by David Horton:
Here is one of those tests, I say a word, you say whatever word first comes into your head. Ready? 'Religion' 'Intolerance'. So, no challenge there eh. I know the religious are always saying that we liberals are intolerant towards religions, and I admit I do have occasional moments when it is too much for me.
But minor criticisms from me and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris pale into insignificance when you look at the hatred that different religions have for each other.
At different times, in different places, you could lose your head, or your hand, or your balls, be disemboweled, burnt alive, buried alive, stretched on a rack, strangled, stoned, hung - could die in any one of hundreds of extremely, and deliberately, unpleasant ways, just because you believed in a different imaginary friend to the person who had the power to kill you. One day you could be the one in charge of boiling in oil, the next, under a new king or queen with a different religious belief, you could be the one being boiled.
This is not just a matter of old practices, it still goes on today, in parts of the world. And even if you are not being hung, drawn and quartered, you may still find yourself forced out of town, or subject to vilification, or, at best, simply not allowed to teach in schools, or run for public office, if you have a religious belief, or no religious belief, different to that of the majority in your country or community.
Strange business, isn't it? Why would you not, at most, feel sorry for someone who didn't share your beliefs, since you are confident yours are the best? Or, more to the point, simply ignore the difference, wave happily to others as you pass them on the way to a different church? No skin off your nose if someone believes something different is it? No reason to skin their whole body? But it is a process that is driving world politics, and politics in a number of countries, at present, and it puzzles me. The best I can come up with is that the belief in an imaginary friend is so irrational, and is based on so little evidence (well, in fact, no evidence) that it can only be maintained by absolute concentration, just like a juggler keeping many balls in the air, or a unicycle being ridden on a tightrope. And it can only be maintained if you think that all around you have the same belief. If, even for a moment, you recognize that someone else is holding, equally fervently, a totally different belief, then your whole set of religious convictions would come crashing down around you, the balls bouncing on the floor, the unicycle a twisted wreck on the ground.
So you suppress the other religions, kill their practitioners, permit no moment of doubt to interfere with your absolute faith that you possess the one true belief, the only real imaginary friend.
I was reminded of this in a different context when I saw that Phillip Cooney had emerged from under a rock to defend his distortion of science in relation to climate change. The way that the neocons have attacked science is exactly like the way that followers of a religion persecute non-believers. The neocons have the fervor that comes from any kind of religious belief. They believe that you can keep destroying the planet for profit and there will be no consequences, no bad outcomes. Scientists keep pointing out, or trying to, that there are limits to growth, limits to pollution, limits to tree clearing, limits to fisheries, limits to CO2. And if we continue to exceed those limits then dire consequences follow for this little planet and all who sail on her.
Scientists haven't yet been boiled in oil or disemboweled for this heresy, but they have been abused, silenced, sacked, for speaking out on global warming, or factory farms, or forestry practices, or rivers, or air pollution. Because you can't allow people to know there are alternative approaches to the economy other than the religion of pure market forces. Once people understand the scientific truth then the neocon balls would come crashing down. No wonder they hate scientists, no wonder that their intolerance resembles religious intolerance.
So I say the word 'intolerance' you say the word 'neoconservatism'.

I was wondering the other day. What could the City Commission of Henderson do to improve my quality of life? They have done such a great job of managing the city’s assets, social engineering sexual behavior and looking after the health and well being of it’s citizens that a new regulation may be in order. Yes, I think we may need a new ordinance. One day I was sitting around the Powell Street Parthenon, (Metzger’s) enjoying my favorite Bordeaux and chowing down on the plate lunch special of Cordon Bleu and caviar when a table of very insensitive North-end soccer mom’s cell phones rudely interrupted me. All of these brightly colored cells phones sounded like chimes and twinkly music boxes when they rang. Here I am trying to cleanse my palate and partake of the fine east-end cuisine when out of the blue comes jabbering women catching up on each others grocery coupons and yeast infections. We don’t need these cell phones in upscale bistros like Metzgers. Why can’t they just go to yuppy hangouts like Captain D’s and Shoney’s? Why do they have to impose their disrespectful and rude behavior upon the good citizens of Henderson? Haven’t the good people of Metzger’s suffered enough during the last year? When will this madness end? Can’t the City Commissioners do something? This is just too much. When will someone in city government come to their senses and put an end to this madness? It’s enough to make a Southern Baptist cuss.

