GOP on Health care: damned commies!

Amazingly, Fed chief Bernake's recent talk before Congress had nothing to do with interest rates or inflation, but instead...health care. Bernake said that access to care for the 47M Americans without it must be a top priority for our country, as well as improving the quality of care and cutting costs. Health care is definitely a bread-and-butter issue for voters this November. As such, there's no better way to sum up the GOP's proposals and responses to Barack's health care plan than this: "Socialism!"

I hope they keep it up. These standard-bearers on the right show you exactly the sort of intellectual rigor and human decency that now characterizes the conservative platform and response to Democratic (not Democrat) policy proposals and arguments. Obama is doing better than that: going to one hour from my hometown, in the heart of Appalachia, to deliver a substantive health care platform speech. The local paper covered the event with a news article and a solid editorial.

Let's look at some statistics in order to get a sense of "what's wrong with healthcare in America":

The Kaiser Family Foundation has a wonderful online tool showing the "fast facts" in slide show format concerning US healthcare. Looking at the number of uninsured in America, totaling 16% of the total population, or 47 M, I found an interesting statistic: 71% of uninsured have a full-time worker in the family and 11% have a part-time worker in the family, meaning that unemployment status can only be blamed in 18% of uninsured cases.

KFF also shows the decline in companies (large and small) offering health care to their workers: from 62% in 1999 to 59% in 2007. If that doesn't sound like much, remember that this is all US companies, so we're talking about literally millions of people losing coverage.

Krugman pointed to new stats on the huge uptick in underinsurance (having inadequate care) among the middle class from a report by the Commonwealth Fund:

The number of underinsured U.S. adults—that is, people who have health coverage that does not adequately protect them from high medical expenses—has risen dramatically, a Commonwealth Fund study finds. As of 2007, there were an estimated 25 million underinsured adults in the United States, up 60 percent from 2003.

Much of this growth comes from the ranks of the middle class. While low-income people remain vulnerable, middle-income families have been hit hardest. For adults with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (about $40,000 per year for a family), the underinsured rates nearly tripled since 2003.

These results and others are published in How Many Are Underinsured? Trends Among U.S. Adults, 2003 and 2007, (Health Affairs Web Exclusive, June 10, 2008), by The Commonwealth Fund's Cathy Schoen, Sara R. Collins, Jennifer L. Kriss, and Michelle M. Doty.

So this isn't just a question of lower-class income, nor of uninsurance. Underinsurance has to be in the mix as well.

There are four basic models of health care reform: (1) incremental change to existing structures, (2) building on employer-based insurance, (3) consumer-based insurance, (4) single payer.

McCain's plan falls under the third model -- consumer-based insurance, and the Grand Old Party has proposed its favorite panacea to the health care crisis: tax cuts. Unfortunately for those who think this is a solution, reality here has a liberal bias: Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, LLC (HPSA), analyzes McCain's plan in detail and shows how it comes up far short.

1. People with pre-existing conditions are screwed.
2. A $2500 individual/$5000 family tax credit falls far short of the average $12000 cost of a health care plan.
3. He completely lacks any proposal for "cost containment" and quality improvement
4. Trade associations that's he's proposed would circumvent underwriting laws
5. The young would pay much less and the old much more -- age rating

Robert Kuttner shows in Everything for sale: the virtues and limits of markets that this free market proposal would be undermined by the following false premises:

First, it assumes that competing health plans will take a high road of offering better service, rather than a low road of risk selections and secret financial incentives to participating doctors.
Second, it assumes consumers will have a free choice among competing plans.
Third, it assumes that good plans will drive out the bad ones, rather than vice versa.
Fourth, it assumes that plans will not acquire a degree of monopoly power. And it presumes that consumers will be adequately informed about competing plans.

In short, this summarizes the weakness of McCain's plan.

The Democratic proposals from Barack and Clinton (and Edwards) are a hybrid of (1) and (2), which focus on making affordable insurance available to those without employer-based insurance. The plans do differ on the issue of mandates, an issue where I clearly side with Obama. Barack's plan would prevent the problems associated with McCain's plan in age rating and medical underwriting and pre-existing conditions clauses. In addition, Barack's plan offers a subsidy for low-income families to get insurance coverage that actually makes it affordable for them.

Harold Pollack responds to Krugman about Barack and mandates. His points about the study summarized:

So we're back where we started: two plans, both with guaranteed availability of insurance regardless of health status, both with subsidies. One has a mandate with (as yet undefined) enforcement mechanisms. The other has no mandate but (as yet undefined) financial disincentives for free-riding. Until the two plans are better specified, there is no basis on which to estimate how many people will wind up not buying insurance under either plan, and therefore no basis for any firm estimate of costs to the taxpayer.

This is hardly justification for the holy war the Clinton campaign is waging on Obama on the mandate issue.

David Brooks follows up on the same issue (Clinton's mandates and dealings with health care):

Moreover, the debate Clinton is having with Barack Obama echoes the debate she had with Cooper 15 years ago. The issue, once again, is over whether to use government to coerce people into getting coverage. The Clintonites argue that without coercion, there will be free-riders on the system.

They’ve got a point. But there are serious health care economists on both sides of the issue. And in the heat of battle, Clinton has turned the debate between universal coverage and universal access into a sort of philosophical holy grail, with a party of righteousness and a party of error. She’s imposed Manichaean categories on a technical issue, just as she did a decade and half ago. And she’s done it even though she hasn’t answered legitimate questions about how she would enforce her universal coverage mandate.

Cooper, who, not surprisingly, supports Barack Obama, believes that Clinton hasn’t changed. “Hillary’s approach is so absolutist, draconian and intolerant, it means a replay of 1993.”

Barack Obama has always been against a mandate requiring people to sign up for health care, much to the chagrin of Krugman et al., and last month's American Prospect shows why, by examining a state-level model for the national proposals by Democrats -- Massachusetts:

What's happened since then? While those beneath the poverty level signed up for free insurance in even greater numbers than anticipated, very few people who were required to pay for their own insurance signed up. Even those eligible for partial subsidies were slow to enroll. The deadline to purchase insurance had to be extended, and 60,000 uninsured people were exempted from the mandate because -- yes, that's right -- they couldn't afford it (so much for universality).

And what about enforcement of the mandate? The state has had to push back enforcement, but plans next year to hit individuals with a fine, although they've relaxed the standards required of employers...it's obviously a flawed system. What is the solution? I'd say single payer, model (4) and the model employed by numerous countries around the world.

Agreeing with me would a lot of experts, think tanks and coalitions of health care providers.

If you're more interested in learning about single-payer, check out those links.

In the meanwhile, we have to address a lot of misinformation and elect a lot of progressive politicians.

Check out current and detailed information on politics and health care at Kaiser

Exploring Life's Origins

I like to write things about abiogenesis.

The Boston Museum of Science has a wonderful new online exhibit called Exploring Life's Origins on the topic, so check it out!

The History Channel will air a show, How Life Began, tonight at 9 PM...the show's schedule:

1. Monday, June 16 09:00 PM
2. Tuesday, June 17 01:00 AM
3. Saturday, June 21 10:00 PM
4. Sunday, June 22 02:00 AM
5. Sunday, June 29 02:00 PM

Also, Youtube has a couple of good videos on the topic as well: 1, 2.

