Ye don’t want to miss the boat, now, do ye? I know ye be nursin’ a turkey hangover, an’ ye might be wonderin’ where all the rum’s gone, but elitist bastards stop for no ill and no holiday. Get yer links in to me, or ye’ll be regrettin’ it. I’ll be watchin’ for ye until the clock strikes midnight.
NaNo sufferers – I know ye don’t be havin’ time for articles. We’ll take a snippet o’ prose instead. I be thinkin’ that’ll be elitist bastardly enough.
Today’s opining on the public discourse.
Um. Ew:
What media genius in the Chambliss campaign approved this spot? Because nothing says “I deserve your vote” quite like inappropriate contact with a prepubescent girl.
And, um, “Big Daddy”? Geebus.
You know, it wasn’t a bad ad until the end there, when he mashed his hand all over her breast buds. There’s a certain age at which girls’ chests become off-limits. “Vote for my big daddy” indeed. Bit o’ advice to Georgia: don’t.
(My NaNo-addled brain can’t remember if I’ve highlighted the following bit before or not. If I did, just do me a favor and pretend it’s fresh news, mkay?) The last thing we need if more fucking Cons in the Senate, anyway.
Everybody knows we’ve got a ginormous financial crisis on our hands. Everybody knows that our bailout is supposed to have some oversight, yet there is no arse in the chair that’s supposed to be overseeing. The Bush regime did something nearly sane and chose Neil Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor, to sit his arse down in said chair and watch our hundreds of billions of dollars like a hawk. Barofsky’s butt is needed in that chair starting now, he’s one of those rare inoffensive-to-both-sides sorts, and everyone knows it’s in the country’s best interests to get him confirmed.
Everyone except the Cons. Here’s how they put “Country first!” rhetoric into practice:
Last week, Sen. Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the banking committee, issued a little-noticed statement saying that although the nomination “was cleared by members of the Senate Banking Committee, the leadership of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and all Democratic Senators,” it was “blocked on the floor by at least one Republican member.” (itals ours.)
Senate rules allow any senator to anonymously block a vote on confirmation to any federal post, for any reason.
The rationale for the move remains unclear. But a Washington Post story from a few days before Dodd’s statement offers two suggestions. It notes that Barofsky supported Barack Obama, and describes an unresolved “battle between the Finance and Banking committees over which has jurisdiction over the confirmation process.”
Blocking an urgent nomination because the nominee, like 52 percent of voters, supported Obama seems petty even by contemporary GOP standards. But a congressional turf war over jurisdiction seems only slightly less so. So either of these two explanations would be a pretty damning indictment of Congress’s response to the crisis.
No wonder these holds are anonymous. Whichever obstructionist fuckwit is playing political games with the country’s future would get their ass reamed by their constitutents, not to mention hunted down by an angry mob of taxpayers.
“Country First” my ass.
Doesn’t that just make you sick? But I hope not too sick – Bush is busy ensuring people can’t afford to get treatment:
As rising unemployment swells Medicaid rolls, the Bush administration issues a new federal rule that would allow states to “deny care or coverage to Medicaid beneficiaries who do not pay their premiums or their share of the cost for a particular item or service.”
In what the New York Times describes as a “sea change” in Medicaid, states will now “charge premiums and higher co-payments for doctors’ services, hospital care and prescription drugs provided to low-income people under Medicaid“:
The administration acknowledged that ’some individuals may choose to delay or forgo care rather than pay their cost-sharing obligations’…The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 13 million low-income people, about a fifth of Medicaid recipients, will face new or higher co-payments. Most of the savings result from “decreased use of services,” it said.
Rather than the Bush administration’s approach of forcing poor Americans to pay more for health care during an economic crisis, the federal government should increase FMAP — the percentage the federal government reimburses states for Medicaid — and expand the program to allow more Americans to buy affordable health coverage.
And Karl Rove thinks our healthcare system is just dandy the way it is:
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, Karl Rove applauds Barack Obama’s appointment of a “first-rate economic team,” cheering the selections of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers, Council of Economic Advisers chief Christina Romer, and OMB head Peter Orszag.