It’s too bad so many well meaning Christians believe in such blatantly false statements like America was founded as a Christian nation. The U.S. has never been a Christian nation but instead a nation of religious freedom. Our Founders and the courts have gotten it just about right when it comes to Church/State issues. The 1st and 14 th Amendments limit the power of government to enact laws relating to matters of faith and worship but it doesn’t seem to stop politicians from making more laws for the Courts to strike down. Everyone is free to read the Ten Commandments, the Bible and pray whenever the spirit moves them on public property. You just can’t force others to do it or agree with your particular beliefs. That is not religious freedom. The Founders lived in a time when colonial governments persecuted and executed followers of certain sects like Quakers, Mormons and Baptists. Established “state” Churches forced persons to attend them, collected taxes to support them and permitted Churches to punish sins as crimes. Our courts have done far more to protect religious freedom than those who rant about “godless schools and liberal atheist leaders.” Some Christians subscribe to the “Christian nation” ideology and want America to become a Christian theocracy. There is no Constitutional foundation for that belief. That is why this country was formed.

Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. . . . President Bush's constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.

Answer: the conservative CATO Institute.

Paul Krugman says there's no reason to shed any tears over Reagan's lost legacy:

As the Bush administration sinks deeper into its multiple quagmires, the personality cult the G.O.P. once built around President Bush has given way to nostalgia for the good old days. The current cover of Time magazine shows a weeping Ronald Reagan, and declares that Republicans “need to reclaim the Reagan legacy.”
But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.
In 1993 Jonathan Cohn ... published an article in The American Prospect describing the dire state of the federal government. Changing just a few words ... makes it read as if it were written in 2007.
Thus, Mr. Cohn described how the Interior Department had been packed with opponents of environmental protection, who “presided over a massive sell-off of federal lands...” that “deprived the department of several billion dollars in annual revenue.” Oil leases, anyone?
Meanwhile, privatization had run amok, because “the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned... Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds — demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.” Holy Halliburton!
Not mentioned..., but equally reminiscent of current events, was the state of the Justice Department under Ed Meese, a man who gives Alberto Gonzales and John Mitchell serious competition for the title of worst attorney general ever. The politicization of Justice got so bad that in 1988 six senior officials, all Republicans, ... resigned in protest.
Why is there such a strong family resemblance...? Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives... And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.
In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs.
If expertise is irrelevant, who gets the jobs? No problem: the interlocking, lavishly financed institutions of movement conservatism, which range from K Street to Fox News, create a vast class of apparatchiks who can be counted on to be “loyal Bushies.” ...
Still, Mr. Reagan’s misgovernment never went as far as Mr. Bush’s. As a result, he managed to leave office with an approval rating about as high as ... Bill Clinton... But the key to Reagan’s relative success, I believe, is that he was lucky in his limitations.
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Reagan never controlled both houses of Congress — and the pre-Gingrich Republican Party still contained moderates who imposed limits on his ability to govern badly. Also, there was no Reagan-era equivalent of the rush, after 9/11, to give the Bush administration whatever it wanted in the name of fighting terrorism.
Mr. Reagan may even have been helped, perversely, by the fact that in the 1980s there were still two superpowers. This helped prevent the hubris, the delusions of grandeur, that led the Bush administration to believe that a splendid little war in Iraq was just the thing to secure its position.
But what this tells us is that Mr. Bush, not Mr. Reagan, is the true representative of what modern conservatism is all about. And it’s the movement, not just one man, that has failed.

The regrets of the man who brought down Saddam Guardian UK:

Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad's Firdous Square. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: "I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day." Try and imagine how truly horrible it must be. Something you wanted with all your heart, and this is the result? You'd rather have a homicidal despot in charge than the US Government?

What’s wrong with being a secular humanist? A humanist is one who’s way of life is centered on human interests or values. As a philosophy it asserts the dignity and worth of man and his capacity for self-realization through reason. It often rejects supernaturalism as explanation for human actions. This description describes our founding fathers philosophy to a tee. More than any other belief they thought that through reason and logic man could govern himself and if he failed he would have no one to blame but himself. In today’s right-wing political religious world, humanism is looked down upon as some kind of evil conspiracy to replace religion and supplant it with a Godless government. Jon Paul Satre was one of the foremost humanists and he has written much about the philosophy. Like our founding fathers he believed that man was the ultimate arbiter of his own destiny. The basis for his belief was that man is responsible for his actions and he couldn’t blame a God or religion for the evil actions that man takes in the name of God or religion. If we engaged in a little more humanistic behavior toward our fellow man don’t you think we would have a little more peaceful society? How many times do we hear religions’ act viciously toward others and justifying their actions through religious dogma? Muslims and Christians might learn a little from reading some humanist writings. Maybe if O’Reilly, Rev. Dobson and many other uninformed right-wingers stopped attacking things they don’t understand they too could learn something.

Once again I want to thank all you right-wingers for making me and my blog one of the many to receive "Man of the Year" award from Time magazine. I couldn't have done it without you.

Blame Bill
Once again, Republicans are using the Clinton dodge -- he did it too! -- to justify the Bush administration's unjustified firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
By Joe Conason

March 16, 2007 Whatever else Bill Clinton is or was or someday may become, he will forever remain the favorite scapegoat for Republicans in trouble. When they're caught, they always point at him -- just as they are doing now in the midst of the scandal over the political dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys and growing demands for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for his role in the matter.
From the Drudge Report to the Fox News Channel to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the usual suspects are shrieking in unison:
Bill Clinton fired a lot of U.S. attorneys too! In fact Clinton was worse because he fired all of them at once! And the Democrats didn't complain when Clinton did the same thing!
If those wails are loud enough, hapless mainstream journalists tend to repeat the same bogus accusations. Phony analogies and bad history gush out in a toxic stream of informational sewage. Then somebody (sigh) debunks those claims, just like someone hoses down the street after a parade of circus elephants.

So let's begin this journalistic sanitation project with a question. Was the firing of eight U.S. attorneys by George W. Bush last December in any way comparable to the dismissal of the entire corps of U.S. attorneys by Clinton in 1993? Even the dumbest pundit in America should be able to figure out that the answer is no -- because every president receives the resignations of all political appointees, including U.S. attorneys, at the beginning of his term.
Outraged Republicans can reassure themselves on this matter by forgetting about Clinton for a moment and thinking back to the dawning days of the sainted President Reagan. On May 9, 1981, according to the Washington Post, the Reagan administration was well on its way to replacing all of the U.S. attorneys. A Justice Department spokesman told the Post that William French Smith, the new attorney general, had received nominations for 55 of the 94 U.S. attorney positions so far. Smith was taking nominations, of course, because those positions needed to be filled. As the Post helpfully explained: "Although U.S. attorneys are appointed for four-year terms, it is customary for them to submit their resignations at the start of a new administration."
When the president fires a carefully selected group of his own U.S. attorneys in the middle of his second term for reasons that appear to be political, that's different from what Clinton (and Reagan) did. The difference is not in the rule that allowed Bush and Clinton and Reagan to dismiss U.S. attorneys -- which is that those appointees serve at their pleasure -- but in the reasons behind their actions.
Yet certain conservatives now claim -- as some of them did in 1993 -- that Clinton fired all of those U.S. attorneys merely as a smoke screen for his real motive. They insinuate that he wanted to protect Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the powerful Illinois Democrat then under investigation by Jay Stephens, the Republican U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. (A few have also suggested that Clinton wanted to get rid of the Republican U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., to protect himself and his friends from investigation, a completely fraudulent claim that I examine in the current edition of the New York Observer.)
By firing Stephens, Clinton supposedly meant to hobble the Rostenkowski probe. Peevish about his firing, Stephens himself held a press conference to voice the same suspicions.