On legal v. illegal drugs

The NYT has a fascinating news article today in which Florida state officials tallied the number of deaths caused by different drugs and found...unsurprisingly, ZERO caused by marijuana, almost 500 caused by alcohol, but a whopping 2300 caused by legal opioids:

The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.

The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328.

Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).

The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.

In November, I relayed my personal experiences with the epidemic of "hillbilly heroin" as I grew up and went through high school, and the fact that I know a few people whose experiences with oxycodone would have to match up against any horse or crack addict in terms of desperation and degradation. This study gives yet another reason to decriminalize pot: if a huge state like Florida finds ZERO deaths caused by marijuana among 170,000 deaths, the arguments that smoking dope can lead to debilitated mental faculties which, in turn, can cause death are undermined. I strongly disagree with complete libertarians with respect to drug policy who think that controlling substances is unnecessary/illegal on the part of the government, especially in light of drugs like Oxycontin(TM). That said, the legalization of marijuana is necessary, even if it may cause a slowdown of brain processing speed. I don't even smoke it (honest, not since high school, 1999), but it is definitely far past the time to de-criminalize it for a plethora of reasons.

Not the least of which being that at least 15 million people in the US have used it in the past month...and those stats are probably under-reported because of the well-known sampling bias when it comes to admitting to illegal behavior.

Don't forget, soon enough, I'll bet the government will be prosecuting people for possession on the basis of their sewage.

I would invite those of you who disagree to present a solid argument as to why marijuana should be illegal while alcohol and tobacco should remain completely legal. In addition, even if you could do that without incoherence (contradicting lines of reasoning about alcohol and tobacco), I'll bet you couldn't go a step further and argue why it should remain criminally-punishable, if it remains illegal. Keep in mind how hard it is to gain productive employment and thus remain a productive citizen with a felony on your record. Go on, I double dog dare you...

Pushing back against Obama smears

(cross-posted to my.barackobama.com blog)

So my mom writes me the other day in response to an article by Frank Schaeffer I brought to her attention on why Schaeffer will vote for Obama:

The article shows me that an eloquent phrase and enough frustration go a long way. I am more concerned about someone who sat under a racist preacher for twenty years and associated with Rezko, Ayers, etc. and their judgement. Also, for someone who wants change, saying one thing and having his people doing another is same old same old ie. Nafta and the Jim Johnson stuff. Dad and I are not happy with McCain either. We feel anyone in the senate is part of the problem, not the solution. On Iraq, we are there, right or wrong, the correct resolution is important otherwise all that was sacrificed is for naught.

Here's my response to her:

Regarding "guilt by association" and the modern McCarthyism, you mentioned his preacher, which I won't touch as it's been beaten to death. You either will or will not believe that Obama never heard Wright preach the more controversial stuff. In addition, as crazy and wrong as he is, Wright is a better man than most of the white versions of himself -- the John Hagees and Rod Parsleys, because he actually volunteered to fight in the Marines during the Cold War in 1961, and so any rhetoric about "loving your country" more than him is dubious. Barack has said many times that he had never heard some of the offensive stuff that later surfaced, and that he'd have left the church at the time if he had...once the stuff came out, he now has left the church. That is the bottom line.

Also, on Iraq, it's just simply insane to say that a war we got into by being misled and based on faulty intelligence must be continued, even if it provides no real strategic value to the US. Iraqi civilians continue to die by the hundreds and thousands, US troops continue to die by the dozens each month, and we literally piss away billions of dollars each week that we can't afford and should be spending at home. Sometimes there is no "good" solution to an immoral war, just like getting in a car wreck: you survey the damage, you bind up the wounds and you move on. All those lives are only "for nought" if we continue the same failed policies that haven't made us any safer. McCain has no exit strategy, and says "it doesn't matter" how long we're in Iraq.

You also mentioned (1) Rezko and (2) Ayers. Regarding the "same old politics" you mentioned (3) NAFTA and (4) Jim Johnson. I will respond to each of these.

1) On Obama's associations with Tony Rezko. Obama bought a house in Chicago and basically Rezko helped him out by buying a lot adjoining the house that was part of the selling package, but that Obama and Michelle didn't want/couldn't afford. The property that Rezko bought stayed in Rezko's name and then eventually he sold it to Obama at around $100K. At this time, Rezko had not been charged with any wrongdoing. Throughout this story, no one has ever shown even one instance in which Obama did a favor for Rezko or used his influence to help him in the legislature.

Obama sat down with the Chicago Sun-Times and answered all of their questions and brought in documents in order to clear up this controversy back on March 15, and that's why you haven't heard about it since. (except on Faux News, probably)

The Chicago Sun-Times is the inside paper with all the local and political connections to the story about Rezko and his indictments.

In one of the recent stories about Rezko, the CST reports that federal prosecutors (probably with high-up friends in the GOP) have been trying to dig up dirt on Obama using the recent charges against Rezko and offering him bait. Unfortunately for the GOP, there appears to be no dirt to dig:

"I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the governor or the senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way but I will not hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru or Winter. I am simply an honest, humble immigrant who believes in the American dream," Rezko wrote as he was kept in solitary confinement in a downtown lockup earlier this year. He was speaking of numerous people who testified at his trial or talked to prosecutors.

Sources say that the feds have not approached Obama to question him regarding Rezko. Rezko was a longtime Obama supporter in Obama's early, formative years as a politician. In Rezko's criminal case, money from a kickback scheme ended up in Obama's campaign fund, though there was never an allegation Obama knew about it. Obama later gave that money to charity.

In his letter, Rezko states that he's been under pressure by federal prosecutors to give information on Obama and Blagojevich.

My question to you: do you know about the Keating 5 scandal involving McCain from the 1989 S&L fallout, when he was officially investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee for using his influence to lobby? Do you think that this scandal is more serious than any association between Obama and Rezko, given that it is official record that McCain received $112K in political donations from a Savings & Loan that he turned around and lobbied for to try to stop investigations into?

I'm just asking to see if you have a sense of balance and objectivity in looking at the differences between the two men.

2) On Obama's informal associations with University of Chicago professor Bill Ayers:

Chicago Sun Times : "Barack Obama and 1960s Weather Underground radical William Ayers: What are facts?" ...[Ayers] met and married fellow fugitive Bernadine Dohrn during that period. The two surrendered in 1980 and were never prosecuted. They now teach at Chicago universities. Ayers and Obama both served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based charity that focuses on developing community groups to assist the poor. A variety of business executives, journalists and academics serve on the board. When Obama was organizing his first race for the state legislature, the incumbent lawmaker he hoped to replace introduced him to her supporters and urged them to back Obama. One introductory event took place at the home of Ayers and Dohrn, according to published reports. Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s legislative campaign in 2001, but there is no other sign that he has actively aided Obama’s political career. [Chicago Sun-Times, 4/17/08]