But while issuing compliments of most of Obama’s nominees, Rove issued this back-handed swipe at Melody Barnes, who ThinkProgress first reported would be chosen to lead the White House Domestic Policy Council:
The only troubling personnel note was Melody Barnes as Domestic Policy Council director. Putting a former aide to Ted Kennedy in charge of health policy after tapping universal health-care advocate Tom Daschle to be Health and Human Services secretary sends a clear signal that Mr. Obama didn’t mean it when his campaign ads said he wouldn’t run to the “extremes” with government-run health care.
During the campaign, Barnes helped inform Obama’s health care approach — the same approach he is now promising to pursue in office. Obama pledged to bring together “doctors and patients, unions and businesses, Democrats and Republicans” together to build on the existing system and “reduce the cost of health care to ensure affordable, accessible
coverage for all Americans.”
Y’see, in Rove’s eyes, it’s okay to talk about giving healthcare a new coat of paint (lead-based, of course), maybe duct-tape a few of the broken bits, move the potted plant over to cover up the hole in the wall, but actually fixing it – that’s just extreme, that is.
Whatever Karl Rove finds unacceptable is perfectly acceptable to me. And why he thinks his opinion is worth two tugs on a dead dog’s dick is beyond my ken. But apparently, both he and Bush think they still have influence, and that they know better than the majority of the country and our incoming president what’s best for us.
Laura Bush is under almost as many illusions as Rove and her husband. She thinks they’re leaving an actual legacy to be proud of:
The Bush family have recorded a Story Corps interview about George W. Bush’s presidential legacy, and what they’re most proud of. This is what Mrs. Bush had to say
Well, it’s certainly been very rewarding to look at Afghanistan and both know that the president and the United States military liberated women there; that women and girls can be in school now; that women can walk outside their doors without a male escort.
[snip]
Well, then. I would have been more charitable, but since Mrs. Bush has chosen this as her legacy, allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Bush’s legacy
Afghan police have arrested 10 Taliban militants involved in an acid attack against 15 girls and teachers walking to school in southern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Tuesday. “Several” of the arrested militants have confessed to taking part in the attack earlier this month, said Kandahar Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi. He declined to say exactly how many confessed.
[snip]
And how, in an occupied country where the situation was so settled that we could leave it to go to war with a disarmed Iraq, did the Taliban gain the ability to attack little girls with impunity?
For seven years, the Bush administration has pursued al Qaida but done almost nothing to hunt down the Afghan Taliban leadership in its sanctuaries in Pakistan , and that’s left Mullah Mohammad Omar and his deputies free to direct an escalating war against the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
The administration’s decision, U.S. and NATO officials said, has allowed the Taliban to regroup, rearm and recruit at bases in southwestern Pakistan . Since the puritanical Islamic movement’s resurgence began in early 2005, it’s killed at least 626 U.S.-led NATO troops, 301 of them Americans, along with thousands of Afghans, and handed President-elect Barack Obama a growing guerrilla war with no end in sight.
Violence in Afghanistan is at its highest levels since 2001; the Taliban and other al Qaida -allied groups control large swaths of the south and east; NATO governments are reluctant to send more troops; and Afghan President Hamid Karzai faces an uncertain future amid fears that elections set for next year may have to be postponed.
Nevertheless, a U.S. defense official told McClatchy : “We have not seen any pressure on the Pakistanis” to crack down on Omar and his deputies and close their arms and recruiting networks. Like seven other U.S. and NATO officials who discussed the issue, he requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
“There has never been convergence on a campaign plan against Mullah Omar,” said a U.S. military official. The Bush administration, he said, miscalculated by hoping that Omar and his deputies would embrace an Afghan government-run reconciliation effort or “wither away” as their insurgency was destroyed.
And so, the Taliban regroups, little girls end up scarred for life, and we chalk up yet one more horrific example of Bush’s fuckwittery.
There is nothing this man is leaving behind that isn’t tainted, nothing that isn’t damaged, nothing that was worth the cost. Nothing. If these people consider themselves good Christians, I’d suggest they start repenting. They should be performing penance – and not this “say a few prayers and it’ll all be better” shit but real, fucking, sacrifice and suffer and work yourself to death to make it right penance.
