December 31
A couple Minnesotans who were observers of the Ohio recount wrote an account for the Star Tribune. The recount was something other than scrupulously honest. They confirm that county election boards chose the precinct to be recounted ahead of time, which was illegal and offered all sorts of room for mischief. There were more precincts with more votes than voters, and something new to me, representatives of Triad and Diebold were involved in the counting. Like I said earlier, all this recount has done is count the wrong way a second time. By now though, who knows if the votes were secure, on top of everything else that has gone wrong.
Hey look, compassionate conservatism. I know it's small, but look hard. After criticism that his administration was being stingy with aid after the tsunami, the aid was increased from $15 million to $20 million. This makes it just a bit less than Bush is spending to inaugurate himself. I guess the phonier the election, the pricier the inauguration needs to be to make up for it. Here's an idea for the acting president: instead of spending incredibly astounding gobs of money on his party, he could spend merely astounding gobs and put the rest into relief efforts.
For more Republican hypocrisy, get this: they want a revote in Washington. Remember how they mocked that idea in Florida in 2000? Remember how they went to court to stop the counting, and got the US Supreme Court to stop the count lest it cast doubt on the plaintiff's legitimacy? And that was with a crooked election (maybe the touchscreens allowed them to steal a big enough margin to avoid scrutiny this time). This one was transparent, but the same guy who told his opponent to concede after a 42 vote margin wants a revote now.
December 30
Former US Representative Tim Penny, formerly DFL, most recently the Independence Party candidate for Minnesota governor and a respected politician, was on MPR's Midmorning last Monday discussing Social Security reform. Though he was on Bush's Social Security commission in 2001 that had the task of coming up with a privatization scheme, and participated in the economics forum Bush held recently, he is widely regarded as the poster boy for centrism and a genuine policy wonk. He is knowledgeable on Social Security, but he can't see the wishful thinking behind his statement that Congress will take this carefully. Does that sound like the congressional Republicans and Bush administration we know? The whole point is to make an ideological attack on a program conservatives have always hated because it's not only run by the government, but it works. Penny spoke of the reform he voted for in the early 80's but seems unaware this is not the same Congress. Not that the Congress that passed Reagan's tax cuts could be considered responsible by most measures, but it was a paragon compared to this one.
Good grief, put the trust fund in mutual funds? Am I the only one who remembers the mutual fund scandals? They were just earlier this year! A caller did challenge him on the huge expenses they have in Britain and Chile, but Penny blithely dismissed them by saying Congress would be careful about which mutual fund companies get to participate. Come on readers, you know this Congress and appointed president. Can you believe for a moment cronyism won't decide everything? That they won't give the business to whoever lobbies best and forms the closest personal relationship with Bush and the Republican leadership?
What he said about Wall St. not lobbying for this isn't true. They've merely been doing it quietly. I'm not calling him a liar. He seems to have believed it. However, he hasn't lost all contact with reality, as he didn't like the idea of borrowing the money needed to cover the transition costs. He also answered a caller who suggested one of my preferred ideas, raising the ceiling on taxable income, by saying it wouldn't fly politically, and I'm sure with the current Republican leadership it wouldn't. Of course, a Democratic majority would solve that problem.
One argument that wasn't raised on Midmorning and rarely gets raised anywhere is that young people benefit from Social Security by not having to support aged parents or grandparents, freeing that money to be used for their own children, paying for college, saving for their own retirement, etc. One commentator, Robert Sheer, does get it, from his own experience. Paul B. Farrell makes the financial case against privatization on MarketWatch.
December 29
Didn't I tell you this would happen? The machines in Ohio came out with the same result in the recount. They found very few new votes. The 92,000 missed punch card votes were, of course, still missed. I don't have much hope of getting an accurate count in time to do anything with the information but make long term reforms. I will remain part of the 20% who suspect the election was fraudulent and take the lack of investigation and prevention as proof. Maybe in the next year we'll get a better idea of what really happened. That will require someone being able to go over the votes not counted and see what an accurate count would have been, while some enterprising pollsters get a handle on just how many people were prevented from voting by the long lines and how they would have voted. My suspicion is the uncounted votes and the disenfranchised voters would have given Kerry a narrow victory in Ohio, and thereby a narrow win in the electoral college. Long term, liberals, if ever we want to win another election, must make electoral reform a top priority.
