Fuck the Filibuster!

The Filibuster used to be done as a last resort for stopping legislation. It used to be that a Senator who resorted to it did so because he really, passionately felt that there was no other choice.

Those days are long gone.

Today, a filibuster is used to block anything and everything that the opposing party does if it happens to be in the majority. And that is done, not out of any principle based on sensible disagreements of opinion, but merely to prevent the other party from doing anything. Then, inevitably, it gets claimed in the next election that the party in power really hasn't done much of anything, and that you, the taxpayer, would be better off with the other party.

So what's highlighted this lately more than the healthcare debate? We started out with a full-fledged public option. That missed because it only had a 58% majority. It got paired back, still having public option, but less of it. That only had a 59% majority. Then it got paired back again, and again, we fell short with a 59% majority. Then it got paired back to the point where there was no public option at all, and not even an expension of Medicare unless you were 5 years older than it takes to join AARP! And now?

We're short by a mere 59% fucking majority!

Is anybody else sick of this goddamned game, yet? Is anybody else frustrated that 1% of the vote, named Joe Lieberman, gets to fuck up everything?

Okay, I know. The filibuster is a necessary tool to keep legislation from being made too easily. It's easy to imagine all kinds of scenarios where we would very much like to have a filibuster to keep disastrous legislation from going through, not the least of which was during the previous administration, when Bush would have literally thrown away all our civil rights to catch terrorists. But damn, isn't a 59% majority enough to pass anything anymore?

Part of the problem is the evaporation of the sensible middle. It used to be that there was a whole army of moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans who would get together in a dimly lit alcove room somewhere and say to each other, "Okay, guys, let's come up with a reasonable compromise, here." But those days are gone. It seems like the Democrats have only a few moderates, and the Republicans have told moderation to go fuck itself. As such, Democratic majorities have a hard time getting anything done, while Republican majorities tend to move slightly more quickly, but also tend to get nothing done. But without any moderates, its pretty much guaranteed that a few fuckheads are going to be able to jam up the entire process. We are currently witnessing that travesty.

This is why I'm writing this. The time has come to revisit the filibuster idea. 60% is too high. If the Senate needs 60% to get anything done, then nothing ever gets done. And in this day and age, that's unacceptable. Things are moving faster and faster. Faster transportation, faster technology, faster pace of world and current events. Gridlock is therefore death. A filibuster must therefore be able to be broken, and broken quickly.

So here's my battle cry: Fuck the Filibuster! I think it should be a MAJOR issue in the midterm elections to lower the filibuster break-vote from 60% down to 55%. I think every Senatorial candidate should be questioned about that issue, and nobody should be elected who answers, "No, I think 60% is fine." Fuck the Filibuster! The american people have spoken quite loudly about wanting a public option. DNA technology makes public option inevitable (as I've repeatedly pointed out), and if we put it off, then medical calamity will crush our economy as a result. FUCK THE FILIBUSTER! Fuck it now! If a 55% majority isn't reasonable, I don't know what is. FUCK THE FILIBUSTER!!!

Although I'd temporarily settle for legislation impeaching Joe Lieberman.

Eric

P.S. I'm DEAD serious! FUCK the Filibuster! I'd BETTER hear this on the campaign circuit in 2010!

Tiger Woods: My Hero!

I never much liked golf. So I never really became much of a Tiger Woods fan.

Until now.

Seems like the entire media circus is drumming on about Tiger's marital infidelities, how big a scandal this is, and how this will cause his sponsors to drop him. Over and over it's played how big a negative impact this is upon his image, and his career.

Fucking why?!

Okay, so we all used to think he was a pretty clean-cut golfer, who was tops at his game (which he still is) and was ground-breaking as one of the only minorities to make it in a predominantly white sport. Turns out, with his father out of the way, he's become something of a playboy, flirting around and sometimes even sleeping around with supermodels.

I hate to always be the one to point out the obvious, but, GOOD! He's banging cover girls on the side! Bully for him! So would I if I had his money and his fame. (Notice I didn't say his good looks, since I think I have the edge there, especially for women who go for bald guys.)

And so what if he is, anyway? Do we naively think that Jack Nicklaus never had an affair? Do we really imagine that pro golfers don't screw around just as much as any other celebrity? I should hope that we're not that myopic, especially in this day and age. Arguably, since golfers hobknob around the country club circuit as professionals in a field where doctors and lawyers play the game for recreation, you would think that they would make it a regular habit of sleeping with the ugly rich men's trophy wives. Why the hell not?

