Bodhi Tree Swaying

Does this “evil” guy look familiar?

“Paid for by the Republican Party of Virginia”

Classy.

From TPM, via WoodMoor Village Zendo.

Wired reports:

The Sacramento County Republican Party hosted a graphic this week comparing Obama to Osama bin Laden, with the caption “The only difference between Obama and Osama is BS,”The Sacramento Bee reports. The text of the graphic adds, “Waterboard Barack Obama.”

The site — an official GOP site — recycles many already-debunked lies about Obama, attributing to him damaging quotes that were actually fabricated by other Republicans, such as this one that was invented by the Arizona Conservative, which claims that Obama refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance with an equally false quote: “I don’t want to be perceived as taking sides. There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression. And the anthem itself conveys a war-like message.”

Kristof is a man with a fine conscience and a passionate concern for Africa, born of having visited some of the poorest people there and having seen their sufferings. He describes today how Bush’s “religious” sentiments and ignorance will cause the deaths of African women, and how McCain plans to keep up these “good works.”

The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa.

Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along with more women dying in childbirth.

The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. Senator Obama supports U.N.-led efforts to promote family planning; Senator McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.

There is something about

…

I’m having a rather frustrating week, with not enough time for writing — just two days out of the whole week are days I can sit down and work on my book. And that’s not leaving much time for writing here, either. So in lieu of any substantive comments of mine on the political storm going on (assuming I’m capable of such a thing), let me refer you to a few posts by other Buddhists.

WoodMoor Village Zendo decries how McCain and Palin’s discourse is creating an atmosphere of polarization and potential violence. I quite agree. This is a big concern of mine. The US has a history of political violence, and most of it has been directed at figures on the left: JFR, RFK, MLK, to name but a few.

The Buddha Diaries reprints a letter to John McCain that Peter wrote on HuPo. Again the theme is how …

The following video was posted at the WoodMoor Village Zendo website. Digital Dharma also covers this story. It’s a really disturbing expose of the brutal practice of hunting wolves from airplanes.

I’m still thinking about Buddhism and politics, and there are some recent posts in the buddhoblogsphere that give food for thought.

At Peaceful Turmoil an unnamed blogger asks thus:

Schaudenfreuda [sic] is not a spiritual virtue. Yet parody can be a way of expressing suppressed or impolite things and giving people a new perspective. So what does that mean for those who do not support Sarah Palin or the Republican ticket for the White House in 2008 who also commit themselves to compassion and sympathy for others? Is it OK to laugh?

This gives rise to a couple of thoughts. First, schadenfreude, which is taking pleasure in another’s pain, is indeed neither spiritual nor a virtue. Second, laughing at someone is not necessarily the same thing as taking pleasure in their pain. We can laugh out of embarrassment, or because the person has said something unintentionally funny, or because a sense …

A couple of great articles on McCain’s bad week:

Oh, the Drama!

McCain, the former fighter pilot who seems to have found his calling as a kamikaze politician.

The Bull Leaves the China Shop

…he’s proven to be a bull in a china shop–or, more accurately, a bull that 1) misleadingly says the china shop is in disarray before he enters; 2) vows not to leave until he cleans up; 3) enters and shatters everything in sight; 4) blames everyone else for the damage and 5) leaves, claiming a job well done.

Incidentally, I watched the debate at my father-in-law’s place and thought that McCain did well. In fact I thought that Obama was on the defensive and that McCain had the upper hand. Obama struck me as taking too cerebral an approach, much as Kerry did in 2004 with all these four or five-point lists, and that it was McCain who …

Auntie at Buddhajones explains why she’s an undecided voter (not enamored with McCain but not confident in Obama’s ability to deliver) and asks: “Am I a Buddhist heretic because I’m not on the Obama bandwagon?”

Tinythinker at peacefulturmoil invites Buddhist conservatives (or at least non-liberals) to come out of the political closet. He or she raises an interesting point that I’ve also been dwelling on, which is that conservatism doesn’t per se have to be about being for the wealthy and against the poor, or anti-equality. I’m starting to think of American conservatism as being an anomaly, although perhaps I have in mind a non-anomalous conservatism that doesn’t exist.

Terence at Republic of T expresses some heartfelt outrage at John McCain’s asking for a time-out from the presidential campaign and from the first presidential debate. Like him, I (cynic as I sometimes am) started wondering whether McCain was avoiding …

I’m troubled when Obama distorts the truth, but more troubled by McCain’s distortions, simply because they’re more common and often more serious.

But I’m really troubled that a major part of the McCain campaign is apparently based on a) getting ghostwriters to lie by writing fictional letters, and b) getting ordinary members of the public to lie by claiming that the letters are their own and putting their names to them. News of this comes from a Salon article, which is a translation of a piece written for a Dutch newspaper. I’ve reproduced the entire article below.

I guess this is disturbing to me because it’s not just a question of a politician bending the truth, or of a politician’s campaign team bending the truth, but because it’s the encouragement of lying as a social norm. “If you’re with us, then the truth doesn’t matter,” is what the message seems to …

Jeff Wilson has a thoughtful article about Buddhism and politics:

As the American and Canadian elections approach, there’s been much discussion among North American Buddhists over how Buddhism relates to politics. Among many converts to Buddhism, at least those willing to speak publicly on the matter, there’s a near unanimity that Buddhists must vote for Barack Obama because he is the only candidate whose views and policies align with good Dharma. The current issue of Shambhala Sun has an article extolling the revolutionary presence of Obama on the Democratic ticket, and while it doesn’t explicitly endorse him, the overwhelmingly positive way in which he is discussed leaves little doubt as to where the author’s and editors’ sympathies lie. Likewise, here on the Tricycle Editors Blog, a recent post urging people to vote was signed only by convert white Buddhists, and while it too doesn’t explicitly endorse Obama, the

…

Further to yesterday’s post, here’s one from the WaPo on how conservatives handle information that disproves their beliefs: yes, contradictory information only strengthens their existing convictions.