While we're in Ohio, here's a real shocker. Are you sitting down? New evidence of fraud. Precincts with more votes than voters going heavily for Bush, punch cards pre-punched for Bush, revelation that even though election boards are supposed to be two Republicans and two Democrats, they are appointed by and responsible to the secretary of state, who in this case was co-chair of the Bush campaign. The item that has made headlines elsewhere is that the secretary of statefor the Bush campaign refuses to be deposed under oath for investigations of voting problems.
Apparently the insurgency isn't the acting president's fault. It's Syria's fault for allowing arms and recruits to move over its border. There's no proof of this of course, but of course in the faith based administration, no proof is needed. Syria denies the charge and says it worries about the insurgency spilling over its border. The Syrian government, a quite repressive government, deserves considerable skepticism. However, the Bush administration has not only been caught lying about just about everything regarding Iraq, not only have some of its members and apologists been clinging since the invasion to the delusion that Iraq's WMDs are hidden in Syria, but it was rattling sabers towards Syria as soon as Baghdad fell. In other words, Bush has a slight credibility problem too. He also has the accuser's burden of proof, but no proof to go with it. Maybe the obvious explanation is right, that the insurgents are overwhelmingly Iraqis who got arms from Saddam's caches and from captured arms, and they're sustained by Sunnis who don't want us there. Bush is just grasping at anything to explain away a miserable failure.
December 28
Remember the story about the Bush administration sending prisoners to countries where torture is more tolerated than here? Here are the details. If you want to do something about it, Amnesty International has identified an American citizen being held and maybe tortured in Saudi Arabia.
After reading the latest about the Ohio recount on Keith Olbermann's blog, a thought struck me. In a foreign country, if an election result is still unknown two months after the election, that is taken as evidence that something funny is going on. In a week it will be two months since the election, and it looks like the Ohio recount might not be over. In Washington, they might still have court challenges going on, but they've had three counts already and the process has been transparent. In Ohio, we never know what's going on, except the delays are interminable and every glitch has favored Bush. Is there any circumstance now under which the Ohio results can be believed?
A bizarre charge now being leveled at liberals is that we don't support the democratic opposition in Ukraine. This charge is based on, well, nothing that I can find. Here it is from a conservative talk show host based in Vancouver (yes, Canada has them too, and they wish they were here), Rachel Marsden. Here's a more academic sounding version from Stephen Zunes, which makes the case for why progressives should back the opposition, but again, no actual instances of anyone doing otherwise. Maybe someone somewhere pointed out that the opposition got money from the Bush administration and that the opposition leader, who appears to have won, may not be everything we hope. That's not exactly opposing a pro-democracy movement or backing the attempt to steal the election. Of course, accusations against liberals don't have to have a basis in reality to be thrown around. Just to make the point that the charge is false, go look at Air America's home page, which at this moment has a link to the Ukraine story. I also saw two links on Common Dreams. Besides these two sites which I believe qualify as liberal, Michael Moore has been following it too. He might be a bit left of Bush. This is also not the first time I've mentioned the story, pointing out that Vladimir Putin, who tried to help the bad guys in Ukraine, also endorsed Bush.
December 27
Blogs tend to focus on the events of the moment, just given their nature. This one is no different, as I hoped when I started this blog last August that debunking lies and misinformation in that day's news would help in the upcoming election. However, with my history and political science backgrounds, I can't help but take the longer term view, which absolutely affects how I see things and what seems important. Today is a prime example of that. Russia and China are holding joint military maneuvers, and this is a result of Bush's irresponsible use of American power. I know it's not apparent at first blush. Bear with me a few more paragraphs.
Like I mentioned when writing about "agitprop" and why terrorism doesn't scare me, I remember the Cold War. I really wish those who think the world is so much more dangerous now would read up on it and find out why their fears are nonsense. Anyway, the point here is that one of the facts of life we could count on was that Russia and China were enemies despite being communist and despite being enemies with us. If World War III started, they would be on opposing sides if not starting it by going at each other. These were both nuclear powers, in case someone wonders why the stakes were so high --- a wee bit bigger than planes crashing into buildings. So that's why I found today's news mildly chilling. Having those two cooperating was a scary prospect back then, and it gives pause now. Note I didn't say "surprise". The idea of a one superpower world seemed unlikely long term, though it appears some Americans thought it so including, unfortunately, our acting president and people with influence over him.