Chicago Sun Times: Obama's Connection To Ayers Is A "Phony Flap". The Chicago Sun-Times wrote in an editorial, "But Ayers, it is also true to say, has since followed in the footsteps of the great Chicago social worker Jane Addams, crusading for education and juvenile justice reform. His 1997 book, A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, has been praised for exposing how Cook County's juvenile justice system all but eliminates a child's chance for redemption. Is Barack Obama consorting with a radical? Hardly. Ayers is nothing more than an aging lefty with a foolish past who is doing good. And while, yes, Obama is friendly with Ayers, it appears to be only in the way of two community activists whose circles overlap. Obama's middle name is Hussein. That doesn't make him an Islamic terrorist. He stopped wearing a flag pin. That doesn't make him unpatriotic. And he's friendly with UIC Professor William Ayers. That doesn't make him a bomb thrower. Time to move on to Phony Flap 6,537,204." ["Clearing up another empty shot at Obama",Chicago Sun-Times Editorial, 3/3/08]

Washington Post: Obama-Ayers Link "Is A Tenuous One." The Washington Post reported in a fact check, "But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one." [Washington Post, 2/18/08]

Woods Fund President Harrington: "This Whole Connection Is A Stretch." The Washington Post reported in a fact check, "Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and 'passion for social justice.' 'This whole connection is a stretch,' Harrington told me. 'Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns.'" [Washington Post, 2/18/08]

Noam Scheiber Of TNR: "I Don't See Evidence Of Any Relationship" Between Obama And Ayers. Noam Scheiber of The New Republic wrote, "Ben says Ayers and Obama were, at best, casual friends. Even that seems to overstate things, though. I don't see evidence of any relationship. The only concrete connection we know of is the meeting, which was attended by a number of local liberals; their contemporaneous membership on the board of a local organization; and a $200-donation by Ayers to one of Obama's state senate campaigns. (Obama also once praised something Ayers had written about the juvenile justice system.) I'm not saying they couldn't have been casual friends; just that there isn't much evidence for that at this point." [The New Republic, 2/22/08]

Birdsell: Obama Links To Ayers Were "Pretty Slender Ties." The New York Sun reported, "'Those are pretty slender ties to a controversial figure,' the dean of Baruch College's School of Public Affairs, David Birdsell, said of Mr. Obama's links to Mr. Ayers." [New York Sun, 2/19/08]

From Time:

"...Years later, Ayers threw a fund-raising party for Obama. They sat together on the board of a community group. Is this association between Obama and these dangerous radicals a scandal? Or is the scandal digging up all this ancient history? Those have been the options in the debate. But the truth is a third option: Ayers and Dohrn are despicable, and yet making an issue of Obama's relationship with them is absurd.
...
If Obama's relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others--including Republicans and conservatives--who have embraced Ayers and Dohrn as good company, good citizens, even experts on children's issues. Northwestern created a "family justice" center for Dohrn to run. Ayers is a "distinguished professor" at the University of Illinois. They write Op-Eds and are often quoted in the Tribune, where, if they are identified at all beyond their academic titles, it is usually as "activists" who have never abandoned their noble ideals. In 1995 the Trib reported on a party at their home to celebrate a new progressive website, designed by the person who designed President Bill Clinton's website. The designer said, "There is a lot of room for different ideas in progressive politics, and we're proud to be associated with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers." Hillary, over to you."

3) By your invocation of NAFTA, I assume you mean the flap about one of Obama's aides, Austan Goolsbee, telling Canadian foreign official Georges Rioux not to worry about trade issues if Obama became president? The original report came from CTV, and was quickly denied by Canadian embassy officials and later CTV itself had to backpedal on a possible "miscommunication":

On Thursday, the Canadian embassy in Washington issued a complete denial.

"At no time has any member of a presidential campaign called the Canadian ambassador or any official at the embassy to discuss NAFTA," it said in a statement.

But on Wednesday, one of the primary sources of the story, a high-ranking member of the Canadian embassy, gave CTV more details of the call. He even provided a timeline. He has since suggested it was perhaps a miscommunication.

The denial from the embassy was followed by a denial from Senator Obama.

"The Canadian government put out a statement saying that this was just not true, so I don't know who the sources were," said Obama.

Sources at the highest levels of the Canadian government -- who first told CTV that a call was made from the Obama camp -- have reconfirmed their position.

Both the Obama aide and the Canadian official involved in the interview denied that the report was accurate, and since they were the only two involved in the discussions, it's ridiculous to take "other sources" at their word.

When the memorandum emerged, it confirmed the meeting and that Nafta was discussed.

According to The A.P., the note reads, ''On Nafta Goolsbee suggested that Obama is less about fundamentally changing the agreement and more in favor of strengthening/clarifying language on labor mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more 'core' principles of the agreement.''

On Monday, Mr. Burton stood by his earlier statements, adding that the policy articulated in the memorandum does not contradict anything that Mr. Obama has said on Nafta in the campaign.

Also, the Canadians argued about this issue on the floor of their own parliament.

Obama campaign denial:

"The news reports on Obama's position on NAFTA are inaccurate and in no way represent Senator Obama's consistent position on trade. When Senator Obama says that he will forcefully act to make NAFTA a better deal for American workers, he means it. Both Canada and Mexico should know that, as president, Barack Obama will do what it takes to create and protect American jobs and strengthen the American economy -- that includes amending NAFTA to include labor and environmental standards. We are currently reaching out to the Canadian embassy to correct this inaccuracy."

Georges Rioux denial:

Statement by the Consulate General of Canada in Chicago

Chicago, IL, March 3, 2008 — The Canadian Embassy and our Consulates General regularly contact those involved in all of the Presidential campaigns and, periodically, report on these contacts to interested officials. In the recent report produced by the Consulate General in Chicago, there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA. We deeply regret any inference that may have been drawn to that effect.

(the statement has since been removed from the front page, but you can Google it or see it here)

Basically, even if all this is true, it proves simply that Obama may have stretched his intentions on NAFTA in order to pander to Ohio and Pennsylvania voters. But, the two people involved in the meeting have both issued denials of accuracy, so it's hard to find a valid or objective way of sustaining this story's credibility.

4) Jim Johnson's supposed "scandal" was devoid of factual basis, and he stepped down simply to take "heat" off when he shouldn't have:

The claim of preferential treatment is based on a June 7, 2008 Wall Street Journal article which says something altogether different:

"A comparison of the Fannie Mae officers' terms with interest rates prevailing when they got their loans raises the possibility Countrywide gave them preferential terms. But it's impossible to tell for sure from public documents. An array of other factors also can account for lower-than-average rates, including a borrower's income, total assets and credit score; how big the loan is compared with the home's value; and how many "points" a borrower may have paid upfront in order to get a lower rate."

[Emphasis added.] Translation for those who lack any financial sophistication: They don't know jack. The numbers themselves bear this out. Johnson obtained three mortgages from Countrywide, each with an initial five-year fixed rate. Here's how the contractual rates compared with the market averages at time, as determined by the Journal:

October 23, 1998: Amount: $393,000; Initial Rate: 6.375%; Market Average: 6.2%. Rate was .175% above market average.

November 8, 2001: Amount: $1,300,000; Initial Rate: 5.250%; Market Average: 6.0%. Rate was .75% below market average.

June 20, 2003: Amount: $972,000; Initial Rate: 3.875%; Market Average: 4.3%. Rate was . 4125% below market average.

So, according to the Journal's analysis, the Johnson received a mortgage that was no more than 75 basis points below the market average for the initial five-year period. Could that difference be explained by points paid up front, the home's appraised value versus the loan value, refinancing penalties or any number of other variables? Absolutely.