There is one pretty obvious flaw in that theory.
On May 31, 1994, Eric Holder, the Democratic successor to Stephens, brought a 17-count indictment against Rostenkowksi -- who eventually pleaded guilty to mail fraud and went to prison. This outcome, with an indictment of one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress arriving in the middle of the midterm election campaign, scarcely helped Clinton or the Democratic Party. Many observers believed, on the contrary, that the Rostenkowksi indictment helped the Republicans win the sweeping November victory that gave them control of the House of Representatives for the first time in more than four decades.
Following the Rostenkowski indictment at least two more Democrats in Congress -- Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Ill., and Rep. Walter Tucker, D-Calif. -- were indicted later that summer, as the fateful Election Day approached. Neither President Clinton nor Attorney General Janet Reno made any attempt to interfere with those decisions.
As a method of escaping responsibility and distracting gullible commentators, the Clinton dodge is now a classic maneuver for Republicans and conservatives. Back in 2002, when Bush was in trouble over his friendship with Enron's Kenneth Lay, the right-wing media insisted that Clinton had once hosted a White House sleepover for Lay. That diversion was an utter falsehood, as any of those who repeated it could easily have determined. It's a fake this time, too -- and it shouldn't distract anyone from holding Gonzales, Karl Rove and all the other authors of the current disgrace to account.

Bush's First 'War on Terror' Blunder
By Peter DyerMarch 15, 2007
Editor's Note: History is often the story of little-noticed opportunities missed, potential forks in the road not taken, an arrogant leader plunging ahead toward a catastrophe he is too headstrong to see.
In this guest article, Peter Dyer recalls one such moment in the early days of George W. Bush's "war on terror":
There is universal agreement that the events of Sept. 11, 2001 altered the course of history. However, the response of the Bush administration to 9/11 eventually had a far greater impact than the original tragedy.

Seen in that light, Oct. 14, 2001 was an even more momentous day.
That was the day President George W. Bush rejected an offer by the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terror.
Afghanistan’s deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, had announced that if the United States stopped bombing Afghanistan and produced evidence of bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country."
Bush responded: "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty. … Turn him over.”
Some U.S. officials had doubts about the sincerity of Kabir’s offer as well as the ability of the Taliban to deliver bin Laden.
But according to Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s: “We never heard what they were trying to say. We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' … I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck.'' [Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2001]
The President’s Oct. 14 decision to continue the bombing closed the door on any possibility of a peaceful, legal and relatively rapid resolution of the shocking terror of 9/11.
It essentially cemented a course of American military aggression in the region which was to lead to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and to the threat of invasion of Iran.
If the United States had seriously pursued the Taliban’s offer, managed to apprehend Osama bin Laden peacefully and arranged a fair and transparent trial, such as the Madrid bombing trial currently underway in Spain, al-Qaeda might have been neutralized without firing a shot.
No war would have meant no Guantanamo, no Military Commissions Act, no suspension of habeus corpus or debates about torture.
Soon after 9/11, President Bush said: "I see opportunity.” He was right. This was an opportunity to provide the world with a splendid demonstration of American dedication to the rule of law and a world without war.
U.S. international moral authority, high in the weeks following 9/11, would have increased. Instead, the opposite has happened.
In a recent survey by the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service more than 28,000 people in 25 countries were asked to rate 12 countries – Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela – as having a positive or negative influence on the world.
The United States had the third highest negative ranking, behind only Israel and Iran.
“It appears that people around the world tend to look negatively on countries whose profile is marked by the use or pursuit of military power,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes.
The tragedies of 9/11 are still unresolved. The loss of innocent life has been compounded exponentially. Thousands of civilians have been killed in Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and soldiers have been killed. Over three thousand U.S. soldiers have died.
In addition to the waste in human lives, the economic costs have been monumental. Congressional Budget Office figures show that between 2001 and 2006, the U.S. spent $503 billion on the “war on terror.”
This figure, of course, does not reflect the devastation of the economy of Iraq.
As high as the price of the “war on terror” has been, the results are even more discouraging, according to a study by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruikshank.
Based on data gathered by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, an organization funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the study concludes that since the invasion of Iraq, the average yearly incidence of fatal terrorist attacks by jihadist groups around the world has risen 607% with a 237% increase in the rate of fatalities.
In other words, the decision made by President Bush on Oct. 14, 2001, has contributed to a seven-fold increase in worldwide terror.
Meanwhile, over five years later, Osama bin Laden remains at large.

