“America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us,” said President Obama during a speech at the National Defense University. “We have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ Neither I, nor any President, can promise the total defeat of terror.” Well isn’t that refreshing to hear! I thought the “War on Terror” would be fought until victory was achieved — no more terrorism. Well, at least that’s the lie we would have to tell ourselves to justify such a war.

Of course President Obama, as Politico points out, is largely debating himself on issues of national defense post-9/11. He has led an administration just as hawkish on anti-terrorism as the previous administration. In fact, when it comes to use of targeted drone strikes, Obama has one-upped his predecessor. So excuse me for being a bit cynical when I hear this president say, “America’s legitimate claim of self-defense cannot be the end of the discussion.” It sure seems like it is. President Obama might not use rhetoric like when President Bush said, “you’re either with us, or against us,” but the president has conducted his foreign policy in much the same manner as Bush.

“We were attacked on 9/11. Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. Under domestic law, and international law, the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces,” said Obama. “We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war — a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.”

But can a nation be at war with an organization? Can a nation be at war against a tactic? Should a country as powerful as the United States allow its foreign policy to be dictated by what amounts to a few fringe radicals dispersed around the globe? And does it make a difference if they are loosely organized?

“Let’s think about this for a moment. A small group of ragged America-haters, who had one lucky day of mass murder nearly seven years ago, will continue to define the foreign policy of the lone superpower for years, possibly decades to come,” wrote Michael Hirsh in a 2008 Newsweek article.

“There’s something wrong with this picture. Yes, we can all agree that 9/11 was one of the worst moments in American history. And we can certainly agree that Al Qaeda must be completely eliminated. But the group has never come close to duplicating 9/11; even the train bombings in London and Madrid that were attributed to Al Qaeda-inspired cells were minor by comparison,” said Hirsh.

It’s become a comedic theme to say if we do or don’t respond in a certain way to a certain event, then the “terrorists win.” But America’s response to 9/11 is no joke. And regardless of the comedic use the “terrorist win” exposition, I’m still going to present two scenarios followed by a simple question. (a) We respond to 9/11 with intelligence and policing but NOT with open-ended military force, and our foreign policy is not defined by the tactic of a few. (b) We respond to 9/11 with overwhelming military force, in a never-ending war on terror, with no clear exit strategy and no clear path to victory, with a tunnel-vision focus on the tactics of a few, costing us trillions of dollars and counting. — Which one is a win for America and which one is a win for terrorists? You can call them false choices, but I still know which one I’m choosing.

Hirsh asked, “Are Al Qaeda and its ilk still really our number one challenge? What about global warming? What about the emergence of China, the resurrection of Russia, the decline of the dollar, the slackening of free trade, the spread of debt and disease, and the persistence of ethnic cleansing?”

Should combating a relatively small, on a world scale, loosely organized group of anti-American extremists be our top priority as a nation?

Every Christmas season I think to myself — There are just not enough Christmas decorations. There are not enough Christmas lights. There are not enough Christmas songs. There are not enough Christmas commercials. I feel like Christmas is fading away. It’s almost like it doesn’t exist anymore. The godless secular heathens have destroyed a once great holiday with their “War on Christmas.” I know there is a war against Santa Claus because Fox News tells me so. You don’t believe me? Well, I’m here to tell you Fox News “informs” me about many important things I should “know.” And besides, Bill O’Reilly has that “No Spin Zone,” which is like a written guarantee on an already trustworthy source of facts, knowledge and reason.

It’s like Tommy Boy once said, “I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull’s ass, but I’d rather stick it up my own ass instead,” or, um, uh, some shit like that. “Fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.” Yeah, that’s it!

So thank God the lawmakers in the great and holy state of Texas had the bravery to pass the “Merry Christmas Bill.” This legislation represents the front line defense against the War on Christmas. I’ve got my gun at my side and I will no longer tolerate devil worshiping secular assholes telling me how this great country was formed, with crazy ideas like separation of church and state. We will take back the country from those who dare say it’s not a Christian nation.

- Bizarro Me

P.S.

Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I’d like a godless heathen, any will do, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy secular slumber over there on Devil Lane with all the other godless people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where’s the Tylenol?

P.P.S.

Oh yeah, and a Merry Christmas to all from a compassionate Christian!

 / photo by cuttlefish

The postscript is adapted from Clark’s loving sentiments about his boss in 1989′s “Christmas Vacation.”

In the trial of media false equivalence, I offer you “Exhibit A,” right-wing talk show host Pete Santilli. Two weeks ago Santilli made threatening comments on his internet radio show, saying he wanted to shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina. “Miss Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted, she needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina,” said Santilli. “I wanna pull the trigger.” But he didn’t stop with Hillary Clinton, he also said, “Barack Obama is moving drugs through the CIA out of Afghanistan and Barack Obama needs to be tried, convicted, and shot for crimes against the United States of America.” Now the Secret Service is looking into Santilli’s comments.

