Bill O’Reilly: A profile in courage

Some are saying that Bill O’Reilly lied about his past, claiming he was in life-threatening war-time situations as a journalist when he wasn’t. I find this hard to swallow. How can a man who maintains such sterling moral standards, who is an example to everyone of sincere compassion and tolerance, who epitomizes the humble humanitarian, be a liar? This makes no sense.

The Bill O’Reilly I know is a man of unquestionable honor and decency, one of the good guys on cable TV. He’s known throughout the industry as an interviewer who treats his guests with the utmost respect, allowing for a free and open discussion of all viewpoints, even those with which he disagrees. And his fact checking is vigorous and goes far beyond industry standards. It’s a rare day at FOX when O’Reilly gets something wrong.

And when O’Reilly champions an issue, you know it is one of great importance to the country he loves with all his heart. Unlike others who will remain nameless, this humble host would never dredge up controversy where there was none before, or blow up minor issues into worldwide battles pitting good against evil. That’s just not who he is.

Now under attack from liberal extremists, O’Reilly is handling the controversy in his usual steady handed way, keeping calm and under control, while his enemies hurl their lies and insults. Stoic, standing tall and proud against the tide of accusations, Bill O’Reilly is without question a profile in courage.

The Battle Between Science and Superstition Heats Up

Most of us have been in this position before. You’re in a discussion with someone and it’s about a matter that is very important to you. You argue one side, she argues the other. At some point, it dawns on you that your argument is actually flawed, and that she is right. You have two choices; you can stop and admit you were wrong. Ha! Might happen if you’re arguing over which brand of cream cheese to buy, but if it’s a topic that you are passionate about, that is deeply embedded in who you are as a person, you will most likely press ahead, getting more heated as the clash continues and your position crumbles like a matchstick house in an earthquake.

If you expand this situation to a much larger scenario, like say, the world, you have a glimpse at what is going on around our planet of people. Throughout the history of humanity, new societies have evolved out of old ones. It’s never been easy, it is often met with obstructionism and sometimes violence, but we manage to move forward despite the obstacles. The Enlightenment didn’t emerge fully formed in a few days, it grew over decades and centuries, with many fighting against it, like the Catholic Church, yet it blossomed and grew stronger despite (and partly because of) the resistance.

Humanity is in a constant battle for the future with itself. Today’s battle is actually a continuation of the Enlightenment in my opinion. History books will tell you that this period ended in the late 18^th century, but today, well over three centuries since it’s dawn, the battle between reason and superstition goes on. As advanced in some areas as we’ve become, this basic struggle is still at the heart of our worldview, and still being fought.

What is the war on terror? At its essence, it is a battle between religious fundamentalists and a world growing increasingly secular and reliant on science for answers. That same war, although less violent, is being played out in in the West as well. To be taken seriously by their party, American Republicans running for national office must espouse beliefs that are in alignment with Christian fundamentalists values and clearly at odds with science and reason. Just a few days ago, probable Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker said he would have to punt on whether he believed in evolution or not.

What makes me both hopeful and fearful is that the battle between superstition and reason seems to be entering a final stage. Violence throughout the Middle East and Eastern Europe is escalating. Fundamentalist Christians in Western countries are trying desperately to retain power and influence as they watch their numbers dwindle. Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, is continuously doing a tap dance between supporting scientific findings and sticking to orthodoxy on many issues. He’s no radical reformer, and only slightly less doctrinaire than many of his predecessors.

The argument between reason and science is without question heating up around the globe, and religious fundamentalists are behaving like the guy in the middle of an argument who just realized his position is weak. They will not concede without a fight, and so they do.

Conservative or schizophrenic? It’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish the two

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder often characterized by abnormal social behavior and a failure to recognize what is real. Sound like anyone you know?

Writing about one of his favorite subjects — how horribly wrong Republicans have been on economic issues — my favorite economist Paul Krugman says, “Across the board, the modern American right seems to have abandoned the idea that there is an objective reality out there, even if it’s not what your prejudices say should be happening. What are you going to believe, right-wing doctrine or your own lying eyes? These days, the doctrine wins.”

He’s absolutely right. The denial of objective reality on the part of conservatives runs across the board and isn’t limited to economics. From global warming to foreign affairs to education and science, today’s Right Wingers are trying desperately to create their own reality, but are, like poor Charlie Brown getting eternally duped by Lucy and her football, continuously running headlong into objective reality.

