Preparing for the jubilee…or tribulation

Today is the day we all dread, the day of the vice-presidential debates. We know Sarah Palin is incompetent and not fit for office, but the question is…will she manage to pull off the spunky/cute routine and win over the superficial morons of the country despite her Bush-like anti-intellectualism and lack of curiosity, even if she does execute a few major flubs? Will Biden throw away a victory by looking pretentious? We shall find out this evening.

Until then, warm up with these amusing links to the ongoing Chronicles of Palin.

Where the blame lies

We’re worried about the current financial crisis — in fact, the whole world is concerned. Most of us have simple explanations for the mess we’re in right now, such as excessive deregulation, lenders raking in short term profit at the expense of long term stability, a weakening economy, and the misrule of George W. Bush and his gang of Rethuglican cronies, but we’re missing the real root cause: it was the gays. Some big flaming homo flaunting his ungodly desires one time too many finally tipped God over into a big snit, and as we all know, God’s aim sucks, so when he tossed that lightning bolt of righteous indignation down upon Broadway, he missed and hit Wall Street instead.

No, seriously.

In a September 25th blog post titled ‘The Nation Will Right Itself If It Fixes Sex’, Christian Civil League of Maine Executive Director Michael Heath writes that the financial crisis facing Wall Street is a symptom of America’s sinful sexual culture, including the acceptance of gay unions.

“Our crisis is a symptom, not the cause,” writes Michael Heath. “I am not saying I know whether this financial crisis is God’s judgment or not. It is not for me to know that definitively.”

He doesn’t know for sure, but he does seem to have some rather definitive notions about exactly what would tickle God’s funny bone.

Heath goes on to list policy changes that would make God “crack a smile,” including: End abortion rights and defund non-profit groups supporting it, amend state constitutions to ban gay marriage and eliminate domestic partnerships and civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, and end discrimination against private religious schools and homeschools.

Whoa, that god sure has some specific and sweeping policy proposals for an ineffable being. And for all of his aw-shucks disavowals, Mike seems to have some inside knowledge on God’s quirks.

But wait! He has missed some. It’s not just those gay people…

A related post by Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian at the National Review’s website pushes a similar theme, this time focusing on Friday’s failure of WaMu.

Krikorian suggests the big bank failed because it was too accommodating to minorities, including gays, African-Americans and Hispanics.

Right. It’s the fault of those minorities, the swarming leeches who take and take and take and don’t compliment my golf game and who don’t pay me bonuses and who want me to pay for their cheap little dreams and not my big important dreams (my Lexus my Rolex my mistress’s boob job my condo my implants my home theater system the good booze the cubans the stuff they can’t have it’s mine), profiting like parasites off the hard work of upper echelon MBAs who barely got what they deserved for distributing the wealth to the little people via all their costly purchases of yachts and beemers and rare wines and priceless artwork and ski vacations in Aspen and indulgent jewelry and new consumer electronics every week and goddamn but it makes me angry to see good white male alumni of Yale and Princeton and Harvard forced to bear the blame for the weakness and lack of vision of little brown people and degenerates who threw away the whole American economy because they just had to buy some ticky-tacky cheap ranch-style lath-and-particle-board piece of crap in the suburbs, and then they don’t even worship the True God, the God of prosperity, the God of the moneychangers and the Pharisees, the God who tells me I’m His Number One, the One God who is God who is His Own Son, who is white dammit white and nicely groomed like an American and not one of those dingy off-color immigrants but a Real American with a pinky ring and a good suit and a little cologne so He doesn’t reek of cabbage or whatever other ungodly stinking rubbish the foreigners gobble down, and God Jesus Lord has a good tan and nice abs (but He only likes girls) and a nice firm manly butt (but only leers at cheerleaders) and He’s big and firm down there (maybe He’ll let me watch) and He wants to hold me and run his fingers through my hair (like I was His beloved no like I was His best friend no like I was His best salesman yeah that’s it that’s safe.) God only loves those who look like Him who looks like me. Amen.

Whew. I have to stop trying to imagine how these people think — it’s just too dangerously weird. And those guys are nuts.

(via Greta Christina)

A dystopian vision

Another interesting blog that has been around for some time is Charles Stross’s — you ought to check it out, and the comments are often informative too. One in particular was brought to my attention — it’s a comment made in response to another fellow, Dan, who is something of an American triumphalist, seeing us spiraling upward, ever upward, into glory and a bold Star Trekian future of wealth and prosperity and technology. Maclaren wrote an antidote, which I include below. I don’t agree with it entirely — we aren’t quite as bad off as it says right now, although I can see his word-portrait as a picture of America 5 years from now, easily, and I don’t see anyone trying very hard to put the brakes on our descent into madness.

Sometimes Stross’s blog is very depressing, too.

[Read more…]

Some local reactions

Our campus has an alternative right-wing rag of a newspaper called the Counterweight, funded who knows how, that throws up horrible little articles that usually sound like the kind of thing that would make Karl Rove and Dick Cheney chortle. They interviewed me recently — yes, I speak politely to even the most conservative students on campus — for a pair of opinion articles of the battling ‘he was right’/’he was evil’ variety, all on the desecration controversy. You can read them both online. The student who was taking my side framed it as an issue of opposition to political correctness, especially campus speech codes, which may be one of the rare, narrow instances where the paper and I might agree.

