The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish.  And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees..  I don't feel threatened.  I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are:  Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me.  I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto.  In fact, I kind of like it.  It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu ..  If people want a crhe, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.  I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.  I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country.  I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?  I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.  But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one anot her for a laugh, this is a little different:  This is not intended to be a joke;  it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.  She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.  And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out.  How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.  I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school.  The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about.  And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out.  I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.  Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did.  But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best R egards,  Honestly and respectfully, Ben Stein

1) Have a fiscal policy that creates immense deficits in good times and bad, burdening America's posterity with staggering burdens of repaying the debt.

2) Eliminate regulation of Wall Street and/or fail to enforce the regulations that already exist, instead trusting Wall Street and other money managers and speculators to manage other people's money with few or no regulations and little oversight.

3) Have an energy policy that disallows producing our own energy and instead requires that we buy energy from abroad, thus making our oil prices highly volatile and creating large balance of payments deficits, lowering the value of the dollar and thus making the problem get progressively worse.

4) Have Congress mandate that banks and other financial entities lend money to persons they know in advance to have poor credit ratings or none at all.

5) Allow investment banks, insurers, and banks to bet their entire net worth and then some on the premise that borrowers known to be improvident will in fact repay those loans.

6) Allow the creation of large betting pools called "hedge funds" that can move markets and control the outcome of trading, thus taking a forum for savings and retirement for families and making it into a rigged casino game that exists primarily to fleece suckers like ordinary working men and women.

7) Have laws that protect corporate officers from being sued for misconduct but at the same time punish lawyers in the private sector who ferret out such misconduct and try to make accountable the people responsible for shareholder and investor losses. If one of those lawyers gets particularly aggressive in protecting stockholders, put him in prison.

8) Appoint as head of the United States Treasury Department a man whose whole life was spent on Wall Street, who became fantastically rich through his peddling of junk bonds at his firm while the firm later sold short those same sorts of bonds.

9) Scare Americans into putting up $750 billion of their hard earned money to bail out the billionaires and their friends who created the market for loans to poor credit risks (The "subprime" market) and the unbelievably large side bets on those loans, promising that such a bailout would save the retirement savings of Americans, then allow the immense hedge funds to make the market crater immediately afterwards.

10) Propose to save the situation by surtaxing the oil industry, which is owned by our fellow Americans, mostly in their retirement plans, thus penalizing Americans for investing in companies that efficiently and legally produce an indispensable product.

11) Insist that the free market requires that banks and insurers with friends of the Secretary of the Treasury be saved but allow other entities not so fortunate to fail, thus creating total uncertainty and terror among financial institutions, and demolishing all of the confidence built up in financial circles since the days of FDR.

12) Then have the Republican candidate say he would keep on the job the Treasury Secretary who facilitated the crisis, failed to protect the nation from the crisis, got the taxpayers to pony up to save his Wall Street buddies, and have the Democratic candidate, as noted, say he would save the day by taxing the stockholders of energy companies.

There, that should do it.

1) Have a fiscal policy that creates immense deficits in good times and bad, burdening America's posterity with staggering burdens of repaying the debt.

Okay, fair enough.

2) Eliminate regulation of Wall Street and/or fail to enforce the regulations that already exist, instead trusting Wall Street and other money managers and speculators to manage other people's money with few or no regulations and little oversight.

Holy shit, you're sounding intelligent.  Who are you and what did you do with Ben Stein?

3) Have an energy policy that disallows producing our own energy and instead requires that we buy energy from abroad, thus making our oil prices highly volatile and creating large balance of payments deficits, lowering the value of the dollar and thus making the problem get progressively worse.

Oh, there you are.  Funny, I thought we did produce some of our own oil.  So does the Department of Energy, for what that's worth.  Unless, of course, you're talking about energy policies that discourage research and development into renewable energy.  That I can agree with, but you'd need to state it a bit more clearly - assuming that's what you mean.  I sure as hell hope you're not talking about corn ethanol subsidies, though.  Oh wait, you don't give a shit about anything that isn't oil.

4) Have Congress mandate that banks and other financial entities lend money to persons they know in advance to have poor credit ratings or none at all.

Sorry Ben, that never happened.  Not once, and not in any way.  From The Big Picture, we have a thorough takedown of this myth that must be read in full to be appreciated.

5) Allow investment banks, insurers, and banks to bet their entire net worth and then some on the premise that borrowers known to be improvident will in fact repay those loans.

Okay, so you're against deregulation, and apparently for regulation of the "shadow banking system" that is the CDS markets.

6) Allow the creation of large betting pools called "hedge funds" that can move markets and control the outcome of trading, thus taking a forum for savings and retirement for families and making it into a rigged casino game that exists primarily to fleece suckers like ordinary working men and women.

I'm going to take a guess and say that you might think short sellers are a Terrible Evil that Must Be Stopped, too.  The fact that you say nothing about the ratings agencies which freely slapped tip-top ratings on every bit of Big Shitpile it could find (which were as big a part of this crisis as the also-unmentioned Alan Greenspan in this horrible mess) makes it seem like you're after everyone but the actual culprits.  And those hedge funds that you so freely put in scare quotes are actually a mixed bag; it's not known exactly what effect they're going to have yet, or what's going to happen to them.

