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stcynic | November 13, 2004We've been hearing so much lately about the red state/blue state thing, how the blue states are full of immoral, gay-loving, baby-killing liberal pagans (and all vote Democratic) and the red states contain mostly morally upstanding, family values loving, God-ordained conservative Christians (who naturally vote Republican). But a quick look at some statistics on a wide variety of things shows that these labels have much more to do with rhetoric than reality.
Conservative Christians are forever telling us that their religion is the key to a cohesive and peaceful society, and that all hell…
stcynic | November 12, 2004This is very cool. My old and dear friend Aaron Dworkin, director of the Sphynx Organization, has been featured in People Magazine for his work expanding opportunities in classical music for minority students. If I did this right, you should be able to see a PDF of the article by clicking here. Just don't tell anyone at People I did this or they'll sue me. Mum's the word.
stcynic | November 12, 2004Okay, I know this rant is full of non sequiturs and ad hominems and who knows what else, but it's still damn funny. Go there now.
stcynic | November 12, 2004Jerry Falwell, it appears, is tired of being old news and he's jumping back in to the political arena with both feet. The Washington Times is reporting that Falwell has formed a new organization called the Faith and Values Coalition. Cuz you know, the American Family Association, the Traditional Values Coalition, the Christian Coalition, the Christian Defense Fund, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and the 14 thousand other organizations that use the same 5 words and just juggle them around, they're just not getting the job done. Or at least, that's what the Holy Spirit tells…
stcynic | November 11, 2004Boy, if this story is correct, it almost makes you feel sorry even for a guy like Arafat. It seems that Suha Arafat, the obviously grieving widow, would not allow the machines that have been keeping her husband's lungs and heart going for the last 13 days (he has been braindead all along, but under Islamic law, apparently, he could not be pronounced dead as long as his organs were still working) until she had negotiated a good financial settlement. Suha, you see, does not live in Israel with her suffering people, she lives in Paris, where her husband was taken for treatment, and she wanted to…
stcynic | November 10, 2004Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for providing this link to the short film Submission, by Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh was murdered last week by radical Islamic thugs in the Netherlands, presumably because of this film, which depicts the brutal oppression of women in fundamentalist Islamic culture. In the context of the war on terrorism and our battle with Al Qaeda, it's easy to see the entire thing as a big abstract, but the truth remains that we are locked in a battle with the most reactionary and theocratic force in the world today and there are real victims of their oppression. I just finished…
stcynic | November 9, 2004A lot of evangelicals seem to think so:
"This was Providence," evangelical leader and presidential adviser Charles Colson told Beliefnet. "Anybody looking at the 2000 election would have to say it was...a miraculous deliverance, and I think people felt it again this year." By allowing Bush to stay in office, Colson said, God is "giving us a chance to repent and to restore some moral sanity to American life."
Richard Land, a leading Southern Baptist who participates in a weekly strategy call between the White House and evangelical leaders put it this way: "Whoever won, it would have been God…
stcynic | November 9, 2004Thanks to Timothy Sandefur for the reminder that today is the 15th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. A very, very important day for the cause of human freedom.
stcynic | November 8, 2004Robert Novak has joined the chorus of dishonesty against Arlen Specter, emphatically repeating the outright lie that Specter said he would impose a litmus test on future judicial nominees that they must be pro-choice and that he said he would block potential appointments. Novak says:
Sen. Arlen Specter, the canny old fox of Pennsylvania politics, got carried away last Wednesday in the flush of an easy fifth-term victory and revealed too much of what he really thinks. He clearly imposed a litmus test requiring support of the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision for Supreme Court nominees at a time…
stcynic | November 7, 2004Via Brent Rasmussen, I just discovered that Ken Layne has a blog. This will immediately make it into my daily must-read list. He's as concerned with the Christian Reconstructionists as I am.
