Parsing the candidates' resumes

Letter from a former fundie to Sarah Palin

That god-fearers are toxic to liberty has been made plain the past 8 years. With god on your side you can turn on your fellow-humans with impunity. Here's an excerpt of an open letter from a former fundamentalist, Marlene Winell, PhD. Read the full text here.

As a former fundamentalist, I'd like to call you on what you are doing.

The media has found you "opaque" about your religion. Why? You have not been honest about the most important thing about you: the fact that you are a born-again charismatic on a mission from God. Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do. Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement. Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God's will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.

Former fundamentalists like me know that your worldview is so encompassing, authoritarian, and powerful that it defines who you think you are, the way you view the world, history, other people, the future, and your place in the world. It defines you far more than hockey mom, wife, woman, hunter, governor, or VP candidate.

Ridiculous religionists - too easy

There are many funny moments in Bill Maher's "Religulous." And that's part of the problem. Freaks, nut-cases, extremists in outrageous costumes and inarticulate people can all be easily set up for a laugh. They are ridiculous religionists. There are a number of these in "Religulous," a film that Maher says is intended to raise doubts about the claims of religion. A laudable, even important, goal. But the toxins of religion also worm deep into the psyches of mostly ordinary people, not just the flamboyant crazies. Stand at the door of most churches prior to a service and you don't see freaks walking in. You see the hoi polloi, the intensely average mass of society. Some, if not many, of these people are awake enough to know that the claims of religion are ridiculous, but they choose to go along to get along. Many more just don't think about the claims, they just accept it as part of their cultural identity. They wear their religion like an occasional badge (or flag pin), a set-it-and-forget-it accoutrement to be displayed at the door of social acceptance.

Where the Great Average goes horribly wrong is when it has to make decisions that affect the world as a whole. In a political contest every candidate has to flash that badge because if they don't then Joe Average gets suspicious. And so dolts like Bush garner praise because they say they make foreign policy decisions based on messages they receive from a heavenly Father. An airhead like Sarah Palin can espouse freakish beliefs in End Times, fear of witchcraft, and messages from the divine and the religious “right” say amen to the possibility (probability) that she could become President. Even Barack Obama has to steer through the treacherous shoals of perception that he is either a Muslim terrorist or a Christian anarchist – so he just goes bland.

While it's true that the claims of religion are ultimately ridiculous, I wish Maher had shown (or had been able to find) more ordinary people. I would have recommended most of my family, who are good-hearted and generally likeable, even while they shamelessly take comfort in ridiculous, unprovable assumptions.

But owing to the hypnotic nature of these beliefs, I doubt that they, and most ordinary religionists, could be persuaded to doubt. But it would have been interesting for Maher to try anyway.

Garrison Keillor on future trivia

Powerful prose! Not sure where it was first published, but I provide the brilliant full text forwarded to me by a friend.

We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus. In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her I know because I'm related to some of them.

Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it. Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay -- uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes. If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Col. Mark Bridges, Col. Steven David, Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Maj. Michael Mori.

It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for forty grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

Garrison Keillor is a syndicated columnist and the author of a new Lake Wobegon novel, "Liberty" (Viking).

Thanks to SEW for giving a publication link: here

A heartbeat away...could be this mouth

Fareed Zakaria suggests in Newsweek that Sarah Palin leave the ticket and "spend more time with her family."

I hope she doesn't. I hope she continues to spew evidence of her total ditziness all over the McCain campaign. Tina Fey did hardly any editing of the following exchange with Couric:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

McCain caught the Katie, instead of the Shuttle to DC

Watch how easily McCain lies. Caught on tape with hilarious commentary by Dave Letterman.

Anti-Palin rally in Alaska - pix

I've gathered some pix about a rally in Alaska, organized by women who oppose Palin's claims for the VP. See the rest of the pix here.

WHICH "country" first?

McMoose on secession:

Beyond the Palin - from a voice I respect

Sam Harris thinks incisively on the influence of religion in society. This article from the LA Times puts succinctly the reasons why McCain's VP choice is so dangerous" "Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority."

Palin: average isn't good enough

She's not qualified to be president, and in picking her, McCain shows that he has little respect for the presidency.
By Sam Harris
September 3, 2008

So let us ask the question that should be on the mind of every thinking person in the world at this moment: If John McCain becomes the 44th president of the United States, what are the odds that a blood clot or falling object will make Sarah Palin the 45th?

The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper's scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain's medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.

As many people have noted, placing Palin on the ticket has made these final months of the already overlong 2008 campaign much more interesting. Is Palin remotely qualified to be president of the United States? No. But that's precisely what is so interesting. McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: Don't look now, but our cousin Sarah just became leader of the free world! Tune in next week and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the "Who would you like to have a beer with?" poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages -- and loses -- both necessary and unnecessary wars.

McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he is willing to put the girl next door (soon, too, to be a grandma) into office beside him. He has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work.

And it might. Palin's nomination has clearly excited Christian conservatives, and it may entice a few million gender-obsessed fans of Hillary Clinton to vote entirely on the basis of chromosomes. Throw in a few million more average Americans who will just love how the nice lady smiles, and 2009 could be a very interesting year.

Tune in next week and watch cousin Sarah fuss with our nuclear arsenal ... .

Sam Harris is a founder of the Reason Project and the author of "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation."

See also, from Huff Post:Palin's Church May Have Shaped Controversial Worldview