James Johnson was the CEO of Fannie Mae, the biggest buyer of Countrywide's mortgages, until December 1998. Consequently, the only mortgage Johnson obtained when there was a potential conflict of interest was a $393,000 mortgage that was 17.5 basis points "above" the market average.

The Journal article is highly misleading in that it places Johnson's tenure at Fannie Mae in a false context:

"Mr. Johnson led Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998. He and Countrywide's Mr. [Angelo] Mozilo worked together to streamline the underwriting process. Mr. Mozilo told Dow Jones in 1995 that he was 'working very closely ... with Jim Johnson of Fannie Mae to come up with a rational method of making the process more efficient by the use of credit scoring.' Their efforts helped to lead to a boom in mortgage lending that brought huge profits to both companies but is now ending badly."

The recklessness in mortgage lending never really took off until 2003, when mortgage lenders like Countrywide abdicated traditional underwriting standards for documentation, income and asset values. Fannie Mae's exposure to the subprime market has always been a tiny percentage of its portfolio. It is false and misleading to tie the subprime crisis to Fannie Mae's lending policies of the 1990s.

This was a non-story from the start: a temporary hire on a vetting committee may have received preferential treatment in his mortgage from Countrywide...so?

I don't really see why someone who is hired simply to dig through the lives of potential VP candidates become, themselves, like a VP candidate: reflective of Obama's own integrity. Johnson was simply hired to do a job, after which he would've been let go. I think Obama shouldn't have caved to the pressure as it is stupid to the core.

Even if he was a crook, he was let go from the Obama campaign as soon as this stuff surfaced, even though it is pretty fact free. In addition, compare the VP search committee of Obama's campaign, which is a temporary group of people hired simply to help him select a VP by digging through their past to make sure there are no secrets, to the permanent advisors McCain has surrounded himself with. Compare that to the lobbyists who worked for McCain for a year after his supposedly "lobbyist-free campaign" nonsense, and the still-lingering stench created by Phil Gramm.

Now McCain is grasping at straws by going after another person on this same committee, while on his own committee sits A.B. Culvahouse, who worked the Iran-Contra scandal in Congress for Reagan, keeping Congressional investigation efforts limited.

___
Summary:
1) Obama's association with Rezko showed an early naivete that he has since admitted and not since repeated; in addition, he never crossed the line ethically as did not use his influence to help Rezko in any fashion.

2) Obama's links to Ayers are tenuous at best. They sat on a board together and Ayers is a noted intellectual in Chicago, so they are acquainted. The "degrees of separation" between him and Ayers are probably more than between McCain and Christian theonomists and advocates of murder of abortion doctors.

3) The "NAFTAgate" story by CTV was later rescinded and both the two men involved deny key facts in the report and say that there is no incongruence between Obama's policy proposals and what they discussed. At worst, even if CTV was right, it means Obama over-pandered to Rust Belt voters, but the facts just aren't there.

4) Jim Johnson was a temporary hire who did not really receive preferential treatment on his mortgage, and the fact that he was pressured out was both sad and ironic, given that McCain has worse within his permanent campaign team.
Conclusions:
Any hint of professional wrongdoing on Obama's part is still sorely lacking, so the right-wing smear jobs have gotten more and more personal, now going after his wife.

The Importance of Skepticism

When I am asked by my Christian friends how I can reject the historicity of the Gospels, I am reminded of the story of Ronald Edwin Hunkeler, the young boy who would later be depicted as a possessed child in The Exorcist book and movie.

About a year and a half ago, I strong-armed my wife into agreeing to watch The Exorcist with me. I was falling asleep about an hour into it, while she was starting to get frightened, and used the excuse of my non-interest to turn it off. I can remember her mentioning at some time that the demonic voices and sounds in the movie were from some "real" exorcisms, added for authenticity and scare effect; I'd heard this before. I can also remember people talking about how this movie, based on the novel of the same name, was derived from a true story. Now, this is where the title of my post starts to come in.

It turns out that there is a real story upon which the movie is based; it's definitely interesting to read about. Mark Opsasnick is to thank, or blame, if you want to see it that way, for correcting decades of misinformation, legend and myth about the story. For years, the location and identity of the boy had been misreported in newspapers, books and movies. The truth behind the story is that of a boy named Ronald Edwin Hunkeler, who originally hailed from the St. Louis area but then came with his family to the DC area at around the age of four (in late 1939). The young man was often in trouble growing up, and described by his best friend as "a mean bastard," but until about the 8th grade, lived a fairly unremarkable life. In the year 1949, he was felt to be possessed by his mother and grandmother, and sent out of town for it to be dealt with. He went through some sort of weeks-long exorcism process, beginning in March 1949, at both a rectory at St. Francis Xavier College Church on the Saint Louis University campus and in the Alexian Brothers Hospital. He was living elsewise at the home of an uncle in St. Louis, and then a short time later, returned the DC area. He then went on to graduate from Gonzaga College High School in 1954 and, presumably, lead a normal life.

These facts were only found out after Mark's extensive investigating, which turned up the suburban DC address as 3807 40th Ave, Cottage City, MD. The longstanding myth, reinforced by many news reports, had always been that 3210 Bunker Hill Road, Mount Rainier, MD, was the site, and that the family only came to the DC area for the exorcism. The myths were so pervasive that a book published to "set the record straight" in 1993 included false reports from neighbors of the Bunker Hill house reporting hearing "maniacal screams" and seeing strange lights around the house in question. It had to be republished after Mark's investigative work uncovered these falsehoods in 2000, and it included almost 100 more pages than the original.

Using Google Maps, it seems a mere 600 m separates the two houses, and the priests used a false address when talking to the media to protect the boy's identity. Mark's purpose had been served once he positively identified the house, name of the family, and general timeline of the events that transpired. He did not set out to chronicle the events of the exorcism himself.

Mark himself concludes, at the end of the investigation:

While Rob Doe was unaware of it at the time, the events that centered around the troublesome teenage boy from Cottage City between January and April 1949 would later have a profound effect on people all over the globe. As the inspiration for The Exorcist, this case emerged as one of the most significant examples of paranormal phenomena in history. It spawned movies, books, and videos, and influenced hundreds of “copycat” cases around the world that led to exorcism-styled assaults, mutilations, and even deaths.

Despite the widespread popularity of this story in the aftermath of William Peter Blatty’s novel and movie, no one had ever actually investigated this case prior to my involvement. Rob Doe had never been interviewed, nor identified. No investigator had ever talked with his childhood friends or people from the neighborhood in which he grew up. In fact, no journalist ever got the location right in the first place. All previous accounts had placed the boy at 3210 Bunker Hill Road in Mount Rainier, an inexcusable error.

With the completion of this adventure we now know who the boy was, where he really lived, where he attended school, who his friends were, what his family life was like, and what behavior and personality traits he exhibited before his alleged “possession.” The credibility of the mysterious diary has now been called into question. I have shown that Father Walter Halloran—the one living, talking eyewitness to the St. Louis exorcism attempts, maintains that he did not witness any supernatural behavior by Rob Doe—no strange foreign languages (other than mimicked Latin), no changes in tone of voice, no prodigious strength, no excessive vomiting or urinating, and—to top it off—he is uncertain about the nature of the markings or skin brandings on the boy’s body. Perhaps most important of all, this case illustrates the need in paranormal investigation for close scrutiny of both initial newspaper accounts and highly touted individuals as providers of information. In this instance, both sources muddled the picture by embellishing the story when facts were uncertain.

