Remember, remember, that Magical September

post from Daily Kos on 07 August 2008 03:50:34 PM. © Daily Kos

Remember way back when -- about a year ago, in fact -- when a fresh-faced kid called "America" was looking forward to Magical September? That time when, if all was not yet right with Iraq, Congressional Republicans would finally part ways with Pretzeldent George W. Bush, and bring our troops home?

Well, it didn't happen then, and it's not happening now, either.

After weeks of late-night negotiations and under intense U.S. pressure, Iraqi lawmakers failed to pass a much-debated provincial elections law Wednesday before adjourning for the month.

The failure to pass the law, which would govern elections in provinces across the country, may push the elections into next year. If elections don't happen by the end of this year, it could be July before the balloting could be carried out, U.N. spokesman Said Arikat said.

Elections originally were scheduled for October of this year.

The latest move by parliament underscores the great divide between security and political progress in Iraq. While violence is at a record low, progress on the political front is lagging as sectarian blocs wrangle over each divisive issue to come before the parliament.

Parliament also has yet to pass a law to share oil revenue or to amend the constitution on such issues as the role of Islam and the nature of federalism in the government. With deep religious and ethnic divisions, members have opted to deal with such issues by putting them off.

Also not accomplished before parliament's adjournment: the Status of Forces Agreement.

So, how's that "surge" workin' out, in terms of, you know, getting us the #@*% out of there, already?

No elections.
No oil law.
No SOFA.

What'd they call those things, way back when? Benchmarks?

Incredibly, the Republicans not only never left the Pretzeldent's side, they went and nominated another of these nuts that continues to insist, in the face of these three stinging failures, that "the surge worked."

And that all we need is a hundred more years of such success.

(h/t: Democrats.com)

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McCain’s favorite superhero is Batman: Some
people think he’s just a ‘rich playboy.’

post from Think Progress on 07 August 2008 03:50:00 PM. © Think Progress

In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) reveals that his favorite superhero is Batman:

He does justice sometimes against insurmountable odds. And he doesn’t make his good works known to a lot of people, so a lot of people think he’s just a rich playboy.

So according to Glenn Beck’s logic…McCain’s favorite superhero must also be President Bush.

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ple-think-hes-just-a-rich-playboy/

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Bin Laden's Driver Sentenced To 5 1/2 Years At
First Guantanamo Trial

post from TPMMuckraker on 07 August 2008 03:46:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

From the AP:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A military jury has sentenced Osama bin Laden's former driver to 5 1/2 years in prison for aiding terrorism, making him eligible for release in just six months. Salim Hamdan was acquitted of conspiracy in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.

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ASSIGNMENT DESK: A VOTING HOLIDAY

post from Ezra Klein on 07 August 2008 03:45:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

Joe says, "Blog about efforts/merits of making election day a national holiday." There are some efforts to do this, and it has many merits. But it's not my favored route. Making election day a national holiday has an array of problems: First, you have a[...]

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=assignment_desk_a_voting_holid

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Stopping Voter Suppression: The Press Gets It
Right in Virginia

post from Open Left - Front Page on 07 August 2008 03:39:24 PM. © Open Left - Front Page

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters Weekly Voting Rights News UpdateBy Erin Ferns[...]

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4-Star General says of Afghanistan: "This is a 25
year campaign. We must be patient in our expectations."

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 07 August 2008 03:34:52 PM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Meg White

The front page of The New York Times today featured a report that on July 22, the "official" death toll of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan reached 500.

Retired four-star Army General Barry R. McCaffrey was in Afghanistan that day. He was there compiling information for a report given to the head of West Point's department of social sciences and first revealed in Small Wars Journal. The report is a frightening one and, due to its implications, perhaps even sadder than the two-page spread of photographs of service members killed in Afghanistan in The New York Times today.Bookmark/Search this post with: buzzflash | delicious | digg digg | technorati Technorati Tags: Alerts afghanistan war on terror troops statistics mccaffrey new york times

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4-Star General says Afghanistan is a
"Generational War" With No Quick Fixes

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Meg White

The front page of The New York Times today featured a report that on July 22, the "official" death toll of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan reached 500.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/alert/449

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More McCain Plans for a Dirty Campaign

post from All Spin Zone on 07 August 2008 03:34:00 PM. © All Spin Zone

By now we all know that John McCain has abandoned his promise for a clean and respectful campaign for President this fall. Everyone knows about the Paris Hilton ad, everyone knows about the McCain campaign whining about the “race card,” and everyone knows about the comments by McCain accusing Barack Obama of putting his election ahead of the country. And everyone knows all sorts of other false attacks waged by the McCain campaign. David Broder, not seeking any sort of judgement, probably because he thinks that’s the journalist thing to do, interviewed both Obama and McCain, and let McCain whine that Barack Obama brought the negatives on himself. What a whiner. Here it is from Broder’s column in the Washington Post:

The first question I asked John McCain and then Barack Obama was: How do you feel about the tone and direction of the campaign so far?
No surprise. Both men pronounced themselves thoroughly frustrated by the personal bitterness and negativism they have seen in the two months since they learned they would be running against each other.
“I’m very sorry about it,” McCain said in a Saturday interview at his Arlington headquarters. “I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings” together, as he had suggested, during the summer months.

