.

Last night, Keith Olbermann delivered another in his series of special comments, this one in response to Newt Gingrich's assertion that it was necessary to curtail free speech to fight terrorism.

"We will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find," Mr. Gingrich continued about terrorists formerly Communists formerly Hippies formerly Fifth Columnists formerly Anarchists formerly Redcoats.

"….to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech."

Free speech is free speech for everyone, and is our single most fundamental freedom. Gingrich -- like with the president, vice president, and the rest of their ilk -- claims to want to protect America, to protect our freedom. They invoke images of terrorists who hate us because of that freedom, and want desperately to take it away from us. Then, in order to protect us from these alleged freedom-haters, they propose taking that freedom away. These charlatans either don't notice the contradiction, or hope desperately that no one else will.

We do.

You -- Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Bush... -- you are the terrorists. You are the ones trying to take away our freedom, and you are doing so far more effectively than anyone with a bomb-belt or a box-cutter could ever dream. What's more, you are using fear tactics to do it, which is the very definition of terrorism. I do not agree with a word you say, Mr. Gingrich, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.



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Proof

Lohse, a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.

I knew it all along.

Correlation between mental illness and GW Bush voters | digg story

Faith != God

(For those that don't know, "!=" is a common programming operator for "not equal".)

There was a recent debate between conservative radio host Dennis Prager and atheist author Sam Harris. There were many interesting points in this debate, and I may discuss it again, but one subject that particularly stood out to me was Prager's attempts to confuse the existence of God with the belief in God. This is especially apparent in this embarrassing paragraph from his closing statement:

You write: “If humanity can’t survive without a belief in God, this would only mean that a belief in God exists. It wouldn’t, even remotely, suggest that God exists.” This statement is as novel as the one suggesting that Stalin was produced by Judeo-Christian values. It is hard for me to imagine that any fair-minded reader would reach the same conclusion. If we both acknowledge that without belief in God humanity would self-destruct, it is quite a stretch to say that this fact does not “even remotely suggest that God exists.” Can you name one thing that does not exist but is essential to human survival?

This argument is so profoundly stupid that I had to ask a friend to verify that I had read it correctly. Prager repeatedly states -- even after Harris clearly and specifically points out the logical fallacy -- that the essentiality of the belief in God is a strong argument for the existence of God. On the contrary, as Harris states, this simply proves a point that no rational person would agree with: that belief in God exists. This fact that they both agree on in no way suggests that that belief is at all accurate, as Prager claims that it does. The last sentence clearly shows that Prager considers belief in God (something that Harris at least hypothetically agrees is "essential to human survival") to be the same as God ("one thing that does not exist"). I can only conclude that this is an attempt on Mr. Prager's part to make readers dismiss the debate as unfair by painting himself as a complete and utter moron. I guess that means that I'm not a "fair-minded reader" that he can easily imagine.

Belief in God has tangible benefits -- particularly for more primitive, unenlightened cultures of the past -- that few rational people would deny, but faith -- as a belief that can be neither proven nor disproven -- is utterly indifferent to its own accuracy. In the absence of the potential for proof, faith can only ever act as a placebo for the believer. To anyone who did not realize that, and for whom the placebo effect will no longer work due to the revelation, I apologize.

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Dirty words

I began work on this post some time ago, but in light of current events, I thought it would be a good time to finish it up and get it out there.

Dirty words are stupid. I don't just mean the unnecessary use of them is stupid (which it is), I mean that the idea that certain words are vulgar or offensive and should not be used is stupid. Words are, by definition, simple linguistic constructs that have no meaning unless one is agreed upon. All of these words have definitions -- often sexual, racist, scatological, etc. -- but these meanings are barely understood anymore due to the stigma of their use. Many of them are also used figuratively to provide pejorative emphasis, and can be an effective and valid means of conveying ideas in such context, and to remove them from the permissible vernacular is no better than diluting their meaning through over-use. The use of censorship, even self-censorship, rather than one's own judgement in communication only causes problems.