For how long? Well, lessee… how long is it ’til the next century, again? That’ll do – for a start.
43,101
I was supposed to be much further along tonight, but I made the mistake of deciding to go back and bung in the list of famous atheists, with little thumbnail bios. Sounds simple, right?
No.
Not when you have to sort through some rather extensive lists, which you whittle down by well-known names, further contemplating whether that name is well-known because Christians already know and despise that atheist, and then trying to phrase the bio so that you’re not plagiarizing Wikipedia… I should’ve given it a miss and waited to add it in the revision stage.
Heh heh heh whoops.
And I’m not even close to done with it. Ah, well.
I spent the last bit of the night revising Rule #9. I didn’t hit on the Constitutional question – I might do that elsewhere in the book, but it really doesn’t belong here – but I did find your suggestions useful, and I hope this works:
9. Absolutely under any circumstances never ever bring up that old “atheism is a religion too” chestnut. Atheism is a philosophical stance, a way of thinking about the world that is profoundly irreligious, or simply a lack of belief in anything supernatural. In the immortal words of my friend Howard, “Atheism is a religion the way bald is a hair color.” Atheism is different from religion in many ways, but perhaps the most important is this: if empirical proof of God were presented to us and verified by science, we’d become immediate theists, just as you would become a “unicornist” if unicorns were discovered living in some remote forest. You may find it impossible to comprehend a life without religion and thus think of atheism as a religion, but your thinking it doesn’t make it so, no more than if I were to call your Christianity a form of atheism because I can’t comprehend a life with religion. Besides, people who say things like “atheism is a religion, too” are just trying to discredit atheists, and showing that they have no good argument in the process. You don’t want to look ridiculous, so don’t make that mistake.
I can already think of a few minor changes to words that would make that clearer, but damn it, I’m tired.
As for the famous atheists, I have a lot of names, including of all people Allan Pinkerton of Pinkerton Agency fame. Whod’a thunkit? I’m thinking of sticking Ron Reagan in there just to twist a few conservative noses. The fact that the son of their hero is a ballet dancer and a liberal has got to kill them – the fact that he’s an atheist, too, is just the insult to injury.
Yes, I’m an evil atheist. Why do you ask?
I’m also a very tired atheist. And I have got nearly 7,000 words to go. Argh.
If anyone has a good argument as to why theology isn’t philosophy, and knows of groups where atheists and Christians are working together in harmony to stop fuckwits from destroying the world, now is the time to say so. I could surely use your help.
Crap in a hat, I nearly forgot it’s Friday. Time for something favorite, and the choice is easy: you guys.
The vast majority of my commenters here are outstanding. One of the absolute joys of writing a blog is having a comments section, in which you often say things that make me laugh, weep, think, and marvel. I can ask a question, and I get answers. The book I’m writing now has been shaped in no small way by your input and assistance. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.
I don’t often highlight specific comments, because I don’t like to play favorites, and it’s usually too difficult to choose between you all. But for the purposes of this week’s Friday Favorite, I’m extracting the exchange that had me absolutely howling:
One more thing: When the topic of “what atheists believe” comes up, I like to say, “I believe in chairs.”
When someone offers me a chair, I sit in it. Given that there is a nonzero chance that the chair will collapse, spilling me onto the ground (as I can personally attest), this is a remarkable leap of faith. And yet it is one I make on a daily basis. I don’t stop to evaluate the structural integrity of every chair I’m offered, I simply trust that it will support my weight and offer sweet respite from the tedious grind of standing upright.
And yet, despite my miraculous faith in chairs, I know that my belief is easily falsifiable. And on those rare occasions when I suffer a bad chair, I know that it is the chair that has failed, and not I who has failed the chair.
To which stevec said…
Howard, I would disagree that you have faith in chairs. You have plenty of evidence (in the form of past experience) that chairs generally work. And if you were to sit down on a chair, and it were to creak portentously, you might well get up and take a hard look at the chair, and maybe gingerly test it a bit before sitting on it again.
