Monday

"I'm The Decider and I decide what is best and what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense," President Bush said last week. (Crooks & Liars has the video.)

This strikes me as Bush's version of "The buck stops here." But note the difference. The plaque on President Truman's desk implied that he accepted ultimate responsibility for any decisions made. Bush's phrasing has less to do with accepting responsibility than with asserting power.

It reminds me of the way Bush never refers to himself as a "wartime president," but rather as a "war president."

* * * *

"The Oil Can, at least for the moment, looks like he has tomorrow off ..."

-- Vin Scully, October 25, 1986

* * * *

Also from C&L, this video of a touchingly earnest Kirk Cameron and someone named Ray Comfort explaining intelligent design.

Watching Mr. Comfort is like listening to Lucy sing "Little Known Facts" in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown -- he's not just wrong, he's condenscending to those who aren't as misinformed as he is.

Anyway, Comfort's explanation of how the Intelligent Design of a banana proves creationism looks like a demonstration from one of those sex education classes he doesn't want kids to have. With the sound off, he seems to be making an argument from nature for something else entirely. With the sound on, you can hear him argue that a banana is perfectly "designed" to be peeled from the stem, which -- as every monkey knows -- is backwards.

* * * *

We haven't heard anything from Fafnir and Giblets in a few weeks and I'm starting to get worried. It could mean the zombies are back. Or the killer robots. Or Dick Cheney. Or the killer-robot zombie Cheney ...

* * * *

Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher is not shrill -- and that's what's so scary about his editorial "A Crisis Almost Without Equal."

Mitchell is dispassionate, matter of fact. He's just calmly stating what he takes to be an obvious truth: The presidency of George W. Bush puts the survival of America in jeopardy.

"How worried should we be about the possible damage he might inflict?" Mitchell asks. The president's defenders would answer that the nation will probably survive the Bush administration. Probably. They hope.

As far as damning with faint praise, that ranks up/down there with possibly not as bad as James Buchanan.

Comments

[antid_oto]

With the sound on, you can hear him argue that a banana is perfectly "designed" to be peeled from the stem, which -- as every monkey knows -- is backwards.

Ah, it's not just that. There's also the fact that God didn't make bananas looking like that. From Wikipedia:

While the original bananas contained rather large seeds, triploid (and thus seedless) cultivars have been selected for human consumption. These are propagated asexually from offshoots of the plant.
...
Cultivated bananas are sterile (parthenocarpic), meaning that they do not produce viable seeds.

Also:

Bananas and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in developing countries. In most tropical countries green (unripe) bananas used for cooking represent the main cultivars.

In other words, the big, yellow Cavendish banana we buy in supermarkets is highly unrepresentative of worldwide bananas and the natural banana state--it is a specific asexual mutant of a single strain of bananas, carefully selected by humans for the tastes of Americans and Europeans. The fact that it suits us is evidence that we bred it to suit us.

[B-W]

Ordinarily, I'd post this as a "TrackBack," but since I actually said this first this time around, I'll just comment by pointing to the blog entry I did last week.

[twig]

antid_oto;

Thanks for the extra information. It makes Mr. Comfort's tortured 'logic' all the more fun.

[Mike T]

My wife adds that the real lesson of the banana is that it can be opened from EITHER end - and that, clearly, no design went into it at all.

[cjmr's husband]

Good Cheneyism in the Washington Post today: he says he didn't want this job, he was drafted.

I guess he's forgotten who was doing the drafting.

[jw]

I thought a new piece of biographical information had been unveiled in the quote from Vin Scully, until I followed the link to the article that included the ESPN classic game, and remembered that the non-Dodger-Blue portion of the country had been blessed with Vinnie during several World Series. Now imagine getting to root for Koufax and his team, action described by Vin Scully. Them days.

- jw

[pepperjackcandy]

I think the American/European raw eating banana is an eloquent argument in favor of intelligent design. Not the "God in the gaps" variety, but of the "if aliens were dropped into the middle of a grocery store, they'd say, 'There's no way this could've developed of its own accord. Some force/being/designer must've interfered with its development'" variety. 8-)

[Reverend Ref]

I used to peel my bananas from the stem until a conversation with a classmate in high school. Now I peel them from the other end. This accomplishes two things: 1) you eliminate having to deal with the seed, as it gets removed at the outset; and 2) you have a nifty little handle that lets you deposit the skin in the trash without ever having to get your fingers icky.

[twig]

if aliens were dropped into the middle of a grocery store, they'd say

"eep eep glorble wingu wingu narboza!"

I am easily amused.

[Noah Brand]

I was amused to see that the banana bit, including the counterexample of the soda can, was lifted more or less word for word from a tract I was handed as a kid. As I was ten at the time, it took me a little while to form a coherent counter-argument.

