Shoutingatmytv.com

Mike Huckabee's feeling picked on again...

This demands an answer. Very few people have called for Huckabee to be silenced. They're wrong, though it's a bit rich for a guy watched by millions to complain about how he's being censored. A great many more have called for recognition that what he said was hateful and stupid. In his piece above, he thoroughly conflates those two, as people so often do when they are called out for saying hateful and stupid things.

Huckabee has every right to say what he said, just as I have the same right to point out that it is wrong, and trades on tragedy to make a point unsupported by the facts. If Huckabee and his followers need a belief in God to recognize that slaughtering innocent children isn't OK, he and they are welcome to that belief, but saying that belief is necessary to act morally and sanely is offensive and wrong. I would point out that the Westboro Baptist Church also claims their beliefs to be informed by God's commandments, as do any number of other vicious demagogues, now and throughout history. One of the reasons the Taliban did so well in Afghanistan was that they railed against the "secular corruption" in Afghani society - does he approve of their solution to that corruption? The Inquisition sought to purge society of its sins by demanding adherence to holy scripture. How'd that work out?

Does our society glorify violence too much? You bet, but not doing so doesn't rely on God. Does Huckabee really believe that only liberals are responsible for creating Halo 2, World of Warcraft, or any one of a dozen first-person shooter-video games, endless Chuck Norris movies, or any of the other violent fantasy outlets commercially available on our stores' shelves? Are all of those things which twist our culture done exclusively by people who don't believe in God?

Huckabee knows better, and since he does, using the slaughter of innocents to sell a Christianist agenda is not only wrong, it's dishonest. Behaving sanely doesn't have to do with belief in God, it has to do with being sane. Adherence to a social contract has nothing to do with belief in God, it has to do with belief in the social contract. I would argue that one part of that contract is dealing honestly with one another and not opportunistically demonizing those we disagree with.

Google and Verizon carve up the internet...

Google Turns Its Back on Net Neutrality | Save the Internet.

Please read the whole thing, but here's the nut:

But blaming Google for finding ways to deepen their own pockets is like blaming a tiger for eating a goat. We can hold them to some modicum of social responsibility, but at the end of the day, they're a corporation - it's what they do.

It's ultimately up to the FCC to protect Net Neutrality, and we need to hold them and our lawmakers accountable to us. We need to fight back and speak up to tell the FCC that we want a completely open Internet.

If you value the innovation on the internet, as well as your ability to choose what you read, listen to, and watch, please follow both links and tell both Google and your legislators that you care what they do about this issue. Telecom companies are spending millions in lobbying money to get Congress and the FCC to allow them to control this public resource. Those lawmakers need to know there will be political costs if they get bought by this lobbying money, anmd Google needs to know there will be economic costs that are too high. They've gotten rich on the innovation on the web, and pulling up the ladder behind them to stop other innovators is not acceptable.

"Journalism isn't dead; it's online."

A week ago, the Webby awards were held, and unsurprisingly, the Huffington Post got one. One characteristic of the Webbys is that one's acceptance speech must be a maximum of five words long. HuffPo solicited readers' suggestions for acceptance speeches, and I'm proud to say that my suggestion, which appears above, was among the finalists (the speech Arianna actually gave said "I didn't kill newspapers, okay?").

Having looked at the speeches that were most seriously considered, I can see that my very earnest offering missed a critical component to any speech - it wasn't funny (see the other contenders here).

Tour de Force

While checking some facts about Islam for a discussion with a friend today, I re-encountered this exchange between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan on Beliefnet. It's several months old, and I'd seen it before, but I had to preserve a link.

It's long, and involved, but I think the arguments on both sides are just dazzlingly eloquent. It is among the most interesting exchanges on any topic that I've ever read in the blogosphere, and among the best about religion that I've seen anywhere. I am not much surprised (both of these guys are very sharp) but I'm still in awe.

OK, coffee break's over...

...everyone back on your head!

Maine was sparkling, crash dieting is a nightmare (so far), and all have prevented me from posting for too long, but...

Yearly Kos

You should read this from Kevin Drum, but I liked it so much that I have to steal a chunk of it too...

"...something else that gets talked about a lot in the blogosphere but still doesn't seem to have fully made it out to the rest of the world: the netroots isn't a bunch of kids. In fact, the age distribution is pretty normal. So is nearly every other distribution.

What's happening now isn't a youth revolt, and it's not powered by free love, free acid, or fear of being drafted. It's powered by a lot of bog ordinary moderate liberals who have been radicalized by George Bush and the Newt Gingrichized Republican Party. I think a lot of journalists (though I don't mean to include Hertzberg here) don't quite get this because they haven't internalized just how far off the rails the modern Republican Party has gone. Until they do, they're going to continue to misunderstand what's happening."

Bingo!