Look at all the poor people

The Wall Street Journal ran an article on the effect that the proposed tax plan would have on real people — you know, not just the rich people, but also the working poor. And they illustrated it with a picture of what they consider the poor.

poorpeople
Look how sad they all are!

So…a single mother with two children makes $260,000 per year. A retired couple living on a measly $180,000 per year.

Jebus. These people are completely out of touch with reality. The article is supposed to be talking about the effects on “affluent and poor”, but apparently they never heard of anyone making less than $100K.

Don’t lump satanists and atheists together: it’s satanists and Republicans

Florida governor Rick Scott has some new allies who thoroughly approve of his plan to allow prayers in public schools if the student body votes to approve: Satanists. It’s annoying that people constantly confuse atheists and Satanists, when they’re nothing alike philosophically.

They have a press release explaining their position. It turns out that Satanism is one of those liberal religions.

[We believe] that God is supernatural and thus outside of the sphere of the physical. God’s perfection means that he cannot interact with the imperfect corporeal realm. Because God cannot intervene in the material world, He created Satan to preside over the universe as His proxy. Satan has the compassion and wisdom of an angel. Although Satan is subordinate to God, he is mankind’s only conduit to the dominion beyond the physical. In addition, only Satan can hear our prayers and only Satan can respond. While God is beyond human comprehension, Satan desires to be known and knowable. Only in this way can there be justice and can life have meaning.

It’s still all bullshit.

Louie Giglio backs away from the inauguration

Good news! Giglio has withdrawn from the inauguration.

I am honored to be invited by the President to give the benediction at the upcoming inaugural on January 21. Though the President and I do not agree on every issue, we have fashioned a friendship around common goals and ideals, most notably, ending slavery in all its forms.

Due to a message of mine that has surfaced from 15-20 years ago, it is likely that my participation, and the prayer I would offer, will be dwarfed by those seeking to make their agenda the focal point of the inauguration. Clearly, speaking on this issue has not been in the range of my priorities in the past fifteen years. Instead, my aim has been to call people to ultimate significance as we make much of Jesus Christ.

Neither I, nor our team, feel it best serves the core message and goals we are seeking to accomplish to be in a fight on an issue not of our choosing, thus I respectfully withdraw my acceptance of the President’s invitation. I will continue to pray regularly for the President, and urge the nation to do so. I will most certainly pray for him on Inauguration Day.

Our nation is deeply divided and hurting, and more than ever need God’s grace and mercy in our time of need.

Notice that he does not withdraw his anti-gay message — it’s just not a “priority” right now. Anyone want to take bets whether he considers homosexuality one of those forms of slavery he’d like to end?

Could one of the presidential advisors please mention to him that it doesn’t matter what religious leader they try to recruit for this job, he or she is going to be an asshat?

Oh, wait, strike that: I have an interesting suggestion. Bring in the Rev. Barry Lynn — I think he’d probably do a good job of offering a secular benediction.

Jebus Christ, guess who’s going to deliver the benediction at Obama’s inauguration?

Here’s a hint.

CHAPLAIN:
Let us praise God. O Lord,…

CONGREGATION:
O Lord,…

CHAPLAIN:
…ooh, You are so big,…

CONGREGATION:
…ooh, You are so big,…

CHAPLAIN:
…so absolutely huge.

CONGREGATION:
…so absolutely huge.

CHAPLAIN:
Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell You.

CONGREGATION:
Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell You.

CHAPLAIN:
Forgive us, O Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying, and…

CONGREGATION:
And barefaced flattery.

CHAPLAIN:
But You are so strong and, well, just so super.

CONGREGATION:
Fantastic.

That’s pretty much a pitch-perfect imitation of Louis Giglio, the icky creepy pseudo-scientific preacher who has been picked to put on a piety show for Obama.

You’ve never heard of him? You’re lucky. You might want to give this video a pass then, because, oh man, he is so treacly stupid he might make you gag.

Here’s the Giglio schtick. He shows a Hubble space telescope photo. It’s really, really big. It’s huge. This thing is gigantic. And our god created it! Therefore our god is really, really, really big. He’s the biggest god ever! Here’s a diagram of the laminin molecule. IT’S SHAPED LIKE A CROSS! Aaaaaaaah! <swoons> <Meg Ryan imitation> <audience cheers wildly>

The man is a gushing idiot. And this is the clown who’ll be praying at the inauguration. Well, I won’t be watching any of it, anyway.

But at least they didn’t pick one of those ranty anti-gay homophobic conservative pastors, right?

Whoops.

Hey, wouldn’t it be great if someday a president just said, “No, we’re not going to bring one of those embarrassing loons onto the stage at all…let’s just have a secular ceremony”?

Science is partisan

I have rarely seen such a politically vapid proposition as the one that Daniel Sarewitz managed to get published in Nature. “Science must be seen to bridge the political divide“, he says. He’s worried about the politicization of science, and he seems to think it’s all the scientists’ faults.

