Greg's Take

Covering up child rape is NOT ok!

2011-11-14T10:02:00.003-05:00

"I should have done more."

Those are the words Joe Paterno said regarding the rape of a child by assistant coach Sandusky. Those are the words of a man who absolutely knew what happened; they are the words of a man who admits he didn't do enough.

What bothers me are the people who came out in support of Joe Paterno and said he shouldn't be fired. Even one blogger who said he should have been fired also said that we shouldn't forget all of the good he's done. Why? Why should we care about how well he coached a game? Through inaction, he participated in the cover-up of child rape. This inaction in the face of such a heinous crime speaks of low moral character in general.

The people who have come out in support of Paterno remind me of the people who tried to soften what the Catholic church did in the face of its widespread child rape scandal: "It was only a handful of priests." "The actions a few priests shouldn't condemn the whole Church." Nonsense. Like the Joe Paterno scandal, there were people who were acquainted with and in authority over the child-raping priests, and they actively covered up the horrendous acts. Even the current pope knew about the widespread abuse and didn't do nearly enough to stop it. Like the Catholic Church, the Penn State athletic department institutionalized child rape by failing to do anything to stop it.

The more I read about the Jerry Sandusky case, the more angry I get at people who think Joe Paterno's job shouldn't have been on the line. He had 8 victims over 15 years, according to the indictment. He had a charity that gave him access to young boys constantly. He had an office on campus, and had access to facilities up until very recently. The act of child rape Paterno helped cover up through inaction occurred in 2002. Why did Sandusky still have access to the campus at all?

It's not like rumors of sexual abuse were spread on shaky evidence about Sandusky, either. There was an eyewitness to the 2002 rape. I realize that eyewitnesses aren't the best evidence in a court of law, but it wasn't like forensics had an opportunity to do a rape kit on the boy involved, because the eyewitness, Joe Paterno, and the athletic director Paterno reported the incident to all failed to report the rape to authorities.

I'm outraged to think that anyone would stack 61 years of successful coaching against the cover-up of child rape and think that the coaching outweighs Paterno's inaction. A person who would let something like that go is a person who would let just about anything slide. What else has gone unreported during his 61 year tenure?

WoW Achievement: Pilgrim's Peril, After the World Changed

2010-11-26T04:51:00.003-05:00

I decided to set up a raid on Thanksgiving night to do Pilgrim's Peril. Unfortunately, most of the people who said they were up for it weren't there, for whatever reason. I heard for most of the day from several people that it just couldn't be done on the Horde side.

A few people in my guild went scouting, one on her BE mage, the others on their alliance toons. Later on in the evening, five of us--four from Kindred Spirits/Khaz Modan, one from Ixkin/Khaz: Gortanadir, Hemophilia, Annwen, Arthur, and Ufgar, respectively--decided to try it. I thought it might be a suicide mission, given that the hit cap against level 85s had to be higher than most people had it. I thought they'd kill us before we got many hits in.

So a mage, priest, paladin, death knight, and hunter went first to Ironforge, where the tables are out front. We went up the road, so we inevitable encountered guards. As long as we had them one or two at a time, we found that we could kill them, making a For The Horde raid seem plausible at some date in the near future. In any case, we did aggro four guards at once, and four of us died. After the res, we did make it up to the tables. We had to kill another two guards when we got there, but it was all good.

Stormwind was much easier. The tables are right out front with no guards around them. We knew this city was going to be the easiest from the earlier scouting missions, but the next part...in retrospect, we might have been able to do it without dying, but there you have it--we died in Darnassus. We got there by running around the city to the coast, using path of frost to get across the water and up to the dock, then ran through the guards. They will not go onto the ship (it's always been that way), so we were safe. We ran through the portal to get into Darnassus, and then we made the mistake of taking a direct route. I got hit for 32k on the hit that broke my mana shield, then I was dead almost instantly after that. They have flying patrols, roaming mounted patrols, and foot patrols--all level 85. I guess this is to make up for all that time Darnassus spent being the easiest city in For The Horde raids.

In any case, the tables are in a spot where, if you skirt around the city, you can get to without drawing much--if any--guard aggro. When I got back to my corpse, I was near a bunch of npcs, but I went invisible and swam into the warrior district. The mobs there are only level 27, and there are no guards. On the other side of the wall, near the training dummies, are the unguarded tables.

Exodar was pretty simple after that. We just took the boat from Darnassus, then ran around the city to the other entrance, between a tree and the building, jumped from the ramp down to the patio where the tables are. We would not have had to kill the guards, but one of us (I won't mention names) jumped too far and drew one. We had to kill that one. I polymorphed the other, but that put me into combat. We had to put it down. But then, there we were--achievement accomplished.

This video will stifle thinking

2009-10-27T02:42:00.003-04:00

I'm sure some people will find the title offensive, but hear me out--or don't. I'm not sure I care at this point. If I don't lose a couple of friends on Facebook after this, I'll be surprised, but my hope is that I can tell my side of things without being limited to a few hundred characters on someone else's profile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JztnF0XpJ1Q

The above video offended me, but not half as much as the Facebook cause invitation that included it, nor as bad as part of the conversation with a friend of a friend after I commented the friend's post. Following me so far?

The cause that used this video as its rallying point was "Put Christ Back Into Schools". As an activist for the separation of state and church, this cause represents the opposition, and I definitely would never support it. The Founding Fathers saw religion as a matter of private conscience, not to be entangled with the state. James Madison, often called the Father of our Constitution, said on the subject: "Church and state must be kept separate to preserve the purity of both." He also labeled Catholicism the worst form of government, since religion and state were intertwined. He was not opposed to Christianity; in the same letter where he criticized the Catholic church, he labeled Christianity "the greatest religion"; he just thought it should be separate from government.

Many of our Founders were only nominally Christian--definitely not of the fundamentalist variety (Patrick Henry, a fundamentalist, was not invited to the Constitutional Convention, and Noah Webster had not yet converted), and the signers of our Constitution were overwhelmingly for separation of state and church. They only included mentions of religion in the Constitution to exclude it from government. In Article VI, they mandated that religious tests would be forbidden for "any office under the United States." They created the Free Exercise Clause, which must necessarily guarantee both the right to free exercise of religion and the right to opt out. They also included the Establishment Clause, which prohibits Congress from creating laws respecting the establishment of religion. The Fourteenth Amendment applied the Constitution's guarantees of rights to the States.

Schools are state institutions. As such, the state cannot use them to show favoritism to a particular religion. They cannot establish Christianity as the official religion to be taught in schools, and it would not be to the benefit of anyone to do so. There is no religious sect in the United States that represents a majority of citizens. Catholics represent the largest sect, but they fall short of twenty percent of this country's population. They used to exceed the numbers of Southern Baptists and nonbelievers, but given the loss of congregants after the pedophilia scandal in recent years, they may be closing that gap. Nonbelievers represented the third largest religious identity in the United States as of the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, and follow-up surveys confirm that their numbers--our numbers, because I am among them--are growing. If we had the organization and enthusiasm of the religious folk, we'd be a political force in this country.

We nonbelievers pay taxes, just like the rest of you. Chances are, since we're statistically more likely to have college degrees and higher incomes, we're actually paying higher property taxes than you, as well, which means we are supporting the schools to a greater degree. Imagine our dismay when Christians want to put religion into the schools! My question to these Christians is: which religion do you teach? You do not believe the same way. Do you teach the contextualism of the Catholics, or the fundamentalism of the Southern Baptists or Pentecostals? There are several versions of the Bible; which one do you use in the curriculum? Any answer you give will displease someone, and chances are that the someone will be a Christian of a different stripe.

I live in the Detroit Metro area. This area has a large Muslim population, mostly to the south of the city. My part of the Metro area has a large Jewish population. Where do these populations fit into the picture of putting "Christ back into schools"? These aren't small populations of people, but they are much smaller than the population of nonbelievers. We nonbelievers represent one in seven people, most of whom will apparently only admit it to pollsters. We're coming out of the closet in greater numbers, largely due to socializing on the Internet, planning face-to-face meetings through email and various websites, and the courage of a few outspoken activists who don't mind being in the public eye. We have long been persecuted, and when we do speak out, the opposition often tries to shout us down. I was told by a Clawson, Michigan City Council member, "We don't need your particular brand of non-religion in our community." I had that message in email, and I kick myself daily for not printing it and handing it to the Detroit Free Press. After 90 minutes of deliberation and more atheist voices present than Christian, the Rochester Hills City Council decided to go forward with a religious display in one of their public buildings, based largely on a survey done by a fundamentalist Christian radio station, WMUZ (that couldn't be biased, could it?). We meet with all sorts of insults and demands for us to shut up, but I'm not shutting up. I have every right to opt out religion.

What bothers me most about this sort of campaign involves the expressions of persecutions Christians voice because they can't have their religion taught in public schools. Religious people have 350,000 churches (approximately) in the United States, representing 1200 Christian sects alone, let alone Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, and other sects in this country. Nonbelievers outnumber all but two of your 1200 sects, but since we're not as organized, we often find ourselves alone when challenging things that force our children into indoctrination.

Okay, I'm going to go back to the video for a second and get it out of the way. The video is a flash representation of an email that began circulating on the Internet in 1996, according to Snopes.com. I first received it in my inbox in 1998. The story contained in the video has some additional comments at the end, and I'll get to those, but basically, the video is the classing straw man fallacy. It creates a scenario that wouldn't happen in reality, then knocks it down with faux inspiration. There is an evil atheists professor, or at least a right bastard, whose "goal" is to make everyone into a nonbeliever by the end of this required course. It's a philosophy class with 300 people in it, which is amazing to me, given the size of my philosophy classes at Kent State, which doesn't have a small student body. I had that many in my Biological Principles class, and more than that in both my Psychology and Sociology courses, but in Philosophy? It's a general education elective that not as many students take as the alternatives. In any case, the "hero" of the story is this Christian freshman who has to take the class for his major. That's also amazing, since a core course at the freshman level is usually just a prerequisite, and won't go into anything like apologetics or metaphysics, other than to go over them briefly to get students acquainted with the material.

So our "hero" basically prays every day of the semester that his faith won't be shaken, no matter what anyone says. What bothers me about this behavior is that even well-known apologists (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) encouraged people to think about their beliefs critically--to question everything. If this course was required for this freshman, chances are that his major was actually Philosophy (forgetting of course that it's an urban legend with roots that go back many years before the Internet), so going into the major with no desire to think critically about faith seems like an exercise in futility.

Here are my several problems with this video:

No professor should ever belittle the religious beliefs of students. At the very least, it invites lawsuits; at worst, it violates not only university policy, but also state laws.
A student whose beliefs have been belittled should stand up for himself or herself; I would go right to the Dean if a professor had been belittling atheists for choosing not to believe.
It's a completely unrealistic story that's being passed off as true. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" comes to mind here.
After the video is where the real problems begin. First, it tells people to pass it to everyone they know, which makes it a chain letter, and therefore undesirable on email servers everywhere. Second, it asks people to pass on a blatant LIE as fact.
The video asks: "Isn't it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell[?]" I found this statement offensive, because this video is essentially blaming nonbelievers for everything wrong with the world. It's also claiming that the "world is going to hell", but there has never been a time when it wasn't, really. Things were worse during the Great Depression. Children who went to school for the first several decades after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki lived in fear of nuclear holocaust. Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were no picnic. The Dark Ages were full of war, persecution of everyone the Church didn't like, disease, famine...every time had its disasters and problems. We live in the most exciting--and scary--time in human history. We have a choice regarding whether to make things better or not--and it's not the Atheists getting in the way of it. Scientists are overwhelmingly in the Atheist or Agnostic categories, as are college professors. These aren't people who make war or plot to steal from unsuspecting first-time homebuyers. These are the people who educate others and invent things.
Next, we get: "Isn't it funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says?" Well, no, that's not peculiar at all. Newspapers have pictures to back up what they say, and I'm still skeptical of the print. Newspapers do get it wrong sometimes, but they are reporting on what's happening in the here and now; they're not our only source, after all, and we can check their information against other newspapers, online sources, and television. I prefer to rely on NPR, C-SPAN, and the actual words of the named sources for my information. If I read a report on a major court decision, I can read the actual decision online after a simple Google search. As for the Bible, we're talking about different versions (the Catholic, the King James, or the NIV? Which one?), and we're talking about self-contradictory, Bronze Age myth, full of magical, mystical, miracles. Am I supposed to believe that a virgin gave birth to a baby boy, that a man walked on water, and that another man survived a few days in the belly of a sea creature without being digested? Am I to believe that there was no other way to get rid of all of the wicked humans in Noah's time than flooding the entire planet, taking all of the innocent animals with it? Am I to understand that all of the babies of all of the wicked adults were, themselves, wicked? We could go into my many issues with the Bible, but I need more than a blog entry--unless it's a novel-length blog entry.
"Isn't it funny how everyone wants to go to heaven, provided they do not have to believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says? Or is it scary?" Okay, there is a law someone just brought up to me today regarding rape victims. If a girl who is not already engaged is raped, the rapist (if caught) must pay the girl's father a fine, then marry the girl and never get divorced. That's in the Bible, along with a large number of laws we don't follow today. There's another law that says if you have a drunken, unruly son, you are to take him to the elders and have him put to death by stoning. There is still another law that makes women unclean for three weeks out of the month, basically. Women are unclean for twice as long when they have female babies as when they have males. In the New Testament, women aren't allowed to teach in the church. Do you really want to go there? I'm not saying there's no good stuff in the Bible--Jesus had some good things to say (none of them original to his teaching, except the doctrine of hell)--but even Jesus commanded his followers to hate their families if they don't believe. I'm so glad my family doesn't hate me. By the way, those of us who don't believe in the concept of heaven don't have a desire to go there.
"Isn't it funny how someone can say, 'I believe in God,' but still follow Satan?" Huh? I don't say I believe in any god, and I definitely don't follow Satan--I don't have a believe in him, either.
"Isn't it funny how you can send a thousand jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing?" Yeah, well, sometimes you get these emails in your inbox at work, and you don't think it's very professional to pass them on--or, at least, that's what should cross one's mind when receiving emails like this at work...but that's where I first saw this message. Even if you're not at work, you should understand that not everyone believes as you do, and you may offend someone who had no quarrel with you in the past. You have a right to your beliefs, but your right to believe ends where it gets pushed onto me. Do you think I've never had Christianity shared with me? The person who sent me the invitation went to Catholic school with me. What she doesn't know is that I gave up Catholicism even before I entered college, and that I sought out Christianity in different forms until I realized that it was all myth, no different from any other mythology I had studied in the past. I did tons of research, and I read the Bible twenty-seven times, cover to cover, in a few different versions, with thousands of references back to various verses over nearly two decades of discussion and debate with Christians. Reading the Bible for comprehension was probably the single biggest contributor to my rejection of faith.
"Isn't it funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar, and obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but the public discussion of Jesus is suppressed in the school and the workplace?" Now, this argument represents the logical fallacy known as the "red herring"; it misdirects the attention of the reader away from the real issue. News flash: the "lewd, crude, vulgar, and obscene" do not circulate at work or school--or they shouldn't. You can get in big trouble circulating material like that through either of these places. By the way, if you think the Bible is free from these things, you have not--HAVE NOT--read it. There's sex, genital mutilation, incest, genocide, animal sacrifice--it's full of blood, violence, and mature sexual content. Reader discretion is advised. It's not what you've seen on television.
"Isn't it funny how someone can be so fired up for Christ on Sunday, but be an invisible Christian for the rest of the week?" Wasn't there something in the New Testament that went something like, "Pray not on the street corner as the Pharisees do; nay, pray ye in the closet, that is in secret." Also, wasn't there something about living by example? In any case, I have no problem with you living the example of the Jesus character in the Bible, but I do have a problem with you shoving it in my face constantly, as if no one has ever done that before in my 19 years as an Atheist (16 out of the closet--well, 9 to my immediate family, but 16 to my friends and co-workers).
"Isn't it funny how when you go to tell someone this, you won't, because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for telling them?" Okay, here's the deal: if I was bashing your religion, which I haven't before this invitation came to me, I could understand you standing up for it, but what this video is asking you to do is some unsolicited, unwelcome preaching. That's very different from standing up to persecution (and you Christians are so very far from persecuted in this country--try walking a mile in an Atheist's shoes--and an outspoken, out-of-the-closet one, not someone hiding in the closet). Never mind that what you're passing on is a complete fabrication.
"Isn't it funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me?" And here's where we come to why I don't like evangelical Christianity: there is no empathy involved here. You have no consideration whatsoever for other people; you can't live and let live. You could very easily live the example of Jesus, only sharing when people ask you about your faith, or you could post your profile comments and inspirational (to you and other friends of yours) messages, but to actively pursue me to join a cause that you know--or should know--that I won't support, then proceed to tell me how we all need faith, how our children need faith--that's another thing altogether. I live fine without faith, thank you very much.

People probably think I shouldn't be offended by this video, and you know what? I would have ignored it completely if it hadn't been for the invitation to join the cause. In any case, it got worse after I commented. I sent a private message to the person who invited me, but then I posted a reply to another friend's post. Here are the points brought forward, and the counterpoints to them:

"This was a video to give people the chance to think about what they believe in...real or not, it makes a good point."

If the point is to stand up for yourself when others put you down, fine, but that's not the only point that was made, and some of the other points were quite offensive to me.

"...that is fine we all have our own beliefs..."

And yet, you posted a video that invites people to preach to others, not bothering to care at all what they think--that's the same kind of bullying the fictional atheist professor was engaging in during the story.

"My beliefs are VERY STRONG, as I'm sure everyone elses are...no matter what they are!!! MAY GOD BLESS YOU ALL."

Actually, I live without faith. I don't find it to be a value. It's arbitrary. Some people have faith that includes discrimination against homosexuals. Some have faith that interracial marriage is a sin. I can't respect that kind of faith, and I don't see faith itself as a value. I consider the actual values you practice as the measure of your character, not simply what you state your faith to be, because faith not only is it as varied as believers are, but it is also not always consistent with a person's actions. The parting shot wasn't exaclty welcome, either, but it wasn't offensive as, say, blaming Atheists for the "world going to hell".

Enter a friend of the friend, to whose post I replied. She finds the video unrealistic, too, but still thinks it's a video to get people thinking. I disagree wholeheartedly; I think it's a video to get people to act without thinking. I think the main message of the video is to tell people to preach their Christianity to other people without consideration of the beliefs of others--even the differing beliefs of other Christians.

The friend of a friend goes on: "This country was founded by Christians, who believed that people have the right to practice their personal beliefs and religions without persecution...and to protect you in your beliefs as an atheist."

Atheism isn't a belief, but a rejection of it. I digress.

"The majority of the people of this country do believe in a god, so why should the majority suffer because of the minority?"

Suffer? Suffer?! Are you kidding? You have strong social networks, you have churches, you have your own houses; you can meet anywhere outside of work or school; you could preach from the streetcorner legally, and yet you want to have a captive audience to whom to preach your beliefs. That's what you have in the workplace and in the schools. Why should I be subjected to your preaching where I work? I'm there to do my job, not to worship with you. Why should my child be indoctrinated into your faith, or even bother learning about it, when she's only five and can't understand it? You are welcome to teach your own kids what you want, but leave mine alone.

Also, as I've pointed out, you are in a minority sect, no matter which sect is yours, from Catholic to Seventh Day Adventist, from Lutheran to Pentecostal, from Episcopalian to Presbyterian, you are in a minority. Whose religion do you propose we put into the schools? It's either going to be some generic, watered-down version that trivialized what you actually believe, or it's going to offend more than just the Atheist parents. Most separation lawsuits--I may be repeating myself here, but it bears repeating--have been brought forward by religious parents of students who were part of a captive audience at school.

"Maybe it shouldn't be taught at school, but kids should not be punished for praying at school either!!!"

Um...if they are disruptive to the learning process, they most certainly should be. They can pray silently at any time. "Pray not on the street corner..." They can pray at home, they can pray at church, they can pray before and after school, and at during lunch. Why do you want them to pray aloud and have everyone join in with their ritual? News flash: students who want to do this are in the minority. We had them in two of the three high schools I attended, and they were a small group in both cases. Most people thought they were too self-righteous to hang around.

"I know my next comment will upset you and I truly mean no disrespect, but what is so wrong with your children being exposed to spirituality?"

My child has autism. Exposing her to spirituality is like exposing her to nuclear physics; she won't understand it and won't bother with any part of it, except as part of maybe a scripted act. Even if she was neurotypical, I would not want her exposed to religion any more than she already is. I don't care if she sees someone praying, but getting her to join in is reprehensible to me, until she can comprehend what's going on and decide for herself. If she does decide to embrace faith, I want her to be thinking for herself, not having someone else do the thinking for her.

"They should be able to make their own decisions, especially when they become adults."

Do your children live without rules? I doubt it. In my house, no one is exposed to religion unless they can first comprehend it.

"I am not mad at you for being an atheist and I would never insult you, I just feel sad that you do not seem to be open-minded regarding it. You don't have to believe, but I am tired of the minority wanting to have God's name removed from so many things because of the minority!!! That is not right, either. Maybe next time, just delete, if you are tired of seeing it...that is what I do, or turn the channel, etc. God Bless you."

Do you realize that "God Bless you" is actually insulting to Atheists? In any case, I do not have an open mind to exposing my five-year-old daughter to something she cannot possibly understand at her age and with her special needs. I did approach religion with an open mind, and I came to the conclusion that it's not for me. If and when my daughter does get to the point where she is an independent thinker, I hope she learns everything she can about everything she wants to learn about--I'm not going to restrict her exposure then. At this point, it would just be imitated acts and scripted speech--does that qualify as spirituality in your mind? I doubt it.

As far as having your god's name removed from things: do you realize that the Pledge of Allegiance and our paper currency didn't have "God" until the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s? That's right: in 1954, when McCarthyism was in full swing and religiosity was equated with patriotism, "God" was added to the Pledge ("under God" was not part of the original) and to our paper money (it was added to the coins in the latter part of the 19th century, but by a stealth maneuver on the part of two members of the National Reform Association, a group that failed to add an acknowledgement to Jesus to the Constitution).

This post wasn't as insulting as the next from this friend of a friend. I'm not going to go through the whole next post from the person who sent me the invitation. I just want to comment on one part of it:

"...for those who don't believe that's fine too...just don't try and change my beliefs either..."

Have I ever sent you an invitation to an Atheist event? Have I ever tried to go over my problems with the Bible before now? Have I ever posted a link on my profile that indicated that I thought religion should be abolished, that you're a fool for believing, or anything of the sort? Have I ever invited you to join a cause that had to do with Atheism? No. Why? Because I figured I'd respect your right to believe as you do. It's obvious that you find your faith important in your own life, and I can deal with the posts regarding your own opinions or feelings on the matter, but when you invite me to join a cause that clearly rolls over atheists and their children, how do you expect me to react?

This next bit is where it gets really offensive to me. The friend of the friend steps back in:

"Greg, is there a particular reason why you don't believe in God? Is that to [sic] personal to share? Sometimes I am ashamed of myself, because I do not proclaim Christ as my savior enough. I resent people thinking that my belief in Christ is some sort of crutch, or an ignorance...or that I am a 'sheep' in a herd of blind mind control, fairytale, etc. I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, and no I do not think anything was lost in translation, the Dead Sea Scrolls prove that. Greg, please do not be offended, I am not trying to change you...it's just tha tI have found most people that don't believe were 'abused' by someone with religion, etc. and of course being a Chrsitian, I would love for you to find the joy and love of God! plus, you kind of started it by disproving the truth in the video! :) Isn't this fun? lol"

I'm sure some atheists have insulted you, especially if you've argued with some online. I try to tell my fellow Atheists that ad hominem (personal) attacks do not help our reputation or help us to make our points; they only serve to make people angry and make us look angry ourselves. I have not insulted you. I have only pointed out that a video posted by two of my Facebook friends--that I would have, again, ignored if it weren't for an invitation to join a cause--was nothing but an urban legend. I find it incredibly odd that anyone would support the distribution of a video that passes off as fact something that is demonstrably false, but that aside, I did not, at any time, call any Christian a fool, part of a herd, ignorant, or anything else as part of the posts I made.

No, this is not fun for me, but I am making a stand because I want to make it clear why I'm offended. Telling me that most atheists you know have been "abused" by religion in some way belittles the intellectual journey many of us have undertaken to get to where we are, philosophically. It took many readings of the Bible, a great deal of research, a great deal of reflection, and many, many civil debates and discussions before I finally let go completely. I didn't want to reject my faith when I first understood the Bible to be fiction. I went to Bible studies. I sought preachers and people I found to be good examples of Christians. I went to various churches. It was inevitable, though: the more I read the Bible, the less believable it became, especially in light of extrabibilical research I'd done. The religion of the Hebrews was no different from that of any other surrounding culture, which made me wonder why the Hebrews considered them to be pagans or Gentiles. I found many contradictions, even within the same books of the Bible. I came to understand that even the evidence for a historical Jesus is flimsy at best. I don't go around trying to destroy the faith of others because of what I've found, but I expect others to leave me to my intellectual freedom.

The most common follow up questions are these two:

1) Then how did we get here?

I don't know. The difference between you and me is that you've created an answer or accepted an answer; you don't really know, either.

2) Where does your morality come from? The assumption here is that there can be no morality without gods--or, more specifically, the Christian god. I consider all gods to be myths.

My ethics come from empathy, which is innate in humans, as is altruism. We're an empathetic and altruistic species from an early age; we learn to go against this nature.

Hit and run comments

2009-10-01T18:28:00.003-04:00

Here's a comment someone recently left regarding an older post entitled, "I wish Sarah Palin would just go away":

Anonymous said...

you are just afraid of her because she has good intentions and you and others
like you.who wont work and just want a handout are afraid that the handouts will
dry up..Ps she is not going away..........

I love that people who tell me I'm afraid of whatever it is I oppose and make their comments anonymously. Don't they see the irony?

No, Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. Anonymous, I am not at all afraid of Sarah Palin. I don't think she's electable. I just think she's utterly annoying and woefully ignorant. I don't know what "good" intentions you mean; she's a pro-censorship theocrat who wants to privatize all public services. She has a "Damn the environment and full speed ahead" attitude that isn't good for the world ecology. She hasn't a clue when it comes to foreign affairs, and she has gotten behind the secessionist movement in Alaska--which borders on treason, as far as I'm concerned. Nope, I am not afraid of her. I am disgusted by her, and even moreso by amount of attention she gets in the media. She is a non-story. Get over it. She's probably run in the primaries, but her primary run will fall flat on its face. Of that, I'm certain.

Be thankful that I have a job right now?

2009-05-02T09:34:00.003-04:00

Warning: this post might make me sound like an arrogant person. I'm going to try to make my case without coming off as too self-centered, but I might not be able to pull it off. For that, I apologize in advance.

I can't tell you how many times I've been told to be thankful that I have a job since everyone finally realized that the economy is beginning to resemble the Great Depression. It bothers me every time I hear it for several reasons.

First, if it did not make business sense for my employer to keep me, I'd be gone. It's that simple. If I did not help to bring new revenue into the company, if I did not work to lock revenue in through technology offerings that can't be replaced easily or inexpensively, if I did not work hard enough to exceed expectations, it would make sense for my company to let me go. However, I fought hard to get this job in the first place. They rejected me. I worked to find out why, because my interviews went very well. It turned out that my employer at the time, who fired me because I was looking for another job, vindictively gave me a bad reference. I produced three new references for my employer, and I ended up with the job. I worked hard to get good at what I did, became a go-to person in my department in a matter of months, received a promotion in a few more, moved to the field, was promoted four years earier than the company standard for my position, and brought in many millions of dollars in new revenue for my company by helping to close business through the integrated technology solutions I offered.

Secondly, there's the implication in the statement, "Be thankful you have a job," that I should be thankful to some sort of deity for my employment. I have three problems with that notion. The first is that I am an Atheist, so I find it offensive on that level; why should I be thankful to something I consider a myth? The second is that no deity is doing my work for me; I am responsible for the excellent work I'm doing for my company. The third is that the responsibility for all of the unemployment that currently exists rests squarely on human beings, and telling me to be thankful to a deity for my job is taking that responsibility away from them. They need to be held accountable if they committed any wrongdoing, and the mistakes that they made that caused the current economic conditions need to be identified in full and corrected.

Finally, I worked my ass off to make myself stand out in my company. I went above and beyond with nearly every account I've touched, only refraining from doing so when the company had limitations on how I could implement their techonology--and even then, I provided excellent service. I pride myself on the job I do, and I wouldn't want to be associated with mediocre work. Now, that said, there is a scenario I can imagine where my company would get rid of my group altogether. I think they would be shooting themselves in the foot, and my colleagues in sales agree with me on that point. Even if it would happen: what? Am I supposed to be pissed off at someone because I don't have a job anymore? I would be, but it would be at the human beings who caused the mess in the first place.

I truly feel sympathy for the people who are currently unemployed, who are competing with so many people for the very few jobs that are out there right now. I have been unemployed and dirt poor, so I know how it feels. When it happened to me, I at least had minimum wage jobs available to me. Now, people are competing with hundreds of applicants for the same entry-level job. People are competing with a couple thousand applicants for professional and management positions. It's a grim situation, and I am sort of lucky I made the right decision to get with the right company when I did. The reality of the situation, though, is that I would still be able to find work in this harsh environment with my unique skill set. I wouldn't want to try; I'd rather keep my current position, but if I had to find something to do to survive, I could.

It is my assertion that anyone who is willing to be productive should be gainfully employed. The way to get to that point is through sound economic policy. We are responsible for coming up with that policy and enforcing it--we humans, and no one else.

I've changed my mind about Republicans shutting up

2009-04-19T12:43:00.002-04:00

I wrote an entry some time ago, just after the election, about how Republicans should just shut up, because that's what they told us Democrats to do after the elections of 2000 and 2004.

Now, I've changed my mind.

Please, please, please keep talking, Republicans. The entertainment value is overwhelmingly abundant and wildly, hysterically funny.

With Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage out there spewing conspiracy theory nonsense, with Limbaugh putting his foot in his mouth and Gingrich following suit, you're making 2012 that much easier.

And you have my full support in your willingness to run that farce of a candidate, Sarah Palin, again. As much as I really hate to see her in the news (she is so freaking annoying), I will take the splitting headaches just to watch your efforts go down in flames again.

Look, I'm going to be serious for a second. If you really want to be a viable party, if you want to be the party I thought I was voting for when I voted for George H.W. Bush (how wrong I was), then you have to get rid of the religious lunatics in your leadership. You have to get rid of the conspiracy theorists and the lying, hateful conservative talkers. You have to get rid of the free market ideologists and start engaging in capitalism with rational controls and protections for labor. You do not have to become Democrats, but you do have to get rid of the uncompromising ideology.

This country is not conservative. You did not lose because you weren't conservative enough, as some people would have you believe. You lost because you RUINED THE COUNTRY. That's right. You voted in irrational ideologues who had no business having access to the Treasury, who had no business deciding science policy, who had no business legislating their religion on us, who had no business passing bills of attainder (Terri Schiavo ring a bell), and you expect us to care when you throw your stupid little tea bag parties, where you whine and cry about how you're getting taxed unfairly? Most of the people at those parties received a tax cut under Obama's plan, and the only people whose taxes were raised had them go up four percent. Boo-hoo. I'll take a four percent tax hike for my income to go up to $250,000 per year.

The bottom line is that the more the crazies howl and scream, the more the rational Republicans out there--and I know some personally--will abandon them in favor of more compromise and more rational policy. There is nothing wrong with being fiscally conservative; I don't want the country to spend more money than it takes in, either. My problem with these recent protests is that all the protesters were nowhere to be found when Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress put us into that first ten trillion dollars worth of debt. They did nothing about it. Hypocrites.

Goodbye, Shadow

2009-04-07T20:36:00.003-04:00

Last night, I had to put down the first dog I've ever had, Shadow. He was a good dog, and I'll miss him. Anyone who has had a dog in the family understands.

My first thought when I got up this morning was that Shadow wasn't going to be part of my daily routine anymore. I wouldn't be letting him out of his kennel to go outside. I wouldn't be filling the water dish for him; I wouldn't be feeding him.

Shadow loved getting the newspaper. We have had a newspaper box next to the mailbox since we moved into our new home last year, so it's rare that he was getting the paper anymore, but that's something he won't do again.

It's for the best. His quality of life wasn't good anymore and keeping him around would have been selfish of us. We tried to save our cat, Fritz, when he only had a fifty percent chance of pulling through with a liver problem, and after a lot of expense, the heartbreak came anyway, and Fritz suffered the whole time. I didn't want to put Shadow through it. His hind legs stopped working properly last night. Everything he loved to do--chasing squirrels, getting the paper, playing fetch--all depended on his legs. He had skin issues, and he'd been listless, as well.

I sat there with his head on my foot, as he had lain so many times during our down time every evening for so many years before this past year, knowing I had to put him down, not waivering in that decision, but hurting over it anyway.

My wife and I went together, and we both had our hands on him as he died.

I really couldn't have asked for a better dog. He was lively for so many years, but also very obedient. Somehow, he knew his yard's boundaries without anyone really showing him, ever since he was a puppy. He was a great watchdog for a long time. When he went to the vet, they let him have the run of the place.

I know lots of people have lost their animal companions and that my situation is not unique; I know plenty of people, including me, who have lost human family members recently, too. I just had to write about it a little.

In loving memory

Shadow

pick of the litter

aka "Pouting Pooch"

aka "Crazy Pooch"

aka "Shadow Bear"

aka "Shadow-roo"

"Throw" was his favorite word.

"Go get it" was his favorite activity.

I will never forget the time when Shadow went to get our paper, didn't find it, and went somewhere to get someone else's. To this day, we have no idea where he went to get that paper.

I will never forget the big dog's bark that came out of his mouth at seven weeks.

I will never forget how he'd growl a warning when Heather acted like she was going to pinch him.

I will never forget how he jumped up and down on the bed with Heather in that hotel in Tennessee.

I will never forget how excited he became about going for rides.

I'll never forget how he howled when he was left alone.

The Daily Download: Ursuline

2009-04-01T22:29:00.002-04:00

I signed up for eMusic, and now I get their free daily track. So far, I am sad to report that I'm not impressed. I haven't received a standout track yet.

Today's download, Ursuline, by Malajube, has a couple parts that sound like music, but the rest of the song sounds like the musicians just began playing their instruments together pointlessly. The intro isn't terrible, and there's a mellow interlude that works for me, but the rest of the song is chaos. Maybe that's the point, but it didn't turn me on at all.

I will only say this once: don't let my critique of any song dissuade you from trying it out and enjoying it. Like any art, music is a subjective thing; different people are going to enjoy different sounds. I'm just hoping for a song I can enjoy one of these days. It's been like getting a lottery ticket. You have a small chance to win millions, but every chance to be disappointed.

The Scarlet A

2009-03-20T11:17:00.004-04:00

Today is the official "coming out" day of the OUT Campaign. I have been an out-of-the-closet, outspoken Atheist for fifteen years now, so it's not my coming out day, but I thought I would show support.

Someone stole my daughter's CDs

2009-03-17T20:39:00.003-04:00

My wife left her car unlocked accidentally when she came back to town Sunday evening, and overnight, someone got into her car and took a CD holder, mostly full of my daughter's favorite music.

Now, I'm not sure what the motivation would be to steal out of someone else's car in the first place, but once the thief discovered that the CDs had children's music on them, would it be unreasonable to think he/she might just quietly return the stolen items? Just leave them on the porch when we're not home?

I'm expecting too much out of someone who is unscrupulous enough to steal someone else's property in the middle of the night, I know, but man...I'm just so angry and saddened by this violation of our privacy.

People who have read this blog in the past know that my child has autism. She craves structure, and if certain music isn't playing when she wants it played, chaos ensues. Now, we do have some measure of discipline with her (she knows what "no" means and will often listen), but neither my wife nor I should have to deny her the music she likes because some jerk decided to come onto our property, open my wife's car door, and sift through her things in the console in between the seats, hoping for something valuable.

I'm sure the thief isn't going to read this article, but on the off chance that you are that person, are you happy? Are you happy with the copies you stole, which we made so we wouldn't damage the originals? Are you happy that you stole a kid's favorite music? Is your own kid enjoying it now?

It's just stuff. It is really just stuff. But hey, a person who would take my kid's stuff out of my wife's car might not care much about how wrong it would be to break into my house and take more of my kid's stuff. The thought of explaining to my kid that her favorite treasures are gone (little plastic toys she carriers around and collects; nothing very valuable to anyone but her, really) just makes me shudder, because she's not going to stop crying and screaming for awhile, and I'm not really going to be able to make her understand. She understands "broken", but not "gone", really.

A worse thought is that this person could break in when we're here, or when I am gone and my wife and kid are here, and do who knows what to them.

So now what? I'm thinking of canvassing the neighborhood, leaving a flyer on every door that explains exactly what this theif did. If nothing else, it will make the neighborhood aware that there are theives around. At best, someone might turn the culprit in to us.

I really just want my kid's music back. I can burn the CDs again, but it would be nice to know if this thief has a conscience.

Catholic Cardinal Knocks A Straw Man Down--I Think

2009-03-03T23:56:00.002-05:00

I will admit that I am one of few Atheists, it seems, who has not read anything written by Richard Dawkins. Sorry, Mr. Dawkins, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I think you'd just be preaching to the choir with me, so to speak, anyway. I did watch "The Root of All Evil", which is a Dawkins video, but I haven't touched the books. I think I've read enough books on evolution that I just have to keep up with the journals, and I'll be okay.

In any case, some Cardinal spoke on how evolutionary theory doesn't conflict with Catholicism, and he said something that floored me:

"We believe that however creation has come about and evolved, ultimately God
is the creator of all things," he said on the sidelines of the conference.
But while the Vatican did not exclude any area of science, it did reject as
"absurd" the atheist notion of biologist and author Richard Dawkins and others
that evolution proves there is no God, he said.
"Of course we think that's absurd and not at all proven," he said. "But other
than that ... the Vatican has recognized that it doesn't stand in the way of
scientific realities."

Now, wait a minute there, buddy. There's an "atheist notion" of biologist Richard Dawkins and others that evolution proves that your god doesn't exist? What?!?

Someone out there enlighten me, because I'm having trouble understanding why this Cardinal would say such a thing: did Richard Dawkins ever say that evolution proves that no god exists? I ask because I think he's setting up a straw man here. It would be absolutely absurd to say that evolutionary theory has anything to do with whether or not gods exist. It's not a question biologists would address when talking about evolution, and I seriously doubt Dawkins would ever say it.

Hey, maybe Dawkins did, though, but I'd have to hear his side of the story before I accept the word of someone who was part of the hierarchy in an institution involved in the biggest cover-up of child rape in the history of the world, as far as I know.

So anyway, great, the Catholic Church is all about the Darwin. So what? That's news? Did you really have to reiterate it after accepting evolution and teaching it in your schools for decades? That's right: I went to a Catholic high school in ninth grade, and we learned about evolution in that class. My teacher--and I'm sorry that I don't remember his name, because some of the things he said really stuck with me--said on the first day of class or close to it: "We will not be talking about creationism in this class. If you want to talk about creationism, go to the theology class down the hall. It does not belong in this classroom. You are here to learn about biology."

Mr....Ryan?...summed it up perfectly: biology should be taught in biology classrooms, not creationism. Creationism isn't science.

A couple other things I remember about Mr....oh, hell, I don't remember...was that he would say "Right there, in flashing green neon lights," while making flashing gestures with his hands. I also remember that he was the only teacher who noticed I was torn up inside when my mom had her brain tumor. He took me aside outside of the classroom and asked me what was going on, and I told him. My grades sunk the rest of that year in other classes, but at least I know he was on my side.

My friend Pete and I bought him this bowtie with little whales printed on it. He was a great sport; he wore the thing with a smile. Man, that guy was a good teacher and a good guy. I wish I could remember his name, because I'd thank him for teaching me evolution the right way the first time, and for being such a great teacher.

Anyway, the point is that evolution has been an accepted subject in Catholic school biology classrooms for at least twenty-three years, and I would suspect several more before that. Was there really confusion on how the Catholic Church stood on evolution as recently as Darwin's 200th birthday? And did the Cardinal who made this statement really have to bring Richard Dawkins into his statements? Of course the Catholic Church is going to think it's absurd that evolutionary theory disproves their god! Even if that were true, the Catholic Church would collapse virtually overnight, right? No god, no Catholicism. No more cover-ups of child rape.

I'm not just trying to make cheap shots at the Catholic Church by bringing up the pedophilia scandal. I am really, really angry that the Catholic Church not only didn't really do anything about the child rape, but also actively covered it up. Here's an institution that has missions that educate, feed, and clothe children around the world. Here's an institution that helped my dad's family to get to America when they were poor and struggling in a war-torn Germany. Here is an institution that has hospitals, including children's research hospitals. They have so much potential to do so much good, and they let something like child rape mar any chance they have at a decent reputation. I disagree with the Catholic belief system (and every theistic belief system), but I could tolerate Catholicism if they didn't cover up child rape--and if they didn't try to actively involve themselves in political decisions that affect people's private lives, but the child rape is a far more serious issue.

All they would have had to do about the child rape was to defrock the priest and turn them in. If they were so concerned about the doctrine regarding keeping confessions secret, they could have issued pennance that demanded that the offenders turn themselves in. There is just no excuse I'd accept. If they'll cover this sort of thing up, would they also cover it up if a priest went around stabbing children? I have to wonder.

Putting words into the mouths of Atheists

2009-03-01T14:55:00.005-05:00

A long time ago, I voted Republican. I actually voted for George H. W. Bush (not his idiot son) twice. It's a decision I regret, and the words in the image above that I saw on RepublicanOperative.com reinforced the reasons why I regret that decision. George H.W. Bush once said that he considered atheists neither patriots nor citizens. If I could retroactively take away my vote, I would do it for that reason. I haven't voted for a Republican since.

Theocrats have taken over the GOP completely. They're the reason I never registered as a Republican, and they're the reason I will probably never vote with the GOP again, even if they do get rid of their corruption problems, their lie machines, and their ideology of supply-side economics. They obviously don't want the likes of me under their political tent.

That said, let's parse this statement, shall we?

"Atheism: the belief..."

No. Atheism is not a belief. It is a reaction to beliefs. Atheists do not accept the claims of theists. That is all that atheists have in common. There is no system of beliefs. There is no requirement to know anything about the origin of life or of the universe. All that is required is that we do not hold the beliefs of theists to be true.

"Atheism: the belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to
nothing..."

No. Atheists do not have to believe anything about origins at all. We don't have the answers regarding how the universe came to be. We don't know anything about what happened before the universe began to expand. I argue that theists do not, either, but they fill that gap in their knowledge with a god or gods. Atheism, again, is simply not accepting the claims of theists. All I had to do to become an atheist is read the Bible, do some research, and realize that the book is not consistent with reality. After I was through with the Bible, I examined other religions and found them equally lacking in substance. It's all about faith at some point, and I have not found faith to be a useful tool in my life. What I have found is that faith keeps some people from accepting empirical evidence, requiring them to have a separate set of facts from everyone else.

"...and then nothing magically exploded for no reason..."

No. Theists believe that nothing magically exploded. Theists--well, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theists--believe that their god magically spoke the universe into being. Yes, he spoke, and the universe came to be, according to their mythology. If that's not magic, I don't know what is.

The "no reason" part is about right; unless someone can prove the existence of gods, I'm not seeing a point to the existence of the universe. It just is, and I'm in it, so I deal with it the best way I know how.

"...creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged
itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits which then turned
into dinosaurs."

No. There's no magic necessary. All life took was carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and a few traces of other elements, plus energy, plus time, to exist. Theists believe life came about through magic. Humans were created from clay and life was breathed into them, according to the theology of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. That's magic. According to evolutionary theory, life changed over time, present life had common ancestry, and life is very, very old. Dinosaurs didn't come along until well after the first life. The first life was present around three billion or so years ago, and it didn't even become multicellular until around six hundred million years ago. That's a very long time for genes to recombine and mutate, and for genetic material to be added, which happens with each reproduction. Again, however, atheists don't have to know anything about evolutionary theory. All atheists have to do is not be convinced by the mythology that life magically came into being after being formed in clay. Well, human life, anyway. How the rest of life came to be, their holy books don't say. They just say that they were created.

"Makes perfect sense."

What makes perfect sense is to say that I don't know how the universe came to be, I don't know exactly how life began on this planet, but I do know that I don't have to accept theistic explanations that clearly do involve magic. To recap, theists believe:

Their god spoke the universe into being from nothing.
Their god breathed life into a clay statue of a man and cause it to live.

Theists absolutely must believe in magic to believe these things to be true. Atheists merely have to say that they have no evidence for magic, have no conclusive evidence regarding origins, and have no reason to accept the claims of theists as anything other than myth.

A Message To Ray Comfort re: Richard Dawkins

2009-02-27T05:57:00.003-05:00

Dear Ray,

I am probably not the only atheist out there saying these words to you in one way or another, but I have to get this off my chest and out in the open: there is a huge difference between someone not taking you seriously and someone who is afraid to debate you.

It has long been the policy of Richard Dawkins and other luminaries in the field of biology to refuse to debate creationists, because meeting creationists in the court of public opinion gives the appearance that there is an actual conflict in the scientific community between evolution and creationism, and there's not. It confuses an already woefully scientifically illiterate community, and it does not do anything to advance the knowledge of anyone. It's a colossal waste of Richard Dawkins' time to meet you on your terms, and worse, it could do more harm than good for the scientific community, especially in the United States, where there is a constant political push to take the teaching of evolution out of biology classrooms.

Come on, Ray, admit it: this whole thing was a ploy to grab publicity for your new book, right? It's pretty transparent to me that no matter what happens, you have gained more free publicity from this stunt than you ever would have if you'd simply have stuck to the Christian radio and television circuit. This story brings your book into the mainstream, whether Dawkins debates you or not. I wonder if you researched anything about Dawkins before you challenged him. Why not Hitchens? He engages in debates all the time with Dinesh D'Souza, for example; he'd probably debate you. You picked the famous atheist with the no-debate policy instead. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not, but you do have a history of insincerity.

I remember well your debate with the Rational Response Squad members on national television, if I can even call it a debate. You used the time to preach and quote from the Bible, rather than doing what you said you came to do: use science to prove the existence of your god. That move wasn't surprising to me; after all, I was one of many atheists who watched that banana video of yours, where you demonstrated clearly for the world that you don't know the difference between natural selection and human cultivation. You got one thing right: the banana as you described it and demonstrated it is intelligently designed; you just got the designer wrong. Humans made the banana what it is today, as is true with just about every crop we now consume. We did similar things with dog, cat, horse, and pigeon breeds. I mention pigeons because Darwin mentioned them in his book to explain how we can modify species through artificially selecting out traits we desire in that species, then going into how nature selects for traits by limiting the ability to survive to reproductive age.

By the way, I have a bone to pick with World Net Daily and everyone who has repeated their announcement that you bumped Richard Dawkins from the number one spot on Amazon. First, Dawkins' bestseller was there for how long? Since it came out? How long was your book in the number one spot, Ray? I went to Amazon to check the rankings, and by the time I read the article on WND, your book had fallen to number five. Not that it matters much to me, but it's just something that people keep repeating, and it didn't last long--although I wouldn't be surprised if all of this free publicity helped keep it close to the top longer than it would have been there otherwise.

I have to hand it to you, Ray: you know how to market yourself well. I have to say that I'm personally insulted by the title of your book, and when I read the sample page, where you say that atheism is the epitome of stupidity, I was rather disgusted, and certainly wouldn't buy it after reading that little piece of incivility.

I'd still debate you for ten grand, though. I could put the cash to good use.

Sincerely,
Greg Reich

Why are so many Christians obsessed with the "sins" of other people?

2009-02-22T10:01:00.004-05:00

I've read the Bible many times--twenty-seven that I can remember, all before the age of twenty-four. I have read many verses hundreds of times, having read in church as a teen and later, after rejecting religion, to refer to then when apologists used them as arguments. What I can't remember reading in the parts where the Jesus character is traipsing around Galilee is any mention of forcing people to stop committing sins.

Of course, to me, "sin" is a meaningless concept; it requires a transgression against a deity, and I don't have evidence of deities; they're all man-made myths. I suppose it could be extended to include transgressions against other people, but that's not common usage.

In any case, so many Christians seem to want to apply their concept of sin to the law, in spite of the fact that there is nothing attributed to the Jesus character that suggest that they should force other people to their way of thinking. I remember something about "Judge not, lest ye be judged." I remember something about not pointing out the mote in your neighbor's eye while ignoring the log in your own. I remember things about giving all your money to the poor, about loving your neighbor and your enemy, turning the other cheek, and so on and so forth, but I just can't seem to recall a word about forcing other people to stop sinning.

Before someone brings up the notion that Jesus didn't disregard Old Testament law (forgetting for the moment that I have no reason to buy into the idea that Jesus actually existed), let's remember that he saved a woman accused of adultery from stoning, and forgave her for her sins.

Jesus would be a really cool character if it weren't for the doctrine of hell, the weird story about him cursing a fig tree, the doctrine of hell, and the talk about hating your family if they don't believe. The values his character advanced in the Bible were humility, love, forgiveness, and charity. These, of course, are all things just as easily attributed to empathy, and do not actually require moral teaching. The concepts of turning the other cheek and loving your enemy are a bit more difficult, and seemingly counterintuitive.

Of course, I didn't create this post to be a cheerleader for Jesus; my point is that if you're going to call yourself a Christian, why not follow the teachings attributed to him and leave other people well alone? Yes, you're commanded to witness to people, but you're also supposed to proverbially shake the dust from your feet and move on when people don't listen to you. You're supposed to hang out with the sinners and live by example among them, not legislate your morality on them. Persuasion and example: that's what I got out of what I read in the Bible.

What prompted this post was a story about how a priest was arrested for praying and passing out literature in front of an abortion clinic. I suspect there's more to this story; he was probably obstructing the entrance while doing these things, which you're not supposed to do anywhere. If you're going to protest abortion--or anything else--you can't do it on private property, especially if you're obstructing the entrances to a place of business or medical services.

My question to Christians is: how is it your place to judge abortion clinics, and how is it your place to keep women from getting abortions? You believe it's murder, sure, but that's you judging other people, and carrying out your judgment. If you really believe in eternal rewards and punishments, then you'll let your god take care of things and worry about yourself, as the Jesus character in the Bible told you. "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Don't point out the mote in your neighbor's eye. There's a log in your own. Maybe.

For my part, I want abortion to stay safe and legal. I don't think I should have control over a woman's decisions about her own body, and I think she should be protected from the will of others over decisions regarding her health and private life. I don't think anyone really loves and embraces abortion, but all of the alternatives a woman has with unplanned pregnancy are difficult, and the situations leading to that decision have complications and issues, as well. There's inequality in sexual relationships, for one thing. Males do not have to make a decision that involves either an invasive medical procedure, physical changes to the body followed by a grieving process, or a life taking care of a child, often before becoming financially stable or educated enough to have marketable skills.

Let's face it: abortion is invasive. What woman would do it for fun? Women who do choose it as an option are already scared, have conflicting emotions, and are often alone in making that decision; you're compounding the situation with protests and guilt trips. What is worse is that if abortion were outlawed, we'd be back to women--young, scared, often not well-off--going to drastic measures to give themselves abortions. They'd either be done by back-alley doctors, or they'd be self-induced with coat hangers, chemicals, or other dangerous methods. Some Christians out there cheer on that risk, but they're forgetting about how they're supposed to be without sin if they're going to cast stones. I haven't met a Christian yet who says that he or she is sinless. Abortion should be safe and legal, from my perspective, because I don't want women to suffer and men aren't equally responsible for the consequences of pregnancy. From the Christian perspective, I would think abortion should be safe and legal so that women would have the chance to be forgiven and "saved" sometime before death. I don't want to presume to think for Christians, so I'm asking: am I off base here? After all, "Jane Roe" became a Christian, right?

The second option, adoption, comes with its own issues. Statistically speaking, pregnancy has more risks than abortion. More women die of complications from pregnancy than from complications from abortions. A woman's body is permanently affected by pregnancy carried all the way to term. Then, there's the possibility of grief from giving the baby up. I was adopted. I met my biological mother. She grieved for about two years. Now, in her case, she wouldn't have aborted me, but it still should have been her choice (and it was, in Ohio, in 1971, when she would have aborted me if she had chosen that option), and if she had, I would never have known.

The third option, having the mother raise the child, is expecting a lot out of women who are most likely not at a point in their lives when they can handle it financially or emotionally. It's not easy to be a single mother--just ask any single mother with little means to raise children. Unwanted children are more likely to be abused. The children often grow up without fathers. Now, I'm not saying that fathers are always a good influence, but if a couple is in a stable relationship, it's so much easier to raise one or more children. There's usually more money, the husband and wife can take turns with the children or adopt separate responsibilities to make each other's lives easier; it's definitely a better situation than single parenthood without support. It is possible to raise a child successfully in a single-parent household. I think my half-sister turned out fine, and I know several other people from single-parent homes who are okay, too. Support from other family members and from friends made all the difference, though. It should be totally up to the woman to judge whether she has the means, stability, and emotional support network to raise a child on her own.

Single mothers are often put down by Christians. I remember Dan Quayle doing it; Pat Robertson and other televangelists do it; ordinary, average Christians do it. I have heard Christians speak in hushed, shocked, affronted tones about the young woman who was pregnant, who was going to have the baby. I have heard them asking: who is going to support that child?

You. Christians, if that woman is in your church, it should be you. If you're going to be pro-life, be pro-life. Step up and take care of the ones who are born, rather than focusing on the unborn and the "sinning" mothers. Babysit the child while the woman goes to work, help her with advice that comes from experience raising children, and forgive her for her "sin" of promiscuity. After all, it is not for you to judge. Right?

Ray Comfort Offers Money to Debate Richard Dawkins?

2009-02-21T14:56:00.004-05:00

Ray Comfort offered Richard Dawkins, who has quite a lot of money already, to debate him in public.

It is my opinion that Ray Comfort does not sincerely want to engage Dawkins in a formal debate. Oh, I'm sure he wants to appear in public with Dawkins, but I'm dead sure he doesn't actually want to debate him.

The last time Ray Comfort offered to "prove" the existence of his god in public, it was in a debate on ABC with two members of the Rational Response Squad, Kelly and Sapient. Comfort promised he would only use science, but what he did when he came up to the podium was preach. That's it.

Ray Comfort has proven himself to be someone who is only seeking to promote himself and his material, and he is using atheists to do it. When he had the chance to engage in a sincere debate with atheists in front of a national television audience, he chose to forego debate and engage in proselytizing.

I am still of the opinion that the Rational Responders should have walked off in disgust, but it's easy to talk from the peanut gallery. I've been on television and on the radio, and I can tell whoever will listen that it's so much different when you're actually there. And hey, Kelly was just...okay, I'm gonna stop there before I get in trouble with my wife.

I hope Richard Dawkins flat-out refuses, and makes a statement about Ray Comfort's track record of insincerity when it comes to debates. It's a ploy for Comfort to make more money, and nothing more.

I'd debate Ray Comfort for $10,000 dollars in public, but that would be to my benefit, not his; he's actually famous. I'd give him a taste of his own medicine, though: I'd shamelessly self-promote. Why bother trying to engage the guy in serious debate when he's just going to preach?

Alexandra Pelosi's Documentary: A Review

2009-02-19T22:54:00.002-05:00

By now, this news is a bit old, but I just watched Alexandra Pelosi's documentary on HBO, Right America: Feeling Wronged, and I wanted to give my take on it.

At the very beginning of the documentary, Pelosi lets us know that the views expressed by the people on the campaign trail are not representative of Republicans in general. She's right, but the people she caught on film do represent the remainder of the country that actually approved of the job George W. Bush was doing till the very end of his term.

There are two types of Republicans that do seem to be typical. The first is the type that wants to make sure that their taxes do not get raised. These Republicans are not the super-wealthy; they are usually small business owners who have voted Republican for years, who remember when the GOP was all about small business, and not large corporations. They are stuck on automatic when it comes to voting (just like some Democrats will automatically vote that way), so they don't recognize how far the Republicans who actually have had power have deviated from the fiscal responsibility and--dare I say it--the social liberalism that used to be part of the party line.

The second type of Republican makes up the majority of the party now. These are the social conservatives. They are vocal, and they vote on the issues of abortion (their number one motivation), faith, homosexuality, and maybe guns--although guns aren't a requirement for this bunch, if they're sincere about being pro-life. In any case, this type of Republican believes Christianity is the only way, and that their morality should be legislated on the rest of us. They will vote Republican because the GOP has recognized that using the faith of this crowd secures their votes.

Now, the type of Republicans Alexandra Pelosi interviewed varied, but she caught some of the true party fanatics. These are people who believe everything Fox News spoon feeds them. These are the people that believe every viral email that comes into their inbox, and they have no problem passing these insane messages on without researching them. These are people who equate tolerance with being politically correct.

One of the women talked about how the Christian way is the only way. That's dictatorship, sister. If you have to force your religion down the throats of others, if you can't win people over through persuasion or, as your Bible prescribes (read the New Testament), living the example, then it's not much of a religion, is it?

A few of the guys were blatantly, unapologetically racist. The one black guy in Mississippi is right: this sort of racism exists everywhere, but in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, if you were to say, "I am not ready for a black president," or "I'm not voting for a nigger," or "I wouldn't vote for a black man or a woman," they wouldn't have a political career, and it wouldn't be good for them, politician or no, to say it on camera.

The smears were everywhere. The viral emails were summarized on t-shirts, buttons, and signs held up in crowds. Barack Obama was labeled a socialist. He was labeled the antichrist. He was equated to Hitler.

One word about the Hitler thing: I just don't know whether to fall over laughing at how ridiculous people are who compare Obama to Hitler, or puke in their faces at the disgusting thought. Hitler made his intentions clear in a book. It's called Mein Kampf, and its English translation is available for free online. He talks about how he was "doing the Lord's work" in eradicating the Jews. Barack Obama wrote books, too. I don't recall him saying anything about eradicating anyone. Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat and thumbed his nose at treaties; Obama is inclusive as he can be and is a constitutional attorney.

No President is perfect, and Obama wasn't my first choice among the Democrats in the primaries, but some of the ridiculous things people say about him just make me want to smack sense into them--and I'm firmly against violence. I just don't know what else would persuade them.

Maybe this documentary will help Republicans to look in the mirror and see what sort of ignorance they at least tolerate, at most foster. I think Pelosi was more than fair to a group of people who thinks her mother is evil incarnate.

Clearing up misconceptions about evolution on Darwin's birthday

2009-02-12T20:57:00.004-05:00

Between site visits at work, I typically listen to progressive talk radio (1310 AM WDET) while I'm driving. Well, today, for some weird reason, my favorite station decided to broadcast NASCAR instead of Thom Hartmann, much to my displeasure, so I changed the band with the intention of listening to NPR, which is my usual fallback. However, the station that came on when I changed the band to FM was 103.5, WMUZ, and it was Bob Dutko, talking about evolution.

Now, I should disclose here that I have been on Bob Dutko's show five times now. I have had conversations with him--as the opposing viewpoint--on evolution, separation of state and church, the notion of dinosaurs and humans coexisting (peacefully?), and the existence of his god (twice). The reason my radio was tuned to his station on the FM band was because the last time I switched to FM was to listen to his show on the way to my appearance on it.

After hearing Bob speak today, it became clear to me that we're going to have to have another conversation about evolution. He brought up several points that I need to address, but one that stuck in my mind was his use of a Stephen Gould quote, followed by a misrepresentations of the idea of punctuated equilibrium. Another notion he tied into his discussion about Gould was the idea of transitional fossils and why they may or may not be in the fossil record.

