“If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW,” says the Telegraph’s James Delingpole.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey claims the emails discuss “repetitive, false data of higher temperatures.”

The National Review’s Chris Horner salivates, “The blue-dress moment may have arrived.”

“The crimes revealed in the e-mails promise to be the global warming scandal of the century,” blares Michelle Malkin.

The Australia Herald-Sun’s Andrew Bolt claims the emails are “proof of a conspiracy which is one of the largest, most extraordinary and most disgraceful in moderrn [sic] science.”

So, do these emails and documents represent proof of a “conspiracy” and “scandal”? At this point it seems highly unlikely, and the more that people look at the illegally-obtained emails and documents, the less likely it will become. Here’s why.

First, there has been much ado made about some emails that supposedly talk about “tricks” and procedures to “hide the decline”, as well as other words used that indicate that the CRU scientists (and their various correspondents) were lying about their data (something that RealClimate discusses). And it’s much ado about nothing (with apologies to Shakespeare). I work in electrical engineering where I use words and phrases that, taken out of context, could be misinterpreted as nefarious by people who are ignorant of the context or who have an axe to grind. For example, I regularly talk about “fiddling with” or “twiddling” the data, “faking out” something, “messing around with” testing, and so on. In the first case, I’m analyzing the data to see if I can make it make sense or if I can extract the signal from the noise. In the second case, I’m often forced to force a piece of electronics into a specific mode manually so I can test it and verify some other function, or I use the phrase to provide artificial test data for calibration and/or verification that my electronics are working correctly. And in the third case, it usually involves trying to deduce whether a problem is caused by the electronic board I;m testing or by the equipment that is doing the testing.

Second, it might be unpolitical to say that you’ll be happy when someone died, or that Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts are pricks and assholes, but that doesn’t make the statements a scandal. I personally was happy when former Senator Jesse Helms died, and I will probably enjoy a drink of expensive scotch when Marc Morano, James Inhofe, and Steve Milloy kick the bucket. And I’ve got no problem calling someone like Joe D’Aleo a liar or Steve Milloy an oxygen thief. If that makes me a bad person, well, I’m OK with that. I expect that most people hold enough contempt for some of their enemies to relish it when they die. So it’s not political and it’s not nice or decent, but it’s also not scandalous. It’s still human, and scientists are just as human as anyone else.

Third and probably most importantly, no matter how much the deniers scream, these emails aren’t likely to reveal any evidence of scientific malfeasance. And even if they do, there’s an entire globe of researchers whose independent research has bolstered the case that climate disruption is real and that it’s predominantly caused by human civilization. It will take more than even a couple of thousand emails to knock the massive, reinforced scientific foundation that underlies anthropogenic climate disruption.

And let’s not forget – the emails and documents were obtained illegally. If there is truly damning information (such as a critical scientist or three overtly saying stuff along the lines of “I fudged my data and nobody caught me. You lost the bet – pay up.”), then the illegality of the release will fade somewhat in the face of other data. But if not, this hack will be a major problem for not only the hackers who released it but also for all the people who are republishing the emails. Hacking is illegal, but in some states and countries, releasing private email correspondence is considered breach of privacy and is thus also a crime.

Finally, let’s point out that some of the people here screaming the loudest from their soapboxes are hypocrites (such as Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey). If the hackers had got into military computers and released private communications, they’d be screaming for the hackers’ blood and demanding that any site republishing the emails be brought up on federal charges. But here they’re screaming for the victim’s blood. If hacking and leaking emails is wrong, then it’s wrong. Claiming that it’s wrong when a leak targets your friends but OK when it targets your enemy makes you a hypocrite and a political hack worthy of nothing but disdain.

There’s a chance that the hack will end the career of a scientists or two, probably for political reasons. But the supposedly damning emails the conservatives and deniers are touting are nothing of the sort. And given how strong the science is, it can survive this latest round of denier dirty tricks.

For anyone interested, here’s a link to a Memeorandum page where there’s lots of links about this topic.

Special effects in movies, when well done, are fun.  They help us escape from our lives to enjoy tales of superheroes, mutants or alternate realities.  We travel to faraway or mythical lands and see dragons, dwarfs and trolls, tree-creatures battling orcs, wizards and sorcerers battling.  Oh yeah, and stuff blowing up.  (Thank you Michael Bay)  None of this really exists, of course, but that’s part of what makes it a good escape for the viewer.

It’s kind of hard to imagine a major blockbuster that doesn’t involve some form of death, shock, torture, shooting or explosion.  War movies can bring perhaps the most accuracy to this genre and this is especially true of those that don’t sugar coat it.  Saving Private Ryan was very graphic but not in an over-the-top, gratuitous way.  It brought home the realities of war.  Most action movies, however, take violence to a completely unrealistic level.

Yes, there are gangs in real life, and there is some level of underworld in our major cities. But our movies would lead you to the conclusion that every street corner is a drug marketplace, every precinct is infested by corrupt cops, in every alley lurks an assassin, every bar is a spontaneous kung fu fight waiting to happen and every nightclub is a potential gang warfare site.  Around every corner a secret agent lays in wait for another secret agent. Domestic abuse is rampant and a serial killer lurks in your closet waiting to decapitate you.  Some zombie wants to eat your brains.

The real world does offer some of these adventures (the supernatural notwithstanding) but, again, the point of the story is to provide an escape for the viewer.  One thing to remember, though: violence always has a victim. Very few chainsaw murders are consensual.

Sex in the movies is also plentiful. It’s in our ads and our magazines, it’s on TV, it’s everywhere.  But there are rules. Flash a single breast or hint at a risque sex scene and your movie gets an R rating.  Show anything more and you’re stuck with an X rating – if you get a rating at all.  Movies with gratuitous nudity get R ratings, while others flirt with “the line” and get away with a PG13. In general, the idea is to offer various levels of nudity and sexuality for the sake of appealing to various levels of horny viewers (mostly men) and to make a buck in the process. It’s easy to view this brand of escapism as more positive than violence, mayhem and death.

Then there are more artistically inclined movies, usually independent, that ask us to think about real life.  In these stories, people who don’t have Hollywood-perfect bodies might get together and do the things that normal people do.  Some breastfeed in public.  Some have non-erotic showers.  Some change clothes.  Some kiss.  Some have sex.  They might show some skin but almost every human is nude at least once a day, right? Skin happens.

If these stories are told effectively we will relate to the characters as they tap into experiences that we all share.  They show reality, or some plausible fictionalized version of it.  Sometimes there are heated arguments and even violence, but they spare us the fx. No blood spatter analysis, nobody shot at point blank range, no body parts flying at us in 3D.

With this in mind, let’s think about the Moral Majority and its neo-puritan descendants.  Which movies seem to catch their attention?  What is it that gets under their skin and ruffles their feathers?

Yes, this is a rhetorical question.

While I respect the rights of people to choose what they see, let’s consider some numbers. Last year, depending on your source, between 15k and 20k Americans were murdered.  This adds up to about six people in 100,000.  Each of these murders, by definition, put an unnatural end to someone’s life.  Friends and family mourned, and in many cases incurred physical and emotional burdens that they will never shed.  The suck factor for homicide is 100%.

Last year approximately a quarter billion Americans had consensual sex.  (Okay, I’m making this statistic up but it can’t be far off.)  If the number is close, this comes to about 70,000 people in 100,000.  Each of these instances (by definition) involved two (or more) people coming together and enjoying the company of another for a time.  Whereas being a murder victim is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, many of these people will choose to have repeat episodes with the same person.  In general, then, it’s safe to assert that most of these victims of consensual sex leave better than they arrived.  The suck factor for sex is not zero but it’s a lot closer to zero than it is to 100%. (Obviously I emphasize “consensual” for a reason – non-consensual sex, sex with a victim, is not sex – it’s violence.)

Isn’t this odd?  Movies portray violence on an exaggerated, unrealistic scale. Violence has a very high suck factor. And nobody bats an eye.  Other movies depict natural sexuality (or maybe unrealistic, but harmless sexuality). And sex is an act that almost every adult in the country takes part in on a semi-regular basis (or they’d like to). The suck factor is very small. And this is what gets conservative panties in a bunch.

So to sum up: in art it’s fine to kill, maim and destroy but it’s not okay to portray a satisfying natural encounter or to take a picture of said encounter.

When you think about it, this bizarre dynamic extends well beyond the arts.  The Right has no problem advocating and rushing into real wars, wars that leave a lot of innocents dead along with the baddies we’re supposedly liberating them from. But sensuality, in all cases outside of married Christian sex, is considered bad (and even that isn’t to be depicted or talked about).  A major irony here is that when we consider all of the political sex scandals from the past few years Republicans seem to comprise a large majority of the perpetrators.  They profess to frown upon nudity, upon cleavage, upon homosexuality, upon sensuality of any type.  But behind closed doors this is exactly what everyone seems to seek.  Even some of the loudest proponents of the Defense of Marriage Act have been caught in hypocritical, compromising sexual situations.  Amusing, or perhaps tragic, is the fact that morality police like David Vitter and Larry Craig snuck behind the backs of their spouses for sexual fulfillment, betraying personal as well as public trusts.  Couples who simply acknowledge the realities if normal human sexuality, on the other hand, can explore their curiosities and desires with the full support, blessing and (optional) involvement of their life partners.

Damn, America has it backwards.

Europeans are a lot more comfortable with their bodies than Americans.  Their magazines feature topless women and there are far more topless beaches.  They have movies with unabashed sexuality (you even find live sex acts in respectable theatre presentations).  We always seem to portray Brits as stuffy but in this respect it is us that are the stuffy ones.

I imagine that with most S&R readers I’m preaching to the choir, but I’ll say it anyway.  Sex is natural and it’s healthy to explore. It should be celebrated instead of demonized.

Disclosure: I take artistic pictures of people in edgy sensual circumstances and participate in activities that those offended by this article would certainly frown upon.  I am tired of having the reactionary moral positions of others thrust upon my art, my life and my friends when all of those participating are benefiting from their involvement.  I really don’t mean to sound like a hippie when I say this but…. Make love, not war!

In case you missed it, the Daily Show’s John Stewart called out Fox’s Sean Hannity during his November 10 broadcast. It seems that Hannity’s show covered the anti-health care bill rally in Washington, and Hannity asserted that more than 20,000 people showed up (his guest, Michele Bachmann, asserted that the number could be as high as 45,000). Hannity then went on to show footage of the demonstration and, sure enough, it appeared that there were many thousands of people on hand. Or were there?

Stewart’s staff discovered something curious about Hannity’s footage. Though the recent demonstration took place on a crisp, sunny, fall day, (as demonstrated by the initial images in the segment) the footage of the crowd showed a cloudy sky and the dense, green foliage of summer. Stewart correctly pointed out that Hannity had used footage from Glen Beck’s 912 rally in September.

Last night, Sean Hannity acknowledged Stewart’s assertion and apologized for “an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.”

