Training camp is back in full swing, T.O. is whining and offensive linemen across America are cursing double cheeseburgers. Must be football season again. In honor of America's sport, I wrap this week with football lingo.

Holding: President Bush - clinging to the past with a less-than-sweeping, beholden to the oil people, energy bill. We could have done better. Way better.

I-left, 70 Venezuela, stomp on human rights and mug for the camera, on one, break: Hugo Chavez. The paragon of human decency and civil rights (yes, I'm laughing) has his own network. Pravda and Al Jazeera, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes TELESUR in a baby carriage.

Wide right: Jerry Falwell - berating the "gay agenda," again. Would someone please find the homosexual who has the agenda and tell him to stop inciting everyone? Sheesh.

Personal foul, unsportsmanlike conduct: Philadelphia Inquirer. For pulling a televangelist and preaching against the very same sins they commit. And while we're having this little talk, maybe the PI hasn't heard, but, like, this military intelligence outfit found this Atta dude, like, a year before 9/11, or something. D'oh, scooped again...

Ejected from the game: Anti-Semites. Boy I wish.

This week's indulgence, why not? It's done more for me in one day than any radical mullah ever will:

The new week is here!

Posted by Bill Turner at 6:17 PM EDT

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Tag, the Philadelphia Inquirer is it. And would the editorial board please dismount the high horse long enough to stop looking absurd? Friday's PI carries this headline in the editorials:

NARAL sinks low in attack ad

Which is immediately followed by: "As conservative groups counterpunch over an abortion-rights organization's unfair attacks on Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., one ad asks, "How low can these frustrated liberals sink?"

Answer: Oh, about as low as your garden-variety Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign - or any one of many below-the-belt attacks from the right on liberal causes.

How many times has the American Civil Liberties Union been pilloried and caricatured as a flag-burning, Klan- and Nazi-loving group of pointyheads for its legitimate defense of First Amendment freedoms?

For all those, then, who proclaim to be shocked, just shocked by the personal attack, the use of guilt by association, or acrobatic leaps of illogic, please give it a rest.

American political and civic discourse has been poisoned by this stuff for more than a decade - and the loyal, blue-state opposition didn't invent, much less perfect the craft."

Beg pardon, but where is the criticism of NARAL? Oh dear, this will have to do: "Groups on both sides of the Roberts nomination need to move beyond vying to be the best practitioners of this bad tradition." Read the full editorial.

Begging pardon again, but if one is going to criticize these misguided ideologues, shouldn't one make sure that one is not guilty of the same offense? I caught the Inquirer's Gaffe on THIS VERY SAME SUBJECT 2 WEEKS AGO. Read the proof

Just thought I'd point that out.

Posted by Bill Turner at 5:17 PM EDT

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We're probably not going to see a sensible discussion any time soon. At least not in the news media. And your guess is as good as mine as to why. Today's New York Times is a great example.

Andrew C. Revkin has a story headlined: "Errors Cited in Assessing Climate Data." The first sentence reads:

"Some scientists who question whether human-caused global warming poses a threat have long pointed to records that showed the atmosphere's lowest layer, the troposphere, had not warmed over the last two decades and had cooled in the tropics."

Read the full article

The first sentence mentions "human-caused global warming" right up front. The rest of the article has nothing to do with human-caused anything. It is a discussion about instruments and variables.

Makes it tough to get a serious discussion when we can't seem to get the issues matched up properly.

Posted by Bill Turner at 7:31 AM EDT

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Every once in a while, I start to wonder if there isn't something insane running the universe. Right now I am very much disturbed by the rampant Anti-Semitism that I see across the web. Yes, I know the arguable difference between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel. But "Jews are the Problem" is not an anti-Israel title. And I see posts like that all over the place.

What I find particularly disturbing is that I can't seem to categorize the people who believe this sort of nonsense. Some are easy to spot. You know, the white hooded ones who have a digital Hitler stamped on their blogs. Some are surprising, because they otherwise would seem like rational people. Some are shocking. People I would never have guessed from previous posts.

It also strikes me that there are many posts like that in the anti-war crowd. I'm debating calling all of these people out, because I don't want to give them publicity for their hate. It's nuts to rant about the futility of hatred while spewing hate.

I am seriously baffled by this. I have no idea what to do about it. I don't even know if there is anything to do. I make no secret of the fact that I support maximum civil liberties. People should be allowed to clearly identify their beliefs in public. I just wonder how to counter the lies.

Posted by Bill Turner at 8:31 PM EDT

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In a not so shocking development: Iran is said to be smuggling arms into Iraq. Read the story in the UK's Guardian Newspaper

With neighbors like Iran and Syria, Iraq has little chance of developing into a full fledged democratic state. Two immediate questions come to mind:

1. How does the US draw down troops when the reasonable certainty exists that both Iraq and Syria will aggressively seek to destroy a fledgling government?

