[This is an update to my previous post, Texas conservatives screw history, so you should read that first to get your blood to a rapid boil before reading this.]
The Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy — creationist, antireality promoter, and stander-upper to experts — was interviewed on ABC TV’s Nightline program. Give this a listen, just in case you were thinking of cutting him a break… for whatever reasons I cannot fathom.
Yes, how magnanimous of the rich white men to allow women the vote, or to give the blacks equal rights!
[If the video doesn't load for you, go to the Nightline web page and click on Thursday's listing of Texas Textbook controversy, which should be up for a few more days.]
I have been active on Twitter today mocking the new textbook standards, and a handful of people have taken me to task thinking I was mocking all Texans. That’s ridiculous; I am clearly ridiculing the ten people on the Board who rammed this revisionist nonsense through… though you may feel free to expand that to the people who support them.
And to the commenters on my original post and elsewhere defending McCarthy because there were in fact communists in America: shame on you. Seriously, shame on you. What McCarthy did — and yes, it was a witch hunt — was directly opposed to all the ideals of this nation: free speech, liberty, presumed innocence until proven guilty, and many more. He was only able to ferret out a handful of so-called communists, but even if he had been 100% successful in his efforts what he did was an abomination for anyone in this country, let alone a seated Senator in the United States Congress. He engendered fear and suspicion, a paranoia and chilling climate from which it took years to recover. He betrayed precisely what he claimed to be trying to protect, and will stand as an object lesson for future generations on what happens when our system fails so utterly.
That is, he’ll stand as that lesson for those who will listen. Clearly, some people didn’t. It’s a crying shame that this includes a majority of the Texas State Board of Education, because now it’s entirely likely the lesson will be missed by a decade’s worth of schoolchildren, too.
Soon after the 2008 election, my then-20-year-old friend G.W. (who happens to be black) told me "Obama's the next puppet." (G.W., please call, Facebook seems to have disappeared you!)
I've come to agree. Obama's gone the way of Clinton, the boy from Hope, Arkansas who also turned out young voters, but sold out for NAFTA and making the U.S. the top arms supplier. Obama (the hopiate of the people) is another puppet of the plutocrats, who spend their time and money manipulating "our" government. Buying Congress is likely the world’s best investment, paying off at 1000 to 1, according to several sources, including Jack Abramoff.
Or take "my" Senator Mark Udall -to Pluto, please! Elected as an environmentalist Congressman from Boulder, but in a supposedly tight race for Colorado Senator in 2008, he caved and came out for offshore oil drilling. He must have made enough "friends" then who showed him a good enough time that this year, though securely in the Senate until 2014, he also came out for free carbon credits for coal users and increased subsidies for nukes!
Soon after the 2008 election, my then-20-year-old friend G.W. (who happens to be black) told me "Obama's the next puppet." (G.W., please call, Facebook seems to have disappeared you!)
I've come to agree. Obama's gone the way of Clinton, the boy from Hope, Arkansas who also turned out young voters, but sold out for NAFTA and making the U.S. the top arms supplier. Obama (the hopiate of the people) is another puppet of the plutocrats, who spend their time and money manipulating "our" government.
Buying Congress is likely the world’s best investment, paying off at 1000 to 1, according to several sources, including Jack Abramoff, in the 3rd paragraph of this Washington Post story. By now, plutocrats buy from Congress perpetual war, torture and bailouts when the deregulation they bought earlier goes bad. It seems likely the Supreme Court will soon make it even easier to buy Congress. Everything civilized must be sold off, faster!
Take "my" Senator Mark Udall (to Pluto, please!) Elected as an environmentalist Congressman from Boulder, but in a supposedly tight race for Colorado Senator in 2008, he caved and came out for offshore oil drilling. He must have made enough "friends" then who showed him a good enough time that this year, though securely in the Senate until 2014, he also came out for free carbon credits for coal users and increased subsidies for nukes! References
"Our" Senator Udall (born on 3rd base to a prominent environmental political family) hits a triple for oil, coal and nukes. Now, THERE's an environmentalist an old-energy company can invest in!
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
So said Einstein. How many more generations shall we waste begging Congress and the President for representation? For mercy?