It reminds me of the now infamous quote in 2004 from an aide to George Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove) that dealt with reality:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

We create our own reality? The hubris reflected in this statement is nearly unfathomable, but I think it is reflective of how many conservatives think. It has been shown over and over again, and is now on full display in Brownback’s Kansas, that supply side economics doesn’t work, yet we just learned recently that Ohio Governor John Kasich’s newest budget is all about slashing tax rates and trying to make up the deficit by raising the state’s sales tax, the commercial activity tax, oil and gas severance taxes and the tobacco tax, increases that disproportionately affect low income individuals and families. Kasich is trying once again to create his own reality, placing political doctrine over common sense.

George Bush governed from his gut, and we all know how well that turned out. To win the support of the Tea Party base, the 2016 Republican presidential candidate will be someone who questions evolution, denies man-made global warming, considers the goal of education to be job training, and believes supply-side economics is a viable approach. In other words, it will be a person who doesn’t live in the same world in which the majority of Americans live, yet could still become President.

The Republican War on Education

To follow up on a blog I wrote a few days ago about the Right’s antipathy toward education, new examples have come to light that signal we really are in an all out war over the minds of our children. Not to be out-cut by fellow wingnut and potential presidential candidate Scott (Crazy Eyes) Walker, Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has proposed a bill that will cut higher education in the state by $387 million.

Advanced Placement history courses are being attacked by Tea Partiers and Christian fundamentalists around the country for being overly negative and not teaching American Exceptionalism. It’s especially bad in Oklahoma where Republican Rep. Dan Fisher has introduced House Bill 1380 that would give the state sole control of curriculum and assessment. Dan thinks the current AP history course spends too much time pointing out what’s bad about America.

People like Dan who serve in state legislatures and on local school boards across this country want to replace education with indoctrination, facts with flights of fancy. They want to dumb down our children to the point where they are unable to think critically and will live lives of unquestioning loyalty to Jesus and the Homeland.

How can America be called exceptional if its population lacks the ability to think and reason? If the Walkers and the Rauner’s and the morons in Oklahoma are successful, we will fall further and further behind the rest of the developed countries in education, and our one-time position as a world technological leader will be only a distant memory.

Most maddening about all of this is the hard cold fact that less educated citizens are attracted to conservative politicians and principals. Republican leaders know this and, especially at the state level, are doing their damndest to create a new generation of loyal party members.

Another Bush legacy: Endless war

Since 9/11 and the freakout of the Bush administration, the President has been granted far more powers than he previously had to wage war through a variety of Authorizations to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress over the years. Obama is introducing a new AUMF that, as an article in today’s Salon points out, is problematic, but whether it passes or not, “…we still end up with claims to fairly unlimited Presidential authority to wage war.”

Fourteen years after the attack on the World Trade Center, we find ourselves embroiled in an endless war with an elusive enemy that is not bound by geography. When I say endless, I mean exactly that. Every bomb that falls from a drone or bullet fired by a rifle breeds a new radical willing to pick up the cause for which his comrade died.

A state legislature from Arkansas has offered a brilliant solution: Nuke ‘em. That’s right. He thinks we can end this fight quickly with a few well-place nukes in the Mideast. This is the kind of lunacy frustration breeds. We will never defeat terrorism with violence. It only breeds more. However the great American war machine must be fed, and we can’t just leave all of that oil in the hands of our enemies.

The AUMF is yet one more indication of how off kilter our system of checks and balances has become. We have a completely incompetent Congress, an activist judiciary at the beck and call of this country’s elites, and an executive branch that believes it has the authority to take America to war anytime anywhere for any reason it chooses.

Thank you, George Bush and Dick Cheney, for all that you’ve done for your country.

The anti-intellectual, anti-education Republican Party

A couple of years ago, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal made headlines by imploring fellow Republicans to “stop being the stupid party,” an admirable and highly unusual bit of advice, although the Governor’s own statements and actions since then indicate he is in fact, very much at home in the current Republican Party.

Unfortunately Bobby, the Grand Old Party is the stupid party and many Republicans embrace that reality wholeheartedly. Education is anathema to the survival of the Tea Party and the GOP has long had a deep running vein of anti-intellectualism through its core. For decades the party has waged a battle to demonize and destroy pubic education and replace it with locally run brainwashing factories dedicated to superstition and mythology in place of science and facts.

Two recent events illustrate the anti-education nature of the Republican Party is as strong as ever.

