This is what the matter is with Kansas.

What Happened When an Extremist, Christian Fundamentalist Got to Run a Whole State

Logic has nothing to do with it.

Um this makes no sense...North Carolina Law Bans Police From Destroying The Guns They Seize

STOP THAT WITH YOUR NAUGHTY BITS!  And weird conspiracy theories held by some fundamentalists.

Beautiful and thoughtful response by an Australian politician to a pastor's question.  Why can't we get intelligent politicians like him?

Why we live longer today.

Harvesting the plastic out of the ocean.  Can it be done?

Climate change's effect on animals who change to winter coats.

The world's largest cave.

Dinosaurs to the death!

Heavy metal Vivaldi.

Trying to push the conservative viewpoint via student textbooks.

Aging in 5 minutes.

Exercise in absurdity.

The best birth control is for men.

You damned hussy!!

It's ALL your fault!

Blame the victim: Religious leaflet claims ‘ungodly’ dressed women provoke rape

Canter handed her “Women & Girls” and Yates started reading.

“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”

It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Yates was annoyed. Then she got to a section on page two:

“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”

The hand-out is signed “anonymous.”

She was obviously asking for it? What century are we in again? Burkas for women?



And this will prevent men from rape?

No.

So, nice try, you horny fundamentalist. Realize society expects you to control yourself, not the women around you.

Bush and his AIDS project in Africa

That everyone touts as a wonderful thing, just remember this:

Under President George W. Bush , the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptive devices in developing countries, even to married women.

Bush's mammoth global anti-AIDS initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, poured billions of dollars into Africa but prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs, whose budgets flat-lined.

The restrictions flew in the face of research by international aid agencies, the U.N. World Health Organization and the U.S. government's own experts, all of whom touted contraception as a crucial method of preventing births of babies being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The Bush program is widely hailed as a success, having supplied lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs to more than 2 million HIV patients worldwide.

However, researchers, Africa experts and veteran U.S. health officials now think that PEPFAR also contributed to Africa's epidemic population growth by undermining efforts to help women in some of the world's poorest countries exercise greater control over their fertility.

AIDS went up with Bush's abstinence program.

And he cut programs:

BUSH LIED ABOUT THE AIDS FUNDING HIS ADMINISTRATION IS PROVIDING, AS WELL AS ITS TIMING "Mr. Bush's other foreign aid initiative, announced in his State of the Union address, is $10 billion in new money to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean over five years. But his budget falls short of that promise. He is proposing only a $550 million increase over the global AIDS money in this year's spending bill now in Congress. Since the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria would be an effective channel for the aid, there is no excuse for the initiative's leisurely start. Mr. Bush's 2004 budget for the Global Fund, $200 million, actually cuts in half what Congress is likely to do in 2003. Mr. Bush has also found part of the money for his AIDS programs by cutting nearly $500 million from child health, including vaccine programs. Child survival is the biggest loser in the foreign aid budget — a scandalous way to finance AIDS initiatives. With the budget dominated by defense spending and huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the White House should not be forcing the babies of Africa to pay for their parents' AIDS drugs." 2.17.03

So while the Bush Legacy buffers search for something ... ANYTHING... that Georgie did while president that was good, this was not as gloriously wonderful as they would have you believe.

Blog sprinkles

Hilarious signs

Mofo snakes!:

THE EVERGLADES, Florida (Reuters) - The population of Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes make a home and breed in the fragile wetlands, officials said on Thursday.

[snip]

"They eat things that we care about," said Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park biologist, as he showed a captured, 15-foot (4.6-meter) Burmese python to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who was on his first fact-finding mission to the Everglades since the Obama administration took office.

With Snow maintaining a strong grip on its head, the massive snake hissed angrily at Salazar and the other federal officials who gathered around it at a recreation area off Alligator Alley in the vast saw grass prairie. It took two other snake wranglers to control the python's body.

"A snake this size could eat a small deer or a bobcat without too much trouble," Snow told Salazar before the secretary boarded an airboat for a tour of the Everglades.

How about small kids and elderly parents?!!1!? One more reason not to visit Florida....

How about making fuel efficient cars, you dimwits?

Industry Fears U.S. May Quit New Car Habit

Hunker down! The Mormons are coming!!

Blame already being prepared for the next inevitable terrorist attack.

Digby discusses an intelligent assessment by Richard Clarke about the Bush administration's reaction to 9/11. I think Clarke is being too kind. I believe the Bush administration had been waiting with bated breath to see what excuse (any excuse) they could use to attack Iraq, and although the attack was horrific, they used every bit of it to push their Neocon political agenda that had been waiting in the background for a decade. A decade. They just slotted tab A into slot B and they had their war.

