Cooking the Books: How the Conservative Best Seller Scam is a Free Market Hypocrisy

by Nomad

When is a bestseller not a bestseller? A lot of bestselling conservative authors have found a way to turn horse manure into gold. It's a testament to their actual commitment to the free market system.  

The Making of a Bestseller

Ever wonder who buys all those books written by people like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin? Somebody has to be purchasing them, right? How else can their books be making it on the best sellers lists so often?

John Iadarola, known for his work on The Young Turks, offers this insight into what can only be called a publishing scam.

It's a credible theory. In 2010, a reporter for Salon suggested the same thing:

The sales of books by awful right-wing authors like Jonah Goldberg are boosted by an entire industry dedicated to … boosting the sales of books by awful right-wing authors. Conservative book clubs purchase tens of thousands of copies and right-wing think tanks order right-wing books in bulk.

Bush's Unending Lies: Why Deceptions about Iraq May Be His Only Legacy

by Nomad

Former president George W. Bush's recent comments about Iraq demonstrated that his skill at deception and self-deception is undiminished by time. 
It will probably be the only thing he will be remembered for.

The other day former president George W. Bush was on NPR plugging his book on his father, 41: A Portrait of My Father. While presumably whitewashing his father's career, Bush took a moment to whitewash his own. 

In that interview Bush was asked whether he thought Iraq was safer now compared with when Saddam Hussein was in power. What would Iraq be like today if we hadn't invaded?  

"One could envision a nuclear arms race between Iran and Iraq. The man, Saddam Hussein, would have a lot of revenue as a result of high prices of oil."

Actually this is an outright lie. 

Since 1991, sanctions on exports and imports administrated by the UN had made all exports of oil tightly controlled. Admittedly it wasn't perfect and Saddam was able to find some loopholes. (This is the Middle-East where no rule is entirely fixed and black markets can be found everywhere.)

However, to claim that Iraq could have found the financing for a atomic weapons program is absolute nonsense. In fact, The government of Iraq declined UN offers to ease sanctions which would have enabled Iraq to sell limited quantities of oil to meet its people's needs. Saddam refused in order to effectively hold his own people hostages and to have all sanctions removed. 

The UN did not let up the pressure on the Iraqi government and set up the much-criticized Oil for Food Program in 1995.  Corruption might have been rife in that program but there was never any evidence that money was diverted for any atomic weapons project. 

In fact, 25% Iraqi oil export proceeds allowed under the sanctions were used to the Compensation Fund for war reparation payments, 2.2% went to United Nations administrative and operational costs and 0.8% for the weapons inspection program. The rest (72%) went to humanitarian purposes.
That doesn't leave very much to spend on a clandestine nuclear weapons research program.

Breaking it Down

Immediately after this statement, to preempt reality from wrecking his myth- he added

"And even though there wasn't, you know, a -- we found a dirty bomb, for example -- he had the capacity to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. And so there's -- you know, it's all very hypothetical."

The statement is typical of his fumbling oratorical style but there's more to it than mere incoherence. Bush tries to cram so much misrepresentation in one remark, it's hard to know how to break it down.
Let's give it a shot.

Dog Owners in Iran To Receive Lashing for Walking their Pets

by Nomad

If Iranian lawmakers have their way, dog owners could face harsh penalties for taking Spot or Fido for a walk to the park. 

The French News Agency, AFP, recently had this odd and rather unhappy news item for all animal lovers. 

If the conservative parliament of the Islamic Republic of Iran has its way, dog owners may have to pay a heavy price for their pets. Hardliners have proposed a draft bill, that would keep at dogs at home and forbid owners from walking dogs in public. 

That proposal has already been signed by 32 members of the parliament. Violations to the law would see dog owners face up to 72 lashes and heavy fines ranging from 10 million rials to 100 million rials ($370 to $3,700 at official rates).
The law states that:

"Anyone who walks or plays with animals such as dogs or monkeys in public places will damage Islamic culture, as well as the hygiene and peace of others, especially women and children."