Audio (courtesy of Hypervocal):

You do not find left-wing personalities saying anything even closely resembling this. The reason there is no equivalence between both sides is because the fringe on the right is so far gone it’s no longer visible from the center. And so-called “mainstream” Republicans and conservatives are terrified of the rabid, crazy and vocal fringe elements within their political movement, so they allow these lunatics to continue to spew their hate speech unchecked. This is a dynamic that simply does not exist on the left, and I dare you to prove me wrong. Find me something comparable on the left.

Comedian Lewis Black tells us why health care should not be a profit institution. From his 2012 comedy special “Lewis Black: In God We Rust.”

The reason we’re at where we’re at is because — way before I was born, the decision was made, that because we’re a capitalist country, that um, health should be seen as a profit-making institution. That’s the way people saw it.

That’s why it’s so odd that we’re actually having an argument over something that was decided long, long ago, and there’s still people who defend that. Now, I’m not sure that health is uh, uh, a profit institution. I’m not sure.

Because, because, it’s what stands between you AND FUCKING DROPPING DEAD. It’s not soybeans is it? It’s not fuckin’, uh uh uh, fuckin’ bottled water. It’s not god-damn cell phone coverage — Time Warner shit. It’s none of that. It’s your health. And I know it’s not a commodity, because you’ve never stopped at a red light and had a crack addict come up to you and go, “Hey, um, can I sell you some of my health?”

- Lewis Black

/ photo by Eyton Z

That sounds really stupid, right? Well, if you’re a climate change denier, that’s how stupid you sound to the rest of us.

There are experts who study what goes wrong in tragic airplane accidents. They dissect and study the smallest bits of crumpled airplane parts, and then piece it all together to figure out what went wrong. This leads to improved airplane design and piloting protocol.

There are experts who study the climate, gathering evidence including ice core samples, understanding data that you or I would be baffled by. But these people are experts in their field. They have studied the climate and how it’s changing and the evidence they have gathered over many years and decades points overwhelmingly to human activity as the cause. I’m not expert on climate science. We can’t all be experts on everything. I give deference to the experts and trust that most people are honest. There’s no compelling reason to cook the books on climate science.

Therefore, if you trust the forensic experts, you should trust the climate experts. Stop thinking your opinion is more informed than people who actually have experience. Stop thinking your opinion is more important than the hard work these people do each day. Because it’s a slap in the face to climate scientists that there are people who believe opinion trumps the scientific method.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature

We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

The Consensus Project looks to break through the Op-Ed articles climate deniers rely on and instead offer only the facts on climate science from peer-reviewed science papers.

The Consensus Project is a peer-reviewed citizen science driven project conducted by volunteers at the Skeptical Science website. Skepticalscience.com was created and is run by John Cook, climate communication research fellow at the Global Change Institute, University of Queensland.

This consensus is nothing new. Climate scientists have said for years human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is the cause of a warming planet Earth. The science is sound, it’s based on overwhelming evidence, it’s peer-reviewed, and there are no secret agendas by scientists to create a crisis. The crisis is real, and denying it will not make it go away.

And denial is nothing new either. I can think of a few examples, but one that really stands out is our stance on cigarettes. Sure, there are still smokers, and there are still people who deny the health effects of smoking, but denying those effects is no longer a mainstream belief, and it is certainly no longer socially acceptable to deny the health implications of smoking. But contrast our current consensus on smoking with this Winston commercial from the 1960s featuring The Flintstones!

The kowtowing to smokers and an uninformed public in this commercial parallels Fox News’ pandering to global warming deniers. It’s almost a religion. They don’t care about facts, they only believe selective bits of information to support their narrative. This is what we call confirmation bias. Scientists, however, do not operate with rigid belief systems. They want to prove fellow scientists wrong. They want to be proven wrong. It’s the only way we figure out how the world works.

Just last week we found out that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has reached 400ppm (parts per million).

When the history of humanity’s struggle to combat climate change is written, few characters will play as prominent a role as Charles David Keeling. A geochemist, Keeling developed an accurate method of measuring CO2 in the atmosphere, and in 1958 began recording background levels of the gas at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

That was the start of the famous Keeling Curve, which has tracked the steady rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Those levels have soared from 315 parts per million when Keeling began, to a grim milestone reached last week, as atmospheric concentrations exceeded 400 parts per million.

Hard core, deeply entrenched deniers will continue to deny. That’s what they do. Fight them, and they only dig in deeper. So they are a lost cause, but we need to do what we can to diminish their disproportionate influence in the public sphere.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is a fact. Standing in opposition to that fact is an industry that fosters denialism. This industry is extracting petroleum at record levels, and finding new ways to extract reserves previously believed impossible. There is still a massive amount of carbon beneath the Earth’s surface, just waiting to be tapped for oil industry profits. And if that happens, it’s game over for life as we know it. The planet will survive, but will we?

Benghazi, while a horrible tragedy for the U.S. citizens killed, their families, and the country, is not an actual scandal, and never was. For eight months Fox News and conservatives have tried to make Benghazi a scandal, and it looked like they might actually have achieved true scandal status when ABC reported two Friday’s ago on ”smoking gun” White House emails. Unfortunately for conservatives, a week later we know ABC’s source was less than factual, and CBS later reported that Republicans were behind the false emails. So if there is a Benghazi scandal, it’s not in the State Department or the White House, it’s within Republican ranks.

