Giants Thunder By

The Economist reconfigures an old way of picturing inequality:

Imagine people’s height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending order of income.

The first passers-by, the owners of loss-making businesses, are invisible: their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor, who are midgets. After half an hour the strollers are still only waist-high, since America’s median income is only half the mean. It takes nearly 45 minutes before normal-sized people appear. But then, in the final minutes, giants thunder by. With six minutes to go they are 12 feet tall. When the 400 highest earners walk by, right at the end, each is more than two miles tall.

via Sully

Quote Of The Day: Sully And Ilk Still Love Catholic Church Edition

The church under Wojtila and Ratzinger took both paths, but the one, alas, has slowly eclipsed the other - until the sex abuse scandal tipped the scales to a near total collapse of moral authority in so many places, Ireland most spectacularly.[emphasis mine]  Sully

That's right, near total collapse of moral authority. Near.

Andrew Sullivan is a smart guy. That he continues to be astonished at his church is, well, astonishing.

About That 72-Virgin Gang Bang

Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I'll show you what's lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Quran lived in thirst--so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where "the first would be last, and the last would be first"--so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today's Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang.

h/t Sully

The Uselessness Of Religion

Andrew Sullivan has a series called Sin Or Crime going on at the Dish. It's about the Catholic RAPISTS who get protection from their bishops and the Pope to keep them out of trouble with the law.

Really? Is that a serious question? Is it either/or? If you are religious, then yes, it's a sin. If you are human, it is revolting, rage-inducing and criminal. Why the question, Sully? Seems that just allows for more equivocation.

In Sully's latest, he is considering whether or not the RAPES or consequences to priests for RAPES would be influenced if the clergy were parents. Um, who fucking cares?

Why is there even a discussion? Hitchens has written a screed in favor of prosecution, Dionne seems to think redemption is possible if they come clean, and I want them shot. No one dares write anything positive, because that would make them RAPE-supporters. It's hard to support RAPE. But for Sully, wondering if it's a sin or a crime seems to be what he is doing.

Dude, it's both.

And you should say that. And you should denounce any organization that systematically RAPES its most vulnerable members (who are members not by choice, usually) and then moves to conceal it by way of their power and statehood.

The Vatican should not be sovereign. There should be no confidence in an entity that conceals these kinds of crimes, especially when done to children. There should be no special treatment of the Church. Revoke its tax-exempt status. Many of them are RAPISTS!

Religion causes folks to equivocate when equivocation is impossible; priests RAPED children. Who cares if it is a sin. It is fucking RAPE. And RAPE is against the law. God has nothing to do with it. Religion has nothing to do with it.

Sully, please stop using stories of saved souls to allow for a debate about this. There is no debate about RAPING children. Is there?

Dick Cheney Waiting To Be Arrested

Sully says what we all know, but apparently refuse to deal with, at our peril:

In fact, the attorney general of the United States is legally obliged to prosecute someone who has openly admitted such a war crime [torture] or be in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on Torture. For Eric Holder to ignore this duty subjects him too to prosecution. If the US government fails to enforce the provision against torture, the UN or a foreign court can initiate an investigation and prosecution.

These are not my opinions and they are not hyperbole. They are legal facts. Either this country is governed by the rule of law or it isn't. Cheney's clear admission of his central role in authorizing waterboarding and the clear evidence that such waterboarding did indeed take place means that prosecution must proceed.

Cheney himself just set in motion a chain of events that the civilized world must see to its conclusion or cease to be the civilized world. For such a high official to escape the clear letter of these treaties and conventions, and to openly brag of it, renders such treaties and conventions meaningless.

Question With Boldness...

Sully posted a reader email in which religion is basically rebuked, and the reader gets posted with no comment from Sully.  Good for you, Mr. Sullivan.

You see that "Question with boldness" Jefferson quote at the beginning of the Beck/Palin video? Here's Jefferson's full remark:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."

That's right. In a video in which he claims that God founded America, Glenn Beck references a quote in which our most important Founding Father stood tall and proud for agnosticism, and against the politics of fear.

Awesome.

For Sully

A View From A Window:

Hey Sully! I'm One Of "These Atheists" (You Condescending Brit!)

Andrew Sullivan, the self-proposed homophobic, gay, conservative, Catholic essayist, has decided to write on his blog (you know, the one that is saving The Atlantic?) that atheists are arrogant and sneering.

