Beware the eternal regress

The eternal regress is the greatest enemy of those who proffer simplistic explanations. The eternal regress is the reason why it doesn't work to say that there is a little person in the brain (without accounting for that little person). It is the reason why it doesn't work to announce that everything has to have a cause and then to explain the existence of the universe by reference to "God" without explaining how God came to exist. The lurking eternal regress is also why no simple explanation is complete. As Carl Sagan once said: "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

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Women should shut up.

According to 1 Timothy 11-12, woman should be silent. They should not teach or lecture to men:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.
I personally think that this is absurd advice, but when I hear female neocons and fundamentalists (e.g., Sarah Palin) lecturing to the country on "family values," morals or anything political, I'm going to be pulling out the above quote from the New Testament. It's a simple two-step to deal with woman who get on the national stage to tell the rest of us that we must continue being an aggressive, war-mongering nation, or that we shouldn't teach real science in biology classes, or that we can't provide instruction and medicine and devices to prevent pregnancies:
A) Do you believe the Bible to be inerrant? B) If so, then you most be silent. It is the Word of your God.
Note further, that braided hair, gold, pearls and expensive clothing are absolutely banned.

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GOP Budget/Strategy Goes From Nothing to Worse

The Republican Party has decided upon a strategy of complete denunciation, obfuscation and obstruction as its best tack to regaining political hegemony in American politics. The Obama administration’s stimulus bill was passed to seek to control the fallout of the impact of the financial crisis upon America. The president sought bi-partisan support for the bill that included (in my opinion) too many GOP style tax breaks. The president’s bill received three Republican votes. But, the fact that only three GOP votes were cast in favor of the stimulus bill in both chambers of Congress has not kept Republicans from touting the benefits of the Obama stimulus plan to their districts and states. The Republicans then voted against the president’s budget without posing any alternative, while claiming they had an alternative with no numbers! And, the Republican no-numbers budget had even larger deficits than the budget proposed by President Obama. The Republican alternative to Democratic healthcare proposals was nothing; which was endorsed by the minority whip Rep. Roy Bunt (R-MO). The Republicans voted against an equal pay bill that was needed after the conservative US Supreme Court threw out a claim of a woman for equal pay because she did not file suit when she was hired some 30 years ago, but after she left the company where she had worked, only then findng out she hadn’t been paid as much as men who had worked for her. The Republicans voted against a bill to allow the government to withhold funds from companies that refused to allow female civilian contractors of American companies in war zones to file suit against their co-workers and employers for multiple forcible rapes by male co-workers while on the job overseas. The Republicans voted against “pay as you go” which required that as you increased spending for any item in the budget you had to make a specific tax increase or budget cut to fund any increase. This legislation was in place when President Clinton balanced the budget and there were “surpluses as far as you cans see.” The Republicans filibustered the Democratic defense spending bill. The Republicans voted against troops and Veterans Affairs bills supported by Democrats. The Republicans even voted against a bill co-sponsored by Republicans to set up a bi-partisan commission of the deficit so as to reign in government spending (they did this because President Obama supported the legislation). After taking months to “negotiate” a Senate healthcare reform bill, Republicans then said they weren’t going to vote for their own bill. Republicans have criticized President Obama for the failed Christmas bombing but, many voted against the bill to install the costly full body scan equipment for US airports which would likely detect such bombers. Perhaps the Republicans will oppose President Obama’s proposed bank tax to fund the bailout of the banks. I wonder?

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Payday loan opponents struggle to get a fair hearing

Payday loans are high-interest short-term unsecured small loans that borrowers promise to repay out of their next paycheck, typically two weeks later. Interest rates are typically 300% to 500% per annum, many multiples higher than the exorbitant rates charged by banks on their credit cards. A typical payday borrower takes out payday loans to pay utility bills, to buy a child’s birthday present or to pay for a car repair. Even though payday loans are dangerous financial products, they are nonetheless tempting to people who are financially stressed. The growth of payday lenders in the last decade has been mind-boggling. In many states there are more payday lenders than there are McDonald’s restaurants. In Missouri Payday lenders are even allowed to set up shops in nursing homes. Missouri’s payday lenders are ferociously fighting a proposed new law that would put some sanity into a system that is often financially ruinous for the poor and working poor. Payday lenders claim that the caps of the proposed new law would put them out of business. Their argument is laughable and their legislative strategy is reprehensible. Exhibit A is the strategy I witnessed Thursday night, February 18, 2010. On that night, Missouri State Senator Joe Keaveny and State Representative Mary Still jointly held a public hearing at the Carpenter Branch Library in the City of St. Louis City to discuss two identical bills (SB 811 and HB 1508) that would temper the excesses of the payday loan industry in Missouri. Instead of respecting free and open debate and discussion regarding these bills, payday lenders worked hard to shut down meaningful debate by intentionally packing the legislative hearing room with their employees, thereby guaranteeing that A) the presenters and media saw an audience that seemed to favor payday lenders and B) many concerned citizens were excluded from the meeting. As discussed further down in this post, payday lenders are also responsible for flooding the State Capitol with lobbyists and corrupting amounts of money.carpenter-branch-library When I arrived at 7:00 pm, the scheduled starting time, I was refused entry to the meeting room. Instead, I was directed to join about 15 other concerned citizens who had been barred from the meeting room. There simply wasn’t room for us. But then who were those 100 people who had been allowed to attend the meeting? I eventually learned that almost all of them were employees of payday lenders; their employers had arranged for them to pack the room by arriving en masse at 6 pm. Many of the people excluded from the meeting were eventually allowed to trickle into the meeting, but only aspayday-employees other people trickled out. I was finally allowed into the meeting at 8 pm, which allowed me to catch the final 30 minutes. In the photo below, almost all of the people plopped into the chairs were payday lender employees (the people standing in the back were concerned citizens). This shameful tactic of filling up the meeting room with biased employees has certainly been used before.

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The problem with politicians

Colin Beavan (No Impact Man) sums it up like this at his blog:

[T]he politics of Washington are defunct. The Democratic politicians want to beat the Republicans. The Republican ones want to beat the Democratic ones. They are, like the rest of us, scared for their jobs! But the American people? We just want to get along with each other and solve problems. We want happy lives and to be kind to our neighbors. We want leaders who care about us more than their own careers.
Americans are often under the illusion that we have meaningful choices when we vote in national elections, but that is dangerously simplistic. Big money and commercial media pre-designate the candidates who qualify as "serious candidates" long before the citizens vote. Those candidates who prevail are those that have given sufficient winks and nods to big money such that they continue to get well-funded. To compound things, big money likes the status quo. Hence, Barack Obama's continuing lovefest with Wall Street (Disclosure: I voted for Obama but I'm sorely disappointed--yet I still think he is far preferable to McCain-Palin). There are no easy solutions to this problem. The start of a solution, in my opinion, is to give smart, "non-connected" and non-monied people a real chance to get elected. There are several "clean money" campaign reform proposals floating about (for details on one of these, see this post by Lawrence Lessig). The purpose of clean-money elections is the radical idea promoted by the Founding Fathers: that We the People would self-govern. The topic Colin Beavan raises today is the most important political topic out there, in my opinion. Without an honest, open and self-critical deliberative process, we don't actually have a democracy. With the current system of private-money elections (especially in the wake of Citizens United), we don't have an honest, open and self-critical deliberate process. What we have instead, is what Beavan has described: a big expensive game where politicians do anything and say anything to maintain their power and perks.

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