Another oft-ignored meaning that they have is what they say about those who use them. While their use alone doesn't make an individual stupid, inappropriate or excessive use certainly demonstrates a lack of eloquence. Some are virtually meaningless beyond demonstrating the prejudice of the speaker. Epithetical remarks such as those for which Michael Richards has been receiving flak could just as easily be cognitively replaced with the phrase "I'm a racist". Beyond that, all that he stated was that the individuals that he was addressing were black, a fact of which I'm sure they where aware, and their reported attempt to extort money from a man who pointed out that they black and admitted to being racist is no less shameful.

Words have meaning because we give them meaning. They have no meaning that we don't give them, and we have no power that they don't give them, and it's foolish to give them the power to harm us.

The Disinformation Show

Now Fox News Channel, a primary source of material for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, is teaming with the exec producer of "24" to try its hand at a news satire show for conservatives to love.

The Daily Show has often been derided by conservatives who claim that it encourages people to be uninformed, despite studies showing The Daily Show to be at least as substantive as other cable news sources and more informative than most news sources, but now the conservative propaganda machine seems to be changing its tune.

The problem with this tactic, of course, is that a Faux News clone would only be so much disinformation, just like most of the "fair and balanced" network's other programming. The Daily Show is an equal-opportunity satirical mockery, and conservatives only feel singled-out because it has been true in recent years that, in the words of Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias," such that his own show is as close as anyone can honestly come to a conservative counterpart to The Daily Show. There's a reason that Colbert's conservative talking points are so amusing, and shows like O'Reilly's would be almost as funny if the audience knew that he didn't believe them.

Satire is only funny if it rings true, so FNC will never air anything humorous... at least not intentionally.

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Depends on What Your Definition of "Succeed" Is

Recently, when asked if there were lessons about our situation in Iraq to be learned from the Vietnam War, Bush once again embarrassed us all by saying that "we will succeed unless we quit."

What's going on in Iraq is not a war, and it's certainly not something that we can win. It would be so much simpler if it was a war, because we could just complete the genocide and leave... or more realistically, we could finish the genocide and pave the land with oil pumps. Obviously, Bush would never be allowed to get away with this, so what are his goals? What would a "clear military victory" be? Kissenger interprets it as "an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control," which he doesn't believe is possible. Someone will need to explain to me how an independent government fitting that description could be brought about by any amount of military force.

Republican senator John McCain says that we're "fighting and dying for a failed policy", but this is wrong. We're fighting and dying for absolutely nothing. There isn't a plan. There isn't even a goal. If there was, we'd have to weigh whether it was worth the losses that we are suffering to eventually achieve it, but there isn't. We've passed the "quit while you're ahead" point, but we can still cut our losses. We can continue sending our brothers, sisters, parents and children to die while we search for a reason to do so, or we can admit our mistake and leave before more of us die. That is the lesson we should have learned from the Vietnam War.

The Racist Club: You may already be a member

A 15-year-old girl at Freedom High School in Oakley, California is trying to start an ethnic club for caucasians. The school, which already has similar clubs for Latino, Asian, and African-American students, has been unsurprisingly resistant to the idea. Some are saying that such a club would promote racism, while other argue that disallowing the club would be "reverse racism". I believe that both of these views are stupid and, ironically, both racist.

Racism is racism, no matter what racial group is being discriminated for/against. The idea of racism against whites as "reverse racism" is racist because it assumes that racism is characteristic of whites. In junior high, I was once accused of being racist by a classmate (who may or may not have realized the irony of his statement ahead of time). When I, hurt by the accusation, asked him why he thought that, his only response was "Because you're white." It is this mindset that is arguably the most prevalent form of racism in the United States today, and the belief that racism against whites is any different from any other form of racism is, itself, racist.

Some caucasians in the United States -- a few of whom may or may not have been my ancestors -- have done some terrible, racist things, but to assume that I am racist because of that is no less racist.