First, punctuated equilibrium is the idea that mass extinction events leave biological niches to be filled, and species will undergo relatively rapid physiological changes as they fill them, if they have enough genetic variation/adaptations to replace the extinct species' specializations. For example, with a small mammalian scavenger species that could not thrive as a predator in an environment full of them, but is aggressive/fast/strong enough to become a predator after a mass extinction, members of the species with adaptations that enable them to be predators will fill that niche, and the rest of the active genes that go along with those adaptations will be passed on. The ones with the most predatory behavior are likely to separate with those who have a more passive tendency to scavenge, so their physiology will follow a different path from their more passive relatives. Plenty of experiments have demonstrated that certain physiological characteristics go along with certain adaptations; foxes, for example, when bred for submissive behavior similar to that of domesticated dogs, will produce offspring with droopier tails and ears, shorter snouts, and more clownish behavior--traits that are typically found in omega males in wolf packs.

Getting back to Bob: he was talking about transitional fossils, and how he though scientists explained them away. He quoted Gould (he brought this same quote up during our broadcast conversation about evolution). It was something about how Gould was complaining that the lack of transitional fossils in the record is an aggravating problem for biologists. He went on to say that Gould believed in punctuated equilibrium, which Bob represented as species just evolving slowly, then evolving all of a sudden, out of the blue, and that's why there's no fossil record of them.

No, no, a million times, no.

I'm setting the record straight here, and I hope I get the opportunity again to do it on his show (our next show is about the existence of Jesus, which I'm contesting as being nothing but mythology).

Bob expects to find freakish, half-evolved forms in the fossil record if evolution is true. The problem with this expectation is that it ignores that only about ten to fifteen percent of DNA in a given species is active, and that different genes will be active in relation to different manifested adaptations. If the active adaptation is an aggressive nature, a whole set of physiological characteristics will follow. There are only so many viable combinations of active genes, so whatever the result of evolutionary change will be a fully formed specimen, but with different active genes. Plenty of forms have been deemed "transitional", but controversy rages over them because there's no way (currently) to determine with certainty whether a form is an intermediary between two species. Perhaps a DNA simulation will yield the answer someday, but for now, we have comparative anatomy, more or less.

So, half-evolved forms are not what I would expect to find in the fossil record, because the changes that occur at the genetic level must manifest themselves in the form of a viable specimen with the ability to reproduce, not some freakish, half-formed animal with adaptations somewhere between one species and another.

As far as Bob's contention that Gould believed that animals evolved slowly, then suddenly--POOF!--changed into something else is concerned, Gould went on to say in the same literature that as surprising as it is, transitional fossils have been found. Furthermore, punctuated equilibrium would still take a couple million years, which is rapid when compared to the average life cycle of a given warm-blooded species (twenty-six million years). The odds of finding the fossils of a species that has a couple million years of existence and relatively rapid physiological change are more remote than the odds of finding fossilized remains of a species that existed for twenty-six million. Fossilization just doesn't occur that often.

With artificial selection (horse breeds, dog breeds, and Darwin's famous example of pigeon breeds), it is easy to see transitional forms--but if you dug up the skeleton of a Chihuahua and a Great Dane, would you be able to tell that that either of them came from wolves? Would you be able to identify the forms between the wolf and the Great Dane or the wolf and the Chihuahua as transitional forms? If we didn't know already that these dog breeds were the result of human intervention, creationists would argue that any forms you found were separate species that happened to be similar, because comparative anatomy means nothing to them. They would argue that they are separate, specially-created species--and they would be wrong.

On Faith and Values

2009-02-11T14:22:00.003-05:00

Faith is not a value.

The reason faith is not a value is that people can have faith in anything they accept without evidence (or in spite of it). Faith can lead people to believe anything that many people would value or few people would. They can believe in peace and love, but they could also believe that homosexuality and adultery should be punishable by death, for example.

Faith has been on all sides of every issue at any given time. During the anti-communist hysteria in the United States of the 1950s, the focus was not on the totalitarianism of the USSR or its forced economic ideology, but on its "godlessness". It was during this period of American history when "In God We Trust" was adopted as the national motto and placed on our currency. It was at this time that the Pledge of Allegiance--already illegal for schools to make children recite because of freedom of speech issues--began to include the words "under God".

During the period of our history when slavery was legal, abolitionists and slaveowners alike used faith to justify their positions. There are rules in the Bible for slavery, and the slaveowners would cite these rules as justification for their practice. The abolitionists would focus on the New Testament, where wealth was condemned, equality encouraged.

The Irish Catholics and the Southern Baptists fought each other for decades, often violently, during the 1800s, all over which version of the Bible to use in a public school setting. It's one of the many reasons both sides began to accept separation of state and church as a good thing, especially in public schools.

Faith can lead to delusion. Some people believe so strongly in their chosen ideology that they will ignore even the strongest evidence against their faith-based convictions. Biblical literalism is one example. No matter how much it is pointed out to biblical literalists that the Earth cannot be six thousand years old, that there was no global flood, or that human beings can't survive in the digestive tracts of sea creatures, based on scientific observations, they will dismiss the science, often demonizing it in the process.

Since faith is subjective, it leads to arbitrary values. Believers will often argue that moral relativity is the hallmark of atheism, and that it's a bad thing, but they never seem to analyze the moral relativism inherent in faith. Here is how religion is divided around the world:

Christianity: 35,000 denominations, most under eleven sects
Islam: Three major sects; twelve denominations (at least); various schools of thought under each
Judaism: At least seven, with various schools of thought under each
Hinduism: 3 major sects with several denominations under each
Buddhism: 3 major sects with many subdivisions
Shintoism: 25 groups
Thirty-four other major religions with thousands of subdivisions and cults.

Faith does not lead everyone to the same end; if anything, it divides everyone. It is not the only thing that divides people; economic and political ideologies also make their contribution, but these are also a brand of faith, complete with their own apologists and preachers.

I am not going to tell you that dropping faith will lead to worldwide unity. I doubt that it would. What I would like to explore is what values might be considered universal, and why.

What seems to be almost universal to human beings is empathy. According to research in neuroscience and psychology, empathy is at least partially an automatic response. There are exceptions, such as psychopaths and sociopaths, but empathy does appear to be something that the vast majority of humans the world over seem to have.

To what values can empathy lead? All cultures have laws against homocide; people do not want to have their lives taken from them, so they see it as wrong when someone takes a life from someone else. There are shades of gray here; some people would include termination of pregnancy as the "murder" of the unborn; most people would allow a justification for self-defense; some would justify execution for certain crimes (especially murder). In any case, murder is outlawed universally to some degree.

In light of the universality of the outlaw of murder, how can anyone justify war? My personal take on war is that the instigator must be a sociopath, a psychopath, or paranoid-delusional. That opinion comes only from the idea that in order to send soldiers to kill and to die, a person must not have much empathy, if any, or must be so scared out of his (or her, I guess, but I can't think of a female instigator of war off the top of my head) mind that he imagines threats or creates them, then works very hard to draw everyone into his delusion and paranoia.

The next near-universal value based on empathy is the idea that stealing is wrong. There are shades of gray and different schools of thought here, too, but for the most part, people don't want other people to take their stuff, and most won't take from other people as a result. I think people feel less empathy when shoplifting, because they aren't thinking about their theft in terms of doing harm to another individual; they see a business making profit, and their petty theft isn't going to hurt, they believe. They don't think about how the reduction in profits will cause an increase in prices for honest people; they don't think about how when insurance covers stolen items, premiums go up for everyone contributing to the pool.

Charity comes from empathy. People want to to good for other people, not only because it feels good, but because they would like other people to do good for them.

The willingness to pass knowledge to other people can come from empathy; people who want to learn will share their knowledge in return.

Empathy is not relative like faith. Perhaps if people went with their empathy instead of faith, they would get along to a greater agree.

Ken Ham--unsurprisingly--gets it wrong about evolution

2009-02-06T22:00:00.002-05:00

Ken Ham, the founder and CEO of Answers In Genesis, a creationist organization, recently wrote an article that appeared on Forbes.com. It may be found here. This is my reply to it, since it would not fit in the comments section, and I like to share.

As usual, Ken Ham displays his ignorance of how science works and does his best to defame evolutionary biologists in the process.

The first point Ham attempts to make is that evolution leads to moral relativism. I say we have it anyway, regardless of worldview. For example, people who call themselves Christians have as many different different views on what is sinful and what is moral as there are sects of Christianity, if not as many as there are individual Christians. Christian moral relativity is great enough to have divided Christianity among approximately 35000 sects worldwide, each with its own unique background and doctrine. They have different versions of the Bible, from the King James to the Catholic version to the New International--they can't even agree on which anthology reflects their beliefs, let alone whether to interpret each literally or contextually.

The reason why I don't kill people, steal from them, or otherwise harm them is because I have empathy (it's also why I'm likely to help them). I can put myself into their situations and understand how the consequences of my actions will affect them. Humans would not have thrived as a species without empathy and cooperation.

His second point about what is being taught in science classrooms is poorly supported by a plaque in Darwin's house and a vague reference to how evolution is taught, but that wasn't my experience in high school biology, or even college biology. Religion was not discussed because it requires faith, and faith is not within the scope of science, by definition. Science is about what can be observed, not about what people accept as true without evidence. We couldn't possibly bring religion into a science classroom (or any classroom, for that matter), since there is so much division among religious people about origins. Origins are not a discussion in a classroom involving evolution anyway, since evolution is about changes in species over time, and not how they came to be in the first place. It's an obvious progression from learning about changes to inquiring about origins, but since nobody really knows exactly how life began on Earth, origins aren't typically the subject of high school biology texts.

Ken Ham's next point represents his transition from ignorance about evolution and how it is taught to defamation of those who teach science and those who learn it. His example of the killer in a 2007 Finland school shooting (I have not researched this incident) fails, because clearly, the killer did not understand evolution at all. If by killing people he believed that he was a "natural selector", he clearly did not understand what is meant by "natural selection". In natural selection, sentient purpose does not drive the process; when purpose enters into it, it is artifical selection. Ironically, this killer selected himself out of the gene pool by being caught (or killing himself; again, I haven't researched the incident), thereby eliminating his chances of mating and passing on his genes. Of course, ideas aren't heritable traits, but perhaps his urge to kill other people and his apparent lack of empathy toward others might be.

In his fourth attempt to defame evolution, Ken Ham again uses an example of people misusing evolution to promote an agenda that displays their ignorance of how it actually works. Evolution is not progressive; there is no species "more evolved" than any other. What one might say is that a species is more specialized (i.e., has adaptations more suitable) for a given environment, but to claim superiority in evolution would be folly. In any case, scientists today do not subscribe to the idea of racial superiority in relation to evolution; the human genome project should have erased any such idea. The idea of "survival of the fittest" isn't even Darwin's; in natural selection, the heritable adaptations that are passed to the next generation that allow it to survive, in its turn, to reproductive age are what matter most.

None of the examples Ken Ham presents of how people misuse and misunderstand evolutionary theory have any bearing on whether or not evolutionary theory is valid. The theories regarding the mechanisms of evolution find validity in their predictive power and in the evidence that reinforces them. The validity of any scientific theory is independent of public opinion.

Questions That Atheists Should Answer?

2009-02-05T22:53:00.003-05:00

I use Google Alerts to get news about subjects that interest me. One of these alerts is a search for "atheist", because, in case you don't know already, I am one. I do see a lot of news articles, but the search also includes blogs. I have toyed with the idea of excluding blogs from the searches, since many of them are just people like Ray Comfort, painting caricatures of atheists with their outrageous stereotypes, putting words in our mouths that many of us--the atheists I know, anyway--would never say.

In any case, I ran across a video from a young man who had five questions he believed atheists should answer. He wanted a YouTube video response or a response in his comments, but I don't think my responses would fit in one comment, I don't want to post several, and I'm definitely not doing a video at this hour--but I thought I'd answer his questions. I will be posting this link in his comments, so I hope he'll run across this page.

Question 1: "Atheists believe that the universe began millions and millions of years ago. Now, how would you know this for a fact, or is it just a guess?"

Greg's Take: Let's parse this question first, because I have some issues with it.

First, there's the "Atheists believe" part. I have been hanging with Atheists long enough to know that we're as diverse a group of individuals as any other group can be; the only thing we have in common is our rejection of theism. There's no worldview that you can assign to all atheists. Some Atheists know very little about cosomology and don't care. Many Atheists don't know a thing about evolution, either, and don't care. They leave these things to astrophysicists and biologists, respectively.

Secondly, there's the word, "believe". Many of us reject the word, "believe", for its implication of acceptance without evidence. I know I do. I have no place for faith in my life, and "believe" is something I'm trying really hard to remove from my vocabulary, because it doesn't do justice to the amount of research I put into the things I know.

Thirdly, there's the idea of the universe beginning. Scientists don't know if the universe had a beginning. They don't. Seriously. All they know for certain is that the universe expanded. How do they know? You know that famous telescope named Hubble? That telescope was named after the scientist who, through the discovery of a phenomenon known as red shift, found out that everything in the universe appeared to be moving away from everything else, and on a certain trajectory. Everything seemed to be moving away from a center.

Fourth of all, it's not "millions and millions", but "billions and billions". The universe started to expand about 13.7 billion years ago.

Finally, no, it's not a guess. Red shift is real. The universe is expanding and has been. Scientists--notice that I didn't say "Atheists", because not every Atheist is well-versed in physics/cosmology--know that the universe is at least 13.7 billion years old because a) the speed of light is a constant, b) we can measure the distance from Earth to the stars we can see with Hubble, c) light had to travel the distance necessary for us to see it, and d) no plausible alternative explanation backed by evidence can explain how light could reach us without traveling this distance. In order for light to be here from where the universe began to expand, it would have had to travel faster than light. I repeat: light would have to travel faster than light.

Question 2: Why are atheists like Richard Dawkins actually afraid of admitting to the fact that they could possibly be wrong and that there is a god?

Greg's Take: Let me begin by answering that there are no Atheists like Dawkins. He's an international Atheist celebrity. He's a household name. There are a few with his level of fame: Hitchens, Harris, Madelyn Murray O'Hair, some comedians (e.g., George Carlin), but not many with his knowledge of biology, his soft-spoken manner, and his intellect.

I would argue that Dawkins would say--actually, he has said--that he is 99.9% sure that there is no designer, like a good scientist would say about anything. He also says he's 99.9% sure there are no fairies. Scientists do not rule out possibilities, but science deals only with what can be observed and quantified, so things people accept on faith are outside the realm of scientific thought.

For my part, I say that the burden of proof is on those making the claim that their god exists. Bring on your evidence, because I haven't seen any. It always comes down to faith.

Question 3: Why do atheists think that it is illogical for Christians and religious people to believe in god, because they can't see him, feel him, hear him, et cetera, believe that we don't have proof of god, when apparently, atheists believe and have faith in the big bang theory and evolution? Atheists love to preach it and teach it in schools, so wouldn't that make atheism a religion?

Greg's Take: We come back in this question to the mistaken noting of Atheists believing things. Think of it more like this: Atheists, for the most part, from what I've seen and experienced, trust scientists. At least, those among us who know science (or are scientists ourselves! Not me--I'm an IT professional) trust scientists, because scientists deal in what is observable, quantifiable, and verifiable. I will admit that many Atheists get overzealous in their defense of evolution and the big bang (which I prefer to refer to as the expansion of the universe as we know it) and go a little far, taking liberties with what science is actually available, but as a former biology major and someone who really enjoys science, as someone who reads journals and science news, I can tell you that evolution is a fact, that it is inevitable, and it takes more knowledge than I can impart to you in this blog entry to understand how it works.

To simplify evolution as much as I possibly can, it's all in the genes. To expand just a little, I can say with certainty that during reproduction, a little bit more information is added to DNA. This addition is an observable, verifiable fact. With additional DNA, there is a possibility that different genes will be active in the next generation of a species, which explains population genetics, but I won't go into that at the moment. What I can say is that when you add mutation (which is the only mechanism creationists seem to think exists for evolution; it's not) and gene-crossing to the mix, you have all sorts of possibities that open up.

I can expand and expand and expand, but unless you've taken a few courses in biology at the college level, you're not going to get it. Evolution is a fact; it's the theories regarding evolution that are not 100% proven--but they are 99.9% there. Evolution has so much predictive power in science. For example, you know the flu vaccines that are administered every year? Scientists know how to make these vaccines because they can predict the evolutionary path of viruses--and it is a statistical fact that people who get flu shots are less likely to get the flu, and more likely to recover faster from it if they do get it.

I already touched on the Big Bang theory, so I won't go over it again. I would just advise you to think of it as an expansion of the universe, because nobody knows what happened before 13.7 billion years ago. Nobody. There are some educated guesses, but there is no certainty.

Oh, and no, atheism is not a religion. If Atheism is a religion, bald is a hairstyle. The reason evolution and the Big Bang are taught in schools is because science must be taught in science classrooms. It is unfair to students who want a career in the sciences to waste time in science class on things that are not science. Creationism is a matter of faith, and does not belong in a biology or physics classrom. What you learn in science classes has everything to do with the body of knowledge that scientists have built, and has nothing to do with popular opinion or debates between people of faith and people of no faith.

Question 4: If the big bang theory were true, then how did everything in the universe come to be designed the way it did? Like for example, how could the Earth be in the perfect position for the sun to give it light, and if it moved by an inch or so, we wouldn't have light like we have now, and the Earth is the only planet with supplies for human life? [I tried to correct for grammar here, but you get the gist, right? I gave up because I hate playing the grammar police.]

Greg's Take: First of all, the Earth moves much more than inch toward or away from the sun, depending on where it is in its orbit. Secondly, how do you know that Earth is the only planet that can support human life? It's a big universe out there, and there could be thousands, millions, or billions of inhabitable planets in it. We just don't know. The odds are good that there is some more life out there in some form, given the number of stars, and given the number of solar systems with planets astronomers are now discovering.

Life has always been a struggle on Earth. While life begets life, life also eats other life. Life has to contend with climate changes and natural disasters, geographic separations and limitations on food sources. Species after species forms and dies. Warm-blooded species last an average of twenty-five million years; cold-blooded species last around three hundred million. I should say that the genus lasts that long, because there is a blurry line where the species becomes so different that it can no longer breed with creatures like its ancestors. Given what geneticists know now about the amount of information that is added with reproduction to DNA, enough change will occur over a twenty-five million year period to make the descendents become very different from their ancestors.

To say that this life is "fine-tuned" for life (which is how it is usually worded) is to have it backwards: life struggled and thrived due to adaptations that allowed it to live under the conditions that existed already. This planet was uninhabitable 3.5 billion or 4 billion years ago; whatever the first life was had to have the correct adaptations to allow it to survive under the conditions that existed then. I am fairly certain that more than one combination of self-replicating proteins appeared, but only the combination(s) producing the characteristics giving it survival advantages thrived.

Question 5: When Christians like my brothers and sisters in christ and I spread the word of god in a loving and perfect way, why do you have so much hate towards us when we share with you about the gospel of our lord and savior jesus christ, when he came to this world to save sinners, he died on the cross for our sins, and was risen from the dead?

Greg's Take: I can't speak for all Atheists. No Atheist can. What I can say is that I do not hate you. I don't know what reactions you're receiving that you translate as hate, but I can guess, because when I first rejected religion, I was angry, frustrated, and alone. I knew a precious few people who were Atheists, and when I came out to my Christian friends, they just wouldn't leave me to it. They felt that I was "lost" and that my "soul" needed "saved", but they--and you--have no idea how condescending that sounds to someone who has just undertaken an intellectual journey away from religion. I read the Bible at least twenty-seven times through during my life, referring to various versus hundreds, perhaps thousands of times during the course of my journey. I studied ancient religions, I studied philosophers and apologists--rejecting faith wasn't something I came to lightly. For people I once considered friends to treat me as though I was being foolish, going through a phase, or as if I had lost my way somehow was disheartening and annoying. That's probably one of the perspectives you're meeting.

I'm well beyond that point now. I'm not angry as much anymore, though I do get passionate about defending kids from being ostracized from their religious classmates, or when a town turns against a family for wanting to keep religion out of government, or when Atheists are painted as hateful, bitter, morally corrupt people. In any case, toward individual Christians, I am pretty much done being angry, but it can get a bit annoying, hearing the same thing over and over. Having debated with Christians since 1991, I can tell you that I haven't come across anything new in about ten years. Sure, there are new spins on old arguments, but it always comes down to the same thing: you have faith, you have ancient texts, and you have artwork. You have no real evidence to prove that your Bible is true, you have no evidence that your god exists, and Jesus is just mythical as any other figure in your anthology of myths. You truly believe that Jesus performed all of those miracles, that he was born of a virgin, that he rose from the dead; I can't buy into any of it. There's scant evidence that he was even a historical person, let alone this magical man-god that your Bible makes him out to be.

Do you really believe Jonah could have survived in the belly of an ocean-dwelling creature? He wouldn't have drowned, asphyxiated, or been digested over the three days he supposedly spent in there?

Don't even get me started on Noah's flood. If you believe that story, please build me a boat with those dimensions that will float--without steel supports, entirely of gopher wood (whatever that is). The longest wooden boat ever built without steel supports was less than three hundred feet long. The reason why was a phenomenon known as "keeling". Essentially, the wood would crack and the boat would sink. Never mind explaining how all of the salt water and fresh water life survived, how algae could have survived without sunlight for forty days and nights, or any other of the long list of things in that story that just aren't possible.

I don't hate you; I just get a bit annoyed by the constant attacks on physics and biology by people who have, at best, a limited understanding of the subjects. Do you know the complexity of the math involved in physics and biology? Have you taken an advanced chemistry class? These subjects aren't ones just anyone can take; science involves heavy mathematics and logical thinking. It's not surprising that most people aren't scientists, but it is surprising how many people reject science out of hand when they haven't taken even the freshman level courses at the college level, if they even took the very basic high school level ones.

I don't hate you, but your Bible bothers me. I don't like being called filthy, foolish, a liar, and an antichrist. I don't like the execution orders your Bible gives regarding Atheists in at least four verses. I don't like how your Bible treats women as the property of men. I don't like its support of slavery. It bothers me that the only way your god character could think of to absolve human beings of sin was to make a humiliating blood sacrifice of his only begotten son (if I would even go as far as to accept this myth, which I don't). It also bothers me that this concept of original sin was born of a myth about a man and woman who didn't have the knowledge of good and evil, but were expected to know that it was evil to disobey your god when they were punished for eating fruit (!) that somehow gave them this knowledge.

Conclusion: I hope I've answered your questions to your satisfaction. Feel free to ask follow-up questions.

Republicans: You Were Wrong. Now Shut The Hell Up!

2009-01-30T10:52:00.003-05:00

The United States is a mess right now. We have a financial crisis, we have two occupations, and a crumbling infrastructure.

Republicans: you did this to us. You were in charge for the past eight years--in total control for four--and you did this to us. You caused the financial disaster by working actively to put as much money as possible into the hands of people who were already wealthy, while also working hard to collapse the middle class.

Your supply-side economics is just what Geoerge H. W. Bush said it was: "voodoo economics". The reason it was so obvious to him and others is because it's so infernally stupid. Here's the theory: put more money into the hands of the wealthy, and they'll invest in more jobs, thereby causing the wealth to trickle down to the rest of the populace. No! Wrong! Stupid, stupid, stupid! How many of you own businesses? How many of you believe you have time to start other businesses? Why would you think that a business owner or the top executives of corporations would have time, with their schedules as full as they are, to create more jobs? They're going to take that money and put it into safe investments--and those that create jobs aren't usually all that safe. Budding businesses fail more often than they succeed.

Stupid. You're stupid and you need to shut the hell up. We don't need your input on the stimulus package, because your input for the past eight years has done nothing to our benefit. Nothing. You have sought only to benefit yourselves and the wealthiest among us, and now even their fortunes are disappearing.

You know what happens when you give more money to the poor and the middle class? They spend it. You know what that spending causes? More businesses will thrive when more people are spending money. The more businesses there are that are thriving, the more jobs we'll have. The more people we put to work, the more secure and prosperous we'll be.

We don't need your input. We don't need it. Shut up. Shut up, already! If I have to hear one more Republican (Boehner) whine abou thow Pelosi won't listen to him, I'm going to scream. I'm so tired of hearing the whining. Isn't it obvious from the number of colleagues that you lost in this last election that the majority of Americans don't give a rat's ass what you say? Don't you realize that America isn't about you? We're hurting. We don't need your political games. We don't need your incorrect policy decisions. Obama is President and the Democrats decisively control Congress. Americans want change. Unless you can come up with something other than tax cuts for the wealthy or other typical Republican fair, your input is not required, and you should be shut out of the process.

Bipartisanship is highly overrated right now. You have demonstrated that you're not capable of compromise, so bipartisanship isn't even possible. Let the adults run things now. Your reign of stupidity is over.

I wish Sarah Palin would just go away

2009-01-30T09:53:00.003-05:00

Every time I come across anything about Sarah Palin, it makes me want to write something about why I wish she should go away. However, every time that thought comes to me, I also think about how I am contributing to the total number of things out there about her, and worry that I'm just fanning the flames.

I can't stand it anymore. I have to get it off my chest. This will be absolutely the last time I write anything about her, and I'm hoping that this post inspires others to ignore her as much as humanly possible.

When Sarah Palin became John McCain's choice of running mate, she was unknown to me. The more I got to know about her, the more I had to wonder why McCain didn't choose someone more qualified. I wouldn't have voted for him anyway, but at least I would have been slightly more comfortable if he had won.

The first story I heard about Sarah Palin was that she tried to get books banned from the library in Wasilla, Alaska. What is true about the story is that she asked the librarian how she felt about banning certain "objectionable" material. The books were never banned, and the list that circulated in a viral manner all over the Internet was a hoax, but the truth regarding that story was enough to make me dismiss her as a viable choice for any office under the United States. If she was willing to try--even try--to ban books from the library, she could not uphold the Constitution.

The next thing I began to hear about was her religion. As someone who supports and defends the Constitution, I fully support the Free Exercise and Establishment clause in the first Amendment, as well as the prohibition of religious tests provided in Article VI. I would feel like a hypocrite if I simply condemned her because she's part of a fundamentalist sect whose members feel as though they're entitled to a separate set of facts about the world than the rest of us, simply because that, to me, would be a religious test. My concern is that she cannot separate state and church, so she will not leave me the freedom to choose not to exercise religion--which is a necessary component of the Free Exercise clause. We can't have free exercise if I am forced to choose a religion; I must be free to abstain from that choice. Sarah Palin's record on the First Amendment is poor in this regard.

Palin's positions on choice, endangered species, drilling for oil, and just about everything else are opposite of mine. I don't favor eliminating opposing viewpoints, but she struck me as someone who is unwilling to compromise--just like George W. Bush. Someone who will not compromise will ignore the will of the people--just like George W. Bush. We don't need another George W. Bush.

Palin demonstrated time and again that she knows nothing about world affairs. The very idea that she would be a heartbeat away from the Presidency was unsettling to me.

Finally, she associated with Alaskan secessionists. The fact that her husband was involved witha secessionist organization and that she spoke to that organization--praising it--tells me that she does not have the best interests of the United States in mind. Why would someone who hates this country want to hold its highest office? I suppose the reasoning involves the notion of changing the country to fit one's own politics.

The media just won't leave Palin alone now. I wish they would. I'm tired of seeing her. I'm tired of hearing about her. She isn't relevant anywhere but Alaska at this point. If the GOP is insane enough to run her again in 2012, I'll be surprised, but until then, can we just be shut of her? Can we just pretend like she never happened? Sure, she was great for comedy, but that's no reason to keep her story alive.

When a friend becomes a fan of the Roman Catholic Church

2009-01-27T19:16:00.002-05:00

For some reason, I have profiles on Facebook and MySpace. I really don't know why. It has been a way for people from my past to contact me, but the other day I realized something: almost none of these people know me anymore.

Chances are that if you met me before high school and haven't seen me since, you really don't know me anymore. I am not that person you knew in elementary or junior high.

If you met me in high school, I'm not sure you really know me all that well, either. My political leanings have changed, my willingness to take risks, my tastes in music (which expanded)...you'd have a lot of catching up to do if we met now.

If you knew me in college or after, you pretty much know me as I am today. I have matured, I've settled down, but I went through some radical philosophical changes around age 19 that solidifed at around age 21, and I haven't been the same since.

All of this intro brings me to the title of this entry. I went into Facebook the other day, and I found that one of my friends became a fan of the Roman Catholic Church.

Wow.

I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. I went to Catholic schools from K through 9, was an altar boy, read in church, and even wanted to become a priest at one point (just before puberty hit, in fact). I had doubts from at the age of eight at the latest, asking, "If God created everything, who created God?" I was told I had to accept on faith that this "God" character is eternal, and that I shouldn't question. Well, if I shouldn't question, why was curiosity so much a part of my nature? In any case, my questions were silenced, and I went along with the religion thing. I kept doubting myself, kept thinking that there just had to be proof out there of the existence of this deity, and that something must be wrong with me because everyone around me believed in this stuff. I did pray, but as I got older, as I became used to none of my prayers being answered--not one damned prayer--they began to start with "Jesus[/God], if you're there..." I was teased endlessly by my peers in Catholic school, and no matter how much I prayed for that to stop, or for me to have the strength to endure it, or for my life to change, it only stopped when I made the changes myself.

I can hear the apologists now: "Oh, you had it in yourself to change; that's why God didn't force it," or "Your prayers were all about you, and that's selfish." Yeah? Well explain why my Uncle Ronnie died at 36 when I prayed for his cancer to go away so my mom wouldn't have to see her younger brother suffer. Explain why my prayers for world peace were answered with more war. Explain...nah, forget it. If you're an apologist, you'll come up with some lame reason why my prayers weren't answered, or you'll tell me that they were, and I just wasn't paying attention, or you'll tell me that they will be, or you'll tell me, as the song goes, "Sometimes God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers." Gag.