7) Have laws that protect corporate officers from being sued for misconduct but at the same time punish lawyers in the private sector who ferret out such misconduct and try to make accountable the people responsible for shareholder and investor losses. If one of those lawyers gets particularly aggressive in protecting stockholders, put him in prison.

I'd really like to know if this is happening, because it would be an outrage.  I do know that executive compensation is currently structured to insulate the the corporate officer from consequences, which does suck.

8) Appoint as head of the United States Treasury Department a man whose whole life was spent on Wall Street, who became fantastically rich through his peddling of junk bonds at his firm while the firm later sold short those same sorts of bonds.

You forgot Alan Greenspan, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.  Just sayin'.

9) Scare Americans into putting up $750 billion of their hard earned money to bail out the billionaires and their friends who created the market for loans to poor credit risks (The "subprime" market) and the unbelievably large side bets on those loans, promising that such a bailout would save the retirement savings of Americans, then allow the immense hedge funds to make the market crater immediately afterwards.

You REALLY don't like hedge funds.  You also seem to have the same love affair with the word "crater" that David Letterman does, but you don't carry it as well.

10) Propose to save the situation by surtaxing the oil industry, which is owned by our fellow Americans, mostly in their retirement plans, thus penalizing Americans for investing in companies that efficiently and legally produce an indispensable product.

What?  First of all, how does proposing something damage the economy???  Second, what's the problem, when they are making the biggest profits EVER (okay, not so much now with the high price of oil curing itself through demand destruction), and also when what we want to do is eventually get *away* from oil as an energy source?  Also, how about addressing the ways we use it in EVERYTHING else from prescriptions to plastics by researching other alternatives, or even synthetics?  Since when is that unfair?

11) Insist that the free market requires that banks and insurers with friends of the Secretary of the Treasury be saved but allow other entities not so fortunate to fail, thus creating total uncertainty and terror among financial institutions, and demolishing all of the confidence built up in financial circles since the days of FDR.

Okay, throwing Lehman under the bus to the benefit of Morgan Stanley does stink on ice - but we have never, EVER had a free market in this country (nor should we, or corporate takeovers would be decided by who managed to hire Blackwater for the fight).

12) Then have the Republican candidate say he would keep on the job the Treasury Secretary who facilitated the crisis, failed to protect the nation from the crisis, got the taxpayers to pony up to save his Wall Street buddies, and have the Democratic candidate, as noted, say he would save the day by taxing the stockholders of energy companies.

Seems like a lot of this is just people saying they'd do stuff.  If the economy is that fragile, then people talking is not the problem, period - it's time to have serious discussions about throwing out big hunks of the underlying structure and building something sustainable.

There, that should do it.

You are, as always, a rambling tool.

And, Joe doesn’t get off the hook either for this snore fest.  As I stated before, Joe has lost a bit on his fastball, witness how he tried to “characterized” John McCain.  Thought for a moment he was having a stroke but Joe Biden soon recovered to “bore again”.

So what’s the final scorecard on Sarah?

Round 3:  The VP  Debate

Here are my running comments as this debate bores on:

Some sample Sarah comments: “They don’t like America!” she said of foreign oil producers.  Well, they like our money.  About global warming, “Climate change is occurring but there are cyclical changes.” (paraphrase)  She doesn’t want to argue about it , but we got to “clean up the problem”. Huh?

Sarah’s answers are a long, rambling, run-on sentences, I mean does this woman ever take a breathe? Please, get some oxygen to your brain, Sarah! Take a  breath will you?

Same sex couples?  She’ll be tolerant and, get this, she digs diversity! She doesn’t support anything but one man and one woman. But then again Joe and Obama weaseled out on the gay issue.

As to Iraq, remember that Bush money pit? “We got to win in Iraq” and then it’s off to Afghanistan, she said. Who’s Talibbany by the way?  Iran, guess what, no nukes says Sarah. Why?  They hate America! Okay but where’s the beef?  And don’t bother looking Joe’s way.  He and Obama look like they are content to run the clock out thinking they have a lead. Hey, there are 30 plus day left in the election!

So far, no major faux pas from Sarah but I think I fell asleep at one point.  Boring!  But nuclear weaponry sounds so annoying coming from her.  Still, better that Bush’s pronunciation of nu-cu-ler.

I think the audience either passed out or left the debate out of indifference it was so quiet. I’m not into the moderator, Gwen either.  I understand she is a black conservative but hey she’s boring.  Think there’s a common thread here?  Where’s Tina Fey when you need her or for that matter Hillary?

Oh no, Sarah’s pushing that Washington outsider crap.  Please you’re a politician, that’s the very definition of an insider. Opps, did she just make a comment about changing the VP role?  Who does she think she is? Dick Cheney?

Oh no, Joe just had another senior moment, he seems to skip every so often like an old warped record! Ah, he just restarted and is attacking McCain's maverick credentials! Good for him, I thought we would have to ge the paddles out to resuscitate him.  Then at one point Joe gets verklemptwhen talking about raising his family.  Way to show your softer side Joe!