There’s just one problem. It was certainly a mistake, but it couldn’t have been inadvertent. I don’t know if Hannity, himself, made the decision to cut in scenes from the earlier demonstration in order to bolster the reported numbers at the anti-heath care rally, but someone did. You can’t make that kind of mistake “inadvertently.”

When a cameraperson is sent to shoot a rally, he or she captures that footage either on tape, flash memory or an external hard drive. It is then uploaded to a single file or group of files under a single heading. An editor then takes images from that file and matches them to voice-over copy or, in this case, simply uses scenes as background for Hannity’s and his guests’ conversation. On occasion, an editor will go to archival footage when she needs a particular shot it wasn’t practical for the cameraperson to get on the day in question. For instance, a story on troop deployment might use stock footage of an aircraft carrier or military aircraft taking off from a runway. In general, news organizations label this clearly so that viewers understand that these are not actual shots of the current deployment.

Hannity’s footage included shots from both November 10 and the September rally. This cannot happen by accident. An editor has to go find footage from two months ago and import it into the current footage on her non-linear editing (NLE) software, then drag and drop and cut and paste clips so that it looks like a seamless, one-day shot. Whether the editor did this on his/her own or whether a producer, or Hannity himself, made the decision to do this is unknown. But someone did.

This wasn’t an “oops” mistake. This was a serious-error-of-judgment mistake. This was the kind of mistake you get when someone caught in overt, criminal behavior says “mistakes were made.”

This was a downright lie.

So, for years, I have been throwing stuffed animals at Lou instead of beer bottles. But now I need throw them no more. Lou no longer haunts my 7 p.m. viewing. He quit his CNN program in a multi-syllabic huff this week. CNN’s venerable, respected chief national political correspondent, John King, will take over in January. I’m sure I won’t have to throw stuffed animals at Mr. King.

But I once considered Lou venerable and respected. He’s a Harvard grad, y’know, a self-touted intellectual giant in matters of finance and economics. That’s why I began watching him years ago. I learned from him things I did not know. But for the past few years, Lou has only taught me the face of intellectual arrogance, bigotry, and unexceptional reporting masquerading as “advocacy.”

Lou, he of the annual salary variously estimated between $5 million and $10 million, has come to fancy himself as a champion of the middle class. Mr. King, as host of CNN’s “State of the Union,” has traveled each week to a different state — 44 so far — to sit down with the middle class in their diner, pubs, and livingrooms. Can you remember — or imagine — Lou doing the same? Aside from his carefully staged, perfectly lit, orchestrated “town hall” meetings at which the middle class had to meet Lou on his turf, not theirs?

When he quit, he lamented the “partisanship and ideology” permeating national politics. He did not or could not view his own brand of divisive opinionating as just another form of partisanship.

CNN, I suspect, is glad to see Lou depart despite 27 years’ of mostly worthy service. CNN’s president, Jonathan Klein, larded the cable network’s own news story with bombastic paeans for Lou:

For decades, Lou fearlessly and tirelessly pursued some of the most important and complex stories of our time, often well ahead of the pack. … With characteristic forthrightness, Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere.

So why’d Lou leave? Was it “extremely amicable,” as Mr. Klein said? Or was his ill-reported “advocacy journalism” wearing thin on a network that had begun to position itself as centrist, parked between MSNBC on the left and Fox News Channel on the right? Or, more bluntly, did Lou not pull in sufficient ad revenues to offset his high salary? (And he complained about Wall Street salaries? Sheesh.) By June, Lou’s ratings had shrunk to unacceptable levels. His TV program had been drawing only 650,000 viewers, and only about 180,000 were from that advertiser-favored, 25-to-54 demographic.

Lou has championed the movement opposing illegal immigration. That’s his signature issue following his self-admitted radicalization following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. When he did not appear in any way, shape or form on CNN’s “Latino in America,” it became clear he was a goner at the network.

Lou says he’s leaving because

some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to … engage in constructive problem-solving, as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day. And to continue to do so in the most honest and direct language possible.

Right. But how? Some pundits conjecture he’ll seek public office. Senator Lou? Hardly. Can you imagine Lou, who is wealthy and self-righteous, hitting the campaign trail and pressing the flesh of that middle class with whom he rarely mingles? Can you imagine him dialing for dollars — raising the money to run for office? He’d find that demeaning and beneath him. And he’s hardly likely to self-finance.

Lou won’t be entering politics. He does not like being held accountable by any one, whether individual, corporate, or political, for what he says and does. He wants freedom to act without consequence. Nor does he have the temperament to make the deals and compromises all politicians must.

Will he move on to Fox? Doubtful. Would he view his brand of intellectually arrogant elitism an ill fit for the likes of a network that many argue is anything but intellectual? Probably. And he certainly won’t bury himself in a conservative think tank. He’d have to submerge his ego.

Lou likes money. Lou likes fame. Lou likes being the center of a self-created universe. Note that his own website touts him as “Mr. Independent.” He likes that tag.

Perhaps Lou wants to be Rush. Lou has a nationally syndicated radio program, “The Lou Dobbs Show,” launched a year and a half ago by United Stations Radio Networks. It’s carried on 400 stations and reaches about 5 million listeners.

But conservative talker Rush Limbaugh has the top-rated talk show, reaching more than 14 million listeners. Lou is eighth in national radio ratings, behind mostly conservative rabble rousers I’ll bet he considers his intellectual inferiors. Then there’s the money: In 2006, Rush signed an eight-year contract grossing $400 million, about $50 million a year. Don’t forget his $100 million signing bonus.

Do you think Lou might find that kind of money attractive? Sure, but Lou has also seen the attention centered on Rush. By politicians. By presidents. By pundits. By the powerful. By the proletariat.

That’s Rush’s world. Lou wants to shoulder him aside. But his CNN gig was not going to get him there.

Bye, bye, Lou. And thanks: I can now buy a new TV.

Those 267,574 people who voted “no” — which would approve the same-sex marriage law — were not dissuaded by an anti-gay coalition of conservatives and churches wielding more than $3 million, including more than $2 million from out-of-state donors, according to a report by the National Institute On Money In State Politics.

Much of the sparring over the referendum was funded on both sides by groups outside the state of Maine. Given that gay marriage has been a wedge issue for years, that’s hardly surprising. But in Maine?

Those who backed the gay marriage law ponied up 12 to 1 over donors to the anti-gay donors and had more money — $5 million. But they lost. The institute’s report, written by Tyler Evilsizer, says:

The measure pitted conservative groups and churches against gay-rights groups, a few wealthy donors, and more than 10,000 smaller donors from Maine and around the country. Question 1 attracted over $9 million, or 72 cents of every dollar raised around Maine’s seven ballot measures. [emphasis added]

But press attention, money, and political capital focused on a wedge issue to divide people of good conscience and faith and divert their attention from far more pressing matters. Maine needs more attention to the condition of its roads, bridges and airports than it does in the bedrooms of loving, consenting adults who wish to make a lifelong commitment.

The blunt end of the money hammer used in Maine against gays was primarily wielded by a group called Stand For Marriage Maine. Like all political communicators and niche interest groups these days, it has a website. But its site is notably deficient. It does not have links such as “About Us” or “Who We Are.” Such links usually provide a list of financial supporters, coalition partners, and the names and contact data for organization officers and staff. Stand For Marriage Maine does not provide such information on its website.

Wading through the organization’s press releases and media stories is needed to learn that Marc Mutty is chairman of Stand for Marriage Maine, that Scott K. Fish is communications director (releases provide a phone number) and that Bob Emrich is a member of the group’s executive committee.

That lack of clear, easy-to-find disclosure makes it difficult for those interested in the issue to find out more about the bona fides of donors and supporters who worked to repeal Maine’s gay-marriage law.

Why not explain “Who We Are”? Only conjecture is possible. It is, perhaps, easier to operate in ideological shadows. According to Mr. Evilsizer’s report, here are the principal sources of money that drove the effort to repeal gays’ right to marry in Maine. A few groups are well known outside Maine.

StandForMarriageMaine.com | $2,650,052
Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland | $553,608
Focus On The Family Maine Marriage Committee | $114,500
Family Research Council Action | $25,000
Maine Marriage PAC | $11,539
Maine Grassroots Coalition | $9,410
Marriage Matters in Maine | $2,678
Maine4Marriage | $230
Proponents’ total $3,367,018

Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, asked Maine ethics officials to investigate the organization. He said it was laundering money. His August letter

contained allegations religious organizations are hiding contributions to the Stand for Marriage Maine campaign. The letter reports how the National Organization for Marriage, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, the national office of the Knights of Columbus and Focus on the Family had contributors give the money to their organizations, and in turn gave the money to the Stand for Marriage Maine to hide the donors’ identity.

But a federal judge ruled on Oct. 29 that the “state can compel the National Organization for Marriage to disclose the identities of donors who contributed to its effort to repeal Maine’s gay-marriage law.” In that story, the Portland Press Herald said NOM — based in Washington, D.C. — had funneled $1.6 million to Stand For Marriage Maine. A resolution of the lawsuit was “months away,” the story said — well after the Nov. 3 referendum. Mr. Evilsizer’s report contains a breakdown of donors to Stand For Marriage Maine showing NOM’s $1,622,152 donation.

But his report notes that financial supporters of gay marriage in Maine “from Away” were also plentiful. Those who supported the gay-marriage law raised $5,678,579.

The Human Rights Campaign, which bills itself as “the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization,” donated $267,589 to the principal umbrella organization, No On 1 Protect Maine Equality. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force gave $139,056. Esmond Harmsworth, a founding partner of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency in Boston and New York, gave $100,000. Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders of Boston gave $91,258.

The website of No On 1 Protect Maine Equality also has a “Who We Are” page that lists its coalition partners. Its “Contact Us” page list its physical address, mailing address, phone number and e-mail address. Its campaign manager is clearly identified as Jesse Connolly.

The gay marriage caravan now moves on, it seems, to New York state. Gov. David Patterson wants a same-sex marriage bill, passed twice in the state Assembly, on the floor of the Senate for debate on Tuesday.

And the money, both for and against, will likely move on as well.

The other day our friend MentalSwitch offered up a delightful little post entitled “Hello Nurse!” It featured a photo of an attractive model dressed as … well, hell, rather than me trying to describe the shot and failing miserably, why don’t you just click on over there and see for yourself. But before you do, please be forewarned that the photo is NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!!

Ahem. Well, actually, its worksafeness (or unworksafeness thereof) became the topic of some discussion here. Initially the pic was posted without a cut, meaning that the image itself would appear on the front page of S&R. Later, after some complaint and brief deliberations, we moved it behind a cut with the dreaded “NSFW” tag, indicating that the content would most certainly get you fired if it were accidentally viewed by any decent, God-Fearing American^® co-worker. And since way too many of our readers work in places where others might be looking over their shoulders, this was a practical concern. As one colleague put it – and we’ll let that colleague name himself if he wants to – “if the wrong person had walked behind me with that image up on my screen, I could have been walked out the door that day, no appeal.”

Such is the reality for millions and millions and millions of people living here in the Land of the Free^®, the Home of the Brave^® and the Birthplace of the Religious Freedom^®.

