Ten Commandments Update

I am not sure who's more confused, me or The Rev. Ewing Marietta.

Well, that's a bit facetious on my part I must admit. Perhaps neither of us are confused.  Perhaps each of us is only a teensy bit confused but confused about different things.  Who know?  Whatever the case, it sure looks to me like the good pastor is missing the point about why the Ten Commandment monument at the Connellsville Jr High is so offensive.

Or maybe he gets the point and is just looking to save face, as it were.

Let's go to the news coverage at the Trib:

The Thou Shall Not Move group plans to erect four new Ten Commandments monuments at upcoming dedication ceremonies while the Connellsville School District and the Freedom From Religion Foundation continue to wage a legal battle over a monument that has been located on school property for more than a half century.

The Rev. Ewing Marietta, pastor of Liberty Baptist Church and an organizer of Thou Shall Not Move, said the dedication events will take place at 12:45 p.m. Sept. 8 at 301 S. Pittsburgh St., Connellsville; 5 p.m. Sept. 15 at the corner of North Arch and Water streets near the Amtrak train station; 1 p.m. Sept. 29 near a bus stop in Dunbar; and 7 p.m. Oct. 5 at 105 Hoke St., Bullskin Township.

Looks like they're erecting some new monuments in the area but it also looks like these erections are on private property.

“We have requests from 52 different places that want Ten Commandments monuments placed on their property,” he said. “We're going down the list and starting with the places that requested the monuments first.”

Marietta said the monuments have already been placed outside the Connellsville Eagles Club on Arch Street, on the grounds of St. Paul's AME Church on Morgantown Street in Uniontown and at the Juniata United Methodist Church in Dunbar.

This, of course, is completely constitutional as each of these spaces is private property.

And I am not sure whether Marietta gets the irony of the Trib's last paragraph:

“Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, a Quaker who was in prison in England three times because of his religion, and came to this country for religious freedom,” Marietta said. “People should be able to hold onto their religious morals and values without the threat of being thrown into jail. We don't want to force the Ten Commandments monuments on anyone, but we don't want them taken away from the public eye.”

Still don't see the irony here?  I'll give you a hint from pa.gov:

Many Englishmen accused the Friends of disloyalty to the Crown as well as to the Church of England. As a result, the British Parliament enacted a series of repressive religious measures known as the Clarendon Code. The strictures elevated Anglicanism to "established church" status and declared all other religious observances to be "non-conformist" and, hence, illegal.

So he was arrested for not conforming to an established church.  Isn't the establishment of a state church something barred by the 1st Amendment?  And isn't posting religious instructions on school property something that is just too close to establishing a state church to be constitutionally acceptable?

Why yes, yes it is.

And so is The Rev. Ewing Marietta as wrong about this historical metaphor as he is about the nature of the separation of church and state?

Hot patootie and bless my soul, he certainly is.

Amazing

Listening to someone named Wes Minter on KDKA right now.  He's sitting in for my good friend Mike Pintek.

After listening for a few minutes, this is the message I sent in via the Dollar Bank instant access line:

It's amazing to hear conservatives say "unless we were attacked, where to we get off being the attacker?" regarding Syria. It's amazing to hear conservatives SUDDENLY want to be 100% sure about the use of WMD.

Where were these exact same conservatives in 2003? We weren't attacked by Iraq yet they said we had to attack. Iraq didn't have WND yet they said we had to attack.

And yet those same lies led to the deaths of 4500 American servicemen and women and yet for conservatives any criticism of the Bush administration's decision of war was tantamount to treason.

For the record I am not in favor of attacking Syria - but then I wasn't in favor of the illegal war in Iraq, either.

So far, no response from Mr Minter.

The Trib Covers A Source.

Yes, they're still at it.

From today's Tribune-Review editorial page:

The left and “progressives” love to blame wage stagnation on greedy businesses wanting to gobble a larger share of the pie. But it's actually a product of businesses' uncertainty about taxes, regulations and employee-benefit costs — which the Obama administration has exacerbated.

Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the nonpartisan, free-market Institute for Policy Innovation (ipi.org), notes...

Regardless of what Mr Matthews actually said regarding wages, take a look at how Scaife's braintrust characterizes the IPI -  "nonpartisan" and "free-market."

Really?  Nonpartisan? Let's go take a look.

Back in October, 2012, American Enterprise Institute scholar J. D. Kleinke published a piece in the New York Times called "The Conservative Case for Obamacare" and for that he was, according to Forbes.com "pilloried" by what they call "Conservative policy experts."

