Rush Limbaugh devoted a segment of his show to what he said were the president’s insults to the “whole gamut of Christians” and Twitter’s right wing piled on. Guests on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show spent 15 minutes airing objections to the president’s comments.
Extra Lazy Saturday Afternoon Reads: Bobby Jindal’s Crusade
Posted: February 7, 2015 Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bobby Jindal, immigration, National Prayer Breakfast, no-go zones, religion and violence, sundown towns 27 Comments
Crusade – Before Battle, Kaye Miller-Dewing
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote a very good post about the right wing’s hysterical response to President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast about violence in the name of religion. And predictably, her nemesis Gov. Bobby Jindal released a statement chiding the President later in the day.
Here’s what Jindal had to say, from the WaPo:
“It was nice of the President to give us a history lesson at the Prayer breakfast,” Jindal said. “Today, however, the issue right in front of his nose, in the here and now, is the terrorism of Radical Islam, the assassination of journalists, the beheading and burning alive of captives. We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians, but it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President. Please deal with the Radical Islamic threat today.”
If Jindal really wants to “keep an eye out for runaway Christians,” maybe he ought to take a look in the mirror. I could go on and and on about modern right wing Christian terrorism, but I won’t–I’ll just give you a few examples below.
Battle of Antioch
Apparently Jindal and the rest of his fellow “conservative” whiners have managed to ignore the Ku Klux Klan–a self-proclaimed [Protestant] Christian organization that is still active today–along with the Christian Identity Movement; abortion clinic bombings and murders of abortion doctors by “God-fearing” Christians; and mass-murders by self-proclaimed Christians like Andres Brevik and Timothy McVeigh, (a Catholic). Again, I could go on and on, but I’ll just offer this top-ten list from Raw Story: America’s 10 worst terror attacks by Christian fundamentalists and far-right extremists.
From Fox News to the Weekly Standard, neoconservatives have tried to paint terrorism as a largely or exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Their message of Islamophobia has been repeated many times since the George W. Bush era: Islam is inherently violent, Christianity is inherently peaceful, and there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist or a white male terrorist. But the facts don’t bear that out. Far-right white male radicals and extreme Christianists are every bit as capable of acts of terrorism as radical Islamists, and to pretend that such terrorists don’t exist does the public a huge disservice. Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev and the late Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev (the Chechen brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, 2013) are both considered white and appear to have been motivated in part by radical Islam. And many terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who were neither Muslims nor dark-skinned.
When white males of the far right carry out violent attacks, neocons and Republicans typically describe them as lone-wolf extremists rather than people who are part of terrorist networks or well-organized terrorist movements. Yet many of the terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who had long histories of networking with other terrorists. In fact, most of the terrorist activity occurring in the United States in recent years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.
I’ll just list the incidents listed in the article, and you can read more about them at the link.
1. Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre, Aug. 5, 2012.
2. The murder of Dr. George Tiller, May 31, 2009.
3. Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church shooting, July 27, 2008.
4. The murder of Dr. John Britton, July 29, 1994.
5. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing, July 27, 1996.
6. The murder of Barnett Slepian by James Charles Kopp, Oct. 23, 1998.
7. Planned Parenthood bombing, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994.
8. Suicide attack on IRS building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010.
9. The murder of Alan Berg, June 18, 1984.
10. Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995.
Can anyone make a similar list of atheist terrorist attacks?
Read more below the fold . . .
Friday Reads: The Evil Men Do
Posted: February 6, 2015 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: President Obama 23 Comments
Good Afternoon!
I’m late today because I’ve been grading nonstop for a few days now and just slept the morning away. Let’s see what I’ve missed in my few days of being bubbled.
Y’all know I take any organized religion with about the same respect as I do any communicable disease. They’ve all created their share of wars and social problems. They all have impossibly evil zealots and a few impossibly good storybook characters. I’ve just yet to find one that’s consistently moral.
You have a right in this country to believe whatever you want to believe. I take The Constitution pretty seriously on that account. I also take it pretty seriously on the account that the Government shouldn’t be in the business of favoring any one religion no matter how many folks take it seriously. The President showed up at one of Congress’ Proof of Piety events and spoke truth to Evil and wow has the shit hit the fan. Violence, self-righteousness, and meanness spews from the religious. It always has it always will. Even Buddhists have their share of tormentors which is probably one of the few religions not responsible for violence on a huge scale. The pious ought to live the fuck up to it.
Earlier today President Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he discussed freedom of expression along with highlighting the many acts of barbarism that are happening now and have happened throughout the centuries which were justified under the guise of religion. He also explained in depth about how as Christians, we can overcome these perversions of religion. President Obama spoke for about thirty minutes and used almost three thousand words today, but the only part of the speech the right wing media is focusing on is when he brought up the Crusades.
Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Michelle and I returned from India — an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity — but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs — acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.
How dare the president put into context the historical atrocities performed over centuries in the name of God! As usual the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue took front and center stage on Fox News and was fuming because Obama dared to mention Christ and demanded that he apologize. Neil Cavuto actually defended Obama for the most part which kind of surprised me, but Donohue, the pedophile priest apologist didn’t.
