A Lesson in Civility and Rational Discourse

Bill Moyers is an ordained Baptist minister. The late Isaac Asimov was an atheist and a past president of the American Humanist Association. Yet in 1988 these two men sat down together and rationally discussed topics which today's political "leaders" use without exception as cudgels to spur their minions into frenzied hatred of all who would dare to voice an opinion at odds with their established party line.

The Asimov interview, like so many of those presented by Moyers, offers a deliberate juxtaposition of opposites discussed and explored on multiple levels, and that is the source of its appeal and power.

OK. Describing the interview as a kumbayah-moment is a bit misleading. Moyers is a Baptist minister; but, he is also a political liberal, having served in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. But those facts underscore the purpose and the title of this post.

Though it took place in 1988, this interview highlights the central irony found in the political climate of 2014. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, was a proponent of rational discourse and a passionate believer in the ability of opponents to find common ground. Today, it is the Party of Lincoln which stands in lock-step opposition to the political rationalism for which Lincoln lived and died.

Today's liberals have no problem sitting down with their philosophical opponents to discuss controversial issues in the hope of finding common ground. In contrast, conservatives - at least those currently in control of the GOP - have adopted the uncompromising "my way or the highway" mentality of fundamentalists the world over. Their goal is not to find common ground but to destroy and bury their enemies.

This attitude is rooted in an unmitigated fear of change in a universe where change is the only constant.

Link to Source of Moyers-Asimov Interview

A World of Ideas (1988, 1990)

Isaac Asimov on His Faith in the Power of Human Reason

October 17, 1988

In this classic interview, Isaac Asimov explains why he believes that scientists are among the most moral people, why science and religion need not be opposed to one other, and why empowering women is the way to secure our very survival on the planet.

Sunday Funnies 140504

There is no Sunday Funnies word of the week today. Instead, I offer a rambling assemblage of the comics and cartoons that tickled my funny-bone and raised my blood pressure in the last seven days.

It's up to you to figure out which did which.

Batter Up!

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Batter down, but not out.

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Much Ado About Nothing

(a bouquet of BC comics for the price of none)

Perhaps he wasn't finished.

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No help wanted!

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Nothing ventured;

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nothing gained...

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...and the "nothing" theme in this week's BC peters out.

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Bigotry: A Primer in Five Parts

Part 1: For those who think bigotry refers to a California redwood

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Part 2: The Good

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Part 3: The Bad

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Part 4: The Ugly

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Part 5: and The Apologist

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Back to our regularly scheduled blog post...

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Oops! That's not it. Let's try it again...

Help Wanted; Help Offered

Try soaking your head in hot water for about thirty years.

That's about how long it took for your scorched-earth, media campaign against liberals to brainwash America into believing that the lies you spread about your patriotism, your Christian family values, and fiscal conservatism were meant to benefit them instead of you and the corporate bosses and fringe lunatics to whom you have sold your soul.

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Old McConnell had a farm...

With an "Oink! Oink!" here and and "Oink! Oink!" there...

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Suffer the Little Children?

When preserving the image of an institution takes precedence over and contradicts the message of the one in whose name it was created...

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A Murder of Crows

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Looks like it's time to switch to PBS for...

A Short Lesson in French Art

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See you next Sunday.

A Letter to President Obama and You

I watched President Obama's Weekly Address this morning; and, logophile that I am, I found myself wishing he had used a slightly different phrase near the end.

Besides being a logophile with a penchant for editing the words of others, I am an optimist, who thinks the Submit Questions and Comments link on the White House website is more than a ploy to collect information to help the Democratic party solicit contributions.

The convergence of my editorial zeal and my optimism (some might say naiveté) resulted in the following letter, which I submitted to the President and now offer to you.

Mr. President, 

Near the end of today's Weekly Address, you said, "...that's why I'm gonna take action on my own wherever I can." 

May I suggest that changing "on my own" to "on your behalf" whenever you summarize your plan "to grow our economy from the middle out, not from the top down" via executive action. 