If you want all money, all power, all truth, all justice, all matter, all energy, all space, and all time flushed into the emergent black hole, you want a purely "representative" government. Without more participation, the puppets will continue to sucker us for votes, while representing the parasite class.
The Swiss system is the "Plan B" we need
Since 1848, the Swiss themselves have "checked and balanced" their Parliament with NATIONAL ballot initiatives. This has kept their Parliament far more honest and representative than Congress. Voting 4-7 times a year on local, regional and national ballot initiatives, the Swiss also read more news than anyone: they take their responsibility for self-determination seriously. Actually, they call their system "co-determination," a good idea for ALL relationships!
While the media have harped on the few problematic U.S. state ballot initiatives, largely in California, a century of ballot initiatives in 24 States and D.C. shows initiatives are the origin of most reforms, such as women's suffrage (passed in 13 states before Congress went along), direct election of Senators (similarly in 4 states), publicly financed elections (passed by initiative in 6 of 7 states with them), medical marijuana ( in 10 of 13 states with them) and increasing minimum wages (in all 6 states that tried in 2006). Most media kiss up to politicians (who want absolute power) by picking on problem initiatives. Research it yourself with the National Conference of State Legislatures' database:
Outcomes depend on who uses the power of ballot initiatives. Here in Colo., ballot initiatives gave us the country's first Renewable Energy Mandate (Amendment 37), the country's strongest ban on lobbyists giving politicians ANYTHING (41), campaign finance reform (27), increased K-12 funding (23), Background Checks at Gun Shows (22), Medical Marijuana (20), cleaner hog farms (14) and Term Limits (12), just in the last 6 general elections. Amendments 23 and 41 were sponsored by my friend Jared Polis (who supports NATIONAL ballot initiatives) even though he's now a Congressman!
"There are NO exceptions to 'power corrupts,' including me when I had power"
So says maverick former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel. Congress has absolute national legislative power, and they've been corrupted absolutely to give away the economy to those who crashed it, give away the peace to the war industry, and give away the climate to the fossil fuel industries. Only a monopoly can do this.
The best project for U.S national ballot initiatives, with big improvements to prevent problems like those in California, is the National Initiative for Democracy (Vote.org), loosely led by Senator Mike Gravel, who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, which got Daniel Ellsberg off the hook for leaking them. That release, and Gravel's solo filibuster led to the end of the draft and then the Vietnam war. The National Initiative is the main reason Mike Gravel ran for President last year, but most media didn't mention it.
Oregon has pioneered the biggest improvement to ballot initiatives, Citizen Initiative Review, which in Gravel's proposal is accomplished by "Deliberative Committees."
Our project is endorsed by people such as Patch Adams, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, "Granny D" Haddock, Julia Butterfly Hill, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Ralph Nader, John Perkins, Coleen Rowley, Pete Seeger, Cindy Sheehan and Howard Zinn. Nader is releasing a book about it this coming year.
But perhaps you think that campaign finance reform is THE reform we need?
Congress passes "campaign finance reform" every generation, always with loopholes big enough to drive their campaigns through. FACT: 6 of 7 states with REAL, publicly-financed "clean" elections got them via ballot initiatives. The far more fundamental reform is NATIONAL ballot initiatives, so that we can effect whatever reforms we need.
As you can imagine, Congress will not amend the Constitution to permit national ballot initiatives, which would end their monopoly.
Gravel discovered that the Founding Fathers had the same problem: the 13 state legislators refused to ratify the Constitution.
So, in the words of James Madison, the Founders "resorted" to "the people" and "first principles" and had citizens, not politicians, ratify the Constitution. (See Madison's 2nd statement in the 1787 debate.)
Similarly, YOU are invited to Vote at Vote.org to take the "mock" out of democracy.
"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government." --George Washington
We need your ideas -and some money. Democracy doesn't come easy.
"The people can never willfully betray their own interests; but they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people" -The Federalist, No. 63
"On the most major issues we've dealt with in the past 50 years, the public was more likely to be right...based on the judgment of history...than the legislatures or Congress." -George Gallup, Sr.