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2006 Midterms

Well, I was hoping to sum up the election for yesterday's post, but Senator Allen has yet to concede the loss of his seat, the last of the six that the democrats need -- and the only one for which a winner has still not been declared -- for a Senate majority to compliment their already-guaranteed House majority. With 100% of the vote now counted, the only thing Allen could be waiting for before conceding is a recount, which he cannot even request for nearly three weeks under Virginia law.

This majority, of course, is technically a 49/49 split, with independent candidates filling the remaining two seats. The first of these is Vermont's Bernard Sanders, a self-described socialist who who beat his Republican challenger by a margin of more than two to one and who caucuses with the Democrats. The second is famed Democrat-in-name-only and former vice-presidential candidate, Joel Lieberman of Connecticut, who lost the democratic nomination to Ned Lamont, but ran as an independent democrat. The two finished the race with 50% and 40% of the vote, respectively.

Counting both of these senators with the Democratic caucus, the Democrats are now the majority party in the Senate. Only one is required for a plurality, but both would be required to prevent tied votes, which would be broken by Darth Va- I mean Dick Cheney. This of course assumes party-line voting, which may not be the case with so many Republicans as disgusted with the President's actions as everyone else, and the Republicans' dirty tactics for maintaining control of the 109th Congress will be much more difficult without a majority behind them.

As I've been typing this, media outlets have finally begun declaring Democrat Jim Webb the winner in Virginia, with Republican Incumbent George Allen expected to offer his concession tomorrow. Allen is not expected to request a recount unless the margin somehow decreases in the meantime.

Sexual denial: It's not just for teenagers anymore

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

This is yet another example of the Bush administration abusing its power -- as well as taxpayer dollars -- to push a religious agenda, ultimately to the detriment of our society.

While it's true that abstinence is the most reliable method of preventing both pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease, no method will work if people aren't willing to use it. Most people are going to have sex no matter what you tell them, and according to The National Center for Health Statistics, over 90% of this new target group have already had sex. Teaching abstinence to the exclusion of safe sex practices only serves to ensure that when teenagers (and twenty-somethings) do have sex, they'll be blissfully ignorant of how to do so safely, making unwanted pregnancies and the contraction of STDs more likely.

To put a religious agenda ahead of a healthy and informed public is deplorable. Using government authority and tax funds to do it is a betrayal. Sadly, it's far from this administration's biggest betrayal of its constituents.

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In the spirit of the holiday...

In the spirit of the holiday (and of the lack of time due to constantly going to the door to give candy to children that obviously don't need it), here are a few of the scariest (although not necessarily new) stories to appear on digg over the last few days:

• Rolling Stone : COVER STORY: Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
• Canadian Citizen Illegally held, tortured, and released tells his story
• Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
• Time Magazine: Can Diebold Be Trusted?
• Electronic voting machines already changing Democratic votes to Republican
• USA is only country to oppose UN arms trade treaty

A society without crosses or veils

So the ideal of a society where no visible public signs of religion would be seen -- no crosses around necks, no sidelocks, turbans or veils -- is a politically dangerous one. It assumes that what comes first in society is the central political “licensing authority”, which has all the resource it needs to create a workable public morality.

While there is truth in this, in that it is disturbing for a government to have the authority to regulate religion, the reverse is also treacherous.

Gang symbols have been outlawed in many contexts, and religions -- particularly the Abrahamic religions -- have become little more than street gangs, only on a much larger scale. Nations that are primarily Christian or Jewish are at war with the Islamic world, and the crosses and turbans have been reduced to the equivalent of red and blue bandanas, and like these rival street gangs, the Christian Right in the U.S. and the "Islamo-fascists" of the Middle East have far more in common than either side would ever admit. The prohibition of such religious symbols in public would make sense for the same reasons.

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NBC Sides with the Rednecks

NBC has rejected an ad for "Shut Up & Sing," a documentary about the Dixie Chicks, because it "cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush." From the variety.com article:

"It's a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America," Harvey Weinstein said in a statement. "The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American."

