Eyes without a mind

Everyone should read the Washington Post’s recent effort in investigative reporting, Top Secret America. It’s distressing. Since George W. Bush, we’ve had this reckless, ridiculous, uncoordinated expansion of intelligence agencies, all sucking up tremendous sums of money, all with little oversight, and all producing floods of data…and it’s all a waste because the emphasis is on sucking in lots of data, and little is done about comprehending it all.

The terrorists really have been effective. They’ve turned us into bloated clowns stumbling over our own feet and doing ourselves far more damage than any hijacked plane could do.

Another theocrat for Kansas

Maybe somebody from Kansas can say whether this crazy woman has a chance. Joan Farr Heffington is running for governor, and she has a few priorities.

  • Require that a Biblical and Constitutional reason exist for the passage of any new laws

  • Allow teaching of Christianity vs. evolution in schools

I guess there won’t be any laws regulating GMO crops in Kansas, or prohibiting stem cell research, or funding the creation of any wind farms. Anything more recent than the 18th century is going to have to be neglected, along with anything not mentioned in the Constitution.

At least she’s upfront about the conflict between Christianity and evolution.

Quick, somebody reassure me that she’s a fringe candidate without a prayer of getting into office. Please. It’s Monday, the day is painful enough.

So that’s why they call it the dismal science

Let’s see more charts and graphs to suck the joy out of your life! Here are 15 Appalling Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America — the rich-poor divide is growing. One graph summarizes it all: If you aren’t in the top 1% of America’s earners, you’re pretty much screwed.

There’s a lot of class warfare going on right now, only it mostly consists of the victims lying back and voting for the officials who will then help the plutocrats mug them some more.

Evolution isn’t libertarian

Larry Arnhart wrote a strange article in which he tried to claim Darwin and evolution for libertarianism, or as they prefer to call it nowadays, “Classical liberalism”. I was invited to give a reply, along with a few other people, but I can give the gist of my reaction here: no one gets to claim a biological justification for their political philosophy. Evolution does not endorse libertarianism, socialism, communism, or capitalism, and even if it did nudge one way or the other, that does not mean that we shouldn’t oppose the brutal short-term expediency of natural processes.

How to fish for atheists

It’s easy. Bait your hook with stupid.

It’s true, we’re a sucker for that stuff, although it does have a downside. We’ll come up, swallow the bait, follow the line to its source, devour the poor fool holding the pole, and then waddle off, all fat and smug. It’s our nature, we can’t help it.

So, for instance, an Indiana politician who is considered a potential presidential candidate, Mitch Daniels, talks about atheism.

People who reject the idea of a God — who think that we’re just accidental protoplasm — have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications — which not all such folks have thought through — because really, if we are just accidental, if this life is all there is, if there is no eternal standard of right and wrong, then all that matters is power.

And atheism leads to brutality. All the horrific crimes of the last century were committed by atheists — Stalin and Hitler and Mao and so forth — because it flows very naturally from an idea that there is no judgment and there is nothing other than the brief time we spend on this Earth.

You should read the rest of that interview, especially the part where he talks about not being ostentatious with his faith. It’s so precious.

The projection is strong in this one. I don’t know if I’d want a president who thought the world was divided into people who thought the only two possible purposes in life were to glorify God or a brutal drive to power.

Daniels is an example of a Christian considered smart enough to be president. You should see what the brain-damaged masses believe. It’s always fun to be lectured about what I believe by a marginally literate kook. Did you know that atheists believe in these six things?

  1. Satan.
  2. Ghosts.
  3. Tarot cards.
  4. Astrology.
  5. Veganism.
  6. Saying OMG.

She even made a video about it!

But wait! You haven’t seen the scariest part! Who is this person?

Jellooo I’m Bev, I’m a health care provider, I work in a hospital and nursing home. I also earn my degree in Bachelor of Science major in Management, I teach academic program to toddlers, children and young adults, I also teach speech to foreign student.

If only she’d move to Indiana, she could run for president someday.

Annoying libertarians

Ah, the funny cartoon yesterday rankled the libertarian contingent again. I’ll explain a few things that will get them fired up even more.

  • Get over yourselves. Mocking libertarians does not bring me a swarm of traffic — you’re like a tiny swarm of self-important rodents who will natter on endlessly in protest, but most normal people laugh once, shrug, and move on. The major traffic-getter on my site yesterday was a post inviting women to express themselves. If all I cared about was sucking in clicks, I’d do that more often; women matter, libertarians are a negligible blip.

  • The funniest thing to me is how quickly libertarians get indignant and demonstrate an absence of a sense of humor. It never fails. Make a joke about libertarians, and they don’t get it, but they will sit there and explain how the joke doesn’t work, endlessly, becoming a new variant of the joke themselves. Please, get some self-awareness!