To put it more shortly, you do not appear to believe in the structural soundness of chairs to a degree which exceeds the available evidence. And that is what faith is, as best I can tell, believing something to a degree of certainty which exceeds what it warranted by the available evidence. So, to be blunt, I doubt your faith in chairs. You are no chair-believer, you.
Brilliant.
While I’m singling people out, I want to speechify Woozle, George, and Cujo359, who have all worked their guts out sending me material that’s proven extremely useful, clarifying my thoughts, and providing the support and encouragement that this book so desperately needs. All of you who have commented or emailed me have been of vital service, but those three have really taken this project to heart, and so have earned an extra tip o’ the shot glass.
I know you all have extremely busy lives. I know you probably have eleventy-one thousand better things to do than hang about here, adding your wisdom to my work. The fact that those of you who have commented on this book-in-progress, no to mention those who have read and commented on my other posts, have found it worthwhile to add your insights is incredible to me. There’s no greater gift you can give to a writer.
I need to work on this whole becoming rich and famous thing so that I can gather you all together in a real cantina, and show my appreciation with a lavish application of food, drink, and entertainment. You deserve nothing less, and a great deal more.
Muchos gracias, mis amigos. Salud.
I. My Way
Stories change their writers. They shape us as surely as we shape them. They set us on paths we never thought we’d follow. When I left home for college, I thought I was writing a quest novel. But the story was already changing, and so was mine.
I’d figured on an English degree, but within the first semester, I realized I needed more. My Western Civilization class had made me realize I’d only tasted an atom of the ocean. To build a world, I’d need far more than my paltry bit of knowledge. I’d need world history, because other civilizations are an excellent inspiration for alien cultures. I’d need geography, geology, and astronomy. I’d need comparative religion, because other worlds wouldn’t believe the same way we did.
Comparative religion led me to Nina Pearlmutter, one of the most incredible philosophy professors I’ve ever come across in my life. Eastern philosophy hadn’t even been on my radar before she gave me a sip of Buddhism. A Buddhist Jew? How the hell does that happen? She made me
realize there was a dramatic amount of knowledge out there I hadn’t even tasted.
Jim Bennett, who taught my geology course, hooked me on harder science with humor and simplicity. I’d meant to focus on English, but our English professors were, ah, decidedly not the caliber of my philosophy, science and history professors. Out on its ear went the English degree. Into Western Civilization II, Eastern Philosophy, and Physical Geography I went. This is what the story demanded. I could smith the words. What I needed was the raw knowledge to craft into something greater than the next Forgotten Realms ripoff.
II. Patterns of Organic Energy
Physical Geography led me to an uncomfortable realization: if I wanted to create a universe for my characters to live and breathe in, if I wanted to do this thing right, I’d have to delve into the hard sciences. I’d rather chosen fantasy to avoid that, but then I read far too many books where the “world” was just a blob of a continent with a few islands thrown in, or a map of Europe turned topsy-turvy. Nothing for it but to go for the really big stuff. Understand how things really worked.
But I figured I could avoid quantum physics. Einstein didn’t like it, I’d heard – good enough for me. All I needed, after all, was enough hard stuff to figure out how planets got here, right? No need to torture myself. I’d glanced at quantum mechanics – it looked horrible. No way.
Working at a book store throws you in contact with books you wouldn’t otherwise do more than glance at. I kept having to shelves this little book called The Dancing Wu Li Masters. A lot of people bought it. I had no idea why. Utterly ridiculous title, even worse cover illustration, it was labeled New Age, and it had the word “quantum” on the back cover. Noooo thank you.
I think a customer browbeat me into trying it, but I honestly don’t remember. I just know I ended up at home with it, staring at it was a chary eye. Opened it up. Started reading.
It was like mainlining heroin. So hooked. Physics had never been my friend. Neither had philosophy, especially Eastern, to be honest, despite Nina’s genius. This book brought the two together and made me fall hard for both.
Schroedinger’s Cat. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Patterns of organic energy. Far from being a cold, clinical thing, it turned out that physics was a warm, wonderful, weird thing. Outstanding. From there, I had no choice but to snap up Steven Hawking, Richard Feynman, Michio Kaku, and a myriad other tremendous writers on physics. I was an addict. I’d take it in any variety I could get it.
