Month: June 2006

Poll: We’re Slouching Toward Theocracy

Buck Banks

Bible babble: George Barna, the Pollster of the Lord, has just come out with another survey purporting to assess the spiritual state of the nation. Somehow, Barna always seems to find what he’s looking for in his nationwide telephone surveys.

His latest poll supposedly confirms Americans’ “reputation as a highly religious people” because “half of all American adults said that their life has been ‘greatly transformed’ by their religious faith.”

People who are usually conservative on political matters were almost twice as likely as those who are generally liberal to cite great personal transformation as a result of their faith.

Overall, 51 percent of the survey respondents said they have been greatly transformed by their faith, about one-fourth (28 percent) said their faith has been helpful but has not produced significant transformation, and nearly one out of five (17 percent) claimed their faith has not made much of a difference in their life.

Women were more likely than men to claim their faith has had a great impact (56 percent vs. 45 percent). Residents of the South were the most likely to cite such an effect (63 percent), while folks in the Midwest were about average (50 percent), and adults in the West (44 percent) and Northeast (39 percent) were much less inclined to attribute such influence to faith. Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans (62 percent) assigned great impact to their faith, compared to half of whites (50 percent) and Hispanics (49 percent), and barely one-quarter of Asians (27 percent). People who are usually conservative on political matters were almost twice as likely as those who are generally liberal to cite great personal transformation as a result of their faith (64 percent versus 35 percent).

Now there’s the chicken-and-egg question: Are we liberals godless because we’re liberal or liberal because we’re godless?

Barna honed in on the pesky 17 percent who said their faith has made no difference in their life. Want to know who they are?

  • Men (21 percent of the 17 percent) were 62 percent more likely than women to say faith meant little in their lives
  • People under 25 (35 percent) — more than twice the proportion among older adults
  • Asians (48 percent) were three times as likely as all other ethnic groups to be faith-free
  • Liberals (28 percent) were three times more likely than conservatives to say faith has made no difference for them
  • Lutherans (16 percent) and Methodists (14 percent) — twice the proportion among other Protestants
  • Atheists and agnostics (64 percent)

Whoa, athiests and agnostics I expected to shun the Lord, but Lutherans and Methodists? What is this world coming to? Barna knows:

“The current political clash between conservatives and liberals over the role of religion and faith in the public square is partially attributable to the fact that so few liberals have had a life-changing experience driven by their faith,” Barna commented. “Conservatives are nearly twice as likely to say that their faith has transformed who they are and how they live. It is only natural that they would therefore want others to have similar breakthroughs, while those who have never had such experiences are more likely to feel threatened by policies designed to foster a faith-oriented renaissance. The absence of a life-changing spiritually-driven experience may also explain why liberals are less likely to believe in God, to attend church, to read the Bible, to donate to religious institutions, and to portray themselves as being spiritually inclined.”

[…]

CA Gov: One Day before Primary Voting, Dem Voters Still Undecided on Angelides and Westly

Jon Ponder

With primary voting tomorrow, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez aptly summed up the current state of the Democratic race between Phil Angelides and Steve Westly for California governor:

State Controller Westly has 35 percent to state Treasurer Angelides’ 34 percent, with 26 percent undecided.

California’s Democratic primary for governor, in particular, is an affair so sleazy and vicious it would inspire revolt, except that no one is paying attention.

The latest Field Poll underscores this:

“During the 60-year history of the Field Poll, there never has been as large a proportion of voters undecided so close to the election in a top-of-the-ticket major party primary,” according to DiCamillo and Mervin Field of the Field Poll…

The Field survey found that Angelides and Westly remain tied, each with about one-third of the Democratic vote, but with more than one-quarter undecided…

State Controller Westly has 35 percent to state Treasurer Angelides’ 34 percent, with 26 percent undecided.

Advantage: Schwarzenegger.

Reid Email Calls Out Republican Pandering

Trish

Did you get the email from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, signed by Harry Reid, with a link to sign a petition asking the Senate to get real? If not, here’s the gist:

…it’s election season and down-in-the-polls Republicans are turning to their same old playbook – fear and division. Later this week, Bill Frist, in an attempt to appease extreme right wing elements of the Republican Party, has promised that the Senate will vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment and attempt to write discrimination into the Constitution for the first time in 230 years.

…We don’t need another Terri Schiavo moment where we spend valuable time away from the important work…

…Senate Republicans and their big oil friends have forced more than ten votes to drill for oil in ANWR, but not a single vote to lower gas prices…

We need a President and a Congress that doesn’t play divisive politics. At a time of war, Republicans should unite the country and focus on the real issues, not divide and undermine its founding principles.

Go here to sign the petition.

The Fundamental Flaw in the Bush Policy

Trish

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman had an Iraq epiphany after reading a blog by former Air Force intelligence officer John Robb, who is now a security and anti-terror consultant. “The problem,” Robb wrote at Global Guerillas, “has become bigger than our will to fix it.”

Bookman says that, in fact, was always the case.