Oh, and you know what I changed the most about myself? I tried very, very hard to show no outward signs that I am an intelligent person. I always stood out like a sore thumb in that regard. When I dumbed myself down superficially, I gained friends. Great change, huh? But it made my life more tolerable.

The bottom line is that I read the Bible more than most people have, in various versions, and what I got from it, at least the parts were Jesus was involved, was that faith could move mountains and prayers would be answered--even if someone had faith "as a grain of mustard seed." Well, I did have at least that much, and it never worked for me. Faith has never been useful in my life, so I discarded it eventually.

The first thing that made me turn from the Catholic Church in particular was confession. I hated confession, and the reason I hated confession was that I rarely did anything that could be considered sinful. I was a good kid--ask my parents! Still, when I told this to the nun who took us to confession for the first time, she told me to think hard, because everyone was a sinner, and I had to have done something. I went in and gave the priest a really lame excuse for a sin. He was probably laughing on the inside. The penance was a pittance.

What you don't want to do is tell a priest that you don't have anything to confess, that they're just making you go. I tried that, and the priest gave me a major penance for "lying". Damn it, I really was a good kid! I always tried to help people. Always. Still do. Unfortunately, that willingness to help sometimes comes off as arrogance; some people see me stepping in to help them as a comment on their capabilities or lack thereof, and feel insulted that I would think they would need help. That's another story, though. The bottom line is that if you're a Catholic, you are guilty until proven innocent, and even then, you're guilty. You're a sinner. No way around it.

Well, good riddance to my involvement with the Catholic Church. I'm still altruistic to a fault, and even though I have my moments that could be considered "sin" by you, I'll be the judge of that, not you. I am NOT one of your FANS!! I know my own flaws, and I am answerable to myself. I am my own worst critic, and I am a harsh one. I feel guilty if I hurt people because I have empathy, not because someone is threatening with eternal hellfire, pergatory, or any other bullshit you try to heap on people. I also feel good when I help people, because I know what it feels like to be helped--by other people, for motives having nothing to do with Catholic guilt.

Here's the thing: I probably wouldn't unload on the Catholic Church at all right now if it weren't for the pedophilia scandal. I know the caricature of the pedophile priest is a running joke right now, but what makes me mad is that the Catholic Church actively worked to cover up child rape. That's what it is. Let's not be so damned clinical about it. They were raping kids. Raping. These priests raped children, and the Catholic Church would sometimes move them from parish to parish, with no oversight regarding what sort of activities they would engage in at their new homes.

It's so insidious, I get nauseous writing about it. Before the pedophillia scandal, priests were well-respected and trusted, because they were "men of the cloth", doing the work of "the Lord" and such. Let's apply what happened with the Catholic Church to another institution where people are generally trusted with our kids: the education system. Image if you will that the same percentage of teachers were involved in child rape within our school systems. Now, imagine the school catching them, then simply relocating the offending teachers to other schools in other parts of the country, never turning them in to the authorities. First, it was just the teachers who were guilty; now, school administrators are complicit. Would you or would you not have their heads, figuratively speaking?

A lot of people left the Catholic Church after the pedophilia scandal, but they're still the largest sect in the United States, even after losing thirty-eight percent of their parishoners here. The Pope let priests get away with child rape, and people still attend Catholic mass. The Pope, his cardinals, and his bishops let priests get away with child rape, and people still tithe--still give ten percent of their earnings to the Church. The Church hierarchy let priests get away with child rape, and they are still in business.

I don't understand why anyone would want to be a fan. I am sure she has to be blissfully unaware of how much the Catholic Church knew about the pedophilia going on at the priest level, but I am not sure I'm comfortable having her name on my Facebook page anymore.

Testing for Autism During Pregnancy

2009-01-26T02:06:00.003-05:00

Recently, there has been a controversy regarding the possibility of a test for autism during pregnancy. With this information in hand, the parent(s) can make an informed decision on whether to continue the pregnancy, or else prepare for a challenging life as (a) parent(s) of a child with autism.

My problem with this approach is that it presumes that autism most definitely has a genetic marker, and that set of genes alone is responsible. Did they arrive at this conclusion only by analyzing the DNA of people with autism, or did they have a control group of randomly-sampled neurotypical people? Perhaps the genetic marker is really a way to tell whether a person is more susceptible to heavy metal poisioning or gluten/casein allergies, and the cause is partially environmental. The evidence that caused me to form my hypothesis that both are to blame involves a recent study that demonstrates a correlation between rainfall and the number of cases of autism in a given area. The more rainfall there is, the higher the number of cases of autism there are. To me, this correlation (though correlation is not necessarily causation) leads to the possibility that some pollutant (mercury from coal-fired power plants?) is getting into the ground water, then into our children's bodies. Some children can process this pollutant; some cannot.

Parents keep bringing up vaccines as a possible cause for autism. Many "know" that it's the cause. The contradictory evidence comes from a study done on children who have received the MMR combination vaccine. This evidence ignores the fact that there is no safe recommended dose of mercury for children under six months, and many vaccinations are given long before MMR. In the first six months of my daughter's life, she received twenty-six vaccines. Did any of them contain thimersol, a mercury-based preservative, or another, aluminum-based one? I don't know. It's worth studying. I'm betting on the atmospheric mercury from coal-fired power plants combined with moderate to heavy rainfall, but vaccines could still play a role. The way to tell is first demonstrate that cases of autism occur more frequently in places affected by pollution from coal (follow the acid rain path for this data; sulfuric acid raid is directly caused by coal's SO2 pollution, and mercury would follow the same direction), then follow it up by demonstrating that even more children have autism who have had vaccinations in these areas.

The bottom line for me is that no test for autism during pregnancy is valid until someone can show me that the sole cause is genetic.

Suggestion for the first 100 days

2008-11-05T13:57:00.004-05:00

There's so much on the plate for soon-to-be-President Obama, it's a bit overwhelming. However, there are some things he can do in the first 100 days to improve our international standing and get the ball rolling domestically.

The very first thing he can do is make sure that every person the United States has confined around the world is transferred to a prison within the United States and brought to trial. If they are being held without charge or evidence, they must be released immediately. He can make this move entirely through executive order. Through this gesture, he will be showing the world that his administration will be a change from that of George W. Bush (and I'm sure we'll see many more examples!).

Some Republicans will see this maneuver as "giving civil rights to terrorists". However, holding people without charge or trial not only denies the American people closure regarding the terrorist attacks that took place on 9/11/2001, but also makes the United States look as though we've taken people prisoner to make it look like we're doing something about terrorism. Furthermore, it makes people suspicious that we have taken innocent people into custody. If we have potentially dangerous people imprisoned, they must be brought to trial and sentenced. If we have innocent people in prison, they must be released. It's that simple.

Besides, giving all incarcerated people the right to a fair and speedy trial is in the Constitution, and the President's duty is to uphold it.

Next, President Obama should work with Congress on infrastructure projects, starting with the construction of a new levy system in New Orleans. Infrastructure projects--not done with contracted, cheap labor, but with people given a living wage for the work--will provide the seed money necessary to get the economy moving again in areas where the infrastructure has deteriorated. New Orleans is a port city, and port cities are vital for trade and national security. It's not the only city we should rebuild, but the victims of Hurricane Katrina, who soon after became the victims of a derelict President and the FEMA people under his direction, need to get the hand up they needed three years ago.

The third thing President Obama should do is work out the redeployment plan for the troops in Iraq. Whether they are transferred to Afghanistan or put on a base in an allied country, they should be out of Iraq as soon as possible.

Finally, the new President's Cabinet members, after they are approved, must each be given a top priority issue to work on immediately:

Secretary of State: The new Secretary of State should meet immediately with our allies and formulate diplomatic strategies with countries who are not.
Secretary of the Treasury: The newly appointed head of the Department of the Treasury should meet with the nation's--if not the world's--top economists to figure out the best way out of our financial crisis.
Secretary of Defense: The first task of the new Secretary of Defense should be to enumerate programs that are obsolete and cut them out of the budget.
Attorney General: The Attorney General should immediately identify any Bush appointees who have litigated based on partisanship and replace them promptly. The next order of business should be to investigate whether war crimes have been committed and prosecute those who have committed them.
Secretary of the Interior: The first order of business for this department is to get industry lobbyists out of the department and undo any damage that has been done to our public land.
Secretary of Agriculture: Restore the export of food from the United States and end the import of it from China, in light of all of the harmful substances that have been found in that food. We have historically produced more food than we could possibly consume here; we should not be importing anything from anywhere unless it is not native to this country. It raises my hackles every time I see apple juice with "PRODUCT OF CHINA" stamped on it.
Secretary of Commerce: This department head should focus on identifying markets where the United States could fill gaps in the world's supply chains with new manufacturing jobs.
Secretary of Labor: The Secretary of Labor should identify the real numbers of unemployed and under-employed people in the United States, then make recommendations regarding the community service for education program. This program should be implemented in areas of the country where the most people are unemployed or not making a living wage.
Secretary of Health and Human Services: This Secretary should identify ways to cut the costs of Medicare (renegotiating pharmaceutical prices, for a start) and how to bring the uninsured and underinsured into the program economically.
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: The immediate act that should be addressed by this appointee should be to put an end to HUD funds being routed to church remodeling and reconstruction. The intent of this money and this department is to make sure that people who need low-income housing get their needs served, not serving the needs of churches with empty pew syndrome.
Secretary of Transportation: The Secretary of Transportation should identify areas where our highway infrastructure needs the most work and develop projects to rebuild that infrastructure, beginning with any major bridges that need report (we don't need another incident like the one in Minnesota).
Secretary of Energy: Under Spencer Abraham (now it is Bodman, but Abraham was first), the energy infrastructure of the United States was tied together far too closely, causing more energy waste and the possibility of shutting down power for entire regions of the United States (remember the power outage that affected the Great Lakes region a few years back?). The first act of this department should be to come up with a plan to localize energy, preferably through a new infrastructure of green technologies. It's not just a matter of energy savings; it's a matter of national security. One accident or attack at one power plant should not be able to deprive an entire region of electricity.
Secretary of Education: The head of this department should work out a four-year plan to get our students competitive with students around the world in areas where we're lagging behind (as in math, science, geography--and, well, everything else).
Secretary of Veterans' Affairs: This Cabinet member should immediate work on de-privatizing the veteran hospitals system and make certain that every veteran who needs care is getting it.
Secretary of Homeland Security: This department is the biggest bureaucracy in the Cabinet. As such, the new Secretary should work on how best to keep from duplicating efforts across intelligence agencies. Either that, or the department should be abolished altogether. I would also like the DEA rolled into some other department. We need to begin treating drugs as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue. We spend ridiculous amounts of money--billions of dollars--on drug law enforcement. If drugs were legal and we treated abuse as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue, and if we stopped treating all use as abuse, we could save billions a year in enforcement costs and in prisoner maintenance.

These are just my suggestions, based on my own observations. I could be missing some important issues. I would love to hear other people's opinions.

We did it!

2008-11-05T00:26:00.004-05:00

Well, we did it--those of us who supported and worked for the Obama campaign, those of us who contributed, those of us who voted have put Barack Obama into the White House.

Tonight, we celebrate.

Tomorrow, we continue to work. We are going to have a Democratic President and Congress, so things can move very quickly; we just have to make sure they are the right things. So, people: what is on the agenda? Here are my suggestions:

The economy: We have to restore the middle class. To do that, we have to look at rebuilding infrastructure to seed the economy with jobs that have a living wage. Those workers rebuilding infrastructure will allow entrepreneurs to make a living in areas where infrastructure has crumbled. In the meantime, we must rebuild our manufacturing base. The auto industry must build cars that run on alternative fuels and electricity. We must manufacture solar panels and wind turbines. We must put money into research and development, then take what we invent and manufacture it here, giving jobs to American workers--and we must do it where people aren't currently working. Regulations of the financial sector must be restored. I also think that every family that has lost a home to foreclosure should have loan terms renegotiated, if at all possible. The credit industry must no longer be able to charge outrageous interest rates to anyone.
The occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan must end.
We must close all secret prisons and Guantanamo Bay, bringing every person in custody to trial, or releasing them if there is no real case.
We must eliminate terrorist networks through intelligence efforts and clandestine operations involving international cooperation, not through occupation of countries.
We absolutely must address climate change and the rapid extinction of this planet's organisms.
We must have universal health care.
We must fix Social Security and Medicare.

To do all of the things we must do, we have to organize, and we have to persist in our efforts to contact members of Congress. Obama can do a lot from the Oval Office, but the bills have to come across his desk. I am sure he will take initiative, but we have to support him in getting those initiatives passed in Congress. We can not sit idly by.

Now, there is one other thing we absolutely must address: we must come up with a uniform way to conduct elections, and we have to address issues such as voter caging, voter suppression, voter intimidation, and election fraud. I have no doubt that an enormous turnout is the only thing that saved us from another stolen election. Well, okay--Ohio may have fixed their problems since the 2004 fiasco, as well, and that helped, but there have been a great many reports of voters purged from the rolls, fliers having been distributed to confuse voters, private investigators dispatched to intimidate voters, and, of course, the electronic voting machines have not all been fixed.

I posted an entry here some time ago, when McCain was slightly ahead in the polls, about how the polls were skewed. I still believe that this is the case. If you look at the wide margins of victory in some states, then go back and look at the latest polls, my logic holds up. For example, if we look at Ohio, there was an 11 point victory for Obama there. No poll--no poll the media used, anyway--in the week before the election was within the margin of error. If you look at Georgia, however, it went completely the other way--eleven points in McCain's favor, outside of the margin of error. I think something fishy happened in Georgia. I could be wrong. The polls of Virginia voters turned out to be dead-on accurate--something I don't buy.

My point is that we should not give up making sure that the elections are free and fair, just because we won. We can't rest at that, because the grassroots effort to suppress the vote still remains. We have to remain vigilant.

Why I Am Voting For Barack Obama Today

2008-11-04T13:26:00.001-05:00

I am going to admit from the start that my decision was made on a single issue, as soon as I knew who the nominees were.

It was the occupation in Iraq that made my decision. I decided to vote for Obama because he wants to end that occupation.

I didn't know much about Barack Obama when I decided that he was getting my vote. Quite frankly, since all of the Democrats in the primaries supported an end to the occupation of Iraq, any of them would have gotten my vote anyway.

Now, things are different. Now, I know a lot more about Barack Obama.

There are a lot of smears out there about my chosen candidate. One of those smears is that he got into Harvard through affirmative action. I don't know the circumstances of his entry into Harvard, but I do know this: affirmative action doesn't make you the President of the Harvard Law Review, and affirmative action doesn't earn you a magna cum laude status at graduation. Obama earned those two honors through his own wit and effort.

Another smear--a smear that shouldn't be a smear at all--is that Barack Obama is a Muslim. He's not, but as Colin Powell pointed out, should being a Muslim prevent American children from dreaming that they could run for President someday? In any case, one thing is clear: Obama supports the separation of state and church, so no matter what his religion happens to be, he's not going to try to establish it as the national religion. He's also pro-science, which will be a welcome change from the last eight years.

As an aside on the whole Muslim thing: for people who believe it, are you fucking stupid? It's either that, or you're completely ignorant of Islam, or both. A devout Muslim will usually wear a beard. His wife will have a head covering, at the very least. He will stop to pray three times a day. He won't eat pork. Obama is so obviously NOT a Muslim that it hurts my head when people make this comment.

I like the fact that Obama will roll back the Bush tax cuts, increasing taxes on the people who can afford it most, while giving tax relief to people in the middle class, like me.
Obama will bring back diplomacy as a major tool in international relations, rather than saber-rattling.

Obama understands the value of education from early childhood through college. I like the offer of community service in exchange for a college education.

I have a lot more reasons I like Obama, but I have to go vote now. I will end by saying that for the first time in my life, I will be voting for someone who has inpired me to vote for him and inspired me in general, rather than the lesser of two evils. It's a great feeling.

GO VOTE! OBAMA '08!!

P.S.: If you're thinking about voting for McCain, please to to http://www.therealmccain.com and see why that decision isn't a good one.

Are the polls skewed?

2008-09-15T20:36:00.004-04:00

Something's not adding up.

McCain is slightly ahead of Obama in the polls? I couldn't wrap my mind around it until I began to question poll methodology.

In normal times, Gallup's polling methods, as explained here, should work fairly well. However, we do not live in normal times. We are in an economic downturn, to put it mildly.

I heard on the news that one in four hundred and sixteen homeowners will be facing foreclosure this month. I have heard that seven thousand homes foreclose each month. I have heard two statistics on the total number of homeowners that either faced foreclosure or who are behind on mortgage payments, but the one I can source is 6.82%.

Do you think the people behind on their mortgage payments or who are in foreclosure are answering their phones? How likely are they to vote for a guy who can't remember how many homes he owns?

Then, I read another statistic today: one in five households is either behind on credit card payments or over the limit on at least one card. That's twenty percent of American households. Do you think those people are answering their phones?

Gallup says that they randomly generate phone numbers--cell phones included, according to their FAQ--but if people aren't answering their phones, which is common with people who are behind on their bills and have autodialers calling them nine times a day or so, the statistics have to be skewed, do they not?

How likely do you think that the twenty percent of households where autodialers are constantly calling are answering their phones for Gallup? The polling company says they call back numbers where they haven't reached anyone, but I have trouble believing that they reach a significant enough number of these households to keep their polls from straying well outside of the margin of error.

The document from Gallup was written in 1997, and said that 95% of homes had a telephone (15% of homes use cell phones only, according to Gallup). How many homes have phones today? How many wrong or disconnected numbers do they get before getting enough good ones in their random sample? Are ten percent of the homes where bill collectors are also calling (inscessantly!) answering Gallup's polls? Fifteen? Five?

I think the methodology is no longer sound, because the probability of selection is not equal for all Americans anymore, and it is this probability of selection being equal that Gallup relies upon for statistical accuracy--as do all scientific polling organizations.

The Sarah Palin Hype

2008-09-09T23:28:00.004-04:00

She's for more drilling for oil--in Alaska.

She doesn't even want victims of rape and incest to have access to safe abortions.

She's for teaching creationism along with evolution in the public schools.

She asked a librarian three times if she could have "objectionable" books banned. She never presented a list (the one circulating on the Internet started as a speculation and became "the" list--it was never real, because Palin only asked about the concept of banning books), but she asked the questions. Three. Times.

She's all for hunting wolves. People in Ohio and Michigan, at least, should know that the reason we can hunt so many deer every year is because our recent ancestors took out the timber wolves, so nothing was hunting them. That imbalance created by an absence of predation could have led to ecological disaster otherwise.

She doesn't want polar bears to be protected as an endangered species.

The above are facts, and they're all I need to know about Palin to dismiss her as someone I feel is not qualified to be President (let's face it: John McCain hasn't aged well. If he were in the same shape as my dad, I'd say he has a chance of living through his first term, but he didn't play soccer for forty years of his life). The idea that she would support banning books from a library at all tells me that she either hasn't read the Constitution, or that she doesn't care about it--and she has to swear to uphold it if she were to become McCain's VP.

So I hear all of these polls have Obama and McCain neck-and-neck, with indicators that show McCain is ahead.

Rubbish, I say. Rubbish.

That's putting it very gently.

What do we know about Sarah Palin, other than what I've posted above? Well, there are a lot of allegations and some more factual items I could post, but here's what America has heard out of her own mouth.

ONE FREAKING SPEECH!!!! ONE SPEECH SHE DIDN'T EVEN WRITE HERSELF!!!!

The writer was Matthew Scully, former speechwriter for George W. Bush. Palin didn't write it herself. She merely recited what someone else wrote for her.

I'm not saying that just anyone could do that. What I am saying that reading off a teleprompter can be done by plenty of people who shouldn't be President. Your local news anchor can read quite well off a teleprompter. Even if she memorized the speech, so what? I was in a musical and a play in high school, and I've memorized some Shakespeare and good poetry, and plenty of other people have, as well.

Remember how polished Dubya was during the campaign season in 2004? I stopped listening to him during the 2000 campaign after he said that the jury was still out on evolution, because that one phrase put my vote into the Democrat column for the first time since I began voting. I can't vote for an anti-science candidate. If both were anti-science, I'd have to go for the one who was going to do the least damage otherwise, but I'd have to hold my nose to do it. In any case, Bush was polished because he stayed on message--a message someone else wrote for him.

Now, remember Bush in the debates against John Kerry? Unless you were Rudolph Giuliani or Karen Hughes, whose spin came from Bizarro world, or unless you were anyone from Faux News Channel, there is no way you could come to the conclusion that Bush won.

Enter Sarah Palin's upcoming debate with Joe Biden. People keep talking about how people who watched the Kennedy-Nixon debate thought Kennedy won, and people who listened to the radio thought Nixon won; looks allegedly played a role. I say no. I think maybe the correlation is that radio listeners were more conservative than television viewers, since the TV viewers would be more technology-friendly and more likely to enjoy the entertainment offered on television over radio. Plus, Kennedy was very smart. I'm not saying Nixon wasn't, but Kennedy was sharp.

Can Palin think on her feet? We'll have to see. What I think is that she's going to speak in the abstract ("Victory is within sight in Iraq"), and Biden's probably going to tear her to shreds with details. She's going to look just as bad with Biden as Quayle did with Lloyd Bentson. Remember that moment? If not, view it here.

Yes, I know Bentsen was on the losing side of that election, but Dukakis was his running mate. What do you want?

Barack Obama isn't Michael Dukakis, fortunately. Sorry, Mr. Dukakis, but you didn't inspire me; Obama does. In fact, Obama has been the first candidate ever to have inspired me in any way. Wait--Dubya inspired me to work for the Kerry campaign, but that's just not the same, somehow.

In any case, Palin is meant to be a distraction--something to take any media scrutiny off of him and onto Palin. Not that the media has been doing much scrutiny where McCain has been concerned, but with it being all Palin, all the time, nobody's looking at the corpse-like John McCain. Nobody is paying attention to his lack of energy, his gaffes, his substance-free speeches. Nobody's looking at the old, bald dude.

Palin was a purely political choice. There are plenty of women--even in the Republican Party--who could have qualified to be John McCain's running mate. She was chosen because she's young, she's pretty, she's unknown, and she has the values of the rabid religious right. She's not there because she's qualified. Most women I know would be insulted by the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. What woman doesn't look at Sarah Palin and then say, "Is she the best you do? Really?"

Sarah Palin is nothing but a political choice, a marketing ploy. They're sheltering her from the media (until they can successfully coach her on the talking points), while the media is still gushing about how she "hit it out of the park" with her RNC speech--which contained lies and insults.

What person in their right mind insults community organizers?

And Obama's right: Palin's comment about reading terrorists their rights is a flat-out insult to the Constitution she wants to pretend to uphold.

My final word for tonight is this: do not worry about the polls. Please, please ignore them. First of all, national polls mean very little, especially if they're even; only state-by-state polls do, because that's how electoral votes go. Something else is skewing the polls this year, though.

It's the economy.

People who found themselves suddenly paying interest rates approaching 30% on credit cards--just because the issuing banks could do it legally, when it used to be called "loan-sharking"--also found that they couldn't pay the minimum payments anymore, and they defaulted. Since bankruptcy is harder to declare, thanks to Republican policy, these people find no recourse but to let the bill collectors call them incessantly with autodialers. These people no longer answer their phones, and their numbers are large.

When a study shows a seventy percent increase in water bills, it's an indication that there are a lot of people with bill collectors calling about other unpaid services.

What about people facing foreclosure? I hear 8,000 per day, 7,000 per day--does anyone have the real number? I heard a staggering figure: just over 6% of homeowners are either behind on their mortgage payments or facing foreclosure right now. Do you think these people are going to vote for another Republican? Let's poll them and see if McCain has support anywhere close to Obama's. Oh, wait--they probably won't answer their phones, either.

So...if 6% of homeowners aren't answering their phones, add to it the percentage of people with delinquent credit card debt who also aren't answering their phones, and you have a great many unanswered phones involved in the polling process. Perhaps someone from a polling company will tell me they correct for that, but I somehow doubt it.

I'm going to say that Obama is actually ahead, and it's more like 58% of voters supporting him. I'm not saying you should stop working hard--work harder!--but I think the polls are horribly skewed this time.

Oh, that crazy GOP

2008-08-27T20:32:00.004-04:00

I think I've mentioned it before--yeah, it was on my first post on this blog. I somehow made it onto the GOP mailing list.

The problem is, the people they address in the messages at each of the two addresses where I receive GOP communications are not me. Perhaps James and William are my other personalities, but I don't have blank periods when I can't remember what I've done...

In any case, I've found their messages most...illuminating? No. Amusing? Perhaps. Disgusting? Definitely. Disingenuous? Absolutely.

I'm going to go through the points in each message and give my take on them.

Don't worry--I haven't forgotten about Michael Savage. He's still on my radar; I have just been so busy with personal and work projects, I haven't had time to hit his advertisers hard. I haven't even had time to update this blog with the new advertiser responses and the very few advertisers who haven't yet appeared on my list.

But hey--this blog isn't about Michael Savage. It's important that we hit him where it hurts, but I have opinions on quite a lot more than that piece of human garbage.

Speaking of Garbage, Often Putrid, let's get to the GOP's list of messages to my..other personalities? Sure.

Let's begin with their opinion that the choice of Senator Joe Biden shows poor judgment on the part of Barack Obama, since Biden has been one of his worst critics. Biden has been known to say that Obama is not yet ready to be President. However, their argument is exactly the opposite of the truth; the fact that Obama could get Joe Biden to be his running mate demonstrates how persuasive a leader he can be. If he could convince his worst critic (among Democrats, that is--and I would say second worst, but the GOP rates him chief among critics) that he is ready to be President, then he's quite the negotiator and has tremendous influence. Furthermore, it demonstrates how qualified he is to be our chief diplomat.

In any case, the message about Biden never criticizes Biden's credentials or character; it simply says that by picking his worst critic, Obama has shown poor judgment.

In the next message, McCain makes an appeal for more contributors. As of August 26th, he had 1.7 million contributors (Obama has surpassed 2 million already--by a long way). He's aiming for two million by the end of the RNC Convention.

Speaking of Rotten Nefarious Corruption, this message contains several claims I want to address. First, there's the question of matching federal funds for the major Presidential candidates. McCain criticizes Obama for "breaking his pledge" to go with federal funds in this election cycle, going on to whine about the support of MoveOn.org, "Big Labor", "Hollywood elites", and "other left-wing groups". Obama explained his move: he wanted to fund his campaign with individual contributions. Besides, McCain's side has the Snakes Bent Voraciously on Truthiness and other 527 groups to support him, because his McCain-Feingold bill left open a huge loophole for these organizations. Until that loophole closes, any candidate would be crazy to take federal matching funds. He complains about misleading negative attack ads, but he himself has engaged in such ads already, comparing Obama to ditzy celebrities, with no ability to lead. There is already a book and a movie about Obama, both full of falsehoods.

McCain goes on to complain about the "liberal" media. This "liberal" media has done 80% negative coverage on Obama, while giving McCain a free ride. Most of the media is corporated owned. Conservative talk has far more outlets on the radio than liberal talk, or even neutral talk. The television stations are corporate owned, and the news organizations have been absorbed into the entertainment divisions of the major networks. To call this media "liberal" is downright insane. If anything, they're drawn to conflict and celebrity worship.

These messages are out of date order. The next message I came across was an invitation to attend or host a Raucous, Negative Claptrap event. For the night of the Republican convention, I could sign up to get special materials for myself and my guests, invite people over to watch the convention with me, and manipulate them into voting for Bob Barr--or, if I'm really on my game, for Barack Obama.

The Saddleback Civil Forum gets mention in the next message. What a farce. It turns out that McCain heard all of the questions in advance and had opportunity to prepare his answers. Even so, I thought his answers were simplistic and stupid, but that's the subject of another post. I really do have to go through it bit by bit, because I found the critiques of Obama laughable, and the praise of McCain gratuitous--more of the same media free ride.

In the next message, McCain reveals his plan: let the RNC do his dirty work, so he can take matching funds and use that as a talking point against Barack Obama. No doubt, the Rancid Nabobs of Chicanery will join the 527 groups in throwing as much money as they can raise at the McCain campaign.

I laughed out loud at the next message. The GOP sent me an urgent message to download the RNC toolbar. They assured me that it would help McCain beat Obama at no cost to me. Well, unless Randy Naked Cuties are involved, I'm not interested, and since I know that Robbers, Ne'er-do-wells, and Cuthroats are behind this move, I'm definitely not taking them up on it. Come on! These are the rat bastards who admitted to illegal wiretapping! Why in the world would I want them watching over my internet activity? They probably already are, anyway. My firewall attack history lists several hits from Langley, VA, Arlington, VA, Washington, D.C., and one other place that escapes me at the moment. I'm not kidding.

Why is it that the Republicans think we should ignore the opinions of the other six billion people on the planet? The next message criticizes Obama for labeling himself a "citizen of the world". It also says that Obama is proposing to raise the U.S. support to the UN to $845 billion, then goes on to say that it's $2500 from each American taxpayer "at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet." Um...McCain? We have a progressive tax system. It's not like each and every American will have $2500 taken from them directly. How stupid must your base be to fall for that one? Also, the message never mentions what amount goes to the UN now. Furthermore, the money is to combat poverty, but McCain calls it "redistribution efforts". It's not just wealth redistribution, Swifty. It's an investment in our foreign neighbors--something that might keep them from coming here illegally to escape oppressive economic and political conditions in their own countries. It only makes us stronger and more secure, and keep illegal labor from being exploited. You're just worried that if people in foreign countries are better off, there won't be a cheap labor pool from which to draw.