Final comments:

Sarah is going to fight for the middle class! We are blessed and she is proud to be an American. Yikes, what a cliche fest!

As for Joe...zzzzzzzz

That's it?  No knock out but are Sarah's scoccer Mom values enough as we near a financial meltdown?

Round 2: Katie Couric Interview

I sat down sat again with my wife to watch the Sarah Palin interview with Katie Couric. As Sarah mumbled a bizarre answer, my wife turned to me and said “What the hell? What a dope!”

I had to agree, it was another embarrassing train wreck of an interview. The woman can’t put two thoughts together, never mind express them in a coherent fashion. As Sarah was talking or should I say stumbling, I was saying to myself, okay this is how you should respond. Instead she gave a long rambling, incoherent commentary about Alaska, national security and her Russian neighbor. Then I had my epiphany: Sarah’s like Dan Quayle, only not as pretty. Really, it was Dan Quayle and losing one's mind speech all over again. Doesn’t matter though, neo-cons like Silly little Freak still love Sarah because she has "values". I just guess that intelligence is not one of those shared values. No wonder why this country is sinking so fast!

I am not saying Sarah is stupid like George Bush stupid, really somebody please do a brain scan on him, but she was clearly coached and if I was Vladimir Putin I would definitely want to invite her to my next poker party. If Bush got all weepy looking into Putin's eyes you can only imagine what Palin's response will be to the Russian dictator.

So what of Sarah Palin and her religious beliefs? Well, five to six years ago she was a member of a Pentecostal church, the Assembly of God to be exact. Now these rocket scientists believe in a literal bible, talking in tongues, faith healing and, how can we forget, the ever popular end-of-times. We have had so many end of times I don’t were to begin. This type of inspired lunacy leads to such clear thinking as “it’s God's will that is being done in Iraq.” Funny, I thought that was the work of a mediocre son looking to clear his daddy’s historical record but, hey, what the hell do I know? I mean we went in there to separate those heathens from the WMD’s right? Eh, okay the weapons weren’t there but we did bring freedom to the Iraqis, right? You know freedom from boredom as the local militia executes the men in your family but hey that’s God’s plan and you can’t argue about the big picture, right?

The good news is that God’s plans are not just relegated to simple matters of war. No way! Did you know that a new pipe line is a task from God? Me, I was thinking Exxon-Mobil but I guess I think way too small. Really, Palin said this. God's will is to be done developing our natural resources, never mind all we are doing is feeding a nasty oil habit and that the sooner we can move to something alternative the sooner we can tell the idiots in the Middle East what they can do with their oil.  Ask Sarah about Creationism and she'll reply sure Creationism should be taught in school!  We don’t have a lick of proof that it can’t stand up to rigorous scientific review but hell proof didn’t stop us from invading Iraq.

Round 1: Charlie Gibson Interview

Being independently minded, I sat with my wife and we watched the first interview on ABC first hand before anybody had an opportunity to tell us how to think about the interview. I’m sorry but as I sat there I found it be both embarrassing and uncomfortable to watch. I replayed it several times on the DVR watching their facial expressions and their body language and it reeked of pure train wreck! Charlie looked like a pained, almost constipated school teacher and Sarah Palin resembled the proverbial moose caught in the headlights.

I’m sorry but the look on her face was priceless. It’s amazing how the Ben Stein fundamentalist creationist crowd regurgitates everything that is thrown at it by the cynical Republican conservatives, by the way the very same conservative wing that was all but ready to throw McCain under the bus. Then McCain goes out and drafts the fundamentalist Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential trophy candidate and she say goes around saying “god tasked us to do this and god speaks to us” and the next thing you know McCain is called “McBrilliant” by the vicodin-laden gas bag named Rush Limbaugh.

The Sarah Palin Files:

More: Palin and the Charlie Gibson Interview: She's No Hillary!

More on Hillary: No Political Catfight with Palin

More on Palin "Governor Palin You're No Hillary Clinton!"

More on Palin with this story,"Apparently-Bristol-Palin-is-no-Chelsea-Clinton-Either"

I bring this up because of the latest move by Creationists (under the guise of Intelligent Design proponents, of course) to get their psuedoscience into American classrooms. Meet the Academic Freedom Petition. What is it? 'Teach the Controversy', basically, but dressed up in the garb of 'freedom' and (surprise, surprise) further from religious funamentalism than any previous push to get ID into schools. From the website:

Across America, the freedom of scientists, teachers, and students to question Darwin is coming under increasing attack by self-appointed defenders of the theory of evolution who are waging a malicious campaign to demonize and blacklist anyone who disagrees with them.

This seems pretty innocent at first glance - after all, everyone should have the right to question whatever they like. Of course, it's not that simple, and I'll explain why.

The first thing to keep in mind is that this is very obviously a Creationist initiative. The Petition website contains links to IntelligentDesign.org (which itself seems to be a product of the Centre for Science and Culture, the science branch of the infamous Discovery Institute) and, of all things, the Expelled website. If you think advocating Stein's 'documentary' should be enough to destroy any credibility this movement may have had, you'd be wrong. The people behind this latest ploy do have a point, but (as always) they're twisting it out of shape to further their own agenda.

