Archives 2016

Wheeze A Coda Dog

The Alexa app on my tablet wanted to share with me the exciting (to it) news that Amazon has released a companion device to its Echo, called an Echo Dot, and invited me to ask “Alexa, what’s Echo Dot?” to learn more.

According to said app’s transcript, here’s the conversation we just had:

– Alexa, what’s echo dog?
– Sorry, I couldn’t find the answer to your question.
– Alexa, what’s the Dutch?
– The Netherlands national football team represents the Netherlands in international football.
– Alexa, what’s the code coda?
– Sorry, I couldn’t find the answer to your question.
– Alexa, what’s the code doctor?
– Sorry, I couldn’t find the answer to your question.
– Alexa, what’s the coda?
– Coda is a term used in music primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece to an end.
– Alexa, what’s Echo Dot?
– [Spiel about Echo Dot]
– Alexa, order some Echo Q-Tips.

Paul Ryan Denounces Republican Strategy

You may have heard that establishment Republicans are almost as terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency as the rest of us. And since they haven’t been able to stop him so far, they’re getting a bit desperate.
So today, Speaker Paul Ryan opened his mouth and said some words:

The Republican party does not prey on people’s prejudices—we appeal to their highest ideals.

Are you fucking kidding me? He would have us believe that he lives in this country, has managed to become Speaker of the House, and yet somehow has never paid attention to electoral politics in the last twenty-some years?

Republicans gave us the Willie Horton ad. They gave us “welfare queens”. They made “9/11” the most commonly-repeated phrase in several conventions.

Republicans were the ones screaming loudest that gay marriage would undermine religious liberty, destroy the family, and probably rain on your Fourth of July barbecue. Ditto gays in the military. And gay scout masters. And now the fearmongering about trans people in bathroom bills is all coming from the right.

Who kept accusing Barack Obama of not being American? Which party gave us “blah people”?

I understand that Ryan doesn’t want Trump to be president. But he’s the culmination of years and years of Republican divisiveness and fearmongering. They, as the saying goes, built that. Preying on people’s prejudices and fears is what Republicans do. Does Ryan really expect anyone to believe otherwise?

I Should Have Known the Pope Wasn’t Going to Change Policy

The news today mentioned that Pope Francis I had okayed contraception for women in Zika-struck areas. Yay, liberal hippie pope! My complaint since the beginning of his tenure is that while he gives good press conference, that’s all he does: he hasn’t changed the church’s policy, and that’s the real problem.

At least so far, the Catholic church has been opposed to both contraception and abortion; Catholic hospitals don’t provide contraceptives when they have a choice, the previous pope famously told Africans that condoms make the AIDS crisis worse. Claims that contraceptives cause abortions. So against that backdrop, saying that contraception ≠ abortion is a step in the right direction, no?

Except, well, maybe not so much: according to AP,

Abortion “is an evil in and of itself, but it is not a religious evil at its root, no? It’s a human evil,” Francis told reporters. “On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one (Zika), such as the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear.”

That’s a reference to a document from 1968 in which that okayed contraception for nuns in the Congo who were being raped.

In other words, Francis still isn’t changing policy. He’s just reaffirming Catholic policy from fifty years ago, policy that’s slightly less dogmatic than the way it’s usually portrayed.

U.N. officials have called on Latin American countries to loosen their abortion laws to allow women to terminate pregnancies if they fear the fetus may be at risk for microcephaly, a rare birth defect that causes brain damage and may be linked to the virus.

But Francis told reporters, “Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.”

So if you’ve found out that your fetus will likely never develop normal brain function; or if you have an ectopic pregnancy; and decide to abort, well, then apparently that makes you just like the Mafia.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gqFZjfFGuM&w=420&h=315]

Bryan Fischer Needs to Make Up His Mind

One of my guilty pleasures is listening to Focal Point, the AM talk-radio show of famed anger-bear Bryan Fischer, a man so far right that even the AFA tried to distance itself from him.

In yesterday’s episode (which you can find at the show archive under Feb. 15, 2016, Hour 1), he made several points about Antonin Scalia, the recently-deceased Supreme Court justice who was so far to the right that even Fischer approved of him.

That Scalia is an irreplaceable genius who interpreted the constitution as the founders would have wanted.

That since Obama is in a position to nominate his replacement, the very future of our republic hangs by a thread. (Update, Feb. 17: See this column for a text version of Fischer’s apocalyptic fears.)