As badly as it griped me to see such a fine, artistic photo hidden behind a cut like some tawdry porno you’d pay a Times Square carney a dollar to see (price adjusted for inflation), I also had no interest in seeing any of our intelligent, hard-working readers escorted out of their places of employment at gunpoint.

However, my colleague Dr. Slammy suggested that the all-too-standard NSFW tag – the Modern American Internet’s version of the Scarlet Letter – was a lingering stain on the credibility of the artist, and in due course I (apparently being ill of will and sharp of tongue) was enlisted to pen what you may take as an official Scholars & Rogues policy position.

Briefly stated, when you put an artist behind the Scarlet NSFW, you convey a general social verdict that shame should be attached to the work. It is not fit for general viewing; it is likely to be deemed offensive to some people; and those who choose to click the link, well, that’s between them and Jesus.

It does not matter whether such a judgment is reasonable. For instance, in the case of “Hello Nurse,” what really is there to be scadalized by? Let’s take a close look:

What is the supposed objection? The subject is of consenting age. No aberrant sexual acts are depicted. Hell, she’s not even partially naked. No vajayjay showing. No boobies. She’s not fondling herself (at the moment, anyway). There is an aspect of the erotic in her pose, of course, but let’s be clear here: whatever obscenity might arise from the communication of this image lies entirely within the mind of the viewer.

Goddammit, people, you can see more NSFWing imagery any goddamned night of the week on any goddamned channel on television during goddamned prime time. If this is NSFW, then the publishers of every fashion magazine available in America need to be hung in the public square right fucking now!!!

Oh, I’m sorry – is my invective NSFW?

It is true, as another of my unnamed colleagues pointed out, that good art seeks to provoke. MentalSwitch isn’t an especially in-your-face artist, but it is also true that his work routinely challenges convention in ways that are guaranteed to provoke, and it’s not hard to conclude who the targets of his critiques are. As he explains in the notes accompanying a portrait of “Lizzy”:

If all Christians were like this guy then the world would be a better place. On the other hand, if all Christians were like this guy we wouldn’t even recognize Christianity anymore….

Well played, that.

Welcome to 17th Century Salem, folks. Welcome to neo-Puritan America, a land where dismemberments and flying body parts and mushroom clouds and elected officials intentionally and strategically lying to their constituents are cool but a woman wearing four times more clothing than every teenaged girl around every swimming pool in the United States is NSFW. Because she looks suspiciously like she might enjoy sex in a non-missionary position. And sex is not to be imagined. Pictures that might make us think of sex are not to be condoned.

In neo-Puritan America, millions of people wake up every morning praying that the Lord will afford them an opportunity during the day to be offended. Hypocritical offense is next to godliness and the Constitution apparently has a clause about the right not to be exposed to anything you don’t like. Lawyers will be summoned. Human Resources policies will be invoked. Sinners will be terminated. And Hester Prynne will have a red NSFW branded on her twitchy, hellbound little ass, BY GOD!

In case the theme of my rant hasn’t yet made itself apparent, the Scarlet NSFW brands the wrong person. Those whose visions challenge are to be positioned behind the screen of shame, while those who are afraid of ideas have their narrow prejudices reinforced by official policies and unspoken self-righteous bullying.

We will know America has finally attained a measure of enlightenment when the reverse of those statements is true.

In the meantime, I mentioned something about a policy, so here it is. Since, as I noted above, we have no interest in damaging the careers of our readers, and since we’re smart enough to know the reality of many workplaces, we’ll be placing things that we believe might offend the average granny-panty neo-Puritan behind a cut. But when we do, understand that it is not the artist whom we are indicting. It’s the Scarlet Letter crowd.

In addition, don’t be surprised to see NSFW replaced by NSFP – Not Safe For Puritans. (My original idea, Not Safe For Repressive Puritan Asshat Jesus Nazis, was deemed a bit unwieldy.)

At Scholars & Rogues, we don’t shrink from challenges. We’re not kept up at night by the unconventional. And we are absolutely, positively not afraid of ideas.

And we will not quietly pander to those who are.

Still, this whole “marketplace of ideas” is a marvelous concept. Perhaps the most marvelous concept in history. Drawing on the Miltonian belief that if people are allowed to enter the agora and freely state their cases, then “the truth will out” (that is, an educated and informed citizenry will unerringly perceive the truth and that weaker ideas will be disregarded in favor of stronger ones), our nation’s founders crafted a Constitution that assured people the right to voice their opinions, free from government intrusion. Yes, the formula has its problem spots – Americans have religiously rejected the “educated and informed” part, for instance, and there have been embarrassing questions reagrding who, precisely, got to be a “citizen.” Also, the framers seemed not to foresee that we’d get to a point where governmental threats to the exercise of speech paled next to those posed by private institutions. Still, all that said, it’s hard to argue that Americans have made a lot of hay with our 1st Amendment guarantees since they were enacted, and even an imperfect marketplace of ideas beats none at all.

This week presented us with a sparkling case study of the marketplace of ideas at its best. A few days back it was announced that conservative pundit and noiser-without-peer Rush Limbaugh was part of a group seeking to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. The agora fairly exploded in conversation. A number of players and the head of the NFL Players Association wanted no part of a man who’s established a reputation for … racial insensitivity? The owner of the Indianapolis Colts (a Bush/Cheney spporter, as it turns out) promised to block any bid involving Limbaugh. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell finally got around to offering that “Limbaugh’s divisiveness is not what the league needs.” Columnists, pundits and bloggers (including S&R’s own uber-cynic, Dr. Sid Bonesparkle) weighed in with a broad range of takes (mostly anti-Rush, it seems). Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton had things to say, and we’d have felt cheated if they hadn’t.

Many of these voices were informed and credible. Others were driven by prefabricated ideologies instead of facts and reason. And a boisterous debate was had by all. In the end, the brazillionaire heading the investment group, St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts, put two and two together. Realizing that Limbaugh was an 800-lb albatross hanging around the neck of his NFL aspirations, Checketts unceremoniously kicked him to the curb.

The wonderful thing about the whole episode? This is precisely how our nation’s founders envisioned our democracy working. An idea was presented. Interested parties, informed or otherwise, had their say. (Remember, the framers knew there would be irresponsible voices in the public debate – that was part of the equation.) Marvelously, it was all enabled immeasurably by the Internet, which Al Gore, love him or hate him, saw as the ultimate tool of Jeffersonian democracy. From a 1994 address:

“And the distributed intelligence of the [Global Information Infrastructure] will spread participatory democracy… I see a new Athenian Age of democracy forged in the fora the GII will create.

The entire public debate was conducted free of coercion from the government. And in the end, the marketplace decided, governed by its collective conscience, that Limbaugh’s participation was not in the best interest of the league, the ownership group or the free market. An idea was tested and found wanting. Dave Checketts made an informed decision.

In theory, we should now be able to tune in and listen as Rush, disappointed though he may be, extols the virtues of the marketplace. After all, that is his core ideological concern – that free enterprise and the marketplace of ideas be allowed to determine the value of products and propositions, right?

• Obama is “more African in his roots than he is American” and is “behaving like an African colonial despot”
• “Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement: Halfrican American actress Halle Berry.” Limbaugh then said: ” ‘As a Halfrican American, I am honored to have
• Ms. Berry’s support, as well as the support of other Halfrican Americans,’ Obama said.” Limbaugh then conceded that Obama “didn’t say it.”
• “Obama has disowned his white half … he’s decided he’s got to go all in on the black side”
• Obama “the greatest living example of a reverse racist”
• Limbaugh sings “Barack, The Magic Negro”
• “Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman”
• “[W]e saw white firefighters under assault by agents of Barack Obama”; “Now white policemen are under assault”
• Obama would not have acted if he’d known that the Somali pirates were “actually young, black Muslim teenagers”
• Limbaugh suggests Dems, media believe “you can’t criticize the little black man-child”
• Obama’s nomination “goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy”
• “The government’s been taking care of [young blacks] their whole lives”
• “The days of them not having any power are over, and they are angry”

There was also the time ESPN was dumbass enough to let Limbaugh on their pre-game show. That didn’t work out so well, did it?

Let’s set aside for a second the obvious troubling question about how a team with Rush at the helm would get new players, since presumably it would dodge the draft. And the also-obvious question of whether, given its stance against illegal drug use, the league would be forced to ban Limbaugh from his own facility. Instead, let’s ask a more basic question: why would a guy like Limbaugh want to own an NFL team, knowing all the hassle involved in the process?

I think I have it figured out. Because it’s the closest he can get, in this day and age, to actually being able to buy, sell and trade Negros.

There. I said it.

So far, no crisis. Mistakes happen, are fixed, retractions and apologies are run, the world is right again, right?

But. This isn’t so simple. First, here are the comments in question. In the original story, the boldfaced text was omitted by Thrush and replaced by ellipses. And as you can see, the missing words change the context of Perriello’s remarks considerably:

“I conducted over a hundred hours of town hall meetings in central and southern Virginia [and the vast majority of them were civil; people disagreed passionately on ideological grounds]. And there were [rare] cases where very racist remarks were made. Sometimes they were called out by neighbors in the audience; sometimes they weren’t. Clearly, race remains a factor in America, [but] there’s also a lot of disagreement here that is genuine and not based on race, so I think we have to have both conversations.”

Now, how the hell would you fumble a quote in such a curiously directional fashion? Let’s listen as Thrush explains what happened in his own words.

The video, which had gone viral among conservatives, was sent to me by a tipster. I watched it, thought it was interesting, and began to transcribe the key parts. As I was transcribing, I got an email from a NRCC spokesman Andy Sere, who wanted to comment on it, appending what appeared to be a full a transcript of the exchange.

A time saver, I thought, so I cut-and-pasted. What I didn’t immediately realize was that Sere had replaced key words — that provided important context –with elipses.

In case you’re wondering, “NRCC” stands for “National Republican Congressional Committee.”

Let’s review. Quoting a Democratic Congressman – check. On explosively sensitive partisan issues – check. About racism – check. Making sure to get those comments right – ummmm, no, I’ll just cut-and-paste from the doc the nice, helpful, trustworthy GOP hack sent me.

Which third-rate Wal*Mart did Thrush buy his journalism degree from, anyway? Okay, that’s probably not fair – his bio describes a guy with a good bit of experience, so we’re dealing with somebody who knows better. To his credit, he doesn’t tap dance. He accepts responsibility and apologizes unconditionally.

The fault wasn’t Sere’s — he’s a partisan operative, not a transcription service. It was mine.

His characterization of Sere is charitable, of course. That is, unless “partisan operative” is a euphemism for “lying piece of shit.” Sure, we know political flaks for what they are, and our expectations could hardly be lower. But that doesn’t excuse someone who deliberately falsified a public official’s words in an attempt to inflame racial hostilities (sorry, no pussyfooting here – Sere did what he did and did so for obvious reasons and there will be no tolerance in this space for those who want to argue either the act or the motivation). Fuck Andy Sere and fuck those who’d defend these kinds of sociopathic behaviors. No society that placed even the slightest premium on honesty and integrity would tolerate this sort of antisocial assault on the public interest.