Not content with merely slashing the University of Wisconsin budget by $300 million dollars, Governor Scott Walker also decided to tinker with the language of the University’s mission statement by removing words that commanded the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.” In other words, higher education should be limited to helping someone get a job and to hell with all that “thinking” crap. Residents of his state raised the roof when made aware of the changes, and Walker back peddled, claiming it was all an innocent mistake.

And then there’s Mississippi state legislator Gene Alday (R-Walls) who said he opposes increases to the woefully underfunded schools in his state because blacks in his community who don’t work already receive “welfare crazy checks.” Alday admitted that Mississippi has poor performing school districts, but he doesn’t think more money will help and blamed the situation on voters “electing superintendents that don’t know anything about education.”

It boggles the mind to think that one of the two major political parties in the United States is opposed to its citizens getting a good education, but it’s true. What’s good for the Republican Party is once again bad for our country.

The last thing America’s elites want to do is wake the sleeping giant

One of the longest running and most oft repeated conspiracy theories is that the American government is actively preparing to institute martial law or impose a national clamp down on dissent and arrest critics of the government, throwing them into FEMA-built concentration camps. This is the historical foundation of the survivalist movement and a tenet of a variety of other ultra conservative/Christian groups in this country. Conviction in this theory has grown markedly since 9/11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

To most people, the idea just seems plain nutty. Few can conceive of the American government attacking its own citizens in such a manner. I’m not one of those people. From the McCarthy era of the 1950s to the present day, our government has worked day and night to silence critics, whistleblowers and anyone who would seriously challenge the American hegemony. The Bush and Obama administrations have consistently punished or tired to punish the whistleblowers, not those involved in illegal activities. “National security” has become a catchall excuse for numerous undemocratic activities by the surveillance state.

However, do I believe the government will send troops into the streets of America’s cities and round up and jail dissidents en masse? I don’t think so, not out of any love for, or adherence to, democratic principals, but rather because America’s elites won’t allow it.

If you think about it, this country’s wealthy and powerful .01 percent have never had it better. They are making money hand over fist due to an economy rigged in their favor. They enjoy numerous tax loopholes that allow them to pay little or no taxes. Thanks to the Supreme Court, they can essentially buy their political candidates a seat in Congress. And the companies they run have the luxury of going anywhere in the world to exploit cheap labor. They know that the slumbering masses are far more concerned with which couple gets kicked off of Dancing With the Stars than who represents them in Congress, and I think they would like to keep it that way.

The last thing America’s privileged minority wants is to wake the sleeping giant of people currently placated by the entertainment industry and illusions of control.

This Week’s Crazy Conservatives

Montana lawmaker David Moore (R-Missoula) wants to expand his state’s indecent exposure laws to outlaw yoga pants and other tight-fitting or revealing clothing. It would also make it illegal for men to wear speedo swim trunks in public.

Republican state Rep. Alan Clemmons proposes what he’s calling the “Second Amendment Education Act.” As the name implies, the bill would “provide all public elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools” with “instruction in the Second Amendment” for no fewer than “three consecutive weeks in one grading period in each academic year.” The curriculum would be written by the NRA.

Responding to President Obama’s comments at a recent National Prayer Breakfast about Christians and historical violence in the name of religion, FOX News contributor Star Parker said, “Because I was in that room. And it was, frankly, verbal rape. Oh yeah. We were not expecting it. Nobody wanted it. It was horrible to sit through. And after it was over we all felt like crap.”

A Christian group CADMinistry (Christians Against Dinosaurs) is an advocacy group that argues against teaching children that dinosaurs actually existed. While it sounds like an Onionesque hoax, it appears to be real, and members have argued in online discussions that, “The science behind them is pretty flimsy, and I for one do not want my children being taught lies. Did you know that nobody had even heard of dinosaurs before the 1800s, when they were invented by curio-hungry Victorians?” and that dinosaurs “lack family values.”

During a legislative dinner where the subject under discussion was domestic violence, South Carolina State Sen. Thomas Corbin told fellow GOP state senator Katrina Shealy that women should be “at home baking cookies” or “barefoot and pregnant,” not serving in the state legislature. When Shealy asked Corbin where he got off making such statements, he responded, “Well, you know God created man first, then he took the rib out of man to make woman. And you know, a rib is a lesser cut of meat."