March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Pope Benedict XVI, during his tenure as archbishop of Munich, played a role in a decision to move a priest accused of sexual molestation to his diocese to undergo therapy, the church said today.
The priest was later reassigned by another church official and committed more abuse, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising said in a statement on its Web site. Benedict, at the time Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, “was involved” in a 1980 decision to move the priest, identified only as “H.,” from a church in Essen, Germany, to a rectory in the Munich region for treatment, the diocese said.
A former vicar-general in the church administration, Gerhard Gruber, subsequently allowed the accused priest to continue pastoral duties, during which he committed abuse and was convicted by a court in 1986. Gruber said in the statement that the decision to re-post “H.” was his alone.
“The repeated employment of ‘H.’ in pastoral duties was a serious mistake,” Gruber said. “I take full responsibility for this and I deeply regret that this decision led to offenses against youths -- I apologize to all those who were harmed by this.”
A wave of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has emerged in Germany this year, beginning at an elite Jesuit high school in Berlin, Canisius-Kolleg. The head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, last month issued an apology to more than 100 pedophilia victims, echoing Benedict’s statement that such abuse is a “heinous crime.”
‘Deeply Upset’
Benedict met with Zollitsch today in Rome, after which the German archbishop told reporters that the 82-year-old pontiff “listened with great distress and interest” to his report on the abuse and was “deeply upset” by the sexual crime.
Benedict has struggled to contain the damage to the church’s reputation from European sex-abuse scandals. He was accused by victims’ rights groups of being slow to respond to Irish investigations last year that documented “endemic” abuse of children since the 1930s by priests in Ireland.
A spokesman for the Vatican, Federico Lombardi, said the pope was “extraneous” to the events in Munich and referred to the statement issued by the archdiocese.
“The statement was clear about Gruber assuming full responsibility for what happened,” Lombardi said by phone. The story was reported earlier by the Sueddeutsche-Zeitung.
Relationships With Boys
When Ratzinger’s church made the initial decision to transfer H. for therapy, documents show that the decision-makers likely knew the treatment involved H.’s “sexual relationships with boys,” the archdiocese said in the statement.
According to the church in Munich, police later began to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct committed by H. while he was a pastoral care assistant near Munich in 1985. After his removal from service, he was sentenced to an 18-month suspended sentence and fined 4,000 deutsche Marks ($2,815).
He continued to be active after undergoing psychological treatment and from October 2008 worked in pastoral care for “health treatment and tourism,” though wasn’t permitted to work in youth activities, the Munich archdiocese said.
An assessment ordered by the current archbishop, Reinhard Marx, “does not justify” H.’s service in church duties.
Pope’s Brother
The abuse scandal’s spread to the Bavarian-born pope’s homeland was highlighted this week when his older brother, 86- year-old Georg Ratzinger, responding to abuse allegations in his diocese, said he regretted slapping students when he was director of the Regensburg Cathedral choir.
In an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse, the older Ratzinger said he’d always had a “bad conscience” about hitting boys, though allegations of sexual abuse had never been raised while he was in office.
Joseph Ratzinger, who became pope in 2005, was appointed archbishop of Munich in 1977 at age 49, after spending most of his life as a theology professor and Catholic intellectual. He served the Bavarian church until Pope John Paul II transferred him to Rome in 1982 to oversee the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, which polices church dogma.
The leader of more than a billion Catholics, Benedict has made some efforts to deal with child-abuse scandals since he became pope in April 2005. He visited the U.S. and Australia for the first time in 2008 and apologized to victims of abuse, becoming the first pontiff to do so.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the use of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments on Thursday that the phrases violate the principle of separation of church and state.
"The Pledge is constitutional," Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling. "The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded."
The same court ruled in Newdow's favor in 2002 after he sued his daughter's school district for forcing students to recite the pledge.
That lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, but the high court ruled that Newdow lacked the legal standing to file the suit because he didn't have custody of his daughter, on whose behalf he brought the case.
So Newdow, who is a doctor and lawyer, filed the challenge on behalf of other parents who objected to their children being required to recite the pledge. In 2005, a federal judge in Sacramento decided in Newdow's favor, ruling that the pledge was unconstitutional.