Now, let me be clear, NBC is a corporation, and has the right to decide what content to broadcast according to the best interest of its shareholders. That said, their stated reason for this action is a bunch of crap.

It was courageous of the Dixie Chicks to speak out against the aspiring dictator in spite of the fact that their target demographic is the very same nascar-watching, gun-rack-owning Red State inhabitants who would (and did) boycott them for speaking ill of the current administration. Given the current level of Bush's disapproval (pdf link), it wouldn't take any such courage for a national network like NBC to air this now, unless of course they've received some secret warnings against doing so from Bush's Ministry of Truth.

This action is at best cowardly, and at worst evidence of not just a conservative bias, but a bias in favor of the evil man in the Oval Office.

Update: As Bill Maher pointed out on his show last night, in order to avoid disparaging President Bush, NBC would have to take their evening newscast off the air (5:20 in this video).

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Bush's "Stay the Course" Flip-Flop

First, I'd like to take a moment to commend President Bush for finally realizing that "Stay the course" is stupid.

Ok, the moment's over.

It's ironic that Bush -- who famously called his opponent in the 2004 election a "flip-flopper" for changing his opinion on the Iraq war -- is now denying his own former position on the same issue. Contrary to Bush's implication, changing policies as a result of new evidence and admitting one's mistakes is always a good thing. Of course, it's preferable not to make those mistakes in the first place, but because nobody's perfect, the ability to admit mistakes and work to correct them is more important than the ability to avoid making mistakes.

Bush does not admit his mistakes. Instead -- in true Nineteen Eighty-Four, Oceana-has-always-been-at-war-with-Eastasia form -- Bush now denies that "stay the course" was ever his position, despite a mountain of proof that includes transcripts on the Whitehouse's own website of six different occasions on which he used those exact words to describe his plan for Iraq (detailed by thinkprogress) and video of even more that just appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (video).

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More dirty trickes from the GOP

On the October 18 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Fox News host Sean Hannity encouraged Democratic voters to "stay home on Election Day," adding that, "your vote doesn't matter anyway." He added that Democrats should not turn out to vote "for the sake of the nation" because Democrats' votes "won't change who occupies the White House" and Democratic "candidates have absolutely no idea how to win the war on terrorism." Hannity also appeared to predict he would be criticized for his remarks, stating: "This is how the press is going to report this: 'Hannity says Democrats should stay home on Election Day.' " He did not explain how that would be a mischaracterization of his comments.

Is there anything more un-American than telling the opposition not to vote? Well, maybe trying to trick them into not voting.

It's one thing to debate in the hopes of convincing them to change their vote. The dissemination of ideas, good or bad, should always be welcome. Telling people not to vote because you disagree with their ideas is quite another, and if Hannity had any intention of making a good-faith attempt to argue against the the platform of any democratic candidate, his focus would have been on changing votes, rather than discouraging them.

While there is something to the argument that the result of a vote will be better without uninformed voters participating, discouraging them from voting rather than encouraging them to become informed is immoral. Encouraging people not to vote because they have an informed opinion that you disagree with is downright unscrupulous.

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As habeas corpus goes, so goes the nation

With habeas corpus now only a memory, Keith Olbermann argues that this is the beginning of the end of the United States. Below are a few excerpts from his most recent special comment, followed by a video of the entire segment. This comment speaks for itself.

[T]onight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

...

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said, "the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass."

We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

...

(addressing President Bush: ) "With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly—of course—the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

...

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant"—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

...

(addressing President Bush: ) "One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks," you told us yesterday, "said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America."

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be "the beginning of the end of America."

full transcript | digg story

The Reliability of Electronic Elections

Sometimes, paranoids are right. And sometimes even when paranoids are wrong, it's worth considering what they're worried about.

I speak here of all who are worried sick that those new, fancy high-tech voting systems can be hacked, fiddled with and otherwise made to record votes that aren't cast or fail to record votes that are.