Since the American people wouldn’t buy a big war, we got sold a tidy war, a war in which “mission accomplished” could be declared quickly and Iraq could fund its own reconstruction.

The truth is, the gap between the problem and our will to fix it has existed from the moment this invasion was conceived. It was the fundamental flaw in the Bush policy, the single thing that doomed it to failure.

If we were going to invade and occupy Iraq, we should have done so with hundreds of thousands of troops, after months of intensive planning. We should have committed ourselves to spending as much money as it took, as much time as it took, as many lives as it took to ensure Iraq’s security.

But that level of national will did not exist, and the Bush administration knew it. Even in the wake of Sept. 11, they knew that the American people would never buy an optional war that large and expensive. They also knew that without a draft, they lacked the manpower that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki and others told them they needed.

Yet they wanted this war so badly — they yearned in their bones to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein and establish American military power in the heart of the Middle East — that they went ahead and did it anyway.

Since the American people wouldn’t buy a big war, we got sold a tidy war, a war in which “mission accomplished” could be declared quickly and Iraq could fund its own reconstruction. It was a fake war, an illusion of war, a war deceptively downsized to fit political will and not reality.

No wise leader does that. No wise leader commits his nation to a war he suspects it is not prepared to win, and we will pay a heavy price for that miscalculation.

Bookman predicts we will be in Iraq for years, defending our military outposts while the rest of the country grinds into increasingly violent decline. It’s not a very optimistic picture but is there anyone who thinks it’s not a possibility?

DOMA Rewind: Successful 1996 Anti-Gay Marriage Fight Was Led by GOP Adulterers

Jon Ponder

This week the Republicans who run the nation are undertaking another cynical attack on the issue of gay marriage. As a wedge issue that enflames the GOP’s homobigot base, same sex marriage has occasionally returned dividends. In fact, conventional wisdom has it that an anti-gay initiative on the Ohio ballot in 2004 tipped the state into the Bush-Cheney column, giving them another term in office they would have otherwise lost. (Others believe the votes in Ohio were stolen.)

The real threat to the institution of marriage does not come from gay people but rather from heterosexual adultery, which is the cause of most divorces.

Ten years ago, the leaders of the GOP in Congress — including Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich — were successful in passing the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA), a law that banned states from recognizing same-gender marriages sanctioned in other states. Timed to arrive on President Clinton’s desk just before the 1996 presidential elections, DoMA was intended to insert a wedge between the President and gay Democrats and supporters of civil rights.

The real threat to the institution of marriage does not come from gay people but rather from heterosexual adultery, which is the cause of most divorces. Now, as Republicans return once again to the well of homophobia, it is important to remember that in 1996 the men who led the fight to pass DoMA were all adulterers themselves.

The GOP adulterers of DoMA included:

  • Rep. Bob Barr (R-Georgia), the author of the bill:
    According to an affidavit filed by Barr’s second wife Gail Barr, Bob Barr paid for and did not object to her having an abortion in 1983. This is rather amusing for two reasons: first of all, Barr is a member of the pro-life caucus. The fact that Barr did not discourage her from having an abortion is rather interesting in light of his strong pro-life stance. Second of all, Barr, in divorce court in 1986, stated that the did object to the abortion. Gail Barr’s affidavit, if true, proves that he committed perjury in divorce court…Bob has been divorced twice, failed to pay child support to the children of his first two wives and while married to his third and present wife was photographed licking whipped cream off of a few chesty strippers at his inaugural party.. this guy is deciding that a whole segment of the population is less moral than him and is unfit to claim marriage benefits?
  • Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kansas), Majority Leader of the Senate:
    Sen. Dole dumped his first wife and child. Dole on his child: �Sooner or later, you have to make a decision � is the child going to become fatherless? � If you become married to politics, something else is going to suffer.�
  • Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), Speaker of the House:
    In 1981, Newt dumped his first wife, Jackie Battley, for Marianne, wife number 2, while Jackie was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment. Marianne and Newt divorced in December, 1999 after Marianne found out about Newt’s long-running affair with Callista Bisek, his one-time congressional aide. Gingrich asked Marianne for the divorce by phoning her on Mother’s Day, 1999. [Source: New York Post, July 18, 2000, Newt’s Ex Wife Aiming to Pen Book by Bill Sanderson, available on lexis].

Of course, DoMA was signed into law by President Clinton, who — if my calculations are correct — was in the midst of his affair with Monica Lewinsky at the time.

There is a move afoot in the Capitol to examine the married lives of all the leaders in the House and Senate who are pushing the Federal Marriage Amendment.

There’s no telling what they might find under those rocks.

It Is Okay with Rightwingers If O’Reilly Maligns U.S. Troops

Jon Ponder

On his show last week, Bill O’Reilly emitted a heinous smear against U.S. forces who served and died in World War II:

Imagine the reaction if a Democrat had made these false statements. We’d be hearing about liberals who hate America and hate our troops and all the rest of it.

On “The O’Reilly Factor” on May 30, O’Reilly floated the argument that the alleged murder by U.S. Marines of 24 unarmed men, women and children in the Iraqi town of Haditha in November 2005 was just par for the course in wartime.