Cavuto: Bill Donohue called that an insult to all Christians and said the president needs to apologize, but I think what he said Bill, obviously you’re worked up over it, “look, what’s done in the name of religion has often caused some heinous acts,” you argue he hasn’t said this enough about Islam.
Donohue: I’m saying this, had he said just said that, that people have killed in the name of their God and it’s not unique to one religion, who could argue with that? But he didn’t do that, did he? He spoke with specificity. he singled out the Crusades and the Inquisition. There’s so many myths about
Yes. The Crusades were a gay old time and are totally misunderstood. So was The Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials. No historian truly gets it. 
The President’s full remarks are posted at the White House site. I was glad to see him welcome His Holiness the Dali Lama because this is one Buddhist who does represent the peaceful part of a major religion and doing anything for him pisses off the Chinese. The Chinese are one of the countries who don’t let people freely believe and actively persecute believers.
I want to offer a special welcome to a good friend, His Holiness the Dalai Lama — who is a powerful example of what it means to practice compassion, who inspires us to speak up for the freedom and dignity of all human beings. (Applause.) I’ve been pleased to welcome him to the White House on many occasions, and we’re grateful that he’s able to join us here today. (Applause.)
There aren’t that many occasions that bring His Holiness under the same roof as NASCAR. (Laughter.) This may be the first. (Laughter.) But God works in mysterious ways. (Laughter.) And so I want to thank Darrell for that wonderful presentation. Darrell knows that when you’re going 200 miles an hour, a little prayer cannot hurt. (Laughter.) I suspect that more than once, Darrell has had the same thought as many of us have in our own lives — Jesus, take the wheel. (Laughter.) Although I hope that you kept your hands on the wheel when you were thinking that. (Laughter.)
The President is right. Slavery, Jim Crow, and the burning of women at the stake were all American Traditions defended by the pious of the many branches of one of the major religions. The pious need to own that too and not confabulate more myths than already exist in the religion itself.
At a time of global anxiety over Islamist terrorism, Obama noted pointedly that his fellow Christians, who make up a vast majority of Americans, should perhaps not be the ones who cast the first stone.
“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” he told the group, speaking of the tension between the compassionate and murderous acts religion can inspire. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Some Republicans were outraged. “The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (R). “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”
Obama’s remarks spoke to his unsparing, sometimes controversial, view of the United States — where triumphalism is often overshadowed by a harsh assessment of where Americans must try harder to live up to their own self-image. Only by admitting these shortcomings, he has argued, can we fix problems and move beyond them.
“There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith,” he said at the breakfast.
We can grapple with the evil that ISIS is doing but we also need to grapple with the evil that happens when any religion gets on full display in a government. One only needs to look at Saudi Arabia and its treatment of women or Israel and its treatment of people of Palestinian descent to see exactly how persecution plays out. Persecution by the Christian majority is playing out in this country today. It’s not just a historical artifact. Women’s health is being held hostage by mistake beliefs about fetuses and sexuality. The intellectual development of children is being held hostage by science denial as is any major action we could take to save animals, people, and our environment from Climate Change. The persecution of GLBT minorities and the denial of their rights plays out daily in states all over the country as does serious prejudice when legislators demand judicial candidates pledge allegiance to their personal make believe friend.
A South Carolina lawmaker is fielding accusations of violating the U.S. Constitution after sending judicial candidates a questionnaire asking their legal opinions on controversial topics and the nature of their relationship to God.
According to The State, Republican state representative Jonathon Hill issued a 30-question survey last week to candidates currently campaigning to become judges in South Carolina. Judges are elected by legislators in the Palmetto State, and while the survey itself was enough to raise eyebrows, Hill has garnered staunch criticism for the nature of his questions: among other controversial inquiries, the survey asked candidates how they would approach a case where a woman sued for equal pay, whether or not they would perform a same-sex marriage, and whether they have a “personal relationship” to God.
“Do you believe in the ‘Supreme Being’ (SC Constitution, Article VI, Section 2)?” one of the questions read. “What is the nature of this being? What is your personal relationship to this being? What relevance does this being have on the position of judge? Please be specific.”
Another question asked candidates how they would respond to attacks on LGBT people in South Carolina, where there are currently no hate crimes laws on the books.
“In a case where someone was assaulted because he was gay, would you consider it a ‘hate crime’ and increase the penalty?” the question read.
None of the candidates responded to the survey, and representatives from the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, which oversees the election that will be held this Wednesday, reportedly contacted Hill to tell him that the Code of Judicial Conduct bans judges from answering several of his questions. This is primarily because doing so would functionally amount to a promise to decide future cases a certain way, as opposed to taking each case on its merits.
Also, since the would-be judges are candidates in an election, asking them specific questions about their faith and spiritual affiliations effectively amounts to a “religious test.” Such tests are explicitly forbidden in Article VI, paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
Religious ignorance and bigotry is on display any time some one hands Mike Huckabee a microphone. Recently, it’s been on display when any one hands the microphone to the Governor of Louisiana. But, wingnuts will be wingnuts and the gamut of wingnuttery is on full display today if you hit any of the right wing blogs.