That the Supreme Court does not make law: it writes opinions. And while everyone’s entitled to an opinion, and while this opinion may be binding on the parties named in the suit, the rest of us are under no obligation to listen to them.

SCOTUS-JustYourOpinionMan

That the Senate still has to confirm anyone Obama nominates, and Mitch McConnell is just too spineless to stand up to القاعدة‎ the Base, those loyal AFA listeners who will demand that the Senate turn down anyone Obama nominates.

That Congress could simply pass a law reducing the number of Supreme Court justices, so that there’s no vacancy to be filled.

So for one thing, I’m sure that Obama doesn’t see this Republican-controlled Congress as a thread, but rather as a major roadblock.

For another thing, somehow the Supreme Court is both trivial, a constitutional afterthought that no one needs to pay attention to, but also so vitally important that a single Justice’s absence can spell the ruin of the nation. Maybe someone can call Fischer up and ask him to explain.

Now, I know that I tend to be pretty snarky here, but in this case, I’ve tried to represent Fischer’s views fairly, in a way that he would agree with. It’s just that he’s a walking, talking Poe. If anyone doubts me, feel free to listen to the show and correct me.

After Scalia

You’ve probably heard that Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia passed away of natural causes a few days ago. I wish his friends and family solace in this difficult time.

But setting that aside, I’m glad he’s off the court. From Lawrence v. Texas to Obergefell v. Hodges to many others, he did more to fight the advance of civil rights in this country than anyone else on the court, or indeed anyone else I can think of.

And now, of course, there’s a storm of speculation in the opiniosphere: will Obama nominate a replacement? (Yes. That’s his job.) Should he leave it to the next president? (No, that would be not doing his job.)

Will the Senate block his nominee? Yes. That’s what this Congress does: block Obama. Isn’t there a tradition of not nominating SCOTUS replacements in an election year? No, that’s just something Republican senators made up so they wouldn’t have to do their job.

Will Obama nominate a liberal, or a moderate? Will Mitch McConnell refuse to let the issue come to the floor? Those are interesting questions, and the pundits are applying the full force of their three-dimensional-chess-playing brains to them, because there are so many interesting ways this could go, so many ways the actors could position themselves. Obama gets to pick a nominee. The Senate can drag its feet on the confirmation. But the longer the position isn’t filled, the more pressure there will be on the Senate to do so. And it could be a big issue in October, at the height of election season.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. But one thing I’m fairly certain of: Scalia’s replacement will be more liberal than him. He or she would pretty much have to be, unless Obama somehow nominates Bryan Fischer or the reanimated corpse of Atilla the Hun.

And that in turn means that some number of cases that would have been 5-4 decisions with Scalia’s vote will become 5-4 the other way. And maybe this country can move forward.

BillDo Has A Totally Practical Solution to Zika

Looks like it’s time for another edition of Bill Donohue Is A Terrible Person.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights commented on the current Zika epidemic:

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said Friday, adding that laws and policies that restrict access to sexual and reproductive health services in contravention of international standards, must be repealed and concrete steps must be taken so that women have the information, support and services they require to exercise their rights to determine whether and when they become pregnant.

So if women get to decide when they get pregnant, there’ll be fewer pregnant women with Zika, and thus fewer kids with microcephaly. Does that sound pretty reasonable to you? Yes? Well, that’s because you’re not a frothing anti-contraception dogmatist like BillDo.

The way he sees it (emphasis emphatically added):

Zeid wants restrictive abortion laws repealed. More than that, he is fuming over the notion that women are in charge of their bodies. They are not. Moreover, he smirks at the advice that women should delay getting pregnant. According to the High Commissioner such advice “ignores the reality that many women and girls simply cannot exercise control over whether or when or under what circumstances they become pregnant, especially in an environment where sexual violence is so common.”

Okay, back up to that “They are not” for a moment. Is that poor phrasing, or did Bill just say that women are not in charge of their bodies? And if the latter, is it safe to assume he means something abstract and nebulous like “all our bodies ultimately belong to Baby Jesus, and we’re just caretakers”, rather than a more concrete bit of horribleness like “men get to decide whether women get and stay pregnant”? (I mean, we know he endorses the “stay” part of that, but I don’t know to what extent he’s willing to say so out loud.)

Be that as it may, he continues:

Here’s some advice for Zeid. Number one, girls should not be getting pregnant, and it is his job to say so.

Okay so far. I’m curious to know how BillDo proposes to enable them to make this choice.

Second, women are not the powerless wimps that he says they are: they can, in almost all circumstances, control when to have sex and with whom.