The unipolar world (the Cold War was often called a "bi-polar" world, and the USA Today article used the term "multi-polar") that resulted from the Soviet Union's dissolution was made apparent by America's easy defeat of Iraq in the first war, and if not apparent enough, by Russia's humiliation in the first Chechen War. The fact it wouldn't remain temporary without someone doing something about it was shown in the Balkan wars, when nothing got done without American leadership, Serbia was defeated without a single American casualty, and both Russia and the western Europeans discovered that they remained far behind us. China tried to get some propaganda points out of the destruction of their embassy in Belgrade, but they must have also noticed how easily we through our weight around on the other side of the world, not something they could do.
It would have been counter to history's lessons to assume the rest of the world would be content to let America remain the lone great power. Since the birth of the nation-state, the strengthening of one great power has always caused a realignment among the others to balance it. Such a rebalancing was inevitable, no matter what any arrogant fool of an American president might do, I grant that. Yet not much happened during the 90's. American power was active, but we acted as peacekeepers, mediators, muscle for humanitarian aid... not the sort of stuff that looks particularly threatening. Even in Iraq, controversial as it was to enforce sanctions and no fly zones, we acted within the UN. America the colossus was also America the good international citizen. It seemed remarkable to me at the time that no alliances formed against us. I thought (hoped?) it was the spread of democracy, and the consistent use of force on the side of the angels and within international law. The necessary task of containing America could be done by the international law and international organizations with which we cooperated.
Now come forward a decade. Bush, the arrogant fool referred to earlier, has invaded a country with almost no one agreeing to it, with no basis in international law, with pretenses of international approval so weak as to be laughable, with the reasons for invasion proven totally false, and with our reputation as a champion of human rights. In essence, Bush did this because he could. Because America could do anything and therefore should. History shows that the reaction which is occurring was inevitable. America the nice colossus looks like it's becoming America the hegemon. It's a combination of America showing that it's willing to invade countries that pose no threat and being able to do it. From this point of view, the mess Bush got into in Iraq is little consolation, because it would be best to prevent American invasion in the first place. Since we won't be restrained by international law or any international organization, nor by our own democratic process which failed to stop the invasion and even allowed civil liberties to be attacked at home, the only reasonable thing other countries can do is restrain us with plain old fashioned force. This, I submit, is what lies behind Russia and China cozying up to each other. Moreover, the Europeans are quite up front that part of what drives the European Union is the need to counter American power. It's tough to see the EU, which sees itself as a champion of democracy, ever being hostile towards the US. However, they have enough experience to recognize imperialism when they see it, and to know that democracy sometimes devolves into dictatorship. Russia's backsliding is a case in point. Bush's policies, both in terms of making war and attacking civil liberties, is exactly the sort of behavior a backsliding state would engage in.
I say all that fully cognizant of the sedition laws of 1798 and 1917, the internment of the Japanese in 1942, the red scares of the 1920's and the 1940's-50's, Nixon's enemies list, the prohibition on abolitionism in slave states before the Civil War, and of the Civil War itself. We survived all of those and came out freer than before. At the time, each may have seemed an unbeatable assault on our own freedom. I'm also aware that we survived the mistake of Vietnam, as well as imperialistic interventions in Cambodia, Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, etc., and how we built the country by conquest of the Indians, yet we went on to become a free country that generally supported the good guys. What is different now is that we weren't the lone superpower, but one of two, or even just one major power among many. That's why the invasion of Iraq is a bigger deal than invading Haiti in the 1920's. We're going to force other countries to form anti-American alliances strong enough to restrain us, and we can place the responsibility right on the incredibly stupid policies of the Bush administration.
For an interesting take on a related point, that we create our enemies in the course of trying to stop them: America's War on Itself.
December 25
Back to the culture wars. Remember "agitprop"? Think back to the Cold War. Think Soviet propaganda. The idea was to not only inform the people of what you wanted them to believe, but to get them worked up about it. The technique seems to have been mastered by the conservative media. They would have us believe that Christmas is endangered. Lest one example be seen as me doing what the right often does, twisting one instance into a general trend, I suggest readers go to a web search of their. Obviously you're on the web, so go look for "Christmas under siege" like I did, because I don't want to waste space on a big pile of links to prove a bunch of the right is talking about this. Oh all right, here's one more. It should be obvious that the whole thing is nonsense. There is a big Christian majority in this country, as there has always been and probably always will be. Retailing is built around Christmas. Most people have a tree in their house, many have decorations outside, carols play on the radio, you get the idea.