Dogs (and monkeys) would, the laws states, be confiscated and held in zoos, or left in forests or other wilderness areas. Even before this law, Iran's morality police were stopping dog owners and warning or confiscating the animals.

Criminalizing Charity: The Shame and Hypocrisy of a Christian Nation

by Nomad

Do city ordinances which forbid the feeding of the homeless violate the religious liberty of Christians? Why has there been so much more outcry about gay wedding cakes and yet barely a whisper when it comes to outlawing a core commandment of the Christian faith?

There's no denying that, from the time of the struggling Puritan settlers until this day, Judaic-Christian values have had a profound influence on American culture. Certainly more than any other religious teaching. This is true not merely in the so-called Bible Belt but in other regions and other aspects of American social life.

Of course, no fair minded person would say that America has no room for diversity of religious thought or that Christianity should be forced upon any citizen. Simply because a religion has an influence doesn't mean it has any more right to become the only faith or the national governmentally-endorsed religion. Yet, it is true that much of American morality has roots in this particular faith.

Despite what Justice Scalia has recently said, the government is constitutionally mandated to remain wholly neutral, neither supporting nor rejecting any religion. At the same time, according to past Supreme Court rulings, the government must also steer clear of interference with degrees of religious faith: from the devout to the unbeliever, all must be respected.

Even with the equally-strong belief in secularism (when it comes to religion and government), on a person level, the humanitarian principles found in Judaic-Christian teachings are generally considered the bedrock of American philosophy. 

Among those Christian unchallengables is the call to charity, a command to help those in need, to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked. This idea, of course, is not unique to Christianity but it is generally where Americans draw their inspiration for doing good works.  

After loving the Lord with the second uppermost command is that we "love our neighbors as we love ourselves." And the two points cannot be separate in the Christian theology as the Book of John observes:

If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion--how can God's love be in that person?

The Book of James one can find:

If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?

In the Old Testament too one can find similar thoughts. Proverbs 14:31 for example:

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.

And in the same book:

Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered.

With regular outraged anguish about "religious liberty" the Far Right Christians seem strangely silence and disinterested when it comes to criminalizing one of Christianity's most noble articles of faith.

*   *   *

Only last month we featured a post about laws against feeding the homeless. Here's what it looked like in action when a 90-year-old man was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida last weekend. 

Megalodon Deception: Why Fictionalizing Science is More Deadly that a Monster Shark

by Nomad

A Shark Week hoax about long extinct monsters of the deep says a lot about our diminishing ability to discern fact from opinion and science from fantasy. 

So there I am watching the Discovery Channel, and there's a program about a prehistoric shark, much much larger than even the Great White Shark. We are talking eighteen wheeler size big. 

This species used to roam the seas millions of years ago and then went extinct long before man came along. Thank Goodness for that, because it is quite possible that humanity would never have been able to cross the oceans with a monster like that, ready to gulp us down like a slices of pizza at a frat party.

Shark Week has always been a big draw for the Discovery Channel. The problem is after spending years talking about a particular animal, inevitably there comes a time when you run out of new things to say. It's big. It swims. It's fast. And it will eat you. That's really all you need to know. People can only remained scared for so long before they get bored. Then it's "Shark, shmark." 

But after racking their brains, the executives came up with a new angle.  

Megalodon Fraud 

According to experts on the show (aptly named “Megalodon: The Monster That Lives”), there is strong evidence that Megalodon is not extinct at all. The show spent quite some time reviewing photos, videos and eyewitness accounts showing that this monster was actually still out there. Waiting on me to pluck up the courage to dip my big toe into the high seas. 

Gradually, however, it dawned on me that there was something wrong here. There was something unnatural about the interviews. The lighting too perfect. the words too precisely chosen and descriptive for an average person. The rhythm of the speech was more like the delivery of a stage actor. The shark expert was a little too photogenic and well-spoken. In addition, the camera work for the video evidence was a little too polished.

That's when it hit me.

The whole show and all of the evidence were a well-orchestrated hoax. Ten minutes of being made a fool was my limit before I continued my search for something to watch.