Meanwhile, we’re gearing up for Mardi Gras down here. The piety patrol is already out harassing people in the streets. I frankly cling to the sentiment of one of my favorite songs ” Imagine … no religion too”.
Have a great day!!! This is an open thread.
Thursday Reads: Media Ignorance and Brian Williams’ Flashbulb Memory
Posted: February 5, 2015 Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Media, morning reads, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Military | Tags: Brian Williams, flashbulb memories, IRAQ, memory errors, retroactive interference 34 Comments
Edvard Munch, Winter landscape at Hvitsten, 1918
Good Morning!!
I’m still snowed in. I’ve been shoveling for two days, but 40+ inches of snow in a week was just too much for me to handle alone. My sister-in-law was going to come down from New Hampshire today to help me dig out, but it’s snowing again, so she may have to wait until tomorrow. My cold is still hanging on too, so this post may be a little disjointed. I’m going to focus on a “shocking” story about newscaster Brian Williams that broke over the past couple of days. The illustrations I’m are paintings of winter scenes by Edvard Munch.
Yesterday, NBC News anchor Brian Williams was caught telling a false story about being shot down in a helicopter in Iraq. From Politico:
On Friday night’s broadcast, Williams cited “a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG. Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
One crew member responded to the story on Facebook the following day, writing to Williams, “Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.”
This week, crew members of 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook helicopter also told Stars and Stripes that Williams had not been in the shot-down helicopter but had arrived an hour later.
On Wednesday, Williams conceded that he was not onboard the shot-down helicopter, but he told Stars and Stripes he did not intentionally make the mistake.
“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”
Edvard Munch, Winter Night with Stars
From Stars and Stripes’ exclusive: NBC’s Brian Williams recants Iraq story after soldiers protest.
Williams made the claim about the incident while presenting NBC coverage of the tribute to the retired command sergeant major at the Rangers game Friday. Fans gave the soldier a standing ovation.
“The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG,” Williams said on the broadcast. “Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
Williams and his camera crew were actually aboard a Chinook in a formation that was about an hour behind the three helicopters that came under fire, according to crew member interviews.
That Chinook took no fire and landed later beside the damaged helicopter due to an impending sandstorm from the Iraqi desert, according to Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was the flight engineer on the aircraft that carried the journalists.
The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove: Brian Williams’ War Story Is FUBAR.
Unfortunately for Williams, this is not the first time he has made “this mistake” on network television. On the March, 26, 2013 episode of CBS’s Late Show With David Letterman, he told the host (at the 3-minute, 50-second mark): “Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in.”
“No kidding!” Letterman exclaimed.
“RPG and AK-47,” Williams elaborated.
“What altitude were you hit at?” Letterman asked.
“We were only at 100 feet doing 100 forward knots…”
“What happens the minute everybody realizes you’ve been hit?” Letterman asked.
“We figure out how to land safely—and we did,” Williams answered. “We landed very quickly and hard…”
Stars and Stripes left open the possibility that Williams also misreported the incident initially on March 26, 2003, but it turns out that back then, at least, he never claimed to have been aboard the attacked chopper—during two different broadcasts on that date. Television news analyst Andrew Tyndall dipped into his videotape library and screened the Nightly News segment in which Williams said “he was in a convoy of helicopters, one of which got hit,” Tyndall told The Daily Beast.
NBC News, meanwhile, unearthed a March 26, 2003 Dateline segment in which Williams reported: “On the ground, we learn that the Chinook ahead of us was almost blown of the sky.”
Edvard Munch, Workers in the Snow
Grove compared Williams’ conflation of events with a story Hillary Clinton told in 2008.
2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s false assertion that, as first lady in March 1996, she came under sniper fire during a trip to Tuzla, Bosnia. “I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton said during a speech. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” CBS News video of Clinton’s arrival showed no such thing; instead she alighted on the tarmac and greeted a welcoming child who offered her a poem.
I would compare Williams’ flub to tales that then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan told about events he recalled that never happened. A famous example from memory expert Daniel Schacter:
In the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan repeatedly told a heartbreaking story of a World War II bomber pilot who ordered his crew to bail out after his plane had been seriously damaged by an enemy hit. His young belly gunner was wounded so seriously that he was unable to evacuate the bomber. Reagan could barely hold back his tears as he uttered the pilot’s heroic response: “Never mind. We’ll ride it down together.” …this story was an almost exact duplicate of a scene in the 1944 film “A Wing and a Prayer.” Reagan had apparently retained the facts but forgotten their source (Schacter 1996, 287).
An even more dramatic error by Reagan was his claim to have been present at the liberation of Auschwitz.
In November 1983, he told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir during a White House visit that while serving in the U. S. Army film corps, his unit had shot footage of the Nazi concentration camps as they were liberated. He repeated the same tale to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and other witnesses. Reagan had indeed served in the Army and worked on morale-boosting movies for the War Department. But he had done so without ever leaving Hollywood for the entire duration of the war.