So where does this nonsense come from? Agitprop. Convince Christian fundamentalists that America's favorite holiday is under attack from evil secularists, which is of course a redundancy. Conservative media wants to get them good and scared and angry. Why? It's the ongoing propaganda. The suckers have to be kept in a constant state of agitation if they're to support the extreme right (remember when that was called "reactionary"?) agenda. If they ever stop to look into what they're being told about all the liberals, gays, secular humanists, civil libertarians, socialists, and other evil do-gooders, they might stop believing it, and might start noticing they've been lied to. Therefore, keep them scared that the bad people are going to take away their way of life. Keep them angry that evil is allowed to flourish, and always at the conservatives' expense.
What makes it believable that real life grinches can steal Christmas? A couple things. The first thing is that conservative Christian denominations teach that Christians are a persecuted group. I know that sounds impossible to believe in a country which is and always has been run by Christians, but I once was a Christian conservative. I was taught. Even though I was an adolescent at the time, I'm not sure I ever completely bought it, but I was taught that we would be persecuted for our faith. Many American Christians have a persecution complex, which predisposes them to believe the nonsense the conservative media yells about (if you think I mean "yells" in a purely figurative sense, go listen to conservative talk radio sometime).
The second thing is the grain of truth in all of it. There are indeed people who don't want Christmas beaten into them. What's wrong with that? Sometimes they raise objections to religious displays on public property, like a creche at city hall, or the common story of the Jewish kid who has to sing "Silent Night" at school. It's possible to go too far, like the Denver parade where the church float was excluded but other religions were included. That's when the molehill technique gets used for the sake of agitprop. First a float is wrongly kept out of a parade, and then it will be forbidden to speak of Christmas in public. Just in case anyone starts listening to the sensible people, they will be subjected to the big lie technique, where something demonstrably false is repeated, and repeated, and repeated, and repeated ... until we have Santa Sleigh Vets for Truth.
So if you're a Christian conservative but still willing to listen to a dissenting opinion, please realize this Christmas under attack stuff is nonsense, and no one is even thinking about denying you your holiday. If you're a liberal who figured that out all on your own, don't presume a definitive debunking means it won't be widely believed. Rather, maybe this is an opportunity. The looney right is so looney on this one, maybe this can be used to expose them to some credulous followers. And remember, "Happy Holidays" is just a secular euphemism to stop people saying what they really mean ---- Happy New Year.
December 24
The good guys pull ahead for a moment. By good guys, I don't mean the Washington state Democrats, though I would prefer they win the disputed governor race. I mean the people who want every legitimate vote counted. The state supreme court said the wrongly disqualified ballots in King County should be counted. Justice Susan Owens summed it up quite nicely when she asked the Republicans, "You're looking at it from the point of view of the winner or the loser - shouldn't we be looking at it from the point of view of the voter?" The supreme court was unanimous. Gregoire was ahead by ten after King County counted the undisputed ballots, and 130 after the disputed ballots were counted. The Republicans are now looking for wrongly disqualified votes for Rossi. The secretary of state, a Republican, supported counting the disputed ballots. He now says it would be illegal for counties that have certified to go back and look at disqualified ballots. I give him credit for upholding the law even if it hurts his party, but the Republicans are more right. No vote should be disqualified for technicalities. The principal that every vote gets counted should override everything else. My argument with the Republicans is they're looking just for Rossi votes, not calling for every county that didn't count mistakenly disqualified ballots to go back and do so. Gregoire will help her legitimacy if she calls for every county to do that. Even if enough wrongly disqualified votes are found to put Rossi in office, Democrats will gain credibility for attempts to fight for voters rights elsewhere.
Keith Olbermann continues his yeoman work on the peculiar election in Ohio. He wrote in his blog that the Hocking County peculiarities were resolved with no wrongdoing discovered, but the next day was willing to correct himself when something was pointed out to him, and to strain my tendonitis by patting myself on the back, it was something I pointed out Monday, that the investigation into just what the Triad technician did with the machine didn't address his desire to know which precincts would be recounted by hand. Ohio law calls for 3% of each county to be recounted by hand, and that 3% is supposed to be random. Olbermann quotes the Green Party recount coordinator for southeastern Ohio, Orren Whiddon, saying, "86 of Ohio's 88 counties have pre-selected their random precincts." If the precincts are pre-selected, how are they random? Perhaps the counties were just trying to be efficient, but my question is why have authorities in Ohio failed to play things straight through this whole ordeal, from registration through recount? The impression they leave is of nefarious activity, even where none is occurring.
