The Silent Scream of Numbers

Please read the article entitled, "The Silent Scream of Numbers" by Robert C. Koehler and subtitled, "The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?" It troubles me that election irregularities that would be considered clear evidence of vote fraud in other countries are overlooked here. There seems to be a collusion among members of the media to choose not to see, not to know. Here's an excerpt from the article:

The media are not on our side. The politicians are not on our side. It’s just us, connecting the dots, fitting the fragments together, crunching the numbers, wanting to know why there were so many irregularities in the last election and why these glitches and dirty tricks and wacko numbers had not just an anti-Kerry but a racist tinge. This is not about partisan politics. It’s more like: “Oh no, this can’t be true.”
...
Let’s simply ask why the lines were so long and the voting machines so few in Columbus and Cleveland and inner-city and college precincts across the country, especially in the swing states, causing an estimated one-third of the voters in these precincts to drop out of line without casting a ballot; why so many otherwise Democratic ballots, thousands and thousands in Ohio alone, but by no means only in Ohio, recorded no vote for president (as though people with no opinion on the presidential race waited in line for three or six or eight hours out of a fervor to have their say in the race for county commissioner); and why virtually every voter complaint about electronic voting machine malfunction indicated an unauthorized vote switch from Kerry to Bush.

This, mind you, is just for starters. We might also ask why so many Ph.D.-level mathematicians and computer programmers and other numbers-savvy scientists are saying that the numbers don’t make sense (see, for instance, www.northnet.org/minstrel, the Web site of Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, lead statistician in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit challenging the Ohio election results). Indeed, the movement to investigate the 2004 election is led by such people, because the numbers are screaming at them that something is wrong.

And we might, no, we must, ask — with more seriousness than the media have asked — about those exit polls, which in years past were extraordinarily accurate but last November went haywire, predicting Kerry by roughly the margin by which he ultimately lost to Bush. This swing is out of the realm of random chance, forcing chagrined pollsters to hypothesize a “shy Republican” factor as the explanation; and the media have bought this evidence-free absurdity because it spares them the need to think about the F-word: fraud.

We have no chance of winning back the country if the elections are rigged. And we have no chance of correcting this if the media won't even look at it.

Trashing the planet

I've blogged before about the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and I think it's time for another article on the realities of that report. Derrick Z. Jackson wrote an article on the subject entitled "US Takes the Lead in Trashing Planet" that was published in the Boston Globe. Here's how it gets started:

For more than four years, President Bush has told us he needs to see the ''sound science" on global warming before joining the rest of the world in combating it. In June 2001, he brushed off criticism of his pullout from the Kyoto Protocol, saying: ''It was not based upon science. The stated mandates in the Kyoto treaty would affect our economy in a negative way."

A year later, Bush's own Environmental Protection Agency put out a report that the burning of fossil fuels in the human activities of industry and automobiles are huge contributors to the greenhouse effect. He publicly trashed the report, embarrassing then-EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, saying, ''I read the report put out by the bureaucracy."

Now comes a new study, by a bureaucracy representing just about the whole planet. It is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, commissioned by the United Nations in 2000 at a cost of $24 million and compiled by 1,360 experts from 95 countries. It is the latest in dire reports as to how we are doing the planet in and, implicitly, how the United States puts its interests and pollution over the welfare of the rest of the planet.

Here's an interesting observation later in the article:

The study offered several scenarios of how humans can halt the degrading of the planet. The most obvious strategies involve a global economy where the sharing of education, skills, technology, and resources leads to a reduction in poverty and pressures on local environments. The worst possible scenario is one called ''Order from Strength," which results in ''a regionalized and fragmented world, concerned with security and protection, emphasizing primarily regional markets, paying little attention to public goods, and taking a reactive approach to ecosystem problems."

That precisely describes the United States. We consume a quarter of the world's energy, are the world's leading contributor to the greenhouse gases of global warming, and take advantage of agriculture in all parts of the world so we can have fresh peaches, peppers, and berries 365 days a year if we wish...