And of course, what list of crazy conservative comments would be complete without an entry from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R)? In a speech to the North American Prospect Expo (NAPE) in Texas this week, Palin said that caribou that died as a result of oil pipeline expansions would have to “take one for the team.”

New Spooky Shorts

So I've posted three new short scary stories over at They're Only Shadows. These three have done especially well (received a lot of up votes) at Reddit's ShortScaryStories subreddit. I hope you enjoy them.

Drug testing welfare recipients: Another bad idea from conservatives

Drug testing welfare recipients is the flavor of the month among reality-challenged governors, who are, of course, mostly Republicans. There are 12 states that currently carry out this demeaning and degrading procedure, and another 12 are considering implementation. Florida, which had a drug-testing requirement for people on welfare, was forced to shut it down after four months by a federal judge. Of the 4,086 people tested during that period, 2.6% tested positive. That’s fewer than 10 people.

Assuming that people on welfare are more likely to use drugs than others is just one extension of the conservative belief that if you are in need of welfare from the state, there’s something wrong with you. People on welfare, goes the thinking, are inherently lazy losers who are simply looking for a handout from the government. They are subhuman, and therefore we can do things to them that we wouldn’t consider doing to others. There aren’t any serious proposals out there to drug test political candidates.

Drug testing is not just insulting and demeaning, it also flies in the face of American jurisprudence, the foundation of which is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Conservatives want welfare recipients to prove their innocence before receiving aid. And how can we look ourselves in the mirror and punish the already down and out for using drugs when they point to George Bush or Barack Obama or any of a number of other successful individuals who have admitted using drugs?

Forcing welfare recipients to undergo drug tests is just one more in a very long line of bad ideas from conservatives. Hopefully, court challenges like the one in Florida will work to end this practice nationwide in the near future.

Will the Brownback failure in Kansas change any minds?

Here’s the question of the day: How much pain and punishment will voters endure before they realize Republican ideas are rubbish? Unfortunately for the people of Kansas, the answer seems to be “a lot.” Republican Governor Sam Brownback won a tight race last November even after it was clear that his experiment in supply side economics was failing miserably and creating a huge budget deficit.

Today, the deficit stands at $344 million and his answer to this dilemma is to further cut funds for education, syphon off money from the state’s pension program and raid funds for essential infrastructure projects. Oh, and yesterday he took time out from his slash and burn activities to remove gender identity and sexual orientation from the classes of protected Kansas government employees. Busy boy.

Aside from the reality that Brownback is a genuinely horrible human being, the facts in this case seem indisputable; Brownback’s economic experiment is a disaster by every standard and is sucking Kansas into a quagmire of debt. This was already evident last November prior to the elections, yet voters again gave him the green light to savage the state even further. The loyalty of conservatives to their ideological foundations is incredibly strong and will not be shaken by reality. Reality is wrong, they answer through their votes.

How bad will things have to get before the people of Kansas, and the United States, say enough to failed conservative ideology?

The war on drugs has been a disaster on many levels, and here’s why

By every measure the war on drugs has been a complete failure, and there are few people outside of Washington who would dispute that. Despite this, Obama’s new budget asks for $27.6 billion for federal drug control programs, a billion more than last year. More lives will be lost, more people will be jailed and more criminals will be rewarded. It is a tragic cycle that is perpetuated by politics and an entrenched serpentine bureaucracy that demands to be fed.

For nearly a century, we have been accosted with propaganda from the government about the dangers of drugs and addiction, and brainwashed into believing that drug users are dangerous “others” or criminals who will sell their babies for a fix. Like I said, this is the propaganda. The truth, however, might shock you.

I read a truly illuminating article at Alternet this morning here. It’s an interview with Johan Hari, author of the book, “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.” What’s fascinating about Hari’s findings after four years of world-wide research is that basically everything we think we know about drug use and abuse and how to deal with it is wrong. The war on drugs, according to Hari, is based on totally false notions of what the problem is and how to deal with it.

If you have any interest in drug policy or the war on drugs, I encourage you to read this article and pass it on.

This week’s repugnant Republicans

I know, revealing the Right’s lunacy is like shooting fish in a barrel. All a Louie Gohmert or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin have to do is open their mouths and you have your quota of insane quotes for the day. But heck, it’s Friday and I need to vent. Here is your weekly dose of repugnant Republicans doing what they do best, being complete morons:

Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton doesn’t want Satan getting in the way of his legislation. His bill to repeal a decades-old ban on crude oil exports was introduced Tuesday as House Bill 666. By Wednesday, Barton had successfully lobbied to get its number changed to a less-Satanic 702.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback says he will cut funding for public schools and universities in a bid to keep the state solvent through June after aggressive tax cuts left gaping budget shortfalls.