Thinking longer term than the possible fraudulent election of 2004, California Senator Diane Feinstein is proposing an amendment to replace the Electoral College with direct popular election. Her press release mentions that the election focused on just a few swing states. There were maybe fewer swing states in this election, but that's normal. As someone who lived in a swing state, I will attest that all the blitz of commercials was lousy to sit through, and probably part of why the election was so bitter. I suppose a swing state voter's annoyance isn't a good reason for a popular vote, but the point is that a focus on a few states and the issues that matter there doesn't serve the nation.
December 23
While things seem stalled in the Ohio recount, Washington is providing entertainment and a great example of how the Republican party really doesn't respect the right to vote. A conservative radio station organized a rally in front of the state capitol to support Dino Rossi and protest fraud in the election. They have every right to rally and protest fraud where they suspect it. They have the right to have the fraud investigated. The biggest hypocrisy however is that they have fought every attempt to investigate fraud in the presidential race, interfered with attempts to register voters, acted to suppress turnout in Democratic areas, and they blocked every attempt to make touchscreen auditable. Every problem in the presidential election has benefited the acting president, yet they want Democrats, Greens, and Libertarians to just graciously accept the result. Specifically in the governor race, Rossi called on Christine Gregoire to be gracious and accept the result of the machine recount, but he and party leaders aren't being gracious about accepting ballots that, unexpected as they were, were disqualified by election worker error. There weren't even the technicalities Republicans have used to disqualify registrations and votes in other states, like the checkboxes in Florida or the ovals in San Diego.
Republicans are using a tactic they used in Ohio however. When they brought blatantly false challenges in Ohio, and showed no shame when they were properly thrown out, one of their tactics was to send letters to voters and challenge them on the grounds the letters came back. Some recipients said they refused the letters. Well, guess what, the Republicans tried this again in Washington.
December 22
Here's the quote of the White House denying there is a presidential memo authorizing torture: "What the FBI agent wrote in the e-mail is wrong. There is no executive order on interrogation techniques." It seems unlikely an FBI agent would be mistaken about the name on the memo. Either some FBI agent lied, or Bush is lying now. Remember this quote if, probably when, the memo comes out.
Richard Viguerie (I wonder if his fellow conservatives hate his French name?) said something on Now with Bill Moyers that explains a lot about the willingness of conservative news media to lie. Here's the exchange:
MOYERS: Do you think what Sean Hannity said is fair?So there's no truth, no such thing as objective factual information, just opinion. That mindset explains why the conservative media act as propagandists though they act like journalists. They act as propagandists by spreading misinformation, perhaps we can even say disinformation, since they at least feel no need to have a factual basis for what they say, and frequently resort to repeating what has been debunked as long as it helps their side. It explains how their audience is utterly unskeptical of what conservative media says, but refuses to believe anything from liberal or mainstream media that contradicts their opinion. That in turn explains why so many people who rely on conservative media are hold grotesque misconceptions like Saddam was behind 911, WMDs have been found in Iraq, or that the Swift Boat Veterans for Shameless Lying weren't debunked on everything. Apparently it's okay to be completely dishonest as long as you're right. I mean "right" in both senses.VIGUERIE: Oh, absolutely.
MOYERS: But there's no fact to back that up. There's no effort to substantiate that with documentation.
VIGUERIE: That's what journalism is. It's just all opinion. Just opinion.
December 21
The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has been releasing documents it's been getting from the federal government regarding mistreatment of detainees from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today on All Things Considered, a staff attorney for the ACLU, Jameel Jaffer, said one document referred several times to a secret presidential memo (scroll to ACLU Presses for Detainee Information) authorizing the use of coercive interrogations. Seymour Hersh reported a similar memo, which looks like the same one. NPR says the White House denies the memo exists, so if it does, they're lying. Hersh quoted Bush saying, "I determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world." Such a determination is illegal. He can't on his own throw out a treaty. If detainees aren't charged with a crime, they are POWs and subject to the Geneva Conventions. If they are charged, they must be given a fair trial. Bush refuses to do either. In either case, torture is illegal under both domestic and international law. Could this memo be what gets Bush indicted for war crimes? To make the charge stick in a criminal trial, it wouldn't be enough that war crimes happened while he was president or even that he should have taken more precautions. It would have to be shown he at least had foreknowledge or refused to take action when he found out. If he authorized torture, that would certainly be foreknowledge. One thing that is certain is that this wasn't a few soldiers who got out of hand, but a systematic problem. However, watch for the conservative propaganda machine to keep saying it was just a few people doing it and the ACLU is the villain for bringing it up.