Jerry Coyne blogs from the atheist meeting that took place over the weekend:

Dan Dennett talked about interviews with active priests and ministers who are atheists, and also mounted a hilarious attack on theologians like Karen Armstrong, who mouth pious nonsense like, “God is the God behind God.” Dennett calls this kind of language a “deepity”: a statement that has two meanings, one of which is true but superficial, the other which sounds profound but is meaningless. His exemplar of a deepity is the statement “Love is just a word.” True, it’s a word like “cheeseburger,” but the supposed deeper sense is wrong: love is an emotion, a feeling, a condition, and not just a word in the dictionary. He gave several examples of other deepities from academic theologians; when you see these things laid out — ripped from their texts — in a Powerpoint slide, they make you realize how truly fatuous are the lucubrations of people like Armstrong, Eagleton, and Haught. Sarcasm will be the best weapon against this stuff.

They're really charming, aren't they? It is as if everything arrogant about the academy and everything sneering about cable news culture is combined into one big snarky smugfest. Maybe these atheists will indeed help push back the fundamentalist right. Maybe they will remind people that between these atheist bigots and these fundamentalist bigots, the appeal of the Christianity of the Gospels shines like the sun.

"Maybe these atheists will indeed help push back the fundamentalist right" or not. Certainly continuing to believe in fairy tales, and that the "Christianity of the Gospels shines like the sun," is not going to help (I think that quotation is a "deepity")!

For all Sully's brains, I don't understand how he continues to believe in his religious fantasy. Isn't his mighty intellect sublime enough?

Wrong Terms

Why do religious people call those of us who don't believe (in fairy tales) "non-theists?"

We should be the unencumbered.

We should be called "people" and they, the "theists" can be called "theists" or, more accurately, "those who believe in fairy tales."


I hate religion, can you tell?  It's a bit tough on my son who will be a bar-mitzvah next year!

An Atheist's Response To Sully And His Religious Ilk

Flying Spaghetti Monsters, Ctd

A reader writes:

Your philosophy student reader's email did a wonderful job of finding three ways to say the same simple point: Christianity is more than an infatuation with God as Deity. I think most atheists understand and accept this and a moment's time exploring the writings of even the spittle-flecked atheist agitators shows that they understand that life still presents significant questions, both moral and existential, that religions claim to answer.

Your previous reader letter raised a similar point concerning the seeming lack of positive propositions from atheist thinkers, but the philosophy student goes a step further and insinuates that perhaps "real atheism" is close to impossible unless one can otherwise justify all of one's existential beliefs without God.

Both of these readers, I think, conflate atheism with too much else. Atheism is a simple proposition: Sufficient, convincing evidence for existence of the Supreme Being(s) is lacking and claims that rely on the existence of God for their validity are therefore false. Atheism is not the idea that morality does not and cannot exist, it is simply the idea that God does not exist. To use your previous reader's metaphor: Atheists claim we all actually live in the same country, but that our country is not God's country even though most people believe that's where they live.

And indeed, were atheists ever to "win" their argument, people would have to decide how to guide their conduct in the world without taking it for granted that certain things were deemed impermissible by the highest Authority in existence. These aren't easy questions to answer and, to my mind, the naked fact that God does or does not exist, does little to help us with their answers. There are reasons to follow certain moral principles that are founded on more than God's directives and lessons and stories that constitute so much of religious teachings bear this out. Atheist thought does, in fact, grapple with these issues as well... but it's somewhat difficult getting religious people to devote lots of time to atheist study.

Your two previous reader letters started by implying that atheists haven't yet earned a place in the discussion and finished by insinuating that it might be impossible for atheists to have anything to say once they get there. The problem is that they seem to expect to find people who identify themselves as "Atheist Philosophers" when in fact they should be looking for thinkers who happen not to believe in God. It may surprise them to learn, despite the Dawkins and Harrises of the world, that many atheists wake up in the morning without deciding how they can disprove God's existence today. Many people who don't believe in God have spent alot of time thinking about how to life a satisfying and proper life.

To put it another way: Just as religion is not an infatuation with God, atheism is not an infatuation with Nothing. The long and significant history of non-theistic philosophy and moral theory is full of the very positive arguments and metaphysical justifications your readers say they want. May I suggest a little Hume to start? Some Bentham or John Stuart Mill? Nietzsche (but always with a grain of salt). Ayn Rand - but only as a case study in how non-theistic theories can still be dogmatic.

I love this response; too many religious poeple think we atheists are rabid. We are not; we are simply not believers. Relax, Sully.

There Will Be Trials

Sully said there would be Obama; and so it was. He now is saying there will be war crimes trials. Just sit tight. I happen to agree with Sully's hope. Though, it's just hope.