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration’s prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation — the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration’s claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

A similar “backfire effect” also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One

…

An interesting article on the psychology of conservatism:

“[People displaying] measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism and gun control,” the team wrote in its report, to be published in the journal Science tomorrow.

“Individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism and the Iraq War.”

From: Conservatives Have Stronger Startle Reflexes?

This backs up other similar findings, such as those in this Psychology Today piece:

In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children’s temperaments. They weren’t even thinking about political orientation.

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects’ childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers

…

I’ve become an addict of the new Ideas blog at the New York Times — a collection of brief “what we’re reading” posts by Tom Kuntz and other editors of the Week in Review. I’m a big fan. I love the blog.

But one post today was atrocious in its inaccuracy, and jumped on a bandwagon that caused a good man to lose his job.

The post reads:

United Kingdom Come

Religion | News from the land where Darwin appears on the 10-pound note: creationism is making a comeback in Britain, say its believers and critics. Witness the creationism museum in Portsmouth. More significant, the Royal Society — Darwin’s old crowd — now says creationism should be taught in science classes as a legitimate point of view. [London Times, BBC]

The “controversy” is a fake one. Professor Michael Reiss of the Royal Society had said this:

“Creationism has no scientific basis.

“However, when young

…

Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science fiction writer, was notorious for being anti-religion, but he also had respect for Buddhism. I just came across the foreword he wrote to “The Buddha’s Teachings on Prosperity: At Home, At Work, In the World,” by Bhikkhu Rahula Basnagoda.

It’s an interesting evaluation of Buddhism by a religious skeptic.

Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke

I have to admit that there is some incongruity in a lifelong secularist like myself writing these words to introduce a book on the Buddha’s way to prosperity, wisdom, and inner peace. My views on religion have been widely publicized, and I believe all religions are a form of mind virus that affects otherwise healthy—and often educated—human beings.

Buddhism stands apart in being tolerant, accommodating, and pragmatic. Having lived for a half-century in Sri Lanka, I have seen how the Buddha’s teachings are applied by various groups in many different ways. Strange as

…

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said “I do” to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama were a member of the “Keating 5″? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is

…

There’s a fascinating interview with George Loewenstein over at Sci-Am describing a very elegant experiment that shows how a sense of poverty prompts people to buy lottery tickets:

We randomly assigned subjects to either feel relatively poor or relatively rich by having them complete demographic questions that included an item on annual income. The group made to feel poor was asked to provide its income on a scale that began at “less than $100,000″ and went up from there, ensuring that most respondents would be in the lowest income tier. The group made to feel subjectively wealthier was asked to report income on a scale that began with “less than $10,000″ and increased in $10,000 increments, leading most respondents to be in a middle tier. The group made to feel poor purchased twice as many lottery tickets (an average of 1.27) than those made to feel relatively wealthier (0.67 tickets, on

…

During the 2004 election season, [Palin's pastor, Ed Lanins] praised President Bush’s performance during a debate with Sen. John Kerry, then offered a not-so-subtle message about his personal candidate preferences. “I’m not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I’m sorry.” Kalnins added: “If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time.”

So there we have it — Kerry supporters are going to hell.

And that church’s nonprofit status should surely be in question — telling people they’re likely damned for voting for a particular party is outside the pale for a tax-exempt organization that’s forbidden to engage in political campaigning.

Kalnins bristled at the treatment President Bush was receiving over the federal government’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. “I hate criticisms towards the President,” he said, “because it’s like criticisms towards the pastor — it’s almost

…

A brilliantly logical piece in The Atlantic by Andrew Sullivan.

According to the logic that follows from the Bush administration’s claim that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques they use do not constitute torture:

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

There is much to enjoy in this account from Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald.

A resident of Wedderburn, Beatrice Alderden, has lodged with Campbelltown City Council her opposition to the Da Bao Monastery’s plans to expand its four-bedroom meditation retreat in O’Hares Road.

“It will really disturb our neighbours,” Mrs Alderden said yesterday. “It’s going to take away our peace, harmony, tranquillity and privacy.”

Buddhists battle residents over temple development – National – smh.com.au

The whole question of whether waterboarding is torture is a bogus one. Nazis were prosecuted at Nuremberg and found guilty of using this precise technique. And the fact that it’s even in question that it may not be torture to drown someone shows how low the current US administration has sunk on the scale of morality.

Nevertheless, because there is a pseudo debate, Christopher Hitchens bravely had himself subjected to waterboarding and describes his experiences in some detail in a Vanity Fair article.

Since the article is entitled “Believe Me, It’s Torture” I don’t need to beware of spoilers.

Some salient points to extract are:

1. The official lie is that this torture technique involves simulated drowning. That’s like saying that giving someone electric shocks is “simulated electrocution” or hanging someone by the neck is simulated hanging.” It’s real drowning, and is torture.

2. Any information extracted is likely to be worthless because people …