Republican lies are a Ponzi scheme for American voters

Chaz K writes, "The midterm elections were a repudiation of Obama and his policies."

I would agree with him except that the Republican party spent over $100 million running attack ads that misrepresented the issues and the candidates' positions. What he are saying is, if Fox News and the Koch Brothers were successful in buying the election, then the election is a repudiation of the president and his policies. This position is nonsensical. If Bernie Madoff convinced a thousand people to invest in a Ponzi scheme, it doesn't prove Madoff's Ponzi scheme is a good investment. More to the point, it doesn't "repudiate" the laws of mathematics that prove Ponzi schemes don't work. 

But the Republicans began opposing Obama and his policies before they even knew what they were. They opposed his policy of marriage equality, falsely saying it would legalize polygamy and somehow devalue traditional marriage.They opposed limited intervention in the Middle East, saying that Obama was a closet Muslim who favors ISIS. They opposed the Affordable Care Act, saying it would destroy the US medical system (it hasn't), bankrupt the economy (it hasn't), and create death panels (it hasn't). They opposed the EPA policy of decreasing coal production and burning in the atmosphere, by saying that Climate Change is a myth created by the scientists because...scientists don't know anything about what they spend their whole lives studying.

If the Republicans lied about the policies of the administration to win the election, their repudiation is only a repudiation of the fantasy that Republicans created with their lies. In other words, it was a repudiation of nothing. In addition, the Republicans have suggested no alternatives to policies they oppose--because they know those policies are reasonable and there are no defensible right-wing alternatives.

Bill Maher debates Ben Affleck on Islam

Recently Bill Maher caused a sensation on the internet by claiming that Islam is more like a criminal enterprise than a religion. What other religion, he asked, threatens to kill you if you don't agree with their religious practices?

Maher and his guest, Sam Harris, then brought out a laundry-list of complaints leveled at Muslims: they subjugate women, they execute apostates (Muslims who renounce their religion), and they execute people who defame Islam or the Prophet Muhammed.

Ben Affleck responded by calling Maher's comments racist. The definition of racism is the application of a set of stereotypical characteristics to an entire race. So, when you condemn Islam because ISIS commits atrocities in Iraq, you are spreading racism. In fact, it is people with microphones, like Maher, who do the most damage by spreading racism. Reza Aslan, a scholar of middle eastern religions, says that Maher has been attacking Islam for a long time but people have just started to notice the damage he is doing.

Maher doesn't see it that way. For him, as also for Sam Harris, Islam is an evil religion. Muslims may reject the actions and beliefs of ISIL, 

but hold views about human rights, and about women, and about homosexuals that are deeply troubling.

Harris says that Islam is the Mother Lode of Bad Ideas.

Is Islam as bad as all that?

We need to understand that this debate is not just about Islam, but religion in general. Harris and Maher are not just critics of Islam, they are famous atheists who are making money from attacking religion. Harris, in particular, has made a career by attacking religion.

So we have to ask, would people be likely to approve this attack on Islam if they understood that the attackers, Maher and Harris, have said similar things about Christianity? The circumstances would be quite different if Maher had said, Christianity is a terrible religion, but Islam is even worse.

To his credit, Affleck pointed out the absurdity of the attacks on Islam. You can't judge a religion with a billion adherents all around the world by the actions of a few extremists in Iraq. The US Constitution made a good rule, that religions should be allowed to practice their beliefs without interference from the government.

Affleck admitted that ISIL had committed some atrocities. So what do you want to do about it? He asked Maher. Kill more people? Hasn't there been enough killing already?

Affleck may have struck a nerve with that question, because Harris first came to prominence as an Islam basher after the 9/11 attacks. His views provided a rational basis to go to war against Iraq. They still provide an excuse to start yet another war in the Middle East, and there are plenty of people who planned the last one still hanging around, urging Obama to send in the troops.

This program went viral, probably because Affleck was on it. Affleck was sandbagged by these two professional muslim-haters.

Obama's decision not to intervene in Syria was a wise one

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) crossed from Syria into Iraq last week. In short order they seized Mosul, Tikrit, and some other, smaller towns near the Syrian Border. Videos showed Iraqi government soldiers removing their uniforms and fleeing their posts before ISIS arrived. American commentators dismissed their actions as cowardice in the face of the enemy. But it was not cowardice. It was merely an attempt at self-preservation.

Videos released later by ISIS showed in gruesome detail what happened to soldiers who were captured by the invaders. The Iraqi soldiers were rounded up and shot. We need to recognize that the Iraqi soldiers, mostly Shi'ite, who were posted in Mosul and Tikrit were not defending their homeland. They were deep inside enemy territory. Those who could not escape to Baghdad could not be certain of survival, for the people of the region oppose the Iraqi government installed by the American army. The Shi'ite soldiers had no place to hide and no one to aid them.

ISIS had been fighting against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator. These were the same fighters that neocons and John McCain had been urging Obama to support. ISIS is aligned with former supporters of Saddam Hussein. They are Sunni Muslims who have a much stronger allegiance to their religious faith than to any government. They are also one of the main forces that have been opposing the Americans in Iraq. Supporting these people would have been a major blunder, akin to the mistake made by the CIA in Operation Cyclone, which led to the empowerment of Osama bin Laden.

We should understand the alignment of forces in the Middle East.

Iran is the leading Shi'ite state. Other Shi'ite leaders are Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki.

Saudi Arabia is the leading Sunni State. Saddam Hussein was Sunni. So was Osama bin Laden. There are powerful Sunni forces in Iraq and Syria, where they oppose the current governments.

The wars in the Middle East between Muslim states since WWII can be viewed as proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia for control of the region. The United States has sided with Saudi Arabia consistently during this entire period, despite the fact that the two countries have little in common aside from an interest in oil.

Sanity seems at last to have reached into the American government. Our intelligence agencies have failed to provide accurate information to our decision makers. Even Jimmy Carter was not immune to the belief that Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union was somehow a danger to the US.

We don't know what intelligence reports led Obama to decide against intervention in Syria. Perhaps he knew more about the makeup of the rebel force opposing Assad than the rest of us. Or perhaps he was wary about any intelligence he received from the CIA, since they had failed so utterly in this region in the past. Whatever his reasons, Obama made the right choice. The US now enjoys the enviable position of watching chaos from the outside rather than having it falling on our heads.