In case someone thinks human rights abuses can't have an influence at home, how about a two hour interrogation because your 11 year old child expressed opposition to the war? This happened to Pamela Albaugh of Leesburg, VA. She was interrogated two hours by the county sheriff's department, and her husband another hour because their son allegedly said, "I wish all Americans were dead and that American soldiers should die." He said this to his teacher. So, did the school treat this as a teachable moment, explain why we support the troops when we oppose the war, explain why wishing something like that is wrong? No, they went off the deep end, acting like an 11 year old boy might be a terrorist. Anybody out there think it can't happen to you?
December 20
I realized this slight deficiency after posting yesterday's entry, but you can scroll down and see how long it was. That one will end up on the opinions part of my personal web site. To fix it for now, yesterday's first paragraph implied that the subject would be attempts to keep evolution of the classroom, but the links in the paragraph were to stories about attempts to include creationism. For an example of keeping evolution out, my mother formerly worked at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Her job included arranging reservations for school groups to see the omnitheater film, so she was usually speaking to teachers. One of the most common questions she got was whether the film mentioned evolution. They were paranoid about it. They even asked when the film was about Charles Darwin's voyage to the Galapogos Islands, which is rather frightening considering these were teachers asking. The key thing is that while probably some teachers themselves objected to the teaching of evolution, they were worried about the reaction of parents if they found out their child heard evolution mentioned. No wonder a plurality of Americans still believe in creationism. As nonsensical as it is, they haven't been taught anything else. I can't provide a link to my mother, so you'll have to believe I'm telling the truth about what she said, and that she told me the truth at the time. If you won't believe that, go away.
Observers seem convinced nothing untoward happened when a Triad technician did something with a voting machine in Hocking County, Ohio. All that happened was the techinician repeated the procedures he said he did on the day in question. I notice the article makes no mention of the other allegations, that he asked which machine would be used for the recount and he suggested a way to cheat to make sure the recount totals matched.
In the Washington state recount, Elections Director Nick Handy filed an affidavit stating that five counties already counted ballots not included in the original count. King COunty is so far being held to a different standard than the rest of the state. The problem comes down to that basic Republican refusal to respect every voter's right to vote. Winnign is more important than respecting the democratic process. Does anyone still fail to understand about a third of Democrats suspect the presidential election was stolen?
December 19
The evolution will not be televised. Actually, it will. It's on Nova and Discovery's Science Channel quite frequently. It's the classroom where you might be asked to pretend it doesn't exist. Evolution gets in the news once in a while when it becomes an issue for a school board, as has happened recently in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kansas and Georgia.
The core of the problem is the common belief that evolution is just a "theory", meaning just a guess. Science is a set of beliefs, just like religion, and therefore a matter of faith. We can each believe what we want, and since the choice is generally presented as including or not including God, the choice is obvious. This is the sustaining factor behind creationism, also called creation science, and its newer iteration, intelligent design. So why isn't creationism as valid a scientific theory as evolution? Because the assumptions behind that logic are simply wrong. They hang together not just on faith, but on a misunderstanding of science and specifically of evolution.
"Theory" doesn't mean "guess". It means an overall explanation for the available data. It does allow for the possibility of change, but not in the sense of being thrown out. To become an accepted theory, a theory has to have a whole lot of evidence behind it, it has to be the best explanation for the available facts, and it undergoes critical peer review. There can be aspects not understood, but not big enough to put the theory in doubt. The Earth going around the sun is still considered a theory, even though we can see the planets going around the sun, because we don't know everything about how they ended up in the orbits they did. Evolution's equivalent might be missing links, held up as evidence that it's just a guess or even wrong. Unfortunately for creationists, fewer links are missing all the time.
The forms of no longer missing links have been accurately predicted, which is a key reason evolution is science and creationism isn't. Science has to be based on the available data, and has to be revised when new data is discovered. It's possible to make predictions and, this is important, test them. Creationism isn't testable. Missing data is just "God did it". Evidence which doesn't fit the conclusion is thrown out, or given the explanation that fits the conclusion. That is perhaps the key difference between evolution and creationism, science and faith. Faith believes, and accepts only that which confirms the belief. Science starts with data, and draws a conclusion. It's not just a different faith.
