Scott Walker Stumbles with Anti-Union Agenda

With his campaign in crash and burn mode, in obvious desperation, Scott Walker has stated that he wants to take his anti-union campaign nationwide.  In one report, Walker said he wanted to end all federal employee unions.  This message is supposed to electrify working class voters who ironically have seen their wages stagnate for 40 years largely because of the decline in labor unions.  Walker's message may play well with plutocrats, but average Americans need to run screaming from Walker.  I make no secret of the fact that I find Walker to be a thoroughly despicable individual.  Let's hope that this is the beginning of the end of Walker's presidential campaign.  Here are highlights from Politico:

Scott Walker is doubling down on his anti-union message. But GOP voters don't seem to be listening.  Walker traveled to union-friendly Las Vegas Monday to inveigh against "big-government union bosses."

He pledged elimination of the National Labor Relations Board. He promised a national “right to work” law freeing workers from mandatory payments to unions that bargain collectively on their behalf. And he said he’d block President Barack Obama’s proposal to expand overtime eligibility to 5 million new workers.

For Walker it may be a last stand as his support tumbles from double digits as recently as July to a dismal 2 percent, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday. 

Walker’s presidential campaign is premised in a large part on the idea that GOP primary voters will flock to a candidate willing to confront and diminish the power of organized labor. Walker aides say his anti-union platform is designed to portray the Wisconsin governor as a politician who can easily translate his statewide successes to the federal government. 

But one of 2016’s biggest surprises is that the anti-union message isn’t selling, either for Walker or for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another GOP candidate who’s built much of his campaign around his willingness to face down union bosses. Unions don't seem to loom especially large as a problem to rank-and-file Republican voters.

Also working against Walker and Christie is the Donald Trump factor. The billionaire mogul has excited a wave of populist-minded, lower-income voters who, when it comes to unions, are hardly conservatives at all. Trump himself is mildly pro-union, an occupational necessity for any real estate magnate operating in the Northeast. "Unions still have a place in American society," Trump wrote in 2000.

Harold Schaitberger, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said, “Mr. Trump, who I don’t believe has very much in common with our goals and our agenda, even he calls out recently the gross CEO pay and the disparity between the CEO class, if you will, and the workers that actually help make their companies successfully." Roughly half of Schaitberger's rank and file is Republican.

Perhaps some of the moronic racists and anti-immigrant bigots are finally figuring out the reality that the GOP's anti-union agenda only aids huge corporations and the wealthy and only serves to speed the movement of the nation to a new Gilded Age where the 1% have all the wealth and the rest of us scramble for the crumbs they drop.

The Myth of Christianity Founding Modern Science and Medicine

In checking out some blogs that are daily reads, I found the image above and a post on Nobeliefs.com that debunks the myth that Christianity has fostered knowledge, science and medical advances.  The sad truth is that more often that not, Christianity has been the enemy of knowledge, science and medical advances.  The Dark Ages that swept over Europe and other areas where Christianity flourished derive in large part from Christianity's rise and the concerted effort to wipe out and destroy anything that challenged religious dogma.  It's a phenomenon we see today fueled by those who want to teach creationism as science and in cretins like Kim Davis in Kentucky.  We see parallel events in the Middle East where ISIS has adopted tactics akin to those once utilized by Christianity. These are some relevant quotes from the post:

From its very beginning, the Church has served as a stumbling block against scientific progress. By the time Theodosius proclaimed Nicene Christianity a state religion in 380 CE, progressive science had already stopped. Richard Carrier (through personal correspondence) puts it this way: "Even pagans, though cherishing their scientific heritage (unlike Christians who generally did not), and applying that heritage more avidly than their Christian peers, appear to have given up on advancing science. And then pagans slowly died out, leaving only Christians who were even less interested in such advancement or how to achieve it." Up until this time, Greek and Roman science and medicine stood at the pinnacle of reasoned thought. Although the Christians conserved their own biblical and religious exegesis, they did little to conserve pagan scientific writings to the same degree. The little that the Christians did save just barely survived. As Kenneth Clark wrote, "What with prejudice and destruction, it's surprising that the literature of pre-Christian antiquity was preserved at all. And in fact it only just squeaked through. In so far as we are the heirs of Greece and Rome, we got through by the skin of our teeth." We owe the real foundations of science to the ancient Greeks and Romans, not to the Christians.