I didn't know whether to laugh or be thoroughly disgusted at the next message, which was a criticism of Obama's example of a way to help reduce oil consumption, which was to properly inflate your tires. McCain and other Geriatrics On Prednisone are making this suggestion out to be Obama's entire energy policy. They're even giving away a tire guage that says, "OBAMA ENERGY PLAN" on it. How disingenuous. Never mind that it's a sound suggestion in and of itself. Proper inflation of your tires will, in fact, improve your fuel economy. My Republican colleague--oh, boy, is he a Republican, too--made that very suggestion on a team conference call last year, in addition to making sure you have oil changes and other proper vehicle maintenance, because fuel costs were about to rise significantly.

McCain's energy plan, by the way, is to lease even more land to oil companies, who already have leased millions of acres where they know there's oil, but they're doing nothing about it.

Enter Orrin Hatch. Hatch's message is supposed to instill fear into the Republican base of the loss of the "Republican firewall" in the Senate. Oh, you mean the President's yes men, who stand together to make sure nothing of value to the American people actually gets done? Yeah, we need to break that "firewall" of corruption and advocacy of unofficial American nobility. We need to get rid of the roadblocks to restoring the middle class and preventing economic slavery--slavery that many Americans are now in because of insane debt, outrageous interest rates, and the fact that ruined credit can block an individual from gainful employment. They're stuck at the bottom, while people of privilege enjoy what they're fed with silver--nay, platinum--spoons.

Here's a message from something called "The Small Cap Insider's Report". It calls Ted Kennedy "the drunkest man ever", and suggests that maybe Kennedy would give Obama a ride home and "narrow our choices this coming election." Wow. Then it warns Obama: "Watch out for those bridges, Barack!" Classless. Utterly classless. The man's battling a malignant brain tumor. The incident mentioned happened decades ago. If you're going to bring up the accidental death of one woman at the hands of a Kennedy, how about I bring up the death of 163 sailors at the hands of McCain?

On the USS Forrester, the aircraft carrier on which McCain was stationed, a young pilot decided to wet start the engines of his jet. Wet starting engines will cause flames to shoot out the exhaust end of the turbine, and shoot out they did--startling the pilot behind him, who accidently released two bombs. These bombs subsequently exploded and kill 163 members of our United States Navy. Because of a young John McCain's poor judgment, his fellow sailors died fiery deaths. You really want to play, Small Cap Insider's Report? Oh, I'll play.

In the next message, entitled "Beat the One", McCain's people list the consequences of an Obama Presidency and 60-seat majority in the Senate: "higher taxes, wasteful spending, more regulation on small businesses, more liberal activist judges on the Supreme Court and much more..." Okay, let's see what the Republicans have done:

Instead of higher taxes, we have deferred taxes. Someone, someday, is going to have to pay the national debt.

Wasteful spending? Wasteful spending?!?!? Are you kidding me? Bush rubber-stamped every single spending bill that came across his desk during the entire time the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress!!!! When Bush came into office, there was a budget surplus, which meant the debt remaining from Reagan and Bush the Elder could actually get paid. The darling of the Geritol Overdose Potentials worked with a Republican Congress to turn it into a half a trillion dollar deficit annually.

More regulation of small business? That's far better than the deregultion of big business, which has had devastating effects on the economy and the environment. Shall I mention the slap in the face the contracting of traditional military jobs to private companies represents, especially when the contractors make several times the average enlisted soldier's pay?

Liberal activist jugdes? Where? How about conservative activist judges and federal attorneys? No, not even conservative--Puritanical, radical reactionaries, fascists...

Speaking of Really Not Cool Groups Of People, how many Bush appointees were graduates of the unaccredited law school Pat Roberston founded? 150?

Finally--at least for now, I received a message about how awful it was that the Democrats apparently cared more about their vacation than about voting on an energy bill. In other words, the Rats Nesting in Congress Griped Over the Petty issue of the delay on the vote regarding drilling offshore. Why the Goofy, Overblown, Petty Republicans are so hot and bothered over plunging metal phalluses (or is it phalli? I think it's a word rooted in Greek, so it's probably not phalli) into Mother Earth is beyond me, especially when the oil companies have millions of acres of land where they already know there's oil, where they are allowed to drill, but they're doing nothing to extract it.

Until next time, Go Obama! Poor Republicans...Next Campaign...maybe. In 2016. When you grow up, get rid of the theocrats among you, understand what fiscal conservatism actually means, understand that investing in your neighbors makes the country stronger and living in America and in the wide world more comfortable; when you see taxes as an investment instead of an intrusion on your enormous fortunes...until you realize that what you did almost ruined America in eight short years, maybe, just maybe, you can put someone else in the White House.

(I don't know what came over me with the acronym play, but I hope you enjoyed it, and didn't just groan. Cheers!)

Taking it up a notch (and Michael Savage is such a liar)

2008-08-01T23:25:00.007-04:00

Michael Savage is so infuriating. I'm really trying hard to keep listening to maintain a current list of advertisers, and others are, as well (though there are precious few).

He keeps saying he was taken out of context. Well, I put him into context here. I argued originally that there was no context into which you could put Savage's attack on autism that would make it better, but it turned out that the real context made it worse. First, he talked about how he'd rather fund treatment of cancer and diabetes in America than AIDS in Africa, and then he went into why he didn't throw autism in with cancer and diabetes. That was the context. His sychophantic listeners forget so easily and don't bother to check; they simply accept that the context was what Michael Savage said it was, instead of recognizing what he did as an attack, and what he did susequently as complete spin--a frantic attempt to appeal to advertisers.

He keeps saying that Media Matters led autism advocacy organizations by the nose, as if they're all mindless sheep who wouldn't bother to check their facts before acting. Never mind that I am completely unaffiliated with any group, officially (though I get many newsletters and am on a few message boards); I'm just a loving parent of a daughter who happens to have autism, and I'm coming to her defense. It's not just Media Matters, Michael Savage. It's every parent who recognizes that what you said has been passed on to millions of people who will now suspect our children of merely being brats who haven't been told by their fathers to cut out the act, as you ignorantly said on July 16th. If they follow the work of your "expert", Peter Breggin, then they will suspect us of causing the issues our children have by abusing and neglecting them. That's what's making my blood boil more than anything. I would never lay a hand on my child in malice, and she is very far from neglected. My wife takes her shopping, to the zoo, to Greenfield Village at The Henry Ford, to restaurants, to preschool, to therapy...and I pay attention to her at home with conversation, games, puzzles, and lots of hugs and laughter. It took a lot of work to get those hugs and that laughter out of her, and it angers me to no end that someone like Savage could lash out in all of his intellectual laziness and outrage borne of ignorance in a way that will affect my child and cast suspicion on her relationship with her loving parents.

Savage said tonight that not only are his advertisers staying, but they're increasing their ads. That's funny, because AFLAC, Chattem, Boca Java, Prison Fellowship Ministries, The Heritage Foundation, DirectBuy, Roger Schlesinger, and Home Depot want nothing to do with him. There are other advertisers I haven't heard in a week, either. There are a few new ones, but this week, during his show, there have been advertisements calling for advertisers to support the Michael Savage show, and a couple of the advertisers who had their ads on last week didn't have them this week anymore.

Someone asked me how we can take it up a notch and really get after Savage. There are groups--Media Matters, for one--who are taking the approach of protesting stations who carry him and calling for them to fire him. I'm not saying they're wrong, but I think it makes a lot more sense to contact the companies who support him financially and educate them about Michael Savage's position on autism. No matter how he wants to spin it, the fact remains that Savage calls autism spectrum disorder a fiction. He talks about how "real autism" is "heartbreaking", but never defines what he means by "real autism", then follows up with an "expert" who dismisses all autism and other childhood disorders as the result of abuse and neglect, especially on the part of mothers. During his original attack, he disparaged minorities as dishonestly claiming that their children had asthma to get more welfare, when they are three to six times more likely to die of asthma.

When you contact that advertisers, focus on the facts. People want to make it into a First Amendment issue, but commercial radio involves company image, and no company wants to look bad by associating themselves with someone who will attack children, women, and minorities in the same segment (except Talk Radio Network, apparently). When they have withdrawn their support to the point where the stations that carry him can't afford to do so, he will still have his freedom of speech, but he won't have a nationwide platform from which to exercise it. He has no inherent right to be financially supported on commercial radio.

Help me educate his advertisers. I need more people in more markets listening to his show, preferably in shifts (listening to his show every day will take your IQ down ten points, I swear, if it doesn't give you a splitting headache). I certainly would love to take turns with someone in the Detroit market, and so would others in their markets. If you want to help with this effort, simply listen for the commercials during Michael Savage's show and note the time and company name (with phone number, if you're not sure of the name's spelling, and if they give it), then send it to me at gregtreich@comcast.net. I am keeping these logs so when advertisers tell me that they don't advertise during his show, as so many have claimed, I can give them days and times when their ads were heard. Please tell me the station and city, as well.

"You liberals!"

2008-07-30T21:30:00.002-04:00

Recently, I began to allow anonymous comments on my blog. I think I'm regretting it, but maybe not. I do want people to see that it's not just Savage; there are apologists for him who take his garbage quite seriously.

What I'm tired of is this caricature of "liberal". What does the word even mean anymore? I know what Michael Savage thinks it means; he doesn't know the difference between a true liberal and a fascist, as is evident from his labeling of George W. Bush as a liberal/socialist. Bush is a fascist; he is into corporate control of the government and doing things that promote big business. A socialist doesn't do these things. A socialist promotes legislation and action that benefits society as a whole. Just what is a liberal, though?

I did something on liberalism on one of my message boards, but I'm not going to cut and paste.

The Free Online Dictionary has several entries for the term, "liberal". I am going to go through them one by one, because I think it's important that we stop caricaturing liberals--and conservatives, for that matter, because these terms are used to divide us, and they have been made trivial and meaningless by those who work toward such division.

The first definition:

a. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian
attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.

Sounds like "liberal" is a synonym for "freethinker" here, and I'm of the firm opinion that being free from bigotry is a good thing. Under this definition, I'm definitely a liberal, and an unapologetic one at that.

Savage says that liberalism is a mental disorder. So it's a mental disorder to break from traditional/orthodox/authoritarian views? It used to be the orthodox view that the Earth is flat. It used to be the orthodox view that the Earth was the center of the solar system. Breaking from tradition and orthodoxy can be a very good thing.

Let's look at the second definition:

b. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant
of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

Supporting reform for the right reasons is never a bad thing. Being open to new ideas is the only way we can progress, really. Tolerance is a good thing until you tolerate intolerance (which is what apologists for Michael Savage are doing). What's wrong with being tolerant and having an open mind?

The third definition is one of those generic ones: "Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism."

Perhaps it would be useful to define "liberalism", then.

A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of
the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law
with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.

Hmmm. Are human beings naturally good? This article about German researchers who studied altruism would suggest that we are born with altruistic tendencies. It makes sense; being slower, weaker, and less well-armed than the predators in existence when our ancient ancestors first evolved, cooperation would have been a great survival strategy; groups of humans would have found it easier to fend off predators, hunt, gather, raise children, make tools and shelters...cooperation has been the norm for us from the beginning--at least along tribal lines.

I kind of like my autonomy, civil and political liberties, rule of law--as long as I'm represented in the legislature, and protection from people who declare themselves to be in charge ("I'm the decider!").

I also think that it's a good thing for people to come together to solve problems they can't solve individually, and that taxes should be an investment. If we can't get some sort of return from the tax money we invest, we should nix those taxes. I use the word "return" loosely; it doesn't have to be realized financially.

Getting back to "liberal", I'm going to skip the political party definition, because we don't have a major party that's truly liberal. The next definition is:

2.a. Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor.

I think this definition represents part of the caricature of "liberal" that the neo-cons promote and demonize. They don't want the government to just "tax and spend". I know very few people who do, actually, from any political party; it's irresponsible, and would be difficult to justify. I do know plenty of people calling themselves "conservative" (again, caricaturing the term and rendering it meaningless) who think it's just fine that we're in debt to the tune of nearly ten trillion dollars to foreign countries, most notably China. That's $10,000,000,000,000. That's a million millions. That's enough to give 300 million people (roughly the U.S. population) $33,333.33 each. Except we owe that much. Savage calls that "liberal" policy, and he's right to this extent (though he wouldn't put it this way): the Congress from 2002-2006 and the President who signed the spending bills coming from them borrowed liberally from our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, burdening them with debt. Where is the benefit to society as a whole, though? That's where the "socialist" label breaks down with Bush, making it downright laughable. Those spending bills were benefits to corporations and individual political donors, along with every pet project the Republicans wanted to support during those four years. In the meantime, 8,000 people lose their homes to foreclosure each day. People are making roughly $2000 less than they made a few years ago. Unemployment is at an all-time high--if you look at the real numbers. The "official" numbers come from the number of people actually receiving unemployment, which runs out after a certain period of time. Gas prices are outrageous, but oil companies received tax cuts from that Congress and this President. Very wealthy people became even wealthier; the rest of us saw our incomes stagnate or go down, while everything became more expensive.

I don't advocate giving tax money away to anyone; I want it to be an investment. In this respect, I can't really be called "liberal". Giving money to autism research and therapy would be an investment in the future of children with autism; society would benefit from having more functional people working, paying taxes, and supporting themselves.

The problem with the people who throw around the word "liberal" is that they're stereotyping people who happen to disagree with them. I argue that we're all liberal, conservative, or moderate, depending on the topic at hand, and labeling people with one of these terms only marginalizes them and causes division. Let's have some real dialogue and stop with the intellectually lazy caricatures.

Boca Java Responds

2008-07-29T21:56:00.003-04:00

Stefanie Hochstadter of Boca Java responded today by saying that Boca Java has not advertised on the Michael Savage show or with the network for more than a year.

I am not reproducing the letter here because there was a privacy notice at the bottom of the email. I know that these notices are not legal and binding, but I've given you the gist: another advertiser is not claiming association with Michael Savage.

Just what is going on here? Only one advertiser so far has admitted to having knowledge of being a current advertiser on the Michael Savage show: Directbuy.com. They chose not to renew the contract. Geico claimed in a response to me that they advertise indiscriminately, and to another person that they pulled their support for Michael Savage years ago (probably from the MSNBC show he had). Either none of these advertisers know that they've bought advertising spots during Savage's show, or their ads are airing without their knowledge and without payment. The former scenario seems more likely to me, but I would really like to know. Do the stations run advertising during Savage's show to make it appear as though he has more financial backing than he really does?

I wonder if there's a way to find out how the bills get paid at a given radio station.

Geico Responds

2008-07-29T00:19:00.003-04:00

I received the following message from Geico:

____________

Dear Greg Reich:

Thank you for your Internet request.

Thank you for using GEICO’s online services.

Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. Let me assure you that we value your opinion and your business.

We purchase our advertising through a national media buyer and it appears on television stations and radio stations throughout the entire country. GEICO has no contract with any specific show, station, or channel. GEICO does not take positions or endorse opinions on stations where our advertising is run.

GEICO has long been, and continues to be, an insurer for everyone. As with any large national insurance company, our customer base is comprised of individuals who represent virtually every position on every issue. We support the first amendment rights of our policyholders and we strive to provide them with exceptional customer service, without regard to their views and beliefs.

If you need assistance, you may reply to this email. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

We appreciate your business and look forward to serving your insurance needs for years to come.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Sincerely,
Brian Moshier
GEICO Internet Representative

_______________

Essentially, they're telling me that they do not endorse opinions, but their advertising dollars do just that; as long as Savage has financial support, he has a megaphone through which to shout baseless claims about autism.

The First Amendment rights of their policyholders aren't at issue here. The issue is that someone with national syndication--which is only possible with the support of advertising--is saying something that hurts children with autism and their parents, and Geico is part of that financial infrastructure. They most certainly can choose not to advertise during Savage's show; the association of their company with Savage certainly damages their corporate image, especially as other advertisers withdraw their support.

There was actually a spot on the Savage show tonight calling for entrepreneurs to advertise. I found that plea encouraging.

What I am doing now is writing to the advertisers I actually hear during the show, letting them know what time I heard their advertisements. It reduces the number of responses I get that tell me it's false that they advertise on his show.

Has anyone else received responses from anyone on my list at the right? I know AFLAC allegedly withdrew support, but I have never seen an official response, and I heard a commercial for them the other night.

Inspiration from the North

2008-07-28T22:47:00.003-04:00

On July 25th, in the midst of the Michael Savage autism spin, I received an email from Leah Bortolotti from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her daughter, Sophia, has autism. Her son, Josh, has become a prominent national figure in Canada, and he's only fourteen. The following article details what he did at age eleven on behalf of his sister and every child in Canada with autism:

<http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=10cb2740-0200-4e77-8c6f-973c83f26922>

Here is Leah's description of her son's activism to date:

"Our neurotypical 14-year-old son, Josh, has been single-handedly doing an autism fundraiser annually for the past 4 years (door-to-door pledges) and has now raised just over $20,000 for autism charities. The past two years have been for Autism Speaks. He advocates on every level for his baby sister, and has been recognized here in Canada in national newspapers, CTV National Television News, and most recently as a runner up in 2008 Canada's Top 20 Under 20 Awards. His unselfish motivation has graced him with some friendships of important people that are impressed with his accomplishments, and brought more awareness to ASD. He has become friends with Nickelback, Rich Little, and other Canadian celebrities."

I hope this young man's story and that of his family moves you as it has moved me.

Want to understand autism?

2008-07-27T04:27:00.002-04:00

Maybe an example of a parent working with a child who has autism will help those of you who don't understand what it means to have a child with autism. Take a look:

http://joyofautism.blogspot.com/2008/07/note-about-crying-to-michael-savage.html

I thought it was a great example.

I'm thinking of putting video up of exchanges with my daughter. Our communication isn't quite on the level of Adam's yet, but translation of atypical word usage is a daily activity for us, too.

Off the top of my head, figuring out that "Mickey piano" is an episode of Mickey Mouse Club where a piano appears about halfway in was a recent challenge. Good thing I watch any television she watches, and she doesn't watch much.

Ads removed

2008-07-27T03:29:00.002-04:00

I decided to take the ads off of my blog.

AdSense has a competitive ad filter, but even though I set it up to filter out the Michael Savage TV ads, it kept putting them into the banner at the bottom of my page. I decided that if I do any advertising from now on, it will be with a known entity, and it will not be random, content-driven advertising.

For me, this fight isn't about making profit.

The Audio That Started It All: The Context, What Was Overlooked, The Spin, and The Apologists

2008-07-26T22:08:00.005-04:00

Here is the audio that started the whole campaign to remove Michael Savage from the radio. Note that I chose to post a video with the preceding context this time:

Here's the transcript of the preceding context:

"But I'm really getting pissed off at the world. I really am. I feel it. I feel it today in particular. When I hear Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, not giving a straight answer to a real conservative Republican, when I read that Bush just slapped us in the face again, and raised the ante on money to Africa for AIDS and malaria from $15 [billion] to $48 billion with a stroke of the pen, without the people's input, I'm telling you, I don't know which way to turn.

"What kind of government is this that can write checks to bail out friends on Wall Street without any oversight by the people, and can write a check for a bunch of degenerate bums in Africa who are going to rob the money, on top of the drug company thieves? Do you think it's actually going to treat people in Africa? I'd rather treat people in America who have cancer. I'd rather treat people in America who have diabetes. Don't get me started on this!"

When I wrote my original article on Michael Savage's attack on autism, it was based completely on what came next. My argument has been that it doesn't matter what context the audio was in; what he said stood on its own and could not be legitimized. I stand by that assertion, but the context is important in light of the subsequent spin. Before I posted my original piece, I had heard the audio I transcribed for you above, and it was obvious to me that there really wasn't a context; he just said the next thing that popped into his head. Basically, his thought process appears to be "I'd rather treat cancer and diabetes, because they're real diseases. Now I'm going to tell you about something I think is not a real disease and does not deserve funding." I don't know how else to take it.

"I'd rather treat people in America who have cancer."

"I'd rather treat people in America who have diabetes."

The implication of what comes next in the audio is that he'd rather NOT treat autism.

"Now you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I'm not talking about autism? A fraud, a racket."

In my original article, I mistakenly replaced the "not" with "now", but "not" is the correct word here. He was saying, "I'm talking about funding cancer and diabetes as legitimate diseases that deserve funding, but NOT autism."

Savage is now in spin mode, of course, but remains not only unapologetic, but indignant that anyone could ever think he'd attack children with "real" autism. He made an absolute statement about autism first, then changed the "fraud" to "99 percent of the cases". But first, he went into something that the media is currently overlooking, that the autism community seems to be overlooking, and that the minority communities are overlooking, unless I have just been missing their outrage. I caught this part and gave an opinion on it in my original post, but I want to bring it back up, because I think it's a twisted bit of audio:

"For a long while, we were hearing that every minority child had asthma. Why did they sudden--why was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because--I'll tell you why. The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help at school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in was told [mocking fake cough]. When the nurse looks at you, you go [mocking fake cough]. 'I don't know. The dust got me.' See, everyone had asthma from the minority community. That was number one."

No one has been talking about this venemous little blurb. I mentioned it, but I'm just a small fish in the ocean of the Internet. Media Matters, autism advocacy groups, and several other people transcribed and published it, but somehow, it became lost.

When were we ever hearing that every minority child had asthma? The tragic truth of the matter is that minorities are three to six times more likely to die from asthma than white children, depending on the group studied. I posted a link to an article about African-American and Puerto Rican children in my original post on this issue, and anyone who wants to research it can find plenty on Google.

Savage hasn't had to answer for these remarks. I mentioned them to several of the advertisers in my letters, but the focus has repeatedly been on autism. I'm glad that so many people want to talk about autism and are sympathetic/empathetic to the cause, but I just don't want people to lose sight of how disgusting this assertion regarding minorities and asthma was, and how it's been largely ignored.

Asthma advocacy groups might also want to give that audio some attention.

Moving on, I want to address the spin where Savage is now saying that he wasn't attacking children with "real" autism, and that the "ninety-nine percent" was hyperbole:

"Now, the illness du jour is autism."

In other words, the illness people--probably minorities, given the previous context--are using to get additional funding and academic help for their children is autism.

Savage's naked ignorance is overwhelmingly on display here.

Anyone who has tried to get extra funding in the area of special education knows that most programs are horribly underfunded and, as a result, inadequate. The preschool program my daughter attends does pretty well, but they could use quite a lot more in the way of resources, and the research-recommended approach of intensive, one-on-one daily therapy is impossible in the public school system. I am paying for additional therapy outside of the preschool to the tune of $780 per month, and I know there is a lot more I could do if I had the funds.

In addition to the lack of resources and funding, it's not as easy as Savage seems to think to get the therapy and extra academic help for autsim. A parent can't just say the child has autism; the child must be screened by a group consisting of a speech therapist, a psychiatrist, an occupational therapist, and a physical therapist. My daughter had to meet certain criteria to qualify for special education, and additional criteria to be in the autism class. It's not just a matter of getting a doctor's note or the word of a school nurse. Maybe things are different elsewhere in this country, but quite a few schools are facing funding crises, and funding is being micro-managed. Anything that sucked funding into one area of focus would draw the attention of the school board and would be addressed.

"You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is in ninety-nine percent of the cases."

Savage has told his audience (including me, since I've been listening to the show to gather an accurate list of advertisers) that the ninety-nine percent figure was hyperbole, and that children with "real" autism should get all of the funding and services they need. Now, had he accompanied this spin with an apology, saying that his attack was irresponsible and had no basis in fact, and he wouldn't still be going on about how the autism spectrum is fiction, I may have simply left him alone and forgotten about him. I have heard enough from him during "Right Wing World" segments on the Stephanie Miller Show to know that I wouldn't want to listen to his show (and I still don't, but I'm keeping on his sponsors until he has none or they've all responded). However, placing the spin into the context of his previous remarks, Savage is being disingenuous here. He followed "I'd rather treat people in America who have cancer" and "I'd rather treat people in America who have diabetes" with "Now you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I'm not talking about autism? A fraud, a racket." How does this juxtaposition NOT imply that he doesn't want to see autism funded through tax dollars? I'm talking about cancer, I'm talking about diabetes, but I'm not talking about autism. That's what he said.

Additionally, Savage claims in his spin-fest that the larger discussion was about drug companies and overdiagnosis of conditions. Now, I missed everything that came before he began to talk about Secretary Paulson, but unless the previous discussion was about how AIDS is also a fraud, a racket, and a largely misdiagnosed condition, I don't see how I can take the spin as anything but a bald-faced lie.

In any case, even if the new figure he's using, allegedly quoting (I can't find the original source) a Dr. Camarata from Vanderbilt University, that sixty percent of autism cases are misdiagnosed, is accurate, it would be difficult for someone whose child was misdiagnosed to get past the screening process at my child's school.

I looked up Dr. Camarata, and I noticed a link for TRIAD, or Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorder. On their Common Questions About Autism Page, it says that autism occurs in 1 in 166 individiuals. Nowhere on the page does is say that sixty percent of cases are misdiagnosed. I emailed Dr. Stephen Camarata to see what he thinks of his name being used on Savage's show in the way it is being used, asking him to susbstantiate or refute the claim. I am awaiting a response.

"It's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is."

So...throwing out the ninety-nine percent as hyperbole and using the new figure Michael Savage now uses, sixty percent of children who have been diagnosed with autism simply have bad parents. He has made the claim, based, I'm sure, on the writing of Thomas Sowell, that the cases where autism is misdiagnosed include children with high IQs and late talkers. It very well could be that this sort of misdiagnosis would have been made quite often before more was known about autism, but there's much more to the observational diagnosis of autism than late talking and evidence of exceptional intelligence. There's more to it than simply having OCD behaviors, which can be part of autism. There's inappropriate play, lack of pretend play, lack of theory of mind/empathy...there is a range of symptoms that, when taken together, result in a correct diagnosis of autism.

The example Savage has been using quite often is Albert Einstein, who was notably a late talker. From many reports, Einstein was told to cut out the act, was called a dummy by his parents, and had a similar childhood to the one Savage recommends for all children. Did it make him speak any sooner? No. Setting aside a diagnosis of autism that Einstein may have faced today, did the parenting method Savage recommends work for Einstein?

Now, going back to whether Einstein would have been diagnosed with autism (there are several people out there who claim that he very well may have had Apergers): the claim Savage makes is that there would be no Einstein today, because he would have been labeled autistic and thrown into an institution. The reality is that during Einstein's childhood, it was much more common to institutionalize people with mental disabilities than it is today, so that argument doesn't hold water.

Also, what is the worst that would have happened if Einstein had received the treatments recommended for autism today? He certainly wouldn't have lost his IQ, would have he? He would have received speech, occupational, physical, and social therapy, all without medication, and he might have had less of a difficult time with his parents and teachers. Would it have caused him not to have gone into physics? Who knows? The theories of general and special relativity probably would have come later anyway; there certainly are scientists who are living today who understand them--they had to in order to build on the theories. Just because a name is a household name (who doesn't know Stephen Hawking? But my understanding is that there are other physicists out there more capable than he) doesn't mean that nobody could ever be as intelligent or capable.

"What do you mean, they scream and they're silent?"

Savage continues to be ignorant about the symptoms of autism, never really defining what he means by "real" autism. Screaming and silence are certainly not the only characteristics of autism. In fact, with Asperger's, the children talk early and incessantly. They have other specific symptoms; I'm sure it's the Asperger's children Savage dismisses as being in the "high IQ" category. In his eyes, they don't really have autism; that's part of his spin.

Let's just say for a moment that everyone with Asperger's just has a really high IQ, and isn't on the autism spectrum. Should they not get any sort of therapy? As someone with a high IQ, I can tell you that going through school without peers of any kind was really, really tough--until I decided to hide my intelligence as much as possible during my high school years. It simply wasn't respected. Really smart kids are often the social outcasts, labeled nerds and regarded as arrogant. Funding programs so high IQ children can have peers in their classes wouldn't be such a bad idea, as far as I'm concerned.

Getting back to reality, people with Aspergers certainly can have high IQs, but there are other symptoms. When I was looking for what could be going on with my daughter, I ran across several professional screening tools for Aspergers. Three of the symptoms that always appeared together were early, precocious talking, physical clumsiness, and social awkwardness. Along with the early precocious talking was the inability of the child to comprehend the speech; it would be scripted, memorized, and only understood later in life. Along with these symptoms had to be the presence of symptoms from each of six categories. I can't remember everything from the list, but it included clues like hand flapping, lack of empathy, lack of eye contact, and several other symptoms that look like autism. That's why Asperger's is on the spectrum.

I will repeat what my friend Angie suggested: take the spectrum people consider "normal", then throw autism on top of it. To me, this statement is a profound way of looking at the autism spectrum. The children may have low, average, or high IQs, but they all have similarities, as well. They are as individual as any other group of children, but they have that one thing or set of things in common.

I know it's not a requirement in order to be a radio personality, but wouldn't it be logical to research a subject before talking about it, especially after making an attack on people who are intimately familiar with it? Savage admitted to lining things up as a child and being obsessed with counting tiles on the bathroom floor, and asked if he would be diagnosed with autism because of that behavior. That's not necessarily autism. OCD behaviors are common on the autism spectrum, but OCD behaviors alone mean that you have obsessive compulive disorder; they don't mean that you have autism.

Maybe Savage is insecure about being labeled as having autism or Aspergers, and that's why he's so irate about the issue. Whatever his problem is (and I'm talking about his insecurity and/or anger issues, not the possibility of him having ASD), he's hurting parents and children by saying that there's one group with a real disability that requires intense treatment, and another group where the problem is bad parenting, but couldn't possibly be a disorder mistaken for autism that also would require treatment. He's still calling the autism spectrum a fraud thrust on the public by drug companies and the medical profession.

"They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there screaming and crying, idiot."