Parsing Obama

The executive orders are so far very subtle but very smart. Scott Horton's analysis is the most telling. Some will be disappointed that Obama is not about to condemn the out-going war crimes of Bush, Cheney et al. in ringing terms. But the election did that. And as the era of the dark side recedes a little, my sense of the looming reality is as follows. The men who ordered a man tied to a chair, doused in water, and chilled to hypothermia so intense he had to be rushed to emergency medical care, the men who presided over at least two dozen and at most a hundred prisoners tortured to death, the men who ordered an American servicewoman to smear fake menstrual blood over a Muslim's face in order to win a war against Jihadism, the men who ordered innocents stripped naked, sexually abused, terrified by dogs, or cast into darkness with no possibility of a future, and did all this in the name of the Constitution of the United States, the men who gave the signal in wartime that there were no limits to what could be done to prisoners of war and reaped a whirlwind of abuse and torture that will haunt American servicemembers for decades: these men will earn the judgment of history. It will be brutal.

We will need some formal and comprehensive record of all that happened, and the Congress will surely begin to move on that (and they should not exempt their own members from scrutiny either). And as specific allegations of torture emerge, the Justice Department will have no option but to prosecute. To ignore such charges is itself a dereliction of constitutional duty.

In the last two weeks, two very important things have happened that make that especially hard to avoid. The Bush administration's chief prosecutor at Gitmo, Susan Crawford, has herself conceded that torture did indeed take place in that camp, and specifically against Qahtani, the prisoner whose torture was personally monitored by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and whose torture log is in the public domain. An attorney general presented with clear evidence of torture engaged in by public officials has no choice but to prosecute - or to make a mockery of his office. It is absurd to ignore the men who have primary responsibility for the crime.

The second big thing is that the perpetrators of war crimes are no longer in power. I predict that as fear of administrative reprisal ebbs, more and more whistle-blowers will come forward with evidence of what was done under Bush and Cheney, in defiance of domestic and international law. That Bush and Cheney got hacks to write absurd legal memos saying that, in Bush's own words, "whatever we wanted to do" was legal will mean nothing. Yoo and Bybee are the kind of useful, amoral sycophants and apparatchiks that always emerge and flourish in lawless states eager to put up a facade of legalism to defend their power-grabs.

I do not believe in a witch-hunt in the CIA, whose many hard-working officers deserve support not censure. I do believe in holding responsible those high elected officials who broke the law and violated the Constitution in authorizing war crimes. It should take as much time as needed for a thorough accounting; it should be meticulously fair; it should be geared solely to ensure that the rule of law is no longer in question; and that only those truly responsible at the top of the chain of command are held liable. But if we do not hold these men to account, the precedent they set is alarming.

They have, after all, argued that the executive branch can do anything to anyone to defend the nation's security as defined and measured by that executive branch itself. They have argued that that power is permanent and not restricted to a discrete length of time. They have declared the Constitution to be entirely subject to the executive's will, checked only by a four year "moment of accountability". And they are unrepentant - even boastful of their actions. We cannot leave that precedent in place. Why? I know no better popular expression of the case than that made by Robert Bolt in this imagined conversation between Thomas More and the John Yoo of his day, William Roper:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Yes, I give prisoners of war, even the demons of al Qaeda, the benefit of the law. For my own safety's sake. And ours'.

Andrew Sullivan Endorses Obama-Again

The whole, exhaustive, complete, long, terrifying, brilliant thing here. Snippet:

But until this unlikely fellow with the funny ears and strange name and exotic biography emerged on the scene, I had begun to wonder if it was possible at all. I had almost given up hope, and he helped restore it. That is what is stirring out there; and although you are welcome to mock me for it, I remain unashamed. As someone once said, in the unlikely story of America, there is never anything false about hope. Obama, moreover, seems to bring out the best in people, and the calmest, and the sanest. He seems to me to have a blend of Midwestern good sense, an intuitive understanding of the developing world that is as much our future now as theirs', an analyst's mind and a poet's tongue. He is human. He is flawed. He will make mistakes. His passivity and ambiguity are sometimes weaknesses as well as strengths.

Sully, I want to thank you for your tireless work this campaign, and the clarity, suspicion, and honesty with which you wrote these past many months. Good show!

A New Low

This from some Republican scumbag:

Malkin Award Nominee

"I'm not doubting she is ill. But believe me, if you think this guy would leave the campaign trail for an hour if he felt he were running from behind, he wouldn't do it. Not unless he thought it helped him to do so...Man. I hope his numbers don't start to drop. He might have to hold a pillow against her face and maybe later break into tears the way Hillary did. Only I suspect hers were genuine," - Dan Riehl, on Obama visiting his sick grandmother in Hawaii.

Hold a pillow against his own grandmother's face? Yes, this is what the right has become.

We're Driving Them Insane!

Sully has a post up telling how our detainees are being tortured to the point of insanity. They are being driven literally insane. It is sickening, embarrassing, dangerous and immoral. Let's have inauguration day moved to November 5th!

Here is a snippet:

A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to The Associated Press...

