Obama, Afghanistan, and deja vu all over again

First, some background:

  • May 1, 2003 President George W. Bush, while standing in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, declares "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
  • October 27, 2007 Presidential candidate Barack H. Obama, speaking on the Iraq War, declares "I will promise you this: that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home, we will bring an end to this war, you can take that to the bank."
  • November 4, 2008 Candidate Obama is elected to the presidency.
  • January 20, 2009 Obama's inauguration.
  • January 21, 2009 First full-day of Obama's presidency passes with no sign that he intends to bring the troops home.
  • February 18, 2009 President Obama orders 17,000 additional soldiers to Afghanistan.
  • February 27, 2009 President Obama declares "Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." Ok, so it's not the "first thing he will do", but he will definitely do it. Someday. For sure, all the troops from Iraq will be out by 2011. It's hard to tell though, the 2012 elections will be right around the corner by that point...

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Left, Right, Center, Lunacy Is Still Lunacy

Several years ago at a science fiction convention I saw a charlatan in the dealers room fleecing people with bogus "kirlian aura" photographs. The person in question had constructed an elaborate chair with complex armrests with hand-shaped inserts and cables. The victim sat in the chair, placed the hands on the plates, and a photograph was taken (a polaroid) that showed a bust portrait int he midst of swirling colors. I got a glimpse of the set up---there were mirrors on either side of the lens reflecting brightly-colored streamers that flanked the magic chair. Somehow, this created a lens flare of multi-hued cloudiness. I am a photographer by training. I know a little something about Kirlian "aura" photographs, enough to know that (a) you can't take them in full light and (b) Polaroid never made a film sensitive enough in the format this person was using to record the faint electrical tracings. You also couldn't run enough electricity safely through a whole human body to create even a thin outline much less the solar flare explosion these prints displayed. They looked nothing like a Kirlian photograph. But people were buying them, fifteen bucks a shot, and I expect the photographer in question made nice change that weekend. When an acquaintance of mine was showing hers off later I made a couple of remarks about the fraudulent aspects of it and all I got for my trouble was frostiness and dismissal as a hopeless skeptic. I confess I took that as my cue to say nothing further. I did not unmask the fraud, which would have been brave and ethical, but might well have gotten me pilloried as a spoil sport. This past year I sat on a panel about alternate religions and mythology at another convention. I was the only self-professed atheist on the panel. When I made my introductions and stated my position, a co-panelist asked me "So you're not a Christian? What are you then?" I was a bit dumbfounded. Did she not know what the word Atheist meant? I expounded. "I'm a humanist and rational materialist. I think all religions are essentially the same. Some are more benign than others but all of them are based on assumptions I can't accept. So I'm not only not a Christian, I am not a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or any variety of Pagan or New Age mystic. As far as I'm concerned, they're all bunk." I was not pilloried. We had a good discussion. I chopped up every religious assertion regardless its source and we all had a rousing good time fencing with each other and I was even congratulated later for having the guts to state my position clearly and forcefully. But afterward, the same co-panelist who asked my what I was if not a Christian came up to me and pressed me further. Do I believe in reincarnation? "No. There's no proof for it. It seems to me to be the same sort of wishful thinking all the rest of them embrace and I have no use for it." I think she was offended at that point. Thinking about it now, I'm beginning to realize why we have such difficulty in public forums discussing religion, especially religion in our political life.

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Reviewing Proofs for the existence of God.

Over at Edge.com, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein presents an extraordinary collection of proofs for the existence of God. The problem with these proofs, however, is that they aren't actually proofs, which Seltzer succinctly explains, one-by-one. Take, for instance, Goldstein's analysis of the Argument from Holy Books:

1. There are holy books that reveal the word of God. 2. The word of God is necessarily true. 3. The word of God reveals the existence of God. 4. God exists.
Seltzer isn't convinced:
FLAW 1: This is a circular argument if ever there was one. The first three premises cannot be maintained unless one independently knows the very conclusion to be proved, namely that God exists. FLAW 2: A glance at the world's religions shows that there are numerous books and scrolls and doctrines and revelations that all claim to reveal the word of God. But they are mutually incompatible. Should I believe that Jesus is my personal savior? Or should I believe that God made a covenant with the Jews requiring every Jew to keep the commandments of the Torah? Should I believe that Mohammad was Allah's last prophet and that Ali, the prophet's cousin and husband of his daughter Fatima, ought to have been the first caliph, or that Mohammad was Allah's last prophet and that Ali was the fourth and last caliph? Should I believe that the resurrected prophet Moroni dictated the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith? Or that Ahura Mazda, the benevolent Creator, is at cosmic war with the malevolent Angra Mainyu? And on and on it goes. Only the most arrogant provincialism could allow someone to believe that the holy documents that happen to be held sacred by the clan he was born into are true, while all the documents held sacred by the clans he wasn't born into are false.
Keep in mind that Goldstein's analyses are rigorous and serious. Her collection includes many "proofs" that you don't typically encounter in philosophy of religion classes, but you constantly encounter in people's living rooms and on public buses. Consider these "proofs," for example:
19. The Argument from Personal Purpose 20. The Argument from the Intolerability of Insignificance 22. The Argument from the Consensus of Mystics 23. The Argument from Holy Books 27. The Argument from The Upward Curve of History 33. The Argument from the Unreasonableness of Reason
If you're in a mood to have a chuckle at those who conjure up supernatural beings through word-logic, try these humorous proofs for the existence of God.

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Economic news on the street

Avert your eyes from Wall Street to see what is happening to America. These statistics are part of a terrifying article by Elizabeth Warren, who serves as the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the banking bailouts:

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.
There are many other statistics in this article. For instance, fully employed males haven't seen a pay increase since the 1970's. Warren also presents banks as villains in her story:
Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts.

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