It is true that most high school teachers either can't or won't discuss Creationism in their classroom, for a variety of reasons. As Airtightnoodle has pointed out, the laws preventing Creationism from being taught are something of a double-edged sword, in that they also prevent teachers from refuting it. Even where this isn't explicit school policy, a teacher can put his or her job in danger by discussing what everyone knows is a religious topic. In high school, Creationism is a no-go area. I wish this wasn't the case, if only to silence claims that biology teachers are incapable of replying to Creationist myths (again, Airtightnoodle goes a long towards debunking that one, but at the moment those are the rules that teachers must play by.

The Petition goes further than that, however, by implying that everyone involved in education or science is being prevented from questioning evolution. This goes hand-in-hand with the implication that the arguments presented in the likes of Expelled are actually valid and worthy of being taught to students. This is obviously not the case (you'll know what I mean if you've ever heard Stein trying to talk about science), and the Petition falls apart when you realise that they're backing the same refuted arguments that 'evolutionists' have been fielding for decades.

If there actually was significant scientific debate over the validity of evolutionary theory, and if Creationists actually did have something meaningful to say on the subject, then I might be more sympathetic to projects like this. As it stands, 'academic freedom' is a dressed up phrase for 'psuedoscience, delivered to students by teachers'. Letting biology teachers point out imaginary weaknesses in evolution would be like letting history teachers point out weaknesses in the idea that the Holocaust was a real event, or that the moon landings were genuine. Rather than strengthening academic freedom, it would make a farce of academic integrity, at a stroke lowering the standards for what should and should not be allowed into a classroom dramatically. Creationism is laughed out of third-level institutes because it's wrong, and it's banned from high schools because it's blatantly religious.

It's also interesting that evolution is the only theory being targeted here - if this is a genuine push for better education, why does it only focus on what has historically been the whipping boy of the Creationist movement?

As always, the Discovery Institute and its ilk are attempting to smuggle their myths in through the back door. Having utterly failed to make any headway in the scientific community (this is what they mean when they whine about being 'censored' or unfairly ignored), they're bypassing the whole bothersome process and going straight for legislation - again. Which leads to the disturbing question of how many times they have to throw their crap at the wall before some of it sticks.

It also tells me that the Neo Cons (who are neither Neo or Con) are in more serious trouble than they may have previously thought.

From the article:

IMAGINE, if you will, that a man who had much to do with creating the present credit crisis now says he is the man to fix this giant problem, and that his work is so important that he will need a trillion dollars or so of your money. Then add that this man thinks he is so indispensable that he wants Congress to forbid any judicial or administrative questioning of anything he does with your dollars.

You might think of a latter-day Lenin or Fidel Castro, but you would be far afield. Instead, you should be thinking of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the rapidly disintegrating United States of America, right here and now.

But I am getting ahead of myself. First, I am furious at what the traders, speculators, hedge funds and the government have done to everyone who is saving and investing for retirement and future security. Millions of us did nothing wrong, according to the accepted wisdom of the age. We saved. We put a large part of our money into the stock market, as we were urged to do. Because the market wasn’t at ridiculously high levels, it seemed prudent to invest in broad indexes, foreign indexes and small- and large-cap indexes.

Now we have had the rug pulled out from under us.

Exactly.

Then this:

Almost no one (except Mr. Buffett) saw this coming, at least not on this scale. But let’s get back to the man of the hour. Why didn’t Mr. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, see it? He was once the head of Goldman Sachs, an immense player in the swaps world. Didn’t people at Treasury have a clue? If they didn’t, what was going on in their heads? If they did, why didn’t they do something about it a year ago, when saving the world would have been a lot cheaper?

If Mr. Paulson and Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, didn’t see this train coming, what else have they missed? What other freight train is barreling down the track at us?

All of this would be bad enough. But by far the most terrifying item I read in my morning paper last week was this: Mr. Paulson demanded that Congress forbid judicial review of his decisions on use of the money in the mortgage bailout. This would amount to an abrogation of the Constitution. Not only would his decisions be sacrosanct and above the law, but so would the actions of his pals in the banking world in connection with this bailout.

The people whose conduct got us into this catastrophe have not only taken our money, hopes and peace of mind, but they apparently also want a trillion or so more dollars to put into their Wall Street Buddy System Fund. This may be the most dangerous attack on the law in my lifetime. What anarchists even dared consider this plan? Thank heaven that minds more devoted to the Constitution on Capitol Hill are questioning this shocking request.

Exactly!  Woo hoo!

Finally, this (read the whole article, it's really great....and I'm still in shock that I'm calling anything Ben Stein writes 'great').

Then there was Mr. Paulson’s insistence that there be no compensation caps for executives of companies being bailed out by the factory workers, the farmers, the schoolteachers and the medical doctors. He told a skeptical Congress on Tuesday that if these caps were put into place, bank executives simply wouldn’t participate in the bailout or sell us suckers their debts. Fine with me. If the banks are in good enough shape so that petulant executives can simply opt out rather than live on a few million a year, maybe we don’t need the bailout at all. Maybe we would be better off if those executives simply bailed out and were replaced by people with more sense and more patriotism.