“In Iwo Jima, in the Battle of the Bulge, Malmedy, all these things,” O’Reilly lectured his guest, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark. “You’re a military historian. You know these happened. It happened in every war. It’s happened in every army. …”

When Clark protested – “you’ll have to show me and prove to me that there were ever any American soldiers in Belgium and Normandy or in Iwo Jima who murdered civilians” – O’Reilly countered with a smirk and a shake of the head.

“In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air, and they were unarmed, and they shot them down,” O’Reilly said referring to the Belgian town of Malmedy, which was fought over during the Battle of the Bulge. “You know that. That’s on the record, been documented. In Iwo Jima, the same thing occurred. Japanese attempted to surrender, and they were burned in their caves.”

But O’Reilly’s historical certainty was astonishingly misplaced. First, at Malmedy, the atrocity on Dec. 17, 1944, was the other way around: about 86 surrendering U.S. soldiers were massacred by German SS panzer forces in one of the most notorious war crimes on the Western Front.

Imagine the reaction if a Democrat had made these false statements. We’d be hearing about liberals who hate America and hate our troops and all the rest of it.

I am overwhelmed by outrage fatigue.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

At times, the comradeship that was the [Vietnam] war’s only redeeming quality caused some of its worst crimes — acts of retribution for friends who had been killed. Some men could not withstand the stress of guerilla fighting: the hair-trigger alertness constantly demanded of them, the feeling that the enemy was everywhere, the inability to distiguish civilians from combatants created emotional pressure which built to such a point that a trivial provocation could make these men explode with the blind destructiveness of a mortar shell.

— Philip Caputo, “Rumor of War”

Reporter Worried Marines Might ‘Crack’ Three Months Before Haditha

Buck Banks

Bad moon rising: Three months before Marines in Haditha allegedly murdered two dozen Iraqi civilians, Tom Lasseter, longtime Baghdad correspondent for Knight Ridder, filed a report that noted concerns that the marines there might “crack under the pressure.”

Here is Lasseter’s Aug. 28, 2005, story, as it appeared then. According to Editor & Publisher, Lasseter recently won an Overseas Press Club award for his reporting from Iraq.

HIT, Iraq — The inability of U.S. forces to hold ground in Anbar province in western Iraq, and the cat and mouse chase that ensues, has put the Marines and soldiers there under intense physical and psychological pressure.

The sun raises temperatures to 115 degrees most days, insurgents stage ambushes daily then melt into the civilian population and American troops in Anbar find themselves in a house of mirrors in which they don’t speak the language and can’t tell friend from foe.

Most Marines and soldiers in Anbar live behind massive concrete barriers, bales of concertina wire and perimeters guarded by sniper towers and tanks.

‘There’s killing bad guys and there’s murdering civilians. Let’s do the first and not the second. Murderers we’re not, OK?’
— Maj. Nicholas Visconti

Despite their overwhelming military might, they must watch every alleyway for snipers and each patch of road for mines or bombs, which can send balls of flame through their vehicles. That happened earlier this month south of Haditha, when an explosion killed 14 Marines in an amphibious assault vehicle.

Officers worry about the enemy while trying to make sure their men don’t crack under the pressure.

“I tell the guys not to lose their humanity over here, because it’s easy to do,” said Marine Capt. James Haunty, 27, of Columbus, Ohio. “I tell them not to turn into Col. Kurtz.”

Haunty was referring to a character in Joseph Conrad’s novella, “Heart of Darkness.” It became the basis for the Vietnam War movie “Apocalypse Now,” in which Kurtz has a mental breakdown and murders suspected Vietnamese double agents.

Asked for an example of the kind of pressure that could cause Marines to crack, Haunty talked about the results of a car bomb: “I’ve picked up pieces of a friend, a Marine. I don’t ever want to see that s— again.”

[…]

Poll: Public Doesn’t Share Congress’ Outrage Over FBI Raid

Buck Banks

Outrage outage: In a rare show of bipartisanism, both Republican and Democrat lawmakers denounced the FBI’s raid last week on Democrat Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson’s office. But according to National Journal’s PollTrack, most regular folks don’t have a problem with the first such raid on a member of Congress’ office in 214 years.

A new poll from ABC News found that an overwhelming majority — 86 percent — of respondents backed the FBI’s actions. Just 10 percent said law enforcement officers should not be allowed to search congressional offices, even with a warrant. That view was dominant among both Democrats (78 percent) and Republicans (94 percent).

Seems like high-profile scandals like the Jack Abramoff lobbying case are depressing the public’s opinions of lawmakers’ integrity.

Only 27 percent of ABC respondents gave Congress’ ethics record a positive rating. In a poll conducted by FOX News/Opinion Dynamics before the raid on Jefferson’s office, just over a quarter said they approve of how Congress is doing its job; a Diageo/Hotline survey from mid-May put approval at 29 percent.

While the ABC poll shows Democrats faring somewhat better on the ethics issue with a 7-point lead over Republicans, 72 percent of respondents see no difference in the ethics and honesty of politicians in either party.