Osama bin Laden is going to turn 50 on Saturday. The big 5-0. It's a special occasion. And George W. Bush got him the biggest present of all: 2006 days of freedom and well-being!
Man, that's thoughtful. Five and a half years ago, when bin Laden ordered the attacks against the Twin Towers, Pentagon and White House, he could not have imagined things going any better.
They hit three out of four targets. The United States government was asleep at the wheel. The American leader was so flummoxed by the attacks he sat around reading a children's book and looking like a jackass to the rest of the world. That same confused leader then invaded the country you were in but missed you as you strolled into Pakistan. Then he attacked the wrong country and deposed a secular leader you hated. He ran his army into the ground fighting the wrong people. And let you run free and uninhibited for 2006 days.
And now you're about to turn 50 - and you're still foot loose and fancy free. 2006 days since you attacked the United States and still no consequences. George Bush certainly knows what to get a guy. You couldn't have asked for anything more. He all about put on a party hat and sang you a song.

The Young Turks

Today Osama turns fifty years old and it is also the 2006th day that he still has his freedom thanks to "w" and company.

2006 days without being held accountable. Why is that?

In evangelical neo-con fantasy world everything is always, "blame Clinton." They believe Genesis clearly shows Clinton was the cause of original sin. Let's see now. The Iraq war has been such an overwelming success, Clinton should have started it a decade sooner? What kind of knuckleheaded logic is that? Their narrow-minded revisionist history is so selectively biased it is comical. Clinton was too smart to get involved and bogged down in Iraq. He had Saddam in check. He was no threat to anyone and the President knew it. I'm talking about President George H. W. Bush that is. If anyone had the means and opportunity to get Saddam it was him. The U.S. military was there during the Persian Gulf War and they were ready to go into Bagdad after Saddam but Colin Powell and Papa bush knew better. There was no reason to remove him from power because it would just create a vacuum and allow the radicals to take over as has happened the last four years. Bush now wants exactly what Saddam was then; A secular Sunni strongman dictator who could control all factions within Iraq. Going into Iraq was the biggest mistake America has made since Viet Nam. If we went in anywhere it should have been Saudi Arabia. That's where the 911 radicals came from. Oh, and by the way, where is Osama? I thought he was the one who caused 911. This is the inconvenient truth right-wingers want to ignore. They just can't seem to get over the fact that under Clinton we had peace and prosperity. In the view of most right-wingers Clinton is the cause of every bad thing this country has faced in the last six years. How pathetically naive is that? If the “blame Clinton republicans” think he should have stopped Saddam in the 90’s why shouldn’t “w” stop the evil and crazy “nucular power” dictator Kim Jong Ill today, by invading North Korea? I think most reasonable people know the answer.