Marrying quantum mechanics to Eastern philosophy had blunted its terror for me. It was just “patterns of organic energy,” which is what the Chinese word for physics means. It was bizarre enough for a fantasy writer to really get her teeth in to. If I’d had something like this early on in school, I would’ve gotten into calculus, and I would’ve taken as much hard science as I could lay my hands upon. The stuff was phenominal.
III. I Clutch My Ideas
The story was starting to force me onto another path, but I still thought of it as fundamentally a quest story. And, while I was using all of the things I was learning to spice it up a bit, I wasn’t letting it expand out and become what it needed to become. I wasn’t letting either one of us really grow.
As a writer, you have to stop clutching your ideas eventually, or you’ll strangle them.
Gradually, the story and the learning I had to do for it began to loosen my grip. The Dancing Wu Li Masters had shattered my assumptions about physics and philosophy. All of those meanings of wu li came dancing through my mind. Something there, something important, but I still wasn’t seeing it. I’d been raised with certain Views, you see. It takes a while to let go of the parochial view of the world and let your mind wander free. It takes a long while before you can hear what your story really is.
IV. Nonsense
I finally let go of the quest motif. Wrote, rewrote, and one day looked on all I had written and found myself appalled.
Western ideas. Christian themes. I’d expanded my view of the world considerably, but obviously hadn’t internalized it. Everything sounded like every other novel written by people who never left the West – totally parochial.
This could not stand. That was not what the story wanted to be. I could sense its misery.
Off to the mythology shelves. Back into the weird world of quantum physics. And the themes of The Dancing Wu Li Masters started dancing before me. Shades of the Eastern Philosophy class I’d take arose. If I wanted a different way of seeing the world, brother, that was it.
I’d never been all that enamored of Eastern thought. I became so. Because when you really delve into it, when you study both quantum physics and Zen Buddhism, you’re struck at first by how bizarre it is. None of it makes sense to a parochial mind raised on Christianity and Newtonian mechanics. How can something be a wave and a particle at the same time? How can someone be enlightened merely by being told to go wash his bowl? Just what is it with all this nonsense?
Chinese thought may not have anticipated the wonderful weirdness of quantum physics in quite the same way as The Dancing Wu Li Masters implied, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are, on a fundamental level, similar. They both teach us to see the world in an entirely different way. If you try to apply your ordinary way of thinking to them, you’ll see nothing but nonsense. Once you begin
to understand
them, you see that they’re not nonsense at all. And you will never see the world in quite the same way again, which is a fantastic gift for a fantasy author.
V. Enlightenment
When it comes to the story I’m telling over a series of books and short stories, yes, I’ve been enlightened. And I’ve been awakened to far more than that.
Zen Buddhism teaches a way of seeing wonder in the most mundane activity. Eating your meal and washing your bowl afterward are activities just as marvelous as a marathon meditation session. This moment is perfect, just as it is. This is where you find enlightenment. No doctrine, no dogma, can do it for you. Those things only get in the way.
Quantum physics and the hard sciences take none of the wonder from the world. They’re far more magical than magic could ever be. The chair I am sitting in feels solid, but it’s made of motion. On a subatomic level, it’s mostly empty space. That knowledge makes the mundane marvelous, just as much as Zen does.
SF writing is all about eliciting a sense of wonder. That used to seem like a very difficult thing to do, but now, I see the wonder has been there all along.
Standing outside my pointed-roof hut
Who’d guess how spacious it is inside
A galaxy of worlds is there
With room to spare for a zazen cushion.-Basho
Illustrations: Wu Li, Boat Trip on the River Underneath a Buddhist Temple; Chinese calligraphy spelling wu li.
If you want to get contraband past TSA, you’re better off with a with a pocket knife than Peter Pan:
When Jessica Fletcher was flying home to New York from Las Vegas, she went through the usual security rigamarol just like everyone else. She knew all the usual rules and regulations, but still found herself surprised when they confiscated something she thought of as being fairly innocuous: a jar of peanut butter.