Of course, the counter-argument is rice. A necessary staple crop without which half the people on earth would starve, it's extremely labor-intensive to grow, inedible in its natural state, and requires a great deal of careful effort to harvest and prepare. It is the opposite of the banana in that regard, but of course is MUCH more important to human survival.

In other words, the creationists are cherry-picking their data and lying about what they do have.

Again.

[gus]

the banana thing was strangely disturbing. and like the general I am 110% heterosexual.

[perianwyr]

If aliens were dropped into a grocery store, they'd confuse the ham with their own species' flesh and start killing people in a blind rage.

Not sure what that has to do with intelligent design, but it's as true as any designer fable.

[wintermute]

> if aliens were dropped into the middle of a grocery store, they'd say, 'There's no way this could've developed of its own accord. Some force/being/designer must've interfered with its development'

Are they talking about the banana, or the store?

[Edward Liu]

wintermute asks: "Are they talking about the banana, or the store?"

Actually, they're referring to the intelligent design adherents trying to convince themselves that they practice good science.

[PK]

Noah Brand: I was amused to see that the banana bit, including the counterexample of the soda can, was lifted more or less word for word from a tract I was handed as a kid.

Same author.

Ray Comfort is well-known in Evangelical circles for his gospel tracts. I'm not too keen on the Atheist one, but the novelty items make for nice conversation pieces.

[cm]

twig, you're not the only one. Thanks for making me laugh.

[Skyknight]

Looking at Comfort's tracts...Both there and in other tracts (I think a few Fellowship Tract League leaflets used the metaphor), they talk about salvation being akin to a convict facing a monstrous fine (flat broke, and fine is around $250,000 or so), and someone else, a complete stranger, paying the fine for him. I think there was a Jack Chick tract that took it to the extreme--a truly fell convict facing a death sentence, and his mother accepting the hanging in his stead.

How is this supposed to make sense, again?

These metaphors speak as though the problem was that something was cut away from the victim (this part makes sense), but all that's needed is for it to be restored. Somehow, regeneration of the one who actually DID the cutting is being overlooked. Not to mention that guilt isn't something that can be transferred to someone who wasn't involved. It's not some kind of negative currency.

I think the main problem is that they're thinking of Heaven as a gift. It's true that it doesn't make much sense to speak of earning a gift. However, existence in Heaven is supposed to be a result of God's love. It doesn't make sense, either, to speak of earning love, but the underlying point is different. Namely, giving a gift is a thing of a moment, but love is (a) long-term, and (b) difficult to dispel if it ever existed. I'm sure there are PLENTY of marriages where some unwitting grievance resulted in something akin to the Great Red Spot, but still didn't shatter the underlying love of the marriage. What's different here?

In fact, it seems that God's love is only meaningful if you swear fealty to the Christ, in the tracts' view. Otherwise, hello God's wrath and your eternal perdition. In a way, this IS earning God's love.

{sigh} I sometimes wonder if, to the dispensationalists, God gave humans free will EXPRESSLY to trigger the sin-and-salvation mechanism...

[BrooklynRaider]

Comfort may not have proved the case for ID, but he's certainly helped prove that conservatives have no sense of humor.

Or am I being unkind? "Nuke the whales." Get it? Get it?

[Irrational Entity]

The anti-evolution tract is a perfect method to turn people away from Christianity. A skeptical person who knows something about evolution and reads that piece would simply see, "If evolution is true, then Christianity is false" and promptly walk away from the whole thing. Conservative evangelicals wonder why their version of Christianity has such a bad reputation in university circles while they shoot themselves in the foot.

[Fred]

Brooklyn --

I dunno, the Steven Wright jokes plagiarized in that tract are pretty funny. But I guess plagiarism is OK if it's for Jesus.

[BrooklynRaider]

Ruh-roh, Fred. How many of them are by Steven Wright?

Plagiarism in tracts may be OK if it's for Jesus, but, apparently, parody is not OK if it's for Cthulhu.

[Johnny EC]

Bannanas as proof of ID theory? Man, that's as bad as when Internet Infidel Richard Carrier claimed in his book "Sense and Goodness Without God" that women with large breasts as well as a lack of blue monkeys flying out of his butt prove that God doesn't exist. ROFL!

[cjmr's husband]

Sheesh, anyone with a dialup connection knows that THAT guy doesn't exist.

#(^Q%&* NO CARRIER

[Linkmeister]

Go beyond the Vin Scully link to Yahoo, then find the blog (San Diego Serenade) link in the story and click it. That's absolutely amazing to watch and hear. The synchronization between Scully's call and the RBI game animation is unbelievably good.

[Locutor]

Whether they prove or disprove the existence of God, I'm just glad that women with large breasts are here.