One final little thought bubbles into my mind: Maybe the bailout should not be of the banks at all, but of homeowners themselves. Maybe if we make the government the buyer of last resort of homes, we will stabilize the markets, stabilize the debt associated with the markets and take the gain out of the credit-default swaps for the speculators. Yes, price would be a huge issue, but so it is for Mr. Paulson’s plan for buying debt from banks.

Why not? We do it for farmers. Why not for the individual homeowner? Oh, right. Because Treasury secretaries don’t know any of those people.

Game, set and match.  Thank you Ben (again, WOW!) for speaking truth.  Now let's hope America hears it.

At least, that's what the AFA would have us believe. The latest from their action alert newsletter:

Ben Blows the Horn on Censorship!

Dear ____,

When I saw this movie I wanted to jump up and down in joy. Ben Stein shows the Evolution Only crowd for what they are. This is the best expose' of the educational bureaucrats ever. See how the leftwing liberals have captured higher education and will not allow any view but theirs to be discussed. See how they punish those who don't think like they think. Ben Stein embarrases them intellectually. The liberals would like to ban this movie. They can't do that, so they did the next best thing--they simply ignored it when it was shown in the theaters. The media critics also ignored it. The movie shows how they refuse to allow any discussion concerning creation. It shows how the liberal educators deal with their peers who do not agree with their Evolution Only stance.

Please watch this movie, then share it with others. I wish it could be shown in every classroom and every church in America.

In a controversial new satirical documentary, author, former presidential speechwriter,
economist, lawyer and actor Ben Stein travels the world, looking to some of the best
scientific minds of our generation for the answer to the biggest question facing
all Americans today:

Are we still free to disagree about the meaning of life?
Or has the whole issue already been decided…
while most of us weren’t looking?

I haven't seen Expelled yet, although I've read enough about it (and seen enough individual clips) to think that it's probably as stupid as everybody keeps saying. This e-mail is worse.

I have no idea why this jackass thinks us 'liberals' ignored Expelled - there's an entire website devoted to cataloguing its flaws, and it has receieved many (overwhelmingly negative) reviews. If the movie hasn't set the academic world on fire, it's probably because it sucks.

The entire point of the e-mail is that this turd is coming out on DVD, which means that I will almost certainly end up watching it if the local video place decides to stock it. (Bringing it to the counter is going to be the most embarrassing experience of my life.) Expect a full review as soon as that happens, assuming it doesn't leave me a shrieking, mindless wreck.

In particular, I was struck by how angry both sides are at “Washington.”

I am not certain what they mean by Washington. The city itself has terrible humidity and awful traffic, but that’s clearly not what they are talking about. I think they mean the way government does business, and here I am puzzled by both sides’ anger, but especially by Senator John McCain’s.

First, there’s the endless complaining about waste, fraud and abuse in Washington...

...There always seems to be more waste, fraud and abuse to complain about. And if my poor old memory doesn’t fail me, the endless investigations of waste, fraud and abuse turn up pretty small potatoes in a federal budget approximating $2.4 trillion. And even if earmarks were totally wasteful, I read that they totaled $18 billion last year. Not pennies, for sure, but a tiny blemish on a federal budget roughly 150 times that sum.

[ ... ]

It’s sometimes awfully hard to define waste. It’s largely subjective. And as far as I can tell, it’s either not a huge number, or it is so deeply woven into the fabric of government that it cannot be determined....

[ ... ]

Then there is that aspect of the war against Washington in which candidates — very often, my fellow Republicans — rage against the machine of regulation. Indeed, this is a constant refrain of the conservatives I call my pals. Regulation is stifling growth and entrepreneurship, they say.

With respect, I don’t see it. Look at the major debacles in the economy in the past quarter-century. The junk-bond scandal of the 1980s was largely a result of a failure of regulation. The tech boom of the 1990s and the subsequent bust were greatly facilitated by a lack of regulation over fiduciary behavior by underwriters and investment banks. The problem was not too much regulation, but far too little.

...the current financial madness [has been] caused by wildly imprudent lending by major banks and investment banks. Basically, a major piece of deregulation, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, overturned most of the laws that had kept commercial banks and investment banks separate. This made it much easier for monster-size banks to lay down enormous bets on the direction of housing prices.
[ ... ]
My point is that Washington — that is, the federal government — is not really to blame for all of our current problems. (One glaring exception is the war in Iraq.) Or, to put a finer point upon it, in some ways Washington was not doing too much, but should have been doing more — meaning more regulation and more prosecution.

Go read it all.

(You will hear a lot of blather from the usual right wing sources in the months ahead that Bill Clinton signed off on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999; please point out to them that the bill was passed by Congress with a veto-proof majority. Opposing it would have been an exercise in futility.

Then again, some might find flailing against the inevitable to be an act of maverick-y maverickness with no purpose...

Ah, but to describe it thusly  is redundant redundancy, innit?

She knew the definition of the word doctrine. She also knew that the bush doctrine isn’t anything official. From where I was sitting, she made Gibson look like an idiot for using the phrase. Now you look like an idiot for posting a story about it. It’s a term that is made up by journalists to try and make someone’s stance look like something official. It can be a “world view”, in most cases it is. You should probably delete this article if you are ever interested in pursuing any sort of journalistic integrity.