I'm sure you know that the arguments coming from the right are designed to attack you personally with little or no substantive objections or alternatives to what both you and a majority of Americans want for our country. It's an insidious tactic rooted in a cynical confidence that Americans harbor latent prejudices, which can be aroused with coded language and innuendo.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that dynamic is understood by many in the middle-class. If they hear that your executive actions are being made on their behalf, rather than by one man standing alone against obstructionist Republicans, they might come to realize that it is they who are being attacked by those on the right. 

Sincerely,

George A. Denino

I Kid You Not

In the Jesus and Mo comic strip below, the author not only kids everyone in the world, but also roasts a shepherd, who found it more expedient to sacrifice kids entrusted to the care of his pedophiliac minions than to protect them and risk exposing a dirty little secret of the church he led.

And for choosing to protect the church's reputation at the expense of both those kids and the message of the one for whom the church was established, the shepherd has been named a saint.

* * *

A definition of terms may be helpful to fully appreciate the multiple levels of satire found in this comic.

scape-goat |ˈskāpˌgōt|noun(in the Bible) a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Lev. 16).• a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, esp. for reasons of expediency.verb [ trans. ]make a scapegoat of.DERIVATIVESscapegoater nounscapegoating nounscapegoatism |-ˌizəm| nounORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from archaic scape [escape] + goat .* * *Link to Source* * *A synopsis of Jesus and Mo  presented in the same satirical vein found in the weekly, online installments:AboutWhat is Jesus and Mo?

It’s a weekly comic strip, dealing in religious satire.
Who’s in it?



Is that really the Prophet Mohammed?
No, it’s a body double. Mohammed couldn’t make it, as he has been dead for centuries.

Is that really Jesus?
Yes, that is really Jesus. I don’t know how he does it, but he always finds time in his busy schedule to appear in the comic whenever someone loads a J&M page in their browser.

Is that really Moses?
Enough already.

Why is the Barmaid never drawn?
It is forbidden. Plus, I can’t draw barmaids.

Why is the art so bad?
Because I’m such a bad artist.

I find the comic very offensive. Can you take it down?
No.

Do you get much hate mail?
Hardly any.

Can I use one of your strips in my blog/website/newsletter/dissertation etc?
Please do. J&M is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 license, which means you can reprint, edit, translate the strips for non-commercial purposes provided you link back to jesusandmo.net.

How can I keep up to date with the strips?
In order of popularity, there’s an RSS feed, a Twitter feed, and an email list. Take your pick. Take them all!

I think you’re great and I’d like to give you lots of money. How can I do this?
You could buy a book, or a shirt, or a card – any of those ways will give you something in return for your money. You can also contribute to our hosting bill by donating with the form in the right sidebar. Alternatively, if you simply want to make a donation out of the kindness of your heart,Flattr has recently developed a process by which you can do just that. Yay Flattr!

Another "Thrilla in Manila"

This video is hilarious.
The contrast between the sagacity of President Obama and the inanity (rhymes with Hannity) of those who read GOP talking points as "news" on FOX is golden.

Unlike the original "Thrilla in Manila," the one shown in the video has a clear winner, and it's the American people...at least those smart enough to recognize when a superior opponent has landed a haymaker on the glass jaw of an overmatched pug.

Allow me to offer a short summation of Mr. Obama's smiling response to Ed Henry's question:

#### you and the cable "news" channel you rode in on! 

Watch and enjoy.

President Obama Shreds Fox News For Their Bogus Criticisms Of His Foreign Policy
President Obama engaged in one of his favorite press conference hobbies. He handed Fox's Ed Henry his head for asking yet another Fox News fueled stupid  question that was entirely based on Republican talking points....
POLITICUSUSA

President Obama Shreds Fox News For Their Bogus Criticisms Of His Foreign Policy was written by Jason Easley for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Mon, Apr 28th, 2014 — All Rights Reserved

Suppressing The Pursuit of Happiness

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"So," you ask, "Why doesn't Congress make college tuition free? Surely a more educated populace would lead to an even better America."