Back to Thrush. The apology is welcomed. His forthrightness in accepting responsibility is also worthy. And given the kinds of insane time demands placed on reporters these days, we can certainly understand why he’d want to save a few seconds by using a transcript that somebody else had already transcribed. (I personally hate transcribing, so I do sympathize, seriously.) PR folks know that reporters are crushed for time, too. I know. I’ve been a PR guy (still am sometimes) and I’ve taught PR. One of the lessons I make sure my students know is just this – reporters are too busy to do the jobs they’re charged with doing, so they’ll appreciate anything you can do to make their lives easier. Sere knew this. (Of course, I don’t teach my students to lie and distort, and I don’t do it myself. PR ethics may not be what we’d all wish, but no professional I know would condone what Sere did.)

Sadly, PR folks seem to know a lot more about reporters than reporters do about PR folks.

As for Thrush’s mea culpa, it’s just not enough. I know journalism professors who’d have smacked their first-semester J 101 freshmen with an F that would have left a mark for what he did. There is simply no excuse. None.

I can find nothing on the Politico site indicating that Thrush was disciplined, and a site search indicates that he has continued writing regularly since the Perriello debacle. If he didn’t serve at least a suspension then it’s a clear signal that Politico doesn’t expect to be taken seriously by those of us who still have some standards for those who call themselves journalists. Once upon a time most respectable dailies would probably have fired a reporter on the spot for this kind of mistake, which is, in journalism terms, tantamount to a soldier letting an enemy take over his post for a couple of minutes while he wanders off into the bushes to relieve himself.

I wish Glenn Thrush no ill. But a bill is due, and until it’s paid I can’t imagine any reason why Politico should be accorded any more journalistic credibility than FOX News or an RNCC fund raising letter.

The problem facing conservatives is that updates to the New International Version are decided on by a committee “dominated by professors and higher-educated participants who can be expected to be liberal* and feminist in outlook”. That would explain why the project proposes to replace all occurrences of the word “Pharisee” with “intellectual”. Mark 3:2 (KJV), “And they [the Pharisees] watched him, whether he would heal him [the man in the synagogue with a withered hand] on the Sabbath day; that they might accuse him.” Mark 3:2(CBP), “The intellectuals watched Jesus to see if he might catch and accuse him of healing on the Sabbath.” No, i didn’t mistype anything. That’s what it says. Maybe God’s revealing himself to be semiliterate. And the “translators” reveal themselves to be rather inconsistent, as the word “Pharisees” in Mark 7:5 is not translated into Modern Conservative but left in plain old English.

Before we leave Mark—the only gospel even partially translated—behind, let’s pause at 7:15. This is the famous verse wherein Jesus says, “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile a man.” Aside from changing the meaning by replacing “the things which come out of him” with “that which comes from within” and moving from a definite state of defilement to one of possible corruption, there’s an analysis of the verse. Translator(s) wonder if maybe Plato was inspired by God because he said the same thing; they even entertain the possibility that Jesus knew “earlier doctrines”. Now that’s just blasphemy because all the earlier doctrines were false and Jesus was the truth…get it together, conservatives.

Should i dare point out the fact that there’s no proof that Jesus said anything recorded in the Gospels? (He might have, i wasn’t there.) Would it be unkind to suggest that since they were written in Greek, the writers might have heard of Plato? I’ll leave aside that wisdom is wisdom is wisdom, no matter who says it or when.

The projects only completed work is the short, “Epistle to Philemon”. “Fellow labourer” is changed to “fellow volunteer” in verse one, because the former “falsely connotes socialism”. And in verse three—“Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”—we learn that “peace” really means “peace of mind”. Peace, you see, is not as Merriam-Webster defines it but means “anti-war”, and we all know that good Christians are not anti-war.

There is more of course, but you’re probably an illogical liberal who hates Jesus and the Bible, so i won’t bore you by going through the translated text with a fine toothed comb.

The project is starting with the New Testament, both a curse and a blessing. The Old Testament would be a lot more interesting, e.g. we’d get to find out the Modern Conservative for “begat”. But at least they’re only adulterating a second rate collections of stories that define modern Christianity. All the best books were thrown out and burned very early on, and the rest have been a tool of conservative politics since the Council of Nicea. I will not digress too far into exegesis, but it should be noted that the project questions whether Luke 23:34 is a “liberal corruption of the original”. There’s actually a fair amount of debate on this verse, but to suggest that its inclusion is a liberal corruption makes for a vast, left-wing conspiracy that stretches back to c. 400AD. Surely they’re just begetting around in jest.

Not even the Bible is immune to socialism, its terminology “permeates” the damned thing without justification. Worse, this corruption encourages the social justice movement within Christianity. Jesus was clearly not interested in social justice, he was just a dork who couldn’t make the football team and had to hang around with lepers and whores and acne-ridden outcasts. Would anyone like to place a bet on the conservative bible project discarding Catholicism’s just war argument like it discards the social justice argument?

But this isn’t about people degrading the New International Version’s seventh grade reading level to somewhere in early elementary school. It isn’t about “translating” English into English. It isn’t even about the simple-minded trying to avoid the complex social, political and religious situation in Judea during Jesus’ lifetime. This is much more serious. The debate surrounding this project “would flesh out – and stop – the infiltration of churches by liberals pretending to be Christian”. If all goes well, the project might prompt the Bible to become part of the curriculum in university Politics Departments, and perhaps the conservative Bible could even be a public school textbook. See where this is going?

Liberals will argue this till the second coming, but the project coordinators aren’t worried about arguing their translations, because the argument will force liberals to read the Bible. That will open up the liberal mind. I’ve read the Bible a few times and look at me. It obviously doesn’t work. I still figure that Jesus looked like Yasser Arafat, was all over Mary Magdalene and that he was probably a revolutionary who associated with terrorists. … Hmm, well now that i think about it, maybe the CBP is right: Jesus might have been a modern, American conservative.

*A “liberal” is someone who “rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons”. Liberals are also socialists, so liberals are self-centered socialists. The Inuit may have a hundred words for snow, but Modern Conservative has none for contradiction.

Since we’re asking rhetorical questions of ill-defined groups of people, i have a few for conservative-land…

Question 1: If we’re to be so afraid of creeping socialism, how come nobody in conservative-land is complaining about the redistribution of individual wealth through the state for the benefit of the military industrial complex? It sure looks like we could cut close to $1 trillion in taxes every year if we weren’t supporting big government Pentagon mismanagement.

Question 2: How come when i visit conservative-land i hear so much about the philosophy of Ayn Rand, but nobody ever talks about her near-militant atheism? She said that the non-existence of God is self evident, and i find it difficult to reconcile her philosophy of extreme individualism with any belief in a higher power. What gives with the picking and the choosing?

Question 3: Why does conservative-land insist on conflating corporatism with capitalism?

Question 4: If conservative-land is so big on free markets, why is it for locking up non-violent participants in the drug market and pouring billions into constraining that market?

Question 5: What exactly are conservatives conserving?

Preemptive Calling of Bullshit: Don’t tell me that it’s about “values” or any derivation of “God, mom and apple pie”.

This was not founded as a Christian nation. It was founded by a bunch of Masons back when Masons weren’t “everyday people” who took care of the gas money for the Shriners’ awesome little cars. They considered themselves heirs to a secret wisdom going back to at least ancient Egypt, and they were serious about it. The only mention of religion in the Constitution is to guard against it, and in the Declaration of Independence Jefferson choose “their Creator” rather than “God”. He could have just written God and everyone would have understood, but he didn’t, did he?

No, don’t give me the Pilgrims bullshit story either. They weren’t persecuted in England. The English got tired of the Puritans running the country like a 17th century, Christian Taliban and took their political power away. The English went back to dancing and celebrating Christmas, and the Puritans left to build their holy land in the New World. They weren’t alone in the wilderness either. Those banks have been fished by Europeans for a long time. The fishermen didn’t help them because the Puritans were self-righteous assholes. Our Masonic founders were trying to protect us from them, deal with it.

I’m pretty sure that darkies, Mexicans, homos, Muslims and commies have moms too.

Apples weren’t wholesome until the temperance movement. Johnny Appleseed was a capitalist paragon, staying two seasons ahead of the settling movement. Not only would he claim the choicest bit of land in a likely location, he would plant apple seeds. Apples don’t come true from seed (every Macintosh you’ve ever eaten is genetically identical to every other Macintosh on the planet). The chances of getting an eating apple from a bag of seeds are about the same as winning the lottery. All those apple trees that Johnny sold were used to make cider, which, with no processing beyond setting up, becomes booze in a short amount of time. Johnny was a drug king-pin and his apples were the scourge of good, Christian society.

So spare me all that. I’m conservative enough to believe that bullshit shouldn’t be worshiped but rather composted and spread on the field to grow more grass to feed the cows that i’ll eat as steaks.

Question 6: My visits to conservative-land have indicated that a good many people their realized that Bush was a fraud during his first term. So tell me, why the fuck did you all vote for him again?

No, you can’t turn that last one around on me. I’ll admit to voting for Obama, but i never would have done it if conservative-land hadn’t nominated a crazy old man with a history of treasonous behavior and health problems backed up by Sarah Palin. What fucking choice did i have?

But i’ll tell you this, with Isis as my witness, barring a massive and unlikely turn by the Obama administration, i won’t be voting for him again. This was the Dems last chance with me, and they blew it.

I don’t speak for liberal-land. I don’t want to speak for liberal-land. I speak for my own cranky, misanthropic damned self. As far as i’m concerned, if you managed to unite mainstream liberal and conservative-lands into one big happy family, it still wouldn’t be able to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. I’ve been plenty critical of Obama, so you can drop the “partisan attack” cry and answer my questions.

Bonus Question: Exactly when will conservative-land start opting out of all the socialism run amok and quit cashing social security, medicaid, disability checks, etc?

Bonus Question 2: For eight long years we were all told to respect the office of the Presidency while the President’s godless, Trotskyite advisers took away our civil liberties, started wars at every opportunity and used the Constitution to wipe their collective asses. So tell me, how does conservative-land now feel it’s right and proper to argue for military coups, impeachment and assassination?

For a second, let’s set aside any arguments over whether or not Rowling’s work merits such a lofty honor and do something that we simply don’t do enough these days. Let’s dig beneath the surface silliness and examine the deeper implications of what this revelation really means.

Put simply, would you be worried about “encouraging” something you didn’t think was possible? It’s one thing to want to discourage, say, meth use or binge drinking or texting while driving or unprotected sex. Those things are real and they have real, observable consequences. If Rowling’s books were encouraging angel-dust-fueled arson sprees, we’d all be advised to support the former president and his merry band of loco parentis.

But did they see witchcraft as real? (Sure, practitioners of Wicca and other neo-paganisms indulge in the craft, but for a variety of reasons I think we have to assume that’s not what Bush was concerned with. After all, Rowling doesn’t talk about real-world Wicca, and real-world Wiccans don’t fly through the skies of London terrorizing the Mugglery. Whatever the real world’s witches may or may no be up to, it has so far proven very unHollywood-worthy.)

