Falwell dead at 73

Just reading this article on Yahoo regarding the death of Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Personally, I reviled Falwell. He was a hateful, bigoted blowhard who appealed to the worst of ignorance in American culture to inflate his viewership and line his pockets using misogyny, homophobia, and religious divisiveness.

In no small sense, the debacle in Iraq and deaths of over 3000 of our soldiers can be laid directly at the feet of these despicable television preachers.

But strange as it seems to say, we will miss him. In life, Falwell had almost singlehandedly made himself and his sorry crusade against his fellow Americans a laughing stock. By his own words and deeds, he did more to discredit the Religious Right than any critic on the other side could have. As the saying goes, had he not existed, we would have had to invent him.

New, improved legislation on Internet Radio??

I received this email today from Joe Lieberman, US Senator from Connecticut regarding an internet petition I signed. Seems to indicate there's action to reverse the penal charges that were going to be levied on Internet radio stations.

May 10, 2007 Mr. Joseph Cascio, Jr.

Dear Mr. Cascio: Thank you for contacting me regarding the Copyright Royalty Board's decision with respect to royalty rates for webcasters. I appreciate the concerns you raised about this decision. You may be interested to know that in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA) introduced the Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060). H.R. 2060 effectively voids the Copyright Royalty Board's decision and sets new rates for the royalties to be paid by Internet radio stations. Specifically, H.R. 2060 states that commercial Internet radio stations instead pay one of two royalty rates for the next five years, to be determined by the station itself, as follows: 1. 0.33 cents per hour of sound recordings transmitted to a single listener; or 2. 7.5 percent of the revenues received by the provider during that year that are directly related to the provider's digital transmissions of sound recordings. H.R. 2060 also alters the formula for determining the royalty payments for non-commercial Internet radio stations so that these stations will pay lower rates than those determined by the Royalty Board.

For more information on this topic, I encourage you to visit the federal resources section of my web site at http://lieberman.senate.gov/issues/resources/, where you will find a "Congressional Research Service" link to a collection of informative and research documents prepared by the Library of Congress. A report entitled "Statutory Royalty Rates for 'Small' Webcasters: Decision of the Copyright Royalty Board" has been made available, which I hope you find helpful.

A companion version of H.R. 2060 has not yet been introduced in the Senate at this time. However, please be assured that I will keep your views in mind should legislation on this subject come before the full Senate for debate. To keep track of actions on specific legislation, you can go to the "Bill Tracking" service at http://lieberman.senate.gov/issues/resources. My official Senate web site is designed to be an on-line office that provides access to constituent services, Connecticut-specific information, and an abundance of information about what I am working on in the Senate on behalf of Connecticut and the nation.

[...]Thank you again for letting me know your views and concerns. Please contact me if you have any additional questions or comments about our work in Congress. Sincerely, Joseph I. Lieberman UNITED STATES SENATOR

"Monumental Ignorance"

An AP story published on Yahoo news today underscored what many Americans have believed for months. The report by an Iraqi government insider, Ali A. Allawi, uses the terms "monumental ignorance", "rank amateurism" and "swaggering arrogance" to describe the American invasion and occupation. How well all of these descriptions characterize the Bush administration in general, in particular the "swaggering arrogance" so typical of the right wing. I'll never forget Bush, and his ridiculous, highly affected John Wayne walk across the lawn of the White House at one of his first public appearances after being inaugurated. What a buffoon.

Claptrap from Ben Stein

A friend of mine who is an Episcopal priest forwarded an email to me today which was a transcript of a Ben Stein piece on CBS Sunday Morning. Frankly, I'm quite surprised to get this from him if it means he subscribes to the ideas put forth in it. He and I seem to agree on a lot of issues, especially about the Iraq war and how monumentally stupid a blunder it was, so I was surprised to find he might (emphasize might) agree with the utter claptrap that Stein is spewing. Let's take them in order.

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Ok Ben, no argument from me here. I couldn't care less about these vacuous twits either. High fives on that one.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

Ok, not much to disagree with from me on this either. "Christmas" is a Christian holiday by definition. Now, let's also keep in mind that that time of year has been celebrated for millenia because it's right after the winter solstice. Ancient people who kept a keen eye on the sunrise and sunset could tell roughly a few days after the solstice that the days were really getting longer again. Whew! The sun wasn't going to completely go away after all. The Romans celebrated the Saturnalia for mostly the same reason. But, I'm not going to throw cold water on the Christians for wanting to claim Christmas. I'm ok with it, really. It's when they start extrapolating that I get annoyed. Keep reading...

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.