Savage has since had an "expert" by the name of Dr. Peter Breggin, who resurrected the long-abandoned stereotype of the "refrigerator mother". Leo Kanner, who defined autism, labeled "cold, unfeeling" mothers as its cause. Breggin's assertion is that all of autism is the result of bad parenting. Michael Savage asked him directly if he believed autism exists, and his answer indicated that he suspected it didn't. If we need any further confirmation, we can turn to his book, Toxic Psychiatry. In chapter 12, which is entitled, "Abandoning Reponsibility For Our Children: A Critique of Hyperactivity, Attention Deficit Disorder, Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia, Autism, And Other Diagnoses", Breggin quotes research that links all childhood psychiatric disorders with child abuse and neglect. He goes one to talk about how Leo Kanner described autism as having to do with childhood upbringing--in 1948. Quite a lot of research has been done on autism since 1948! The chapter reads similarly to the quackery of people who denounce other science: the prevailing "ideology" keeps any papers that challenge it out of the peer-reviewed journals. That's why the quacks publish books--their professional peers don't have control over the publication of a book, nor can they stop it from being popular among people outside of the profession.

Apparently, Breggin hasn't updated his research on autism since he published the book in 1994. The American Journal of Human Genetics published an article in 2001 on genetic markers and autism. They found that chromosomes 5, X, and 19 were different in children with autism. Interepreting the findings is complex, but they would seem to suggest that autism has a genetic component. Also, with the multiple questionaires parents of children with autism must invariably fill out when seeking therapy, evidence of abuse and neglect would certainly be caught. A "refrigerator mother" would certainly be unable to talk about every detail of her child's behavior, because she wouldn't be paying attention, now would she?

I resent Breggin's resurrection of the "refrigerator mother" and the insinuation--no, accusation--that autism is the result of child abuse and neglect. My daughter has never, ever lacked affection. She has become quite affectionate with people she knows, but it had to come over time--and it wasn't for lack of trying on our part. I've never had a problem holding her, but I'm one of the very few in her life who hasn't. My wife certainly has no problems getting a hug or a kiss, either. We've never laid a malicious hand on her, either, and wouldn't think of it.

Savage attacked single mothers here, and insulted loving fathers who do take part in raising their children. Never mind that what he's suggesting is that we fathers verbally abuse the children we are around to raise. Discipline doesn't have to involve calling our children morons, putzes, and idiots. There is nothing constructive in this approach, nor is there anything in Savage's statement that would qualify as real discipline. Where is the correction?

Oh, and I can also tell you from experience that hurling insults at your child with autism will result in scripting (if your child is verbal at all), and you'll regret it. I have never verbally abused my child, but she did once wake me up at around 4:30 AM with a blow to my head with her electric guitar (she loves musical instruments, and even sleeps with them). I yelled the worst possible expletive I could yell before I knew what was happening, and she hasn't stopped repeating it. I've even tried to get her to replace it with something that sounds similar (e.g., fudge), but it hasn't worked. My wife once slipped and called her a "crybaby", and now she says it anytime she doesn't get her way.

Road rage is also not good around children with autism who happen to be verbal.

In contrast to my child, my niece learned to say "Bullshit!" when she was two. More accurately, my brother told her to say it, and she started repeating it with glee. I took her aside after seeing that her mother was getting quite embarasssed, and I told her to say "Bullpuckey!" It sounded a lot cuter, actually--but the point is that a parent/caregiver can do this sort of thing with a neurotypical child. Not so with a child who has autism.

"Autism! Everybody has an illness."

This statement comes back to Savage's insecurity about his own childhood behaviors being on the list of red flags for autism, not understanding, as I've illustrated, that it's a combination of symptoms and not one here or there that results in a correct autism diagnosis. Of course, that's if you buy into his spin. It could also go back to his original labeling of autism as "a fraud, a racket."

"If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, 'Don't behave like a fool.' The worst thing he said: 'Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot. Don't act like a girl. Don't cry.' That's what I was raised with. That's what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You're turning your son into a girl, and your turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men."

Poor Michael Savage, always acting like a foolish girl as a child, crying his poor little eyes out.

Okay, that might have been a cheap shot, but he deserves it. It's too bad he didn't take his father's advice about not sounding like an idiot.

What if your kid is a girl? I have a daughter. Is she supposed to stop acting like a girl, whatever that means at age 4? Or is it that Savage is only concerned with boys? Or maybe only girls have this thing Michael Savage calls "real" autism, without ever defining it.

I could never take this guy seriously if he didn't have a radio show carried by 300-plus stations (some have dropped him since July 16th). He truly is a reflection of his father's child-rearing methods, though, because he makes a living insulting anyone with whom he disagrees without regard for intellectual dilligence, fact, empathy, or nuance, nor does he ever seem to suggest practical solutions for problems--he just complains about them.

"That's why we have the politicians we have."

Bad parenting is why we have bad politicians? Maybe, but I think that's a separate issue from autism. If 1 in 166 (or 1 in 150, whatever the current accurate number is; I'm using the TRIAD number because it's the most recent I came across) children have autism, that's hardly a majority of people, so it's not much of a voting bloc. That's just a weird conclusion to draw there, Savage.

Finally, we have the apologists for Savage. These people are the reason why I'm going after the sponsors. The apologists have painted him as everything but a simple entertainer to a full-fledged hero of children with autism, and it's making me sick, quite frankly. Here are the things I've been hearing and reading:

"He's just an entertainer."

No, people take him seriously, and say that he speaks the truth. He makes this claim himself. Furthermore, I have to wonder what sort of people are entertained by hearing that liberalism is a mental disorder, autism is a fraud and racket, homsexuals are perveted pigs who should die of AIDS, dissent should be met with arrest for sedition, Obama is a closet Muslim socialist, and the euthanasia of Terri Schiavo was the same as the beginning of the Holocaust. I suppose if no one took him seriously, or if his rants were taken as satire, which is Stephen Colbert's format, then it would be different.

"He wasn't talking about kids who really have autism."

That's what he claims, but that's after he made the claim that autism is a fraud and a racket, leaving a little loophole of one percent who have legitimate disorders. What he's done since is dismiss the autism spectrum, bring on an expert whose work suggests that he believes all of autism is the result of child abuse and neglect, and leave "real" autism undefined. He hasn't done a thing to educate his audience on what constitutes autism. Instead, his focus has been on how he has been persecuted, taken out of context, and maligned by the media and progressive groups--and how he's so heroic for bringing autism to the forefront of public dialogue.

No, Savage, you're no hero. Autism awareness has been growing without you. What you did was turn autism into a misdiagnosis, and you continue to do so by never defining "real" autism (if you say it exists, then you have to know what it is, right?), never educating your audience in any meaningful way on the subject. That's why you have to go.

"Media Matters is just trying to get rid of him before the election."

Media Matters has been pointing out what Savage has been saying for quite some time now. It's not like they made up something untrue about him, either; they simply passed on what he said to the American public. Now, he wants to shoot the messenger. He calls them Stalinists and fascists, which simply aren't compatible political worldviews; he calls them perverted, childless men. Also, to listen to Savage, you'd think Media Matters was the only group coming after him.

I'm coming after you, Michael, and so are a bunch of other parents (I certainly couldn't do it alone). There was no call for what you said, you're unapologetic about it, and we're now having to defend ourselves against your ignorant apologist listeners. I've already spoken to three apologists this week--one who was a listener and two who simply heard about the controversy and thought it had been blown out of proportion. Everyone has an opinion, and when you added fuel to the fire of ignorance, you made it harder for those of us who have children with autism, who are struggling to pay for therapy and struggling to help others understand our children, to gain and maintain acceptance in society.

"There are more important issues."

My child is pretty much at the top of my list of important issues. I want her to have a functional future.

Savage has thrown out references to obscure court cases that haven't been publicized, where someone is already going through the justice system, or has gone through it and the system failed (in his mind, anyway). It's a diversionary tactic, and it's really stupid. You can protest a court all you want; a jury is going to be influenced by the evidence presented in a case, both forensic and testimonial, and by the arguments of the attorneys. We don't try people in the court of public opinion. That's a good thing. We don't want to live under ignorant mob rule. Media sensationalism and political/special interest opinion would destroy anyone's right to a fair trial. Think about the O.J. Simpson case: how difficult was it for the court to find jurors who didn't have knowledge about the case or a firm opinion on it? Activism doesn't belong in the justice system; impartiality and objectivity should be the standard.

I've heard more from Savage apologists, but I think I'm going to end this extraordinarily long post here. My next piece will be more positive and inspirational, I think. I've been indirectly introduced to an extraordinary young man who has been advocating for his younger sister who has autism. The story of his family turns everything Michael Savage has said on its ear, and it moved and humbled me so much, I absolutely have to share it.

Till next time.

The Heritage Foundation Reponds Re: Michael Savage

2008-07-26T15:41:00.003-04:00

I received the following email message from The Heritage Foundation yesterday:

__________

Subject: Heritage doesn't advertise on Savage

Greg,

It came to our attention today that a blog post you wrote last Sunday incorrectly identified The Heritage Foundation as an advertiser/sponsor of The Michael Savage Show. That is incorrect.

http://gregstake.blogspot.com/2008/07/michael-savage-picks-on-my-daughter.html

We do not now, nor ever have, sponsored or run ads on The Michael Savage Show. Would you mind correcting your blog post to reflect this?

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Rob

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The Heritage Foundation
Robert B. Bluey
Director, Center for Media & Public Policy
Robert.Bluey@heritage.org
214 Massachusetts Ave. NE
Washington, DC 20002
tel: (202) 608-6155
fax: (202) 544-6979
mobile: [removed by me]
http://RobertBluey.com

_________________

Once again, we have someone whose advertisements have definitely aired during the Michael Savage show (at 10:21, 10:54, 11:21, 11:54, 12:14, and 12:43 on July 23rd on WDTK, for example), who denies advertising on the Savage show. What is going on?

It is worthy of note that no advertisements from The Heritage Foundation aired during the July 24th show on WDTK in the Detroit market. It is also noteworthy that DMI USA, Roger Schlesinger, Business Software Alliance, AFLAC, and Sears did not advertise on the July 24th show.

There were several new advertisers on the July 24th show. I have already updated the list with them. I wonder if they even know their ads are being used to support Michael Savage.

I did not get the chance to hear last night's show in my market. I had a guest in from out of town. I did get reports from other people and will be updating my list shortly.

Reflection on autism diagnosis

2008-07-25T09:02:00.002-04:00

Brain physiology is a tricky thing. One may dissect the brain of a cadaver, but observation of actual brain physiology during development is mostly limited to what neurophysiologists can see with electrical activity and MRI/CT scanning technology.

I was reading an article on autism diagnosis when it occurred to me that what is known about the brain are the areas where we should see electrical activity corresponding to various stimuli. Shouldn't children with autism display fairly consistent EEG data? The obvious problem--at least to parents of children with autism--is that getting the child to sit still for an EEG will be a major challenge.

If it is possible to determine which areas of the brain are or aren't firing the way they do in a neurotypical child, shouldn't stimulation of those areas with very low grade electrical shock or through specific physical activities help with the child's issues, at least early on, when the brain is most malleable?

According to Dr. Stanley I. Greenspan, therapy for autism works best when tailored to the individual child--but that's true, in my opinion, of neurotypical children and education, as well. I think that my friend Angie is correct in saying that the reason there is an autism spectrum and the reason it is so broad is that children with autism span the same range neurotypical children do--except with autism added. If that assumption is true, and it seems logical that it is, then there should be some common physiological feature that defines autism--which means medical diagnosis is possible, with treatment that has much less trial and error involved.

Has anyone seen research in this regard?

Just how ridiculous is Michael Savage, anyway?

2008-07-25T07:18:00.002-04:00

I just had one thought that came from Savage's show last night. Before some of the segments of his show, they play clips from past shows (Please remember that I am only listening to this garbage to make sure my list of sponsors is accurate, and will never debate him point-by-point). One of those clips involved Terri Schiavo. Savage compared pulling the feeding tube from Terri Schiavo to the beginning of the Holocaust, linking liberals to Nazis in the process.

However one feels about the whole Schiavo ordeal, how could anyone in their right mind compare a euthanasia issue with the wholesale slaughter of millions of people to fulfill the sick fantasy of racial and cultural purity?

I guess if you listen to his show from the perspective of anticipating what ridiculously outlandish thing he is going to say next, it might be entertaining. I just find it disgusting.

Savage keeps saying that his rant about autism was taken out of context. I say that there is no context into which you could put his words to make them any less incendiary, and his subsequent shows have done nothing to make me feel any differently--he still denounces the concept of the autism spectrum as something made up by greedy pharmaceutical companies and doctors, casting suspicion on families whose children have the diagnosis of autism. He's saying that he's defending the defenseless, the children who really have autism, but he's actually hurting them--us, in the case of my family--by labeling autism a misdiagnosis in most cases.

In the time my wife has been on autism message boards (since Caitlin, our daughter, was two) and in the short time I've been on them myself, we have found that the autism community is quite skeptical of doctors (as just about anyone who has dealt with the health care industry will be--I really must talk about my back sometime and the six-month circus that occured before I had any sort of treatment). I encourage such skepticism; therapy for autism isn't cheap. I just dropped nearly $1600 down on classes that meet three days a week for a couple hours each day so my child can receive therapy from professionals. Savage probably would call this therapy a racket, too, but I've seen the progress my daughter has made in this time. She's really learning how to interact properly in social situations in a way that is fun for her. Her clarity of speech is improving. It was a real sacrifice in my current situation to spend that money, but the best research demonstrates conclusively that children diagnosed with autism respond best to early intervention. The longer parents wait, the more difficult it becomes to get the child to respond to therapy.

There is a physiological reason why early intervention works. Anyone who has studied childhood brain physiology (I know, it's a hobby for us all!) and mental development knows that when we are children, we have the ability to form more connections between synapses, known as dendrites. This physiology is the reason why we learn language best before the age of ten--the more connections we make early on, the easier it is to maintain them later. For the child with autism, the earlier the diagnosis, the more malleable the brain will be, and more likely it is that the brain can be "rewired" a bit to get around the issues associated with autism.

With the kind of therapy we're providing for our daughter, even if she didn't have autism, she'd benefit from the social interaction and the mental stimulation. The people who have been involved in her therapy at The Abilities Center in Walled Lake and at the Bussey Center in the Southfield School District have always want to involve the parents, as well; they send us information on what they're doing with Caitlin and how we can help.

I encourage skepticism; I denounce derision. The former is a quality rational, protective, loving parents have where there children are concerned; the latter is a quality Michael Savage has.

The list of advertisers grows--thanks you for your diligence

2008-07-24T20:38:00.000-04:00

I was going to respond to things Savage has been saying on his show. I'm so tempted. I won't do it, though. I refuse to feed the troll. I have actually deleted most of this post twice now, because I have gone off on rants that speak directly to his spin. I refuse to debate him. I refuse to lend him that kind of legitmacy. Yes, he's the famous person and I'm just some guy who is the father of a child with autism, but if I debate his points as he makes them, I am only drawing attention away from the effort to get rid of him. We don't need him around. He's perpetuating myths about autism and casting suspicion on anyone with the diagnosis of autism.

He just doesn't get it.

For those of you out there who don't understand the reasons why my blood boils over this issue, and why others are so outraged, let me try to clarify it for you: when Savage claims that 99 percent of the cases where autism is the diagnosis are fraudulant, he casts suspicion on every single child and parent for whom autism is a reality. So now, when I tell other people that my daughter has autism, people who listen to Savage will doubt it. He is trivializing autism, even as he tells his audience that "real" autism is heartbreaking and devastating. He's making the word meaningless to his listeners. He's turning it into the default, catch-all diagnosis for any behavior in children outside of the norm, and that is where the problem really lies.

What I find most ironic is that while those of us who are trying to get him off the air are doing it the way consumers would in a free market, given that it's the only power we would have in the absence of regulation of commerce, Michael Savage is attempting to cast his derision on Media Matters by having his listeners demand tax returns from the organization--he's using government regulation, which is something he normally despises.

In any case, thanks to people who have responded to the call for an effort to log the advertisements on his show in various markets, the list of Michael Savage's advertisers is now more complete. It is going to take some time to update. I urge you to contact every one of them, and if you receive a response, please post it on your blog, and I will link to it from mine, or send it to me so I can post it here.

By the way, Home Depot and Geico, who have both denied advertising on Savage's show, have had five and four commercials tonight, respectively, on the station in my market.

Please keep up the great work, those of you who are writing to the sponsors and those of you who are sending me advertising logs, and those of you who are spreading the word.

My exchange with Home Depot

2008-07-24T20:31:00.000-04:00

Home Depot has denied and denounced advertising on Michael Savage's show. Since I heard a Home Depot commercial on his show with my own ears on July 18th on WDTK out of Ferndale, Michigan, I had to follow up. The following is my exchange with the Home Depot representative:

___________

Hi Greg –
The Home Depot does not currently advertise on The Michael Savage Show, nor do we have any kind of sponsorship in place with the program.

We strive to ensure that the programs we support through advertising reflect our core values. Feedback from customers like you plays a large role in helping us to maintain these standards, and this is why already have selected not to be an advertiser on this show.

Again, we do not advertise with this program and any suggestion of such support is false.

Thanks -

Sarah Molinari Corporate Communications Manager The Home Depot

___________

Hi Sarah Molinari,

If I had not heard the commercial on July 18th with my own ears, I would not have written my message. Geico and Prison Fellowship Ministries were not aware of their advertising airing during the Michael Savage show, and neither was Chattem (makes of Gold Bond). As the good representative of Chattem explained, her company buys in local markets, and not directly from shows. If Home Depot buys advertising time on radio stations the same way, it is quite possible for your commercials to air during the Michael Savage show without your knowledge. Again, I urge you to speak to anyone associated with Salem Communications or Talk Radio Network to let them know that you do not want your commercials aired during Savage's show.

I did not hear a Home Depot commercial during last night's broadcast. If I hear another Home Depot commercial, I will let you know. It definitely aired on July 18th sometime between 10 PM and 1 AM on WDTK out of Ferndale, Michigan.

Sincerely,Greg Reich

______________

Thanks Greg –

We have had reports of some NY area customers who claim to have heard an ad last week – is that also where you’re located? If not let me know where so we can check with that station too. We have confirmed that we did not purchase air time for any such time slot in NY (or elsewhere). You see we support many AM radio stations and weekend home improvement programs that run on these stations. Sometimes an ad will run in error during other programming, which we suspect may have been the case here.

Thanks for letting us know -

Sarah Molinari Corporate Communications Manager The Home Depot

___________

Action Alert: The Disability Community Unites Against The Savage Nation and Talk Radio Network

2008-07-24T17:50:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone,

As many of you have already heard, this past week talk radio personality Michael Weiner, better known on the air as Michael Savage, made several outrageous remarks in regards to autism, including, "Now, you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I'm not talking about autism? A fraud, a racket…I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot." A full transcript of his statements can be found here. Remarks like these spread ignorance about autism and threaten to return us to a previous era where parents were blamed and labeled as "refrigerator mothers" for having autistic children. Not only have Michael Weiner and Talk Radio Networks refused to retract these outrageous comments - they have added to them by claiming, unsupported by science of any kind, that the autism spectrum is an overdiagnosed medical condition. This is part of a broader pattern of statements attacking people with disabilities and our families. It requires a strong response.

As a result of this continued attack against autistic people and the broader disability community, the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network has joined with over a dozen national and regional disability rights organizations to call on the sponsors of Talk Radio Networks and the Savage Nation to pull their support. Together, we have issued a strong joint statement calling for an ad boycott. In addition, we've collected contact information for several of the major sponsors of Talk Radio Networks in order to empower our community to take further action. We urge you to use the information below to write, call and e-mail these sponsors and tell them why it is imperative they join companies like Aflac and Telesouth Communication that have already pulled their ads in response to these hateful remarks. There are over 50 million people with disabilities in the United States with approximately $200 billion in disposable income. It is time for us to make our voices heard.

Below you will find contact information for Talk Radio Networks' largest sponsors and a sample letter for you to use as a reference point in your e-mails and phone calls. We will be keeping an updated list on our website here and will post updates and changes to contact information as new information becomes available. In addition, if you would like to express your support for the disability community's joint statement on this issue, you can do so by signing our petition here. Organizations wishing to become signatories to our joint statement should contact us at info@autisticadvocacy.org. Please distribute this message to your networks and feel free to repost.

Sample Letter:

"To Whom It May Concern:

As a member of the disability community, I am outraged by the recent comments made by Talk Radio Networks' host Michael Alan Weiner, also known as Michael Savage, stating that autism is "a fraud...a racket...In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is." Not only have these comments not been retracted but Talk Radio Networks continues to stand by Michael Weiner as he continues spreading public misinformation about autism. Autism is a very real developmental disability affecting millions of Americans. Public ignorance and prejudice against people with disabilities represent one of the most significant obstacles to full access and inclusion of people with disabilities throughout society. I urge you to take immediate action and pull your financial support from Talk Radio Networks and The Savage Nation Radio Show in response to these hateful comments."

Contact Information:
ABC, Inc.:
VP Advertising/Sales Mike ShawPhone:
212 456-7272
mike.shaw@abc.com
VP Public Relations
Kevin Brockman
Phone: 818 460-7756
Fax: 212-456-1424

Acura:
Acura Public Relations
Mike Spencer,
310-783-3165
info@acura.com

American Express:
Leslie Berland
212.640.5142
Leslie.A.Berland@aexp.com
American Express
P.O. Box
981540
El Paso, TX 79998-1540

Boca Java:
Stefanie Hochstadter
shochstadter@bocajava.com
1-888-262-2528
Boca Java
730 South Powerline Rd.
Suite D
Deerfield Beach, FL 33442

Campbells:
Campbell Soup Company
Campbell Place
Camden, NJ 08103-1701
Phone: 800-257-8443
Phone: 800-871-0988

Citrix:
851 West Cypress Creek Road
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309,
United States Americas PR

Jason Wyse
Americas Senior PR Manager
Phone: (786) 449-3740
Email: jason.wyse@citrix.com
Eric ArmstrongDirector,
Corporate Communications
Phone: (954) 267-2977
Email: eric.armstrong@citrix.com

Dish Network:
CEO Charlie Ergen:
(303) 723-1010
CEO assistant:
(303) 723-1005

EchoStar Satellite L.L.C.
Attn: Corporate Communications
9601 S. Meridian Blvd.
Englewood, CO 80112
press@echostar.com

Ebay:
Alan Marks
Senior Vice President Corporate Communications
Telephone: 1-408-376-7400
Fax: 1-408-369-4855
Email: info@ebay.com

General Motors:
Andrea Canabal
General Motors, Northeast Communications,
Work: +1-914-244-6059,
Cellular: +1-914-391-6898,
andrea.canabal@gm.com
Stockholder line: 313-667-1500

Gallo Winery:
John Segale
Gallo Winery Spokesperson
Work: 916-960-5341
Cell: 916-600-1081
Prudential:Bob DeFillippo
Phone: 973-802-4149
bob.defillippo@prudential.com

Nestlé Purina PetCare:
Email: kschopp@purina.com
Phone: 314-982-2577
Fax: 314-982-2752

Simon & Shuster:
Michael Selleck
(800) 223-2336
info@simonsays.com

Staples, Inc:
Paul Capelli,
508-253-8530
paul.capelli@staples.com

Subway:
SUBWAY® Public Relations
(203) 877-4281
Les Winograd Ext. 1683
winograd_l@subway.com
Kevin Kane Ext.1329
kane_k@subway.com

Volkswagen:
Keyes, Steve
Director, Press and Public Relations
Phone: 703 364 7650
Fax: 703 364 7071
Email: steve.keyes@vw.com

Thank you for your support and please distribute. Our combined activism has and will continue to help us create a world that respects, includes and supports people with disabilities throughout society.

Remember, nothing about us, without us!

Regards,
Ari Ne'eman
President
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network
1101 15th Street,
NW Suite 1212
Washington, DC 20005
http://www.autisticadvocacy.org
732.763.5530

Statement From The Autistic Self Advocacy Network

2008-07-24T07:22:00.000-04:00

DATE: July 23, 2008

-FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-

Contact:
Sheryl Bass or Wendy Greenwald
The SolutionPR
(720) 488-1116
Sheryl@thesolutionpr.com

Incensed Disability Groups Call for Ad Withdrawals on The Savage Nation Radio Show

The disability community is livid. In an unprecedented collective advocacy effort, the disability community has come together to call on show sponsors to withdraw their support in response to Michael Savage’s inflammatory, discriminatory, and dangerous comments about autism that he made on his July 16 radio show, “The Savage Nation,” syndicated by Talk Radio Networks. Savage said an autistic child is just a “brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out” and that “99 percent of the cases of autism are a result of lax parenting.” He said parents of autistic children need to say to the child, “Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.” Because Savage absolutely refuses to apologize, and because Talk Radio Networks refuses to act, a coalition of over a dozen disability groups led by the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network with the American Association of People with Disabilities, the National Coalition for Disability Rights and others are calling on the show’s sponsors to withdraw their support.

Ari Neeman, President of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, says Savage’s comments “do real damage to autistic people by increasing public ignorance and misinformation about autism, thereby putting at risk vital education, support and services.”

Neeman added, “There are more than 50 million people with disabilities in the United States, representing approximately $200 billion in disposable income. We represent a market that cannot be ignored. Various show sponsors such as Campbell’s, Staples, Subway, and Purina One are part of the fabric of American family life, and these companies need to stand by American families, including families with special children.”

“We feel this is beyond a free speech issue,” explains Zosia Zaks, a nationally known writer, speaker, and autism advocate. “Other radio hosts have been penalized for racist and sexist comments. These comments are no different in their tone or intent,” she stated in a recent e-mail interview.

The letter to “The Savage Nation” show sponsors will be delivered to them tomorrow morning, Thursday, July 24. To schedule an interview with Neeman about this important discrimination controversy, please contact me at the e-mail address or phone number above.

Coordinating Efforts To Contact Michael Savage's Advertisers

2008-07-23T21:51:00.000-04:00

In an effort to consolidate the list of Michael Savage's sponsors in all markets, I have created a links section on this page and consolidated the lists I have so far. I would like to involve as many people from as many different markets as possible in this effort until we have responses from every company on the list or Michael Savage is off the air.

Unfortunately, to get a comprehensive and accurate list, some of us must listen to Michael Savage's show. I have found that some lists online include sponsors who have already dropped Savage due to disparaging comments he has made about various groups in the past. Some lists are even from the effort to cancel his old MSNBC show. We must make certain that we are not focusing our efforts on the wrong companies.

What I want to do is have a distribution list of people who want to gather an accurate list of sponsors. Please email me at gregtreich@comcast.net if you would like to particpate. What I would like to see is a list of companies who are advertising on Michael Savages show with a log of the times the ads aired. We need these lists from as many markets as possible, and if there are several of you in a single market, you can rotate your listening duty. The point is not to get ratings for Michael Savage, but to concentrate on contacting the advertisers.

For those who believe that Michael Savage has a right to say the things he says and that we're demolishing the First Amendment by trying to take away his voice, please remember that we're not trying to regulate him out of the radio market or sue him blind. We are using true market forces to oust him from the airwaves. He absolutely loves the free market, right? Yes, unless it works against him. We are voting here with our power in the market as consumers.

If Savage's listeners want to donate money to keep him on the air, so be it. That's the market at work. We would still no longer have to support his opinion with a portion of the dollars we spend on the goods and services offered by the people who advertise on his program. If he can find enough sponsors to support him, they'll have a limited consumer base and won't be able to compete as successfully in the market.

It's ironic that Michael Savage calls the people protesting him "Stalinists", considering that we're using the power of the market to accomplish our goals.

We must also not lose sight of what he said to launch this effort in the first place, no matter how he tries to spin it.

Chattem, Inc (Gold Bond) Responds Re: Michael Savage

2008-07-23T07:29:00.000-04:00

I received the following response from Chattem, Inc, this morning:
_________________

Let me start by telling you how much we appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts about the Michael Savage Radio Show. Chattem has been in business for over 125 years, and in that time, we have learned to listen to our customers above everyone else. It is through feedback such as yours that we attain a real time understanding of the sensitivities and concerns of consumers.

In response to your email, you should know that Chattem does not purchase any advertising from nor is a sponsor of the Michael Savage program.

While commercial air time may be indistinguishable to most listeners, there are several ways for advertisers to acquire commercial air time. Chattem chooses to buy commercial air time that is supplied by the local radio stations rather than commercial air time that is supplied by national programs such as Michael Savage, Rick Dees, Liza Gibbons, etc… Generally, the commercial air time purchased by Chattem sponsors the local news, weather and traffic reported to listeners by a local radio personality. Sometimes Chattem advertising copy is delivered by a local radio personality. Other times the local radio station plays a pre-produced advertising script just after or just before the local news, weather, and traffic report. In all cases, Chattem advertising is occupying commercial air time that was the property of the local radio station rather than the national program that is being broadcast. We have requested that the local stations not air our advertising during his show.

Again, thank you for your comments.

Dawn Simpson
Consumer Affairs
Chattem, Inc.

____________________

What Dawn Simpson is saying here is similar to what I guessed the situation to be with advertising on the radio; most of the companies aren't even aware that their commercials are being aired during Michael Savage's show, and want nothing to do with him. If they make the extra effort to ask the stations not to air their commercials during Savage's show, that's great.

Update on Michael Savage Advertisers

2008-07-23T02:18:00.000-04:00

As I have noted in previous posts, Breakpoint (a subsidiary of Prison Fellowship Ministries) and DirectBuy.com have both denounced Michael Savage's comments, and the comments from Home Depot demonstrate that they were unaware that their advertising dollars were supporting Michael Savage.

I have yet to receive a response from the rest of the sponsors I've listed.

Here are some advertisers I heard tonight, some with one time at which I heard them. Since I received Home Depot's message that said any statement that charged them with advertising on the Michael Savage show was false (even though I heard it with my own ears), I began to take down a sample time. I invite any representative from the following companies to listen to Michael Savage's show to hear their own commercials (in my market, Savage airs from 10 PM to 1AM on WDTK AM), so the times will differ from that of his live broadcast).