Also last week news broke that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly targeted conservative groups. Somehow this story was attached to President Obama and his administration. Conservatives simultaneous hate government, believe it is corrupt and inept, yet conservatives also hold the conflicting belief (when politically convenient for them) that the President of the United States is all-powerful and omniscient on all issues of government. — So of course President Obama was involved. Well not so fast. So far it looks like there might have been a cover-up going on within the IRS. It appears some in the IRS knew what was going on and knew it was wrong and they were not forthcoming. What is not clear is the intent. The Right believes the IRS targeting of conservative “Tea Party” groups was malicious and driven by ideology, but as of yet there is no proof of that. It could simply be that some IRS employees were using improper methods to categorize and prioritize their workload following the Citizens United ruling.

And finally, on Monday the Associated Press (AP) reported that the Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained phone records of AP reporters and editors without their knowledge. The DOJ insists it was done for national security reasons in the after math of a CIA-foiled terrorist plot in Yemen. Out of the three big “scandal” stories in the past week, this is the one I believe is the most scandalous. It’s another example of post-9/11 overreach by the security apparatus of our government. This is also, unsurprisingly  the scandal that seems to have the least traction so far, particularly among right-wing pundits. Because national security was involved, conservatives are slow to fulfill narratives here. They will sit back and let the facts come out first, maybe offer some prudence and leeway toward good old-fashioned due process.

We have Benghazi which is not a scandal, but possibly Republicans trying to make it a scandal now have their own desperate actions to defend. And we have the IRS which is probably not a scandal, and certainly at this point has no connection to the White House. From my vantage point, there’s a lot of right-wing narrative-fulfilling going on with these two stories, but not much scandal.

However, the DOJ’s breach of the news media shield is heinous. This story wreaks because no matter what your opinion of the news media, we cannot allow government to spy on the press in the name of national security. We allowed government to declare war against a tactic (terrorism), giving it long-lasting and unprecedented power to kill in the name of national security. That was a huge mistake, resulting in diminished and devalued civil liberties. We cannot allow the same thing to happen to the freedom of the press.

President Obama and the umbrella. (Reuters/Jason Reed)

Because this week has been full-time scandal week and because some conservatives are full-time bat shit crazy, what was a kind gesture to a visiting foreign prime minister turned into yet another scandal: Umbrella-gate. Yeah, apparently that’s a thing now.

“Mr. President, when it rains it pours, but most Americans hold their own umbrellas,” tweeted former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Alright, at least she addressed him as “Mr. President.” That was nice. And I’m thinking this tweet doesn’t live up to the usual conservative hyperbole I’m used to. I’m sure there must be more…

The Daily Caller — Obama breaches Marine umbrella protocol

OK, that got my attention. Much better. And it sounds really serious! Go on…

The commander in chief of the American armed forces today forced a violation of Marine Corps regulations, so he wouldn’t get wet.

Actually, I think it had more to do with his guest, but continue…

According to Marine Corps regulation MCO P1020.34F of the Marine Corps Uniform Regulations chapter 3, a male Marine is not allowed to carry an umbrella while in uniform. There is no provision in the Marine Corps uniform regulation guidelines that allows a male Marine to carry an umbrella.

Well shit. It looks like we have a scandal after all. This sounds like a severe breach of the uniform code of conduct. I mean, there aren’t thousands of women in the military facing sexual discrimination and physical violations each year, right? So let’s focus on the umbrella.

Not even the President of the United States can request a Marine to carry an umbrella without the express consent of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, according to the Marine Corps Manual.

You know, I seem to recall Presidents taking us to war without the “express consent” of congress. But go ahead, keep talking about the umbrella. Let’s make this a full-fledged scandal with sideshow congressional hearings and all. It’s still over three years until the next presidential election. That’s a lot of 24-hour news cycles to fill.

So while Japan and much of Europe has faced stagnant economies or worse in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the United States has seen steady economic growth, surpassing pre-recession GDP levels. And what do Republicans want? They want austerity. They want massive government spending cuts. They want the European model. Well, you can see the European model in the graph above. Do you agree with Republicans?

Conservatives, Republicans and other people who display general disdain towards fellow human beings can tell people to “get a job,” or “get a better job” but the reality is simple. There is NOT a good paying job for every American who wants one. When we face that reality, we acknowledge there are adults in America who work laborious full-time jobs and still rely on government assistance just to put food on the table for their family. Just to get by. Just to live.

Daily Kos — When a worker is on food stamps, that’s an employer that is relying on taxpayers to augment wages, to bring workers up to the bare minimum they need to survive. Full-time work at $8.25 an hour—a full dollar above the federal minimum wage—still leaves a family of three below the poverty level.

Think about that the next time you hear about striking fast food workers, or striking Walmart workers, or any workers who work jobs that pay minimum wage. Think about that the next time you hear a Republican politician say raising the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs. — Fewer jobs? Fewer jobs paying minimum wage? Fewer jobs paying less than what’s necessary to support a family? I’m glad we’ve raised the bar so high in America.