This isn't the end of his career. Tiger's just a golfer, people. He's not a Republican politician.

Frankly, instead of hiding from it, or making statements to the press about how embarrassed and ashamed he is, and calling for privacy, I think Tiger should do exactly the opposite. He should set up an interview for Playboy magazine, and confess all. "Hell yeah, I slept with several supermodels!" he should tell them. "Aren't you jealous?" He should tell the magazine, how many, how often, and brag about it. His wife's as good as gone anyway, what's he got to lose? After that, he should be given the key to the Playboy Mansion, and told to have himself a good time. And in embracing his new playboy image, he'll find his career is as solid as ever, and his sponsors will want even more of him. Those sponsors that don't want him, well, they'll be replaced with other sponsors, won't they? Tiger's just too good a commodity to lose, unless some CEO is a damned fool.

So why is everyone so convinced this is a negative, especially Tiger? Well, it probably has something to do with the fact that he's seen by most people to be a ground-breaking figure for civil rights. He does for golf what Jackie Robinson did for baseball and Barack Obama did for politics. Right?

Well, almost. It's never been forgotten how Tiger appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show and openly stated that he didn't really think of himself as black. (Gasps from the crowd.) He explained that his father was black, and that he was one quarter white and one quarter Phillippino. As such, the African-American community has never really seen him as an ideal hero. But he had such a clean-cut image that they put up with this blatant declaration of common sense to see him as one of their own anyway. Now that he's no longer clean-cut, it seems that the perception is that the African-American market might just turn its back on him.

You know what? If they do, fuck them! That's right, you heard me. How many complete shitheads and scumbags have African-Americans stood by over the years? From O.J. Simpson, to Kobe Bryant, to Barry Bonds, to Michael Vick, to Darrell Strawberry... the list goes on and on. Cheats, thugs, hoodlums, criminals, in some cases outright murderers... each one given a pass just because they could play a sport. How hypocritical to turn their back on Tiger Woods for the relatively mild quirk of merely boinking beltway broads? Remember Magic Johnson, and how he contracted AIDS because he was screwing fifteen cheap hookers a night? Magic wasn't abandoned. Tiger shouldn't be, either.

So he doesn't see himself as black. And, Oprah, neither should you! Michael Vick, you're not black either! Neither are you, Ray Lewis! The whole black/white thing was a LIE, cooked up by evil bastards who wanted an excuse to exploit their fellow human beings for slave labor. How DARE you fuckheads keep that ridiculous falsehood alive! That goes for you clowns in the media, too! The scientific fact is that we are all ONE HUMAN RACE! Period! We aren't different colors. We're different shades of the SAME color! It's high time our use of language stopped pretending that we're separate. It's high time that we recognized ourselves as the like-kindred we are.

If we look up to Thomas Jefferson as a hero, even though he fucked black slaves, then we should also look to Tiger Woods as a hero, even though he fucked white women who are not only not slaves, but could have any man they want. They wanted Tiger. Get over it.

So yeah, he's my new hero. I think he is to a lot of other people, too. The question now is, will he ever come to realize it?

Eric

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

So our beloved trophy-president has been awarded, and now accepted, the Nobel Peace Prize. His speech, which as usual was enlightening and insightful, was oddly themed with numerous references to war, and the necessity of war to maintain the peace. This has been lampooned by those on the left, as well as hailed by those on the right, and left a whole shitload of people in the middle wondering just what sort of president we've gotten, here. But mostly, it's been flatly commented that Obama has done very little to deserve his Nobel Prize, and as such, doesn't really deserve it.

Now, I'll admit, it does seem like our President hasn't done much yet. In fact, at first glance, it doesn't seem like he's done anything, yet. He's named Sotomayor as a Supreme Court Justice, passed another economic stimulus bill, and is about to sign into law an absolute joke of a health care bill, but other than that, what is there? And to add to the irony, he's just recently added 30K worth of troops to Afghanistan. (See my previous blog post on that one.) Obama himself called his accomplishments "slight," and pointed out that he is "at the beginning of [his] presence on the world stage, rather than at the end."