I am reminded, as I read this, of how the human ability to embellish and "finish" stories for other people (by filling in what we believe are reasonable guesses into the gaps) can not only start a simple rumor, but end up enshrined in news reports, books and lore. And what we have to realize is that at this time in history, post-WWII, people were generally prosperous and modernist in their thinking. Telephones, automobiles, tape recorders, typewriters...all tools with which we assume reporters were familiar and employed in their pursuit of truth. Given that to this day, reasonable, intelligent, educated people living in the 21st C still believe that the person in question lived in Mt. Rainier, that exorcisms took place in the house in MD, that one of the priests was severely wounded by a bed spring, &c., is it really that difficult to see how myths and legends and lore crop up? This is in the 21st century! Imagine in the time of the Romans, when no phones for long-distance conversation and interviews, no easy transport for conversation and interviews, no tools for rapid transcription, no tools for easy and permanent preservation of records...

Is it really hard to see why it is important to be skeptical of extraordinary claims?

River Front Magazine has a long investigative article on the St. Louis side to the story, where the exorcisms actually occurred, given that the boy, upon whom the book and later movie would be based, lived at 8435 Roanoke Drive in St. Louis for a little while in spring 1949, after being sent away from DC for his "treatment"...

I've posted the full-text of the article below.

In conclusion, all I can say is that if such myths as these were able to take root and enshrine themselves in newspapers, in a day and age when such technology and modernism exists that people are naturally skeptical of such stories...how much the more so in a day and age like that of the historical Jesus, when people already knew little to nothing of naturalism/science and were very superstitious and religious? If the basic facts of the story behind The Exorcist could be this far removed from that depicted in the novel and movie and news reports, how much more so the tales in the Gospels? See Dan Barker for more on this idea, and the way he charted the number of miracles and embellishments as a function of Biblical chronology.

Skepticism is important: if we don't have solid standards for belief, if we don't seek to justify and find warrant for our beliefs, then we can literally walk around confident in false knowledge. Credulity is one thing, arrogance in error is even worse.

Hell of a House
For sale: three-bedroom Colonial in charming neighborhood. Hardwood floors. Lots of personality. And, oh yeah: Satan slept here.
By Chad Garrison
Published on October 26, 2005
http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2005-10-26/news/hell-of-a-house/full

For the residents of this tidy, tree-lined Bel-Nor neighborhood, the haunting story that surrounds the home at 8435 Roanoke Drive may be their worst-kept secret.

"Oh yeah, that's the house," confirms neighbor Cris Coy when asked if he's aware of the occult history of the two-story brick colonial next door.

"That's what they say," acknowledges Jean Kustura, a 72-year-old widow who for twenty years has kept watch over the north St. Louis County neighborhood from her bungalow on the other side of the infamous house. "But all of that happened back in the 1940s. I'm told the victim is still alive. He won't talk about it."

Other neighbors, including the couple across the street and several families living on adjacent blocks, are also quick to share the mysterious story of the house. Indeed, it seems the only people who aren't eager to recount the sordid tale are the home's current owner, Gary Stafford, and the real-estate agent trying to sell the house.

"I don't want to talk about it," bristles realtor Patrick McLaughlin before quickly hanging up the phone. "It's not going to help me sell the home."

Stafford, a real-estate investor who has never lived in the three-bedroom house, says he became aware of the "rumors" only after he purchased it out of bankruptcy this summer. The last person to occupy the residence, a man named Elvis Fantroy, left the building in June and hasn't been heard from since.

"I don't think publicizing it is a good thing," says Stafford, who's asking $169,900 for the sturdy 63-year-old domicile that has been on the market more than two months. "It's certainly not something we'd need to disclose to the future buyer -- that, some 50 years ago, a boy who stayed in the house may or may not have been possessed."

"Besides," adds Stafford, attempting to further distance his investment from the events purported to have occurred there, "the exorcism didn't happen there. It happened at [Saint Louis University]."

But the fact remains that the real-life story behind author William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel The Exorcist had its origins in St. Louis.

Legend tells of an ill thirteen-year-old boy who, in the late winter of 1949, traveled to St. Louis from suburban Washington, D.C. Convinced the child was possessed by the Devil, Jesuit priests from Saint Louis University performed a grueling month-long exorcism on the boy, at last freeing the teen from Satan's grasp in the psych ward at Alexian Brothers Hospital.

Whether the child was actually possessed is still a matter of debate, but the fact that priests did perform the archaic ritual of the exorcism is not.

Blatty used a diary kept by one of the exorcists as the basis of his 1971 book, which rode atop best-seller lists for 54 weeks. When Blatty's seminal shocker hit theaters two years later, filmgoers across the nation threw up in the aisles and ran screaming from movie houses. There were also reports of people conducting their own gothic exorcisms, killing several "possessed" victims in the process.

Reacting to the hysteria, several priests with intimate knowledge of the St. Louis exorcism came forward to angrily deny some of the more outrageous claims made in the movie, such as the possessed child masturbating with a bloody crucifix and spewing pea-soup-like vomit.

But the priests did not deny that the exorcism took place in St. Louis. Follow-up news articles, some based on excerpts from the diary Blatty used to pen his book, placed the exorcism at the rectory of St. Francis Xavier College Church on the Saint Louis University campus and in the Alexian Brothers Hospital.

But missing from almost all accounts is mention of the St. Louis residence where the boy stayed prior to being moved to the rectory and, finally, the hospital.

But that house was almost certainly the property Stafford recently purchased at 8435 Roanoke Drive. With both the church rectory and the Alexian Brothers Hospital having been razed decades ago, the home remains the last surviving landmark associated with the ghastly story.

It is within that nondescript brick home that some of the most spellbinding tales of the exorcism occurred.

Priests report arriving at the house on March 9, 1949, to witness the boy's bed shaking uncontrollably. At the mention of the scriptures, the boy screamed out in pain. Scrapes and welts -- some forming letters and words -- rose up inexplicably on his skin. A bottle of holy water flew through the air.

For two weeks the priests waged night-long battles with the demon inside the lone lit bedroom on Roanoke Drive.

That these scenes in the home are not addressed in the retelling of the exorcism is not surprising, given the extraordinary care the Jesuits took to conceal the identity of the possessed boy.

In fact, few of the St. Louis priests involved in the exorcism ever spoke of it. Father William Bowdern, who carried out the majority of the exorcism rituals, died in 1983 at the age of 85, never having disclosed what he knew of the case.

Father Raymond Bishop, who kept the diary of the exorcism, and Father William Van Roo, an attending priest, also remained tight-lipped, believing media attention violated the confidentiality of the possessed boy.

This past March, Father Walter Halloran, the last surviving Jesuit to take part in the exorcisms, died at 83.

Halloran was a 27-year-old history student at SLU when Bowdern recruited him for the exorcism. A handsome, athletic man who excelled in both football and track, Halloran provided much of the needed brawn, holding the flailing child while the priests read to him the rites of exorcism. During one episode the boy broke free of Halloran's grasp and punched him in the face, breaking his nose.