Edvard Munch, Winter Night
And then there was the story about 9/11 that George W. Bush was repeatedly criticized for–he claimed on that morning he had seen the first plane hit the World Trade Center twin towers before he went into a school for a photo op of him reading to children. But that was impossible, because film of the first tower being hit was not aired until the next day later that day. Here’s Bush’s story quoted in a piece at e-Skeptic by memory expert Daniel Greenberg
I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card — actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower — the TV was obviously on, and I use[d] to fly myself, and I said, “There’s one terrible pilot.” And I said, “It must have been a horrible accident.” But I was whisked off there — I didn’t have much time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, “A second plane has hit the tower. America’s under attack.”
Two weeks later Bush’s story had evolved:
Bush remembers senior adviser Karl Rove bringing him the news, saying it appeared to be an accident involving a small, twin-engine plane. In fact it was American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of Boston’s Logan International Airport. Based on what he was told, Bush assumed it was an accident. “This is pilot error,” the president recalled saying. “It’s unbelievable that somebody would do this.” Conferring with Andrew H. Card Jr., his White House chief of staff, Bush said, “The guy must have had a heart attack”… At 9:05 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767, smashed into the South Tower of the trade center. Bush was seated on a stool in the classroom when Card whispered the news: “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.”
Edvard Munch, Yellow Log
The fact is that memory errors like these are quite common. Human memory is not perfect–we tend to get basic facts right, but when we retell a memory again and again or even go over it in our minds, specific details can change. There are a number of ways this can happen. We can forget the source of a memory, as Ronald Reagan did with the movie scene he believed to be real. It’s also comment to retroactively alter a memory, as Bush did with his 9/11 flashbulb memory. That is caused by “interference.” I doubt that Williams deliberately lied about his flashbulb memory from Iraq. Why would he put his reputation at risk in that way? Most likely, he conflated his memories with other things he learned later about the event that made a strong impression on him at the time.
You can read more about false flashbulb memories in this scholarly article by Greenberg (pdf): President Bush’s False ‘Flashbulb’ Memory of 9/11/01. A flashbulb memory is a very vivid recall of a dramatic event in which we have a sense “remembering” exactly where we were and who we were with when we experience or heard about the event.
Back to the Williams story.
At Slate, Ben Matthis Lilly provides a detailed timeline of the various stories Brian Williams has told about his 2003 experience over the years. The initial story Williams told in 2003 was also inaccurate, according to soldier witnesses, but Williams still claims his original report was true.
In the initial account (given on both the Nightly News and a Dateline episode on March 26, 2003), Williams clearly states that he was part of a group of helicopters that was fired upon while performing a mission:
We are one of four Chinook helicopters flying north this morning, third in line. As we head toward the drop point the Iraqi landscape looks quiet. We can see a convoy of American troop carriers and supply vehicles heading north.
This 2003 account, like Williams’ apology, implies the helicopters landed together after ground fire:
All four choppers dropped their load and landed immediately.
However, Stars and Stripes‘ piece says unequivocally that Williams’ helicopter was not part of the group that was fired upon—not third in line, and not part of the line at all.
…Crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor wasnowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.
The soldiers quoted by Stars and Stripes say that they recall being upset at the time by the inaccuracies in this 2003 version of events.
Edvard Munch, New Snow on the Avenue
But do these soldiers really recall being upset in 2003? We can’t know for sure, because they didn’t tell their stories in public at the time.
I’m sure Brian Williams will continue to be attacked for his false memory. He might even lose his job over it, because lazy reporters would never consider consulting a psychologist who actually conducts research on human memory errors and their causes. Here’s Eric Wemple’s evaluation of Williams’ apology at the Washington Post:
That’s a very nice admission, though “conflating” the experience of taking incoming fire with the experience of not taking incoming fire seems verily impossible.
It might seem “verily impossible” to Wemple, but it isn’t impossible at all. It’s not even surprising to anyone who knows anything about how human memory works. I have no way of knowing for sure whether Williams lied or not; but if I had to guess, I think it’s more likely that he inadvertently created a false memory.
What stories are you following today? Please post your thoughts on the Brian Williams story and/or your recommended links in the comment thread.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: February 3, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Andrew Wakefield, anti-vaccine movement, anti-vaxxers, Chris Christie, herd immunity, Jack Wolfson, measles outbreak, Rand Paul, vaccines 35 Comments
The Magpie, Claude Monet
Good Morning!!
The Midwest and Northeast were hit with another huge snowstorm yesterday, and there could be another one on the way. I may never get my car out of the driveway again. The strange thing is that it is also incredibly cold, in the single numbers again this morning. I’m going to wait until it gets into the 20s before I start trying to get my front door open and start digging out. I’m also struggling with a cold, so I’m going to have to shovel slowly.
The measles outbreak and the vaccine “controversy” are the stories topping the news today, after several politicians weighed in yesterday. I’m going to focus on those stories again today.
First up, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. From Jeffrey Kluger at Time Magazine: Chris Christie’s Terrible Vaccine Advice.