I also want to recommend another article on the same report, this one by Mark Morford entitled, "Earth To Humankind: Back Off" and it's subtitled, "Say good-bye to your car, computer, everything. We are burning up the planet too fast to hang on". Here's the beginning of that article:

The Earth is going down. Way, way down. To the mat, hard and painful and with a sad moaning broken-boned crunch.

We are chewing her up, spitting her out, stomping and gobbling and burning and gouging and drilling and sucking her dry and we are carelessly replicating ourselves so goddamn fast we can't even stop much less even try to slow the hell down, and all we want is more and faster and with less consequence and pretty soon the Earth is gonna go, well, there you are, I'm finished, sorry, and boom zing groan, done.

Don't take my world for it. Just read the headlines, the latest major, soul-stabbing report.

Please don't tune out this information because it's too painful to face. I have a feeling that a critical mass of informed people is required for a difference to be made. Let's all be part of that critical mass.

Stalin lives

You will forgive me, I hope, for blogging on the same subject as yesterday's entry - the conference entitled "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith". The Arkansas Democrat Gazette has published an article on the conference entitled, "A wake-up call for the Sane Majority". Here's how it gets started:

Does it strike you as odd that persons calling themselves Christians are furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing juveniles unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such individuals describe themselves, straight-faced, as adherents of the "culture of life"? Are you surprised to learn that people called conservatives would quote Joseph Stalin? Yes, that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and mass murderer.

And no, I am not making this up. It happened recently at a Washington conclave held by something called the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not household names, many in attendance were familiar controversialists, representing right-wing groups like the Family Research Council, the American Conservative Union, etc. Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama's Judge Roy" Ten Commandments" Moore. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, having fled the jurisdiction--er, left town to attend the pope's funeral, addressed the group on TV. But the real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an expert in constitutional law.

Now the part that is really chilling to me is this:

Vieira said that his "bottom-line" solution for renegade judges was Stalin's: "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ' No man, no problem. '"

The audience reportedly didn't gasp. They laughed. "' No man, no problem, '" he repeated for emphasis. "This is not a structural problem we have. This is a problem of personnel."

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank supplied the full Stalin quote, which is quite famous: "Death solves all problems: No man, no problem." He speculated that Vieira couldn't possibly be urging the killing of Supreme Court justices. But he put the remark in the context of recent threats by DeLay, who said that "the time will come for the men responsible for [Terri Schiavo's death] to answer for their behavior," and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, RTexas, who mused that unpopular judicial decisions could lead people to "engage in violence."

Think about it folks. The right-wingers are now quoting Stalin. In a positive sense. This is clearly an incitement to violence. Why these people aren't arrested and questioned regarding possible terrorist involvement is beyond me. Actually, no it's not beyond me. You all know the acronym: IOKIYAR - "It's okay if you're a Republican." Can you imagine Democrats getting away with saying something like that about conservative judges?

The war on judges

Oh. My. God. You must read the article in The Nation by Max Blumenthal entitled, "In Contempt of Courts". It is a report on the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference recently held in Washington D.C. The chief of staff of Oklahoma's senator Tom Coburn was quoted as saying, "I'm a radical! I'm a real extremist. I don't want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!" This kind of language is beyond outrageous. That it is tolerated and applauded in our society today indicates just how close we are to the establishment of a right-wing Christian Taliban in this country.

One speaker accused Michael Schiavo of strangling his wife thereby causing her neurological injuries and described her as aware and alert. He manipulated the audience into dissolving in tears over the "murder" of Terri Schiavo by the judiciary:

As members of the audience gasped, [David] Gibbs painted a vivid portrait of Schiavo in her hospital bed. "Terri Schiavo was as alive as anyone you see sitting here," he said. "She liked my voice. It was loud and deep and she would roll over and try to talk back." But after Judge Greer "literally ordered her barbaric death," everything changed.

Gibbs described his visit to Schiavo's hospital room after her feeding tube had been removed. Schiavo lay in bed "with her eyes sunken deep in her head...she was skeletal," Gibbs recounted. "Then she turned to her mother suddenly, like she wanted to speak, and she just started sobbing." By now, members of the audience were crying.

