Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

Dump Duhbya

Global Warming Melts the Republican Message

I sometimes get the sense that Duhbya and conservatives of all stripes (from neo- to paleo-) are finally parting company. You can’t blame conservatives: Duybya has effectively destroyed their political chances, quite possibly for a long time to come. Duhbya, in turn, may realize the conservatives give him nothing now and by pretending to be the guy he pretended to be in 2000 (the compassionate uniter, not the indifferent divider he truly is), he might trick Democrats into giving him something that seems to offset his legacy of incompetence and shame.

As the World Warms, the White House Aspires, By Dana Milbank

Yesterday, as the temperature pushed toward 90 degrees in the capital, global warming caused a meltdown in the Bush administration’s message machine.

Just as President Bush was about to wheel out his “new international climate change framework,” the NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, declared that there is no need to take action against global warming.

“Whether that is a long-term concern or not, I can’t say,” he said in an interview with National Public Radio, adding: “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.” In fact, Griffin found it “rather arrogant” to suggest that global warming is a bad thing.

A couple of hours after the broadcast, Griffin’s boss took the stage at the Ronald Reagan Building to endorse just such arrogance — an initiative aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. “The United States takes this issue seriously,” Bush said.

This mixed message led to a rather cool reception for Jim Connaughton, the president’s adviser on the environment, as he briefed reporters on the plan at noon.

“Will the new framework consist of binding commitments or voluntary commitments?” asked CBS News’s Jim Axelrod.

“In this instance, you have a long-term, aspirational goal,” Connaughton answered.

Aspirational goal? Like having the body you want without diet or exercise? Or getting rich without working?
– – – – –

OpinionJournal – Peggy Noonan
Too Bad President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder.

What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.

The White House doesn’t need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don’t even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place. [mjh:Damn, I misunderestimated Duhbya. I thought he was stupid and heartless, but it was just a con!]

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. [mjh: Official GOP disclaimer: the GOP does not believe “battered wife syndrome” exists and supports traditional family values, including god’s own plan for wifely subservience and the need for a husband to occasionally assert his unquestionable authority.] …

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it’s time. It’s more than time. [mjh: Official GOP disclaimer: the GOP does not believe “psychology” and other liberal excuses for bad behavior.]

It’s fascinating to watch the self-professed “deep-thinkers” of the “party of ideas,” “the moral and silent majority” that in 2004 declared their victory would last a generation — to watch that party fall apart, long-knives flying. Couldn’t happen to a better group. Too bad the whole world is on the brink of destruction. mjh

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Global Peace Index: We’re 96th! We’re 96th!

Iran, U.S. have something in common: Both rank high in violence, By BARRY SCHWEID, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The United States placed 96th [in an assessment of the peacefulness of 121 countries] and Iran came in 97th on the global index released Wednesday by researchers at the Economist magazine.

“The United States suffers because it is the world’s policeman, with high levels of militarization,” Andrew Williamson, the director for economic research, said in an interview. …

Norway was rated at the country most at peace, followed by New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland and Japan. Iraq was in last place, with Sudan and Israel just above. …

Western Europe was rated the world’s most peaceful region, although France was ranked 34th and the United Kingdom 49th. …

About 24 indicators were used, including wars fought in the last five years, arms sales, prison populations and incidence of crime. …

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070531/NEWS07/70531018/1009

Dump Duhbya

The Village Idiot

During a Rose Garden news conference on Thursday, President Bush was asked by New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg why Osama bin Laden is still at large. Bush responded:

“Why is he at large? Because we haven’t got him yet, Jim. That’s why. And he’s hiding, and we’re looking, and we will continue to look until we bring him to justice. We’ve brought a lot of his buddies to justice, but not him. That’s why he’s still at large. He’s not out there traipsing around, he’s not leading many parades, however. He’s not out feeding the hungry. He’s isolated, trying to kill people to achieve his objective.”

NADA - New American Dark Ages, other voices

Last Week’s WTF?!

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor
Wolves Terrorizing Catron County

MEXICAN WOLF program personnel are the ones flagrantly and regularly breaking federal laws and regulations and thereby causing intolerable endangerment in Catron County as the people are made to tow the line in all areas regarding safety for wolves.

There are many similarities between dumping killer predators in people’s yards and commandeering airplanes and flying them into buildings. In both cases the targets are people, not government.

These federal functionaries who illegally and/or unsafely dump killer predators are not attacking the U.S. government. They are attacking average citizens in our homes and on our properties. …

Will the Department of Justice explain why cover-ups and the breaking of federal law and rules leading to illegal predator dumping is not terrorism, and why they are shirking their duty? Will the U.S. attorney explain to the world why planned and deliberate acts of terror directed against the people are of no concern to his office, if indeed, that is the case?

MARY MACNAB
Blue, Ariz.

A few years ago, conservative loonies feared The New World Order, enforced by jackbooted thugs, black helicopters and UN forces. Before that, the bogeyman was a communist. (Why do we let the fearful set our agenda?)