A Republican state lawmaker said Thursday that women who become pregnant from sexual assault should not be exempt from an anti-abortion measure, because childbirth resulting from rape is "beautiful." "Obviously rape is awful," West Virginia Del. Brian Kurcaba (R) said during a committee hearing on a new abortion restriction. "What is beautiful is the child that could come from this."

Louisiana Governor Bobbie Jindal’s speech at the American Principles Project’s conference highlighted the need to strongly support public education. But Jindal is currently trying to cut the budget of the state colleges by as much as $300 million —nearly a third of the system’s current budget.

Speaking on Saturday at the Educational Policy Conference in St. Louis, former U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway denounced the notion that conservatives are waging a “war on women,” asserting that sexual libertinism has “impoverished women” and created a culture in which child porn is acceptable.

An Alabama congressman with virulently anti-immigrations beliefs has a new theory on who may be causing the current measles outbreak: “illegal aliens.” Appearing on the Matt Murphy radio show Tuesday morning, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) sees a correlation between immigration and the measles outbreak that has erupted in the United States.

Why Conservatives choose to attack the messenger so often

There’s a good article in today’s Salon analyzing why conservative pundits so often turn to attacking individuals as opposed to attacking their ideas. The short answer is that conservatives resort to ad hominem attacks because their arguments against issues like climate change, feminism, gun control and many others are so obviously weak they have no other choice but to try and redirect attention by crucifying the messenger. 

The author goes into detail about why this approach is on the one hand illogical and offensive, yet on the other hand has proven effective, especially in areas where the average person has little real knowledge, like climate change.

Anyone who has seen clips of FOX anchors in action has been exposed to this nauseating tactic. Bill O’Reilly is a black belt in personal attacks. But I recently saw a video where attacking the messenger was ratcheted up to new levels of absurdity.

A documentary filmmaker brought his camera to a street fair sponsored by the Church of Scientology. Security guards prevented him from entering, even though the event was open to the public. Soon, however, three “civilians,” obviously members of the Church, approached the man and began verbally harassing him. Their tactic was interesting. Instead of simply telling the man to get the hell out of there, they tried incessantly to turn the conversation from questions about Scientology to an indictment of the cameraman.

“I think you look like a pedophile,” said one thug.

“You have problems, Mike. Let us help you with your problems,” said another.

“This is all about you, Mike. Not us.”

This attack went on for probably fifteen minutes and the cameraman proved a worthy adversary, meeting the verbal assaults with specific questions about the Church, to which the thugs never responded. One of the desired goals of these kinds of attacks is to make the recipient so angry he loses control and looks like a shrill lunatic. The cameraman never fell victim to this ploy, and the thugs eventually figured out they weren’t going to get the results they wanted and left.

Attacking the messenger is always a loser’s tactic, yet it continues because it can, unfortunately, be effective.

A fellow veteran says what needs to be said about Republican hypocrisy

The Super Bowl: A Celebration of Consumption

The Super Bowl — the game that is to sports what the Mall of America is to shopping — is over. The contest between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots was admittedly more exciting than most, and Katy Perry’s halftime show was a spectacle of smoke and mirrors (literally) to be remembered. Of course, many people watching the extravaganza were as interested in the commercials as the game itself.

The championship game has really become the Corporate America Bowl, an electronic marketplace where Fortune 500 companies spend tens of millions of dollars on 30 and 60 second mini-movies, competing for the attention of a zillion prospective customers. Articles about who won the commercial wars during the event are as numerous as articles about the team that won the game.

Super Bowl Sunday is a celebration of consumption, a sacrifice of men’s bodies to the god of materialism and capitalism, a super shiny object drawing our attention from reality. It’s a violent contest continuously interrupted by companies hawking their wares. I wonder if between brawls to the death Ceasar allowed merchants to walk around the coliseum selling figs and sandals?

I know, it’s tedious and redundant to criticize the Super Bowl, but I had to get it out of my system. Can’t wait until next year.

America's Drastic Decline

This isn’t going to brighten up your Super Bowl Sunday, but it’s far more important than who wins today’s game. Our country is in serious decline.