As soon as he left the stage, one of the event's planners asked all the men in the room to get down on the floor and pray. With no other choice, I moved my plastic-upholstered chair aside, took to my hands and knees and listened as plaintive voices arose all around me with prayers for Schiavo's parents and maledictions against judicial tyranny. A saccharine version of Pachelbel's Canon emanating from the player piano in the hotel lobby seeped through the banquet hall's open doors, suffusing the ceremony with a dreamlike atmosphere. When I finally dared to look up from the ground, I realized that my head was only inches from an enormous posterior belonging to William Dannemeyer, the former congressman who once issued a letter to his colleagues listing twenty-four people with some connection to Bill Clinton who died "under other than natural circumstances."

As the conference attendees filed out of the banquet hall and into the rain-flecked night, mostly silent except for the few who were still sobbing, they seemed prepared to do anything--absolutely anything--against judges...

I am very concerned about the reported tone of this conference. There truly does seem to be an incitement of violence against judges who are referred to as "evil". I really recommend that you read the entire article. It's an eye-opener.

A speech worth reading

Here is a speech by Cindy Sheehan entitled, "Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs". Ms. Sheehan's son was killed in Iraq exactly a year before she delivered this speech at the famed Riverside Church in New York City. She is a part of a movement called, "Building the Beloved Community" which seeks to spread the peace and justice message throughout the country. This one paragraph speaks volumes:

Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs....gangsters who lust after fortunes and power; never caring that their addictions are at the expense of our loved ones, and the blood of innocent people near and far. We've watched these thugs parade themselves before the whole world as if they are courageous advocates for Christian moral values....and for the spread of democracy. Yet we all know that they are now putting in place, all across this country, a system of voting that provides no way to validate the accuracy of the counting of the votes. Our loved ones have been buried in early graves even as these arrogant thugs parade themselves before the entire world, insisting that democracy is worth dying for, killing for, and destroying entire cities for, all the while they are busy here at home overseeing the emplacement of an electronic voting system that invites fraud at every turn, an electronic vote-counting system that provides no way to validate the votes cast, and that, by it's very design, prohibits recounting the votes.

Please click on the link and read the whole speech. It is moving. It is disturbing. It is truthful. May it be energizing to all who read it that we may take whatever action we can to help our country wake up.

What free press? - part 2

I really want to recommend an article by Mike Whitney entitled, "Pope TV and the new world media" if only for this paragraph:

Don't talk about a "free press". The American media showed their true colors in their handling of the decimation of Falluja. The entire media stood by with their hands over their mouths while a city of 250,000 was bombed to the ground in the greatest single war crime in the last decade. The story of Falluja is a tale of cluster bombs, napalm, depleted uranium, banned weapons, families crushed in their homes, dogs devouring dead citizens on the city streets, and masses of displaced people victimized by a vengeful and implacable enemy. It's a story of unspeakable crimes, of absolute impunity, and unfathomable cynicism.

The article is about how the press, in collusion with the administration, distracts us with mega-stories about celebrities while downplaying the news to which we really need to pay attention. Attention is definitely being steered "away from Bush's ruinous war."

Health Care and the coming crisis

Paul Krugman is starting a series on the health care crisis and on what can be done. Today was his first article entitled, "Ailing health care" and he's promised more to come. Here's an excerpt:

First, America's traditional private health insurance system, in which workers get coverage through their employers, is unraveling. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that in 2004 there were at least five million fewer jobs with health insurance than in 2001. And health care costs have become a major burden on those businesses that continue to provide insurance coverage: General Motors now spends about $1,500 on health care for every car it produces.

Second, rising Medicare spending may be a sign of progress, but it still must be paid for - and right now few politicians are willing to talk about the tax increases that will be needed if the program is to make medical advances available to all older Americans.

Finally, the U.S. health care system is wildly inefficient. Americans tend to believe that we have the best health care system in the world. (I've encountered members of the journalistic elite who flatly refuse to believe that France ranks much better on most measures of health care quality than the United States.) But it isn't true. We spend far more per person on health care than any other country - 75 percent more than Canada or France - yet rank near the bottom among industrial countries in indicators from life expectancy to infant mortality.

I look forward to the series and I recommend that your read today's whole article.