They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were forbidden even minor distractions such as a soccer ball or a dictionary.

"I will continue to do what I can to help this individual maintain his sanity, but in my opinion we're working with borrowed time," an unidentified Navy brig official wrote of prisoner Yaser Esam Hamdi in 2002. "I would like to have some form of an incentive program in place to reward him for his continued good behavior, but more so, to keep him from whacking out on me."

The Terrorists Won

It's depressing but true. Crazy thing is, Gary Shandling said it:

On 9/11, Al Qaeda had no expectation of a traditional military victory against the United States. The point of the attack was economic -- to draw the U.S. into expensive and protracted foreign wars that would deplete our resources and destabilize our government. By invading Iraq, George Bush became the happy idiot to assist Al Qaeda in this goal.

h/t Sully

The Dogs Of Endorsement

Sarah Palin is an enthusiastic supporter of killing defenseless animals from the air, and offered helicopter and airplane shooters of wolves $150 each for a severed front leg of a wild wolf. But most are shot defenselessly from the air, often not killed outright and left to die on the ground. Palin enthusiastically defends this cruelty. You can find out more here. It is no accident that the Humane Society Legislative Fund has decided to endorse Obama for president this year. They have never endorsed a president before.[emphasis mine]

h/t Sully

More Sullivan: Fargo, ND

h/t Sully

Sullivan As Grammarian

Thanks Sully. This explains a lot:

Samuel Augustus Maverick (July 23, 1803–September 2, 1870) was a Texas lawyer, politician, land baron and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. From his name comes the term "maverick", first cited in 1867, which means independent minded. Maverick was considered independent minded by his fellow ranchers because he refused to brand his cattle. In fact, Maverick's failure to brand his cattle had little to do with independent mindedness, but reflected his lack of interest in ranching... Maverick's stated reason for not branding his cattle was that he didn't want to inflict pain on them. Other ranchers however, suspected that his true motivation was that it allowed him to collect any unbranded cattle and claim them as his own.

Questions About Palin Ignored. Why?

Andrew Sullivan is a brilliant, right-of-center gay dude who used to be the editor of The New Republic (high standards they have there...usually). So when Sully talks journalism, I tend to listen with appropriate deference.

Well, he experienced a journalistic first. Private emails asking about Trig Palin's biology were made public. Not good journalism. Just read the thing...

The Crime Of Committing Journalism

24 Sep 2008 02:15 pm

Howie Kurtz's piece in the Washington Post today reprints two emails I sent McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb privately last week. Kurtz got the emails because Goldfarb sent them to him, after sending them to other reporters to goad them into doing a story on me. Kurtz published my confidential emails to Goldfarb, having been contacted by Goldfarb to write the story.

I should reiterate two critical things: I have never claimed that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin's biological son. In fact, I have gone to enormous lengths never to say that, going silent for two days to figure it out and decided to leave it alone. Why? Because I had no proof of anything, only questions. Since then, I have raised legitimate policy questions about what is undisputed in the public record, but I have not made any statements of fact I do not know to be true. That's my job. But I also expected the McCain campaign to do their job and at some point to provide evidence or a public statement setting the record straight, which they could persumably very easily do. So I waited three weeks, watched two interviews, scanned Nexis and Google for any confirmation of actual evidence, and then privately asked Goldfarb and two other people I know and like in the McCain campaign to confirm the evidentiary truth on the record. I did not raise this issue in public. I asked a question in private. But it has now been made public by Goldfarb and Kurtz, and since they are now in the public domain, here are the two emails I sent Goldfarb and he got Kurtz to reprint:

"I'm very sorry to say, it's come to this: can you confirm on the record that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin's biological son? . . . Since this is a crazy idea, it should be easy for you or someone to let me know, the most popular one-man political blog site in the world, what the truth is."

"I asked a simple question akin to asking whether you can confirm that the sky is blue. Here's the question in case it got lost: can you confirm on the record that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin's biological son? Can I please get a response of some sort, even if it is that you will not respond?"

I got no response, so I let it drop. Like everyone else, I have been trying to get some answers to some factual questions from the McCain campaign but they refuse to provide them. But for the McCain campaign to go to these lengths, violating core confidentiality of private good-faith questions, is something that has never happened to me before in journalism. I am also amazed that a fellow journalist would publish such emails in full. But since this is now all in the open, you deserve to know what your blogger has been trying to do in private for three weeks: just get a factual answer to a factual question on the record.

They won't. They cannot take the time to confirm on the record that Trig is Sarah's biological son, but they will try to smear the person asking. What does that tell you?

Sullivan Notes...

that,

Since Sarah Palin was selected for the vice-presidential nomination, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has given more press conferences than she has. That's the country John McCain believes in.