American exceptionalism is the idea that America has been blessed by God and is inherently superior to other countries in the world. Obama declared at one point that he believed in American exceptionalism.

The facts, however, tell a far different story. You won’t hear about this by listening to the mainstream media, but over the last thirty or forty years, our country has fallen farther and farther behind the world’s other developed nations in a wide array of important areas. The partial list below is mostly from an article titled “America is the best country in the world at being last” from today’s Alternet, but I’ve added a few additional ones.

Most Americans would tell you that they love their country, but then vote people into office who do far more harm than good. If you truly love America, vote for people who want to turn this nation around and move us back up to the top of these rankings.

A superpower in name only, America now has

• the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
• the greatest inequality of incomes;
• the lowest social mobility;
• the lowest score on the UN’s index of “material well-being of children”;
• the worst score on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index;
• the highest expenditure on health care as a percentage of GDP, yet all this money was accompanied by the highest infant mortality rate, the highest prevalence of mental health problems, the highest obesity rate, the highest percentage of people going without health care due to cost, the highest consumption of antidepressants per capita, and the shortest life expectancy at birth;
• the next-to-lowest score for student performance in math and middling performance in science and reading;
• the highest homicide rate;
• the largest prison population in absolute terms and per capita;
• the highest carbon dioxide emissions and the highest water consumption per capita;
• the lowest score on Yale’s Environmental Performance Index (except for Belgium) and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Denmark);
• the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of national income (except for Japan and Italy);
• the highest military spending both in total and as a percentage of GDP. America spends $600 billion a year on defense, which is more than the next 10 countries combined;
• the largest international arms sales;
• The second largest percentage of citizens who do not believe in evolution (besides Turkey);
• an economy that allowed 100 percent of the economic gains made between 1983 and 2013 go to the top 20 percent.

Americans misinformed on scientific issues thanks to the mainstream media

A new study by the Pew Research Center and American Association for the Advancement of Science, compared opinions about scientific matters of the public and AAAS’ member scientists. Published in the journal Science, the study found that Americans are dangerously misinformed about evolution, GMO foods and climate change. I won’t go into the specifics of the survey findings, but if you are interested you can find them here.

A Salon article that looks at the survey ends with a quote from the CEO of AAAS and publisher of Science, who says: “There is a disconnect between the way the public perceives science and the way that scientists see science. Scientists need to do something to turn this around.”

I disagree with this conclusion. I don’t think it’s accurate or fair to blame scientists for the American public’s lack of scientific literacy. The mainstream media is the true culprit here.

Like it or not, evolution, GMO foods and climate change have been politicized by conservatives (through their megaphone FOX News) and successfully characterized as “liberal” or “secular” positions instead of scientific findings. Because of this, mainstream news outlets have been very timid about reporting accurately on these subjects, often serving up so-called experts on both sides to further confuse people. Living in fear of angering and loosing viewers or funding, ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS tread very lightly around the truth related to these important issues, leaving a void that FOX News is only too happy to fill.

Scientists need to be concerned with science, not public relations. And news outlets need to be concerned with informing listeners and having the courage to present scientific facts regardless of the political implications.

The Obama Administration: One step forward, two steps back

The Obama Administration: Just when you think it’s taking one step forward, you find out it’s actually taking two steps back. Recent statements from Obama about marijuana policy suggested that he believes keeping the drug illegal is counterproductive, a reasonable and forward-looking opinion. Then, just yesterday, his nominee for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch made it clear at her confirmation hearing that she totally opposes legalizing marijuana and the Justice Department will not support any steps toward that end.

One step forward, two steps back. If Obama truly believed that keeping marijuana illegal was counterproductive, why would he nominate someone to head the Justice Department who vehemently disagrees with that stance? Either Obama is lying about his own feelings on the subject, (and why would he do that?) or perhaps he’s really not in control of who gets nominated to high posts in his Administration. The issue of marijuana legalization is a very hot topic in America with a tremendous amount of momentum at the state level, yet Obama picks someone with a viewpoint on drugs that is stuck in the 1970s.

I know that I’m stepping into tin-foil hat land whenever I bring this up, but I have long had the feeling that Obama is not in control of the executive branch in the way we would imagine a president being in control. Perhaps he’s just big on delegating work to others, but incidents like the Lynch nomination make me wonder about who is really calling the shots at the White House.

Koch brothers announce they are buying the 2016 elections

What do you get the billionaire who has everything? How about the United States of America? 