Among them:

Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation: “The fundamental philosophical difference is that liberals do not think the free market can work in health care and so the government must make it work. Conservatives think the free market has never been tried. Kleinke is clearly in the former camp and is thus making the liberal, not the conservative, case for ObamaCare.” [Bolding in original.]

In 2002 the Capital Research Center, a conservative think-tank that is itself the beneficiary of almost $5.3 million of Scaife foundation money over the years rated the Institute for Policy Innovation as an "8" on a "1 to 8"/"Left to Right"scale.

And since we mentioned the Scaife money, how much has this "nonpartisan" think tank received from foundations controlled by my good friend Richard Mellon Scaife?

Of the $2 million or so it's received from various foundations, the IPI got about a quarter of that ($470,000) from The Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations.

Finally, if the place were so "nonpartisan" why would TeaParty Senator Ted Cruz be a part of its 25th Anniversary gala?

Nonpartisan?  Not even close.

Disassembling The Trib's Climate Science Denial

Let's start with what Scaife's braintrust published this morning at the Tribune-Review and then unweave point by point:

Al Gore, who profited handsomely paving the way for Al Jazeera's U.S. entree, likens climate change skeptics to racists, homophobes and those who enable an alcoholic's denial. Oh, this just in — the United States recorded 2,899 record cold temperatures versus 667 record warm temperatures between July 24 and Aug. 19.[Bolding in original.]

There are two points I want to look at here; what Al Gore said and the data being used to "debunk" the climate science.

First, what did Gore actually say?  Did he really "liken climate change skeptics to racists..." and so on?

No, not really.  In a piece in a Washington Post piece about how and why he's "optimistic" about the future regarding climate science, this is what Gore actually said:

Well, I think the most important part of it is winning the conversation. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, hey man, we don’t go for that anymore. The same thing happened on apartheid. The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We’re winning that conversation.

The conversation on global warming has been stalled because a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it’s mentioned. It’s like a family with an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time a subject is mentioned and so everybody avoids the elephant in the room to keep the peace. But the political climate is changing. Something like Chris Hayes’s excellent documentary on climate change wouldn’t have made it on TV a few years ago. And as I said, many Republicans who’re still timid on the issue are now openly embarrassed about the extreme deniers. The deniers are being hit politically. They’re being subjected to ridicule, which stings. The polling is going back up in favor of doing something on this issue. The ability of the raging deniers to stop progress is waning every single day.

So it's not really about "likening" deniers to racists, homophobes and so on.  It's really about how the conversation is changing.  In the past (before "civil rights was won in the South") a racist joke was far more acceptable in day to day discourse.  Same thing regarding members of the various LGBTQ communities across the country.  Not that everything's fixed, mind you, but the conversation's changed enough that two gay men can hold hands in a fast food restaurant and the homophobes who try to ridicule them are themselves subject to public shaming.

Imagine that 20 years ago.  Or 10.

The conversation is changing, he said.  The deniers are the ones subject to ridicule (like this from just last week) because their position is simply embarrassing.

Now let's take a look at the data the braintrust is trying to use to undermine the science.  I haven't been able to track down it's exact source, but let's (for the minute) assume it's true - that United States recorded 2,899 record cold temperatures versus 667 record warm temperatures between July 24 and Aug. 19. 

Even if that's true, so what?

The United States only makes up about 6.6% of the total land mass of the planet (or only about 2% of its total surface area).  Assuming a world wide pattern from such a small selection of the data is misleading (at best).   But even if it does point out a large scale trend (that there were fewer "record-setting hot days in that month") again, so what?

What's the larger global trend?  The selected data the braintrust uses doesn't go anywhere near the global trend.

Which is still getting warmer.

The braintrust is running out of ways to mislead on climate science.

The Trib's Climate Strawman Argument

Before proceeding, we gotta answer the question, "What's a strawman argument?"

Here's an answer:

A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is, refutes this misrepresentation of the position, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted.

So. How has Scaife's braintrust on the editorial board of the Tribune-Review committed that local fallacy today?

Take a look:

A funny thing happened on the way to Obama & Co.'s “grassroots” effort claiming “climate change” is wreaking all manner of weather havoc. The website wattsupwiththat.com notes that we typically have about 1,200 tornadoes by this time each year. But this year, there have been only about 720 reported twisters. What's a climate clucker to do? [Bolding in original]

Their point only makes sense if ""wreaking all manner of weather havoc" includes an increase in the number of tornadoes.  Meaning that if the "climate cluckers" are saying that climate change will increase the number of tornadoes while the number of tornadoes has actually decreased, then there'd be a problem, right?