Whoa! Not so fast, folks. You're starting to sound anti-American...even socialistic. Perhaps you don't really understand how dangerous that would be.

Thomas Jefferson worte, "An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people," and he meant it.

He also wrote in the Declaration of Independence "...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That, however, did not stop the wealthy leaders of the American colonies from changing Jefferson's idealistic, unalienable right to "the pursuit of happiness" into the much more business-friendly right to "the acquisition and protection of property" when they wrote their state constitutions after the Revolutionary War was over. They did not do this out of Jeffersonian idealism or democratic fervor, but out of good, old-fashioned, quintessentially American self-interest.

That same self-interest perpetuates America's favorite self-deception. We love to tell ourselves and the rest of the world that in America "all men are created equal" yet we continue to elect officials whose ideology calls for the perpetuation of inequalities within our multi-cultural populace.

Fear of education lies at the very heart of this ideology, for education is the true leveler in any society. It is "a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."

However, "an educated citizenry" that is free can't be controlled and manipulated nearly as easily as a one perpetually in debt to their "betters" and brainwashed to vote against their own best interests out of fear that "the dreaded other" (distinguished by race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, education, or any other wedge-issue) will get what little they have.

A glance back at history will show that a minority which controls the purse strings of a country has always used this tactic to forced the majority at the bottom of the economic ladder to dance to its tune.

It worked on the plantations of the Old South. It worked in South Africa under apartheid. And it is alive and well in today's America where corporations have been given the status of people by the Roberts court and can make a mockery of the "one person one vote" principle by simply purchasing politicians with millions of "free speech dollars."

Education is much more than "a vital requisite for our survival as a free people." It is the only property whose acquisition enables a free people to pursue happiness, and it must be protected. 

"So, " I ask, "Are you interested in equality and freedom or only in the myth of equality and freedom? Do you believe that all people, have an inalienable right to pursue happiness or that property and wealth have an unalienable right to negate the ideals and principles on which our nation was founded?"

With control of the Senate and the governorships of many states on the ballot in November, what you do on election day w will answer those questions."

Sunday Funnies 140427

The Sunday Funnies word of the week is mishmash:
mish-mash |ˈmi sh ˌma sh; -ˌmä sh |noun [in sing. ]a confused mixture : a mishmash of outmoded ideas.ORIGIN late 15th cent.: reduplication of mash .

1. "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later."

That's not the voice of the announcer in a Fram oil filter commercial. It's Mother Nature.

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2. Survey Says...

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3. Maybe he's using Swiss cheese. After all, it's "holey".

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4. UFO Sightings have become quite rare.

The number of UFO sightings has diminished as the number of smart phones with cameras has increased. One would think that if there actually were UFOs we'd have more sightings with images and video just as there were for the meteor that exploded over Russia a while back. 

But there may be another reason for the drop off...

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5. Help me! Help me!

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6. I'll Get Straight To The Point...Seriously

There's a bunch of chatter on the internet about the supposed dangers of immunizations, and some people are refusing to have their children get their shots.

This is stupid.

But then, Americans seem to be incapable of recognizing when they're being asked to reject overwhelming scientific evidence because a small group of people don't like what that evidence says or suggests.

The benefits of immunization far outweigh the risks. For more information, click here.

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7. A Question of Leadership

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8. A Trip Down the Semicircular Canals

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9. Cleaning the Latrine

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10. It's old joke time!

Two senior citizens, Bob and Jim, were discussing their hearing problems over lunch. 

Said Bob, "I had to get a new hearing aid, and it cost me an arm and a leg, well over $1,500." 

Jim smiled and said, "Strange you should mention it. I just bot a new hearing aid myself, but it only cost me $49.95. 

Bob was astonished, and asked, "What kind is it?" 

To which Jim replied, "1:45."

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11. Are you Putin me on?

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12. Young Elizabeth Warren?

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