I Believe it is Time to Part Ways with the Republican Party

I have been a Republican my entire voting life.  I registered Republican when I was eligible and while I have never voted strictly down party lines, I have believed in much of what the Republican Party has stood for in previous years.  But now, does anyone know what the Republican Party stands for today?

You see my dilemma, and while I would love to blame this parting of the ways on Donald Trump, I have to say it's been a long time coming.

For example something happened recently that makes me question much of the existing crop of Republicans, and it's something that has happened before.  Let me explain -- anyone remember the Dixie Chicks?  They made a few comments about then-President Bush that got them in a hot water with their fans, radio stations, and record companies.

Let me be clear, I disagreed with what they said. But as this quote, often mis-identified as being from Voltaire, explains my position:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

John F. Kennedy said something similar:

"If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."

We are supposed to have certain individual freedoms in this country, and one of those freedoms is free speech.  While I disagreed with the Dixie Chicks comment, they have the right to say it!  They were subjected to comments that threatened their citizenship, their career, their lives, and the lives of their children!  Much of the worse invective came from self-described patriots and conservatives.  I can understand not wanting to buy or listen to their music anymore, but death threats!

Apparently when it comes to 'free speech', far too many people think it means that folks are only free to speak publicly if they say something you agree with -- if not, you get to threaten their children.  That's not free speech!  Free speech doesn't not give anyone the right to threaten!  Make no mistake, death threats are an assault!  You've heard the phrase 'assault and battery'?

"In criminal and civil law, assault is an attempt to initiate harmful or offensive contact with a person, or a threat to do so.  It is distinct from battery, which refers to the actual achievement of such contact."(Wikipedia: Assault)

The Republican Party was founded on the ideology of 'Republicanism' which, among other things, stresses the rights of the individual.  Tell me what part of individual rights means you cannot speak out your opinion without fear of death threats for you and your children?  It is not patriotic to threaten someone with whom you disagree!  I would go as far as to say it's Un-American -- but when you consider the bombast and vitriol dripping from many self-avowed Republicans in recent years it's seems to be becoming Un-American not to threaten those you disagree with!

I would love to say this is an isolated incident, but it's happening again!  I disagree with Colin Kaepernick, one of the quarterbacks on the San Francisco 49'ers.  If you haven't heard, he refused to stand for the National Anthem and has cited several reasons why he will not stand.  Like I said, I disagree with him, but he has that right!  Like the Dixie Chicks, he's getting quite a backlash, again from self-described patriots and conservatives, including that rather ridiculous figure that gives Alaska so much negative publicity:

"America - let's sack this ungrateful punk. Kaepernick - yeah, you're really "down with the oppressed" in this nation. Enjoying your $114 million contract, your previous adoring fans, sucking up a life of luxury... GOD AND COUNTRY GAVE YOU THIS OPPORTUNITY. You can't acknowledge that? Then on behalf of every Vet I'm privileged to know: GET THE HELL OUT."(Palin's Facebook)

Agree or disagree -- fine -- but demand he leave?  He's probably cost himself millions in endorsements and it might jeopardize his position as an NFL Quarterback, but he has that right!  But no, right-wing nut jobs are threatening him and ones like Palin want to kick him out.  You know when people disagreed with Palin, they simply didn't vote for her.  Imagine the hue and whine if people treated her the way she's trying to treat Kaepernick!

I didn't want to turn this into an anti-Palin piece, but anyone else remember her defending that Duck Dynasty guy, claiming his right to free speech was violated?  Hmm, where was her defense of the Dixie Chicks, or for that matter, Colin Kaepernick?

 "Sarah Palin for one said (per CNN):

"Those 'intolerants' hatin' and taking on the Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing his personal opinion are taking on all of us," Palin, who met the series' cast while on a book tour in Louisiana, wrote on Facebook, along with a photo of her and the cast of the A&E series." (What’s the difference between Duck Dynasty & The Dixie Chicks?)