So, do we then conclude that President Bush and his cronies wanted to discourage children from learning how to change each other into rats? From flying around on brooms? From trying to outwit dragons? From teleporting via fireplaces? From sneaking around under invisibility capes?

Certainly these are the sorts of things that we’d want to keep our children away from, I suppose. But while Dubya may have resisted the corrosive effects of education, there are rules of logic and he is not magically immune to them. By definition, one wouldn’t actively discourage children from something that was in fact impossible. Not unless one were absolutely barking, anyway. It might theoretically be dangerous for young children to attack the Xyrxalian Star Fleet on Pegasus-back, for instance, but you don’t recall any Executive admonitions on the subject, do you?

Still, let’s remember, the Bible says that witches are real. Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin consulted freely with a witchbusting “minister.” The shenanigans at Hogwarts are barely more outlandish than some of what went on in the White House when Nancy Reagan, wife of Bush’s intellectual hero Ronald Reagan, was in residence.

And we’re talking about a man who believes that God commanded him to run for president.

Therefore, I believe we have every reason to believe that our former president did, in fact, view the kinds of powers imagined by Rowling in her best-selling series to be plausible.

Since this is America, we have to respect his faith.

It’s no secret that I don’t agree with the GOP on much of anything these days, but there’s kind of an odd element to my conversations with Republican acquaintances lately: a lot of them profess significant disagreement with the platform and policies of their party, too.

Taken in a vacuum, this is hardly surprising. After all, America is the land of disagreement, and there aren’t any parties out there that are acting in significant accordance with my views. So individual Republicans at odds with their party and with others in the party? Makes perfect sense.

We don’t live in a vacuum, though. We live in a complex series of interrelated contexts, and in context the reservations of my Republican friends merit further scrutiny. For starters, those who aren’t on the bus with our current media-enabled popular revolution seem to be the majority.

For these folks I have a word of advice: you have some ugly problems, and they need confronting today.

Republicans vs. the Republican Party

We recently had a little round-and-round here over Sara Robinson’s article on “Fascism in America.” Sara argues, persuasively and with detailed evidence, that the Republican Party represents a looming fascist threat for the United States. She doesn’t use the term “fascist” as a casual pejorative; she uses the word in a specific way and she defines precisely what she means by it. A couple of our readers took exception, with our friend Lara Amber (a very smart, progressive mind, by the way) finding something personal in the analysis:

Most Republicans are nice people, they aren’t “racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage.” (Nice way to shut down any discourse with anyone across the aisle by the way, way to go Sara! -sound of head hitting desk).

My response there, which I stand by, was that Robinson wasn’t talking about the individuals who comprise the party, but was instead describing its official apparatus. To be sure, the GOP has members who are guilty of everything Robinson says in that passage, and probably more, but I don’t read her as overgeneralizing to the extent that Lara believed. Still, Lara is like me – there are Republicans in her life, good people whom she respects and cares about. So the tendency to say “hey, wait a damned minute” is perhaps understandable.

But herein lies the proverbial rub: as Lara herself notes, the GOP is currently experiencing something of a leadership crisis. Right now its visible leaders are (to Party chair Michael Steele’s dismay) primarily media nutbags and hatespewers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. It’s also being “led” by a variety of well-funded astroturfers and “activist” organizations – these are the invisible hands manipulating the strings of the teabagger revolution, the birther conspiracy and the faux-ragers who have invaded the townhall health care “debates” – and fueled by the Fair & Balanced^® press. You have occasional appearances by political luminaries like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman (who’s now saying she’ll run for president if Jesus asks her to – where’s Sam Kinison when you need him?) and plenty of yammering by Congressweasels in the pockets of the insurance industry who are desperately trying to distract us from opinion polls showing that a vast majority of citizens want real health care reform built around a public option. And so on, and so on.

If you were asked to rebut Robinson’s characterization of the GOP – “racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage” – there’s not a lot of evidence out there in the public eye this summer that would serve you very well. So let’s take all this and see if we can summarize in a way that we can more or less agree on. How about this:

The Republican Party leadership is currently dominated by reactionary and corporatist voices that are not in line with the beliefs and values of a significant percentage of the party’s members.

(Yes, I’m more than aware that the Dem leadership is corporatist and out of step with what a good number of its members believe, too. We’ll deal with that another day.)

The second problem facing my GOP friends is even more troubling. In short, your party, your voice and your official political agenda are being hijacked by the most ignorant, unsavory, hateful and toxic elements in American society. Some examples:

• A woman yells “Heil Hitler” to an Israeli describing the benefits of his nation’s health care system.
• Gun-packing thugs “exercising their rights” near Obama rallies. (Thanks to Brandon for this link.) Here’s some more armed intimidation.
• By the way, that last dog-and-armored-pony show was orchestrated by a radio host with militia ties. This particular patriotic’ approach to defending the Constitution apparently involved plotting to blow up federal buildings. You know, like that other patriot, Timothy McVeigh.
• Former GOP Congressman Virgil Goode is making the rounds speaking to hate groups.
• Let’s not forget the murder – in church, no less – of Dr. George Tiller.
• And let’s not forget that other right-wing media consumer (Hannity, Savage, BillO) who walked into a “liberal” church and opened fire.
• By the way, these folks have the Constitutional right to carry guns and intimidate you, but you don’t have the right to put a bumper sticker expressing your beliefs on your car.
• Gordon Liddy is still roaming free, by the way.
• More examples of the cradle-to-grave crazy here…
• God wants gays, Barney Frank and Barack Obama executed.
• Just remember, violence is inevitable, and it’s Obama’s fault.

I could go on. But do I need to?

If you’re a reasonable Republican, all this has to trouble you (and I’ve heard enough Republicans say that it does to know that  I’m not imagining things). The issue isn’t that all GOPpers are like the fruitcakes running loose here in the Summer of Hate. In truth, this silliness is the work of a minority that isn’t big enough to do much damage at the ballot box. So since they can’t win using the techniques prescribed by law – you know, campaigning, voting, that sort of thing – and since their opinions are shared by so few (again, national polls on health care say over 70% of Americans favor a public option, for instance), they’re trying to get their way by being the loudest. By resorting to rhetorical misdirection and deceit when reason and fact are so thoroughly stacked against them. By pitching the most obnoxious tantrums. By resorting to base terror, intimidation and thuggery. By playing on the media’s insatiable thirst for noise.

The worst part, from the perspective of the rational Republican, is that a lot of these barking loons probably aren’t even members of the party (although the money behind their organized, choreographed hissy fits certainly is). Of course, at least one GOP lawmaker seems more than willing to welcome the lot of them aboard, and the average citizen may not expend the energy necessary to differentiate all the players aligned against Obama.

The Mandate

If you don’t control your image, your image will control you. – Dennis Green

If you are, in fact, an educated Republican who prefers to deliberate your way to conclusions thoughtfully, these are dangerous times. Because thanks to the way the system is rigged – and let’s understand who rigged it this way and why – most of what you hear through Big Journalism channels is inaccurate, at best, and most of what you hear through alternative channels is noise, at best. And those who do have something intelligent to say? Well, there aren’t many cameras pointed in their direction. Reason and fact aren’t as exciting as townhall cage matches.

I spent a lot of years (beginning in the early 1980s) saying, to any coherent Christian who’d listen, that they’d better get serious about taking back their religion from the jihadists on the right. Now I’m saying it to every Republican who was offended by what Sara Robinson wrote and who is watching the Summer of Hate unfold with a little unease.

You need to find a leader and take back your party – either that or walk away from it in ways that make your disapproval unmistakeably clear. You may think these people don’t speak for you, but they are speaking in your name, whether you like it or not. And at the moment, nobody is doing anything to correct the notion that everybody to the right of Barack Obama is a rabid hyena.

In thinking about technological change, and our relative inability to often recognize the transformational technologies at the time they come along, consider the electric guitar. Particularly the solid-body electric guitar invented by Les Paul, who passed away Thursday at the age of 94. The NY Times story does him justice – he was just messing around and came up with this thing because he couldn’t find it anywhere. And I don’t imagine that in his wildest dreams he could have foreseen the impact it would have; certainly no one else did at the time.

But in retrospect, it’s clear that the electric guitar is one of those things that changed everything. First came rock and roll, which led to the sixties, when led to the breakdown of everything…. No, wait, first came rock and roll, which led to drugs, which led to the breakdown of everything…. No, darnit, let’s see, first came rock and roll, then came… I can’t remember.

But it’s true. The electric guitar changed everything. It made music more interesting, certainly, and the cultural landscape has never recovered. Actually, the US culture wars of much of the second half of the 20th century focus on rock and roll as much as anything else, perhaps more so. I remember my first (and only) visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. We were on The Older Daughter’s college tour, which took us out to the Midwest – Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa – and it was a great holiday, one of the great family trips we took. And I remember insisting, over the bemused objections of everyone else in the family, that we should make a visit. Everyone was a pretty good sport about it, as I recall.

And it was worth the trip. For the rock and roll audience, it was interesting – most of the people we saw there would have looked completely at home in your standard Indianapolis 500 crowd. And the upstairs part, where the inductees have been enshrined, is a bit weird and over the top, actually. Of course, since so many of them are dead, maybe it’s a not inappropriate venue. (Les Paul was inducted in 1988.) But the really interesting part of the museum is the actual museum itself, which lays out, in a very serious but undeniably clever way, the history of rock and roll in America. And you realize, in a way that I’ve seen crystallized nowhere else, that the history of rock and roll in America is inextricably bound up with two other aspects of American life – race and censorship.

And both are still with us. The race thing is obvious – think of the South, changed on the surface but perhaps not underneath (given the racists they repeatedly elect to Congress and their local legislatures), and the outrage among a substantial part of the US population against Obama that is currently driving the tea party and healthcare protest lunacy. If America does permanently schism, as it shows every intention of doing, it will be over race. Which will be tragic, but perhaps nonetheless unavoidable. The censorship thing, too, is still around – fundamentalists of all stripes (who in the US are primarily, but not exclusively, Christian) will never stop trying to ban stuff, and if they can’t, they’ll burn stuff, and if they can’t do that, they’ll think of something else instead – as recently as a couple of years ago Dixie Chicks CDs were being bulldozed. The overlap between these two sets would make an interesting Venn diagram.

And rock and roll, for as long as it’s been around, has epitomized both of these conflicts. Early radio stations refused to play “Negro Music.” While it was on separate stations, that was fine – but as soon as white teenagers started listening in, civilization started to collapse, or something. But people really believed it then, and they still believe it now. Rock and roll in the US is inevitably political, in a way that it’s not in, say, Holland (which brought us one of the best rock guitarists, Jan Akkerman, who plays a Les Paul guitar too). Even in this day of corporate rock and roll, it’s still a principal outlet for the other, in Fanon’s framework, and always will be. Anyone can pick up an electric guitar and a bass and a drumkit and go to town. So the censorship thing will always be there. And who knows how long the race thing will still be around for – it may need for my generation to finally die out before America is mature enough to come to grips with it. Rock and roll has historically been one of the principal modes of attack on racism, ever since white boys like Carl Perkins first picked up his Les Paul Gold Top and came out with “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1956. And without Les Paul, no rock and roll as we know it.