However, I take issue with those who say that this is something akin to giving a new model of car an award for durability after its first year on the road. It's not like we're giving Sarah Palin a Pulitzer Prize for Literature, here! I would argue that he's accomplished quite a lot in his short time. Let me list what he's done so far:

Let's not forget what he did as an Illinois State Senator. All during Obama's presidential campaign, the so-called liberal media kept quiet about this, making it seem as though he were an empty suit. But during that early time, he brokered a bipartisan deal to prevent racial profiling by the police, rallied funding to keep daycare centers open for working mothers, and garnered support from Chicago police districts in winning reforms of death penalty regulations. Bear in mind, rallying police behind a black politician is difficult even on the Republican ticket. (It's a shame Barack didn't live in L.A.!) He was a pretty good candidate for president right there, if only the media would have bothered to mention it once in a while. (I had to learn it on fucking Wikipedia, for shit's sake!) It was almost as if it were mutually agreed among all national news sources that State legislation was something akin to minor-league ball, and didn't count. Bullshit to that, I say.

Let's also not forget his real estate deal with Tony Rezko. "What?" you say. "You count the land deal with Rezko among his accomplishments?!" You bet your ass I do! Here's why:

Yes, the Obamas wanted to buy a house, but it was beyond their price range. Rezko offered to buy some of the adjoining land, which lowered the overall price on the remaining real estate. Rezko probably wanted some later political kickback in return for doing this. But what this this dirty crook get? Nothing! That's right, absolutely nothing! Zip! Zilch! Nada! In short, people, our current president did a deal with a crook all right, and swindled him! Bully for Obama! Haven't we always wanted a president who could cheat the devil?

After that, he singlehandedly gave the DNC a much-needed kick in the ass (pardon the pun) with a rousing speech that nearly won John Kerry the election by itself. The whole nation watched that and said, "Damn! Now there's a presidential candidate!" They were already talking about him running in 2008.

Finally, he succeeded in winning the 2008 presidential election. By becoming the first black president, he's done more for African-descended Americans than anyone before or since -- including the oft-worshipped Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! It shook the inner cities of the U.S. to their very core. No longer can black youth claim that they have no hope. No longer can they presume that there are only two ways out of the slums -- drugs or basketball. Now, with a black president, they can know that it is possible to live their dream. And on top of all this, Obama becomes the very symbol of what black youth need the most to be: educated! No more can they say that education is a "white thing." No longer can speaking proper english be seen by blacks as a betrayal of their heritage. No longer can hoodlums tell smart black kids who study hard that they're being an "oreo!" Because now we can look to a black president with a Juris-Doctorate and say, "That's a small taste of what you can be!"

If anybody can show how such an accomplishment ISN'T worth a Nobel Peace Prize, and THEN some, I'll buy him or her a new car!

And in ten years' time, when Barack has retired, and goes on to doing secular humanitarian work the way all former presidents do, some of the best home-grown American scientists, engineers, and medical doctors will be black, and will to point back to Barack's years of presidency and say, "He inspired me! He made me realize I could be more, do more, achieve more!"

Want more reasons? How about foreign relations. Overnight, Obama has taken America from being a despized evil empire, to something more like, "Well, I still hate America, but maybe it's not so bad after all." Now THAT'S quite an accomplishment!

So enjoy your award, Mr. President. I disagree strongly with your humble assertion that your accomplishments are "slight." No, they're great! Maybe you haven't saved the economy yet, and maybe you haven't cleaned up all Bush's international messes yet, but you are off to a fairly good start, all things considered. And you'll always be the symbol of what America can be, no matter how your four-to-eight years turns out. That's why you deserve the symbol of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Eric

You call THIS healthcare reform?

As Jeff Goldblum said as Ian Malcolm in the movie Jurassic Park, "Boy, do I hate being right all the time."

I said it in my earlier posts & blogs: This is only going to end up being the first of many reforms for medical care, because somehow, someway, Congress will find a way to get a little bit done right, while getting most of it wrong. Sure enough, that's exactly what we're getting. I called it.

I also said that this basically was a choice between government and the insurance companies. The choice our buh-RILLIANT legislators have come up with, favors the insurance companies.

As Ian Malculm also said, "Now, that is one big pile of shit!"

That's two for two. But I also said that DNA technology would guarantee that the insurance companies would someday, very soon, have genetic profiles on all of us, and thus be able to deny us the very coverage we need, when we need it the most.

I'm about to go three for three, unfortunately.

We've taken one small step in the right direction, in that those who are 55 or older will be able to buy their way into Medicare. But we've stepped beneath the sword of Damocles in order to do it. The buy in option is good only if those over 55 are of a certain income level, and even then, it will cost them. The rest of us are saddled with being forced to buy from private insurers, and so the chances of our actually surviving to the age of 55 goes down considerably! Presumably, at least a couple of these private insurers will be not-for-profit, but I'll believe that when I see it. So we're giving insurance companies, who are guaranteed to screw us, even more control over healthcare?

