realthog

Make no mistake, I'm a great fan of the rationalist organization the Center for Inquiry (CFI), and I think the work they do pushing back against the forces of ignorance and superstition -- and outing the crooks who take advantage of other people's ignorance and superstition -- is excellent.

But every now and then, almost reassuringly, the CFI does something so blitheringly stupid as to defy credence. A few months ago they issued a -- hastily retracted and revised -- positional statement opposing the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (you know, the one that isn't a mosque and isn't at Ground Zero). And now they've sent out a fundraising appeal that you can tell from its opening few lines just isn't going to raise that many funds from the rank-and-file CFI supporters like me.

A Special Message from Eddie Tabash
CFI Board Member, Speaker, Debater, and Chair of CFI Los Angeles

Like most Americans, I have been experiencing difficult economic times in this most challenging year. Nonetheless, I have personally donated a total of $100,000 to CFI during 2010.

That's where I stopped reading, and I suspect it's where most other recipients will have stopped reading likewise.

Anyone who has $100,000's worth of spare cash lying around that they can give to the CFI -- or any other charity -- is not "experiencing difficult economic times". "Experiencing difficult economic times" is what people whose total annual earnings are less than half that $100,000 -- sometimes 'way less -- are doing.

Current Music: Myslivesek - Symphony #6

Wanna know the breathless latest about Sarah Palin's interview with Glen Beck? Simon Maloy's got the poop, if you can swallow it, on the excellent Media Matters:

I'm watching the Glenn Beck interview of Sarah Palin, and it's really leaving me speechless that two people who are so woefully and determinedly uninformed have such an impact on the national discourse.

Beck just asked Palin if she'd heard about the Federal Reserve's record profits for last year, and then bemoaned that "nobody's having hearings on the Fed, nobody is looking for a windfall profit tax on the Fed, we can't even open the Fed's books." Palin responded by thanking Beck for "bringing this to light," adding: "I don't know anybody else who is."

There's a very simple reason why no one else is talking about taxing the Fed's profits or having hearings or even discussing this -- because people who care to know what they're talking about already know that 100 percent of the Fed's profits go to the Treasury. Every single cent. There is no talk of a windfall profits tax because it's already effectively at 100 percent.

Indeed, so wonderful are our rightwing media and punditocracy that FOX News is largely ignoring the earthquake disaster in Haiti, Pat Robertson is blaming the disaster on the Haitians themselves for incurring the wrath of God (they made a literal pact with the Devil, you see, in order to get rid of their French overlords), and Rush Limbaugh is advocating that none of us send any aid donations because ". . . we've already donated to Haiti. It's called the US income tax" -- part of perhaps the most disgusting piece of propaganda in billionaire Scumbaugh's long career of racist, neo-Nazi hatemongering.

I subscribe, for research reasons, to a bundle of faux-Christian rightwing organizations as well as a few more moderate ones. Today I've been bombarded with exhortations to donate funds by appallingly godless secular organizations (e.g., Alternet, MoveOn, Care2, Color of Change) and by out-and-out accursed rationalist/atheist ones (notably the Center for Inquiry, which has a subdivision, SHARE, precisely to funnel funds to Medecins sans Frontieres in emergencies like this). Moderate sites (e.g., Religion Dispatches) are at least putting links online to the aid charities.

Meanwhile, however, from the Christian rightists (e.g., the AFA, Focus on the Family, OneNewsNow) there's been an absolute bloody deafening silence. I find it impossible to reconcile this with their repeatedly bellowed claims that by definition atheists and agnostics -- indeed, anyone outside their own particular little cult -- lack the very possibility of a moral compass. Are they themselves so entirely devoid of moral values that they cannot recognize a correct course of action when it's standing there right in front of them?

By contrast, those disgusting secular degenerates at The Nation have mounted a useful resource page for those seeking the best way to send funds: it's here.

ETA: I'm not a huge Keith Olbermann fan, but sometimes -- as in this comment on the Robertson/Limbaugh obscenities -- he hits the nail right on the head.

Current Music: Brunetti: Symphony #22

You may recall a few months ago there was a bit of a flap regarding the movie Creation, which concerns itself with Charles Darwin's dilemma over the implications of his discovery of the principle of evolution by natural selection.

Despite respected leads Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, despite picking up accolades at various festivals, and despite the obvious topicality of its subject matter, the movie had significant difficulties finding a US distributor. Could this be because potential distributors were worried (justifiably or not) about the possibility of a major kerfuffle from religious extremists? Or could it be, as the faux-Xtian right maintained, because no one in their right minds in this country would want to go see a boring biopic about a long-dead scientist?

Well, this morning, just after 9.00, I received from the NYC branch of the Center for Inquiry an RSVP e-mail invite to a preview screening of the movie on Monday evening. It took me a few minutes to consult with Pam as to whether we'd both like to go, but I wrote back fairly quickly with my response: yes, we'd like a couple of tickets, oh yes, pretty please, yes we definitely would, you bet.

We were too late: already, after a matter of minutes on a Saturday morning, all the tickets had been snaffled.

Some lack of interest, eh?

Current Music: Gounod - Funeral March of a Marionette

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Entries tagged with center for inquiry

sometimes they just don't get it

dumb and dumber -- no, dumber than that. a lot

the movie in which there is supposedly no US audience interest

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