I am not a journalist nor do I have any pretensions regarding journalistic integrity, whatever that may be nowadays but I do believe fair is fair, so here is your inane and somewhat tired comment. However, the blog stays. That said, earlier today I sat down sat again with my wife to watch the latest Sarah Palin interview with Katie Couric. As Sarah mumbled a bizarre answer, my wife turned to me and said “What the hell? What a dope!”

I had to agree, it was another embarrassing train wreck of an interview. The woman can’t put two thoughts together, never mind express them in a coherent fashion. As Sarah was talking or should I say stumbling, I was saying to myself, okay this is how you should respond. Instead she gave a long rambling, incoherent commentary about Alaska, national security and her Russian neighbor. Then I had my epiphany: Sarah’s like Dan Quayle, only not as pretty. Really, it was Dan Quayle and losing one's mind speech all over again. Doesn’t matter though, neo-cons like Silly little Freak still love Sarah because she has "values". I just guess that intelligence is not one of those shared values. No wonder why this country is sinking so fast!

Meanwhile Lady Macbeth, aka Hillary, stays away from the fray!

Erik John Bertel

The Sarah Palin Files:

More: Palin and the Charlie Gibson Interview: She's No Hillary!

More on Hillary: No Political Catfight with Palin

More on Palin "Governor Palin You're No Hillary Clinton!"

More on Palin with this story,"Apparently-Bristol-Palin-is-no-Chelsea-Clinton-Either"

Sam Harris rips Sarah Palin a new one in Newsweek

Islamic assault on human rights

Jewish 'ultras' defend morals with menace

Gianna Jessen survived an abortion attempt and is now a pro-life advocate shamelessly attacking Barack Obama - As to why this constitutes as news on Faux News is even more shameless:

Sometimes the harm done because of magical thinking is done to the pseudoscientists themselves - "Biologist-turned- nutty-parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake was stabbed in the leg earlier this year by Kazuki Hirano, a Japanese day laborer who had been stalking Sheldrake after believing he was the victim of mind control experiments."

CREATIONIST NEWS:

A review of Christopher Hitchens' most recent theist-crushing - Hitchens debated against Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a physicist, theologian, and author of God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity. And it seems that unsurprisingly he kicked his Albacete's ass. I expect the debate will probably make it to YouTube soon enough.

Last week, I mentioned that creationist Bill Lucas was going to be speaking at Virginia Tech. Well he gave his talk and guess what? It turns out he's at best totally full of it and at worst, crazy.

New excavation reveals Stonehenge was once a miracle healing destination - Not surprisingly, no real healing actually seems to have taken place there.

UK Cathedral seminar to equip clerics to deal with Dawkins

Atheists reading holy tests out loud for charity

Cleanliness is far from godliness - A little dirt is a good thing

Did Neanderthals Pray? part 2

Will anyone buy Expelled on DVD? Anyone? Anyone? - That's right, the little creationist propaganda film that proved that Ben Stein doesn't use "Clear Eyes" that nobody saw is coming to DVD. Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care. But I figured I use this as yet another opportunity to plug the website that totally debunks the claims in the film, ExpelledExposed.com

EPIC FAIL:

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway's logical fallacy in The Wall Street Journal - Hemingway's idea of a logical argument is to cite a Baylor University study that vaguely suggests religious people are less likely to believe in other pseudosciences or paranormal claims to make her case that skeptics and atheists do more harm than good by trying to teach people how to think critically. Of course it doesn't seem to occur to her that the reason the religious tend not to believe in other forms of pseudoscience or paranormal claims is because often the specific beliefs of the religion demand mutually exclusivity. For instance, fundamental Christians must reject psychics as at best charlatans and at worst devil worshipers. Religions are very good at keeping their parishioners away from the competition.

NEWS I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED BEFORE NOW:

James "The Amazing" Randi is giving a talk in NYC - I will definitely be there with bells on (I haven't decided whether these are to be literal or figurative bells yet). If you can come, this is not to be missed. There's a reason they call him "The Amazing." Oh, and it's FREE.

New skeptical-friendly show, The Mentalist, coming to CBS - The main character is a guy who uses his keen observational skills to solve crimes. He used to make money pretending to be a psychic but then went straight. Sounds a little like the show Psych. Though it's also received lots of comparisons to House.

AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:

New Optics Technology To Study Alien Worlds - "NASA Goddard scientist Rick Lyon has been working on potential missions and technologies to find planets around other stars (called exoplanets or extrasolar planets) since the late 1980s. Only recently has he begun to believe that NASA may actually fly a planet-finding mission in his lifetime."

Why Chemo Works For Some People And Not Others - "MIT researchers have shown that cells from different people don't all react the same way when exposed to the same DNA-damaging agent — a finding that could help clinicians predict how patients will respond to chemotherapy."

Primordial Fish Had Rudimentary Fingers - "Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals, are regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes. Now researchers at Uppsala University can show that this is wrong. Using medical x-rays, they found rudiments of fingers in the fins in fossil Panderichthys, the “transitional animal,” which indicates that rudimentary fingers developed considerably earlier than was previously thought."