Unlike nearly all the other Jesuits with privileged information of the exorcism, Halloran shared what he knew of the case but always stopped short of saying anything that might identify the child. His most detailed recollections were told more than a decade ago to Washington, D.C.-based author Thomas B. Allen, who in 1993 published the book Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism.

The book relied heavily on Halloran's account of the exorcism and, most important, an unedited copy of the exorcism diary he provided. The result is an enthralling day-by-day chronicle of the possession, beginning on January 15, 1949, when the boy's family first heard odd noises in their suburban D.C. abode, and ending April 19, when Bowdern is said to have finally cast Satan from the boy.

In one account, Allen describes the night the exorcism began in the Bel-Nor home's second-floor bedroom.

"Something now rippled on Robbie's right leg," writes Allen, using a pseudonym to identify the boy. "As Bowdern again commanded the demon to identify himself, red welts formed an image on the leg. It was, the witnesses later said, an image of the Devil."

The true identity of the boy and his family has never before been publicized. A dozen years following the release of his book, Allen still declines to disclose the name made available to him in Halloran's unedited diary.

"Soon after the book came out, a television show offered me $15,000 if I'd identify the kid," says Allen when contacted by phone at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. "I passed on it. During the research for my book I sent the kid -- then in his mid- to late 50s -- two letters to the address where I believed he lived. I never heard back from him, and I have to respect his privacy."

In the book, Allen identifies the St. Louis home as belonging to the boy's paternal uncle and depicts it simply as "a two-story brick house set back behind a front-yard lawn on a quiet street in a suburb a few miles northwest of St. Louis."

How, then, can we be sure the house on Roanoke was indeed the site of the exorcism? The answer comes circuitously, by way of Allen's report. While the author provides scant detail of the house, he does provide the address of the residence in Mt. Rainier, Maryland (just north of Washington, D.C.), where the boy is said to have lived at the time of the possession. That home, listed as 3210 Bunker Hill Road, received far greater notoriety than its counterpart in St. Louis.

Allen writes that the family moved away a short time after the exorcism. The property sat vacant for years. The home was known by locals as the "Devil's House"; teenagers dared each other to enter. Vagrants squatted in it, often setting parts of the house ablaze with their cooking fires.

By the early 1960s, the ramshackle structure -- believed by many to be cursed -- became such a nuisance that the local fire department used it as a training exercise, systematically burning the house room by room. Today all that's left is an empty lot, but that doesn't stop thrill-seekers from congregating on the very spot where they believe the Devil possessed a little boy.

Sadly for the thrill-seekers, the property is most likely not the true site of the possession. Prompted in part by Allen's book, Washington, D.C., writer Mark Opsasnick began researching the owners of the property on Bunker Hill Road. He discovered that the couple who lived there in 1949 did not have children. Working with clues gathered from Allen's book as well as dozens of news articles telling the "real-life" story behind The Exorcist, Opsasnick determined the boy grew up in nearby Cottage City, Maryland.

In 1998 Opsasnick published his findings in Strange Magazine, a publication dedicated to the unearthly and paranormal. In what is undoubtedly the most comprehensive investigation into the boy's identity, Opsasnick chronicles how his research led him to a home at 3807 40th Avenue in Cottage City. Dozens of interviews with people who knew the family living there at the time confirmed the author's hunch that the Cottage City address was in fact home to a family whose child became "sick" in the winter of 1949 and went to St. Louis for treatment.

Although Opsasnick never identifies the child or the family by name (he uses the pseudonym "John Doe" throughout the article), he leaves valuable clues for anyone wanting to out the family, including which census books, municipal directories and libraries he used to verify the family's name and address.

When reached by phone earlier this month, the periodicals clerk at the Hyattsville Library in suburban Washington, D.C., reported that the 1949 directory Opsasnick cited in his article had been stolen but proudly noted the library did have the same directory for 1954.

In his article Opsasnick writes that Maryland land records show the family lived at the same Cottage City address from the years 1939 to 1958, meaning the 1954 address should have the same name for the family living at the address in 1949. That name: Hunkeler. Mr. Edwin E. Hunkeler and his wife, Odell.

The same last name is listed for the home on Roanoke Drive, according to the St. Louis County municipal directory for 1949. Leonard C. Hunkeler -- the paternal uncle of the possessed boy -- and his wife, Doris, occupied the home from 1942 (the year the house was built) until sometime in the early 1950s.

As to the identity of the possessed boy: His last name was most certainly that of his father, Hunkeler. No verifiable media report has ever given his full name (or, for that matter, the last name of Hunkeler), but at least two Web sites, one claiming to have obtained the unedited exorcism diary and another that ostensibly retraced the clues given in Opsasnick's article, give the name as Ronald Hunkeler.

But just what occurred in the Hunkeler residence in the early morning hours of 1949? For that we turn to the diary of the exorcism, a copy of which Thomas Allen furnished the Riverfront Times.

Written in stark and stilted prose, the 26-page document begins at the home in Cottage City. It is there that the family reported hearing strange noises in the walls and beneath the floorboards. The scratching sounds continued for several days before becoming silent to everyone but the thirteen-year-old boy, who also complained of hearing "squeaking shoes" circling his bed at night.

In his book Possessed, Allen writes that the boy's favorite aunt, a spiritualist from St. Louis, introduced the child to the Ouija board during one of her earlier visits and suggests the boy may have channeled the possession through the board game. The diary, however, makes no mention of the Ouija board but does refer to the aunt. It was her ghost that the family first believed to be behind the noises.

But soon the spirit transformed from poltergeist to sinister specter. The boy's bed shook wildly throughout the night. Bibles and holy relics flew through the air. Claw-like scratches raked the child as he slept. When the word "Louis" rose up on his ribs, the family decided a trip to visit relatives in St. Louis might rid them of the haunting.

On Wednesday, March 9, 1949, Father Bishop visited the family at their relative's home on Roanoke Drive. Bishop, a professor at Saint Louis University and the author of the exorcism diary, blessed the entire dwelling before entering the bedroom, where he found the boy lying perfectly still on a bed that was rattling violently.

Writing in third-person and referring to the possessed boy by his first initial of R, the author reports: "Bishop sprinkled St. Ignatius Holy Water on the bed in the form of a cross. The movement ceased quite abruptly. During the course of fifteen minutes of activity a sharp pain seemed to have struck R on his stomach and he cried out. The mother quickly pulled back the bed covers and lifted the boy's pajama top enough to show zig-zag scratches in bold red lines."

Friday, March 11: Bishop returned with Father Bowdern, the pastor of St. Francis Xavier College Church. "The boy was dozing when the bottle of St. Ignatius Holy Water was thrown from a table two feet from R's bed into a nearby corner, a distance of approximately six feet." Five minutes later: "A bookcase was moved from alongside the bed and turned completely around facing the entrance of the room."

Wednesday, March 16: The priests obtained approval from St. Louis archbishop Joseph E. Ritter to administer the rites of exorcism as spelled out in the centuries-old Catholic prayer book, the Roman Ritual.