stcynic | November 7, 2004She's already won one Idiot of the Month award, can she go for two? Look at this bizarre diatribe on Worldnutdaily about the recently discovered Flores Man. It's just full of absurd statements. To wit:
But the showstopper in the recent discovery of Homo flores came when the 3-foot-tall adult female skeleton was dated as only 18,000 years old. That means this hobbit-like dwarf of a human shatters the long-held scientific belief that Homo sapiens systematically crowded out other upright walking human cousins some 160,000 years ago and took over the human population tens of thousands of years…
stcynic | November 7, 2004Editor's Note: Dan Ray left this as a comment on the thread below, but it's so long and detailed that I think it deserves to be up here on its own where everyone can read it. Dan is a law professor and a longtime reader who has become a friend as well and I have extended an invitation for him to be a guest blogger whenever he has the time or interest to do so. As we get more into questions of constitutional law in the near future, I'm sure he will lend us his knowledge from time to time and we will all benefit from that. Here is his statement:
This is a great topic, and I look forward to…
stcynic | November 4, 2004Back in January, Pat Robertson pronounced to the world that God himself had told him it was going to be a blowout for Bush:
I think George Bush is going to win in a walk. I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004.
Now, I think we can all agree that one of the closest elections in history can hardly qualify as a blowout. So what happened, Pat? Was the Lord not omnipotent enough to make sure it happened? Was he not omniscient enough to get the prediction correct? Or could you just be a fraud and a conman? I'll go with the latter.
stcynic | November 4, 2004Before the emerging conventional wisdom hardens into an Undoubted Truth, take a look at Eugene Volokh's debunking of today's sudden consensus that it was moral issues that brought Bush the victory. As he notes, in the exit polls about 22% named morality as the most important issue, but 20% named the economy and 19% said terrorism. That's hardly enough to pick out the highest one by a slim margin and declaring it the overriding issue.
stcynic | November 4, 2004I know the election is over and everything, but I just can't help but point to this article which contains several American soldiers talking about how they watched the Al Qaqaa site be looted and in late April and early May 2003 and couldn't do anything because they were so outnumbered:
U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen witnessed the looting and some soldiers sent messages to commanders in Baghdad requesting help, but received no reply, they said.
"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," one officer said...
Soldiers who belong to two different…
stcynic | November 3, 2004I'm out of town the rest of today for a loan closing and to break bread with an old friend or two. Hope no one kills themselves while I'm gone. If you're feeling depressed, take two shots of tequila and call me in the morning.
stcynic | November 3, 2004So much for last minute predictions, eh? First, let's dispose of the obvious - Ohio is going for Bush, and the desperate hope of a miracle by the Kerry folks is a fantasy. Game, set and match for Bush. So with that fact clearly stated, what do we conclude?
First, three major pieces of conventional wisdom died last night. Among the very first things one learns in Political Science 101 (at least back when I was a poli sci major) are these three things:
1. High turnout always favors Democrats and hurts Republicans.
2. High turnout always favors challengers and hurts incumbents.
3. Negative and…
stcynic | November 2, 2004Well, everyone is waiting breathlessly to see who wins. I voted today, and I would bet money that I am the only one in this county who voted for Badnarik; the vote counters probably think it was a joke ballot. The voter turnout has been huge, with predictions that it might top 70% of eligible voters. I'm not sure that's ever happened before, but I know it doesn't bode well for Bush and the Republicans. Higher turnout always favors the Democrats, especially with an incumbent Republican.
I had a conversation with my Republican campaign consultant friend the other day and he predicted that it…
stcynic | November 1, 2004Somehow I managed to get on the email list for Worldview Weekend, a group on the far right of the far right. Their latest email is quite amusing:
I believe anyone that does not vote on Tuesday is sinning and anyone that votes for Kerry is committing an even greater sin! We not only need President Bush but we need members of the U.S. House and Senate that will support those he will appoint to the federal bench and the U.S. Supreme Court.
This election is a worldview battle, a battle between good and evil....it is a spiritual battle. This is it folks.....if Kerry wins and he appoints Judges…
stcynic | November 1, 2004As badly as this missing explosives story has gone for the administration and their reporters, both reluctant and otherwise, I must confess to being more than a little surprised that Sandefur is still insisting that I somehow "jumped the gun" or "fell" for a false story. The evidence could not be any more firmly on my side on this one, as I will easily show below. In this latest post, he does at least attempt to address the actual substantive issues rather than just linking to obviously farcical articles and making sarcastic comments. Unfortunately, almost every factual claim he makes is…