Just over a week from now, these words from Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) may very well ring true when avid atheist and irreverent comedian Bill Maher hits the big screen with Religulous.  The documentary follows Maher on a pseudo-spiritual journey as he interviews people from across the globe about God and religion.  In the wake of Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, it could be Religulous that gets the last laugh.

Religulous Trailer

Expelled Trailer

Maher and the director of Borat could be banking on having the last word.  So, before rushing to boycott this film (as religulous people often do), please consider the possibility that the release of this faithless mockumentary may actually open yet another door for discussing one's faith.  Rather than renting Facing the Giants for the eleventeenth time and retreating to your faith-based bubble, get out and proclaim the gospel.  On your faces, Christians, and to the theaters!

Besides, evolution doesn't get any better than this...

Richard Dawkins clip from Expelled

Evidently, I'm not alone.

From the right, and the left.

I've long argued for a complete evisceration of the tax code and accounting "rules," and this may be our shot. The Man built in the complexity that created this house of cards, and no one trusts them to fix it.

And...it scared me to be honest.

Am I a slave to my technology is what I kept asking myself?

That's a question we should all be asking ourselves. If Terry's article was not enough, then read the article that spurred his post....you will have a lot to think about.

Connected, Yes, but Hermetically Sealed by Ben Stein

“MAN is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

What would Rousseau have made of the modern-day balls and chains with which we shackle ourselves? They are not made of steel or iron, but of silicon and plastic and digits and electrons and waves zooming through the air. These are the chains of all kinds of devices, like the BlackBerry, the iPhone and the Voyager. These are the chains with which we have bound ourselves, losing much of our solitude and our ability to see the world around and inside us.

and

But try a day without that invasion of your privacy. Or a week. You will be shocked at what you discover. It’s called life. It’s called nature. It’s called getting to know yourself. I have a close friend who is in prison. He used to be imprisoned by his P.D.A. He has many stories, but the most haunting one is about how, without his phone, without his P.D.A., he has come to know, for the first time, who he is.

Nice blog by Rod Dreher.   Nothing like getting the blood pressure pumping first thing in the morning...  Part of me wants to stick my head in the sand and go on as if nothing is wrong.  Why not?  None of this really affects my family, YET.   Right?   The other part of me wants to abandon my children's education and sit at my computer and radio all day reading, listening, pondering, and philosophizing about what's going on.  Of course, I'd blog.  A lot.

Today's ponderings:

First, Maestro Einhorn points out that the fellows who run big investment banks have a strong incentive to maximize their assets and leverage themselves into deep trouble because their pay is a function of how much debt they can pile on. If they can use relatively low-interest debt to generate slightly higher returns, the firm earns more revenue and executive pay increases. Often, an astonishing 50 percent of total revenue goes to employee compensation at Wall Street firms.

(break)

The owners, employees and creditors of these institutions are rewarded when they succeed, but it is all of us, the taxpayers, who are left on the hook if they fail. This is called private profits and socialized risk. Heads, I win. Tails you lose. It is a reverse-Robin Hood system.

Wall Street, Run Amok
By BEN STEIN
Published: April 27, 2008

Did they know, as they were on the verge of destroying our economy, that the government would bail them out?   Did they care?

Only in America can the rich rob the poor and then make the poor pay when the scheme fails.   Whoo-hoo Libertarianism. NOT!

 It’s a lot easier said than done, but figuring out what path you want to head down is a crucial first step to reaching your final destination. 

Planning and figuring out what to do with the rest of your life might seem too monumental of a task, but the trick is to do it one step at a time, one day at a time. 

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”   - Sun Tsu 

You need to realize that you are not signing a lifetime contract with anyone by simply choosing a specific goal for yourself. Worst case scenario is that you realize your current path is no longer in tact with your original plans and you’d have to change it. We’ve all taken detours before, and it shouldn’t be hard to get yourself back on a positive path. Pretty much, you just need to alleviate any unnecessary strain you imply onto yourself. 

“Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.” - Mary Schmich 

Take a nice deep breath and think about what you love doing. Close your eyes and reminisce about your childhood and all the dreams you had in front of you. What were some of those dreams?

Also, think about things you love to do. What do you love to do so much, that you’d do it for free? Maybe you’re already doing something everyday but never realized its potential for becoming a career. Now the trick is to find a way to get paid for what you love to do. 

“Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”  -St. Francis of Assisi

I know what you’re thinking… and yes, there is a high demand in the prostitution field, and yes, the pay is really good. But trust me, I tried it before and it was a tough gig… the hours were late, no healthcare, no dental, rude customers, weird customers and of course, not a good retirement package….  (just kidding) 

Still having problems figuring out what’s for you? Try talking with family and friends. Maybe they can see the greatness and potential in you that you can’t see yourself. 

Pick up the book called “Grindhopping” by Laura Vanderkam http://www.grindhopping.com. It talks about finding your own passions in life and turning it into an entrepreneurial venture. The term Grindhopping comes from the mundane lifestyles that most adults fall into, where we go to college, show up, become an average student and then eventually go out into the world as a corporate slave in the corporate grind. So Grindhopping is thus, finding your own path and becoming your own boss, hence skipping, or hopping, the daily corporate grind that drives so many of us into becoming mediocre working adults. 

