Cognitive dissonance can be a powerful thing. Many people, when faced with information or evidence that contradicts something that they’ve believed or worked on for a long time will react in some very odd, and often counter-productive ways. There are many examples on the net of people pretending that contradictory evidence simply doesn’t exist. Watch Corny’s site (again, my fave ’cause he’s just plain hilarious) for awhile, and especially read the comments to see many times many examples of this. Others will react with anger and outrage at any hint that such and such is true when it’s been so obvious for so long to them that it’s not. I suspect that many homophobes (read: closet cases) like Rekers fall into this category.

Having said that, it’s rare to see such a thing laid bare. Often you can determine when cognitive dissonance is a factor only after spending a bit of time with the person and seeing how they react to what is said. But there are times, and they don’t happen often, when a statement is made which clearly and concisely lays out exactly where the dissonance is at.

Such a statement appeared in a recent LA Times story entitled “AP IMPACT: After 40 years, $1 trillion, US War on Drugs has failed to meet any of its goals“. Needless to say it doesn’t have many kind things to say about US drug policy. But the quote that really got to me, the one that so clearly exposes a mans cognitive dissonance was a statement made by John P. Walters, the former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a.k.a. the Drug Czar. In the story he’s quoted as saying the following:

“To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven’t made any difference is ridiculous,” Walters said. “It destroys everything we’ve done. It’s saying all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It’s saying all these people’s work is misguided.”

My response is “Exactly!”

But of course he is unable to face the fact that any of those “ridiculous” ideas could possibly by true. So he does what he must to prove it, at least to himself.

Here’s how his logic works: If US drug policy has not been working then all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. Since they obviously have not been wasting their time, US drug policy must be working. If US drug policy has not been working then all these people’s work has been misguided. Since it has obviously not been misguided, US drug policy must be working.

And of course if you turn it around the same logic applies. If these people have been wasting their time, then it must be because US drug policy is not working. Since US drug policy is working, they must not be wasting their time. It’s a nice little loop tied around his brain so that each one proves the other and he can always be right.

A lot of people are dissing the teabaggers for their awful spelling, and to be fair it can be pretty damned amusing. Like this one (click to see the Flickr page from whence this cometh):

Here’s the problem. My spelling sucks, too. I misspell shit all the time, but nowadays the computer fixes the vast majority of those mistakes for me. Unfortunately most poster boards don’t have built in auto-correct. I think these people have just become so used to auto-correction that they forget to spell check their own work anymore. I’m not sure that my signs would be much better if I had to actually make them by hand.

(thanks Boing Boing)

Our trust of the government has been renewed! Whether we like it or not.

The US PATRIOT act has been renewed with none of the reforms that had originally been pushed by the Dems. From the article over at the EFF:

Disappointingly, the government’s dangerously broad authority to conduct roving wiretaps of unspecified or “John Doe” targets, to secretly wiretap of persons without any connection to terrorists or spies under the so-called “lone wolf” provision, and to secretly access a wide range of private business records without warrants under PATRIOT Section 215 were all renewed without any new checks and balances to prevent abuse.

But of course this is only a problem if you don’t trust the government to wiretap ONLY people that deserve it, right? Fortunately our government trusts the government enough for all of us, so we needn’t worry.

(via Boing Boing)

Obama is once again inviting people on the internet to send in questions, this time via YouTube, which he will then select from and answer. The first time he said that the most popular questions would be the ones answered. Needless to say he learned his lesson and made no such promise this time. Why? Because last time one of the most popular questions was about marijuana legalization, and that is just not one that he wants to have to answer. As a dodge he pretended that the question was focused on using legalization as a way of stabilizing the economy, thereby making it seem ridiculous and deserving of no more than a cursory “silly stoners” type response.

Well, guess what. The most popular question by far this time is also about legalization. I’m guessing that he will simply refuse to answer this time since he can now choose which questions to address and which to ignore. What really got me, though, was that NPR has decided to follow Obama’s lead and present it as a silly question that few people actually care about.