Responsible wealth

I just came across a really inspiring article published by Common Dreams about wealthy people who are donating their tax cut to fight the Bush administration. It's entitled, "Some of America's Richest Say 'No, Thanks' to Bush Tax Cuts" and it's by Abid Aslam. Here's an excerpt:

''It's obscene that Washington is handing out tax breaks to millionaires with one hand and shredding the safety net with the other,'' said Marta Drury, a member of Responsible Wealth, a national network of affluent Americans advocating what they term ''widespread prosperity'' and concerned that a deepening wealth divide in America is undermining the country's social and democratic fabric.

''So I'm calculating my 2004 tax cut and donating it to organizations fighting for responsible, fair, and adequate taxes. I don't believe that people like me with incomes over $200,000 need $69 billion in tax cuts,'' Drury added, referring to the total estimated value of 2004 tax cuts granted Americans in her income bracket.

Responsible Wealth, founded in 1997 and claiming 1,000-plus members, has stood at the forefront of what Time magazine termed the ''billionaire backlash'' against elite tax cuts and Bush's proposal to repeal the estate tax. On Wednesday, members urged others in the ranks of America's rich and famous to join the ''Responsible Tax Pledge'' initiative.

The tax pledge asked members to calculate their 2004 tax breaks and donate these to fair-tax campaigns. For wealthy individuals like Drury, the average estimated tax break in 2004 was $20,000. For several other pledge signatories, it amounted to more than $100,000.

''It's irresponsible to put America deeper into debt to give tax cuts to millionaires,'' the tax pledge stated.

It feels really good to blog a positive article. Go read the whole thing. It's good for what ails you!

The Christian right again

Well, it's an ongoing concern of mine. That's an understatement. It's an ongoing sense of appalled disbelief. Except that it is real. And that is the Christian right's desire to bring about the end of the world. Here is an excerpt from an Australian article by Terry Lane entitled, "The Christian Right's fundamental problem":

There are two consequences of having so many Christian fundamentalists near the levers of power in imperial America.

First, it is a precondition of the return of Jesus that all Jews return to Israel and that the territory of that country should coincide with that promised to Abraham by God. Until Israel retakes its promised land, expels all the Arabs and welcomes back all the Jews of the diaspora, Jesus can't come.

The so-called Christian Zionists are influential. According to The Christian Science Monitor they "have access to the White House and strong support within Congress, including the backing of the two most recent majority leaders in the House of Representatives". In Genesis, God promises Abraham all the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates", an area which includes a part of Egypt, a large slice of Iraq and Syria, not to mention all the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. There is no room for Arabs in this promised land.
...
As the peace of the world twists around the territorial war between Jews and Arabs, and as it is Australian Government policy to follow the US wherever it goes, we are certainly affected by American Middle East policy. And if that policy is based on ancient superstition we are entitled to be alarmed.

The second consequence is environmental. As the subtitled of the article states:

If you believe in Armageddon, you don't need to save the planet. That's a concern if you also influence the White House and US foreign policy.

I am indeed alarmed. I am alarmed when a major network - NBC - schedules a mini-series entitled Revelations about biblical prophecies of the end of days. (Here's a review but you'll have to register with the Washington Post to access it. And here's another one from Newsday.) It is imperative that those of us with a rational world view take action against the life-destroying superstition that has come to such prominence.

Republican divisions

I'm offering you two articles today about disagreements within the ranks of the Republican Party. One is from the Boston Globe; it is by Nina J. Easton and is entitled, "Rift emerges in GOP after Schiavo case". Here's how it gets started:

WASHINGTON -- Top conservative leaders gathered here a week after Terri Schiavo's death to plot a course of action against the nation's courts, but much of their anger was directed at leading Republicans, exposing an emerging crack between the party's leadership and core supporters on the right.

Conservative leaders criticized President Bush for failing to speak out strongly against removing the feeding tube from Schiavo, the 41-year-old incapacitated woman who died March 31. They blamed the president's brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, for failing to employ State Police powers to take control of Schiavo. They condemned comments by Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Vice President Dick Cheney expressing support for the nation's judges.

And yesterday they issued an "action plan" to take their crusade for control of the nation's courts well beyond Senate debates over judicial nominees, pressing Congress to impeach judges and defund courts they consider "activist" and to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts over some sensitive social matters -- a strategy opposed by many leading Senate Republicans.