I'm not going to go over the whole theory of evolution, partly because Charles Darwin's Origin of Species is a huge book, partly because a bit more has been added over the last 145 years, and partly there was an excellent explanation of the theory and how we know what we know in the November 2004 National Geographic, with the provocative cover "Was Darwin Wrong?". The first page of the print edition starts out with a word in huge letters, "NO". The print copy is necessary for the full article, but an excerpt is on the web site. The web site version includes links to a bunch of sites which go into the subject in greater depth, including at least one creationist site's rebuttal which got in the list despite calling National Geographic a liar. This article is a good example of creationism, not because it makes a believable case, but because it shows how creationists argue their point. Besides calling the other side liars, the article misstates what the other side says, starts with premises that aren't factual to reach it's conclusions, uses scientific sounding words, and falls back on the Bible.
For example, near the beginning, the author of that article, Terry Mortenson says National Geographic "...reflects on the fact that nearly half of Americans don't believe in evolution, due in part to 'Scriptural literalism' [really, it's simply believing God's plain word]..." He later says evolution can't be a theory in the same way as other theories that are based on repeatable observations, because evolution is the unobserved past. I guess he would throw out history too since the living weren't there to see it. In fact, none of us were there when the Bible was written, but some of us feel awfully certain about it. Actually, his notion comes under the category of false premises too since the theory of evolution is based partly on contemporary observation and comparison of specimens, like Darwin did, and is backed by genetic evidence. The latter, as the National Geographic article shows, has been adequate for predicting intermediate species found by paleontologists. Predictions that can be tested sounds rather scientific, doesn't it?
In a later paragraph, he says:
Creationists believe, based on the clear teaching of Genesis, that God supernaturally made different "kinds" of plants and animals during the first six literal days of history and that He endowed those creatures with the genetic information to produce enormous varieties within the original kinds but not the ability to change into a different kind.This marvelously illustrates the fallacies of creationism. "Kinds" isn't a scientific term. It has no specific meaning, like "species". It comes from Genesis, or rather some translations thereof. Genesis wasn't written in English. A different translator can come up with a different word for "kinds". He wants something observable for evolution, but there's no test for the supernatural. It's sort of correct to say a kind doesn't change into another because there's no such thing. If he means genes don't change, well, they do. That's what mutation does. The key thing though is the belief that God made everything as is and Genesis tells how. Genesis isn't a science text. Faith isn't proof to those who don't share that faith. That's the part creationists either can't figure out or don't want to accept.
Another creationist fallacy is that contradictions in evolutionary theory disprove it:
Evolutionists say that only evolution can explain why there are certain creatures in one location, say kangaroos in Australia, but not in another location. However, Darwin claimed that evolution explained the pattern of life on fixed continents, while now evolution is supposed to explain the pattern of life on continents that moved apart from one big one. If evolution is so flexible that it can explain such mutually incompatible distributions, then it explains nothing at all.If Darwin is taken on faith, then The Origin of Species is like a sacred text, and contradictions disprove it. That sort of thinking explains why Genesis has to be literally right or not at all. There's another explanation that better fits the facts for an apparent contradiction. There has been another 145 years of research. Darwin got some things wrong. As new facts are discovered, conclusions have to change. That's the difference between reason and faith.
Later, Mortenson did the mischaracterization thing. He quotes paleontologist Stephen Gould saying the trade secret is the lack of transitional forms, the infamous missing links. Mortenson is honest enough to give the date in a footnote, 1977, but in the text would be relevant, because even if the argument could be made back then, more transitional forms have been found since. Why would anyone even bring up a discredited argument? Because that's what creationists do. It doesn't matter if an opposing point is proven or a supporting one is debunked. Creationism means simultaneously ignoring evidence which doesn't fit the belief, and believing explanations without supporting evidence. It's shown so clearly when Mortenson says, "Darwin attributed the lack of evidence to our ignorance of the fossil record. But today our museums are loaded with fossils and the missing links are still missing." That's just not true. Mortenson evens mentions a classic example, archaeopteryx, discovered just a few years after Darwin published his theory, half dinosaur and half bird, just like Darwin predicted.
Just to add the right touch at the finish, the same issue of National Geographic included an article on Mayan myths --- including their creation myth. I wonder if there are Mayan fundamentalists who discount evolution because Darwin didn't mention that people were made out of corn?