Priceline (11:32 PM): http://www.priceline.com/

Bullfrog Sunblock (didn't record time): http://www.bullfrogsunblock.com/

Christianity.com (didn't record time): http://www.christianity.com/

Business Software Alliance (didn't record time): https://reporting.bsa.org/usa/home.aspx?pr=1&HBX_OU= or http://www.bsa.org/country.aspx?sc_lang=en

Swiss America Trading Corporation (11:34 PM): http://www.swissamerica.com/

*NOTE: Michael Savage read a letter on the air from Craig Smith, the CEO of Swiss America, who supported him in his efforts, gushing about how "God is pleased" with the work Savage is doing.

Barracuda Networks http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/?L=en

Of course, there were some of the usual suspects:

DMIUSA (11:48): http://www.dmiusa.com

Geico (11:33): http://www.geico.com

The Heritage Foundation (11:47) http://www.heritage.org (they advertise more than anyone)

FreshStart America (11:48) http://freshstartamerica.com

DirectBuy.com (They said that their contract is up with Savage at the end of the week, and they will not renew it.)

Home Depot Unaware of Advertising on Michael Savage Show

2008-07-22T23:13:00.001-04:00

I received the following response from Home Depot:

________

Dear Mr. Reich,

Thank you for contacting The Home Depot Customer Care in this matter. The Home Depot does not currently advertise on The Michael Savage Show, nor do we have any kind of sponsorship in place with the program. We strive to ensure that the programs we support through advertising reflect our core values. Feedback from customers like you plays a large role in helping us to maintain these standards and I really appreciate you bringing this matter to our attention. Again, we do not advertise with this program and any suggestion of such support is false.

In fact, one of our company?s founders, Bernie Marcus, is very active inthe effort to build awareness and raise funding for autism research. We join him in this effort and have supported several of his campaigns. Learn more about his programs for autism at www.marcus.org <http://www.marcus.org/>.

Thank you for your interest in The Home Depot.

Sincerely,

Hemant

Customer Care.

____________

It's not surprising that they are not aware of how their advertising dollars are being spent; Home Depot most likely made the deal at the level of Talk Radio Network or some other level that had nothing to do with the Michael Savage program directly. However, the fact is that I heard the commercial myself on July 18th. It makes it all the more urgent that Home Depot demand that their advertising dollars not be used to support Michael Savage.

Directbuy.com Responds Re: Michael Savage

2008-07-22T22:07:00.000-04:00

One Sara Shragal sent me a message on behalf of Directbuy.com:

*

Good afternoon Mr. Reich,

Thank you for writing with your feedback about DirectBuy's sponsorship of Michael Savage's radio show. Like you, we at DirectBuy were surprised and saddened by Mr. Savage's comments.

Our contract with the Michael Savage radio show is up at the end of this week, at which point DirectBuy will no longer be a sponsor of the show.

Again, thank you for writing to me with your feedback. Should you have any additional concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Kindest regards

Sara Shragal

DirectBuy, Inc.

*

This is good news.

At time of this writing, Michael Savage is shifting the discussion from his venomous words to overdiagnosis of autism. He has backed away from his claim of "99 percent" to "58 percent", based on information from an "expert from Vanderbilt University".

It doesn't matter. What he said is inexcusable. As a communications professional, Michael Savage should know how what he said would be taken by the parents of children with autism. He also should know that what he's saying will hurt those who are in real need.

Breakpoint Responds Re: Michael Savage

2008-07-22T18:44:00.000-04:00

I have not received a response as to whether or not I have permission to post the messages from Breakpoint yet, but I think it's important that people know how they responded. I received two messages from them. One was in response to my direct message to them; another was a response to my posting of a link to their website in this blog in the list of advertisers who support Michael Savage.

_________________________

Prison Fellowship Ministries wrote:

Greg Reich,

Thank you for contacting us with your concern. We are glad you have written us and would like you to know that we do not sponsor Michael Savage in any way. We are very interested in learning how you obtained this false information. We are very concerned. We don't want to give anyone the impression that we support Savage in any way, or agree with his views on autism in any way. If you can help us by letting us know any further details we'd be grateful. Simply respond through email and we'll do our best to correct the information out there as soon as possible.

Mr. Colson's view of autism is evidenced by the many times he has addressed this issue in our BreakPoint Commentaries, often speaking about his love for his own grandson Max who has autism and the difference Max has made in Chuck's life. You can find these commentaries here:

http://www.breakpoint.org/search.asp?keywords=autism&x=12&y=4

Thank you for any help you can give us in this matter. God bless.

In Christ,

Ministry Service Representative

PFM

_________________________

Message #2:

Dear Mr. Reich,

In regards to your recent blog listing BreakPoint as an advertiser for the Michael Savage show, please know that BreakPoint does not advertise on the Savage show. In fact, we don't do paid advertising. Most likely what you heard was your local radio station promoting BreakPoint during the Savage show-that's something BreakPoint doesn't control. We never request to be promoted during any specific show.

As we mentioned in our previous response to your email, Mr. Colson has an autistic grandson who is near and dear to his heart and Chuck has been an advocate for children with disabilities. He has offered commentaries on this subject which you can find here: http://www.breakpoint.org/search.asp?keywords=autism&x=12&y=4

You can be certain that we'd never support Mr. Savage's position. We would very much appreciate your removing BreakPoint from your list of Savage sponsors, especially since we have and will continue to speak out about the God-given dignity of autistic children and of every human being.

In Christ,

Ministry Service Representative

PFM

_________________________

I think they've made it quite clear that they do not want to be associated with Michael Savage in any way, as I expected. It is my sincere hope that pressure from PFM will actually draw a public apology out of Savage, but I won't hold my breath--Savage isn't the apologetic type.

Update on Michael Savage

2008-07-22T01:54:00.001-04:00

I have attempted to contact all of Michael Savage's sponsors to make them aware of what their advertising dollars support. Most of them are not companies or organizations I patronize, but a few are larger, and one, Home Depot, is a place I've visited regularly in the past. I will not patronize Home Depot until they pull their support from Michael Savage's show.

DMIUSA has a full email inbox. I hope a lot of people had the same idea I did.

I have to be honest: I skipped one sponsor. I didn't try to contact Townhall.com, because just as I was looking for contact information, I ran across an article about how autism is over-diagnosed. Besides, Ann Coulter's one of their columnists. If they like her, I'm sure Michael Savage is no problem for them, either. Pointless, hate-filled rants are their specialty.

According to a New York Times article, Savage is standing by his remarks on autism. However, he's shifting the discussion to a broader point of "autism is over-diagnosed". I truly hope nobody lets him get away with it, but I know the gutless mainstream media will not bother to do any research, and he'll get away with all of he disparaging remarks he made.

He attacked children with autism and their parents. Let's not forget that.

He also attacked minorities, implying that they were all on welfare and all minority children were dishonest about asthma--something they die from three to six times more often than white children with asthma.

There was nothing factual in his claims about autism. The only number he cited was "99 percent", in reference to the number of cases where autism is simply a "brat who hasn't been told to cut out the act." If anyone in the media interviews him--and I'm told Good Morning America will--they should have a good set of facts handy and, ideally, a group of parents with their children who have autism. This last would be difficult for most parents dealing with autism, I know--my kid wouldn't want to be in such an alien situation, and might have a meltdown--but I'd love for Michael Savage to look at the faces of autism and try to stand by his remarks.

Michael Savage picks on my daughter

2008-07-20T17:57:00.000-04:00

Media Matters brought to my attention that Michael Savage, a nationally-syndicated radio talk show host who reportedly ranks third among right-wing talkers behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, made some disparaging remarks about children with autism and their parents recently, saying that in 99% of the cases, it's just an act, and there's no father around to straighten them out, and, basically, verbally abuse them. For his full comments, play the audio below:

I was so angry when I heard his comments, that I decided to listen to his show to find out who sponsors him, so I can let them know just what sort of nastiness their advertising dollars support. My hope is that they withdrawal their support, and he loses his radio presence.

I'm going to parse his comments here, because Savage didn't just pick on children with autism, but on several groups at the same time:

"Now you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I'm now talking about autism? A fraud. A racket."

Did Michael Savage ever see the movie, "Rain Man"? Dustin Hoffman's character, Ray, was an autistic savant. Hoffman's research for the character was based on a real person, Kim Peek.

Autism manifests itself in many ways, with varying severity and ability to function. With my daughter, it's hand-flapping (diminished with therapy), spinning and watching objects spin, inappropriate play, inappropriate reactions to questions, an aversion to wet foods, sensitivity to certain noises, and obsessing about music and musical instruments. She also fits the profile of a hyperlexic, which means that she could read before she could speak, but didn't comprehend it, and probably won't for another year. She was mostly non-verbal until she was two, and she still doesn't have conversations, though she can sing whole songs, repeat whole passages from videos she has seen, and communicate her wants and needs to us.

Caitlin was less than a year old when my wife, Heather, noticed that something wasn't quite right, and she was around fifteen months when it really became noticeable to everyone else. She'd been developing normally, then she stopped. She didn't babble like other kids, stayed in her own little world, hand-flapped when she was excited, wouldn't make much eye contact or respond to her name...there were all sorts of clues. Autism only came up after our own extensive research, and an exhaustive pursuit of a correct diagnosis. I searched through peer-reviewed research on autism, used diagnosis surveys that the doctors used, and had her go through tests with professionals. There is no doubt that my daughter has Pervasive Development Disorder, which is on the autism spectrum. There is also no doubt that when I go to her preschool, the children I encounter there have autism, as well.

While there may be people out there trying to scam parents of children with autism, Savage isn't going after them. He's not using his radio presence to help protect parents from unscrupulous opportunists with snake oil cures. Instead, he attacks the parents and the children. First, however, he goes after racial/ethnic minorities:

"For a long while we were hearing that every minority child has asthma. Why was there an asthma epidemic among minority children? Because...I'll tell you why: the children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in was told [sic] cough-cough-cough. When the nurse looks at you, go cough-cough-cough, 'I don't know, the dust got me.' See, everyone had asthma from the minority community. That was number one."

There's a whole lot going on here. Savage states as fact that "we" were hearing how every minority child has asthma. Really? When was that? I don't recall it. He's a lot older than I am, so maybe it was a few decades ago, but my suspicion is that he made it up out of whole cloth.

As far as children getting extra welfare if they had disability is concerned, it's not as simple as telling the government that your child has a disability, or faking a few coughs (does this guy know anyone with asthma?) in front of the school nurse. And where is he getting the idea that asthmatics get extra help in school? I knew three kids with asthma through my school years, and not one of them received special academic treatment for their condition. They did get permission to skip certain activities in gym class, but that's about it.

What's most disgusting about the claim Michael Savage is making is that black and Puerto Rican children in New York, for example, die six times more often than white children with asthma. Black children have asthma at a thirteen percent higher rate than whites, and Puerto Rican children have it twenty percent more often. You might be able to put something over on a school nurse once in awhile (I simulated a contagious rash when I was in sixth grade by having a friend slap me on the arms, and was sent home for it), but hospitalization and death for serious asthma attacks? That's quite another matter. Equally disconcerting are the facts that Savage is implying that the entire minority community is on welfare, and that they are all dishonest enough to have their children fake a medical condition. Savage's assertion here is racist to its core.

Savage returns to autism at this point:

"Now, the illness du jour is autism."

I'm not going to give Michael Savage an inch here. As someone with sponsors, as someone who bills himself as trained in science, as someone with a national platform from which to speak, he should know better than to speak before he researches something. For the rest of the people out there, I have to forgive this line of thinking a little (though intellectual laziness is one of my pet peeves). In this day and age of rampant pharmaceutical advertising, we hear about diseases that just don't sound like diseases. I'm highly skeptical of restless leg syndrome, for example, and I think irritable bowel syndrome could have a dietary treatment--though I am not going to pretend to be a neurologist or gastroenterologist and tell you for certain that these issues aren't valid medical conditions. I definitely don't know enough about them to get onto a nationally-syndicated radio show and label them fraudulant. If I ever found myself with either of these conditions, I'd do extensive research and seek medical treatment.

In any case, when my wife first suggested that autism might be what's different about our daughter, my reaction was to be skeptical. I knew what classic autism was, but the autism spectrum seemed to include far too great a range of behaviors to be under one category. However, I was focused on the differences and not the things children with autism share in common. It was a friend, Angie, who put things into perspective. She said, "Think of the range that is considered 'normal'. Think about how broad that is, then add autism." It made total sense, and once I began looking at it from that perspective, I saw the common traits, seeing the differences in my child as the differences any child should have from another.

The recent surge in autism diagnoses has several possible explanations: vaccine preservatives (thimerosal), older parents, better diagnosis techniques...but to say that it's the illness of the day is to imply the possession of knowledge about autism and examples of fraudulant diagnosis. If Savage has such evidence of fraud, I'd love to see him produce it.

Savage: "You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is in ninety-nine percent of the cases."

I want to know what research Michael Savage has done or has seen that gives him authority to speak on ninety-nine percent of autism cases.

Savage: "It's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is."

I'd say what's really on my mind, but I'm trying to keep this particular post PG. My kid's not a brat. She's not spoiled, she's disciplined as well as she can be without actually being able to have a meaningful conversation, and she doesn't act up all that much. She's a happy child, a silly child, a child with a love for music, swimming, family, words, and numbers, and yes, occasionally, she acts up. Has she been told to cut the act out? She has been told to cut it out, but she's not acting. She truly becomes uncomfortable and frightened in situations where there is a lot of noise and crowds--if it's a new place. She's fine in the mall or a familiar restaurant, but not in an unfamiliar restaurant or a party. A neurotypical "brat" can tell you what is setting him/her off; with a child with autism, it could be just about anything, and they often can't tell you in the "normal" way. It's frustrating, embarassing (more for my wife than for me), and hard on a marriage. The vast majority of the time, my child with autism is not a "brat", by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't appreciate the attack on my child.

Savage: "What do you mean, 'They scream and they're silent."

Wow, what a wonderful clinical definition of autism. Bravo, Savage. You really hit the nail on the head.

Smell the sarcasm?

Some scream, some flap their hands, some spin, some bang their heads against the wall, some have obsessive-compulsive behaviors, some line things up incessantly, some are completely non-verbal, some obsess with letters and numbers, many make little or no eye contact, most won't respond to their names when called; most are combinations of a lot of these characteristics. Seizures are common. Some are extremely picky eaters. There is a whole range of behaviors and developmental differences unique to children with autism. "What do you mean, "They scream and then they're silent?" What a flagrant display of naked ignorance and intellectual laziness.

Savage: "They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot."

Way to attack the mothers and the kids at the same time, there, Savage. If the father is around, like I am, the implication is that his parenting skills are lacking as well.

There's so much packed into this insult. The first implication is that autism is the result of single mothers raising children. If there's no father around, we're talking about children of single mothers, right? There's no autism; it's just that single mothers aren't doing an adequate job raising their children. That's the message we're suppose to ascertain here, isn't it?

When I heard this part of the audio, I had to ask the question, "Does Michael Savage have children?" Other than the "Straighten up" part, and, arguably--though not applicable to my daughter--the "Act like a man" part, what Savage is suggesting fathers say to their children is nothing short of verbal assault--and on a child with autism. For Savage's information, since I have a daughter with autism, I have heard parents speak this way to their children, and it doesn't work. You can scream till you're blue in the face, and you'll end up looking like the moron/putz/idiot, because in the end, you'll still have an inconsolable, screaming child. Savage may or may not suggest smacking a child, but I know of parents who have been there, too. I'm against corporal punishment for my own reasons, not the least of which is that I've never heard of it actually working on neurotypical kids, other than anecdotally, let alone children with autism. It's a great way to have your child end up fearing you and withdrawing into isolation, which will only hinder progress--if not halting it entirely--and turn the child into an adult who can't function well in society.

Back to the part about whether Savage actually has children: yes, he has two. They're grown. His son founded a company and his daughter is its CFO. Only they can speak for how well they were raised. Whatever the case, I don't have to verbally assault my daughter to discipline her when she does something she knows is wrong. I simply show her what she did wrong, show what is correct, and I move on. Eye contact is essential--and we had to work hard on the eye contact at first. Now, I have no problem getting it. Most of the time, my daughter listens, and I'm lucky--it wasn't always that way. It doesn't change the fact that I need to put her through expensive therapy to help her with her developmental delays, which are mostly related to social skills, especially conversation. I wish Savage knew the pain of a father who can't have a conversation with his child, not because she's being a brat, but because she's unable to understand the concept of meaningful, two-way verbal exchange. She's progressing, but it's still going to take work. Imagine all of those parents out there who can't pay for therapy.

Savage: "Autism--everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, 'Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot. Don't act like a girl. Don't cry.' That's what I was raised with. That's what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training."

Ah, yes, and you turned out so well, didn't you, Michael? Attacking children with autism and their parents makes you into a real man, doesn't it? Since I began researching this guy so I can do something about him, I've found that he attacks women, homosexuals, liberals (or, rather, a caricature he draws of liberals), minorities, immigrants, protesters, Muslims, and anyone else who happens to draw his derision on a given day. He cites very few facts and makes very few valid points, as far as I can tell, but I'm only going on the one show I've listened to so far and the transcripts of the several shows where he's attacked all the groups I've mentioned. Looks like he didn't take his father's advice about acting like a fool or sounding like an idiot.

By the way, my father wasn't a wimpy guy by any stretch of the imagination. My brother was still of the opinion that my dad could kick his butt well into adulthood. He did go negative a bit like Savage's father, but he also taught me positive things: family cohesion, hard work, loyalty, perseverance, and self-reliance. One thing he'd never do is call my daughter with autism a moron, putz, or idiot. He used to say to me, "You're so smart, but you're so goddamn dumb," when I did something of which he didn't approve (acknowledging my academic prowess, but pointing out a moment of perceived stupidity or momentary lapse in common sense), but where my daughter is concerned, he recognizes that there are issues that can't be addressed in the same manner in which he addressed his kids. He tells me that my daughter will come along if we work hard with her and get her therapy. Where's the disconnect with Savage? Oh, yeah--my dad has actually seen a child with autism. Michael Savage hasn't.

Savage: "You're turning your son into a girl, and you're turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That's why we have the politicians we have."

Using "girl" as an insult here aside (Savage says diragatory things about women all the time), is Michael Savage really blaming parents of children with autism for the state of affairs in this country? I think he was broadening the subject here to include all parents who don't verbally assault their children, but the connection between this statement and autism only exists in the mind of Michael Savage, and perhaps people who think like him.

I wouldn't have posted this piece without suggesting some course of action, because I absolutely can't stand giving people like Michael Savage any undue attention. However, he allegedly has around ten million listeners, and, while we may or may not be able to reach them or change their minds, we can spread awareness of what autism really is, and, in the meantime, we can hit Savage in the wallet.

Some people have suggested complaining to the FCC. If someone can point out something Savage did to violate FCC regulations, by all means, take this course of action. I seriously doubt you'll find such a violation.

Some people have suggested to simply change the channel, and not to listen to Savage. I agree. Don't listen to Michael Savage. I'll do it for you so I can contact his advertisers and you can do the same. However, he already has dedicated listeners. As I've mentioned, he ranks only behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity among right-wing talkers. I only listened to his show last Friday for the first time because I wanted to find out who sponsors it. During that show, he disparaged anyone who wanted to see the new Batman movie, he called Heath Ledger a junkie, and he called anyone who wanted to visit a Presidential library a "yokel". Most of his rants were pointless and rambling; it's a stream-of-consciousness style that sort of meanders without any meaningful structure.

In any case, Savage has listeners, and some, maybe even most, agree with him. These people vote, and they talk with other people who vote. We may or may not be able to reach the listeners of Michael Savage, but through education of enough people, we can relegate those who think like Savage or follow his lead to the lunatic fringe, where they belong.

The more imporant thing we can do is make his advertisers aware of what Michael Savage is saying, and let them know that as consumers or potential consumers, we would be less likely to buy from them if they continue to support such disparaging speech. For those who say that this sort of pursuit sounds like censorship and is contrary to the First Amendment, please understand that freedom of speech does not translate into freedom to say anything you want on the radio, because that freedom is dependent completely on who will pay for you to stay on the air. Remember also that every time you go to Home Depot, or you buy insurance from Geico, or you use Gold Bond Medicated products, or you use Wachovia Bank, some small part of your money is supporting Michael Savage's venemous speech.

Furthermore, Savage is representing the radio network of which he is a part. What he says is a reflection of that network, and they should act accordingly. Do they support such speech? It's not just offensive; if all it did was offend me, I wouldn't have written this post. What Michael Savage is saying actually can hinder efforts to obtain funding for autism research and for special needs classes children with autism attend in our public schools. It can damage parents emotionally if the people around them treat them the same way Savage did on the air, and they can't change the channel in these cases.

If Savage can find enough funding to remain on the air after his major sponsors drop him, all we can do is educate the public as much as possible, which we should be doing anyway. In the meantime, here is a list of his sponsors and their websites:

Digital Media Inc., U.S.A.: http://dmiusa.com/

Nevada State Corporate Network, Inc.: http://www.nscn.com/

Roger Schlesinger, the Mortgage Minute Guy: http://mortgageminuteguy.com/

Townhall.com: http://www.townhall.com/

Effectur: http://www.effectur.com/landing.aspx?id=436&gclid=COv8oen-ypQCFQ4RnQodqE95rA

Geico: http://www.geico.com/

Home Depot: http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?pn=Contact_Us&langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Wachovia: http://www.wachovia.com/

Gold Bond: http://www.goldbond.com/

FreshStart America: http://www.freshstartamerica.com/

Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/

Breakpoint: [Link removed; see "Breakpoint Responds Re: Michael Savage]

Debt Consultants of America (snail mail and phone number listings): http://www.dallas.com/debt-consultants-of-america-incorporated-b23046351

DirectBuy: http://www.directbuy.com/ [See "Directbuy.com Responds Re: Michael Savage"]

WebEx: http://www.webex.com/

The list above includes only the sponsors who advertised during the show I listened to on Friday. I will continue to listen for sponsors as long as it takes.

Yet another reason why I'm not voting Republican

2008-07-18T02:28:00.000-04:00

Somehow, I got onto the RNC email list. It's amazing, because the RNC
doesn't care a whit about separation of state and church, and I'm among their
top enemies in that regard. I serve on the Board of Directors in an
organization dedicated to the total separation of state and church, which the
upper echelon of the GOP considers a myth and an undesirable state of affairs.
Never mind that the organization is non-partisan, and that there actually are a
few Republicans who think separation of state and church is a good thing.
It's too bad that they also think that the middle class should be separated from
their jobs and their money.

In any case, I received a survey from the McCain campaign, and I thought I'd share
the questions with anyone who cares to read them, because they're awfully
telling. Most are "Yes", "No", and "Undecided" questions.

Section I: Jobs and the Economy

1. Do you think Congress should respond to the economic slowdown with a
plan of tax cuts to stimulate the economy?

Oh, yes, because that's worked so well so far. I thought it was irresponsible
to cut taxes in a time of war in the first place, and I really haven't reaped
benefits from it. The only people who really did reap benefits were people
whose main source of income is dividend checks (capital gains dropped from 28%
to 15%), and really, really wealthy people. The few hundred dollars most
of us ended up getting pales in comparison with the rise in the cost of living
we've experienced of late.

2. Do you believe our economy with grow if we cut taxes and put more money
in the hands of hardworking Americans?

Republican tax cuts haven't been to the benefit of working class Americans;
they've inflated the bank accounts of the wealthiest Americans, and those who
make the bulk of their money from dividend checks made out like bandits, with a
thirteen percent increase in their annual take--if their take remained the same.
Some made out even better, and some have had less luck in the market.
Let's face it, though--people with a lot of money who get it from the stock
market and other investments covered under capital gains know where to put their
money. They aren't hurting.

Also, consider the fact that the middle class has had an average decrease in income of
over two thousand dollars per household per year since Bush has been in office,
that eight thousand houses foreclose per day now, and that prices of everything
have gone up, and you'll see that lowering taxes won't help all that much,
especially since our infrastructure is already crumbling.

Furthermore, our dollar is weaker, we have far fewer jobs for people without
rare skills, and cutting taxes on people who already don't pay all that much in
taxes--relatively speaking--won't stimulate the economy because they will go
from drowning in debt to maybe scraping by. Most of this country lives
paycheck to paycheck, and the average person is thousands of dollars in debt to
credit cards alone, never mind car payments and house payments.

Finally, employers who pay people based on what they'll take home after taxes
will simply pay employees less, so they'll take home about the same amount.
It benefits employers, not employees. Some employers might pass on the
benefit to workers, but the largest employers won't.

3. Do you think the unemployment insurance system needs to be modernized to
meet the needs of displaced workers?

Yeah, but I'd want to see what they mean by "modernized". I'm highly suspect
when Republicans get involved in things that unions created. They're
highly anti-union, and will do what they can to benefit employers, not
out-of-work employees.

4. Which of the following do you feel is most adversely affecting the
economy in your area? [Yes, they capitalized everything!]

-Burdensome Taxes: If taxes are seen as investments in the general welfare of
the United States, they are no longer burdensome. Nobody likes to pay
taxes, but if you want certain services, like roads, schools, public safety,
fire departments, and so forth, you have to pay taxes. I'm all for tax
reform, but let's face it: most of our tax money goes to military spending,
federal law enforcement, and prisons. How about we address the issues
behind that staggering portion of the budget and move on from there?

-Unstable Real Estate Market: Deregulation of the mortgage industry killed the
real estate market, in addition to poor lending practices and yes, poor consumer
understanding of mortgages. I recently purchased a home in this buyer's
market, and the mortgage company tried to push me into an adjustable rate
mortgage after the housing crisis was in full swing. My answer
was, "Are you freaking kidding me?" The corporate predatory lending
practice of marketing unaffordable loans to people who aren't credit worthy
helped create this crisis.

Consumers have to take some of the blame, but I've heard of loans approaching
29% after the interest rate went up--who would have thought the rate could have
gone up that high? It was bad enough that credit cards became deregulated
at the federal level, and can charge whatever interest rate they want, but
having that sort of rate on a mortgage is unconscionable.

Speaking of credit cards, if you want to get out of debt with those people,
don't pay your bill for at least one month, and probably two. You will
incur late fees and possibly over-the-limit fees, but they will put you on
hardship programs, some with 0% interest. You could also close your
accounts and get on a payment plan. You think you might be ruining your
credit, but chances are that you don't have great credit anyway, you're most
likely extended, and home and car loans are more important on your credit report
than unsecured debt. Oh, and medical bills? If you can't afford
them, don't pay them. They don't count when you're looking for a mortgage.
Just wait six months after your delinquency.

Note on the credit cards: turn your ringer off for a month and a half. The
ringing will drive you nuts. After the month and a half is up, start
answering the phone. Don't mess around with debt counselors and don't get
duped into paying the full balance owed or the current past due. Tell them
you don't have the money, and they'll work with you. Be nice. Most
of these people will be nice back. If they're pushy and mean, ask to speak
to a supervisor. They usually won't be pushy and mean if you are working
out a payment plan or settlement.

One more note on credit cards: I think the outrageous rise in interest rates is the
single biggest reason for the economic slowdown. People are in debt up to
their eyeballs and can't buy the consumer goods that drive the economy.
They have less money, so they buy cheap, Chinese-manufactured products.
Stop giving these people your money. Trust me.

-Threat of Terrorism: Terrorism has been on the rise globally since Dubya took
office. His invasion of Iraq has been a recruiting tool for terrorist
organizations. Grampy McSame will continue the policies of Bush the
Younger, so it stands to reason that terrorist organizations will be able to
maintain the recruiting tools supplied by this Republican President.

Do you know why we haven't had an attack on American soil since 9/11? There
are two reasons outside of the diligence of intelligence agencies. The
first is that our soldiers are in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they can be
attacked by terrorists who blend in with the locals really well, and Osama bin
Ladin wanted us over there so he didn't have to fight us over here. By the
way, he also wanted our bases in Saudi Arabia closed. He got both things
he wanted. The second reason is that it's really expensive and
logistically difficult--nearly impossible, in fact--to attack Americans on
American soil if you don't live here and don't speak the language. Read
the 9/11 Commission Report, and you'll see just how difficult it was to
a)recruit people willing to sacrifice themselves for Osama bin Ladin's cause,
b)find such people who were educated enough to either already know English or
learn it well enough to accomplish the goal, and educated enough to learn to
fly, c)finance the operation (yes, Osama bin Ladin has lots of money, but al
Qaeda operates with cash, mostly, and large wire transfers catch the eye of U.S.
Customs), and d)stay under the radar long enough to get the job done. It
is tragically amazing how difficult it was for al Qaeda to execute the
9/11 attacks. The tragedy gets worse, though: word has it that sixty
federal agents possessed prior knowledge that two people involved in the attacks
were on the terrorist watch list and were learning how to fly planes, and
nothing was done to stop them or even keep them under an appropriate level of
surveillance. And don't buy into this nonsense that the scenario was a
"failure of imagination", because that scenario had been advanced several times
before. It happened in "The Running Man", for the love of mud! If
you've never seen that movie, it ends with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character
plowing into a television network's building with an aircraft. If you were
involved in national security and you saw that movie or even heard about it,
wouldn't you go over such a scenario just for the mental exercise?

-Severe Government Regulations: For these people, any government
regulation is severe. If you want to see where failure of regulation gets
you, take a look at the mortgage industry, the credit card industry, and the
food industry. The most recent development in the area of food is the
recall of five million pounds of beef due to E. coli contamination. We've
cut funding from the inspection of food, so our food is coming to us poisoned.
Imagine that.

Speaking of severe government regulations, these Republicans want to restrict
your freedom of reproductive choice (abortion and birth control), your freedom
of choice of partner (they're anti-gay rights), your freedom of expression (flag
burning laws and arrests of protesters) and your economic freedom (unless you're
wealthy already). They build more prisons and make tougher laws to put
people in them, keeping the prison industry alive and well, thank you very much.
They escalate drug law enforcement, which mostly imprisons people for simple
possession, when it's actually far less expensive and more sensible to treat it
as a public health issue. Make no mistake: the Republican Party is only
against "severe" regulation when it comes to anything that involves big
business. They actually used to support the entrepreneur, but they're so
in bed with corporations now, it's disgusting.