The student who was arguing against me couldn’t spell my name consistently, claimed my actions were “far beyond decent”, and got the facts wrong, claiming I’d surrounded the cracker with anti-semitic articles. Oh, he will go far in the Republican party, I can tell.

Do Republicans think at all?

The mayor of Fort Mill, South Carolina forwarded one of those stupid chain emails that throws around absurd accusations — in this case, the Bible predicted that the anti-christ would be a Muslim in his 40s, and that Barack Obama was therefore the anti-christ. There is so much wrong there; Obama is not a Muslim, the Bible doesn’t say such a thing (especially since it was written before Islam), and you would expect such a devout Christian to know this. But he sent it on anyway.

Now if he were somebody of normal intelligence, at this point he’d be saying, “oops, hit the wrong button, I meant to hit delete…”. But no. He’s making excuses.

Fort Mill Mayor Danny Funderburk says he was “just curious” when he forwarded a chain e-mail suggesting Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is the biblical antichrist. “I was just curious if there was any validity to it,” Funderburk said in a telephone interview. “I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up.”

Well. Think that one through. So Funderburk’s way to get to the truth of a scurrilous claim is to simply repeat it to a bunch of other people? And the kind of evidence he’d accept to debunk it is scriptural?

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Shoulda gone to church today

Today is Pulpit Freedom Sunday, that day when the wingnut churches were all planning to preach endorsements of political candidates in defiance of the restrictions imposed on them by their tax-exampt status. I hope the IRS harvests a windfall here — it’s simply absurd that they can demand freedom from taxation because they are religious organizations caring for the spiritual needs of their flocks, and then turn around and demand that they also be given the right to be a political organization. It’s one or the other. Let the preachers preach for McCain/Palin, but not on the government’s dime.

The organizers of Pulpit Freedom Sunday are convinced that the protest will result in a court challenge to the law. Mr. Stanley said the law was so unclear that, “I anticipate getting to federal court, certainly the appeals court.” But Robert W. Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at the George Washington University Law School, found that unlikely.

“It’s settled law,” Professor Tuttle said. “People can unsettle law that’s settled, but I think that it is very, very unlikely that a lower federal court would reach any other conclusion except that religious organizations have no constitutional right to engage in political speech while accepting deductible contributions.”

Speaking of settled law, wouldn’t it be nice to really shake things up and strip all churches of their tax exemptions? I know there’d be an immediate roar of protest from all churches everywhere that would have some political cost, but after 9/10ths of the churches fold, and after cities enjoy the sudden filling of the voids in their municipal tax base, and after the financial crisis is resolved, we’d be better off.

Chicken

Unbelievable—John McCain runs away and begs for the imminent presidential debate to be delayed, citing the need to address the financial crisis, as if he actually matters and has a plan other than to do whatever the Bush administration orders.

I smell fear.

I was sent a great suggestion: if McCain is going to be curled up in a foetal position somewhere, perhaps they should have the vice-presidential debate instead. She’s ready, right?

Nature discusses the US election

Good ol’ UK-based Nature has a special section dedicated to the US election. I’m not surprised — the whole world has a stake in this one, and I sure hope we don’t disappoint them, for our sake and theirs. Both presidential candidates were asked their opinion on various issues of science policy, and the answers are publicly available, in two parts. Unsurprisingly, only Obama bothered to reply; in an attempt to be fair, Nature dug through McCain’s old speeches to charitably cobble up the kind of answers he might have given if a) he weren’t an incompetent old coot who can’t get his act together, b) he actually cared what the universe outside the right-wing electorate thought, and c) he wasn’t going to heedlessly gut science as quickly as possible if given the opportunity.

If only they’d gotten Sarah Palin to submit something…but since Nature is not Punch, they probably thought that throwing a comedy routine into a prestigious science journal would be inappropriate.

I did like this short, sweet answer:

Do you believe that evolution by means of natural selection is a sufficient explanation for the variety and complexity of life on Earth? Should intelligent design, or some derivative thereof, be taught in science class in public schools?

Obama: I believe in evolution, and I support the strong consensus of the scientific community that evolution is scientifically validated. I do not believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental scrutiny.

(Before you jump on him about using the word “believe”, read this.)

I also thought this one was very good. Science is an international enterprise, but it would be selfishly nice if my country did more to recruit and support it.

Would it make sense for more overseas students who receive PhDs at American universities to stay in the country and contribute to its research base and its wealth? What immigration reforms would you support?

Obama: I believe that we must enact comprehensive immigration reform to restore our economic strength, relieve local governments of unfair burdens stemming from an inefficient federal immigration system, ensure that our country and borders remain secure and allow a path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants who are willing to pay a fine, pay taxes, and learn English. A critical part of comprehensive immigration reform is turning back misguided policies that since 9/11 have turned away the world’s best and brightest from America. As president, I will improve our legal permanent resident visa programmes and temporary programmes to attract some of the world’s most talented people to America.

My enthusiasm is not unreserved, but I know exactly who I’ll be voting for in November.