Grindhopping (verb) – Achieving accelerated career success, without paying your dues. 

“Grindhoppers who hit the jackpot from the start have not just talent, but affection for their work. They do not believe that they should be anything but blissfully happy with their jobs.”  - Lauren Vanderkam

 Excepts from the book: 

Guideline #1: Always Be Your Own Boss

            No compromises, no excuses 

Guideline #2: Know Where You’re Going

            It’s the only way to drive on unmarked roads 

Guideline #3: Recalculate Risk

            Get comfortable with being uncomfortable 

Guideline #4: Think Projects, Not Jobs

            Welcome to the Craig’s List Economy 

Guideline #5: Seek to Be Judged on Results (and Deliver Them)

            Be better, and you’ve got it made 

Guideline #6: Everything is Negotiable

            From money to work-life balance, don’t believe “that’s just the way it is” 

Guideline #7: Cultivate a Network and a Nimble Mind

            Learn how to learn on the job

I asked Lauren, “What is one thing all the Grindhoppers you met have in common?”

Her response was that all of them had a strong sense of self-discipline. After all, these people aren’t working for anyone else other than themselves. So it’s their own internal fire and personal drive that will allow them to succeed or fail. 

So now the question is, do you have that same motivation within you? Well, if not, then come back everyday to get your daily dose of motivation here at 365DaysOfMotivation.wordpress.com (shameless plug).

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”  - Walt Disney

Secvente din filmul "Eliminat: Inteligenta nu este permisa":

Ben Stein vorbeste despre film:

Ben Stein vorbeste despre legaturile dintre Hitler si Darwin.

Ahhh... teenage love!

I remember this one time... there was this one girl I really, really liked.  I was... 14, going on 15?  We met at Daniell's "summer" vacation camp.  She made my heart do all sorts of acrobatics whenever she was around.  And she liked me, too... I could tell!  She'd always make it a point to look me in the eye and smile.  When I'd least expect it, she turn around and smile at me when she caught me staring at her.  I'd feel my face get flushed whenever she and her friends passed me by.  Her friends would always giggle at me, but she never did...

[Creatas]

I'd been in this situation before... I'd have a crush, I could tell that she liked me too... but I just didn't have... the "skill" ...to close the deal.  I'd either bungle it, or simply not do anything about it past the flirting stage.  I'd just watch them from afar, and watch (eventually) as some other dude got the girl.

[GraphicsHunt]

This time was going to be different.  This time, I was determined to overcome this shyness.  So, I sat closer to her in my classes... ate lunch near to her table... I noticed when she came in and went so we'd always happen to 'bump' into each other... eventually, we got to talking and laughing, and my confidence grew more and more with each passing day.  Eventually, I really felt myself falling for her, and she for me!  One day, I decided to make a bold move.  With all that was happening between us, the 'deep feelings' I felt had to be revealed.

I asked her for a kiss...

Politely.

She... sort of smiled... then said no.

She said I was "nice", but I was "just a friend".

:|

A few weeks later, after camp was finished, one of my classmates was telling me about this (different) girl he was seeing for a little while and had just kissed for the first time.

Me: So what did she do when you asked her for a kiss?

He: Ask? I didn't ask her anything!  I just... held her and kissed her!

Me: (quizzically) ...and she kissed you back ?!

He: (laughing) Yeah! :grin:

Me: Oh... :|

What's my point?  Why am I putting this all out there?  Its simple, really...

When is Barack Obama going to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy ?

If you're too nice or too polite, you won't get the girl.

The McCain camp just spun another lie into a disgusting, grotesque campaign ad (video):

If I was the father of two kindergarten-aged girls, what do you think that my reaction would be?

Why is the Obama campaign taking long to respond forcefully to this?

Is he afraid of being labelled an "Angry Black Man"? (video)

Newsflash!  As far as 'they' are concerned, you already are!  And they called you "uppity" to boot!  So what are you going to do about it?

The thing is, is America ready for another angry black man?  I think McCain is doing whatever it can to goad him into displaying his (righteous) rage simply because it will play him into their hands.

They will twist it so much that it'll leave Jeremiah Wright speechless.  They're doing it already anyway... almost every ad spins the facts, quotes out of context, and makes the truth out to be something stranger than fiction.

I don't know what McCain's minions are holding back, but whatever it is, the microsecond Obama takes off his belt to lash the dolts with some sense, they will let the pit bulls go after him and won't hold them back.

If we're alarmed at the people who look at him and call him uppity now, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Who knows?  Maybe America is ready.  There've been several portrayals of "Angry Black Men" in popular culture for many years... Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and even Will Smith have filmed righteous indignation scenes throughout their careers that resonate with us still.

When Denzel played decent and nice and noble and upstanding characters he got bypassed by the Academy.

Thing is though, he only got his Oscar when he played it crooked in Training Day.

(Trailer)

Even McCain's own people have called the game out for what it is:

"This election is not about issues. (emphasis mine)

This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

- Rick Davis, John McCain campaign manager

Go suit up.  Its time to show them you know how to play.

Handle your stories, man... *fist bump*

:cool:

Peace and Rice,

jw