This is what happens when we engage in a war without end against a faceless enemy that could be anywhere, anytime (look over your shoulder, look under your bed). Terrorism is the new name for anything you don’t like. It’s becoming meaningless, as are the conservatives. mjh

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Bible Literalism is Voluntary Ignorance

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If you believe the universe is only a few thousand years old, you are wrong. This is not a matter of opinion or perspective. This is willful ignorance. This is choosing to be stupid. That is one’s choice, but unbearable to witness. mjh

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The Denver Post – Museum’s biblical take on “history”
Exhibit opens to public Monday
By Dylan T. Lovan, The Associated Press

Most scientists say there’s a gulf of millions of years between humans and the giant lizards, but according to the Creation Museum, they lived in harmony a few thousand years ago. It’s part of the literal interpretation of the Bible adopted by Ham and other creationists.

“People are just fascinated by dinosaurs, but they’ve sort of become synonymous with millions of years and evolution,” he said.

Evolution is derided at the 60,000- square-foot facility, packed with high-tech exhibits designed by an acclaimed theme-park artist, animatronic dinos and a huge wooden ark. In this Old Testament version of history, dinosaurs appeared on the same day God created other land animals.

A Colorado group offers a similar take on area museums. Littleton- based Biblically Correct Tours, founded in 1988, offers religious tours of secular sites, such as the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

The Kentucky museum’s displays include fossils, hung in large glass cases. Ham said most fossils were created by the massive flood detailed in the book of Genesis.

“The Bible doesn’t talk about fossils, but it gives you a basis for understanding why there are fossils around the world,” he said. [mjh: what a curious equivocation, to take the Bible literally but then fill in gaps as needed. Why not just say there is no such thing as a fossil because the Bible doesn’t mention them?]

Ham said the stories of the Bible are supported by science, a notion that has drawn the ire of science educators across the country.

“They make such a point of trying to make it appear scientific,” said Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor, author and critic of the museum. “Instead of shying away from those things that clearly disprove what they’re trying to say, they use those things for deception.”

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Speak Truth to Power

My favorite contemporary writer is Dan Neil. I think he pays his bills by writing car reviews for the LA Times, but that earns him the option to write a column labelled “Pop Culture.” Neil is literate; nearly every column includes some deliciously offbeat word that gives me pause.

While I enjoy almost everything Neil writes about contemporary culture, I especially appreciate his take on our war-culture. I’ll let him speak for himself here, but if this excerpt doesn’t impress you, seek him out — he’s worth reading. mjh

[mjh: In a column titled “Bomb Mots,” Neil writes about cable TV shows devoted to military weapons. I’ll resist the urge to highlight a few choice phrases. I think you’ll see them for yourself.]

Bomb Mots – Los Angeles Times

God knows I love to see things blow up. A proper gentleman’s education cannot be considered complete unless he has, at some point, shot a watermelon with a high-powered rifle. But I have a major problem with a lot of this programming, the first being its clinical and morally vacant fascination in killing. You know that familiar wing-camera footage of white-orange napalm blooming in the jungle canopy in Vietnam? There are people under there. At the other end of every smart bomb is some poor dumb bastard who is about to be blown to bits. When I hear some narrator crow about America’s precision bombing, I just cringe. There is nothing precise about a 1,000-pound bomb.

I had a similar reaction to media coverage of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Grand Challenge, DARPA’s annual open competition for autonomous ground vehicles. How many people registered that this was a program to develop robotic weapons? Did anybody even see “The Terminator”?

It’s not about the necessity of armed conflict, or morality of a particular weapon. All of that is, as they say in the military, above my pay grade. It’s about making glib entertainment out of mechanized death. You couldn’t blame a visitor from another country watching this program and concluding that Americans have slipped into a nutty late-Roman fascism.

[mjh: I cut from this Neil’s exchange with one of the hosts of such a show, but here’s the ending.]

Good propaganda fools the people who see it. Great propaganda fools the people who make it.

Letters-to-the-Editor, NADA - New American Dark Ages

How Some People Celebrated Earth Day (updated 5/8/07)

As I do every other day, I walked Lucky Dog around the neighborhood park today. Our park has two soccer fields, both of which are in use most Saturdays and, maybe, Sundays. Today, all around the two fields, I picked up small water bottles thoughtlessly tossed on the ground by players or fans (parents). We tell ourselves many lies, one of which is that “sports build character and discipline.” The evidence of that litters fields all over the world. Another lie: “environmental consciousness has become mainstream.” Or any kind of consciousness, for that matter.

To all the coaches, referees and parents: how about a post-game sweep of the field to clean-up? Show some leadership, teach some discipline, encourage some character. To the athletes: it’s up to you to keep your world from becoming a pigsty. mjh

PS: original blog entry 04/23/07; printed in abqjournal.com 5/8/07