Obama May Prove to be the Greatest President Ever

Obama has accomplished more without war than perhaps any president in history: Inherited an economy on the verge of total collapse and prevented a second Great Depression, the American economy has just marked the longest period (52 months) of sustained private sector job creation ever in history eclipsing Bill Clinton's previous record of 51 months,  the deficit is declining at the fastest rate in 60 years, the economy is adding jobs faster than anytime since the 1990s tech boom, more than half of all stock market wealth in America has been created in the last 5 years, Obama has made great strides in securing the world's loose nukes, passed and implemented universal healthcare, made the gutsy call to kill Osama bin Laden, ended two wars he inherited, brought home the last POW, killed more terrorists in 5 years than the previous president did in 8 years, showed how to disarm a country of its WMD by disarming Syria of all its WMD without firing a shot, deposed the tyrant Qaddafi in Libya without using American troops, captured the mastermind of the Benghazi attack and forced Putin to blink and back down from reconstituting a new Soviet empire without using military threats and risking WW3. Whew, that's not even a complete list!
He did all this with complete Republican obstructionism; an opposition party actually trying to harm the economy as a means of hurting the president. Think how much better things could be if we had an opposition party that put the interests of the country ahead of hateful partisan politics.
If a Republican president achieved any one of the above accomplishments, they would be carving his face on Mt Rushmore. Yet all Obama receives is scorn and hate from an opposition party that refuses to celebrate American victories if it means giving the black guy a shred of credit.
The Republican opposition to Obama has not been anything like normal and appropriate opposition on policies, it has been unprecedented in its extreme, over-the-top hatred, unlike anything ever seen before. Republicans take offense when this opposition is called racist but are we to believe that the first black president and the most extreme opposition to a president ever in history, just happen to coincide and have nothing in common? This hatred of the president can't be because he is extreme in his policies because he is not, he is a moderate with which many on the left have been disappointed. As an aside, this is why Obama's poll numbers come out low; he gets down voted by a lot of people on the left in addition to the conservatives. So again, is the first black president accompanied by the most extreme hatred of a president in history just a coincidence? Obviously not. Like it or not, Obama may prove to be the greatest president ever. Maybe we should start looking at plans for Obama's face on Mt Rushmore.

True Faith Does Not Deny Science and Reality

While not intending to demean anyone because of their religious beliefs since one of the great things about this country is that you can believe pretty much anything, but have you ever considered why you believe so strongly in your religion? Was it because, as a young child, you did exhaustive research into all the religions of the world and found the evidence for one particular religion to be convincing? Or, was it because as a young child who trusted your parents and saw them as incredibly smart; you were indoctrinated into your parents religion before you were capable of mature critical thought? Isn't that the reason that your religious assumptions are so deeply ingrained and feel so right? And isn't that the reason that everywhere you look on Earth, children, with very rare exceptions, believe in the religion of their parents and believe that that particular religion is THE TRUTH whether it is Protestant, Catholic, Muslim or whatever?

To a five-year-old, parents are incredibly knowledgeable and trustworthy, by the age of 15, not so much. Looking back, do you think your parents, unique among all the people of the world, were actually right about everything? Do you think your parents had special insight into the nature of existence or were they just doing to you what had been done to them? Didn't you just blindly adopt most of the views of your parents who blindly adopted views from their parents and so on down the line? If you are nothing more than just a conduit for taking the views of our ignorant ancestors and pounding them into the minds of our children so that they can grow up and do the same, then what was the point of your life? How can you make a difference?

What I am suggesting is incredibly difficult. To hold up long held core assumptions to the light of scrutiny is the most difficult task most of us can ever undertake. True faith does not deny reality, it embraces it.

Intelligent Design Can't Just Be the Nice Parts

A very nicely done video on Intelligent Design.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v83X9-oJ-w

The Slippery Slope Argument is Based on Fallacious Reasoning

The slippery slope argument is a form of fallacious reasoning. The argument goes something like this: If the government is allowed to look at phone calls from known terrorists then what is to stop them from listening to everyone's phone calls. This is a false way to look at the issue since the reasoning validating the first part of the statement does not apply to the second part. The second part of the slippery slope argument will either stand or fall on its own merits; the first part has nothing to do with it.

Here is a common slippery slope argument that has stopped the advancement of rights in the area of death. Anytime someone brings up the idea of physician assisted suicide the slippery slope argument springs up that next is Nazi style gas chambers. One has nothing to do with the other but it is always used and has always worked. We are not able to have a rational discussion of common sense end of life treatment because the next thing you know we are warned, we will be rounding up all the old people and putting them in extermination camps. The idea that someone with a fatal and painful disease could seek help from a doctor to end their life has nothing to do with rounding up old people for extermination.

Is the FISA Court a Rubber Stamp

“The FISA court is just a rubber stamp”, I keep hearing this from those that think the government is seeking to spy on and control the American people. Critics point to the extremely high approval rate for government requests for warrants which they say indicates that the court is just a rubber stamp. But there are two possibilities for the high approval rate, either the court is a rubber stamp and approves all requests just because the government is asking OR the requests the court receives are in fact valid with due cause so the court has no reason to turn them down.

There is another piece of data that can help us determine which of the two above possibilities is more likely and that is the number of requests for warrants. If the court was just a rubber stamp, you would expect to see a large number of requests; if warrants were automatic, the government would abuse the process and would be requesting warrants to look into dealings of all kinds, legitimate and illegitimate resulting in a large number of warrant requests. If, on the other hand, the court was actually judging warrant requests professionally in a case by case manner, you would expect to see a relatively small number of warrants requested. In that case the government would only request warrants in a few instances where they are justified and would not abuse the system knowing that to do so would result in a high turn down rate. The fact that there are only a small number of warrant requests and a very high approval rate would tend to support the likelihood that the court is not simply a rubber stamp and that the government is not requesting warrants except where they are justified. 

Conservatives Are On the Wrong Side of History

A conservative is, by definition one who wants to stick to the old ways of doing things and opposes change. The long arc of history is toward more freedom, more liberty and more equality. The conservatives have always been on the wrong side of history in the fight for change and greater human rights and equality.

In the 1860's, the conservatives opposed freeing the slaves. The Republican Party of the 1860’s was a liberal party, calling for protective tariffs, freeing the slaves and a progressive income tax where the rich paid more. The Democratic Party was the party of “NO” back then. History has proven that the conservatives were wrong.

The right of women to vote didn't happen until 1920 and was bitterly opposed by conservatives. Some conservatives are still fighting against basic voting rights for women; for instance, Sean Hannity sits on the advisory board of the male supremacist Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), founded by Fox News contributor Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson who famously said, “allowing women to vote was one of the greatest mistakes America ever made”. The struggle for full equal rights for women in the employment and reproductive areas still goes on and is opposed by most of today's conservatives.

Conservatives opposed the minimum wage, child labor laws, the 8 hour work day and sick leave that was established by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Conservative warned that the minimum wage and labor standards would collapse the economy; sound familiar?  Conservatives are still trying to undo the minimum wage and oppose increases to keep up with inflation. Conservatives were wrong then and they are wrong now.

Conservatives by definition tend to oppose change and while every change is not necessarily for the better, consider the overall progress of civilization over the thousands of years and consider where we would be if the conservatives had succeeded in keeping us stuck in a brutal past. History has proven that the conservatives were wrong.

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Facts Don't Count When it Comes to Religion

These two pictures say a lot about how intractable religious beliefs can be.