I can sure appreciate his not liking being pushed around for being Jewish. I don't like being badmouthed for being an atheist. People say things about atheists that they wouldn't dare say about a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim. But atheists are fair game, I guess. Ok, fine. Let's keep going, though.

I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Here's where Ben and I part company. People who believe in God are in no way, shape or form pushed around in this country. In fact, they enjoy special treatment in innumerable ways. Their problem is that they are offended when they don't get special treatment. Tell me one, just one way in which a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindi, a Buddhist or any other religion is prevented from practicing his or her religion. The problem is that they're not satisfied with practicing. They want to harness the government to make everyone else practice their religion, too.

And the bit about you can't find it in the Constitution? Duh, Ben... it's called The First Amendment.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

Oh, give me a break. How are you not allowed to worship God? This is the same crap that the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world have been handing us. You are absolutely free to worship any way you want AS LONG AS IT DOESN'T INFRINGE ON ANYONE ELSE'S FREEDOM. But that's the bit they don't understand, isn't it? They aren't satisfied to pray, they want me and my kids to pray their prayer. They want my government to believe what they believe. Sorry, Ben. I used to think you were a pretty smart guy. Now I see you're just another rhetorical snake-oil salesmen like the rest of the right wingers.

Vloggers are voters, not reporters

Steve Garfield posted an interesting entry in Off On A Tangent today about his experience with the John Edwards campaign in a special "bloggers only" meeting that had been arranged in New Hampshire. I think part of difficulty he encountered was that the campaign, and to a certain extent the bloggers themselves consider bloggers to be essentially reporters. Different clothes, maybe, smaller cameras, but still, reporters. The good part to this is that at least some of them enjoy access and time with the candidate that the general public doesn't get. The bad part is that they are perceived as "the press" - a channel through which to deliver the message, rather than (and this is my big point) a voter to be met and to be shown the candidates up-close personality, and to be perhaps persuaded to vote for the candidate and to tell their friends (i.e., all their readers) that the candidate is a good guy, and maybe they should consider voting for him/her, too. To me, a blogger is less a reporter than a voter with a lot of friends. A candidate doesn't try to charm or convince a reporter like they do a voter.

There is a lot of conversation in the blogosphere lately about how objective bloggers should be when posting about political topics. Well first of all, there's room for a lot of different approaches. We're experimenting here, right? Let's throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

If I was going to vlog about a campaign event or candidate, though, I wouldn't try to be like a professional reporter. The message of the video blog medium is personal connection. I'd act and want to be treated like a voter not a reporter. I want to get to know that candidate as a person. To let my instincts inform my decision. If I was a campaign manager, I'd think of vloggers as a way to make a personal connection between my candidate and the voters. Unless of course, my candidate is an ass, in which case, I'd want to keep them at a distance. Hmmm, could the access or lack thereof of a candidate to vloggers potentially be one metric for measuring the personal character of a candidate?

This will really disappoint the Holy Rollers

The New York Times recently published an article about evidence for a possible meteor impact in the Indian Ocean that caused a mega-tsunami some 4500 years ago. Part of the evidence is what the investigators call "chevrons" of displaced earth near the shore in Madagasgar. These valleys are theorized to have been carved out by a 600 foot high tsunami. By examining the direction of the chevrons, the investigators have found solid evidence of a large impact crater at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Further, silt deposits in the chevrons contain ocean-bottom minerals fused to deep water micro-fossils, which are characteristic of impact events.

Other researchers have correlated multiple flood myths with known astronomical events (a solar eclipse) and found agreement with the geological age data. Torrential rains, weeks of darkness (oh, say 40 days) and of course, tsunami floods would all have been coincident with such an event.

This is certainly a credible explanation of flood myths and end-of-days prophecies. Unfortunately for the Creationists and other holy-rollers it has nothing to do with the supernatural.

There go those scientists again, taking all the fun out of make-believe.

Clean sweep, baby!

So, I went to bed Tuesday night, after writing my last entry, thinking that the Republicans were ahead in the Senate tipping point races. But, lo and behold, I awake to find that the Democrats have won! WOO HOO!

So we Blue Staters now control both houses of Congress. In my dreams, I couldn't have imagined this wonderful an outcome. It really restores my faith in the American people. We're really not a bunch of dirty tricks, mean-spirited holy rollers. We really can think.

Now, Madam Speaker, and Mr. Majority Leader, please don't spend this valuable and hard-won political capital unwisely. It won't be hard to do a better job than the bozos you're replacing, but you can do much better. Let's show them how it can really work.

Damn, what a country! :)