A Christian mob murdered the mathematician and philosophy teacher, Hypatia, in 415 CE. I use this date to mark the beginning of the scientific Dark Ages, and its end at the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th century because of the almost total lack of progressive science done during this period (most scholars today refer to the Dark Ages as the Early Middle Ages. See notes below). Hypatia's death serves as a convenient marking point, not because she died as the last pagan (pagan persecution lasted for centuries after) but because she lived as the last non-Christian of any merit that would teach science in the Western Christian world. Moreover, around this time, the Western Empire had begun to die. The Renaissance marks the approximate time when science began its catch-up with the ancient pagans.


It came from scientific and enlightenment minds that influenced religion to bend its ways to concede to science, not the other way around. The Renaissance and the period of the Enlightenment came as a result from people beginning to reject certain religious beliefs. Renaissance means 'rebirth' and represented a cultural movement based on humanism to regain ancient classical sources that the Church had long suppressed or ignored. Moreover, the Renaissance inspired new ways of thinking about, not only science, but literature, philosophy, art, politics, and religion. The Age of Enlightenment (beginning approximately around the 18th century) represented the time when reason trumped religion as the primary source for thought. It resulted in the first concepts of secularism and the blasphemous idea that one does not need religion at all for workable investigations into nature.


The graph(†) above represents an approximate graph of the advancement of science through time. For critics, please see a further explanation of the graph: click here. 

The Christian Dark Ages represents a time in the history of Europe where scientific advancement not only halted but went backwards. The hole left by the Dark Ages bears the imprint of scientific ignorance that lasted longer than the Roman Empire. Imagine where scientific advancement would stand today if not for the scars left by Christianity.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

Donald Trump and the Media's Phony Objectivity

I continually bemoan the irresponsibility of the mainstream media and it's insistence on engaging in "balanced" reporting even when the end product ends up more as fiction writing or GOP propaganda.  The GOP has benefited tremendously  from this refusal to admit that the GOP has ventured into the realm of insanity.  Whether the phenomenon is due to a desire to pretend that America still has a functioning political system or a reluctance to attack the GOP lunacy since much of it traces to the :godly folk" - the media never wants to paint the true picture of "conservative" Christian extremists - the end result is that the nation is being severely harmed.  As noted many times here, if the media had done its job and not become the simpering lap dog of Bush/Cheney, the Iraq War could have been avoided.   A piece in Salon looks at the consequences of the mainstream media not doing its job.  Here are highlights:

[I]f the media—especially the dominant elite media—really wants to know who’s responsible for Trump’s rise, one place they should start looking is right in their bathroom mirrors.

I know, I know. Trump is a clownish figure far removed from the sort of seriousness they strive to cultivate. Surely they can’t be blamed for him, right?

Wrong. Here’s why: As Congress returns, there’s a looming threat of yet another government shutdown. Once unthinkable, then disastrous when Gingrich introduced them, shutdown threats have become a part of normal politics in the Obama era, thanks in large part to “balanced” journalism, which has helped to reframe them as normal, if perhaps a little bit risky—and therefore, a bit titillating. With a large part of the GOP buying into this fantasy view of how politics works, they were at first content to vent their hatred primarily on President Obama and congressional Democrats, but now their anger has widened to the entire political class—which is actually well deserved, in a way. But it’s not just the GOP politicians who egged them on who are to blame—the “balanced” media played a starring role as well.

When the whole political system gets pulled for years in the direction of government-by-temper-tantrum—and the media treats it as perfectly normal—it really should not be so surprising when an intemperate blowhard like Trump suddenly shows up to steal the show.

The “balanced” media has promoted this dysfunction around government shutdowns in at least three distinct ways: First, the media presents the shutdown shorn of historical context, with no indication of how radical, novel or one-sided it is, or of how it relates to a broader range of related radical and novel right-wing strategies, or to the dramatic underlying rightward shift of the GOP in Congress . . .

Second, the media adopts a “balanced” approach to reporting on the prospects of a shutdown, and the shutdown itself. It seeks to place blame on both sides . . . regardless of how inaccurate this is. This falsely balanced reporting works in favor of the absolute worst actors—always giving them the “benefit of the doubt,” and against those who are most public-minded . . .

Third, the media “balances” any residual negativity that the shutdown perpetrators might be left with stories intended to cast the other party—the Democrats–in an equally bad light. The media’s months-long obsession over problems with the Obamacare website filled this function perfectly.