The entire exchange here demonstrates NPR’s attempt to trivialize the matter by making it seem like a bunch of stoners were just having a laugh, and that real people know better (RAZ is Guy Raz, weekend host of All Things Considered, and Mr. JOHNSON is Clay Johnson, the technology director at the Sunlight Foundation. You can hear the interview and read the entire transcript here):

RAZ: Okay. So, can we infer that legalizing pot is the most important issue in America right now?

Mr. JOHNSON: Well, you know, if that was the case, then we probably have a lot of marijuana users going, dude, where’s my polling place or something like that, because they certainly don’t show up to vote.

RAZ: I got you. So before we could continue, I do want to play a few other questions that were submitted to President Obama.

Unidentified Man #2: How many turkey sandwiches can you eat in one day?

Unidentified Man #3: Would you support legislation for a national bedtime?

RAZ: Is this really an example of democratizing this process?

Mr. JOHNSON: Well, there’s a couple of things you have to look at here. First off, you know, YouTube is the venue where people are asking these questions, which is the home of cat on a Roomba punching a pit bull in a sweater vest.

RAZ: I didn’t see that one.

Mr. JOHNSON: Saying that this community is representative of American society at large is probably incorrect.

[...]

Mr. JOHNSON: …But it’s important to remember that just because, you know, an organization or a group or a community is the most well-organized doesn’t mean they’re the most popular. So when you see, for instance, marijuana questions being the top question, it doesn’t mean that they’re the most popular amongst all of America. What it means is this is the most organized community…

RAZ: Yeah.

Mr. JOHNSON: …that’s capable of getting their, you know, plus-one-ing their question.

Notice how the entire exchange is designed to make the whole issue look silly, from depicting the questioners as stupid stoners, to presenting obvious joke questions as equivalent to the legalization question, to making YouTube out to be nothing more than a place to find silly videos about nothing of consequence. Look, this is not a question being asked by a bunch of stoners sitting around a bong in their parent’s basement saying “Dude! Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get the Prez to say ‘marijuana’?!?” It did not get popular just because they all got their stoner friends to vote for it. This is a legitimate concern raised by those who understand that most, if not all, of the evils attributed to marijuana are a result not of the drug itself, but of it’s prohibition. It’s popular because so many people know this but are given no voice or are simply dismissed as stupid stoners who just want to get high without being harassed by the cops.

Read up on Alcohol Prohibition here in the US and tell me that we’re not seeing many of the exact same problems now with marijuana prohibition. Unfortunately those who prefer prohibition, whether for moral reasons or business reasons, have done an excellent job of convincing many people that the problems stem from the drug itself, and that prohibition is actually the remedy. It’s an amazing testament to the power of propaganda when skillfully employed.

Ideally the news media should create opportunity for discussion by presenting real information about important topics. Instead NPR is trivializing this issue by pretending that it’s just a joke made by people too high to know what’s really going on. It is extremely dishonest and serves only to shut down conversation on an issue that affects not only this country but the entire world in one way or another.

Fuck you NPR for running this big steaming pile of shit and calling it news.

I don’t know that there is an introduction that can do this video justice. My brain hurts.

Update: I’ve never really listened to or watched Ann Coulter myself, though I’d heard about her from many. I guess I thought this was an outrageous video of her being especially stupid, but after looking through a bunch of old YouTube videos, I’m finding that it was actually pretty representative. If you still want to see the video you can see it here, otherwise I think I’ll just avoid Ann Coulter videos in the future.

I find this video hilariously ironic. Don’t get me wrong, I think Faux News is a steaming pile of bias like most sane individuals. But this video is chock full of exactly the kind of scare mongering that it is accusing Faux News of delivering. I can almost hear an announcer saying “They’re worse than Hitler because they accuse Obama of being worse than Hitler!!!”

When the hacked emails first came out, I said they would be a quote miners heaven. I was right, but to a much, much lesser extent than I would have thought possible, which is saying a lot. It’s amazing how little material the climate deniers have actually found to backup their claims of conspiracy.