Charles and David Koch have announced that their political network is planning to spend nearly a billion dollars on conservative candidates for House and Senate seats and the presidency in 2016.

Thanks to their ideological soul mates on the Supreme Court, the Koch’s can now lavish money on their chosen candidates through an immense network of non-profit groups without, in many cases, having to identify donors. Koch-approved Republicans will get writer’s cramps endorsing their checks.

Does this sound like democracy to you? Me neither. America is quickly becoming an oligarchy where a small minority of elites determine who goes to Washington. The system of checks and balances instituted by our founders has clearly broken down, and voting has become an exercise in futility.

It’s a shame. America began as a brilliant experiment in democracy, but has been taken over by the insatiably greedy 1 percent whose only allegiance is to the bottom line.

Devil Dog Signals the End Times

Insanity reigns. What was once satire is now reality. What was once unthinkable is now thinkable. What was once a stunningly bad idea is still a stunningly bad idea, but it’s been released into the real world of living human beings. This event is without a doubt the harbinger of the end times. It may just be the anti-Christ.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the KFC Double Down Dog. This atrocity is a hot dog nesting in a “bun” of fried chicken drizzled with a mucus-like sauce. It looks like a horrible accident on the set of a porn movie. The needle on the disgust meter is buried in “Burn it with Fire!” It’s the only food on the planet that Andrew Zimmern won’t put in his mouth.

At the moment, this Devil Dog is only being featured at a few KFC outlets in the Philippines WHERE IT IS SELLING OUT. So you know that like ebola, the disease will spread worldwide quickly, poisoning the palates of millions before it can be stopped and a cure found. For the love of all that is holy, keep your children away from it and safe, and resist, resist, resist the siren song it will use to lure you into the nearest KFC.

Dear arrogant, clueless billionaires: Please shut the fuck up

The chutzpah is strong in this one.

Billionaire Florida real estate mogul Jeff Green, who is presently attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said this:

“America’s lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence. We need to reinvent our whole system of life.”

Of course. It all makes sense now. It’s the little people’s fault for wanting anything more than food, water and a roof over their heads. Never mind the economic prosperity we enjoyed in the fifties and sixties, when taxes on the rich were far higher than they are today. That’s just a false memory. Now, go back to sleep, little people.

What we need, Mr. Green, is an economic system built on fairness with an equitable tax system. What we need is to drastically lower income inequality and to provide people with a realistic, livable minimum wage. What we need is for companies to stop sending jobs oversees. What we need is to stop allowing American companies and individuals to avoid paying taxes by keeping their money in off-shore accounts and foreign banks.

You are correct when you say we need to reinvent our whole system of life, but it needs to be done in a way that will make you and your billionaire friends very unhappy.

The terror never ends: Two more short scary stories

I've posted two new bedtime stories for your enjoyment at They're Only Shadows. Pleasant dreams.

A detailed explanation of how "Trickle Down" economics works

When will Americans stop glorifying violence?

The film “American Sniper” is stirring up controversy. Michael Moore and Seth Rogan have dissed it and gotten a lot of nasty, hate-filled Tweets and emails for their opinions. I haven’t seen it and probably won’t, but it sounds like one more in a long, long line of propaganda efforts from Hollywood designed to romanticize and sanitize America’s military actions.

What exactly makes Navy Seal Chris Kyle a hero worthy of our respect? If it’s his body count, why aren’t the pilots and crew members of military bombers who dropped explosives on Iraq and killed tens of thousands of people, given ticker tape parades and huge medals? And what kind of a guy is Kyle? People have pulled excerpts from the book on which the film is based, and the unfiltered bigotry and lack of compassion for human life paint a less than heroic portrait of the real American sniper.

On this Martin Luther King Day, it’s a good time to ask when we as a country will stop glorifying individuals who commit violence in our name and start celebrating the peacemakers? Creating a day of remembrance for King was a good start, but I’ve never had a job where my company recognized the day as a holiday, yet everyone gets Memorial Day off.

Our priorities as a country are badly skewed, but because we are Americans, we don’t feel any need to look in the mirror and assess our weaknesses. Films like “American Sniper” play to our darkest desires to beat up anyone who acts, talks, thinks or looks different than us. That’s the attitude of a schoolyard bully, not a great democracy.