Last I checked, Chris Christie isn’t a licensed commercial pilot, which is one reason he probably doesn’t phone the cockpit with instructions when his flight encounters turbulence. Chances are, he doesn’t tell his plow operators how to clear a road when New Jersey gets hit by a snow storm either. But when it comes to medicine, the current Governor, former prosecutor and never doctor evidently feels pretty free to dispense advice. And doncha’ know it? That advice turns out to be terrible.
Asked about the ongoing 14-state outbreak of measles that has been linked to falling vaccination rates, Christie—the man who prides himself on chin-jutting certainty—went all squishy. “Mary Pat and I have had our children vaccinated and we think that it’s an important part of being sure we protect their health and the public health,” he said. “I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”
The Governor then went further, taking off his family doctor hat and putting on his epidemiologist hat. “Not every vaccine is created equal,” he said, “and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.”
He was not specific about which diseases fall below his public-health threat threshold, but New Jerseyans are free to guess. Would it be polio, which paralyzed or killed tens of thousands of American children every year before a vaccine against it was developed? Would it be whooping cough, which results in hospitalization for 50% of all infants who contract it and death for 2%, and is now making a comeback in California due to the state’s low vaccination rates? Are we going to have mandatory HSV 2 testing? Or would it be measles, which still kills nearly 150,000 people—mostly children—worldwide every year?
Of course this isn’t the first time Christie pretended to be a medical expert–remember how he reacted when nurse Kaci Hickox landed in Newark after treating Ebola patients in Africa?
Christie later tried to walk back his remarks about vaccines, but he has a history of pandering to anti-vaxxers. During his 2009 campaign for governor, Christie wrote the following in a letter to supporters:
“Many of these families have expressed their concern over New Jersey’s highest-in-the nation vaccine mandates. I stand with them now, and will stand with them as their governor in their fight for greater parental involvement in vaccination decisions that affect their children.”
Next up, Senator Rand Paul. At the Washington Post, Jose A. DelReal writes: Rand Paul, M.D., says most vaccines should be ‘voluntary.’
“I’m not anti-vaccine at all but…most of them ought to be voluntary,” Paul told Laura Ingraham on her radio show Monday. “I think there are times in which there can be some rules but for the most part it ought to be voluntary.”
Paul pointed to a 2007 effort by then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who is also considering a 2016 run for the Republican nomination, that would have required young girls to receive a vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV). That move was sharply attacked by social conservatives who said requiring vaccination against HPV, which is a sexually transmitted disease, would encourage promiscuity. The Texas legislature eventually overturned the mandate. Perry later called the order “a mistake.”
“While I think it’s a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that’s a personal decision for individual’s to take,” Paul said, attempting to strike a balance between responsible medical protocols and personal choice.
Like Christie, Paul made sure his own children were vaccinated. But Paul really went off the deep end later on Monday.
Speaking on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” later Monday, Paul said that there should be increased public awareness that vaccines are good for children, but reiterated that vaccines should be voluntary, as he said they were in the past.
“I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,” Paul said. “I’m not arguing vaccines are a bad idea. I think they’re a good thing. But I think parents should have some input. The state doesn’t own your children, parents own the children and it is an issue of freedom and public health.”
Parents “own their children?” WTF?! And what are these “profound mental disorders?” Who are these children and what vaccines did they get? I can’t believe the media lets this man get away with throwing out these evidence-free claims.
At The Week, Ryan Cooper explains the immorality of Christie’s and Paul’s positions.
…this entire argumentative frame misses the greatest benefit of vaccines: herd immunity. A population vaccinated to a high enough level becomes largely impervious to the disease by sheer statistics, and that protects the vulnerable ones who can’t be vaccinated, or those whose vaccines didn’t take root. Vaccines are not just about preventing personal illness, but stopping them from spreading. Done systematically enough, it can eradicate diseases completely. The elimination of smallpox, which killed something like 300 million people in the 20th century alone, ranks high on the list of human accomplishments.
That is why this is as much a moral issue as a scientific one. The appalling selfishness inherent in the idea of “vaccine choice” was starkly illustrated in a recent CNN story. After the measles outbreak at Disneyland, CNN talked to a family whose 10-month old baby had contracted the disease. They’re terrified he’ll pass it on to their 3-year-old daughter, who has leukemia and can’t get the vaccine — but might be killed by the disease. Here’s the response of a refusenik parent:
CNN asked Wolfson if he could live with himself if his unvaccinated child got another child gravely ill. “I could live with myself easily,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate thing that people die, but people die. I’m not going to put my child at risk to save another child.” [CNN]
In other words, it’s okay to cause the death of another child if your kid wants to go to Disneyland. And that’s leaving aside the risk to Wolfson’s own kids, who are put at risk by his atrocious parenting.
Every person depends on society to function. From public roads, to sanitation, to clean water, to the very economic system itself — your day is made possible by millions of other people doing their small part to maintain our civilization. When it comes to violently contagious diseases, it is not possible to speak meaningfully of choice divorced from the needs of those people.
Here’s a little more on Dr. Wolfson from Terrence McCoy at The Washington Post: Amid measles outbreak, anti-vaccine doctor revels in his notoriety.