I wrote a story identifying “nine distinct bodies of evidence” contradicting the “both sides did it” narrative:

(1) The longstanding GOP fixation on shutting down the government.
(2) The GOP’s creation of the shutdown crisis by blocking the budget reconciliation process.
(3) The emergence and evolution of the incoherent Ted Cruz/Tea Party plan to force a shutdown over ‘Obamacare’.
(4) The record of prominent Republican politicians and others who repeatedly warned against forcing a government shutdown.
(5) The contrary historical record of some Republicans downplaying the severity of the shutdown.
(6) The record of drastic Democratic budget concessions embodied in the “clean continuing resolution” which House Republicans rejected.
(7) The polling evidence that only GOP base voters are opposed to political compromise—and are indifferent to crisis.
(8) Evidence that GOP base intransigence drives policy.
(9) The framework of American legislative history.

There were stories here and there in the press touching on all of the above, but because of the ideologically driven commitment to “balance,” they were kept isolated and atomized, never consolidated into a coherent picture of what was actually going on at the time. And for good reason: the GOP wanted a shutdown, and the public overwhelmingly did not.

[T]he GOP had severely damaged itself, and stood a very real chance of losing control of the House in the 2014 midterms. The shutdown strategy had proved itself to be a disaster. It should have thoroughly discredited all who had argued for it, and all the thinking that led to it. That’s the clear lesson that should have been drawn. But then the “balanced” media got to work, and all the the above was swiftly negated—not just forgotten—by media’s “balanced” shift of attention to the problems with the Obamacare website.

The short-term result of that was that it protected the GOP from suffering any consequences for the shutdown. In the 2014 midterms, this meant not only holding the House, but taking over the Senate as well.

Karma, however, is a bitch. The long-term results are now showing up in the form of the Trump campaign’s dominance, and the crumbling of more “mainstream” “responsible” conservatives—not just Jeb Bush, but the entire suite of governors and ex-governors . . . 

[T]his “balanced” coverage removed all cost for the GOP’s extremism: They didn’t have to be for anything, they could just be against, and not suffer any consequence for the pain they caused. But, at the same time, they didn’t accomplish any of the impossible things they had promised.

More Sunday Male Beauty

Why Republican Claims that Iran Deal is "Another Munich" Are All Wrong

Facts and objective reality mean nothing to the base of the Republican Party, especially the deranged Christofascist and Tea Party elements.  Now, they don't mean anything to a frightening number of GOP elected officials in Congress.  Nor does any form of knowledge of actual history.  Had Bush and Cheney and their neo-con advisers done even a small amount of historical review, they would have known that the Iraq War as they envisioned it was a fantasy.  Now, similar ignorance fuels the GOP claim that the Iran nuclear deal is another Munich, referring to the betrayal of Czechoslovakia in 1938 when Germany was ceded parts of that country with no demands or concessions in return.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the false comparisons being made by Republican demagogues.  Here are highlights:

[T]he rhetorical matching of the Iran accord with the 1938 Munich conference doesn't withstand scrutiny. That Iran is not analogous to Munich is clear from the following:

First, Munich was about altering Europe's map. Vienna isn't about geographical changes; its focus is arms control, a subject not on the Munich agenda.

Second, at Munich, Hitler gave up nothing - no territory, no weapons. He successfully procured Czechoslovakia's dismemberment because the conferees agreed to force that nation to cede the Sudetenland to the Nazis. Czechoslovakia wasn't even a conference participant.

Third, the Munich conference didn't address the accelerating buildup of Germany's vast military machine whereas the Iran accord significantly reduces that country's capability to produce a nuclear weapon by requiring that it cease pursuing a plutonium bomb; that it redesign and rebuild the Arak reactor so it will not produce weapons-grade plutonium; that the original core of the reactor, which would enable the production of weapons-grade plutonium, be rendered inoperable. Furthermore, its spent fuel is to be shipped out of the country.

Finally, unlike Munich, which placed no international inspectors in Nazi-occupied territories, this agreement relies on an unprecedented level of intrusive international inspection, not on unverified trust that critics falsely assert is inherent in the deal. Iran agreed to international inspectors having access "to the entire supply chain that supports Iran's nuclear program" according to a presidential statement released in April. Tehran's acceding to this degree of foreign inspectors on its territory is neither a partial nor "a total cave" by our administration, as Kirk has foolishly said. Clearly, Wendy Sherman got a lot more from Iran's negotiators than Chamberlain got from Hitler!