“I’m a poor, young New Yorker, and it’s cheaper in Vegas,” she explains. “But seriously, what am I going to do with peanut butter? Sneak up behind the pilot and shove it in his face, causing him to veer off course and send us hurtling toward earth?”
But what Fletcher finds most confusing about the scenario is what she mistakenly got away with on several flights to Dallas, Texas and Brussels, Belgium — carrying a combination wine opener/pocket knife through security in her carry-on bag. It wasn’t until her third trip between her home and Dallas that security finally confiscated it.
Strangely enough, I can see a modicum of sense: after all, with reinforced cockpit doors and nervous passengers ready to tackle terrorists, a knife could do a lot less damage than a jar of C4 disguised as food. But you’d think TSA could’ve, y’know, brought one of the bomb dogs over, or stuck a fork in the jar to determine that, yes, this is stuff that will only explode if Mythbusters gets their hands on it.
The two goobers this article interviews for suggestions on improving security don’t help the situation. One swears by profiling, which may be kosher in Israel but is a civil liberties nightmare here. The other is a babbling freak who thinks terrorists will somehow employ 90 year-old wheelchair-bound grandmothers if we stop searching them.
I hope President-Elect Obama puts a sane person in charge of developing new ways to keep us safe. This Keystone Kops routine is getting ridiculous.
Today’s opining on the public discourse.
What fucking discourse? Everybody’s off eating themselves into oblivion, arguing with conservative relatives, and giving thanks, it seems. I’ve got a thimble’s worth of political news for those of you who just can’t get enough, and some fun stuff to compliment your turkey hangover.
What am I giving thanks for today? That some of my favorite political bloggers only took part of the day off. Among an abundance of other things, which I shan’t bore you with here.
We have a new SOFA:
Just 10 days ago, Iraq’s cabinet overwhelmingly approved a security agreement with the U.S. that calls for a withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 2011. The measure then went to the Iraqi Parliament for approval, but success was not a given.
As it turns out, it passed rather easily.
Iraq’s parliament approved Thursday a security pact with the United States that lets American troops stay in the country for three more years.
The vote in favor of the pact was backed by the ruling coalition’s Shiite and Kurdish blocs as well as the largest Sunni Arab bloc, which had demanded concessions for supporting the deal.
Iraq will hold a referendum on the SOFA, allowing their war-weary populace to vote on whether to keep the Americans about or kick us the fuck out, leading Hullaballoo’s dday to make an incisive observation:
It is, however, interesting that the Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, politicians throughout the Parliament, and now every individual Iraqi will have a chance to weigh in on this security agreement with the United States, yet basically one “decider” in this country is allowed to do so.
We are, however, a shining city on a hill, so that balances things out.
That’s right. Iraq has a better handle on democracy right now than we do. Outstanding. Our work there is finished.
Instead of forcing our tender attentions on Iraq, it might be a good idea to actually, you know, start doing something useful about fighting terrorism. It seems some terrorist organizations have no problem with escalating the “war:”
Terrorist attacks are not, tragically, entirely uncommon in India, especially this year, but the events in Mumbai have been on another level of magnitude.
Indian police commandos rescued some hostages on Thursday as standoffs continued against heavily armed militants who a day earlier had swept into Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, in a shocking series of coordinated and bloody attacks.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a televised address that the attackers probably had “external linkages” — the first official indication that the authorities were likely to blame outsiders.
The hooded gunmen, firing automatic weapons and throwing hand grenades, attacked at least two luxury hotels, the city’s largest train station, a Jewish center, a movie theater and a hospital.
The Mumbai police said Thursday afternoon that the attacks killed at least 101 people and wounded at least 314. It was not immediately clear how many hostages were freed in the commando operation or how many were still being held.
This year, the more routine terrorist attacks in India have featured bombs left in public areas. The coordinated, well-orchestrated attacks that began yesterday were executed by young men with machine guns, who brazenly made no effort to hide their identity. The LA Times speculated that the attacks “required a previously unseen degree of reconnaissance and planning,” leading some experts to suspect “the likely involvement of experienced commanders.”