“Don’t be mad at me for speaking the truth about vaccines,” Wolfson said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. “Be mad at yourself, because you’re, frankly, a bad mother. You didn’t ask once about those vaccines. You didn’t ask about the chemicals in them. You didn’t ask about all the harmful things in those vaccines…. People need to learn the facts.”
But whose facts is he talking about? Every respectable expert totally disagrees with him and his anti-vaccine movement and, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, urges parents to get their kids vaccinated. And Wolfson himself, who has quickly become something of a spokesman for the anti-vaxxers, is in no way an expert on vaccines or infectious diseases. He’s cardiologist who now does holistic medicine.
What the experts say: “The measles vaccine is one of the most highly effective vaccines that we have against any virus or any microbe, and it is safe, number one,” Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS. “Number two, measles is one of the top two most contagious infectious viruses that we know of…. So you have a highly infectious virus and you have an extraordinarily effective vaccine.”
Despite the measles outbreak that has spread to at least 14 states, Wolfson’s advice to parents is:
Wolfson actively urges people to avoid vaccines. “We should be getting measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, these are the rights of our children to get it,” he told the Arizona Republic. “We do not need to inject chemicals into ourselves and into our children in order to boost our immune system.” He added: “I’m a big fan of what’s called paleo-nutrition, so our children eat foods that our ancestors have been eating for millions of years…. That’s the best way to protect.”
Should kids have polio too?
McCoy also wrote recently about Andrew Wakefield the British doctor who started the vaccine panic:
If the [measles] outbreak proves anything, it’s Wakefield’s enduring legacy. Even years after he lost his medical license, years after he was shown to have committed numerous ethical violations, and years after the retraction of a medical paper that alleged a vaccine-autism link, his message resonates. Facebook is populated by pages like “Dr. Wakefield’s Work Must Continue.” There’s the Web site called “We Support Andrew Wakefield,” which peddles the Wakefieldian doctrine. And thousands sign petitions pledging support….
Wakefield’s defenders frequently harbor a deep distrust of government. “They often suggest that vaccination is motivated by profit and is an infringement of personal liberty and choice; vaccines violate the laws and nature and are temporary or ineffective; and good hygiene is sufficient to protect against disease,” said a 2008 editorial in Nature.
Others, from Katie Couric to Jenny McCarthy to Michele Bachmann, have caught the anti-vaccine bug.
Katie Couric?
And in Wakefield, who still preaches the gospel of anti-vaccination from Texas, such individuals find a true martyr — a man who has sacrificed everything to take on powerful pharmaceutical companies and the biggest villain of all: the government. Those who came to hear him speak in 2011 at Graceview Baptish Church in Tomball, Texas, left messages of encouragement, according to the New York Times: “We stand by you!” and “Thank you for the many sacrifices you have made for the cause!” Another person, suddenly aware that a reporter was in the midst, warned the writer she better be careful. “Be nice to him,” the woman said. “Or we will hurt you.
“To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one,” J.B. Handley, co-founder of a group that disputes vaccine safety, told the Times. “He is a symbol of how all of us feel.”
Read much more about Wakefield and his discredited research at the WaPo link.
Meanwhile measles continues to spread from coast to coast. Here’s a map of reported cases at the NYT.
What else is happening? Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a terrific Tuesday!
Monday Reads: Who Exactly Votes for all these Tacky People?
Posted: February 2, 2015 Filed under: morning reads 16 CommentsGood Morning!
My mother had a saying for everything. They are hardwired into my brain with the exact same voice and tone from the very first time I heard them. I think one of the first ones that I learned was “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Evidently, there are quite a few politicians whose mothers either never said that or who completely ignored it. There’s an astounding number of people out there that just don’t seem to be able to show some class when in the public eye. First up, officer and no gentleman, John McCain who called protesters “low life scum” in a senate hearing. Code Pink is not exactly known for its demure demeanor, but people still have a right to voice their opinions and a senator should be used to it at McCain’s age.
Sen. John McCain says the Code Pink protesters he called “low-life scum” at a hearing last week deserved it.
The Arizona Republican made the remark after protesters rushed a Senate Armed Services Committee witness table where 91-year-old Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, was testifying. McCain, the committee’s chairman, ordered them escorted from the room by Capitol police.
“These people were physically threatening Henry Kissinger,” McCain told CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday on “State of the Union” as he defended his comments.
“I’m used to people popping up at these hearings and yelling, and then they’re escorted out — that’s at least some version of free speech,” he said. “These people rushed up. They were right next to Henry Kissinger, waving handcuffs at him. He’s a 91-year-old man with a broken shoulder who was willing to come down and testify before Congress, to give us the benefit of his many years of wisdom. Of course I was outraged, and I’m still outraged.”
I’m not exactly sure why Senate Republicans felt the need to roll out Kissinger. He certainly has done some terrible things in his day, so bringing him back as an authority on anything is dicey at best. I seriously doubt any of them were going to manhandle Kissinger. They’re pretty well-known for being loud and for interrupting things. What’s wrong with banging on the desk and watching the Capitol police do their jobs? Hasn’t that generally worked before for these things?