John McCain says he’s sorry Obama made him resort to negatrive and ugly campaigning? No, we’re not going to take that, not when campaign memos are leaked showing the next McCain negatives against Obama. No, this McCain strategy is to go all negative all the time. We get McCain’s plans for further negative planning from Sam Stein at Huffington Post:

In a McCain campaign “Economic Communications Plan” that was obtained by the Huffington Post, an aide to the Senator lays out several themes, tactics and objectives to shore up the Arizona Republican’s standing on the economy and paint Barack Obama as a “job killing machine.”
“Our polling tells us that Americans are still not tuned into what the candidates might do to fix the economy,” reads the memo. “We have an opportunity to fill in that gap.”
The strategy, which was authored by Taylor Griffin — a veteran of the Bush White House and Treasury Department who serves McCain as a senior adviser — seems built around traditional themes. The McCain campaign will paint Obama as being “aligned with trial lawyers” and “unions (card check, trade, education reform),” and push the frame that he “raises taxes” and “will kill jobs.”

Of course, all of this is unrelated to facts and policy. John McCain has been allied with the Bush Administration for the last seven years, and we know what happened to jobs in that time, we know what happened to paychecks and we know what happened to prices at the pump and in the grocery aisles. Again, McCain is whining. He won’t take personal responsibility for his negative campaigning or his distortions. But something may force him to take responsibility, I suppose.

As John Aravosis notes, there are a lot of newspapers out there writing editorials against McCain’s negative thrust in the campaign. I like Obama’s comment at the end of Broder’s column, which is mostly drivel. Yet to Broder’s credit, there’s a bit of a hint (a little tiny hint) that he endorses the Obama view:

“My general point,” Obama continued, “is that both the conventions and the debates will offer formats for Senator McCain and myself to make our best case to the American people at a time when the American people will be paying attention.
“And ultimately, the best corrective to overly negative campaigns are the American people, who are not interested in a lot of bickering but are interested in who’s got the best answers for the country.”
I think everybody would agree with that last point.

Now Broder could certainly have done what any sane columnist would have, note the rampant and ugly campaign that McCain is running and call the old wrinkled white guy on it. It is not a valid excuse, even if it is the standard Republican whine, when McCain says that Obama not scheduling town hall meetings is what forced him to go negative. But Obama has it right. The negative campaigning is not going to serve McCain. That strategy is going to chase independents away from supporting McCain in the long run, especially if Barack Obama keeps to a positive message. Americans like to be optimistic, after all. Isn’t that why they voted for Reagan overwhelmingly, after all?

McCain will discover someday that the negative campaigning he is running is going to backfire badly on him. I suggest if we don’t see a bloodletting in the McCain campaign by Labor Day, with a complete reversal of course, then McCain may lose this race for President by far more than a narrow margin. What, most polls are giving Barack Obama a 6 point lead nationally, or thereabouts. I predict ten points unless McCain does a flip flop (again) on the practice of negative campaigning.

Read The Full Article:
http://allspinzone.com/wp/2008/08/07/more-mccain-plans-for-a-dirty-campaign/

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If Paris Hilton and John Mccain IM'd

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 07 August 2008 03:34:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

One of the funniest things I've read in a while. From 236.com, click over there and read it - it's just great.

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Who Is The God That Stands Between The Theist
& The Atheist

I’m of the opinion that morality isn’t the domain of any particular segment of society…whether that be religiously inclined groups or those who don’t believe in God. Generally speaking, I suspect morality is an individual construct…albeit influenced by many factors including the individuals one chooses to associate with.

Regardless, there is an ongoing effort to suggest that disbelief (atheism) is the means by which the individual elects to abandon God…and therefore morality. This assertion is frequently connected with an acceptance of the theory of evolution. As such, the suggestion is that God and evolution are mutually exclusive…as are good and evil and right and wrong.

In the first of the following videos, one of the more lucid atheists on the internet, Potholer54 (a frequent YouTube contributor), offers a reasoned rebuttal to this contention. In this video, as he points out, more and more studies support the claim that the atheist’s sense of morality meets or exceeds that of those who embrace a belief in a divine being.

In the second video, Potholer54 simply offers his understanding of morality…a morality that isn’t exclusive to either group and needn’t be linked with a belief or disbelief in God…a morality that is mindful of the innate worth of that which surrounds us…humanity.