It's been made clear that Washington's holding out for increased sanctions and/or requirements not tied to the nuclear weapons issue - which is what so many hardliners here were demanding -- would have cost us the support of our negotiating partners and likely doomed this diplomatic effort. Such a development would have isolated us from our partners, much as failure to join the League in 1920 isolated us from Europe, and it would have increased tensions in the Middle East much as our withdrawal 95 years ago helped direct the world toward another war. Iran would have resumed its nuclear ambitions unhindered by international law and the strong international alliance formed against it. 

July's Iran nuclear deal stands as one of the most significant foreign policy achievements of this or any recent administration. It rejects a Munich replication and builds on the lessons of Versailles while eliminating many of its pitfalls.

I suspect - or at least hope - that most Republicans know what actually happened at Munich and, like their Christofascist allies, are simply lying and hope that many Americans are simply too stupid to realize that they have been played for fools. 

Obama’s Secret Weapon: GOP Extremists

One of the ironies about the far right is that it is in many ways hastening its own destruction through its extremism and intransigence to change.   The Christofascists, while demanding special rights and displaying the ugly hatred at the core of their theology, are speeding the exodus of the younger generations from religion entirely (and more older folks are following suit as well).  And on foreign policy where the GOP and the Christofascists and Tea Party lunatics seem to want endless war - they always ignore the squandered American lives and squandered billions of dollars - they helping drive moderates and sane individuals to the Democrats.  Killing Muslims may take the Christofascists and their GOP political whores to near orgasm, but decent people are increasingly repulsed.  A piece in Slate looks at how the GOP helped insure the approval of the Iran nuclear power deal.  Here are excerpts:

This was a great week for the White House.

A month ago Democrats were working to stop a GOP-penned resolution of disapproval against President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. . . .  it would restrict his ability to lift sanctions on Iran, and potentially threaten the deal itself, as allies questioned U.S. commitment to the agreement.

On Thursday, however, that changed. When the resolution came for a vote, 42 senators voted to filibuster and keep it from the Senate floor. Democrats didn’t just save the deal; they blocked the GOP altogether. It was a huge win, and the administration wasn’t shy about its success. “This vote is a victory for diplomacy, for American national security, and for the safety and security of the world,” said Obama. 

[W]e shouldn’t ignore the extent to which it [the White House] had a huge ally in persuading Democrats to stand with the deal. Namely, the Republican Party.

Republicans could have capitalized on the division, running against the deal while offering an alternative and showing—in word and deed—that this was about the policy, not the president. . . . . considered opposition could have peeled away enough Democrats from the administration to win the legislative battle and jeopardize the deal. Instead, Republicans jumped to hyperbole.

The apex of this criticism came Tuesday, when former Vice President Cheney slammed the agreement in the fiercest words possible. “I know of no nation in history that has agreed to guarantee that the means of its own destruction will be in the hands of another nation, particularly one that is hostile,” he said.

None of this scared Democrats into voting against the deal. Instead, it was evidence that this fight was irreducibly partisan, with no chance of a compromise or détente. Cautious Democrats—like Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon or Cory Booker of New Jersey—had two options: They could sign on with Cheney and the GOP, or they could bolster the president. They chose the latter, and handed Obama a victory that wasn’t guaranteed.

Again and again, the GOP’s great obstacle—and Democrats’ great ally—is itself. Its intransigence might win elections—Obamacare helped the GOP win the 2010 midterms, and Republicans hope that Iran will do the same for 2016—but it comes at a cost: policy that’s more liberal than the alternative. And while there’s still time to turn the tide, it’s running out. If Democrats win another four years in the White House, they can turn Obama’s changes into a new and durable status quo.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

The Vatican Declares War on the Transgender

As I have noted before, I think those who are hoping that Pope Francis will modernize the Roman Catholic Church are in fantasy land.  Yes, the Church is streamlining its annulment process, but that does little to change the underlying mindset of the bitter old men in dress in Rome and plush bishoprics across the globe.  The bottom line is that the so called leaders of the Church cannot let go of the 12th century writings of those who nowadays could well be deemed to be psychotic and mentally ill.  The latest example of the Vatican's embrace of 12th century ignorance is the attack on those who are transgender who are barred from being godparents.  Personally, I do not understand why anyone who is LGBT would want remain in any way affiliated with Catholicism.  That said, this latest Vatican attack  will perhaps be a wake up call those in the dream world of seeing Francis as a reformer.  Here are highlights from a piece in The Advocate:

The Vatican recently announced that it is “impossible to allow” transgender people to be godparents. In the warped logic of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [formerly known as the Inquisition], identifying as transgender “reveals in a public way an attitude opposite to the moral imperative of solving the problem of sexual identity according to the truth of one's own sexuality.”