To prevent science from continuing its worrying slide towards politicization, here’s a New Year’s resolution for scientists, especially in the United States: gain the confidence of people and politicians across the political spectrum by demonstrating that science is bipartisan.

What the hell does that even mean? Does he think the scientific institutions in this country are all arms of one political party? Has he even considered the possiblity that it isn’t science dogmatically accepting the goals of one political party, but rather, that the other party has so willfully and enthusiastically embraced anti-scientific sentiment that it is not in our own interest to support them?

He cites a letter from a long list of highly respected scientists, including a group of Nobelists, who openly endorsed Barack Obama for president. He deplores this. Why? Because many of them already had a history of supporting Democratic candidates.

But even Nobel prizewinners are citizens with political preferences. Of the 43 (out of 68) signatories on record as having made past political donations, only five had ever contributed to a Republican candidate, and none did so in the last election cycle. If the laureates are speaking on behalf of science, then science is revealing itself, like the unions, the civil service, environmentalists and tort lawyers, to be a Democratic interest, not a democratic one.

Yes? So? There is a reason most scientists tend to vote Democratic: because the Republican party is a puppet of the evangelical Christian right and the irrational reactionary Tea Party. Scientists will tend to vote for the party that best supports scientific positions and doesn’t promote anti-scientific bullshit…not because party bosses are telling them to stay in line, but because that’s what scientists care about.

When your party fields a set of presidential candidates that includes evolution-deniers and climate-change deniers, the casual disregard for scientific evidence is not going to encourage scientists that you are actually on their side. When your party is representated extravagantly by the Texas Board of Education, you’re going to be perceived as anti-science.

Sarewitz ignores all the flaming science-denialism of the far right wing of the Republican party to pretend that both parties are essentially the same.

This is dangerous for science and for the nation. The claim that Republicans are anti-science is a staple of Democratic political rhetoric, but bipartisan support among politicians for national investment in science, especially basic research, is still strong. For more than 40 years, US government science spending has commanded a remarkably stable 10% of the annual expenditure for non-defence discretionary programmes. In good economic times, science budgets have gone up; in bad times, they have gone down. There have been more good times than bad, and science has prospered.

Both parties recognize the utility of science and technology; neither really embrace it, with the Republicans being far, far worse. They appointed John Shimkus to head the Economy and Environment committee; the Shimkus who immediately announced that global climate change isn’t occurring because the Bible promised it wouldn’t. Marco Rubio could babble that there is some legitimate scientific doubt about whether the earth is 6000 or 4.5 billion years old — and he’s a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. The official Republican party platform in 2012 demanded an end to abortion and stem cell research.

Now why should scientists embrace all that? Are we supposed to pretend that doesn’t matter, because Republican approval of military and industrial research means overall level of funding to NIH/NSF won’t change?

Note that I’m not saying the Democratic party is flawless. Far from it. I’ve moaned about Tom Harkin’s alternative medicine boondoggle before; I know that Democrats are about as likely as Republicans to be anti-vaccination, and are worse about opposing genetically modified organisms. Picking either of these teams of bozos is a matter of compromise, but the differences are clear, and the Republican clowns are flagrantly anti-science, and proud of it.

So Sarewitz piously bleats out this nonsense, and then, as you might expect, offers no serious answers to how scientists are supposed to be “non-partisan.” Here’s the sum total of his advice:

To connect scientific advice to bipartisanship would benefit political debate. Volatile issues, such as the regulation of environmental and public-health risks, often lead to accusations of ‘junk science’ from opposing sides. Politicians would find it more difficult to attack science endorsed by avowedly bipartisan groups of scientists, and more difficult to justify their policy preferences by scientific claims that were contradicted by bipartisan panels.

During the cold war, scientists from America and the Soviet Union developed lines of communication to improve the prospects for peace. Given the bitter ideological divisions in the United States today, scientists could reach across the political divide once again and set an example for all.

“Reach across the political divide”? What? How? Scientists are not a voting bloc in congress. They aren’t trying to reach compromises with a group of people — they’re trying to understand the natural world, and when one party consistently defies reality with theological nonsense, we’re not going to reach out to them. We’re going to tell them they’re wrong.

There is another strategy for members of the electorate to take other than compromise: it is to advocate for the party that best fits the values of your group. Right now, the Democrats, imperfectly and with reservations, does a somewhat better job of meeting the expectations of most scientists. Why the hell should we support an anti-science political party? Because bipartisanship is a virtue unto itself? It isn’t.

Sarewitz is simply a middling idiot.

The NRA has spoken

The executive vice president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, gave a press conference today on the recent school shooting. He had a culprit in mind — the media, which lets kids see all these horribly violent programs — and a solution, which had absolutely nothing to do with addressing his postulated causes. Instead, he proposes that the nation fund armed guards for every school. Really. That’s his serious answer.