Mike Huckabee has begun bottom feeding for the Republican Presidential nomination. He’s said some pretty outrageous and mean things in his life as a preacher. This is pretty ugly.
Possible Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Sunday argued that Christians could have “gay friends,” while still opposing marriage equality because it was a biblical principle.
During an interview on CNN, Huckabee refused to say whether he thought homosexuality was a choice because he said that the bigger issue was how the law was being changed to legalize same-sex marriage.
“We don’t change law because some people in a black robe decided the fact that they don’t like the fact that 70 and in some cases 80 percent of a state’s population have affirmed natural law marriage,” the former Arkansas governor opined.
But Huckabee said that gay people could “be his friend” even if he disagreed with their sexuality.
“I don’t drink alcohol, but, gosh, a lot of my friends — maybe most of them — do,” he explained. “You know, I don’t use profanity, but believe me, I’ve got a lot of friends who do. Some people really like classical music and ballet and opera, it’s not my cup of tea. I would like think there’s room in America for people to have different points of view without screaming, shouting, wanting to shut their business down.”
Huckabee encouraged Republicans to invite LGBT people “in the tent” as long as the party did not change it’s position on equal marriage rights.
“For me as it was for President Obama in 2008, this is not just a political issue, this is a biblical issue,” he insisted. “And as a biblical issue, unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it’s really not my place to say, ‘Okay, I’m just going to evolve.'”
“It’s like asking somebody who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli. We don’t want to do that,” Huckabee continued. “Or asking a Muslim to serve up something that is offensive to him or to have dogs in his backyard.”
“We’re so sensitive to make sure we don’t offend certain religions, but then we act like Christians can’t have the convictions they’ve had for over 2,000 years.”
It certainly would be nice if some one would rapture him out of our lives, wouldn’t it? Can you even imagine what kind of mind could compare the civil rights of american citizens to keeping a dog in the backyard?
Every time I think Louisiana has been turned into a third world hell hole by current Republican regimes, I come across the story of a real third world hell hole. This is some information about Honduras, which has
been pogrommed into a senseless and horrid crime state since being turned into another one of those libertarian experiments. When do we get to have enough of these failed states to say that the crap the Koch Brothers actively push basically leads to state chaos? Honduras–much like Louisiana–has been privatized into a pirate state. They’ve got militarized and private police forces … gee who does that sound like?
Since the 2009 coup against President José Manuel Zelaya and subsequent election of Porfirio “Pepe Lobo” Sosa and his favored successor Juan Orlando Hernandez, Honduras has embarked on a devastating neoliberal economic program that has contributed to its status as one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region. The privatization of Honduran society has been accompanied by a militarization of public security efforts in the country, both of which have been fueled by a network of U.S.-supported policies and programs.
Despite the country’s crackdown on crime, violence in Honduras hasskyrocketed in recent years. Honduras now has the world’s second-highestnational murder rate and is home to two of the world’s five most violent cities. Unchecked gang activity has contributed to widespread corruption and impunity within police and government institutions.
This weekend, a coalition of leftist opposition parties came together temporarilyto defeat a proposed amendment to the Honduran constitution that would have given permanent status to the country’s militarized police force, known as the Policía Militar de Orden Público, or PMOP.
This “elite” police unit, which serves under the direct command of the presidency, is intended to support President Hernandez’s heavy-handed crime reduction efforts. President Hernandez created the PMOP shortly after coming to office in 2014, with support from a legislature dominated by his conservative National Party. The Hernandez administration’s police militarization efforts also had the backing of the country’s business sector.
According to one study, in 2013, only 27 percentof Hondurans expressed confidence in the civilian police while 73 percent thought the military should be involved in policing efforts. Nevertheless, both the military and the police have a long history of corruption and criminality as well as abuses committed against civilians in Honduras.
The violence is terrible there. Meanwhile, where do you suppose they got all these troubles from?
As Mackey reported, “The ZEDE’s central government is stacked with libertarian foreigners,” including a former speechwriter for presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., conservative political operative Grover Norquist, a senior member of the Cato Institute think tank, and Ronald Reagan’s son Michael, as well as “a Danish banker, a Peruvian economist, and an Austrian general secretary of the Friedrich Hayek Institute.”
According to the official ZEDE website, the zones place a heavy emphasis on security, offering “a 21st century, business-efficient, non-politicized, transparent, stable, system of administration, plus a special police and institutional security to overcome regional issues and meet world standards.” A new bill introduced by Hernandez minutes after losing the vote this weekend would allow municipalities and ZEDEs to request that the PMOP or other branches of the Armed Forces provide them with security services.
Honduras’ continuing militarization of security efforts appears to have the backing of the United States, which has provided more than $65 million in security aid to Honduras since 2008. President Hernandez has also met frequently with high-level U.S. officials for talks on security and migration issues. As the U.S. amassador’s Twitter account wrote on Friday, “U.S. cooperation with Honduras’ fight against narcotrafficking and crime is strong and continuing.”