Yeah. You can just see the tremors rippling in your coffee cup, announcing the arrival of something very old, and very monstrous.

Remember, the DNA technology obeys Moore's law. It gets half as expensive and twice as powerful every two years. That means that public option is not dead. It will be back again someday, and when it returns, we'll simply have no choice but to embrace it fully, because the private insurers will be unable to take on any genetically guaranteed losses.

Oh yes, I know what some neocons might say: We should try to pass laws preventing the insurance companies from using DNA profiling.

Quoth Ian Malcolm again, "The type of control you're attempting is.... not possible."

We can't even keep illegal drugs out of the hands of the poorest Americans. We certainly cannot keep illegal information out of the hands of the wealthiest! Make no mistake, public option is inevitable. It's a black hole, and we've passed the event horizon. There's death, taxes, and the public option. Get used to it now, people, and fuck off with your "tea-parties" already!

So, basically, this latest incarnation of healthcare is a mistake. A BIG mistake. The senate kept falling back, and compromising, and falling back, and compromising some more. Now, one last big compromise has been reached, and there's so little to fight over that it's barely even worth it. We've essentially given a starving multitude one, solitary grape, and said, "bon apetit!" But we'll end up passing it, and we'll end up calling it a victory in the media, mostly because at this point, even a Pyrrhic victory is still a victory of some sort. But then we'll have to wait two to three years before the issue can be revisited, and by then, it will be too late to avoid the medical mayhem.

I'll go four for four when DNA technology causes private insurance healthcare to finally all but destroy the medical industry. But that's going to cost our economy dearly. To save us all that headache, it would be far, far better to put in the public option now, seeing as how it is as guaranteed to happen as the disappearance of one's sex life after having children. But something tells me that we're going to need to literally have babies dying in front of hospitals before we finally get public option passed. Apparently, some of us are just that stupid.

What a shame. We were sooo close!

One thing's for certain: We've had any illusions about having a "super-majority" completely destroyed. We don't have a super-majority. We have 56 votes and a few milk-toasty dipshits who think they can hold the entire nation hostage. But let's not overly blame Joe Lieberman. He was only one of a whole clown-car full of assholes who fucked this up. The real culprits are the Republicans, who had what I can only call a "super-minority," where they held firmly together with complete solidarity, for the absolutely wrong thing. So the best thing we can do, is fire those goons in the midterm elections. The only way we can get it done, and done right, is to render the wrong side out of a job.

"Don't you mean, 'extinct?'" Dr. Malcolm would say.

Eric

I Predict: 2012

Okay, this one's just for fun. The year is closing out, and we're about to start up a new year on a nice, round number. So what do the 2010's hold for us? I thought that I would gaze into my crystal ball (which I am able to do by situating two mirrors slightly off-parallel and staring at my bald head) and let people know what I see for the upcoming future. A few of these predictions are serious, most aren't, but even the facetious ones are rooted in some truth and a little wish fulfillment. Here's what I see looming on the horizon at or around the year 2012:

Carrie Prejean moves to Alaska. Sometime afterward, she announces her intention to run for governor.

Sarah Palin takes a break from her book tour to go moose hunting with Dick Cheney. She shoots him in the face accidentally.

Richard Heene wife-swaps with Michelle Salashi. The two of them gate-crash the Emmy Awards Ceremony by flying over security inside a big, silvery balloon.

Hugh Hefner names Tiger Woods as the heir apparent to the throne of Playboy figurehead. He even bequeaths his famous smoking jacket.

Canadian eskimos jointly file an international lawsuit against the G-9 for despoiling their tundra lands with global warming. The suit is successful.

Actual inland soil landmass emerges from beneath the ice in Antarctica for the first time in tens of thousands of years.

Conservative talk show hosts, faced with no other choice as ice disappears and sea levels rise, finally reverse their position that global warming is a hoax, but it's too late to save their ratings. Other hosts lose their shows, or are restructured. Sean Hannity is moved to the 11:00 slot. Rush Limbaugh dies of spontaneous human combustion. Michael Savage stubbornly refuses, and is subsequently fired. Fortunately for everyone, Dennis Miller emerges as the leading conservative talking head.

Obama dumps Joe Biden as his Vice President before running for re-election. His replacement? Governor Christine Gregoire of Washington. Or Jennifer Granholm of Michigan.

