Questions for Obama – or His Cheerleaders

Although, I would never even consider voting for the intolerable and untenable McCain/Palin ticket, I’m finding it extremely difficult to work up any enthusiasm for – or trust in – Obama/Biden. I’m trying to do so, though, because I live in Florida, where my vote will matter much more than it would if I still lived in New York.

Yes, the Democrats’ platitudes are articulated better than the Republicans’, and, superficially, sound far more appealing. But even a cursory reading of the transcript of last night’s tea party (only an idiot would refer to it as a “debate”) demonstrates that Obama’s words are just as meaningless and empty as McCain’s.

So the following, organized by category, are some questions that I’d like to hear Barack Obama answer. I even invite any reader who's a member of the "We Love Obama" fan club to stand in as his proxy, as long as you can provide some cogent evidence that you're speaking for him. Please don't waste your time telling me how bad McCain would be; I already know that.

Economic Policy

• You’ve spoken a lot about wanting to “fix” our energy system. Can you tell us about five specific actions toward such an end that you would either take directly as president or push Congress to adopt? Can you give us an estimate of the cost of these actions, and give us particulars about where the money and manpower would come from? If any of these actions would require a degree of government administration and/or oversight, can you explain in detail how that would work?


• Same questions about fixing our health care system. Again, please be specific rather than speaking in generalities.


• Same questions about our educational system, with the same requirement for details.


• How, exactly, do you plan to prevent lobbyists from influencing government actions? What do you mean when you refer to “special interests,” and can you name any interests that aren’t special?


• You’ve said over and over again that you would cut taxes for the middle class, and raise taxes for those making more than $250,000. Are you talking about gross or net income, and how would you specially ensure that there isn’t a huge loophole disparity between those amounts? What kind of dollar figures are you talking about for those cuts and those raises, and what will be the end result in total revenues collected each year through federal taxes?

Constitutional Issues

• How will you go about deciding whom to appoint as a Supreme Court justice, should a vacancy occur. Without speaking in vagaries, what criteria will you use?
  


• Assuming that a pregnant woman is healthy both mentally and physically, at what point does her fetus’s potential future trump her right to choose? How would you justify, constitutionally, ever denying a woman the right to make decisions about processes occurring within her own body?
  


• Can you explain, exactly, how the faith-based initiatives you’d propose would work? Can you also explain how such initiatives would not conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment?


• You voted to give telecoms immunity from prosecution after they had colluded in spying on American citizens. Can you explain how you justify that vote? If your answer is related in any way to realpolitik, can you clarify why that should take precedence over the Fourth Amendment?

Foreign Policy

• What specific advantages in “the war on terror” do you think will be gained today by killing bin Laden? What specific advantages will be gained by capturing him and not killing him? Are there any other persons whom you would like to kill or capture? Why or why not?


• Which countries do you currently consider America’s friends? Explain. Which countries would you like to bring into America’s circle of friends, and how would you do that? Explain. Which countries are most dangerous today to America, and how would you make them less dangerous? Using specific details, please explain that answer as well.
  


• How do you envision an Iraqi democracy working? Can you support your ideas with examples drawn from Iraqi history, culture, or religious beliefs.


• The Palestinians democratically empowered Hamas. Is that OK with you? Why or why not? Should the United States be more committed to worldwide democracy or worldwide freedom? Can you elaborate on the distinction between democracy and freedom?


• Do you believe that all Jews worldwide are represented by Israel? If so, how? If not, then given that Israel is a quasi-theocratic state and not representative of an entire ethnic or religious group, how can you justify using the loaded phrases “never again” and “Holocaust” in statements supporting that country?


• Do you agree that many of the problems in the 21st century world are caused by religious extremists? Why or why not? In what way are the beliefs of religious extremists different from the beliefs of other theists? What steps would you take to curb religious extremism around the world and in our own country?

Other Relevant Matters

• Using as an example at least 25 votes during your years in the Senate, in what ways have you personally stood up to the Bush Administration? What was your own reasoning for casting those votes? Again, using as an example at least 10 votes during your years in the Senate, in what ways have you personally stood up to the majority of your own party? What was your own reasoning for casting those votes?


• Under what circumstances would it be all right for a president to lie to, or mislead, the American public? If you answer “never,” then under what circumstances would it be all right for a presidential candidate to lie to, or mislead, the American public? If again you answer “never,” then can you explain your pro-FISA vote and your decision to bow out of the public campaign financing system, both of which you'd promised not to do.


• As president, will you represent atheists as well as theists? If you agree to get advice from, and/or speak privately to, religious leaders, will you also seek advice from, and/or speak privately to, avowed atheists? Have you consulted on public policy with any representatives of atheist groups, or appeared at any atheist functions? If so, with whom, where, and when? What was your rationale for agreeing to appear at a public circus sponsored by Saddleback Church and hosted by its pastor, Rick Warren?


• Whom are you thinking about for various cabinet and advisory positions, and whom are you considering for your presidential staff? Again, without speaking in vagaries, what criteria will you use to select these men and women?


• Under what circumstances should a president seek evidence from experts rather than consulting opinion polls? Do you think the majority of the American people have ever held "wrong" opinions? What opinions are those, and why, in your view, were they wrong?
  

Those are 20 straight-talk opportunities. I’d be satisfied if Obama addressed himself to any four of these items — a mere 20% — in the next month. But I’ll bet he won’t. Any takers?

Imus in the ... Warning

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I occasionally listened to Don Imus’s morning show, unimaginatively but accurately named Imus in the Morning, on WNBC radio in New York City. In those days of our country’s — and my own — relative innocence, it seemed enormously funny to hear female callers being asked, “Are you naked?” Just the word “naked” being set loose into the airwaves was hilarious; the fact that many responses were a sultry “yes,” made the humor even more rib-busting.

As I matured, though, I began to realize that there was absolutely nothing even vaguely comical about that repeated interchange. It was moronic, schoolboy comedy, on the level of fart noises and booger jokes. Even before Imus was fired in 1977, he had gone his auditory way, and I had gone mine.

What I did find entertaining, but only slightly, was the fact that Imus later wrote a novel called God’s Other Son: The Life and Times of the Reverend Billy Sol Hargus. Published in 1981, the book’s title was scurrilous, and, to an atheist like me, titillating. I bought it — proud to support any anti-religious sentiment — but I never got past the first few pages. Sinclair Lewis had done a much better hatchet job on the evangelicals in Elmer Gantry, published about 55 years earlier. As I remember Imus's book, it was not very well written, nor was it witty; but it did have that cool controversial title on its cover and spine. It conformed to its author's M.O.: a jolt of superficial shock for shock’s sake, hiding a lack of substance. For years, people who came to my house and goggled at my extensive book collection as if I were running a museum, would notice the Imus work tucked away in a far corner. They’d ask what I thought of it, and I’d confess, “I haven’t read it — yet.” Some time in the late ‘80s, that "yet" became "ever." God's Other Son found its way into a giveaway box of junk volumes, along with Hesse’s Siddhartha, Rand’s For the New Intellectual, The Gospel According to Peanuts, T.S. Eliot’s cat poems, and an anthology of elephant jokes.

I hadn’t thought about Don Imus since I kissed his novel goodbye. Until this week, when he became a media un-darling.

I suspect that Imus was paid by his corporate bosses, as all controversial commentators are, to be (1) thought-provoking, (2) funny, and (3) challenging to conventional wisdom — not necessarily in that order. What he said about the Rutgers team was certainly not thought-provoking; it was not funny, except to addle-brained goofballs who laugh, as I did at the word “naked,” whenever they hear something taboo uttered; and it was definitely not challenging to conventional wisdom, since “wisdom,” conventional or otherwise, and “college basketball” are not overlapping magisteria. Here’s what it was: offensive, for no reason.

Now, if Imus had called, say, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, for instance, “hos for publicity,” that might have been (1), (2), and (3). But he didn’t. Instead, he hurled a racist and sexist slur at a group of basically anonymous women who are not public figures deserving of serious criticism — except maybe for the way they played.

The above-named Jackson and Sharpton, sniffing media blood in the water, the possibility of hours and hours of nourishing photo ops and sound bites, then decided to swim in for the self-promoting kill. Jackson, himself, is not exactly innocent of ethnic slurs. His famous anti-semitic characterization of New York City as “Hymietown” was one of the lowlights of the 1984 presidential campaign. Sharpton has been making hay out of racial divisions ever since he became a meme as a spokesperson for the black community in the bogus Tawana Brawley case. It wasn’t long before every third-rate pundit joined the feeding frenzy. Even some of the sharks in the blog-sea are shocked — shocked! — at Imus’s behavior.

Let’s get this straight. Free speech is a right. No government should censor anyone’s expression, no matter how odious. However, broadcasting bigwigs are not the government — not yet, anyway. They can shut up anyone they please, for any reason. They don’t even have to be consistent; they can choose to tolerate specific offensive language from some people and not from others. So Imus has it wrong about rap musicians; it’s perfectly “fair,” in a free-market sense, to single him out. The firings of Don Imus did not infringe in any way on his First Amendment guarantees.

Oddly enough, though, the women who were actually insulted by Imus accepted his insincere apologies. A practical-minded recruiter for Rutgers even pointed out, “You can’t pay for publicity like this.” Ask all those politicans and media mavens who, for years, exploited Imus’s popularity by appearing on his show. They knew that, too. The guy was harmless; his guests must have felt sure that listeners would tune out Imus’s idiocy, leaving interviewees free to use his desirable venue in promoting their own ideas.

Do I think that Imus’s comment was offensive? Definitely; I would choose to have nothing to do with a person who expressed himself that way. Do I care, personally, that Imus was summarily cashiered? Nope; it won’t affect my life at all.

But the incident sets a dangerous precedent, in that it empowers the theocrats, like the reverends Jackson and Sharpton, as well as countless other mind-control freaks of the political right and left. They know that Americans wear their various sensitivities proudly, and, as a people, have forgotten how to shrug off inanities. We have become, all of us, dangerously thin-skinned, regardless of the color of that skin.

What Imus said was nasty and stupid, but it didn’t hurt anyone. He wasn’t calling for an official reaction against his targets, whoever they might have been. He wasn’t asking his listeners to join him in a political campaign to oppose marriage between consenting adults, or to blow up clinics that provide legal medical services. He wasn’t trying to persuade gullible teenagers that they can obliterate their perfectly natural urges by taking a vow to a supernatural being, or deny adequate education to children whose parents would prefer that their offspring remain blissfully ignorant. He was not promoting a war based on lies, not making a mockery of the justice system, not advocating torture, not letting his public policy be bought and paid for by special interests, and not stealing taxpayer dollars to feed into the pockets of the pious mind-twisters. He was just being an ass, and a not very interesting one at that.

So here’s what the Imus situation should teach us. Demagogues of all varieties can use trivial insults to whip up a vast artificial rage that, maybe, most people don’t really feel. The momentum of that spurious anger, unfortunately, can act as a smokescreen hiding the genuine ills in our society. We get hyped up to go on an intellectual rampage over a stupid comment by a no-talent radio personality, but sit apathetically by while our rights are trampled by a no-talent president. After all, he didn’t insult anybody, right?

Meanwhile, the gleeful hierophants wait patiently for us to take umbrage at some frivolous affront. Then they use that latest instance of our national hypersensitivity for their own purposes. In a sudden burst of the news cycle, they rush in and grasp temporary power.

The next target of the rabble-rousers will be, as promised, the music industry. Afterwards, probably that evil Jew-controlled Hollywood will come under scrutiny again. Maybe, in the not-too-distant future, publishers and booksellers who offer those disgusting atheist diatribes will be asked to answer for their transgressions.

And so I say to anyone who has joined in the general condemnatory hysteria: May the farce be with you.

Where Is H.L. Mencken When We Need Him?

Mojoey over at Deep Thoughts has created an Atheist Blogroll, listing over 100 sites of interest to us nonbelievers. I’m proud and pleased to be included.

I don’t disply his whole list here, however, because I don’t find every one of those blogs interesting. I’m particularly bored by two kinds of subject matter:

The Same Scientific Arguments for Evolution
Those of us who are gonna get it, already get it. There’s no point in repeating the same facts, over and over, ad nauseam, as if some fundamentalist from the blogosphere is going to stumble across one of our pages, smack him- or herself in the head, and say, “Oh, now I see!”

Most of us atheists have grabbed the mantle of science and wrapped ourselves in it. But, let’s face it: it’s not necessary to be an expert in biology, geology, paleontology, zoology, or any other kind of –ology to be reasonably certain that nature’s ways do not need the overlay of a higher power. Most of us are just not qualified to rattle off scientific evidence to academic poseurs. While I, for instance, love and admire books like The Selfish Gene and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea—to name just two of dozens I’ve read on the subject—and like to think that I’m fairly well-versed in neo-Darwinian studies, I’m not convinced that I’ve digested all the complex data to the point where I can speak persuasively on a theoretical level, a la Dawkins or Dennett. Nor am I interested in doing so. Why would I be, when they’ve already done the job so eloquently themselves? If a creationist hasn’t had an “aha” moment by now, I’m not likely to be the one who’ll open his or her non-created eyes. And, pssst. Neither are you.

Because really, it’s almost 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. I don’t think it’s necessary to follow every single argument presented by the scientific community since then to accept the overwhelming evidence against Genesis, just as I don’t believe one needs to have studied meteorology to suspect that Zeus has nothing to do with thunderbolts. Although I’ve long forgotten Newton’s formulas and have only a dim understanding of Einstein’s improvements to them, I still know that if I trip at the top of a flight of stairs, I will wind up, somehow, at the bottom—and that the cause of my fall will be the attraction of gravity, not sin. But don’t ask me to prove this with well-articulated theory; my intelligence was not designed that way. That’s why I’m happy to leave the fine points of science to the scientists, particularly those rare few who write wittily and well.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be vigilant in selecting our school boards and other educational leaders. We must fight the theocrats whenever necessary. But we don’t have to keep re-enacting the Scopes trial amongst ourselves, do we?

Philosophical Disputations with Believers
Give it up! It’s a waste of time! The Christian Nation is not reading your Letters to them with any intent to ponder your ideas. They know the Truth; it’s printed in their bibles and whatever-elses they use to spread the god meme from generation to generation. Most of us wouldn’t consider spending even five minutes explaining why we feel that “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” isn’t true. Yet, many of us atheists love nothing better than to score illusory intellectual points against the moronarchists.

But faith always trumps facts, because it’s shown to its best advantage when the facts contradict it. So while we may find it great fun to yammer on about the ontological, cosmological, teleological, and other arguments for the existence of god, and to try to blow them up in the believers’ smug faces—really, whom are we kidding? Most religious folk do not have a love of, or even a casual affection for, wisdom. They wouldn’t recognize a philosophical argument if it bit them in the metaphysical ass.

We all know (or we should) that our blogs are, for the most part, read by one another. Let’s try to entertain and enlighten ourselves, to call for political or legal action when it’s necessary, and to share the hilarious and/or frightening idiocy that greets us every day. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that we can hawk our wares in the so-called free marketplace of ideas, when we’ve really just found ourselves stuck in the medieval bazaar of ignorance.

Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation: Sue the Bastards (or Maybe Not)

Way back in 1968, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether taxpayers had standing to sue the government for throwing their money around in unconstitutional ways.

The case, Flast v. Cohen, was brought by a woman who objected to federal financing of textbooks for parochial schools. Apparently, the schools in question had been dipping into the government’s collection plate rather than their own. Even though those particular textbooks were on secular, rather than religious, subjects, Flast believed that the expenditure still violated the First Amendment.

The Court’s opinion was authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren, a secular saint if there ever was one. He wrote that a taxpayer could, indeed, prevail in a lawsuit—but only if two conditions were met.

First of all, the suit had to establish a logical link between the taxpayer him- or herself, as a taxpayer, and a legislative act that the taxpayer believed was unconstitutional. For all intents and purposes this link could be established only if the act in question fell specifically under Congress’s power to tax and spend, as stated in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. In other words, a person could sue about the expenditure of his or her tax dollars only if it could be shown that Congress had earmarked those taxes for an explicit use.

Secondly, the taxpayer could claim that the act was unconstitutional only by demonstrating that the funding in question exceeded specific constitutional limitations on Congress’s power to tax and spend.

In Flast, the Court found that both conditions were met. The taxpayer was able to establish a link between herself and the legislative act by showing that the allocation of her money fell under Congress’s power to provide for the “General Welfare.” The expenditures exceeded Congress’s power to tax and spend because the bestowal of public monies on religious institutions flouted the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Flast, and all other taxpayers like her, had suffered harm; she had been ripped off by god's representatives posing as her own.

As time passed and the Court grew more and more conservative, the taxpayers’ right to sue became narrower and narrower. In 1981, for example, another Establishment Clause case was brought, this time by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It seems that the Department of Defense, as part of a series of cutbacks, had closed a military hospital in Valley Forge. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare decided—in an act of Christian charity, no doubt—to donate part of the land to the Valley Forge Christian College. This pilferage of public property improved neither the common citizens' health, nor their education, nor their welfare. The Court found, however, that since Congress was not directly involved in the land transfer, the public had no right to sue. Basically, the government was free to steal from us as long as the theft was not spelled out by an act of Congress.

Fast-forward to last Friday. The Supreme Court announced that it will decide whether citizens can challenge the spending of tax money by Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives. The case, Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, et al., will be heard in February.

Of course, I would love the FFRF to succeed. Bush and his theocratic cronies are distributing our hard-earned bucks to the supernatural charlatans. That’s clearly a violation of the First Amendment. There’s no separation of church and state when their hands are joined in picking our pockets.

But I predict that the good guys will be losers in this effort; we don’t have a prayer. The money was not allocated directly by Congress to the White House’s Faith-Bait effort. Rather, the President was given a gift of our cash to use at his discretion—or lack of same. I doubt that a conservative Court will decide that the FFRF has standing to speak for you, me, and all the rest of the people who feel cheated by our nation’s churches. Most likely, the inactivist majority of judges will shrug their robed shoulders, while the pirates of religion continue to thank their bandit god for Republican appointments.

Well, Somebody's Gotta Play Cassandra

Although many atheists may be exulting in the nationwide repudiation of President Bush, we need to be reminded that none of yesterday’s Democratic winners has gone on record as being a non-believer, a freethinker, or even a doubter.

If, as the TV pundits claim, the Democrats won big because the religious right was angry at Republican deviations from the true path, we church/state separationists find ourselves pretty much in the same position as we were before the vote: holding the supernatural bag. The evangelicals’ message would seem to be “Support our theocratic vision wholeheartedly or we will defeat you.”

Is that what really happened? Experts everywhere are busily trying to parse each vote to find out exactly what combinations of background, race, gender, age, income, education, cosmic disorder, animal magnetism, and bowel health led to the electorate’s decisions. No matter how high-tech the wise guys’ methods, however, the results will still be the equivalent of asking a ouija board to explain the balloting; they will usually conform to the subconscious hopes or expectations of the analysts. And the analysts, particularly those on the right, love hellfire and brimstone. Religious fervor makes great TV.

We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, when the “numbers” substantiate the commentators’ gut reactions. That’s why I expect to hear a lot in the next few weeks about conservative Christians’ temporary disaffection with the current administration. Watch for that word “temporary.” It’ll be used as a bludgeon by the faithful.

So here’s my unhappy prediction: There will come to pass a new plague of faith-based initiatives and religious entitlements, supported enthusiastically by both political parties.

It’ll be Sunday morning in America.