So let’s all hope that Les Paul was greeted by a heavenly choir wearing sunglasses, all strumming away on their Gibson Les Pauls to “How High the Moon.”

Wufnik is an American who lives in London, has too many advanced degrees for what he does for a living, and has strong feelings about rock and roll.

The WG1 report was authored and reviewed by approximately 2000 scientists with varying expertise in climate and related fields, and so having a list of over 30,000 scientists that rejected the WG1’s conclusions was a powerful meme that AGW skeptics and deniers could use to cast doubt on the IPCC’s conclusions and, indirectly, on the entire theory of climate disruption. And in fact, this meme has become widespread in both legacy and new media today.

It is also completely false.

According to the Petition Project “qualifications” page, “Signatories are approved for inclusion in the Petition Project list if they have obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher in appropriate scientific fields.” The fields that are considered “appropriate” by the OISM are as follows:

• Atmosphere, Earth, and Environment fields: atmospheric science, climatology, meteorology, astronomy, astrophysics, earth science, geochemistry, geology, geophysics, geoscience, hydrology, environmental engineering, environmental science, forestry, oceanography
• Computers and Math: computer science, mathematics, statistics
• Physics and Aerospace: physics, nuclear engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering
• Chemistry: chemistry, chemical engineering
• Biochemistry, Biology, and Agriculture: biochemistry, biophysics, biology, ecology, entomology, zoology, animal science, agricultural science, agricultural engineering, plant science, food science
• Medicine: medical science, medicine
• General Engineering and General Science: engineering, electrical engineering, metallurgy, general science

The OISM’s qualifications for being a “scientist” are expansive, and as such there are a number of questions that have to be answered before we can take this list seriously. What expertise does a nuclear engineer or a medical doctor or a food scientist or mechanical engineer have that makes them qualified to have an informed opinion on the cause(s) of recent climate disruption? How many of these names are working climate scientists instead of science or math teachers or stay-at-home-mom’s with engineering degrees? How many of these people has actually published a peer-reviewed paper on climate? How many people took a look at the card that served as a “signature” (click on the image to see a larger version) and realized that they could lie about having a science degree and their deception would never be discovered?

At this point it’s literally impossible to know because the names and degrees on the list cannot be verified by anyone outside the OISM. We can only take the OISM’s word that they’re all real names, that all the degrees are correct, and so on. This does not stand up to the most basic tests of scientific credibility.

Unfortunately, the OISM’s list has had its credibility fabricated for it by individuals and groups as diverse as Steve Milloy of Fox News (see this link for a S&R investigation into the background and tactics of Steve Milloy), L. Brent Bozell of conservative “news” site Newsbusters and founder of the conservative Media Research Center, Benita M. Dodd of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, the libertarian/conservative site American Thinker (a site that has regularly failed to fact-check their AGW posts), conservative commentator Deroy Murdock (who works on Project 21 with the wife of one of Steve Milloy’s long-time associates), RightSideNews, Dakota Voice, Dennis T. Avery of the Hudson Institute, Lawrence Solomon of the Financial Post, Michelle Malkin, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to name just a few of the better known. As a result, the OISM’s petition has been elevated to a level of credibility that is arguably undeserved.

While it’s not possible to test the validity of OISM list directly, it is possible to test the conclusions that have been drawn from the OISM list. Specifically, we can test what percentage the 30,000 “scientists” listed on the OISM petition represent when compared to the total number of scientists in the U.S. And we can then compare that to the percentage represented by the 2000 IPCC AR4 WG1-associated scientists as compared to the estimate number of U.S. climate-related scientists.

According to the OISM website, anyone with a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Doctorate of Philosophy in a field related to physical sciences is qualified as a scientist. In addition, the OISM sent the petition cards pictured above only to individuals within the U.S. Based on this information, we can us the OISM’s own guidelines to determine how many scientists there are in the U.S. and what percentage of those scientists are represented by the OISM petition.

The U.S. Department of Education tracks the number of graduates from institutions of higher education every year, and has done so since either the 1950-51 or 1970-71 school years, depending on what specifically the Dept. of Ed. was interested in. This data was last updated in the Digest of Education Statistics: 2008. We’re specifically interested in the number of degrees that have been awarded in the various scientific disciplines as defined by the OISM in the list above. This information is available in the following tables within the 2008 Digest: 296, 298, 302, 304, 310, 311, and 312. Table 1 below show how many graduates there were in the various categories defined by the Dept. of Ed. since the 1970-71 school year (click on the image for a larger version). The numbers have been corrected to account for the fact that PhD’s will usually have MS degrees as well, and that both are preceded by BS degrees.

As you can see, Table 1 shows that there were over 10.6 million science graduates as defined by the OISM since the 1970-71 school year. This is a conservative estimate as illustrated by teh 242,000 graduates in biological and biomedical sciences from 1950-51 through 1969-70 alone, never mind the 166,000 engineering graduates, and so on. Many of these individuals are still alive today and would be considered scientists according to the OISM definition thereof.

The OISM website lists how many signatures they have for scientists in each of their categories. Given the number of graduates and the number of signatures claimed by the OISM, we can calculate the percentage of OISM-defined scientists who signed as referenced to the total. These results are shown in Table 2 below.

In other words, the OISM signatories represent a small fraction (~0.3%) of all science graduates, even when we use the OISM’s own definition of a scientist.

However, as mentioned above, it’s entirely reasonable to ask whether a veterinarian or forestry manager or electrical engineer should qualify as a scientist. If we remove all the engineers, medical professionals, computer scientists, and mathematicians, then the 31,478 “scientists” turn into 13,245 actual scientists, as opposed to scientists according to the OISM’s expansive definition. Of course, not all of them are working in science, but since some medical professionals and statisticians do work in science, it’s still a reasonable quick estimate.

However, it’s not reasonable to expect that all of those actual scientists are working in climate sciences. Certainly the 39 climatologists, but after that, it gets much murkier. Most geologists don’t work as climate scientists, although some certainly do. Most meteorologists do weather forecasting, but understanding the weather is radically different than understanding climate. So we can’t be sure beyond the 39 climatologists, although we can reasonably assume that the number is far less than the 13,245 actual scientists claimed by the OISM.

13,245 scientists is only 0.1% of the scientists graduated in the U.S. since the 1970-71 school year.

We can, however, compare the number of atmospheric scientists, climagologists, ocean scientists, and meteorologists who signed this petition to the number of members of the various professional organizations. For example, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has over 55,000 members, of which over 7,200 claim that atmospheric sciences is their primary field. The OISM claims 152 atmospheric scientists. Compared to the atmospheric scientist membership in the AGU, the OISM signatories are only 2.1%, and this estimate is high given the fact that the AGU does not claim all atmospheric scientists as members.

The AGU hydrology group has over 6,000 members who call hydrology their primary field. The OISM list has 22 names that claim to be hydrologists, or 0.4%.

The AGU ocean sciences group claims approximately 6,800 members. The OISM has 83 names, or 1.2%. And again, given that AGU membership is not required to be a practicing ocean scientists, this number is inflated.

The American Meteorological Society claims over 14,000 members and the OISM claims 341 meteorologists as petition signatories. That’s only 2.4%.

It’s clear that the OISM names don’t represent a significant number of scientists when compared to either the total number of science graduates in the U.S. or to the number of practicing scientists who work in likely relevant fields. But that’s not all.

Over recent years, various organizations have set out to estimate just how widespread the supposed “scientific consensus” on AGW actually is. Two recent efforts were conducted by the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University and by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The STATS survey found that 84% of climate scientists surveyed “personally believe human-induced warming is occurring” and that “[o]nly 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming.” The STATS survey involved a random sampling of “489 self-identified members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union” and it has a theoretical sampling error of +/- 4%.

The Pew survey was taken in early 2009 and asked over 2000 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) their opinion on various scientific issues, including climate disruption. 84% of AAAS respondents felt that “warming is due to human activity” compared to only 10% who felt that “warming is due to natural causes.” The AAAS has over 10 million members, and the results of the survey are statistically valid for the entire population with a theoretical sampling error of +/- 2.5%.

84% of 10 million scientist members of the AAAS is 8.4 million scientists who agree that climate disruption is human-caused. 84% of the climate scientists (conservatively just the members of the atmospheric science group of the AGU) is, conservatively, 6,000 scientists who have direct and expert knowledge of climate disruption. The 13,245 scientists and 152 possible climate scientists who signed the OISM petition represent a small minority of the totals.

The IPCC AR4 WG1 report was written and reviewed by approximately 2000 scientists. If we assume that the 20,000 AGU members who claim to be atmospheric scientists, ocean scientists, or hydrologists represent the pool of potential experts in climate science in the U.S., then approximately 10% of all climate scientists were directly involved in creating the over 1000 page report.

That compares to less than 1% of all OISM “scientists” who mailed a pre-printed postcard.

Ultimately, The OISM petition will continue to rear it’s ugly head until its fabricated credibility has been thoroughly demolished. Social conservatives and libertarians, each of which has their own ideological reasons to push the OISM petition, have been effective at keeping the “30,000 scientists reject warming chicken-littleism of IPCC” meme circulating throughout conservative media outlets, even as climate disruption-focused media have worked at limiting the damage from the OISM petition. But given the fact that the science supporting a dominantly anthropogenic cause for climate disruption is overwhelming, it’s only a matter of time before the OISM petition wilts in the heat.

Q: Let’s say you’re sick with a potentially deadly disease. Who do you want for a doctor?
A: The smartest, most experienced and highly qualified expert in the field.

Q: You’re looking to invest your life savings. Who do you trust to handle your money?
A: The brightest, most agile financial mind I can find.

Q: You’ve been selected to participate in a “private citizens in space” program. Who do you want in charge of building the rocket?
A: The most brilliant and reliable engineers in the nation.

So far, so good. One more.

Q: You live in a time of unimaginable complexity and danger. Who do want to be the leader of the free world?
A: Somebody I can have a beer with. You know, a regular guy, a Joe Sixpack.

It’s said that people tend to get the leaders they deserve, and I can’t imagine better proof than the United States. At present we’re watching as a new president attempts to arm-tackle an array of national political and economic crises of evil supervillain jailbreak proportions, and at this early stage it’s far from clear that he’s Rushmore-bound.

• He may or may not get health care reform passed, and if he does it may or may not be as comprehensive as the programs pursued by previous arch-progressives Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower.
• He may or may not bog us down in a vastly expanded quagmire in Afghanistan, although at present only an idiot would bet on him meeting his campaign promises regarding getting the heck out of Iraq.
• He may or may not decide to honor the pledges he made to the gay community.
• He may or may not spearhead a green revolution that saves the species from itself.
• And his economic policies may boost us to new, unprecedented levels of universal prosperity. Or they may plummet us nards-first into a meat grinder of a global recession so epic it will make the Great Depression look like a weekend in the Hamptons.