Sarah Palin runs for president in 2012. She narrowly loses the nomination to Mitt Romney, so she goes rogue and runs independently on the "Tea Party" ticket. The conservative vote is fractured, and Obama wins by a ridiculous margin.

As a direct result, Democrats get a super-super majority with nearly 70 votes in the Senate. But still can't pass real health care reform!

And finally, Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama deny that they've been having a secret love affair.

Eric

Stem Cell Research

Well, here I thought I could take a break from blogging for a little bit, maybe put up a couple more of my old blogs from the Milwaukee Evolution League about the Grand Canyon, and focus on my upcoming finals. But no. One of my classmates in my Cell Biology course just had to go and piss me off, and now I'm venting here.

Her name is Maria Fernandez, and I have no qualms whatsoever about dropping that name, both because she deserves the infamy, and because latino culture still hasn't realized that if your name is the same as that of a million other people, you should probably change it so that you actually HAVE an identity! She e-mailed everybody in my class today -- something that would be impolite enough under nearly any circumstance. But why did she breech this etiquette? Because our class today covered stem cell research, and she thought she'd take it upon herself to tell us all how only adult stem cells have been able to treat or cure anything, and that no embryonic stem cell cures have been produced just yet. She reminded us about how the embryo has to be killed in order to obtain embryonic stem cells, and listed a bunch of "cures" obtained by using adult stem cells. She then included a couple of links to websites which supported this view.

Now, the more I think about this, the more steamed I get. Dr. Zhao is our professor, and this fellow student has the hubris to step into his role, going over his head, and telling us all what's what. The nerve!

But what's worse is, she promotes an unscientific view: that conception is the point at which the life of an individual being begins. This nonsense view is trumped again and again by the facts, but like a Cheerio in milk, it just won't sink. As I've pointed out in past blogs, it's the BRAIN that defines the being! The brain, the brain, the brain! How can that concept be so difficult for people to grasp?

The answer is that it can quite difficult, especially when scientists don't bother to point it out. They're too scared of pissing off the wrong senator and jeopardizing their research funding. So they go out of their way to stay out of the fight. Like Dr. Zhao did. He responded to this student's e-mail by thanking her for her views, and the interesting links! Now, I understand that scientists want to remain neutral, but isn't remaining neutral taking the side of pseudoscience by allowing it to flourish?

I suppose I should make this case again, for the benefit of those who haven't read my past blog posts. We all know what happens when sperm meets egg -- you get a zygote. But well after that point, that zygote may split to become TWO zygotes, as in the case of twins. And because of this, an individual being cannot have begun at the point of conception, because it's logically ruled out! On the other hand, as the Tracy Marciniak case pointed out, birth is not the place to draw the line either, because if a 8.5-month pregnant woman is punched in the stomach, and her baby dies, the assailant ought to be prosecuted for manslaughter, as we all can agree. So the line must be drawn at some point between these two extremes. That line can only be the formation of the brain. After all, every organ in your body can be replaced with a donor organ or a mechanical device, and you would still be essentially you. However, if your brain were to be removed, the rest of your body is simply meat. The BRAIN defines the being. Always has, always will. If you're alive, it means brain-alive, and when you're dead, it means brain-dead. A person can be brought back from clinical death -- where heartbeat and respiration have ceased -- solely because the brain has not died yet. That means we should draw the line either at 20 weeks (the point at which the cerebral cortex forms and movement of the fetus begins), or at 4.5 months (the point at which the cerebellum forms and higher brain function becomes possible). Either way, early-term abortion is a woman's inalienable right.

Thus, the only reason people have to insist that conception is the point at which we must draw the line, is religious indoctrination. And the bizarre twist to that, is that for the majority of Christian history, theologians and religious scholars regarded the point at which life begins to be long after conception. They felt it was at the point of "quickening," when a woman first felt her baby move inside her. It wasn't until the late 1700's when that changed, and the doctrine of "simultaneous animation" (the belief that the soul entered the body at conception) became popular. The Bible says nothing about the subject, and so it must be recognized that this "conception" doctrine is the word of Man, not the word of God.

So here comes this naive little girl in my class, presuming to spam us all with her misguided defense of blastocysts with neither brain nor soul. What a bitch!

