politics

I don't know how I almost missed this sad tale of anti-Muslim bigotry, fundamentalist Christian craziness, and political opportunism from the Religious Right.

Rafiq Bary is a 17 year old girl from a Muslim family. About four years ago, she converted to Christianity. A few months ago, her father bought her a laptop and she started spending all of her time on Facebook; sometime around here -- I would suspect under the influence of some wacky fundamentalist Christians -- she became convinced that her father was going to do her in in an "honor killing." (Because, you know, I always spend a lot of money on an expensive gift for someone before I do them it. And I like to economically support someone, house and feed them, for several years after they've done the thing that motivates me to kill them, before I do the deed.)

She ran away, and someone -- I would suspect the same wacky fundamentalist Christians -- bought her a bus ticket from her home in Ohio to Florida. There, she lived for two weeks with wacky fundamentalist Christians Blake and Beverly Lorenz, from the Global Revolution Church, whom she had gotten to know through a Facebook prayer group.

She being a minor and all (and one suffering from delusions induced by the craziness of others), the usual course of the law would be to send her back to her parents. But, you know: those people are Muslims. And so:

Bary's case has, in recent weeks, become a huge deal for the Religious Right and has been getting lots of coverage from places like Fox News, WorldNetDaily, OneNewsNow, and Human Events and has also been championed by several Religious Right groups like Concerned Women for America, the Traditional Values Coalition and the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

From a 1944 ad for war bonds. The poetic linebreaks and capitalization are as in the original.

...

Let's put an end to the foul prejudice fanned by our
Enemies...

By our obvious enemy, the goose-stepping Hun...and
Our more insidious one, the unAmerican American.

When you find anyone -- yourself included -- thinking,
Speaking, acting, with racial or religious prejudice --
STOP IT!

If Smith, Kelly, Cohen or Svoboda is good enough to die
For us, he's good enough to live with us...
As an equal.

Be American!

Here's a head-scratcher:

Most cultural conservatives -- not all, but most -- are opposed to multiculturalism. They believe that Western civilization is superior, that English literature should be taught in schools and not Chinese literature, that classical Roman mythology should be emphasized and that of the Native Americans given little if any mention, that French and German history is more relevant than that of India or Japan.

However, if you suggest that contemporary England, Germany, France, or Italy might have some useful examples of modern political solutions (in, say, the field of health care), if you say that these nations might have some useful ideas, many of these same people will tell you that you're un-American, that you ought to move to Europe and stop trying to change America.

So, can anyone tell me when exactly the dividing line is? When did Europe stop being the font of all that is good and civilized and an example that we should study and follow, and start becoming the embodiment of decadence?

And the madness continues...on Tuesday, Obama will give a speech where he will "challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning," and call on students, parents and educators to see that every child receives the best education possible. The speech will take place during the school day and will be broadcast to many schools.

You might think that this is Mom and Apple Pie stuff which no one could possibly object to. In fact, Bush the First gave a similar speech, without any incident or protest that I can recall. And you might think that everyone knows that most students will doze through it.

But in the foaming vitriol of the right-wing pundits, this is Hitler Youth type stuff. Finkelstein compares Obama's "plan for our children" -- that they work hard and stay in school -- with Mao Zedong. Beck calls it "capturing your kids." Malkin says he's recruiting "junior lobbyists."

So nutcases like Bryan Fischer, Pamela Geller, and Tammy Bruce suggest having your kids skip school.

So, it seem that the conservative movement, such as it is, is now officially opposed to education.

Res ipsa loquitur.

From The New Yorker, this story of how Texas executed a man for homicide by arson, on no reliable evidence, will chill you:

As Hurst looked through the case records, a statement by Manuel Vasquez, the state deputy fire marshal, jumped out at him. Vasquez had testified that, of the roughly twelve hundred to fifteen hundred fires he had investigated, “most all of them” were arson. This was an oddly high estimate; the Texas State Fire Marshals Office typically found arson in only fifty per cent of its cases.

Hurst was also struck by Vasquez’s claim that the Willingham blaze had “burned fast and hot” because of a liquid accelerant. The notion that a flammable or combustible liquid caused flames to reach higher temperatures had been repeated in court by arson sleuths for decades. Yet the theory was nonsense: experiments have proved that wood and gasoline-fuelled fires burn at essentially the same temperature.