And then someone goes and makes a video like this, blasting the two most “damning” quotes out of the water.

As usual it’s not looking good for the deniers, and I’m sure that as usual they’ll simply ignore that fact and continue to proudly proclaim their “victory”.

(Thanks to Pharyngula for this one)

Roger Ebert put up a great post over on his blog. I highly recommend you go check it out.

I think it’s worth highlighting this sentence fragment, even though it’s going to be ignored anyway: “…I emphasize my words “should not” rather than “can not” be President.” I haven’t read the comments yet, but I can almost guarantee that people have already called him out for trying to dictate what beliefs a candidate must or must not have before they are allowed to be president.

Demonstrating that they have no clue what the real “War” is about, FoxNews once again frames it as an atheist attack on Christianity.

The reality is that it’s about preventing the government from saying that ONLY Christian symbolism is allowed on public property. It’s not an atheist issue, but a 1st Amendment issue. Atheists “won” last year by being allowed to put up a display of their own. This year is a “victory” only in the sense that all religions are being treated equally for once. That is to say that Christian symbolism is not allowed, just as Buddhist, Islamic Jewish, etc… symbolism is not allowed.

EDIT: Forgot to thank the Atheist Media Blog for the heads up.

It appears that one of the first shots in the so-called “War On Christmas” has been fired. Last year the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers tried to get a Winter Solstice display put up at the State Capitol. After they submitted the request, and after many follow-up calls they were finally denied with the following response:

[The] Arkansas Secretary of State is charged with the responsibility of preserving and maintaining proper order and decorum on the State Capitol Grounds. At this time, we are unable to fully determine the appearance or qualities of your proposed display. You may submit additional photographs or drawings of your proposed display if you would like us to reconsider your request.

The ASF tried for awhile after that to get (and give) more info, but eventually decided to just try again in a year.

So here it is 2009 and they’re a bit more prepared this time. They submitted another application for a Winter Solstice Display, and since they were denied for being too vague last year, this year they’ve got detailed descriptions and images of exactly what they expect the display to look like. Of course, you’ve probably already guessed that they were once again denied. What reason was given this time? No reason except for the same vague statement about maintaining proper order and decorum:

As we stated last year, the Arkansas Secretary of State as the custodian of the Capitol Grounds is charged with the responsibility of preserving and maintaining proper order and decorum on the State Capitol Grounds…

Obviously part of the reason that the reply was so vague was to avoid any language that could be construed as pro-christmas and therefore pro-religion (i.e. pro-christian). Not being a lawyer myself, I’m not sure exactly what the legal situation actually is. The ACLU says they are looking into it (“the situation is under review”), which I can only assume means they’re trying to determine what, if any, legal recourse the ASF has. I’m guessing that the next step is getting some definitive reason about why the application was denied instead of some vague notion of proper decorum.

In any event, the path is pretty clear. The state is apparently going to put up as many roadblocks as possible, and the ASF is going to steadily work their way around them. If they don’t succeed this year, then they’ll use what they learned to try again next year. In the end one of two things are likely to happen: 1. The state finally relents and allows the Winter Solstice Display to be erected (not likely), or 2. the state finally somehow lets slip that they’re denying the application simply because it’s not a christmas display, and then the legal battle is on.

So why is this even an issue? The religous folks would like you to believe that it’s a direct attack on Christianity by evil atheists for no better reason than because they’re atheists and that’s what they do. The reality is that it’s a very clear First Amendment issue. The relevent wording is here:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

In this case they are doing both by granting rights to Christians which they are denying to everyone else. In other words, by saying “Christmas decorations are allowed, but Solstice decorations are not” the state is saying “Only christian’s may be represented on state owned land.”

It’s late now, and I’m getting tired. To see what my views are on this type of case, see my post on the Mojave Desert Cross (Deep In The Mojave Desert) and it’s followup (Deeper In The Mojave Desert). The situations are very similar, and have the same underlying constitutional problems.