Too bad that's not the "climate cluckers" argument.  How do I know?

From the IPCC report:

Although some evidence is available regarding increases in the intensity and frequency of some extreme weather events, it is not yet clear how tornadoes will be affected.

And according to wunderground, this has been the position of the IPCC since 2007.

Um, guys?  Do you even bother to do any independent research before writing your editorials?  Merely echoing stuff you find on science denial websites does not constitute adequate research and you're deceiving your readership by doing so.

Tracking Teh Crazie - Cruz And The Birthers!

Over at Talkingpointsmemo, Josh Marshall has been spending some time on Senator Ted Cruz' presidential eligibility (given that the Senator was born in Canada to an American mother).

For the record Marshall writes:

I can tell you Ted Cruz’s politics are awful. And having had significant life overlap with him I can tell you that at virtually every point in his life - at least from his late teens through mid-thirties (after that I have less evidence) - he’s quickly developed a reputation as a raging a-hole. His new workplace - the Senate of the United States - just continues the pattern. But he’s definitely a ‘natural born’ citizen and thus constitutionally qualified to serve as President of the United States.

And for the record I am total agreement with Marshall on this.

That's not to say that that it's not great fun to watch Cruz squirm on his own eligibility question.  If there's no issue about his eligibility then why did he feel it necessary to release his birth certificate?  Or renounce his Canadian citizenship?

This is why.  From World Net Daily (aka birther central):

Conservative icon, radio host and author of the No. 1 book in the country right now, Mark Levin said he’s sick of “birthers” after encountering a particularly “obnoxious” one at a hot, crowded book-signing event.

The man, whom Levin described as “disrespectful” toward him and the other fans, reportedly pointed at Levin and told him he was wrong in concluding that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is eligible to be president.

The issue of constitutional eligibility, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times during Barack Obama’s runup to the White House, now is surging again, only the target this time is Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father.

But you'll note the attack is not coming from the left (see Josh Marshall, above) but from the birthers now confronting other conservatives (like Levin) using the same "logic" that they used to prop up their previous Obama-birther frenzy.

For example, let's look at the "dual citizenship" part of the story - from the flawed camera obscura that is Jerome Corsi:

The State Department is maintaining a “counter-misinformation” page on an America.gov blog that attempts to “debunk a conspiracy theory” that President Obama was not born in the United States, as if the topic were equivalent to believing space aliens visit Earth in flying saucers.

However, in the attempt to debunk the Obama birth-certificate controversy, the State Department author confirmed Obama was a dual citizen of the U.K. and the U.S. from 1961 to 1963 and a dual citizen of Kenya and the U.S. from 1963 to 1982, because his father was a Kenyan citizen when Obama was born in 1961.

In a number of court cases challenging Obama’s eligibility, dual citizenship has been raised as a factor that could compromise his “natural born” status under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution. The cases argue dual citizenship would make Obama ineligible even if documentary evidence were shown the public, such as the hospital-issued long-form birth certificate that indicates the place of his birth and the name of the attending physician. [Emphasis added.]

It's the same for the "American mother gives birth abroad" side.  If it didn't work for Obama then how can a true American (like the one who confronted Levin) think it's OK for anyone else?

This has been the birther discourse for years.  We shouldn't be surprised that they're going after one of their own.

Funny how that works out, eh?

Yea, What Mr. Ruffalo Said

From Salon.com:

Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo wrote a really moving defense of safe abortion care and women’s reproductive rights over the weekend, and shared how his mother’s own experience obtaining an illegal abortion shaped his views about a woman’s legal right to decide if, when, and under what circumstances she will have a child.

Some highlights:

What happened to my mother was a relic of an America that was not free nor equal nor very kind. My mother’s illegal abortion marked a time in America that we have worked long and hard to leave behind. It was a time when women were seen as second rate citizens who were not smart enough, nor responsible enough, nor capable enough to make decisions about their lives. It was a time that deserved to be left behind, and leave it behind we did, or so it seemed. We made abortion and a woman’s ability to be her own master a right. That right was codified into law. That law was the law of the land for decades.

And:

So that is why I am lending my voice to you and your movement today. Because I actually trust the women I know. I trust them with their choices, I trust them with their bodies and I trust them with their children. I trust that they are decent enough and wise enough and worthy enough to carry the right of Abortion and not be forced to criminally exercise that Right at the risk of death or jail time.

Damn straight.