December 17
The "Republicans Have No Shame" show continues in Washington state, where Republicans asked a judge to stop the count of ballots mistakenly disqualified by election workers. They found a friendly judge in a different county to agree with them that through some technicality, it's too late to count the ballots. They can't even claim the technicality is in the law, as it's pretty clear. To give some credit however, the Republican secretary of state, Sam Reed, unlike his counterparts in Florida and Ohio, chose the side of the angels and agreed the ballots ought to be counted.
Finally I get into the 3G issues like I promised the other day. It's scary, but not surprising: a large minority of Americans believe the civil rights of Muslims should be restricted. It's also not surprising that religious people are more likely than non-religious people told believe this. These are the same people who want restrictions on homosexuals, organized prayer in public schools, etc. The common thread is a belief majority rule should be allowed to override minority rights. The classical term for it is "tyranny of the majority". The theory behind protections for minority rights, like the Bill of Rights, is that the majority have little to fear from the imposition of governmental power as they will likely be in agreement with it, and better able to influence it or vote out those who run it. Minorities are more likely to be the objects of the suppression of their rights. Despite the persecution complex of conservative Christians, Christians are a majority of the whole population, and conservatives probably the majority of Christians. Given their numbers, it would be easy to make impositions upon people of other religions were it not for minor obstacles like the Bill of Rights. It's hard to believe the grassroots conservative Christians understand the Bill of Rights when even those in high public office don't, like Mary Kiffmeyer who said the words "separation of church and state" were the most destructive words in American life.
It would be somehow unjust if Alberto Gonzales is disgraced not by his countenancing of war crimes or malfeasance in presenting Gov. Bush (his last legitimate position, so I guess he can still be called that) with death penalty cases for review that left out the defendants' side, but by failing utterly in his latest task, vetting Bernie Kerik for Homeland secretary. I'll take it anyway. Of all Bush's nominees, even more the Kerik, Gonzales is the one I most want to see gone. Even Rice is probably just a habitual liar, but Gonzales is a cruel bastard.
December 16
In the category of "Republicans Have No Shame", we have an election for mayor in San Diego where a Republican, incumbent Dick Murphy, has had himself sworn in, even though it's already definite that the Democrat won. How could this happen? The Democrat, Donna Frye, was a write-in candidate, and some of the voters who wrote her in didn't mark an oval next to her name. Seriously, that's it. All those were deemed illegal, even though there was no doubt who they intended and the rule seems to defy common sense. But no, knowing they're winning only by disenfranchising some voters, the Republicans are trying to make a technicality decide the election. The legal wrangling goes on, since common sense and federal election law might happily coincide.
Heading up the west coast, remember when the Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi said Democrat Christine Gregoire should graciously accept his 42 vote margin after a machine recount? He's gained 79 votes so far in the hand recount, and he accepts those, but his party is suing King County over 573 absentee votes mistakenly disqualified by election workers. It wasn't even the voters who made the mistake this time, but they still want a way to disqualify the votes. Why? King County includes Seattle, which is heavily Democratic.
Even that's just hypocrisy, not the outright fraud that's just been newly alleged in the recount in, guess where, Ohio. A technician for Triad Systems, which built the punch card machines, was witnessed doing something with a machine in Hocking County. This violates orders to not touch ballots or machines until the recount is over. The company says the maintenance is routine and they have nothing to hide. An affidavit from an election worker says the technician told county staff how to inconspicuously post the original vote totals, so they could check those and report them as the recount result. What's really weird, or maybe sloppy, is a report in the New York Times that mentions the technicians visit, the affidavit, and the company's explanation, but not the advice to cheat in the recount, that the company is controlled by Republican donors, nor that the company made the punch card machines used in Florida. This is just too many coincidences to look innocent. What it demonstrates is that this machine recount is pointless. It's now under a cloud all it's own, besides the questionable veracity of recounting with the same machines that made the mistakes. If Ohio would just go right to a hand recount, this wouldn't be an issue. There will be a request for a hand recount of course, and thanks to the interminable delays by the secretary of state, there conveniently won't be time. If Republicans are so confident the result won't change, why to they so resist counting every vote? It comes down to the primary reason I'm not a Republican and probably never will be: they don't care what they do to win.
And for some judicial weirdness, the Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice, Thomas Moyer, has thrown out the challenge to the Ohio election on the grounds that it challenges more than one election. Huh?
See the archives for earlier entries.