From Peter Rothberg's blog at The Nation:

Do 87 million Verizon Wireless customers know that the company is a co-sponsor of a major climate-change-denying, union-busting, pro-mountaintop removal Labor Day rally staged by Massey Energy in Logan, West Virginia?

...

Massey Energy, the largest producer of Central Appalachian coal...[in 2008] agreed to pay $20 million in fines to the EPA to resolve more than 4,500 violations of the Clean Water Act for polluting waterways in West Virginia and Kentucky with coal slurry and wastewater.

One of the country's foremost practitioners of mountaintop removal, a radical form of coal mining in which entire mountains are blown up, devastating hundreds of square miles of Appalachia and polluting the headwaters of rivers, the company has fiercely lobbied against Obama administration and EPA efforts to crack down on the practice.

These anti-environmental sensibilities will be well represented at the company's Labor Day "Friends of America" celebrations next weekend. The gala's featured speaker, Lord Christopher Monckton, a science adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is one of the world's most infamous global warming-deniers. Other "distinguished" speakers include Sean Hannity and Ted Nugent.

So why is Verizon sponsoring this pro-mountaintop removal rally on a strip mine site? Calls to the company have so far gone unanswered.

This "Friends of America" thing sounds like something from the next stage of teabagging we've previously discussed.

Letter to the editor, Washington Post:

Richard Cohen claims that "No one can possibly believe that America is now safer because of the new restrictions on enhanced interrogation." But Cohen, -- like other apologists for torture -- fails to realize that every abuse of a detainee acts to recruit more people to extremist groups. Those who beat and waterboarded prisoners, and those who ordered the torture, might as well have been drawing paychecks from Al Qaeda.

When we do evil, we only help the cause of those who would label America "the great Satan". Ending abuse is one of the best tools we have to stop terrorist ideology from spreading, and thus to make America safer.

The topic on 9/11 conspiracy theories came up in a Facebook thread today. Here are my posts from a discussion thread from Slashdot on this from last year, with a lot of links debunking conspiracy theory arguments. Quoted material is from other Slashdot posters (except as otherwise attributed), see the link for context.

Making multi minute phone calls from 30k ft with 2001 phone tech and no onboard plane phones (I already know its not possible, but would love to see them try)

You know that's not possible? So you tried it, eh? Please, post the details of your experiment.

Getting a 767 sim and attempt to fly the same path as pentagon plane

Why would you try it with a sim for a plane of a different model than the one that hit the Pentagon? Flight 77 (with a former co-worker of mine and his whole family on board) was a 757.

Of course, why let facts get in the way of a good batshit conspiracy theory?

why there was NO remainder of anything a passenger plane crash leaves in a crash site, and there were NO bodies, passenger belongings, pieces of bodies, ANYTHING but fairly intact TWO bodies in the scene.

Are you saying there were no bodies, or were you saying there were two?

Allyn E. Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers (a company involved in providing emergency engineering and post-collapse assistance) said "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts."

Of course, once you reach the level of batshitness you've achieved, you can simply ignore his testimony by saying "they got to him too!"

And I'm sure you simply don't accept the claim that the remains of 184 people were identified; surely "they" got to all 102 DNA analysts, sample processors, logistics staff, and administrative personnel at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. It's a DOD facility, after all.

Are you saying there was no debris from the plane? That's simply incorrect; hell, you can even see photos of a bunch of it at this batshit conspiracy site. And photos of the plane debris inside the building (where, in answer to your question about the lawn, most of it ended up, in agreement with conservation of momentum) can be seen at this somewhat less batshit crazy site. And some more photos here. And more photos, with amazingly detailed analysis, here

But I'm sure "they" got to the owners of all of those sites.

In this Bill Maher interview, Jeff Sharlet discusses "The Family", a cult that perverts Christianity into a "might makes right" philosophy, and whose members consider themselves the new "chosen ones" -- and include many conservative members of Congress. I especially like their comparison of themselves to the Mafia, and the quote about how "morality is for the little people".

Jon Stewart talks with Betsy McCaughey, source of much of the FUD around healthcare reform:

Don't miss the even wackier second part: