April 18, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


THE RIGHT WING EDIFICE IS CRACKING

P. T. Barnum must have known about people who vote for Republicans when he famously said, " A sucker is born every minute." For years now Republicans have persuaded people to vote against their self-interests with a host of irrelevant distractions. We heard talk of "values." We've heard about how the country has gone to heck since the Supreme Court ruled that school-sanctioned school prayer was unconstitutional. We've been told to turn a wary eye toward those "other" people, such as racial minorities, immigrants, feminists, and gays. We've been told that a fair and progressive tax system is "socialism" and "class warfare." Barack Obama is sending a chill down the spines of the regressive right when he openly talks about the real reasons people are angry. This column by David Michael Green is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Of course, that turned the right absolutely apoplectic. You can argue with them about tax cuts (which were really tax transfers) and they'll just call you stupid. You can dispute with them about the faux war on terror, and they'll merely label you naive. You can point out the breathtaking stupidity of Iraq, and they'll only question your patriotism. But undermine the whole stupidity-industrial-complex upon which they're fully dependent, and watch them shake with fear and storm in desperation. They know full well that - were Americans ever to elevate their political discourse above a level that wouldn't embarrass your fifth-grader's civics class - the entire premise of the regressive agenda would unravel faster than a yarn store staffed by cats. You'd be able to count the entire national vote for the GOP presidential nominee on two hands and maybe a couple toes. You could fill Guantanamo sixteen times over with all the criminals in and around the Republican Party. And you'd be happy to do it, too.

The idea of an honest discourse in American politics means the unraveling of the entire premise of the regressive movement, and it must be fought with a ferocity that makes Stalingrad look like a dispute over seating arrangements at a dinner party. That is why Obama must be muzzled, and hammered, and especially mocked. Once we breach the wall and start taking an honest political analysis seriously, the tellers of the Big Lies are finished, hated and destroyed.

"INTELLIGENT DESIGN" ARGUMENTS DON'T WORK

We occasionally read or hear comments from creationists who claim that the belief in evolution is what prompted the horrors of Stalinist Russia or other "godless Communists." That conveniently ignores the atrocities committed for centuries by the devout of whatever faith. It also tries to link a biological process to political acts. The scientific evidence for evolution is overwhelming. But the latest creationist wrinkle is to claim that life is simply too complex to have arisen without a "designer." I would have to ask why the "designer" designed disease and parasites, among other things. This commentary by Richard Dawkins is at www.latimes.com:

Theologians attempt two (mutually incompatible and pathetically inadequate) answers to this unanswerable point. Some say their God is not complex but simple. This obviously won't wash. No simple god could design bacterial flagellar motors or universes, let alone forgive sins or impregnate virgins. Presumably recognizing the justice of that, other theologians go to the opposite extreme. They admit that their god is complex but assert that he had no beginning: He was always there and always complex. But if you are going to resort to that facile cop-out, you might as well say flagellar motors were always there. You cannot have it both ways. Visitations from distant star systems are improbable enough to attract ridicule, not least from the advocates of intelligent design themselves. A creator god who had always existed would be far more improbable still.