LAPIERRE: You know, five years ago after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if — what if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he’d been confronted by qualified armed security? Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 little kids, that 26 innocent lives might have been spared that day? Is it so important to you (inaudible) would rather continue to risk the alternative? Is the press and the political class here in Washington D.C. so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and American gun owners, that you’re willing to accept the world, where real resistance to evil monsters is alone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life, her life, to shield those children in her care.

No one. No one, regardless of personal, political prejudice has the right to impose that sacrifice.

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no national one size fits all solution to protecting our children. But do know that this president zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year’s budget and scrapped Secure Our Schools policing grants in next year’s budget.

With all the foreign aid the United States does, with all the money in the federal budget, can’t we afford to put a police officer in every single school? Even if they did that, politicians have no business and no authority denying us the right, the ability, and the moral imperative to protect ourselves and our loved ones from harm.

LAPIERRE: Now, the National Rifle Association knows there are millions of qualified and active retired police, active, Reserve, and retired military, security professionals, certified firefighters, security professionals, rescue personnel, an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained, qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every single school.

We could deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer, relying on the brave men and women in America’s police forces. The budgets — and you all know this, everyone in the country knows this — of our local police departments are strained, and the resources are severely limited, but their dedication and courage is second to none. And, they can be deployed right now.

I call on Congress today, to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. And, to do it now to make sure that blanket safety is in place when our kids return to school in January.

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation, or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work and by that I mean armed security.

Shorter LaPierre: MOOOOOORRRRE GUUUUUUUUUUNS!

Then we should surround playgrounds, libraries, movie theaters, swimming pools, football fields, grocery stores, candy shops, toy stores, and every place that kids might go with heavily armed guards. Let’s live in fear and turn this country into a police state.

People called him crazy 5 years ago. Now we call him obsessively, dangerously stupid.

The total cultural solution

I told you that this problem of mass shootings was amenable to skeptical analysis, and that it would take a comparative analysis to work out exactly why America was so violent. But of course, someone has already done this; this is what sociology is all about. So here’s one interesting explanation that I didn’t think of.

Mass shooters in any nation tend to be loners with not much social support who strike out at their communities, schools and families, says Peter Squires of the University of Brighton in the United Kingdom, who has studied mass shootings in his own country, the United States and Europe.

Many other countries where gun ownership is high, such as Norway, Finland, Switzerland and Israel, however, tend to have more tight-knit societies where a strong social bond supports people through crises, and mass killings are fewer, Squires said.

…

“What stops crime above all is informal social controls,” he says. “Close-knit societies where people are supported, where their mood swings are appreciated, where if someone starts to go off the rails it’s noted, where you tend to intervene, where there’s more support.”

What, a better social support network would reduce violent outbreaks? You know, that’s the very same solution that also breaks the dependency on religion. Atheists should be entirely behind building stronger government support for everyone: it weakens religion, it reduces violence, and it reduces economic disparities, giving everyone an equal opportunity to develop and grow. It’s the best and greatest solution ever!

Too bad it’s the antithesis of Republican (and conservative Democrat) policies.

It was a good week to go offline

I’ve had my head in the sand for the last week, so pardon me for arriving late to the recriminations following the violence in Newtown, Connecticut last week. Like everyone, I’m wondering why it happened, and looking for answers: unfortunately, the only people providing answers of absolute certainty are the deranged reactionaries of the far right, who are lining up at the media microphone to babble their rationales. Most seem to involve a neglectful god who is teaching us a lesson.

James Dobson: We elected the wrong presidetn and allow abortion, so: “I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.”

William J. Murray: “Without the authority of God, there are no morals, and none are taught in the public schools today. The ethics that are taught are situational, perhaps the same situational ethics that led to the logic that caused the tragic shootings in Newtown.”

Gary DeMar: “The problem is, our current culture – through the educational system – is telling young people that they are animals, in some cases, less than animals. So genetically we are no different (really) from a worm, a bug, or a dandelion.”

Mike Huckabee: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Bryan Fischer: “I think God would say to us, ‘Hey, I’d be glad to protect your children, but you’ve got to invite me back into your world first. I’m not gonna go where I’m not wanted; I am a gentleman.'”

On the less ardently god-walloping side of the right wing, though, they’re offering secular solutions. Mad, dangerous, unworkable solutions.

Louie Gohmert: “I wish to God she [the principal] had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out … and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids”

Ann Coulter: Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws.”

Megan McArdle: “I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. “

Those are all awful and ridiculous ideas. But the very worst is this anonymous poem making the rounds of facebook. WARNING: dangerous levels of treacle and stupidity! Have a vomit bag handy!

Wait. This is so bad, I better put it below the fold, just to be safe.

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