Income inequality worldwide: Bad and getting worse

There is a sobering new report from Oxfam about income inequality worldwide. Some lowlights:

• The richest 1 percent of the world's population currently controls 48 percent of the world's total wealth.
• If trends continue, Oxfam predicts that the most affluent will possess more wealth than the remaining 99 percent by 2016.
• The 80 wealthiest people in the world possess $1.9 trillion, which is almost the same amount shared by some 3.5 billion people at the bottom half of the world's income scale.
• Thirty-five of the lucky 80 were Americans with a combined wealth of $941 billion. Germany and Russia shared second place, with seven uber-rich individuals apiece.

Although late to the game, Obama is at least attempting to do something about this egregious problem and will announce a plan to extend tax credits to the middle class by hiking taxes on wealthier Americans and big banks during his upcoming state of the union address. It’s a step in the right direction, but we’ll have to wait and see what the dim bulbs in Congress have to say about this.

As bad as things are for the 99 percent here in America, there is one statistic that is perhaps the most shocking and damning of all.

More than 1 billion people worldwide live on less than $1.25 a day.

There is a serious glitch in the Matrix

Something is wrong. Very wrong. Somehow we ended up with a Congress that is diametrically opposed to the will of the majority of Americans. This isn’t supposed to happen in a democracy, but it has, which calls into question whether we can truly call ourselves a democracy anymore.

The national research firm Hart Research Associates polled 1,101 American voters and found that 72 percent strongly support more pollution controls, 70 percent strongly support protecting public lands like monuments and wildlife refuge areas, and 66 percent support the expansion of wind, solar, and renewable energy development. Sixty percent of voters surveyed also said they strongly supported setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — a number that rose to 82 percent when including voters who said they somewhat support that proposal.

Republicans in Congress oppose every one of the initiatives that the voters favored by a majority. Our electoral system is clearly broken, and it’s not just the whining of sore loser Democrats. The polls bear us out. I would guess that polls taken involving any number of issues beyond the environment would show similar results.

True, meaningful campaign finance reform has always been at the top of my “most important issues” list. We need to overturn Citizen United, but we must go beyond that to do even more to take huge sums of private money out of our elections.

 The glitch in the Matrix can be repaired, but it will take political courage to fix it, and sadly, courage in Washington today is in very short supply.

This week in stupid

Physician Ben Carson, a Republican who will probably run for President, compared America’s founding fathers with ISIS because they were willing to die for their beliefs and didn’t compromise “for the sake of political correctness.”

A Tennessee mother has complained that the taillights of a school bus form a “Pagan” pentagram and is demanding they be changed.

A new Alabama abortion law allows judges to appoint attorneys to represent fetuses in abortion cases involving girls aged 17 and younger who don't have consent for the procedure from their parents. The ACLU points out that Alabama does not have a statewide public defender program. Fetuses can get an attorney, but poor adults accused of crimes cannot.

According to a study by The Tax Foundation, the seven states that take in the most federal tax dollars all had one thing in common. They all voted Republican in the presidential 2012 election.

Four U.S. Republican Senators introduced a bill on Tuesday seeking to cut off any funding which could allow detainees – including men long cleared for release by federal agents – to leave Guantánamo. One of the four is John McCain, who campaigned for president in 2008 saying that the detention center at Guantánamo needed to be closed.

As part of a holiday charity campaign, the Walmart Foundation last month donated $1.5 million to food pantries across the country. An estimated 825,000 workers at Walmart, the largest private employer in the United States, earn less than $25,000 annually, placing many who have families below the poverty line and in need of food assistance programs.

A bipartisan trio of lawmakers in Mississippi has introduced a bill calling for the Bible to be named the “state book.”

The stage is set for two years of “The Agony and the Misery”

The curtain has just gone up on Act I of “The Agony and the Misery: Two Years of a Republican Controlled Congress,” and we already find two major characters stepping into positions of power from which they plan to wreak havoc upon reason and science.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has been named chair of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, which oversees NASA. Despite the scientific consensus, Ted doesn’t believe in man-made global warning, so he’s obviously the perfect person for the job.

Fellow southerner Marc Rubio of Florida will chair the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, fisheries and Coast Guard, which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration. Marc is also a global warming denier, and is skeptical that the Earth has been around more than 6,000 years.

So the plot is set in motion. Anti-science, pre-Enlightenment Ministers of Evil have gained control of the government agencies they would love to destroy. Will the powers of darkness prevail? Will a champion of science step forward to battle the purveyors of ignorance and superstition? Can America survive two years of this asinine nonsense?

Stay tuned.