The second article is published in both BuzzFlash and Smirking Chimp. It is by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. and is entitled, "GOP heading over political cliff". Needless to say, my first thought after reading the title was, "We can certainly hope!" Here's an excerpt:

With the Schiavo case operating as a catalyst, most Americans are becoming increasingly aware that GOP inconsistencies go well beyond the misappropriation of the terms "pro-life" and "pro-family." The president can't claim to be "pro-democracy" when he ignores repressive regimes abroad, when his Administration tolerates and encourages torture, and ignores the need for voting reform in our own nation. He surely cannot claim to lead the party of "fiscal solvency" when we began the Bush presidency with a more than $200 billion/year surplus, and our deficit is now more than $420 billion per year and counting.

I recommend both articles. If we have room for hope, it is in the possibility that the extremist Republicans have enough rope to hang themselves.

Friday Cat Blogging!

Here are Henry and Leroy up on their favorite ledge in my little cottage. Sadly they are going to lose that soon as I am moving next Friday. It will be a positive move for me as I will have a bit more space but the cats will lose their wonderful perch!

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Bush and the Roman Catholics

Sorry there was no update yesterday. The blogger program was having a problem and wouldn't let me post. So today I'm trying again! Today's update is below.
~~~

Sidney Blumenthal has written an article about the White House exploitation of the divisions in the Roman Catholic Church. The article is entitled, "Politics in red robes" and is published in the Guardian. Here's how he starts off:

President Bush, a militant evangelical Protestant, has lowered the American flag to half-staff for the first time at the death of a pope. Also for the first time, a US president will attend a papal funeral. Bush's political rhetoric is deliberately inflected with Catholic theological phrases, in particular "the culture of life", words he used to justify his interference in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman, the removal of whose feeding tube was upheld 19 times by state and federal courts.

In the 2004 election, Bush's campaign helped organise the attack on John Kerry's Catholic authenticity by conservative bishops who threatened to deny him communion. Inside the White House, policy and personnel are coordinated in line with rightwing Catholicism. Not only are issues like international population control, reproductive health and women's rights vetted, but so are appointments.

Since the accession of Pope John Paul II, the conservative mobilisation within the American church has been a microcosmic version of the ascendancy of the conservative movement in the country generally. As the authority of the Vatican was marshalled on behalf of the conservatives, the Republican right adopted its position as its own in order to capture Catholic votes. Now the social agendas of conservative Catholics and Republicans are indistinguishable.

Do read the whole article. Blumenthal mentions the conservative undermining of the saintly and progressive Cardinal Bernadin shortly before his untimely death. I was a great admirer of Bernadin and he is sorely missed. Bernadin taught the concept of "the seamless garment" of life which sees capital punishment and war as evils equal to abortion and that the person who is truly pro-life will not participate in any of them. He worked to build consensus and was a supporter of openness and dialogue. He was not autocratic or authoritarian. We could well wish for more like Bernadin although I have little hope that prelates like him will be appointed given the current world-wide religious climate.

The decent Christians

There's so much to blog about today I hardly know where to begin. I could blog about ethically challenged Tom Delay. I could blog about the very troubling attack on the judiciary. I could blog about the very scary condition of our economy. I could blog about John Paul II. But what I have decided to share with you in part is an article by Mark Morford entitled, "Where are the good Christians?" because it speaks to a serious concern of mine: the fact that fundamentalists presume to speak for all Christians. Here's how he starts out:

I know they're out there.

I forget, often, too often, just how many there are but I know they exist in much larger numbers than you might be led to believe by current spiritually embarrassing headlines and I know they are just as, if not more, passionate and healthy and deeply felt in their beliefs than the overpublicized sects of angry and frothing "true believers" screeching into the megaphone of the culture, the ones yanking BushCo's chain and pounding their Bibles and hiding their warped porn fetishes and forcing their way into our lives and laws and bedrooms right now.

They are the decent Christians. They are the calm, morally progressive, compassionate, open-hearted Jesus-loving folk who don't really give a damn for archaic church dogma or pious noise or sanctimonious candlelight vigils, for repressing women or bashing gays or slamming Islam and. in fact, turned to Christianity precisely because they believe these things are abhorrent and wrong and, well, anti-Christian.

You know it grieves me somewhat to see Morford's sentence, "They are the decent Christians," because it implies (sadly correctly) that the raging fundamentalists who have such influence today are not decent. Later he observes:

They are, in short, those who understand the deep irony that, when it comes to religion, the ones who scream and stomp and whine the loudest are often the ones who understand their faith the least.

But there is a reason these calm and moderate and private Christians don't make the news, why, despite their enormous numbers, they are not setting the cultural agenda like some sort of sanctimonious meth-addled monkey (hi, Sen. Santorum!) right now.

It's because they are not organized. They are not a club. They do not have a unified attack agenda. They do not have pamphlets or advertising budgets or congressional lobbyists or the complaint line of every TV network and program except Fox News and "The 700 Club" on speed dial.

It is simply a disaster that the fundamentalists have somehow been allowed to set the cultural agenda. Progressive Christians and progressive people of other faiths do need to organize. Oh, there are organizations like The Interfaith Alliance and Americans United for Separation of Church and State but these groups are relatively small. Somehow we've got to get mobilized. Or the United States is going to turn into a very nasty theocracy indeed.

Liberal academics

Paul Krugman has written an article exploring the reasons that university professors tend to be liberal. It's entitled "An academic question" and is published in the New York Times but I'm linking to the Smirking Chimp reprint because the New York Times website requires registration. Here's an excerpt:

It's a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that?

Conservatives see it as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion. And they say that new "academic freedom" laws will simply mitigate the effects of that bias, promoting a diversity of views. But a closer look both at the universities and at the motives of those who would police them suggests a quite different story.

Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider. But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?

One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.

Krugman looks at other issues as well. Personally I've thought for some time that valuing facts over ideology brings one naturally to a liberal position. In other words, those who are members of the "reality based community" are liberal because liberalism is supported by the facts when they are honestly examined. Educated people tend to value the evidence over dogmatic assertions.

War as a game

I had no idea that it costs $18,000 to recruit one high school student into the military. I’m not easily shocked but that bit of information did the trick. The LA Times has published an article by Jason Felch entitled, Recruiting our high school students: From video war games to signing up for Army. Here’s an excerpt:

Tim Casper, a crew cut-sporting 15-year-old from Victorville, peered into the computer monitor and hunched slightly as he maneuvered the video game's soldier into a flanking position.

Using a keyboard, Casper ordered the soldier to lob a grenade, then slap a new magazine into his assault rifle. Creeping past the burned-out shell of a Humvee, the soldier fired a quick burst into the back of what looked like the enemy.

"That's me, dude," said Jeremy Donnelly, 15, looking up from a video screen across from Casper.

The classmates, both Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets at Victor Valley High School, were playing "America's Army," a realistic, multiplayer combat video game designed by the Army as a recruiting tool.

But this game does not show what real wounds look like. The very idea that real war can be compared to a video game is repulsive. But how can our young people know what it’s really like? We aren’t being shown what the military people look like who come back horribly maimed. We aren’t being shown the insanity of severe PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Lives are being ruined and our young people are seeing the unspeakable horror that is war presented as a game.

Democracy or Theocracy?

Not long ago a friend gave me a subscription to Church and State - the publication of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. As a religious person I have a keen interest in this issue because just as I don't want religion tampering with my government, I don't want government tampering with my religion. I think the founders knew what they were doing when they wrote a secular constitution and I'm deeply concerned that the wall of separation is now being so dangerously eroded.

So, I'm sharing an article with you today by Neal Heller entitled, "Democracy or Theocracy" that has been picked up by Smirking Chimp. Heller observes:

Religion is no longer just a sidelight in the American political scene; it has moved front and center. If those of us who consider ourselves mainstream and more toward the center don't wake up soon, the religious right will steamroll moderation and we will find ourselves no longer living in a democracy, but rather a theocracy.
.... The Republican Party has been home to the religious right for a very long time. Today, more than ever, this party has become beholden to those that would like to ignore our rules of law and let God - their God - decide the fate of our country.

Heller then discusses the Schiavo case and the weakening of the separation of powers due to the attacks on the judicial system by the right wing. He later says:

What's next? When will we see these religious fanatics rear their ugly heads again? Do we really want any one religion exercising that much power in this country? Look around the world, and you will see that wherever religion rules the day, so too does hypocrisy and trouble. This country has done very well, thank you, without being dictated to by the religious right. I have a great deal more respect today for the first President Bush, as he probably lost his bid for re-election because he refused to cave in to the religious right. His sons, apparently, better understand just how to cater to this powerful element of the Republican Party. Terri Schiavo should rest in peace as this horrible 15-year ordeal is finally over for her. How long the effects of this political debate lasts is another story.

Mainstream America better take their collective heads out of their rear ends before it is too late. We cannot stand on the sidelines anymore while religious fanatics hold our government hostage. It has been happening in Israel for a very long time. It is beginning to happen here as well. Our very system of government is at risk. I, for one, do not want to be here when we make the transition from democracy to theocracy.

I don't either. But I think I will be for it is already happening. What we are experiencing is the tyranny of the majority. I don't want to have to pander to Christian fundamentalism in order to get along in my country. I want to be Christian and Buddhist and interfaith as I am and to support people whether they're Hindu or Muslim or Wiccan or Humanist or Atheist when they turn to me and to St. John's Center for Spiritual Formation for companionship and support. Because if religion can tamper with government, then government can tamper with religion - and that's very, very scary indeed.

Something to ponder

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security....

-- They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer, 1955

(about Nazi Germany)

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

-- Justice William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court (1939-75)

A Canadian looks at America

America is going stark raving bananas. That's the point of view expressed by Michael Harris in an article entitled, "Changing from Republican to radical" which is published in the Ottowa Sun. Here's an excerpt:

The truth is America is bouncing off the walls at home in the name of a religious extremism that makes a mockery of true American and Christian values.

This week the Washington Post reported that a growing number of pharmacists are refusing to fill legal prescriptions for birth control or morning after pills in the United States. Several states have already passed so-called "conscience" legislation that permits doctors and health care workers to refuse various procedures to patients that conflict with their personal beliefs. And in a survey by the National Teachers Association, 31% of respondents felt obligated to present creationism as an equal "theory" to evolution in U.S. schools. Is it any wonder that Judge George Greer, the principal judge in the Schiavo case, now needs armed guards?

With the president chastened by a humiliating rejection of his Schiavo gambit, Americans may make a greater effort to inform themselves on other policies of this Administration abroad which are every bit as hypocritical as Terri's Law. Who in their right mind would sell 24 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, a country that self-admittedly sold nuclear technology to rogue states, is run by a tyrant, remains a hotbed of terrorism and regularly threatens its nuclear neighbor, India?

There's nothing in the article we don't already know but it's quite a rant and gives us a good indication of how we look to our neighbors in the north.

Friday Cat Blogging!

Here's Edgar sleeping away in his little house and Ethel looking in my house!

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Yup, the election was stolen.

Well, I wondered why exit polls were an indication of a corrupt vote count in Ukraine but not here. Now there's a statistical study that indicates that the likelihood of exit polling being wrong is incredibly tiny. The article reporting on this is by Steven Dyer and is entitled, "Exit poll analysis points to 2004 election corruption". Here's part of what it says:

There's a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been so wrong in predicting the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, according to a statistical analysis released Thursday.

Exit polls in the November election showed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., winning by 3 percent, but President George W. Bush won the vote count by 2.5 percent.

The explanation for the discrepancy that was offered by the exit polling firm -- that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polling -- is an "implausible theory," according to the report issued Thursday by US Count Votes, a group that claims it's made up of about two dozen statisticians.

Twelve -- including a Case Western Reserve University mathematics instructor -- signed the report.

Instead, the data support the idea that "corruption of the vote count occurred more freely in districts that were overwhelmingly Bush strongholds.

"The report dismisses chance and inaccurate exit polling as the reasons for their discrepancy with the results.

I really don't know how to comment except to say it is disgusting beyond belief. But not surprising.