See what I mean?  As much as I would love to put the blame on people like Palin and Trump, it goes deeper than that.  They epitomize the problem, but they are not the cause for it.  I almost had some respect for Paul Ryan, but when he kowtowed and supported Trump, it was gone!  There don't seem to be any Republicans worthy of the label 'Republican'.

What I see is a disturbing trend that is being exemplified by people all too many people who self-identify as Republicans.  For quite some time I have felt that electing a President and Congress folks has not been an exercise in selecting the best person, but all too often it has boiled down to selecting the lesser of two evils.  That was bad enough several Presidents ago, but it's gotten to the point of being a farce.

Republicans used to stand for so many things that made sense, reducing the national debt, smaller government, conservative fiscal policies, individual freedoms . . . but where has that all gone?  The best you get today is lip service from dinosaurs who are so indebted to special interests that they forget they are supposed to be representing their constituents.  Disagree?  I welcome it, unlike others.

Here's a few examples:

• The political power of the oil and gas companies and the nearly incessant denial of climate change, contrary to all of the evidence. 
• The power of the NRA to block any legislation that might stand a prayer of dealing with the issue of gun violence. You might educate yourself on the Dickey Amendment, not just the language, but the impact over the last 20 years.
• How many Republicans are pandering for the votes of the Christian Right?  It's not because they share the same beliefs, but because voicing narrow views shared by religious conservatives is a way to get them to vote for you.  Sure, tell me Donald has actually read the Bible?  Anyone believe that?
• The amount of money shelled out by pharmaceutical companies for ownership of more than a small block of politicians, emphasizes most recently by the cost of EpiPens!.  
• How about which politicians helped to tobacco and lead-additive companies get away with poisoning us for decades!

Now for more recent events, look at the collection of losers that ran for the Republican Nomination for President in 2015/16, look at them!  Religious panderers, failed business people, bombastic politicians who have never had an honest job.  You wouldn't let any of them babysit your kids and people want to give someone like Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, or Donald Trump the nuclear codes?

No, it's time for the modern day Republican Party to dissolve.  It's over.  The party of Jefferson and Lincoln no longer exists!  The party I have supported for so long and continued to want to support has disappeared!  It's time for a new party, one that represents and respects individual rights!

Facts, We Don't Need No Stinking Facts

I was following some of the news concerning the two big political conventions and noticed something strange about one of them, an overabundance of 'feelings' conversation.  I was mulling it over and what jelled it in my mind was John Oliver's Last Night on Tonight commentary about the Republican National Convention (RNC):

They really did spend a lot of time identifying peoples' feelings about something, much more than relying on anything resembling a fact.  Oliver said, "Believing something to be true is not the same thing as it being true" summed up the RNC pretty well.  I really was waiting for the RNC to use "Feelings" as their new theme song.

The interview with Newt really keyed in on it.  How he, as a politician, would go with feelings over facts any day. Shouldn't that be a warning flag?  I am not talking a little 3x5 inch flag on the end of a piece of straw.  I am talking about a room sized piece of red cloth run up to the top of a 90 foot flagpole signaling a serious disaster!  When someone wants you to go with your feelings, it usually means they don't have any facts to back something up, so they need you to 'go with your gut'.  Why would that be?

I have to wonder if the RNC 'feels' they are in a losing position.  Changing from 'facts' to 'feelings' is only a tactic when the facts don't back you up.  As we can see from the Newt's part of the interview, the facts do not back him up, so he tries to make the claim that his feelings, and the voiced 'feelings' attributed to 'the average American' are actually facts in themselves. Sorry, Newt, an unsupported opinion does not equal actual supported numbers, and it never will.

An analogy in Poker is called a 'chopped pot', which means splitting the pot evenly among the players who have yet to fold the hand.  There are two instances of a chopped pot, one is the hands are truly tied after showing them.  The other is when one player feels they are at a disadvantage and wants to minimize their losses, so they offer to chop the pot rather than take the risk and see the cards.  This is usually done because of a 'feeling' of having a weaker hand than one or more of your opponents.  In chess it's the offer of a draw rather than play out the rest of the game.