So the jury is still out on Mr. Obama. But… While past performance is no guarantee of future results, there’s also that thing about those who don’t understand history being doomed to repeat it. And America’s history of electing dolts, buffoons, scoundrels, knaves, low-jackers, pig-fuckers, gomers, dog-whistlers, Kloset Klansmen, recidivists and sheep pimps to the Highest Elected Office in the Land does not make one optimistic about the prospects for Barackapalooza. I’d love to be wrong, but let’s be honest. An indicator that can pick a loser 100% of the time is every bit as valuable to the shrewd investor as one that always picks the winner, and the Electoral College is as reliable a Finger of Doom as the world has ever seen.

Let’s review, shall we?

George W. Bush: Worst president ever? Dumbest president ever? Hard to say for certain, although put me down for “hell, yes.” The nation apparently elected a string of semi-housebroken wombats in the 1800s, and contemporary polling feels obliged, in the name of “balance,” to humor the estimations of conservative “scholars” who rate him the sixth-best ever. For my money, that opinion alone is sufficient for the credentialing institution to revoke the PhD, but such is the price we pay for the privilege of living in an society that not only tolerates fools gladly, it gives them television shows.

Bill Clinton: In so many ways, Clinton was the archetypal president of our age. He was the distilled, undiluted essence of the modern political animal. He was like everything in Washington, only moreso. And I don’t mean that in the good way.

Bubba may not be the man who invented the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, but he was damned sure the one who established it as the only wing that mattered. The irony, of course, was that he was reviled by the GOP. I’ve always wondered if the source of that rage was that Clinton was a better Republican than they were.

In addition, he cheapened the office at every turn: whether renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidder, pardoning Marc Rich or “hiking the Appalachian Trail” like mink freebasing Viagra, it seemed as though his every action left us feeling the need for a shower. From the poor house to the penthouse to the whore house, we’ve never seen anything like him. God willing, we never will again.

George HW Bush: It’s still hard to fathom how this mealy-mouthed little wimp stumbled into the White House. All the Democrats had to do in 1988 was find a candidate with a pulse. Instead, they trotted out Mike Dukakis, a man with all the charisma and passion of an accountant on a phenobarbital drip.

Bush the Elder was the latest incarnation of an established and thoroughly corrupt dynasty, and between him and his fuckwit kids there is no better argument, could be no better argument, in favor of a 100% inheritance tax. If they’d had to earn anything on their own merit their only entree into a country club would be as assistant assistant assistant greenskeepers reporting to Carl Spackler at Bushwood.

Ronald Reagan: Wow. Where to start. Back in the 1960s Marshall McLuhan, in writing about where television was taking the culture, predicted Reagan in terms so accurate that you’d think you were reading a history instead of a precognition. The only thing missing was the name and home address. The failing in McLuhan’s analysis, if there was one, was this: as cynical as he was, the reality turned out to be even worse than he feared.

Ronnie was as anti-intellectual a leader as we could have imagined prior to Dubya. A man who somehow managed to remain immensely popular despite the fact that most Americans disagreed with his policies. One of the most corrupt collections of advisors, staffers and appointees in history. And the man who represented the grand triumph of years and years of scheming by wealthy conservatives bent on by god rolling the rich-poor gap back to feudal levels. An intellectually void, amoral cesspool of a human being who will nonetheless go down as one of our “great” presidents.

Jimmy Carter: Carter has the distinction of being one of the very few politicians that Hunter Thompson ever said anything nice about, and his record since leaving the White House has made clear what an outstanding statesman and humanitarian Carter really is. History will not mark him down as the most adept practitioner of the presidential arts, however, and for those who bemoan the erosion of the line between church and state, let’s remember just how very publicly Baptist Jimmy was. Now, thanks in part to him, we’ll never get the smell of the fundamentalists out of the furniture. (Which reminds me – Phish is playing four dates at Red Rocks, so those of us who live in downtown Denver are hoping the wind isn’t blowing straight west-to-east for the next few days.)

Gerald Ford: Nice enough guy, seemed like. For a politician and all. But he wasn’t ever elected.

Richard Nixon: Please tell me we don’t really need to talk about this one.

Lyndon Johnson: Ever heard of Vietnam? It’s hard to recall the last time somebody took an idea so bad and managed to make it even worse. He does get credit for important civil rights legislation, at least.

Still, in the final analysis he was a president from Texas with a lust for illicit, unwinnable wars. If that reminds you of somebody else, don’t blame me. I’m just reporting the facts.

John F. Kennedy: He invaded Cuba, and once the troops started landing he changed his mind. He nearly got us into a hot nukular shooting war. Then there was that Vietnam thing – he and LBJ can share this honor. Marilyn Monroe was either a plus or a minus, depending on where you stand with respect to the marital infidelity issue.

Ultimately, though, the only thing that saved his legacy was death. Had he lived to serve out his term(s) he’d be judged today based on his record, which falls somewhat short of the legend.

So, when was the last time America elected a president it could be proud of? By today’s standards Ike isn’t looking bad at all, and his two predecessors, FDR and Truman, also score high marks.

If you look at that chart in the link above, it seems like maybe the country’s ability to elect somebody half decent runs in cycles.

Let’s hope that’s the case, and that the wheel is turning back in our direction. Because damn, America is due.

Snark aside, Bondelli does a nice job of addressing Hough, who “argues that the increase in lifetime wages for graduates no longer makes up for the financial burden of university education and the ensuing student loan burden.” He also takes on one of the GOP’s most successful and devastating canards, explaining that

In 2003 when I was lobbying against tuition increases in Arizona, a Republican state legislator argued that a college degree is a personal investment that the students are paying for their own future financial prosperity.

I second Kevin’s thoughts (and encourage you to click over and read the whole post). However, I also think the response needs to run even deeper. In truth, as stupid as that Repub legislator’s argument was (and in all likelihood, as stupid as the legislator was), it’s an argument that wins over a lot of people if you let its underlying assumption go unchallenged.

Bondelli touches on the point in quoting University of Rhode IslandVice President for Administration and Finance Robert Weygand, who explains that

Public colleges need to promote and publicize the work they do for the community and their contributions to economic development. Well-publicized proof that they make a difference to the state, and not just the earning potential of individual graduates, is meaningful to lawmakers, even in tough times.

The underlying issue that must be dragged out into the light and stomped is that somehow a nation’s education policy is all about individual investment. This is “ownership society”-style bullshit and it traces its “intellectual” roots back through the eight-year lie that was the Reagan administration and into the conservative academic framework laid in the 1960s by the likes of Daniel Bell. It culminated in rhetorical low-water marks like “government isn’t the solution to your problems – it is the problem,” and unfortunately the Newspeak linguistic cross-patch that this crowd inflicted on an easily-duped public is still working its corrosive magic today.

The answer we give when faced with this kind of cynical forked-tonguery must make clear that it’s not about Little Billy choosing whether or not to invest in his future. Instead, the question is about what’s best for the nation. In a society where only the top 5% of economic elites can afford a quality education – and we’re heading in that direction at a rapid pace – that means that 95% of the nation’s intelligence, 95% of its genius, 95% of its creativity and insight and inventiveness and problem solving capacity, 95% of its scientific potential – 95% of that nation’s possibility is at risk. It’s likely doomed to go unrealized.

Imagine that nation engaged in a highly competitive global marketplace with countries that make refining their intelligence, regardless of class or station of birth, a top priority. Imagine a nation that’s much like America in size and socioeconomic structure and overall potential. And imagine that while we’re keeping 95% of our brighest and best away from learning as best we can, they’re moving heaven and earth to get their brightest and best all the education possible.

Let’s go a step further and make this a math question. The US has a population of around 300 million. Statistically speaking, “genius” is a term that (as flawed as it may be) refers to the top 2% intellectually. So that means that America is home to roughly 6 million geniuses. Now, say we only provide quality educational opportunities to the richest 5%. That leaves us with 300,000 of our best minds honest to their sharpest potential.

Now consider that other hypothetical country, call it AltAmerica. Same numbers, only this time you educate all your geniuses. Our 300,000 is now up against their 6 million.

Which nation do you think innovates the best products? (I start with that example, because obviously nothing matters besides feeding the consumerist beast, right?) Who more quickly comes up with cures for diseases? Who creates solutions to pressing social challenges? Who is best able to provide for the common weal while preserving the environment?

Over time, which nation comes to dominate and which one fades?

A nation that adopts a “let Billy decide whether to invest in his future” policy will be, in short order, at the mercy of a nation that makes educating Billy a top priority.

If you don’t like my math, fine, adjust to your liking. But the dynamic remains (and I’m framing the discussion in a restrictive fashion, as well, because you don’t have to be a rated genius to be smart enough to change the world). And by the way, I do have a couple of specific nations in mind. Neither of them has a population of 300 million, either. Both have over a billion people, and they have more honor students than we have students.

That politician that Kevin references is either stupid or corrupt, or maybe both. But whether he’s acting out of class-based malice or simple butt-ignorance, the policy he espouses would, over time, reduce the US to the equivalent if a slobbering backwater surrounded by thrumming, intellect-powered New Atlantises. No doubt he’d like to keep the rabble in its place, educated only enough to provide unquestioning labor for the power elite’s enterprises, but the dangerous fact is that he hasn’t thought this thing all the way through.

Which also demonstrates, by the way, that not everybody in that 5% elite is exactly rocket surgeon material. So maybe my scenario above was actually a little … conservative, if you will.

Thanks to Kevin for taking this issue head-on. I hope he won’t mind me adding my two cents…

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office:

Barack: Hey everybody, what’s the difference between a progressive and a toilet?
Rahm: I give up, Mr. President.
Barack: The toilet doesn’t follow you around after you use it.
[Entire Cabinet]: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

A few days ago Chris Bowers, one of the progressive blogosphere’s smarter and more influential voices, announced that he was becoming a conservative Democrat. His reasoning was compelling. Let me sample a bit for you (and encourage you to go read the rest as soon as you’re done here).

You can “endorse someone other than a Democrat for President, and then have the Democratic leadership do whatever it takes” to keep you in the Party. “You get ten times the media mentions that one gets being a progressive.” You get “more money, too. You can proclaim that you are a conservative Democrat, and still have small, progressive, grassroots donors be by far your top contributors.” You can “hold up, water down, and threaten whatever Democratic legislation you want” with no consequences at all. “You get frequent meetings with the President and proclamations that he is one of your own.” If you bitch about it you get “threats about never hearing from the White House again.” You’re “far more likely to receive a major cabinet appointment. Not even counting the Republicans, New Democrats outnumber Progressives in President Obama’s cabinet by 7-1.” And that’s not nearly all.

Okay, so maybe Bowers isn’t really abandoning his fellow progressives. Maybe he was just being a smart-ass to make a point. I can’t say I approve of such tactics, but hey, my old pal Jonathan Swift was known for the occasional snark, so who am I to judge?