Yes. In almost all circumstances (let’s say over 95%), women decide when and whether to have sex. The other cases are called rape.

Third, he needs to man-up and name those Latin American nations (those were the ones he was addressing) where rape is commonplace.

Oh, Jesus Mary-fucking Christ on a consecrated cracker! Is this really that hard to look up in the age of Google and Wikipedia? Here’s a chart of rape rates in Latin America. And here’s Wikipedia’s section on rape in Brazil, one of the countries currently worst-hit by Zika.

Whichever way you slice it, we’re talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of women whom BillDo dismisses with a wave of his in-almost-all-circumstances, women far more alive and breathing than the virgin Mary, the only woman he seems willing to protect.

Fourth, killing innocent persons is never a morally acceptable remedy for any disease. Fifth, he ought to be policing the U.N. instead of lecturing us about the wonders of abortion

For some reason, BillDo doesn’t mention that the document he’s complaining about isn’t a paean to abortion, but rather talks in more general terms about letting women control their bodies, including sex ed, medical services, and contraception, as well as (and preferably before) abortion.

But I guess none of that matters, because when women use contraception instead of abstinence, it makes Baby Jesus cry.

Still, I’d like to end on a positive note by treating Bill better than he would half the human population, and allow him to choose for himself whether or not to choke on a barrel of contraceptive jelly.

The Bible Answer Man Dodges the Euthyphro Dilemma

A few days ago, on the Bible Answer Man show, Hank Hanegraaff tackled the Euthyphro dilemma.

Briefly, this comes from one of Socrates’ dialogs, in which he asks a man named Euthyphro whether certain things are good because the gods say so, or whether the gods say those things are good because they are good. This also applies to the Christian god, naturally.

In the first case, morality is inherently arbitrary and subjective: if God decides that rape is good, then rape automatically becomes good; but this feels wrong, aside from being abhorrent.

The second case is that certain actions are good on their own merits: that charity is good and rape are bad for reasons that have nothing to do with any gods. But in that case, the gods are irrelevant to morality.

Now, personally, I don’t see a problem with the second one. If a god showed up and told me to do or not do something, I’d want him/her/it to explain why, and to provide a better explanation than “Meh. I flipped a coin, and today, pork is tref”.

But of course Hanegraaff sees his god as the source of morality, and not merely a middleman or a teacher. So the way he gets around the dilemma is to say that yes, things are good because God says they are, but also God wouldn’t command something like rape to be moral, because such is not his nature: things are good because they reflect God’s nature.

The problem is that this doesn’t solve the problem: it merely redefines “good” to mean “like God”, with no connection to anything else, like happiness or well-being, or anything like that. Is killing someone good? It is, if it reflects God’s nature. So how can we tell whether it reflects God’s nature? Given the number of people that Yahweh kills in the Bible, it seems that killing, and even genocide, reflects his nature.

I expect Hanegraaff would dispute this, saying, for instance, that it was okay for God to kill everyone in the flood because they deserved it, or that slavery was necessary back in ancient Israel, or It’s Okay When God Does It, or whatever. But that’s just it: why is it even necessary to explain why the Bible seems to describe God as doing horrible things? Especially if the Bible is a true account of what happened, and especially if, as many apologists say, God’s law is written on all our hearts? Wouldn’t we read about the massacre of the Midianites and think, “Yeah, they had it coming”? Would anyone balk at the image of Jesus whipping people with a scourge he made himself?

It seems clear that even if “good” and “evil” aren’t clearly defined and have fuzzy edges, Hanegraaff isn’t relying solely on the Bible to figure out what falls in each category, and neither does anyone else. That is, whatever “good” means, it’s not synonymous with “like God”.

R.I.P. David Bowie

David Bowie has died at the age of 69, of cancer. You may remember him as the guy who changed the direction of rock six or seven times.

I wish I had something clever to say here, but I don’t, so just read the AP’s retrospective (or Wikipedia‘s, if you’re reading this in a dystopian future where the AP’s links have gone dead) while listening to Moonage Daydream:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFDj3shXvco&w=420&h=315]

Charlie Hebdo, un an après

la-une-de-l-edition-double-de-charlie-hebdo-qui-sort-le-mercredi-6-janvier-photo-charlie-hebdo-1451896178
Charlie Hebdo cover, Jan. 4, 2016. The caption reads, “One year later, the assassin is still at large.” Image from l’Est Républicain

One year after the shootings at Charlie Hebdo that claimed the lives of its top staff, the magazine has released a double-length special edition issue with the cover above.