-Growth of Government Spending: The occupation of Iraq, the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security, the creation of the White House Office of
Faith-Based Initiatives, and the failure to veto every single spending bill that
came across Bush's desk are all examples of the insane growth of government
spending. Bush cut taxes (for the wealthiest Americans, mostly), but
borrowed most of the money from China to make up for massive increase in
spending he and the Republican Congress from 2002-2006 created.

-Unpredictable Fluctuating Fuel Prices: It's all in the wording, because a more accurate
phrase would be "Apparently Limitless Increases in the Price of Oil".
"Fluctuating" makes it sound like the prices are going up and down drastically,
when they're going up fairly steadily, with very minor, temporary decreases
along the way. The steadily rising price of oil has many causes:
speculation, increased demand due to the overwhelming use of imports, neglect of
automobile fuel standards, lack of refineries, willingness to squeeze the
consumer for every available penny on the part of the oil companies...there are
all kinds of factors here. The out-of-control increase in the price of oil
is causing the cost of everything else to go up, but that's also a function of
deregulation. Reagan deregulated the trading of oil futures. Oh, and
he and Bush the Elder sold weapons to Iran and armed and trained the Taliban,
but that's beside the point.

-Other: I answered "Republican policies".

5. Which of the following is the single most important economic issue
facing your family?

This question had relatively benign choices and was one of the very few leading
questions on the survey. Your choices were: Health Care Costs, Price of
fuel, High Taxes, Inflation/rising prices overall, Mortgage Crisis, and Other.
The random capitalization is theirs. I answered "Republicans in office"
under the "Other" category.

6. Do you believe that reducing the federal deficit should be a top
priority?

Yep--I don't know why we wanted to owe all that money to China in the first
place. Seems contrary to common sense. Unfortunately, they didn't
want commentary; only "Yes", "No", or "Undecided".

7. Do you think government should reduce regulations and provide tax incentives to
encourage small business growth?

If that means that small businesses can ignore safety standards, labor laws, health
regulations, and the promises they've made to employees regarding benefits, no.
I'm sure there are some regulations that hinder businesses, but I want examples,
and I want to decide on a case-by-case basis. The same goes for tax
incentives. I want to know the reason the tax exists, what we're going to
lose if we cut it, and how giving the small business owner that particular cut
is going to give me a return. Is my tax burden going to be lowered because
that employer can now hire people at a more competitive rate of pay, which means
they'll be in a higher tax bracket than they may have been previously?
That's one example of several that cross my mind.

Quite a few people go into business without taking taxes into account in their P&Ls,
and think that the business income is their personal income, with the mistaken
understanding that they are taxed progressively like individuals. Maybe a
progressive tax is fairer when it comes to businesses. I don't think they
should be excused from paying taxes altogether, because the services their taxes
cover must be paid for by other taxpayers or by borrowing more money from China.
There is a certain level of tax that's fair. Businesses get robbed, so
they need the police department. Businesses lose property to fire, so they
need a fire department. Businesses have a supply chain, so they need
roads. Businesses need an educated work force--even the most basic
businesses need people who can do math and communicate properly--so they need
strong schools. I don't think they should be exempt from taxes altogether,
which is often the case for a certain period of years--a period where other
taxpayers pick up the slack.

8. Do you feel the U.S. tax code should be made simpler and fairer?

Yes. I am all for tax reform. I just don't think the Republicans should handle
it. I think a flat tax that begins at a certain income level might
be fair. It would reduce accounting costs, eliminate most of the debatable
necessity of the IRS, and eliminate the inefficiency of overpayment and
distribution of refunds. No tax returns would have to be filed for the
average employee or employer. Self-employed people would most likely be
the only ones with paperwork.

I am not against taxes; I just think they should always be an investment. If we
don't have a clear return in whatever form, the tax should be eliminated.
The interpretation of "return" is very loose here, though, and must be left up
to the people. How the people take the power back is another, much more
complicated matter.

9. Do you agree that Government should aggressively rein-in (sic)
spending?

Yes. End the occupation in Iraq. Don't get involved in wars of aggression.
End the war on drugs and start treating drug abuse as a health issue.
Reform the law so that Medicare can once again negotiate drug prices for
participants. Reduce the need for prisons. Stop spending to benefit
corporations and wealthy members of Congress. Dissolve the Department of
Homeland Security and streamline the current intelligence agencies with
technology. Stop auditing individual taxpayers with incomes that make such
spending impractical--the return just isn't there.

10. Should "pork-barrel" spending be completely eliminated?

I want that spending defined first. I have an understanding of the phrase,
but I want examples of the spending Republicans want to eliminate before
answering in the affirmative.

Section II: National Security [This is where the questions get
really bad.]

1. Should the first foreign policy priority of the next President be
winning the war against radical Islamic extremists?

I thought that we were supposed to be going after a criminal organization.
The occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with waging war against radical Islamic
extremists; Saddam Hussein wasn't one, and ran a mostly secular dictatorship
(though his language was just as religious as any of our politicians' in his
speeches). We should never have waged war; we should have tracked down and
prosecuted the criminal organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
They are mass murderers, not a military force, not a nation-state; they should
be hunted down like any fugitives from justice and tried in front of the world.

Allegedly, the prisoners at Guantanamo are people involved in the planning and
execution of the 9/11 attacks. Didn't we deserve to see their public
trials right away? Why did it take years and a Supreme Court ruling to
bring them to trial? Why haven't we captured and tried Osama bin Ladin?

We're distracted, that's why.

I didn't know this was a holy war--or, at least, we've been told it's not.
Are we there to eliminate all fundamentalist Muslims? I thought we were in
Afghanistan to find Osama bin Ladin (who is allegedly now in Pakistan) and
disband the Taliban (whom we armed and trained with our own CIA), not eradicate
fundamentalist Islam. We were told we were going into Iraq to eliminate
the "imminent" threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, which didn't
actually exist. It turned out that we went there to profit the military
industrial complex--parasites like Halliburton and Blackwater who capitalize on
military ventures.

2. Should America surrender in Iraq regardless of the consequences in the
Middle East?

I almost killed my laptop by spitting out what I was drinking all over my keyboard
when I read this question. Surrender? How the hell would we even do
it? To whom would we surrender? We're not at war with a
nation-state. Ending the occupation in Iraq would simply give the
Iraqis their country back. The graceful thing to do would be to end the
occupation, then fund the rebuilding of the country using only Iraqi labor and
Iraqi companies. It's the least we could do after nearly a million
civilians died and four million had to flee the country, after we destroyed
their infrastructure, after we tortured people who did no wrong, and after we
allowed their national treasures to be looted. Let's not forget that over
4100 American lives have been lost, tens of thousands have been altered due to
grievous injury and psychological trauma, and the cost is going to go over a
trillion dollars in the near future, if it hasn't already (including indirect
costs).

You can't surrender to a criminal organization. It's not possible. They
have no authority except what they can take. You hunt them down like any
other criminals and bring them to justice.

3. Do you agree with Democrats who believe national defense spending should
be slashed to fund domestic programs?

Where is this policy written? Cutting defense spending and funding domestic
programs are two separate issues, and are treated as such by nearly every
Democratic politician I know. We put more money into military spending
than all of our allies combined. Something has to be done to curb that
spending. The wording of this question is disingenuous.

I will assert firmly here that if we spend one quarter of the defense budget on
real diplomacy, we'd see no reason to spend as much on defense as we do.
The fact is that we're spending quite a lot on offense right now.
The occupation of Iraq does not represent defense by any stretch of a normal
imagination.

4. Do you support giving our law enforcement agents the tools they need to
monitor terrorist communications?

In other words, "Do you think it's okay that we illegally wiretapped our own
citizens, using taxpayer dollars?" My answer is that they already had the
tools, but this administration decided to illegally wiretap without bothering to
obtain court orders, which they are allowed to apply for after the fact, under
FISA law. I don't like the idea of surveillance without oversight. I
think that Bush had surveillance on political opponents and ordinary citizens,
not on terrorists, and even if he did have it on terrorists, he should have
obtained the authorization of the FISA court. He should have already been
impeached over this illegal action, and Cheney--at least--should have been
impeached over the outing of a covert CIA operative.

5. Do you believe that we should set a public date for withdrawing from
Iraq even if it undermines our troops in the field?

My eyes rolled after I read this question. Who wants to undermine our troops
in the field? The answer we're supposed to get here, of course, is Obama.

Our troops are already getting attacked regularly by people in Iraq who want the
occupation to end. They're losing limbs and lives because we have a
stubborn idiot in the White House who doesn't understand that this occupation
has cost us infinitely more than we've gained. In fact, I can't think of a
thing we have gained, except for more than a couple of dozen seats in Congress
for Democrats in 2006, and a probable victory for Democrats in 2008. It's a
hollow victory. We have a lot to fix. Grampy McSame isn't going to
fix it. I don't know if Obama can, either, but I've seen how fragile the
Republicans can make this country's economy and stability in eight short years,
and I don't trust them to turn things around.

Section III: Other Issues [The lunatic fringe]

1. Should we appoint judges who will interpret the law instead of liberal activists who
make new laws from the bench?

This question comes from the mindset of neo-conservatives who think that judges
should merely interpret legislation, not in terms of the Constitutions of the
United States and the various States, but as they're written and passed by the
various legislative bodies at all levels of government.

Activism from the bench is undesirable, no matter whether it is liberal or
conservative activism. What we should be looking at in terms of judges is
knowledge of and adherence to the Constitution, not their willingness to simply
stick to the letter of any law Congress (or any legislative body) passes.

2. Is it critical for the U.S. to develop alternative sources of energy and
find new supplies of oil in order to fight inflation and keep fuel affordable?

In other words, are you willing to sell off pristine land that belongs to you, the
taxpayer, for your enjoyment, in order to burn some more fossil fuel? I'm
all for the part regarding finding alternative sources of energy, but I want to
reduce oil consumption, not enable the addiction.

This would be like saying there's a crystal meth shortage, so while you smoke
marijuana, we're going to find ways to more efficiently produce crystal meth.

3. Do you think we should work to give parents with children trapped in failing
schools more choices to give their children a better future?

Translation: Do you think we should funnel money away from public schools to
give parents tuition vouchers for private schools? This practice largely
promotes Catholic education; truly private schools are quite often prohibitively
expensive. Vouchers would not benefit inner city children as much as they
will parents who have money, who will basically get a government-funded tuition
discount on very expensive private schools. While the Catholic schools are
arguably better than the inner city schools, there are quite a few public
schools in the suburbs that compete quite well with them. The answer is
not to promote Catholic education with school vouchers, but to fix the issues
that lead to schools failing in America's urban centers.

I know there are a lot of people who think privatization of education is a good
idea, and maybe non-profits would pick up the slack for the poor kids, but so
far, attempts at school privatization have left even suburban children behind.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention it: some people are all about the privatization of
schools because they don't think they should be forced to pay for the education
of someone else's kids, which is a valid stance, albeit one with which I
heartily disagree. However, the Republican theocrats in charge of the
party currently want schools to go private because they are less strictly bound
to Constitutional provisions. In other words, kids will get a daily dose
of religion, unless they're lucky enough to have parents who can afford to send
them to the cost-prohibitive secular private schools. Not only that, but
they'll bring intelligent design--or worse, young-Earth creationism--into
science classrooms, teach revisionist history, make the kids pray, recite bible
verses, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance like good little conformists.
Sex education, they hope, will be abstinence-only (though my Catholic sex-ed
class taught about birth control, with the accurate numbers).

4. How do you think Congress should best address the looming Social
Security crisis?

Of course, this question assumes that Social Security is a looming crisis, when
Medicare is actually under more of a threat of insolvency and costs much more
than Social Security.

Your choices are:

-Raise the retirement age for today's younger workers: This option might
actually make some sense, but where do you draw the line?

-Eliminate the current Social Security tax cap: Social Security was designed
as a safety net for people whose incomes made saving for retirement much more
difficult, or for people who can't work anymore. I'm quite sure
Republicans would scream bloody murder if the tax cap was eliminated, because it
will definitely take another chunk of income from them. However, raising
that cap might be sensible. Social Security isn't keeping up with the cost
of living at the most basic level. It also might make more sense to
strengthen the middle class so that more people are paying into Social Security
at a higher real dollar amount. When salaries and wages decrease, the
amount that goes into Social Security also decreases.

-Offer younger workers the option to part of their Social Security tax into a personal
account: Do you know whom this benefits? Investment companies.
You know whom it hurts? Current Social Security recipients, or taxpayers
who have to make up for money borrowed to keep the program going. The
question is moot, though: the more Bush talked about this kind of program, the
less the American people liked it, and the lower his approval rating sunk.
People hate this idea, especially older people, who tend to vote at a higher
rate, and how are a larger proportion of the American population.

Alternative solutions might be:

-Not allowing people with a certain level of assets to collect Social Security, since
they have no need for a safety net (*coughJohnMcCaincough* Yes, John
McCain collects Social Security benefits.)

-Finding a way to fund Social Security for current recipients while allowing
younger people to put money into private portfolios. Something I didn't
mention above about this type of program is the risk involved. You could
lose your entire portfolio if you have a bad broker or you don't know how to
manage investments. The "safe" investments all earn too little for you to
use them for your entire retirement.

-Use Social Security to bankroll student loans and other forms of lending. The
interest could help fund the program.

-The above idea of not allowing people at a certain level of wealth collect benefits
works really well if we make it so less people need the safety net when they are
too old or too unhealthy to work.

5. Do you believe that individuals should be allowed to privately invest a
set percentage of Social Security tax in personal accounts?

No. Social Security is a safety net. Private investments carry risk with them.
It's not smart, and it will take away funding from people who have paid in all
their working lives already.

6. Do you think that forcing every American into a socialized national health plan is
the best way to deal with uninsured patients?

Look at the wording of this question: "Do you think that forcing..." Who thinks
that forcing is a good thing? However, that's why we have a representative
Constitutional Republic--so we can vote on things that we want. Nobody is
dictating anything here--except the Decider himself, Bush the Younger. He
created the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives by Executive Order,
diverting funds from other Executive programs, including billions from the
Housing and Urban Development budget. Most of that money went toward
rebuilding churches that could not afford to stay open due to empty pew syndrome
and to abstinence-only sex education. It also went to faux clinics set up
to mimic Planned Parenthood so religious fanatics could scare the hell out of
young women who went in thinking they were going to get an abortion or accurate
information on reproductive health.

Okay, moving on: "Do you think that forcing every American into a socialized national
health plan..." Socialized? That sounds like Socialist! I'm no
damned Socialist! Oh, wait...schools are a form of "socialized" education.
Police departments are a form of "socialized" keeping of the peace (ideally).
Fire departments are a form of "socialized" protection of property from fire and
rescue of people from all sorts of nasty situations. Of course, some
people who disagree with a national health care plan also want to privatize
these services. They're ideological in their belief in everything being
part of the free market.

"...national health plan..."

Does "national health plan" mean a national health insurance plan only? If
that's the case, we stand to save a lot of money just by going to a single-payer
system that is administered by the government. Medicare has about two
percent of its costs dedicated to administration. The rest goes toward
paying for health care. We'd eliminate 25% to 35% of the administrative
costs involved in private health insurance, leaving us with enough money--just
based on what we spend on health insurance coverage every year--to insure 86
million more people.

Now, a national health plan would be a better idea. Not only would it be a
single-payer insurance program with low administrative costs (especially if
there's a good technology investment at the beginning), but also with a lot of
reform, the health care industry would become a lot less costly. I think
even pharmaceutical companies should be taken out of private hands. No,
strike that: I think that pharmaceutical companies should especially be
taken out of private hands. Private pharmaceutical companies are all about
maximizing profits, so they have no interest in you actually being healthy, or
creating drugs that do much of anything. They cut corners, as well, and
hide scientific findings in order to market their product. If there's one
thing the government does well--ask Penn and Teller, who said it during their
NASA episode--it's science. Science done with profit in mind involves
deadlines and pushy marketing people. It's not an environment conducive to
intellectual pursuits, which could take time and a lot of trials. Medicine
would become very inexpensive under such a system.

Hospital administration would be a government function under a national health
care plan, so we'd save money there. Health care professionals would not
have to worry about collections, since everything they do would be covered.

No system is perfect, but I've been caught up in the private health care system,
and it's not a picnic. It's far from it. It was a living hell.
After four months in excruciating pain, I was finally diagnosed. I went
one week just waiting to get better, after a doctor told me I would be better in
a week. Then, I went through three weeks of physical therapy, each session
of which made my pain worse. For the next four weeks, I waited to get an
open MRI. For almost two more months, I waited to see an orthopedic
surgeon who specialized in spinal care. For another month after that, I
waited to see a pain specialist, because there was nothing the spinal care
specialist could do. For another month, I had to wait for my first
epidural steroid injection.

During the entire ordeal, I had to document everything and send it to the people
whom my employer uses to pay short-term disability benefits. It's good
that we have these benefits; 70% of my pay is better than nothing, but take away
30% of my pay and add health care co-pays, and my budget was stretched very,
very thin. I made up for it with credit cards, which a lot of people say
was a mistake, but if I hadn't paid my medical bills at the time, I wouldn't
have been able to continue trying to get diagnosed and treated, because
Broadspire, the disability payment people, needed to see that I was paying my
share. Three months into the ordeal, my employer sprung on me the fact
that I would have to start paying my health care premium, which would come out
of my paycheck when I came back from short-term disability. Five months
into it, all of the credit card companies raised my interest rates from the
9%-14% I had been paying to 26%-29.99%, even though I hadn't missed a payment
and I hadn't been late. My balance was just over a certain percentage of
my limit. It was because of this snag more than any other that I forced
myself to go back to work, still in excruciating pain.

I would have had to go back to work anyway, or find another job, because just when
my financial situation was making me think going back to work was the only
choice I had (bankruptcy was an option I hadn't considered, but I should have at
the time--after I went back to work, it was too late because my income exceeded
the maximum I could make before declaring chapter 7, and the way chapter 13 was
designed would have had me barely scraping by for four years, because they make
you pay back the balances now), Broadspire told me I didn't have objective
evidence that I was in pain. Now, I had--still have--an MRI that shows
that I have no disk between L5 and S1, and that the disk above it is
desiccating. I have bone rubbing on bone; L5 and S1 are scraping together
all the time. That scraping causes irritation, which causes swelling,
which causes a pinched nerve. The pinched nerve was so excruciating that I
couldn't take another step if I was walking, no matter what I was doing or where
I was at the time, until I rested a bit and the pain subsided slightly.
Then, I could take two more steps and I'd freeze again. Since the epidural
steroid injections, I'm better off; it still hurts a lot, but my right leg goes
numb instead of exploding in pain when I walk awhile, and I start walking funny.
My back starts hurting like a bad toothache, but no pinched nerve. People
who have sciatica know what I'm talking about, but it wasn't just the sciatic
nerve that was being pinched. I had a sacroiliac injection series to get
rid of that pain.

So I watched the movie "Sicko" a few months back on DVD, and I cried. There was
this young guy from France who had a similar problem to mine. After six
months off at 100% of his pay, his doctor asked him if he thought he could go
back to work. He said he thought he could. The doctor asked him if
he was one hundred percent, and he said no. The doctor told him to take
several more months off, which he was able to do at 100% of his pay, and he went
back to work without pain. Yeah, I cried. After my six months off,
still in horrible pain, I worked my job for a couple months, and I caught a
lucky break. I got to have a desk job at a call center for a month.
I thought it was going to become permanent, but during the last week of that
month, they dropped the bombshell that the facility was closing in five to ten
years (!), and that all positions would be backfilled by people who already
worked at the facility or who were in Memphis. The facility is going to be
around for half a decade to a decade, more than enough time for me to stay off
my feet and allow my back to heal while still being productive, and they
couldn't let me stay. Couldn't make an exception in my case. I was
devastated. The group I was helping out for that month was absolutely
outraged, because I had a unique combination of tech support and field
experience that allowed me to help some of them service the people they
supported--people like me--better, and they enjoyed having me around. They
didn't want someone who didn't know the job coming in and learning it if they
could have someone who hit the ground running on day one.

So I'm thinking of moving to France. Shove your Freedom Fries up your ass.
While you're at it, shove your private health insurance and health care
industries up there, too.

"...to deal with uninsured patients..."

Right now, the way we deal with uninsured patients is that we let them suffer and die,
like my Aunt Pam did, or we end up making up for what they don't pay in our own
health care costs and health insurance premiums, because hospitals can't refuse
them, and they often wait until their problems become an emergency before going
to the emergency room. I know I did when I wasn't insured and I had
pneumonia in 1997. My Aunt Pam had cancer. She suffered the pain and
fatigue for quite some time before the cancer consumed her entire body.
It's so bold to say that we should just let the uninsured go untreated when
there's no face to put on them. I see my Aunt Pam every time I think about
the uninsured.

7. Which political party do you feel is best able to handle each of the
following issues?

A lot of old guard Republicans are the Goldwater type--fiscal conservatives and social
liberals. The Republican Party was the party of the entrepreneur some time
ago because fiscal conservatism and social liberalism go hand in hand in
business--at least, businesses are, by and large, more tolerant than other
institutions in society. It doesn't matter to the bottom line whether the
people who made the money were black, white, yellow, red, or albino; if there's
a profit, you're in business. It benefits business to have the
largest, most diverse labor pool, because labor is cheaper that way and the
employer has a wider skill set from which to choose. They can reach more
markets if they're culturally diverse.

My point is that a lot of people have preconceived, outmoded notions of what it
means to be a Republican. They think Reagan was the Goldwater type, when
he was really more like Bush--but a lot better at communicating. In any
case, the Republican Party is the party of the theocrat corporatist, a person
who wants social control and thinks he is pre-ordained to have more than
everyone else.

By the same token, people have pre-conceived notions of what it means to be a
Democrat. People shouldn't vote along party lines; they should vote in the
best interest of themselves, their families, and their communities. In any
case, here are the issues, with, of course, my not-so-humble commentary:

-War in Iraq: If you think the Republicans are handling the war in Iraq
well, you're not paying much attention. It's not even a war at this
point--it's an occupation, pure and simple. They keep saying they're
fighting terrorists, but I ask you: what good does it do to hold a position when
your goal is to hunt criminals down? What good does it do to put our young
men and women in uniform in a place where people who want to kill them can blend
in with all of the other civilians, so they don't know who the enemy is?
What good does it do to torture innocent people, as we did in Abu Ghraib prison?
We imprisoned men, women, and children in Abu Ghraib, by the way. I
suggest watching "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib", a production that has appeared on HBO,
but should be available in DVD format. It's very enlightening--and
sickening--to know what our government has authorized at the highest levels.

Just to recap: we've lost 4114 soldiers the last time I checked, tens of thousands
have been physically wounded or psychologically traumatized, nearly a million
Iraqi civilians have died violent deaths, and approximately four million Iraqis
are now refugees in other countries or on the border of their own. Am I
missing something? How is this a victory?

Here's something you won't hear on the news: our invasion of Iraq was a
violation of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, which prohibits wars of aggression.
When we ratified the treaty, we added a loophole that said that we could invade
a country if they posed an imminent threat to us. That's why it was so
important for Bush to fabricate the threat of WMDs. Bush committed treason
when he decided to invade. Our Congress can be absolved of this charge for
authorizing use of force because they were led to believe that there was an
imminent threat. The intelligence they had was cooked.

Torture violates the Geneva Conventions, which is another series of treaties we
signed. Yet another violation that falls under the Geneva Conventions is
the treatment of the prisoners of this "war on terror". According to the
Geneva Conventions, we must treat prisoners according to our own laws.
They have right to a fair and speedy trial in front of a jury of peers.
They're just now getting it--that's not fair and speedy. They've been
treated worse than Timothy McVey, who took out preschool children with all of
the other people he killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, and not all of the
prisoners we are holding actually have evidence against them in regard to being
involved in the 9/11 attacks. A couple do, and they freely admit it--case
closed. I think we should keep them alive so they can't be considered
martyrs; there's nothing worse for them than to die in prison of old age instead
of dying for their heinous cause. I'd like to see what evidence, if any,
we have against the rest.

Remember John Ashcroft? Under his stint as Attorney General, over one
thousand Arab-Americans were arrested, detained, and questioned in relation
to alleged terrorist activity, and we didn't get a single prosecution out of
it.

-War Against Radical Islamic Extremists: I already gave my opinion on
this matter above. I will only add that they are not the only extremists
in the world, and extremism--violent extremism--is not confined to Islam.
Eradicating terrorism could be a worthy goal, but it has to be approached with
intelligence, good police work, and due legal diligence. Terrorists are
criminals, not armies of nation-states, and should not be elevated to that
status. Calling it a war does just that.

-Taxes: Tax cuts in a time of war are insanely irresponsible. 'Nough said.

-Health Care: We've only done worse in this category while Republicans have
been in power. Costs have gone up while quality has deteriorated.

-Federal Spending: Are you kidding me? I'd rather have "tax and
spend" tempered with "pay as you go" than borrow and spend, then have your
grandchildren and great-grandchildren pay. We're ten trillion dollars in
debt, people!

-Social Security: Republicans want to bury it, even taking away what people who
already paid into the system are getting in their retirement. Do you want
old people at the poverty level to start living in cardboard boxes or with their
grown children?

-National Defense: Haven't an estimated 13 million illegal immigrants come over
the Canadian and Mexican borders since 9/11? Don't you think that's a
little bit of a threat to national security? How many al Qaeda members
made it here on student visas, let them run out, and just stayed? Do we
know if there are sleeper cells? What's to stop them from pulling a
Timothy McVey, or even from driving a car filled with gasoline containers into a
crowded area and setting it alight?

They're not inspecting the containers coming into our ports. They almost
sold our port security to Dubai. Their occupation of Iraq has caused more
recruitment for terrorist organization than the formation of Israel. I
think the Republicans are downright worthless on national defense.

-Foreign Policy: I'm not a big fan of bomb first, figure out why later.

-Environment: Ask the people who worked at Ground Zero and lived near there just after 9/11
how good the Republicans are on the environment. "The air is safe to
breathe," EPA political appointee, Whitman, told them. Years later, most
of them are having severe respiratory problems.

Bush wanted to lift regulations on the amount of mercury companies are allowed to
emit. Mercury is a poison. We can process very small amounts of
mercury--well, most of us. We can't afford to have mercury levels rise.
None of us can.

-Economy: Even though I have gotten raises for the past two years, if you measure my
salary against the cost of living, it has actually gone down. Are you
better off than you were eight years ago? Maybe if you were just out high
school or college, but chances are that you're not.

-Immigration: How could you possibly choose who is better on immigration when everyone is all
over the place on this issue?

-Energy: Do you think the oil company executives vote for Democrats? Do you want to
be on the same side as oil company executives?

Republican energy policy has been dismal. Consolidation of energy
production and distribution of power over longer distances has led to a rise in
energy costs. It also led to that major power outage we experience in
Michigan and Ohio a few years back.

The Enron folks were GOP people all the way, as well.

-Education: Nearly ever Republican during the Republican primaries said they'd do away with
the Department of Education. Do you think they really support the
education of your children?

-Protecting Traditional Values: What the hell does this mean? This category
is the one where abortion, faith, and gay rights all come into political play.
All of these issues are private matters. They should be kept private, and not
left to Republicans to decide.

Did you know that abortions went down under Clinton, when the policy was
comprehensive sex education? They're back up now. So are STDs.

If you have faith, do you want Republicans dictating what values your faith
should espouse? Traditional values for some people are different for
others. If you're like me and you don't espouse faith, you most likely
don't want anyone forcing you to pay for religious activities or forcing your
children to sit through religious rituals when they should be learning
something.

Are gay people hurting you in any way by getting married? Think about it:
since gay marriage became part of the Republican platform, you've seen more gay
people kissing on television and going through marriage ceremonies than you ever
would have otherwise.

Part IV: Campaign Strategy [Bet they don't mention voter caging, voter
suppression, and election fraud a la rigged voting machines!]

1. Do you believe it is critical that our candidates stand behind a
hard-charging conservative message of smaller government, lower taxes, new jobs,
and a strong national defense?

If that's what your candidates actually stood for, I might vote for them.
They're weak on all points. Republicans don't know the meaning of "smaller
government"; they'll cut welfare benefits and other social programs while
spending a great deal more on military ventures and enforcement of archaic laws.
I don't want lower taxes if it means that we'll have to borrow money to make up
the difference and then some, and if my daughter's children's children will have
to pay back the debt. I'd love to see new jobs, but the only new
jobs Republicans have created have been in India and Southeast Asia. As
for a strong national defense, I think a smart strategy would be to employ
diplomatic measures to prevent war, rather than engaging in constant saber
rattling and waging wars of aggression. We should be able to defend
ourselves properly unless and until we have eliminated the need to do so.

2. Should the Victory 2008 program be focused on turning out the Republican
vote and registering 2 million new Republican voters?

If you can find two million people who actually agree with your platform and aren't
being duped into registering as Republicans, by all means, knock yourself out.
I think you're going to need farm more than two million to beat the Democrats
this year, though.

3. Are you concerned about the vast sums of campaign funds being stockpiled
by the Democrats and their liberal allies?

If you are a die-hard Republican, I would expect that news would be discouraging.
However, if you think about it, the vast amounts of money the Democrats and
their 527 organizations have raised to elect Obama President means that people
are voting with their checkbooks and credit cards this time around. Obama
is getting his funding from individual donors, not special interests or
corporations. The fact that he can raise so much from individual donors
should tell us how the election should go this year.

There are lots of myths floating around about Obama. Go to http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp to research these myths and dispel them. There is one email going around that has several links to Snopes, but when you check them out, they say the opposite of what the email says. That's how cynical and bold these people have become. They have to spread lies about Obama to beat him.

Snopes has very little on John McCain, which should tell you who is starting the
false rumors in this election. If you want the dirt on McCain--and there's
lots of it--go to http://www.therealmccain.com.

If you want to take the survey, go to
http://web.campaignsolutions.com/RNC/Victory2008/.