The point is that progressives have a beef with the new fauxcialist administration, and regardless of what you think about their issues, their analysis or their personal hygiene, a review of the facts certainly justifies their pique. Think about it.

• Obama the Campaigning Man was pretty clear in his disdain for the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama the President has apparently decided that gay rights can wait. (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Don’t bother.)
• Candidate Obama was balls-to-the-wall about greening the economy, and I mean yesterday. President Obama, whose favorability rating is running better than 2-1 for, seemed unable or unwilling to expend some of that political capital on the just passed ACES bill, which many experts think will accomplish diddley (or worse). (Again, whatever the eventual reality about this bill turns out to be is irrelevant – the point is that Obama did not act in accordance with the more progressive stance he had taken earlier.)
• And what about health care? A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for “a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.” How overwhelming, you ask? Overall 72% were in favor of the “public option,” and 57% said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to get it. Hell, 50% of Republican respondents want it. So, you have very high approval ratings. And you certainly have a significantly greater mandate than George the Conqueror did after nipping John Kerry in 2004. You have significant majorities in both houses of Congress. You have overwhelming popular support for a public option. And you can’t get it done? Seriously?

I’m sitting here trying to figure out why corporate America, which would stand to benefit tremendously from having the burden of insuring the citizenry lifted from its shoulders, isn’t in open revolt. (That part of corporate America that doesn’t include the insurance industry, I mean.)

It has been observed that the Republicans seem to be more effective with a minority than the Dems are when they have the entire country by the balls. GOPpers derail the train by threatening a filibuster, but the Democrats can’t seem to head off a bad idea with a damned-near buster-proof majority. How the hell is this possible?

This, of course, is what’s known as a “rhetorical question.” The butt-obvious answer is that the contemporary Democratic Party is not really a party, at least not in the same way that the GOP is. Instead, it’s a bizarre amalgam of progressives, “moderates,” bipartisan fetishists, “New Democrats,” DINOs and opportunistic Republicans (see Specter, Arlen). The median at present lies significantly to the right of Richard Nixon, who despite the recent revelation that he was in favor of abortion in the case of half-breed fetuses, posted a record that would make him pretty darned progressive by 2009 standards. (Good thing you dodged that bullet, huh Mr. President?)

Ultimately, Bowers and other frustrated progressives are right. The Democratic party just isn’t that into them. They’re useful when votes are needed, but are utterly incapable of leveraging that into actual influence. As far as the “responsible” centrists are concerned, progressives are the late-date with no self-esteem, the unwitting fat chick at the pig party.

So, what to do?

Playing along isn’t working. So how about rounding up all the members of the Progressive Caucus (and their many allies around the country) and opting out? Leave the Democractic Party. Form a third party of their own (or just join the Greens). All of a sudden the Democratic Party has a numbers problem. All of a sudden they lose majority status, chairmanships, agenda-setting stroke, etc.

I’m no expert on the rules of the American legislature, so I’m sure there are nuances I’m missing. Nonetheless, I imagine the Republican wing of the Democratic Party would wet itself. And in the short term this could be very good for the GOP, which would find itself in the plurality.

Longer-term, though, it seems like the progressives can make an argument – and one that is supported by some actual evidence – that they represent the will of a goodly slice of the American public. Even better, given how the youth vote seems to be trending, they can also argue that their hand is going to strengthen over time. Are these premises accurate? Hard to say. But they are testable hypotheses, and the posit is certainly plausible enough to be worth examining.

Maybe the remaining Dems respond by making the reality of the situation official and decamping for the GOP. Maybe the Blue Dogs and the “moderate” wing of the GOP abandon those pesky snake-handlers on the right and form a new “centrist” coalition. Who knows. If that did happen, however, America would at least have the refreshing luxury of an opposition party that, you know, opposed. We could get all that corporatist DC clutter, which thrives because it dominates both parties, up for a real referendum. What a campaign hook – America vs. the Beltway.

Part of me says “what if it backfires?” But the other part of me looks at the state of the current union, at the looting of the last eight (or, depending on your taste for the long view, 29) years, at the energy way too many Americans have to devote to worrying about what happens if they get sick or injured, at the staggering cost associated with continuing to fuck around with the environment, at the fact that millions and millions and millions of citizens have no hope at all of financial solvency, at the knee-buckling stupidity of a populace that’s been victimized by a brilliantly conceived War on Education, at…. Fuck it. You get the picture.

Off your knees, progressives. The worst that happens is more of the same. At the least do us the favor of dying on your feet.

I’m referring, of course, to the “Lone Wolf” Flu. It’s precisely the sort of bug we’d expect to strike conservative talk show hosts across the nation – and it has – but lately it’s turned up in what were once considered to be some of the most objective and sanitary environments in the American media landscape.

I’ll stop torturing the metaphor now, lest it seem like I’m treating the subject too lightly. Instead, let’s examine a couple of news items that do considerable damage to the truth of our domestic terror problem. First, a June 13 AP story bylined by Devlin Barrett and Eileen Sullivan came across the wires with this headline: “Shootings show threat of ‘lone wolf’ terrorists.” And yesterday the Wall St. Journal joined in with “FBI Seeks to Target Lone Extremists,” which explained that “[l]one-wolf offenders continue to be of great concern to law enforcement.”

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the terrorists they’re characterizing as “lone wolves” are no such thing. Or, if they are, then the working definition of “lone wolf” is so badly broken that it’s beyond fixing. That phrase asks us to accept that killers like James von Brunn and Scott Roeder (and Eric Rudolph and Buford Furrow and Benjamin Smith and James Kopp and Jim David Adkisson) get to the point of politically motivated homicide all by themselves. It asks us to accept that these people have no context, no community, no ideological fellow-travelers whipping them on.

Which is bunk. David Neiwert has written a couple of pieces since the latest fatal case cropped up in the Holocaust Museum several days ago. As he explained on Friday, “these are not ‘isolated incidents’.”

As Potok explains, the “lone wolf” concept was popularized in the late 1980s by an Aryan Nations leader named Louis Beam as an extension of his strategy of “leaderless resistance.” One white supremacist, a fellow named Alex Curtis, even went so far as to develop a “point system” for lone wolves.

A 2003 piece by Jessica Stern in Foreign Affairs described how even Al Qaeda was finding the concept useful. And she explains its origins:

The idea was popularized by Louis Beam, the self-described ambassador-at-large, staff propagandist, and “computer terrorist to the Chosen” for Aryan Nations, an American neo-Nazi group. Beam writes that hierarchical organization is extremely dangerous for insurgents, especially in “technologically advanced societies where electronic surveillance can often penetrate the structure, revealing its chain of command.” In leaderless organizations, however, “individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or instruction, as would those who belong to a typical pyramid organization.” Leaders do not issue orders or pay operatives; instead, they inspire small cells or individuals to take action on their own initiative.

The strategy was also inspired by at least one “lone wolf” shooter: Joseph Paul Franklin, a racist sniper who in the late 1970s and early 1980s killed as many as 20 people — mostly mixed-race couples — on a serial-murder spree, and attempted to assassinate both Vernon Jordan and Larry Flynt. (Franklin was also the inspiration for William Pierce’s Hunter, the follow-up novel to The Turner Diaries.)

As it turns out, we know a bit about these murderers, and the facts help us paint a picture of wolves who are anything but lonely.

• Buford was a member of the Aryan Nation.
• Smith was a member of the white supremacist Creativity Movement.
• Kopp was a member of the anti-abortionist Lambs of Christ.
• Rudolph isn’t tied to a specific hate group, but seems to have had ample support from a variety of sources.
• Adkisson was a fan of hate-talkers Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Bill O’Reilly.
• Roeder was either a member of or had ties to a variety of right-wing organizations, including the Montana Freemen, the Sovereign Citizen Movement, the Army of God and Operation Rescue.

Like all these other “lone wolves,” von Brunn was hardly an island, either.

The conclusion we’ve all hopefully reached about “lone wolf” terrorists is this: just because the rest of the pack isn’t physically present doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Sara Robinson summed it up nicely:

The assassins themselves are ratting you out. They’re telling us, straight up, that they were inspired to act by the hate radio talkers that you empowered — one of whom is now the de facto head of the Republican party. They got it from media outlets owned by your biggest donors. They got it from bloggers who receive daily talking points faxed in from the GOP. They got it from activists representing causes that would have never become causes in the first place if the issues hadn’t been politically expedient for you.

Beyond that: You’ve already admitted your own complicity. When the Department of Homeland Security expressed their worries about right- wing extremist violence last April, practically every conservative pundit in the country went into a righteous fit. DHS never named anyone directly, so it was astonishing how many of you on the right were so quick to step up and claim that that memo was slandering you, personally and collectively. Since you were so eager to claim that that memo was all about you, now that the violence has come to pass, we’re well justified in holding you to that.

The Press as Typhoid Mary

Back to the AP story, which unfortunately provides a warm, nutrient-rich pool in which the “lone wolf” meme can replicate with abandon. In a number of respects, it might be argued that the reporters and editors toe the journalistic line in ways that are more than defensible. The term is embedded in quotation marks in the header and in the first occurence in the body of the story. They interview and dutifully quote experts, and we have no reason to believe that FBI officials have any particular ideological axe to grind with their use of the term.

The WSJ story, authored by Gary Fields and Evan Perez, differs from the AP article primarily in the fact that it doesn’t even feel a need for quotation marks.

Despite the insight each story provides into the FBI’s attempts to head off these kinds of “isolated” attacks, I find myself wanting more in the way of perspective from the reporters. A lot more. As the FBI frames the issue, a “lone wolf” crime is apparently defined in opposition to one “planned by a trained terrorist network.” This taxonomy is probably useful in some contexts, but here it lacks a certain … granularity. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman quoted by the AP privileges the term.

In the end, the reader comes away with the idea that these killers are, as a matter of fact, solitary agents. Both agencies lend credence to this misinformation by failing to challenge the underlying factual inaccuracy, and in doing so they inadvertently serve the cause of the “leaderless resistance.“ When our most reliable news institutions say that these incidents are isolated, that they’re not part of a larger movement, that there’s no collective organization behind the attacks, it provides cover for a thriving, blood-thirsty community of wolves.

Put a little more aggressively, we might argue that such weak reportage provides aid and comfort for terrorists. No, that’s not a terribly civil accusation, and I’m certainly not arguing that Fields, Perez, Barrett, Sullivan or their editors are in some way intending to promote or enable the actions of these freak-right loons. Nonetheless, their failure to fully and clearly identify the context in which these actions occurred has an effect – intended or not.

If their hesitance to pull that particular trigger is somehow related to a concern over the appearance of bias (far more likely with the AP than the WSJ, I’d think), I’d offer two responses. First, the Homeland Security report that stressed the threat of homegrown right-wing terror was generated by the Bush Administration. Second, “balance” is never an excuse to sidestep the truth.

If we’re going to effectively address the causes of our recent domestic terror epidemic the Lone Wolf Flu must be eradicated. Step one: our mainstream media has to stop spreading the virus.