I’m fascinated by the fact that so many believers feel the need to impugn the values of atheists. It seems as if the validity of their beliefs is contingent upon invalidating the merits of disbelief…and therefore the morals of the disbeliever. I realize there is a natural tendency to mistrust those who don’t share similar beliefs, but the degree to which this particular divide has become a source of animosity between theists and atheists suggests other factors may be at play.

Two possible explanations come to mind. The first is premised upon the need to understand the meaning of our existence. For the believer, faith plays an integral part in defining purpose as well as providing a plausible explanation for the acceptance of death. Unfortunately, the structure of religion often makes our existence an either/ or equation. In other words, if you believe in God, death will be an enlightened transition; not an unequivocal ending. In this construct, it also means that a lack of belief will facilitate a fate worse than death…eternal damnation and suffering.

The nature of this first explanation provides the foundation for the second. Simply stated, the very existence of atheists can create an angst in the believer that serves to challenge the adherence to faith in the absence of evidence.

The believer’s approach is therefore a life constrained in hopes of achieving its extension…premised upon the flawed notion that in the absence of external pressure (thou shalt not restrictive mores), the individual will devolve into debauchery. The other avenue is the acceptance of an unbridled life…premised upon an understanding that a life well chosen is also a life well lived…which, in turn, establishes a system of experiential feedback and reward. In other words, human morality need not be an external construct. Rather, it should be an adventure of introspective awareness.

The former hinges upon denial and the latter is predicated upon discovery. The former is lived inside a narrowly defined room filled with doors that must never be opened as a matter of decreed doctrine. The latter is lived in the same room absent the fear that exploration will undermine the individual’s ability to preserve the chosen identity and the innate humanity. In the end, it’s the difference between a life lived in fear and a life lived deliberately.

In fact, I think one can relate it back to the Bible and the story of Adam and Eve. On the one hand, God provided his subjects with free will…presumably a decision by an all knowing being that must have been predicated upon some awareness of the likely outcome. On the other hand, he chose to present his subjects with a challenge that they mustn’t partake of the apple. Again, one would presume that he, having created his subjects, would be undeniably aware of their ability to adhere to this edict.

The plausible conclusions one can draw from this story are limited. One, God, all knowing though he may have been, must have miscalculated the likely actions of his creation…a conclusion which makes little sense if one actually accepts his omnipotence. At this juncture, one can make two assumptions. Either he knew mankind would fail before ever being presented the challenge or God’s all knowing capacities are questionable as would be his capacity to create.

If one prefers the former, one is left to question why an all knowing, all loving God chose to dupe the first humans he had ever created. Hence, we could still conclude that he is all knowing (though spiteful or twisted), but his bona fides as all loving must be called into question. If this is one’s conclusion, the justification for worshipping such a God might be suspect. In other words, is a God who toys with his subjects the kind of deity we humans should seek to engage and embrace? I don’t think so…unless one prefers to fearfully abdicate the free will he granted us…knowing full well his promise of an afterlife could be another ruse designed to amuse him.

If one prefers the latter, then it would be difficult to see God as all knowing, though he could still be viewed as a well-intentioned fellow who simply isn’t that capable. If this is one’s conclusion, it is difficult to imagine that he could have created such a complex world while also being unaware of the behavior his creations would exhibit.

In other words, does such an obvious miscalculation suggest that the God we know may well be fallible? If so, who is the all knowing and all loving God we speak of…and is he the God defined in the Bible or some other divine being unknown to us at this moment? If we can’t discern this answer, can we reasonably follow the Bible or the God described in it? Even if the God we know is an all loving being, isn’t it possible that he’s far more mortal than we presume? Should we fear or follow a God whose plan appears to have been a miscalculation from the outset?

With either possibility, the likely explanation is that God is nothing more than the creation of flawed and fallible humans seeking to make sense of our existence in the absence of enough knowledge to explain it or enough courage to accept it. Given the uncertainty of the meaning of our existence…coupled with the certainty that no individual has ever avoided its ending (death)…we can clearly see why our ancestors were motivation to create God. And so they did…by the hundreds.

Regardless, the presence or absence of a God has done little to alter the innate capacity of humans to act with empathy or to act with enmity. History is the record of individuals who have chosen one or the other…or some combination of both. Willful acts of goodness are no more dependent upon a deity than evil acts are the work of the devil.

Mankind has always had free will. What we so often lack is the willingness to embrace the responsibility free will imparts. We’re surrounded by catalysts for good and evil…yet our actions remain nothing more than the conscious choices we make. Perhaps that’s the true meaning of the parable of Adam and Eve. As such, abdicating one’s free will to fear can make us feel better but it doesn’t necessarily make us better people. God need not be a substitute for goodness. Wouldn’t we be better to have it here in this life than to envision it as some idyllic other world? Paradise is a choice. The choice is ours.

Atheists Are Immoral - Debunked

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