That night, the diary reports, "Father Bowdern in surplice and stole began the prayers of exorcism. On the first 'Praecipio' there was immediate action. Three large parallel bars were scratched on the boy's stomach. From then on at the names of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother and St. Michael scratches appeared on the boy's legs, thighs, stomach, back, chest, face and throat. The most distinct marking on the body were the pictures of the Devil on R's right leg and the word 'HELL' imprinted on R's chest."

The nightly interventions at 8435 Roanoke Drive would continue for the next week, the child's reaction to the exorcism growing more extreme by the day.

From the Friday, March 18, entry: "The prayers of the exorcism were continued and R was seized violently so that he began to struggle with his pillow and the bed clothing. The arms, legs, and head of R had to be held by three men. The contortions revealed physical strength beyond the natural power. R spit at the faces of those who held him and at those who prayed over him. He spit at the relics and at the priests' hands. He writhed under the sprinkling of Holy Water. He fought and screamed in a diabolical, high-pitched voice."

The night of Sunday, March 20, Bishop reports, the boy reacted with more violence than on any previous occasion: "The high point of the evening were urinations which really burned R, breaking wind through rectum three different times, and cursing the exorcists. Some of the vulgarity follows: 'Go to hell, you dirty sons of bitches. You dirty assholes.'"

Monday, March 21, the family, having had little sleep since the exorcism began, agreed to move the boy to Alexian Brothers Hospital for the night. For the next several weeks, the boy would move from the hospital to the College Church rectory and back to the home on Roanoke Drive, even returning to Cottage City for a few days when the priests erroneously thought the boy was cured.

The climax came the day after Easter -- Monday, April 18 -- when the boy awoke in a furor inside the psych ward of the Alexian Brothers Hospital. His seizures and spells continued through the morning, with the priests placing medals, rosaries and relics around his neck. In his hand they placed a crucifix.

The boy mocked the priests, saying, "He has to say one more word, one little word, I mean one BIG word. He'll never say it. I am always in him. I may not have much power always, but I am in him. He will never say that word."

Still, the priests endured, holding council over the boy in one final push to exorcise the demon. At 10:45 p.m. the boy lay still. In clear, commanding tones he shouted out: "Satan! Satan! I am St. Michael, and I command you Satan, and the other evil spirits to leave the body in the name of Dominus, immediately. Now! NOW! N-O-W!"

Seven minutes later the boy awoke to announce, "He's gone."

During his final spell, the diary reports, the boy saw a vision of the Devil and "ten of his helpers" engaged in a fiery battle with St. Michael the Archangel. At one point during the dream, the angel smiled at the boy and said "Dominus" (Latin for Lord), the word the boy vowed he'd never say that morning.

The exorcised boy, presumably Ronald Hunkeler, is reported to be living somewhere on the East Coast. He is now 70 years old. Rumor has it he named his first son Michael, after the archangel who rescued him from Satan's clutches. He supposedly has never spoken about the exorcism.

A brief addendum to the diary reports that the boy and his family returned to visit the Alexian Brothers in August 1951. The entry describes the boy, then sixteen, as a "fine young man" and tells that his father and mother converted to Catholicism shortly after the exorcism.

Little else has been officially reported on the event by SLU or the Alexian Brothers. Neither institution claims to keep extensive records of what is arguably the most famous, if not sensational, event in their history.

"Oh yeah, we get this question every year around Halloween," says SLU archivist John Wade, barely suppressing a yawn. "We have a file on the exorcism, but it's mostly just newspaper clippings."

In suburban Chicago, at the national offices of the Alexian Brothers, archivist Donna Dahl keeps a tight rein on any information regarding the case.

"This person was a patient and covered under the clause of confidentiality," says Dahl. "We don't release any information on our patients, no matter how bizarre the circumstances under which they were admitted."

Within the chancellery, Fathers William Faherty, 90, and Frank Cleary, 76, are two of the handful of people still living with any institutional memory of the exorcism, and both men knew several of the SLU priests involved.

"I was an undergraduate at SLU in 1949 when this was going on," recalls Cleary, who retired from teaching theology at the university a few years ago. "There were plenty of rumors about it at the time."

Cleary says it was only after the release of the film The Exorcist -- 24 years after the St. Louis exorcism -- that anyone made a big deal out of the case. "I tell students that it was probably not a bona fide case of possession," says Cleary.

As for the welts and scrapes that rose up on the boy during the rites of the exorcism?

"I'm told," says Cleary, "that is something people can do psychologically. It's like blushing."

Father Faherty, professor emeritus of history at SLU, isn't so sure. He knows his friend Father Halloran continued to believe in the possession up to his death earlier this year.

"You see from the gospel evidence of evil's influence on the individual, and the gospel took those to be possessions," reflects Faherty. "I'll leave it up to the experts."

Regardless of the veracity of the possession, the exorcism clearly put an emotional and physical strain on all involved, especially Father William Bowdern, who fasted throughout the duration of the lengthy ordeal.

"He must have lost thirty to forty pounds," recalls 80-year-old Betty LaBarge, a relative of Bowdern who had the priest over for dinner late into the exorcism. "He looked terrible, just fatigued. When we asked him what was wrong, he simply turned the conversation. It wasn't until years later we learned he played the leading role in the exorcism. Still he never did talk about it. The word came from others involved."

The only person still living in St. Louis with first-hand knowledge of the exorcism may be 86-year-old Brother John Grider. He was one of dozens of Alexian Brothers working in the hospital in 1949.

"I've never talked to the media about it, and I prefer to keep it that way," says the frail voice over the phone. "It's not something that should be publicized."

But try telling that to the residents on Roanoke Drive, where rumors persist that the "Exorcist house" remains a portal to the netherworld.

Next-door neighbor Jean Kustura tells how the young couple living in the house years earlier complained of the northwest bedroom -- where the exorcism is said to have occurred -- being eerily cold and drafty.

Greg LaFontain, a Bel-Nor neighbor on nearby Bellerive Drive, recalls the time he and his wife, Elizabeth, toured the house years ago when it was up for sale. Upon ascending the stairs an illness swept over Elizabeth, who ran from the house. When her husband joined her on the front lawn, Elizabeth was adamant that they not purchase the home.

Mark Willingham has heard all the tales and laughs them off.

From 1991 to 1999 he and his wife, Diane, lived at the home before moving to the Central West End and later to a house in mid-county. A no-nonsense insurance adjuster, Willingham says he learned of the home's occult past only after he purchased it.

"Sure, it came as quite a shock," he recalls. But Willingham maintains that nothing out of the ordinary ever occurred in the house while he lived there, and he assures future homeowners that they, too, have nothing to fear.

"We loved that house," he adds wistfully. "Way I see it, the place was blessed so many times during the exorcism, it's probably the safest home in all St. Louis."

It really isn't so hard to think that just as modern-day legends abound on Roswell and UFO encounters and exorcisms, so too do ancient ones abound about magic Messiahs and miracles.
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Technorati tags: Skepticism

The joke that is political news

Ok, so I said a while back that the whole "liberal media" thing was getting old. Although one of the issues was brought a little balance, you saw very little looping of the audio or Youtube videos of Hagee on evening newscasts. This is what motivates me to derisively refer to the term, and supports my contention that the media is hardly interested in "helping" Obama. As of now, it's just a joke to pretend that he is a "media darling" as some claim. (report)

In effectively clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama survived late firestorms of news coverage about his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which was by far the dominant media story of the entire campaign, according to an independent research organization.