This ruling was handed down when Alex Salinas, a Spanish man who had been assigned female identity at birth, sought to become his nephew’s godfather. The local bishop originally agreed, but then asked for advice from the Vatican. The Vatican stated, “It is evident that this person does not possess the requirement of leading a life according to the faith and in the position of godfather and is therefore unable to be admitted to the position of godfather or godmother."

The Vatican’s declaration that Alex and other transgender people are unfit to be godparents is exclusionary and hurtful. It says to the Roman Catholic Church’s transgender members, to the people who love and care for them, and to the entire church that trans folk are “less than,” and not fully welcome in our midst. It is a blanket statement that anyone who does not fit neatly into binary gender categories is morally suspect, inherently unworthy to serve as a guide to an ethical, faith-based life.  

[T]his is another instance of church officials using the church’s sacraments, which are meant to be signs of how grace is present in human life, as dividers rather than builders of community. Transgender people have already been told not to seek ordination or acceptance into religious communities, that their baptismal certificates will not be changed to reflect their true gender, and that marriage is based on the birth gender. Now, they are told they cannot even be sponsors of someone entering into the life of the church.

My advice?  Walk away from Catholicism and encourage your friends and family members to do likewise.  If enough people leave, the Church will either accept modern knowledge or wither and die.

GOP Anti-Gay Bigotry Threatens First Amendment

As I have noted so many times, there is no apparent limit to the extent that the majority of Republican office holders will go in order to prostitute themselves to the Christofascist element of the party base. Perhaps the foulest example is the misnamed First Amendment Defense Act which would grant special rights to Christofascist while effectively eliminating First Amendment rights for everyone.  These political whore refuses to concede that freedom of religion does not mean (i) the right to force one's religion on others and/or (ii) special exemptions from the general laws. The New York Times slams the GOP threat to the U.S. Constitution in a main editorial  Here are excerpts:

This past June, in the heat of their outrage over gay rights, congressional Republicans revived a nasty bit of business they call the First Amendment Defense Act. It would do many things, but one thing it would not do is defend the First Amendment. To the contrary, it would deliberately warp the bedrock principle of religious freedom under the Constitution. 

It is being hawked with the specter of clergy members being forced to officiate such marriages. This is a ploy, as the bill’s backers surely know: There has never been any doubt that the First Amendment protects members of the clergy from performing weddings against their will.

In reality, the act would bar the federal government from taking “any discriminatory action” — including the denial of tax benefits, grants, contracts or licenses — against those who oppose same-sex marriage for religious or moral reasons. In other words, it would use taxpayers’ money to negate federal anti-discrimination measures protecting gays and lesbians, using the idea of religious freedom as cover.

For example, a religiously affiliated college that receives federal grants could fire a professor simply for being gay and still receive those grants. Or federal workers could refuse to process the tax returns of same-sex couples simply because of bigotry against their marriages.

It doesn’t stop there. As critics of the bill quickly pointed out, the measure’s broad language — which also protects those who believe that “sexual relations are properly reserved to” heterosexual marriages alone — would permit discrimination against anyone who has sexual relations outside such a marriage.

This bizarre fixation on what grown-ups do in their bedrooms — which has long since been rejected by the Supreme Court and the vast majority of Americans — is bad enough. The bill makes matters worse by covering for-profit companies, which greatly multiplies the potential scope of discrimination against gays and lesbians.

These are radical proposals, but they are accepted without question by many in today’s Republican Party. In its current form, the bill has 148 co-sponsors in the House and 36 in the Senate — all Republicans but one,
Thankfully, the bill’s chances of passage are low. Even if it were to get through Congress, President Obama would surely veto it. Still, its symbolic power will embolden those looking for a legal justification to discriminate . . .

Many religious leaders and clergy members are themselves deeply disturbed by the proposed legislation; more than 3,000 signed a letter opposing it on the grounds that genuine religious liberty “does not allow us to harm or discriminate against others.” The supporters of this bill, who are so eager to talk about religious freedom, would do well to listen to the people they claim to represent.

The GOP has become a radical sectarian party and its extremism seems to only be growing as the party relies more and more on dwindling numbers of angry, ignorance and bigotry embracing "conservative Christians" for votes.  The GOP needs to be destroyed in its present incarnation and the religious extremists it panders to need to become political and social lepers.  If one wonders how elements within Islam became so toxic, look no farther than what the GOP and Christofascists are doing to Christianity.