But it’s not at all clear that India’s dealing with an external group. This atrocity may be homegrown:
There’s now evidence that the attacks were carried out by indigenous militants and motivated purely by rage at Hindu-supremacist atrocities inside India rather than being part of an international Al Qaeda plan of attacks or Pakistan’s strategy of “foreign policy by terror proxy”. Blake Hounshell notes:
Today’s horrific attacks in Mumbai were claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen…A group calling itself the “Indian Mujahideen” has claimed responsibility for attacks in a number of different cities over the past several months. The Indian Mujahideen sent a warning in September expressing anger over recent raids by the city’s antiterrorism squad (ATS). Today’s message from the Deccan Mujahideen appears to be identical…
And what might they be pissed about?
Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation… believes the attacks could be “yet another manifestation of domestic terrorism” that has its genesis in a longstanding institutional discrimination against Muslims.
“There are a lot of very, very angry Muslims in India,” she said, “The economic disparities are startling, and India has been very slow to publicly embrace its rising Muslim problem. You cannot put lipstick on this pig. This is a major domestic political challenge for India.”
Invading countries isn’t going to solve the issues that lead to terrorism. Changing the conditions that breed it and treating terrorism as a law-enforcement issue will do far more. It’s a good thing we have a President-Elect incoming who understands nuances, and not McPalin, who would probably call for war on India and condemn Ms. Fair for making sexist references to Sarah Palin.
Of course, some folks aren’t as grateful for our new president and the complete repudiation of the insanity of the last eight years as others. Saxby Chambliss, in fact, is counting on Palin’s star power and easily-frightened ignoramuses to get him back into Washington:
Sarah Palin will spend part of Sunday and most or all of Monday, campaigning for Senator Saxby Chambliss, in his bid to keep his seat from the strong challenge of Jim Martin. This move on the part of the Saxby campaign is being widely perceived as one to use her ability as a “closer,” that is – somebody who can cinch a deal.
Certainly, Palin has proven she can make her base base salivate. And many appearances by her in the Southeast United
States during September and October drew huge, enraptured throngs.I’m sure Saxby’s campaign will love throwing scraps of red meat out to the crowds greeting Palin. But her rabid stump style might just as well drive undecided voters toward Martin.No doubt, the group plowing a lot of money into Georgia right now, the National Republican Trust PAC, has sent her the talking points she will use Sunday and Monday:
Barack Obama is just one seat away from TOTAL CONTROL Obama will enact crushing new taxes to pay for immediate citizenship for 15 million illegal aliens Obama is getting ready to enact a RADICAL AGENDA
This should be highly entertaining. I just wish we could focus on, y’know, actual important issues in this country rather than another round of ZOMG the commofascistscarybrownsocialibruls iz taking over!!11!eleventyone!11!!! hysteria from our resident rubes.
Still… at least she makes for some good LOL moments:
Happy Thanksgiving from the Bush administration:
And, finally, what I’m giving thanks for right at this moment:
A President who knows the true meaning of compassion and competence. If you need your heart warmed, go and view that photo diary. My deepest, most heartfelt thanks to the people who made this moment possible: Yes, we could, yes, we did, and yes, we will. Together.Happy Thanksgiving, my darlings.
42,031
Yepper. Less than 8,000 to go, and only 1/2 day of work standing between me and a completed book.
I could probably even sneak out for Thanksgiving, but not if I want those last 8,000 words to be more than useless babble. The bits that are left require research. So home I stay, and fajitas I eat. Mmmm, fajitas.
For my fellow NaNo sufferers, who may be staring down the barrel of a seemingly-impossible deficit right now, I think that the encouragement from the Life After Faith appendix is appropriate:
Caucasian mountaineers had a proverb: “Heroism is endurance for one moment more.” What you’re going through may seem like it’s unendurable, but if you keep your focus on getting through for just one more minute, you’ll get through. It’s how people end up becoming heroes, and it’s how people end up with a reputation for being courageous. They’re not doing anything particularly remarkable. They’re just getting through for one moment more.