So Grover Norquist et al are the folks that are terrorizing my state too through their stooge Bobby Jindal. The budget here is now in utter disrepair due to tax giveaways to businesses and tax cuts to rich people. There’s just no money coming in to support anything. Here are two disturbing stories. First, our historical and natural parks are having to shut down.
Nearly two centuries ago, American officials were worried about Louisiana’s coastline. But their concern wasn’t erosion of the marshes or walls of water driven by a storm devastating the region. It was foreign navies.
Fresh off of stinging naval defeats to the British in the War of 1812, President James Monroe and the Congress of the fledgling United States settled on coastal defense as a priority.
To address that concern, they commissioned a series of forts to be built along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. These forts, known as the Third System of coastal defenses, included Fort Monroe in Virginia, Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay and Fort Pike in Louisiana, as well as more than three dozen others.
Today, those forts are historical relics, reminders of the way wars were fought before aircraft, smart bombs and ballistic missiles.
Fort Pike is no exception. The isolated spot along U.S. 90 at the eastern extremity of Orleans Parish has for years been host to children scampering over its earthen battlements and sitting astride the old cannons, and history buffs wandering slowly through the fort, eyes peering back through time.
But as of Friday, even that has ceased as Fort Pike succumbs to a modern foe: state budget woes. A $1.5 million midyear budget cut for the Office of State Parks means that Fort Pike’s last visitors toured the site Friday, officials said.
The closure is indefinite, said Jacques Berry, a spokesman for Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, who oversees the state park system.
Those of you that saw the closing episode of True Detective got to see the inside of one of its sister forts as the hideout for the mass murderer. They are extremely interesting building and deserve preservation.
Our Governor has proposed a 35% cut to Higher Education budgets this year since basically there are no other ways to fund the budget except through devastating a few items or raising taxes. He’s basically cut over 65% in his 7 years of ruining errr running the state. This is an incredible move because this level of cuts would mean that every single public college and university campus in Louisiana would have to file for financial exigency next year. Exigency is the public entity’s version of bankruptcy. We’re talking two medical centers, a law school, and a number of universities from LSU on down. Think on that. EVERY SINGLE public university in a state will be basically bankrupt and will have to institute massive lay offs.
The Revenue Estimating Committee, a state panel that determines how much money Louisiana government has to spend, declared Monday what nearly everyone knew was coming — the budget hole is larger than originally estimated.
New midyear budget cuts will total $103.5 million, and the state budget hole for the next financial cycle has grown $203.8 million, bringing next year’s projected financial shortfall to some $1.6 billion overall.
The drop in revenue is largely due to a weak oil market. Albrecht predicted that oil prices will remain low not only for this year and next year, but for the next three-to-four years, until 2019. The price of oil per barrel was around $100 per barrel last year, and will be a little over $50 per barrel next year, he said.
For every dollar the price of oil per barrel drops, Louisiana loses about $11 million in state revenue, according to Albrecht. The collection of Louisiana’s severance taxes — which are related to extracting oil from the ground — will drop $80.4 million in the current fiscal year and $222.7 for next year, Albrecht predicted.
This means that state agencies — notably higher education and state health care — will likely have to absorb more midyear cuts, while also preparing for drastic funding reductions during the next fiscal year. Gov. Bobby Jindal already reduced state spending last month by $180 million, in part because of falling oil prices.
Even before the budget situation worsened, Louisiana’s higher education institutions had already been told to brace for more than $300 million in funding reductions, a cut equal to the entire public operating budget for Louisiana’s community and technical colleges.
Health care services had been told they would have to absorb a $250 million hit, which could balloon to more than twice that size because Louisiana would no longer be able to put up the dollars required to attract certain types of federal funding.
Senate President John Alario, who has served in the Louisiana Legislature for 40 years, called the proposed cuts to higher education and health care “devastating” a few weeks ago — and that was before the state government officially recognized just how bad the problem was during the Monday meeting.
Meanwhile, it seems Jindal is going to have to live without the Duck Dynasty nod since that’s going to Mike Huckabee’s run at the presidency. I’d just like to know when we can roll out the guillotines and just be 
done with them all. And with that, I have nothing nice to say about them, so I shall end it here.
On, a lighter note, Happy Ground Hog’s Day! Here’s a link that discusses the roots of the celebration.
The obsession with weather forecasting at this time of year is completely understandable -after all, winter weather is tiresome, and for many, downright dangerous. Will the supplies you stocked in the autumn last until spring? Finding out didn’t make the supplies last any longer, but signs of spring could soothe a worried mind. One omen Europeans looked for was the emergence of hibernating animals. The snake mentioned in the old Imbolc verses was rarely ever seen, but hibernating mammals were. In some parts of Eastern Europe, Candlemas is also known as the Day of the Bear, and the weather forecasting tradition varies. In some communities, good weather on the day of the bear will cause the animal to stay outside, meaning spring will come soon. In other places that observe the Day of the Bear, the “contrary” rule applies– if the weather is nice, the bear will see his shadow and be frightened back into his den for more winter weather. So one should hope for a cloudy or stormy day at Candlemas.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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