The story of Wright and his race-based rants against United States policies surfaced in March and received four times more coverage than any other theme or event throughout the campaign, according to data compiled by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the Pew Research Center in Washington. The issue undercut Obama with working-class white voters in the later primaries, most analysts have said.

Over the last five months of the campaign through June 1, Obama received significantly more news coverage than the other candidates. He was a major figure in 63.5 percent of campaign stories, compared with 54 percent for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who started the contest last year as the odds-on favorite. Both Democrats received more than double the coverage accorded presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, who was a prime subject in 26 percent of stories, the survey also found.

No other story line came close to attracting as much coverage as the Wright-Obama association, and most of it was negative. The nonpartisan project monitored and coded about 300 to 400 campaign stories per week in nearly 50 news media outlets, including newspapers, broadcast and cable television, radio, and Internet news sites, tracking campaign stories in which the candidates received at least 25 percent of the print space or broadcast time.

Yeah...real "liberal media" for you. Excellence in journalism. It's time for "silly season" in campaign coverage to be over; we need journalism that does justice to the gravity of the issues that our country and our world are facing. See the whole report for more.

*Oh, and not that this joke qualifies as a journalist, but he does reveal the paucity of tools in the GOP toolbox: Red Scare is still one of the few.*

On a more positive note, let's hope Obama shows 'em all and gets 40% of the Evangelical vote, as per RR flack Mark DeMoss.

*Check out the remix of 2Pac and Nas about Obama*

Correlations between reading and politics, religion

It's never as simple as we want it to be.

I want more people to read, and I complain about reading in America. Then, on the other hand, I wish that people read less of the same ol', same ol' religious stuff and tried a solid philosophical treatise on morality or metaphysics. It really seems that a lot of what people read is fluff and at least partially ahistorical, given Americans' preferences for religious reading. The trend is moving at least in part away from these books, so that's encouraging...

That said, there is evidence that people who are nonreligious and those who are politically liberal read more than those who are religious and political conservatives.

People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.

There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.

The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories.

Can we infer causation from correlation? I don't think so.

One of the reasons I reject IQ comparisons between theists and atheists is the point that if you can find me even a few people with very high IQs who are theists (or atheists), then any "argument" based on studies that show a disparity in IQ between the two person groups is flawed: even if on average, smart people are believers, or disbelievers, it would be cum hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Although I don't imply causation from correlation with reading, I do think it's worth thinking about why the correlation exists. Before I'm accused of meanness or prejudice, I pointed out that the anti-intellectualism on display in many Evangelical churches is not to be taken as a logical connection between religion and anti-intellectualism. That said, I think that part of being religious is taking doubt and skepticism seriously, and I think that this requires a lot of reading outside of one's own "comfort zone(s)" and world view(s). Here, there is real evidence that certain forms and brands of religion, especially those that equivocate on faith as certitude, discourage reading materials that may "incur doubt" or "lead one astray" or some similar sentiment. Perhaps there is truth in it.

After all, if, as I think to be the case, religions are all based on ahistorical myths and/or false premises about the nature of god(s) and revelation, then a serious analysis of religion done by smart skeptics will poke holes in anyone's certitudes. And if the religion one adheres to carries a threat of everlasting torment if said adherent doubts or loses faith, then it is logical for its religious leaders to exhort followers to avoid reading treatises on atheism/skepticism. Hell, just look at what Paul said about wisdom and philosophy, and his warnings of those with "false teachings" and such. So, is it prudent, then, to "flee" from reading materials whose conclusions you know to be in opposition to the religion you espouse?

Perhaps it is.

Maybe believers are right for sticking to reading materials that don't "endanger" their souls. I guess Calvinists don't worry about such subtleties.

I wonder, if the Bible and religious books were filtered out of reading surveys, what the results would look like. Until I have some data, I'm just speculating and pissing in the wind...

I did like the statistics that show the most popular books on college campuses, and the correlation with SAT scores at those schools has to mean something. But what conclusions can be drawn between one's reading habits and one's IQ or religious preference? Not too much. I know that I and a lot of other nonbelievers spend what is probably a surprisingly large amount of time reading "religious materials" and/or scriptures. Obviously, we do so in large part due to education and arguments' sake, rather than edification.

Bush lied. People died. (and are still dying)

After the invasion of Iraq, as I've said before, I was blissfully unaware of the false intelligence used as justification for pre-emptive war. I saw people screaming, "Bush lied, people died!" Basically, I just thought they were "shrill" or "unhinged" or, in Orally's language, "far-left"...I thought that any mistakes made were made by intel people, and that the president was honest and didn't know any better.

Now we all know better.

The just-released report from Congress shows that Bush and Cheney used false intelligence that they knew was false in their arguments to the public.

Iraq is still a cancer, and it always will be. People want to say, "Okay, mistakes were made, but what is next?" Unfortunately, the fact that we involved ourselves in an immoral war makes ending this war as soon as possible the only moral option.

My "I told you so" moment

Ok, so it's time to gloat. Here is his full speech, and it is a great one.

Almost a year and a half ago, I put in my lot with Obama. In re-reading that post, it saddens me to see how much the Muslim rumors, propagated in large part by FauxNews' false report that he attended a Madrassa, have persisted. It also saddened me to see how race has played into the elections in large part due to Appalachian demographics. (BTW, see Montana, Iowa, Idaho...&c as a refutation of the claim that Obama can't win "working class whites").

Although there have been ups and downs, I saw his potential early on and I still see it.

He will make an excellent president.

Below, I've posted an electoral map prediction from Markos. I think it looks pretty good: Obama 283 - McCain 255. I would put money on an Obama win in 5 months just as I did put money on his primary victory in January 2007.

I can't wait!

Teacher ratings

At the end of a long and weary first year teaching, I am reflecting on my own job performance. Although I put in a lot of hours at times, I see in retrospect that a lot of my time was wasted on things that didn't necessarily translate to student learning or teacher improvement. I think I learned more about teaching this year than the students learned about chemistry...

What I would like to find out is some objective student feedback. Preferably feedback during the summer so that I can adjust my tactics accordingly and also because they'll have time to reflect and be a little less emotive in the ranking itself.

I remember discovering during my TA days at UF the ratemyprofessor.com site, and finding myself pleasantly surprised at my statistics there:

Daniel Morgan's Scorecard:

* No. of Ratings: 13
* Average Easiness: 4.2
* Average Helpfulness: 4.9
* Average Clarity: 4.5
* Hotness Total: 0
* Overall Quality: 4.7

These are all ranked out of an upper bound of 5. I was pleasantly surprised with the results I saw, and I asked my students one or two semesters to please go online and throw in their $0.02 some time. What really broke my heart is that no one gave me a Chile pepper (a "hot" rating)...

I checked ratemyteachers.com and found my name absent from the Hammond School listings, so I just went in and added it. Looking at the dates on some of the reviews, it doesn't seem all too popular a site for the students. Perhaps they have another one that is favored, or perhaps (as is my experience with them) they really aren't as into online tools like this as the hype attributed.