"I want to be treated equally," Newdow said when he argued the case before the 9th Circuit in December 2007. He added that supporters of the phrase "want to have their religious views espoused by the government."
In a separate 3-0 ruling Thursday, the appeals court upheld the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on coins and currency.
Anti-evolutionists and climate change deniers often go hand in hand. Now there’s a bill in Kentucky that wants to “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories” about “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”
Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools. [...]
The bill, which has yet to be voted on, is patterned on even more aggressive efforts in other states to fuse such issues. In Louisiana, a law passed in 2008 says the state board of education may assist teachers in promoting “critical thinking” on all of those subjects. [...]
The linkage of evolution and global warming is partly a legal strategy: courts have found that singling out evolution for criticism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. By insisting that global warming also be debated, deniers of evolution can argue that they are simply championing academic freedom in general.
I’m all for teaching competing scientific theories and comparing them. I don’t think creationism qualifies as a scientific theory — but maybe teachers should talk about creationism and why it’s not science, just like all the other creation myths.
Debunking religious nonsense shouldn’t really be part of a science class, but it seems at least with creationism, there are enough adherents to make it worth debunking in the classroom, just like if there were a minority of students who held to a flat earth.
* Court says mercury preservative did not cause autism (Adds reaction)
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) - Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special U.S. court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness.
The special U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement.
"The Meads believe that thimerosal-containing vaccines caused William's regressive autism. As explained below, the undersigned finds that the Meads have not presented a scientifically sound theory," Special Master George Hastings, a former tax claims expert at the Department of Justice, wrote in his ruling.
In February 2009, the court ruled against three families who claimed vaccines caused their children's autism, saying they had been "misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment".
The families sought payment under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no-fault system that has a $2.5 billion fund built up from a 75-cent-per-dose tax on vaccines.
Instead of judges, three "special masters" heard the three test cases representing thousands of other petitioners.
They asked whether a combination vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, plus a mercury-containing preservative called thimerosal, caused the children's symptoms.
MYSTERIOUS CONDITION
More than 5,300 cases were filed by parents who believed vaccines may have caused autism in their children. The no-fault payout system is meant to protect vaccine makers from costly lawsuits that drove many out of the vaccine-making business.
Autism is a mysterious condition that affects as many as one in 110 U.S. children. The so-called spectrum ranges from mild Asperger's Syndrome to severe mental retardation and social disability, and there is no cure or good treatment.
The U.S. Institute of Medicine has reported several times that no link can be found between vaccines and autism.
Supporters of the scientific community welcomed the ruling.
"It's time to move forward and look for the real causes of autism," said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation. "There is not a bottomless pit of money with which to fund autism science. We have to use our scarce resources wisely."
But advocates for the idea that vaccines are dangerous said they would not give up. "We hope that Congress will intervene in what is clearly a miscarriage of justice to vaccine-injured children," said Jim Moody of the Coalition for Vaccine Safety.
Autism Speaks, another advocacy group, said it would also not completely abandon the theory that vaccines might cause autism.
The organization said it would invest "in research to determine whether subsets of individuals might be at increased risk for developing autism symptoms following vaccination."
But the group also said it was clear that if such a link did exist, it would be rare.
"While we have great empathy for all parents of children with autism, it is important to keep in mind that, given the present state of the science, the proven benefits of vaccinating a child to protect them against serious diseases far outweigh the hypothesized risk that vaccinations might cause autism," Autism Speaks said in a statement.
"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." --Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Keep an open mind- but not so open that your brains fall out." --Richard Feynman (1918-1988)
"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge." --Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
"Our beliefs inform our actions. I want to hold as many true beliefs and as few false beliefs as possible." -Matt Dillahunty
"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special." --Stephen Hawking, Der Spiegel, 1989
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f114fb01-5842-4240-9f65-8f89521d768d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3d6dcc13-0e3b-4922-aead-639b8c085517)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a6aa1e8c-c2c8-4c9f-bac8-b102561df9fc)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=95c4d3f5-3388-43b7-b5e6-e71ea82bd167)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1a498768-a06f-4fd3-956e-f551f847a156)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=81f3bd48-6f8f-4250-ac33-9a88be262cfb)