2. What role does the desire for religious hegemony play in this sordid mess?

Posted by Bill Turner at 7:16 AM EDT

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"After September 11th, it almost goes without saying that religious violence in the name of a holy cause has escalated . Killing in the name of God constitutes a major driver of violent conflicts today. No major religion has been, or is today, a stranger to violence from its extremists, and that violence will pose challenges for U.S. foreign policy and for the analysts who seek to inform that policy. So, too, comparisons across forms of religious violence are instructive. New Religious Movements (NRMs) – which are almost always offshoots, however bizarre, of major religious traditions – have also emerged as sources of violence. Yet Islamic extremists are now in a class by themselves as a threat to the United States, as a transnational, non-state movement with the chance to appeal to a billion and a half people." Quite the beginning to a report that clearly outlines a set of perspectives on our current global conflict. And to deny that there is a global conflict is, in my opinion, to deny a stark reality that will become more real with each terrorist strike.

Read the full Rand Report

Read the Rand Report Summary

The outlines of New Religious Movements (NRM's) are particularly useful and allow for a more reasoned understanding of the context of current violence. I would have liked to have seen a more detailed study of the ascendance of these groups, but that is a study for a different time. As it stands, the definition given is sufficient to get a clear picture of the conflict at hand.

Two points:

1. Whereas the US approach to religion (somewhat hands off) is useful within our cultural context, it appears to be useless in defining and relating to peoples unused to our cultural framework.

2. This fundamental disconnect is particularly dangerous when interpreted in the framework of our own internal debate about our best course of action.

We were caught unprepared for the outbreak of this problem. Now we appear to be in denial (These are not conclusions of the report, but seem evident to me) that the problem is what it is.

At any rate, the report is definitely worth a read.

Posted by Bill Turner at 7:02 PM EDT

Updated: August 10, 2005 7:43 PM EDT

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The American Center for Voting Rights has released a report that should cause some consternation for a party that appears to have benefitted from widespread vote irregularities and shady practices: The Democratic Party. Your read that correctly D-E-M-O-C-R-A-T-S. The party that has consistently whined the loudest, thrown electoral temper tantrums and pointed the withered finger of accusation regarding denial of civil liberties to the disenfranchised, is the party that receives some rough criticism.

Read the full report

Perhaps the problem rests in the way the system has evolved into a feeding pool for monied interests. Stop and consider just how difficult it is to get power within a party. Am I suggesting that we should have a model with splintered parties littering the political landscape?

You betcha. Why not? The Federal Government has become one powerful machine. The easiest way to put the brakes on it is to get back to a decentralized government more responsive to the people. And I'm not talking campaign finance reform. I'm talking about ballot access.

Let constitutionally qualified candidates run and you'll have more than enough election observers on hand to make sure that the polling is fair. The cost argument is tired and doesn't hold water. Challenges to elections eat up loads of court time and fundamentally undercut the legitimacy of our elections.

I guess what I am trying to say is, let's give each qualified candidate the dignity of receiving an up or down vote. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Posted by Bill Turner at 12:56 PM EDT

Updated: August 10, 2005 12:59 PM EDT

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How do you get a group of people who don't like heavily centralized power structures to work in the Party System of the United States?

Bach Talk.net has a great post on LP "reform movements." It is worth the read. Read the full post at Bach Talk.net.

The trouble is, the system is designed in a way that runs completely contrary to individual control. Until Democrats and Republicans begin to see how distant the system has become from its roots in the principles of the Social Contract forwarded by Locke, Libertarians don't have a prayer. Why? Parties are best suited to a parliamentary system. They lock in votes for specific agendas.

What the hell do you do if your specific agenda has threads running through four different parties? Libertarians are best when the individual is allowed to shine. We also have such divergent views that it is almost impossible to get us all going in one direction. So how do we get "reform."

It strikes me that it should happen outside of the party construct. I haven't worked out how. Yet.

Posted by Bill Turner at 8:19 PM EDT

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From the files of: Why I fear the socialists more than inept Republicans.

The Independent Media Center hails Telesur - "Televisora del Sur (Television of the South), or Telesur, began broadcasting from Caracas on July 24, the day South American independence leader Sim?n Bol?var was born. Telesur was created by the Venezuelan government in association with the governments of Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay to provide a counterweight to corporate channels such as CNN and Univision." Read the full whitewash, I mean, Article. And someone in the back of the class pipes up with, "Hey, isn't a government like a powerful corporation with an army, or something?"

Go on, hate America. Burn a flag and sing "Down, down, USA." But siding with Hugo Chavez in the name of free expression and cultural liberty? Want to know the frightening part?

They really believe what they write...

Posted by Bill Turner at 12:08 PM EDT

Updated: August 9, 2005 12:35 PM EDT

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Good morning Mr. Kettle, this is coffee. You're black. Filed under reasonably absurd rhetoric:

"'Anti-gay extremists are trying to gain a stranglehold on government.'

Pretty scary stuff!" - Jerry Falwell, quoting Joe Solmonese and commenting on the statement. Seeking to Destroy Judge Roberts, By Jerry Falwell - World Net Daily

"'I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!-Rev. Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, 1979 pp. 52-53, from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom'

EGADS!" - Bill Turner, quoting Jerry Falwell and commenting on the statement.

Posted by Bill Turner at 9:18 AM EDT

Updated: August 9, 2005 12:38 PM EDT

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