As you might have noticed the Discovery Institute (DI) has been spending a lot of time claiming that intuition is just as good as actual science.  That your 'feelings' about a subject are just as valid as someone who studies and works and has the evidence to back up their claims.  Why would they do so?

Because they must 'feel' they are in a losing position.  I wonder if donations are down or some of their big donors are questioning their lack of results?  Why else would they be celebrating 20 years of non-achievement.  That's why they are pushing books like Doug Axes "Undeniable" and re-releasing books like "The Design of Life". And that is why they make statements like:

"We don't need to rely slavishly on what scientists say because, in an important sense, we are all scientists, capable of judging a big scientific idea like evolution, if not necessarily the technical details, for ourselves." (More Scientists Praise Douglas Axe's Undeniable)

I really love this statement because after years of the DI telling us how scientific they are and how many scientists disagree with evolution -- suddenly the message is who cares what scientists say anyway!  This is the equivalent saying "Oh Yea!" after a telling insult for which you have no response.  I mean what do scientists know anyway, nanny-nanny-boo-boo!

Telling people to go with their gut shows how little they have in the way of facts to support their Creationism/Intelligent Design.  To paraphrase a favorite movie "Facts, we don't need no stinking facts!"

Kennie's Ark Park about to Open, Sorry Kentucky! I feel your pain!

Yes, I haven't talked about it much, mainly because there isn't much to say.  Little kennie ham, with the help of a newly elected Republican Kentucky Governor, have once again made fools of the people of Kentucky and is opening an exhibit to showcase his narrow theological views and potentially leaving the people of Kentucky to pay for it . . . especially if his highly suspect attendance projections come in more like the reality of his other abortion, the Creation 'Museum'.  And all the time, he can discriminate against many of Kentucky's citizens as potential employees, while the taxpayers get to help pay for the privilege!

Cincinnati.com ran this "Who pays for the new ark? Taxpayers help" and even the Boston Globe ran "Kentucky’s ark defies science but evokes a version of Christianity" it probably will piss little kennie off.  But then when anyone says absolutely ANYTHING he disagrees with, tends to piss him off.

I spoke too soon, he has already commented on the Cincinnati.com's article with "A Cincinnati Enquirer Ark Hit Piece".  I'm not going to quote it, you probably already know what it says, more and more defensiveness and unsupported comments about his motivations, as if the money means nothing to him.  He calls most of the press coverage and 'positive and balanced' and yet I have Google Alerts on both 'Ark Encounters' and 'Answers in Genesis' and something like 90% of the articles I have seen was more neutral and simply announcing it was coming and some of the details already known and well publicized by kennie and his Hamian publicity machine.  Although, maybe innocuous reporting is something kennie would consider positive?  Who knows!

Will I visit the Ark Park?  No!  I've already been to his other 'Monument to Scientific Ignorance', aka the Creation Pseudo-Museum, and have no intention of lining kennie's pockets with any more of my money.  If I want to go zip-lining, there are a great many other places for me to go, there are also many real museums within easy driving distance, especially the Cincinnati Museum Center, with its Children's Museum, History Museum, Museum of Natural History and Science, to name a few of the attractions there.  Indianapolis and Columbus also have some great museums, many of which I have visited at least once in the 20+ years I have lived here.  Wandering around a wooden structure based on a fairy tale that not only claims that an imaginary world-wide flood, but that humans and dinosaurs lived together -- which is contrary to every piece of paleontologist evidence -- is not for me.  I doubt I could contain my laughter with a second trip into kennie's delusions.

I am looking forward to one thing.  In 2010 the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the 'Worlds Most Craptastic Tourist Attractions'.  Kennie's so-called-museum made the cut.  I am looking forward to them running a new article and am curious where the ark park will fall on the list and wonder what word they will use this time to describe these 'attractions', I really did love 'Craptastic', didn't you?