  • There were the typical claims that government would be at the mercy of whatever rascal we elect to the presidency. I would like more government. A well-regulated civil service would be an excellent buffer against the whims of the executive. Why do you anti-government guys always think so simplistically, assuming that big government means concentrating more power in the hands of an autocratic individual? You do realize that we live in a representative democracy with more than one person at the top, and that non-partisan institutions within government can function without an overlord?

  • The alternative to regulation of basic services by the government is privatizing them and giving more power to corporations — whose goal is to increase profits. Personally, I like to see the Invisible Hand shackled and restricted to doing useful work, rather than picking pockets.

  • I actually do like civil libertarians very much. The rights of the individual to think and speak as he or she pleases should not be compromised. However, the social machinery that maximizes civil liberties is very much the product of cooperation and secular social institutions. Most of the oblivious libertarians — the ones who can’t get the joke — don’t realize that their advocacy of mindless laissez-faire capitalism and unfettered industry is about destroying the social fabric that allows each of us to be something more than a serf. Freedom is worth paying taxes for, unless all you think freedom is about is gathering money.

My apologies for the link to the malware site in that post, too, and I’ve removed it for now. I hope the bad stuff gets fixed soon; Barry Deutsch at leftycartoons.com (right now, go there at your peril) actually has page after page of absolutely marvelous cartoons that will make pro-union, pro-equality, pro-socialism, pro-goodness and light people feel all happy and warm.

Julia Gillard inspires a lot of polls

The godless Australian PM, Julia Gillard, has sure riled up the pollsters. Here’s three polls at once to slam. Start clicking!

Do you care at all about Julia Gillard’s lack of religious faith?

* Yes 33.71%
* No 66.29%

Hey, what’s the difference between “No” and “Don’t care” in this poll? And what does it mean that it will affect their vote? This is a remarkably meaningless and uninterpretable poll.

Will your vote be swayed by Julia Gillard’s stance on religion?

* Yes, it will affect my vote 29.35%
* No, I’ll still vote the same 45.21%
* Don’t care 25.45%

This one is the only interesting one — does godlessness influence you in a positive way? Too bad it’s an internet poll, because we can’t tell from these kind of data.

Are you more or less likely to vote for Julia Gillard given she is an atheist?

More likely 39%
Less likely 34%
It’s not important 27%

I guess I won’t ever be visiting the Maldives

It’s a tiny little island nation in the Indian Ocean, and it sounds like an interesting place. Unfortunately, the people there make it a hellhole.

In the Muslim-majority nation of Maldives, a man stunned an audience during questions and answers period in a lecture given by an Islamic cleric, by stating that he had chosen freedom of conscience not to follow Islam. The man, Mohamed Nazim, was promptly attacked, taken into custody, and has been threatened with death and beheading, or other punishments for choosing his freedom of conscience. Maldives media are reporting that it is the first time in many hundreds of years that a Maldivian has publicly renounced Islam, since Sultan King Hassan IX converted to Christianity in 1552 and was deposed.

Religion is an evil mind-rot with varying degrees of infection, but I think the worst of them all has to be Islam. What a nasty little superstition it is.

Here’s a real twist, though: The Maldives is on the UN Human Rights Council. I like the idea of an international tribunal like the UN, but this is the kind of insanity that makes it a joke.

Nazim was taken into police custody for expressing his conscience, where he received “Islamic counseling” and threatened with execution. The fact that he has now reverted to Islam in the face of such dire oppression does not change the fact that he’s got to be the bravest atheist alive.

Here’s a video of the odious Zakir Naik addressing Mohamed Nazim’s question. Theologians are all the same: he tries to turn it into an argument that god must exist, because otherwise there is no reason to have morality. Naik is a moron.

He does back off from insisting that Nazim be put to death, saying that there’s a difference between leaving the faith and advocating against the faith; the latter warrants killing the apostate, but not necessarily the first.

Congratulations, Australia!

Australia has a non-religious woman as prime minister! This is nominally promising, but we’ll have to wait and see if she actually follows through with some kind of commitment to secularism (the former PM, Kevin Rudd, was known for recruiting god to his party’s side).

Also, unfortunately, in all the hullabaloo about having two X chromosomes, red hair, no husband or children, and making a secular affirmation instead of a religious oath of office, I’m not hearing much about her politics, other than that she’s more or less expected to continue current Labor Party policies. Is that good or bad? I don’t know. Maybe some Australians can explain in the comments.

I wouldn’t care if she were a red-haired Hindu if she were doing good work, but the last thing we need is a godless prime minister who is also incompetent — and yes, that could happen!