This article discusses a House bill to require electronic voting machines to produce voter-readable paper verification, and for those paper ballots to be used to audit a random 2% of the precincts in which they are used. This will go a long way toward making these machines reliable, but there's a long way to go.

The software for these machines should be open-source, so that any voter (with sufficient technical knowledge) can verify it, unlike the secret last-minute patch distributed to Diebold machines at the last minute in 2002 that was verified by no one. Of course, there must also be safeguards in place to ensure that the publicly verified software is actually what the machines are running, and that there are no open I/O mechanisms that can be used to subvert this. All this is required for a voter to have a comparable level of confidence to reading a paper ballot and seeing it placed in a locked ballot box.

Lower-tech forms of vote manipulation, -- such as those used in 2004 in places like Ohio -- must also be stopped, but at least voters disenfranchised through such means are generally aware that their votes have not been counted, unlike electronic manipulation, which can result in votes being thrown out without leaving a trace that they were ever cast.

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Baby Steps

Nancy Pelosi, congresswoman from California's 8th district and current minority leader, is poised to become the first female Speaker of the House if the Democrats take control of the House in the coming election. In the digg story linked below, a few of the commenters asked why her gender is important.

It's important because it's a milestone in the agonizingly slow progress in weeding out misogyny from our society. Between that, the racism, the homophobia, and other forms of hate in our political process, I'm embarrassed to be American.

Now, that's not to say that all Americans are sexist, racist, and/or homophobic, but the fact that a large enough percentage of the electorate is that parties need to take those factors into account when selecting candidates is deplorable. The fact that that is more true among conservatives should be enough to make any reasonable person think twice before voting Republican.

I long for the day when being sexist is more damaging to a candidate than being female, being racist is more damaging than not being caucasian, and being homophobic is more damaging than being homosexual. At the current rate, the nation, if not the entire human race, is likely to destroy itself before that day comes.

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Wake up, and smell the conspiracy

According to a recent New York Times/CBS poll (pdf link), question 81:

When it comes to what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?

Only 16% (down 8 points from 2004) of Americans believe the Bush administration's official story, and the belief that they are "mostly lying" has been accelerating to rise 20 points since 2002, for a total of 28%. Of the remaining 56%, a shrinking 3% are unsure, for a total of 81% who believe that the administration is not being entirely truthful.

Given the overwhelming convenience of the attack to the plan (pdf link) that was released in 2000 by PNAC (of which Dick Cheney is a founding member) and that the administration has since been following. This is not conspiracy nut stuff. The document, linked above on PNAC's own website, expresses the need for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a
new Pearl Harbor" -- which, as I've previously discussed, would be more accurately called a new Reichstag Fire.

At 81%, the belief that the Bush administration is being at least partially dishonest about having had information that might have allowed it to prevent the 9/11 attack is not only mainstream, it is a vast majority. The question is, given this information, how can 34% still approve of Bush as president?

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The Gullible Right

Keith Olbermann is at it again. He's done several stories over the last couple of days on the new book, "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction". This book exposes the GOP plot to dupe evangelical christians into voting Republican while referring to them as "the nuts" and regarding them with contempt behind closed doors. For the Bush administration, The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives -- or in the words of Karl Rove, "a f-ing faith-based thing" (it's unclear where the term "f-ing" originated, but the indefinite article used suggests that Rove did not censor himself) -- was promised and established for the sole purpose of winning votes, and once those votes were won, the administration did nothing but undermine and complain about it.

In light of the administration's true position on these "Faith-Based Initiatives" -- programs to provide funding for humanitarian organizations -- which violate the constitutional separation of church and state by exclusively funding christian organizations rather than secular ones or those established by other religious groups, we must question their other unconstitutionally religious policies like the campaign against same-sex marriage. Is Bush really a homophobe, or is he just after the homophobe vote?

This is why the Constitution requires the separation of church and state. These abuses and manipulations of the electorate, whether a candidate legitimately shares their beliefs or not, is the inevitable result of mixing religion and politics.

read more | digg story