Are things getting bleaker in Kentucky?

Listening to the radio this morning I learned that the Governor-Elect of Kentucky is a Tea-partying Conservative Matt Blevin.  What that will eventually mean, I have no idea.  He's already on record supporting that discriminatory Kim Davis and proclaimed a number of issues dear to Conservative hearts.  The Courier-Journal reported that groups like The the Family Foundation of Kentucky is thrilled.  Martin Cothran, their senior policy advisor is quoted as saying:

“It’s going to be a big change in policy in this state, I think … to have the governor’s office in the hands of somebody who really wants to make some conservative change is heartening.”

“We’ve elected a governor who has expressed strong support for religious freedom, who is also in favor of charter schools. So we are hopeful some of the policy statements he made during the campaign are realized.”

However since the Legislature is controlled by Democrats, strategist Danny Briscoe predicts:

“Every bill that comes up, every critical issue that comes up, Republicans will say ‘how is it going to affect our chances in November,’ and the Democrats will say the same thing, which I think means we probably won’t get a lot done,” 

I wonder how long it will be before kennie ham posts about it and how it will impact his Ark Park?  Are things bleaker for the people of Kentucky?  I hope not, I really do!

Dan Rather: Ignoring science isn't just a Republican problem. It's an American problem.

I was working on how best to build my own response  to some of the foolishness said by the Republican candidate wanna-bes and caught this from Dan Rather: "Ignoring science isn't just a Republican problem. It's an American problem."  Everyone should read it.  What he does isn't try and solve the issue, or even identify all the root causes -- although he does mention quite a few (loss of faith in authority, suspicion of big corporations, a general political balkanization).  He focuses on one of the reasons the anti-science feelings seem to be so prevalent, the one he knows intimately, as you would expect, journalism and how the press covers science.  He identifies some of the problems:

• Hyping certain "advances" that are more PR than science
• Shying away from covering important stories because they're "too complicated." 
• Don't even do a good job explaining how scientific research works
• Scientific issues don't lend themselves to simple soundbites for TV

He does mention one of my pet peeves, which got my attention [I added the underlines for emphasis]:

"And then there is the danger of false equivalency. Not every issue has two sides, or certainly two equal sides. Yet when you put two people on screen to tell both “sides” of the story, in the viewer's mind it immediately connotes 50:50, even if you say it doesn't. Giving someone equal time to explain their side doesn’t mean there is equal data, research and science behind their view. Often times, the “other side” of the story has very little data to support its very big exceptions to the rules." 

You might recall I have mentioned this a time or two, usually in regards to the Discovery Institute's lack of science and kennie ham's lack of anything.  He also had a link to a John Oliver video, which is a personal favorite.

I wonder if Oliver has done a show about Evolution?  I'm going to have to look!  Hang on a second . . . no, he hasn't addressed Evolution or Creationism, however his take down of Televangelism is a classic.  I would love to see his take on the Discovery Institute!  OK, back to Dan, who says:

"This is not to say that every science policy question has an easy or correct answer. There is a lot to weigh in how we should employ science and what we should fund. But it is not a debate we can afford to shy away from. I think that any politician who doesn't take those questions seriously is not fit to lead our country in the 21st century."

We need to ask our potential leaders more questions about science!  One of the things that has to be important is not only what the candidate says, but where are they getting their information -- from people who are actually doing the work or from folks with a philosophical axe to grind.  Trump failed badly on vaccines, Carson failed on so much!  You just have to love that last line 'I think that any politician who doesn't take those questions seriously is not fit to lead our country in the 21st century.'

I understand they are pandering for votes, but why are they pandering in such a way that makes them seem positively uneducated!  I thought Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry was bad, but Ben Carson and Donald Trump?  It's crossed the pandering line and reached epic stupidity.  Is Donald Trump or Ben Carson fit to lead us in the 21st century?  They certainly haven't shown it yet, have they?  I wonder which candidate kennie or the DI will back?