Now, somebody might reasonably ask me: "Eric, isn't this personal?" For those who aren't aware, my mother is currently stricken with some form of vascular dementia, which has been causing her to rather rapidly wither away over the last two years -- something which might give any of us a new perspective on the stem-cell research debate! So my answer to that is, you damn straight it's personal! Yeah, I hope some breakthrough in stem cell research can save my mother! No form of stem cell research gives more bang for the buck than that of embryonic stem cells. It's the cheapest and most effective way of harvesting and using them. Adult stem cells, for all their purported benefits, are still too expensive and cumbersome. Most of the breakthroughs that have been made using adult stem cells came because scientists had no choice but to use the adult versions because of the heinous policies of the Bush administration. We lost roughly eight years of quality research because the science was slowed from a sprint to a crawl! And this recklessly headstrong little twat in my class decides to be a squeaky wheel for exactly that kind of evil bullshit!

Okay, it's personal. That doesn't mean I'm not right!

I sent a scathing e-mail in reply to Maria. Serves her right for spamming with a returnable address! But I also sent a very polite reply to Dr. Zhao, telling him that this e-mail was inappropriate, and that I hoped that religion and politics can remain outside the classroom, especially at the college level. (After all, we know how much I don't want religion in science class!) He immediately replied, and told me he has no intention of telling anyone what position to take on this issue. (I'm still waiting on Maria's reply.)

I understand his reasons. As I pointed out earlier, scientists don't want to rock the boat when it comes to their funding, so they go out of their way to be conciliatory to conservative views, even when they contradict the science. But the Freethought movement does not suffer from such constraints. Skeptics and Humanists are science-minded citizens who are usually not professional scientists. They can, and should, raise the hue and cry over this! Maybe then, this myth about conception (or, myth-conception?) will finally die out.

Eric

Erosion in the Grand Canyon

Here is another repeat of a post I put out on the Milwaukee Evolution League blog years ago:

Creationists say that there's just no way such a little river as the Colorado River could have carved a canyon so very large. They insist that instead of a little water and a lot of time, the Canyon formed from a lot of water and a little time. But the fact is, neither of these polar opposites is the case. Rather, the Canyon formed with a LOT of water over a LOT of time.

One almost needs to have rafted the Grand Canyon to appreciate just how mighty the Colorado truly is. It's not just another waterway! It carries enough water through it to provide power to all of Las Vegas via Hoover Dam. It provides enough water to meet much of the potable water needs of Los Angeles, CA. This ain't no stream, folks! It's a fairly consistent gusher with a lot of power behind it.

But not only that, the river is rich in highly abrasive sediment. As one travels the river, the sediments can be so thick that you can't put your hand more than a couple of inches below the surface of the water before it can't be seen. When rafting the river, boatmen often put their canned beverages in a drop bag and throw it over the side in order to keep them cool. (In fact, the Colorado is deep enough to be quite frigid year-round, even in the hot Arizona sun!) But the sediments erode everything, including the beverage cans. If you leave your beverage in the river for too long, the abrasion of the river will strip the paint right off the can! If the paint is completely removed, rafters are left with the dilemma of trying to tell the difference between a can of Coca Cola and a can of beer! With erosion like that going on in the space of only several hours, imagine what millions of years could do! Perhaps the wonder of the Canyon is that it isn't significantly deeper. In fact, it probably would be much deeper, if a series of volcanoes along the North Rim hadn't dumped hot magma right into the middle of it about 15 million years ago.
That answers how the river cut such a deep canyon, but why is the canyon so wide? Could a river, no matter how mighty, have cut so wide a chasm when so comparatively narrow?

The answer is yes, for a number of reasons. First, canyons don't erode from the top-down. They erode from the bottom up. And when enough rock has eroded beneath, a rockfall from above ensues. This results in minor to major damming, forming new rapids or waterfalls, which erode very rapidly (thousands of years). Once level, the river cuts at a much slower rate. Also, occasional floods do occur with unusually large rainfalls on given years. During such periods, the river becomes much wider, erosion takes place much more rapidly, and more radical change takes place. It's wrong to look at the dry-season summertime Colorado River and say that such a "small" river couldn't have cut so wide a canyon.

Carrie Sager, daughter of Genie Scott, got to see this first hand on day three of the trip I took through the Canyon back on '05. During a heavy rainfall, a washed-off boulder fell and hit a side wall resulting in a large chunk of canyon getting knocked off into the river. It made a fantastic splash, and we all heard it, believe me! But Carrie was an actual eyewitness. What a story she got to tell!

It's very easy to accept that erosion made something so huge when you can actually see the rock widening right in front of your eyes.

Eric