Survive enough of those moments, and you’ll find you’ve made it through. Even the worst times end. One thing I’ve learned in my life is that if I endure the bad times long enough, something good is waiting for me. Something changes. And it was worth holding on for.
Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust and went on to become an eloquent advocate for human rights, knew more about despair than most of us ever will. “We have to go into the despair and go beyond it,” he said, “by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.” If you’re feeling despair, probably the last thing you feel like doing is embracing it, but simply fighting it is exhausting. I’ve followed Elie’s advice, and found that by embracing my moments of despair in order to channel them into something else, using them as the driving force to help other people, has taken away their power to hurt me. When pain or despair are used to do something positive, when they become useful, they’re much easier to handle. They become almost welcome, and then one day, without my really noticing, they’re gone.
The Japanese have a wonderful proverb: “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” It goes perfectly with Confucius’s wise words: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall.” It’s hard, when we’re knocked flat by the agony of losing most of the things and the people who defined our lives up until now, to believe that we can ever rise again. But we can. If you look, there will even be a hand extended to help you back up just when you least expected one.
Finally, I’d like to share some excellent advice from St. Francis of Assisi. “Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” Look. Just because I’m an atheist doesn’t mean I can’t quote a religious man who made a great deal of sense. And he’s right: by not trying to do it all at once, by taking things step-by-step, you’ll find yourself doing things you never thought possible.
Three days, my darlings. It can be done. And if you have to cheat, get drunk, and go on a 10,000 word stream-of-consciousness ramble that’s only remotely related to the book, well, so be it. Quantity over quality this time round. Don’t worry if it doesn’t really fit.
That’s what revision’s for.
I need to see about collaborating with this delightful progressive on future projects:
Oh, Lordy. It is that time again. Thursday is Thanksgiving— the official kickoff event of the 2008 holiday season. For a lot of progressives, these festivities also mean that we’re about to spend more quality time with our conservative relatives over the next six weeks than is strictly good for our blood pressure, stress levels, or continued sanity.
[snip]
These family gatherings were hard enough to stomach through the appalling years of the Bush Adoration—but this year, it’s likely to be even worse. Our beloved family wingnuts were insufferable, in a grotesque Mayberry-on-acid surreal kind of way, while crowing into their succotash about the manly Godliness (or was it Godly manliness?) of Our Divinely Ordained Commander-in-Chief. But this year’s different. This year, they’re on the way out of power—and they’re scared witless about it. Which means big steaming heapin’ helpings of liberal-bashing are likely to be featured prominently on the menu next to the mashed potatoes, as they put fresh vigor into every paranoid anti-liberal fantasy ever spouted by Rush, Reverend Pat, or their new darling, Sarah Palin.
The black guy won. Armageddon—or, at the very least, socialism, atheism, gun control, and a national epidemic of erectile dysfunction—must certainly be at hand.
As you prepare to head once again into the family fray, it might be useful to note that most of the right wing’s favorite anti-liberal slanders are rooted in some deeply-held—and deeply wrong—assumptions about who liberals are, and what we believe. If your relatives, God bless ’em all, insist on going down that road, your best defense this year might be to listen closely for these underlying myths and fables at work—and be prepared to challenge them head-on when they surface in the discussion.
Here’s a basic set to get you started. Tuck it away in your bag with your Xanax and Maalox, and apply (liberally, of course) as needed.
#8, “Liberals are Godless—and therefore, amoral,” is my especial favorite, in light of the book I’m writing. But they’re all wonderful, and should come in useful once it comes time to once again be subjected to ye olde “Libruls are whut’s wrong with Amurka” lecture.
This is one of many things I’m thankful for – I do not have to go through this agonizing torture. For those of you who do, good luck and my sympathies, my darlings.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
(Tip o’ the shot glass to Crooks and Liars)
I’ve just spent the last couple hours reading Christian bullshit spewed out in secular threads, and it has led me to consider revising my book.
Here is the revised version of How to Talk to an Atheist in its entirety:
“You know what, don’t bother. I didn’t want to talk to you, anyway.”
Sigh.
At least I’ll have all of the lovely hate mail I can post for our entertainment…