The George Tiller this woman knew and loved.

Ameritaliban?

This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today. From the introduction to Part 1:

"Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their pow

Mingora, Pakistan in the Swat Valley destroyed during the fighting. The Taliban must be pleased.

Obsesses much, does he?

Obsesses over other people's sexuality a lot for a religious guy....

Dobson: Hate crimes bill could protect exhibitionism, fetishism, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, prostitution, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, urophilia, voyeurism, bestiality.

Apparently you need to hate stuff to show you love Jesus.

Don't you have a nuclear strike to predict or something?

Pat Robertson tries to reactivate fear and loathing of the gay, talking about the ultimate conclusion:



The only one who is perverted is you, Mr. Robertson.

Winning hearts and minds

By insulting their religion?

A former Afghan prime minister has called for an inquiry after Al Jazeera broadcast footage showing Christian US soldiers appearing to be preparing to try and convert Muslims in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai said there must be a "serious investigation" after military chaplains stationed in the US air base at Bagram were filmed discussing how to distribute copies of the Bible printed in the country's main Pashto and Dari languages.

But:

Questioned about the footage, US colonel Greg Julian told Al Jazeera: "Most of this is taken out of context ... this is irresponsible and inappropriate journalism.

"This footage was taken a year ago ... the bibles were taken into custody and not distributed.

"There is no effort to go out and proselytise to Afghans."

The footage has surfaced as Barack Obama, the US president, prepares to host Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, at a summit on Tuesday and Wednesday focusing on how to tackle al-Qaeda and Taliban bases dotted along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Denial may work for this event, but we know that the fanatical fundamentalists have overtaken parts of the military and have tried to make these wars into a holy crusade.

Being told they must convert or die doesn't inspire trust, does it?

Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

Click the link if you dare .... because there will be smiting....

Because the Dark Ages were so much fun

Oklahoma and Texas fundamentalists are attempting to silence atheists, scientists, biologists, supporters of evolution, logical thinkers, and sane people.

Not a multiple choice question

Write your answer in full citing scientific research.

DB shows how one scientist responded to Creationists (via PZ Myers). Click to read the excellent response.

As for me, I grew up religious and throughout my schooling I came across concepts that were not acceptable to my religion. My church's and family's reaction was not to force the school district to implement my faith's tenets into the curriculum, but to take the classes needed without demur. My faith was not shaken by exposure to alternate theories, I was not contaminated by thinking scientifically. (Why I left my church later is easily explained. I grew up.)

This bizarre need of Creationists to sweep reality aside for their children so they won't hear anything but their own ideas echoed back is sad. Is their understanding of God so fragile that even the whisper about the theory of evolution makes them fall from grace? Are they that afraid of the scientific process, fact-finding and rigorous methods of proof that they must deny its worth?

If God is All, then asking questions and demanding answers shouldn't indicate weakness of spirit or lack of faith. It shows an eagerness to learn which is what humans are hardwired to do. How does creeping and peeking through life, recoiling at facts and saying no constantly honor His creation?

Religion belongs in church. It does not belong in school (unless it's a class about religion, the Bible, philosophy, etc). Trying to jam faith-based ideas into a science class weakens both and does neither any service.

*edited for clarity.

A vast right-wing conspiracy

To force you to love God.... their God. Certainly not my God.

The Protect Marriage Coalition, which led the fight to pass an anti-gay marriage initiative in California, is now suing to shield its financial records from public scrutiny.

The lawsuit claims that donors to Protect Marriage and a second group involved in the suit have received threatening phone calls and emails. It asks for existing donation lists to be removed from the California secretary of state's website and also seeks to have both plaintiffs and all similar groups be exempted in the future from ever having to file donation disclosure reports on this or any similar campaigns.

Although public access advocates believe this sweeping demand for donor anonymity has little chance of success, it does point up the secretive and even conspiratorial nature of much right-wing political activity in California.

[snip]

The man who more than any other has been associated with this kind of semi-covert activity over the past 25 years is reclusive billionaire Howard Ahmanson.

Ahmanson is a Christian Reconstructionist, a devout follower of the late R.J. Rushdoony, who advocated the replacement of the U.S. Constitution with the most extreme precepts of the Old Testament, including the execution -- preferably by stoning -- of homosexuals, adulterers, witches, blasphemers, and disobedient children.

Ahmanson himself has stated, "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives."

Thanks, but I'd rather not. Besides, once you've let the theocrats loose upon the government things will get quickly out of hand. Who is to say it will be your specific religion that will be the one that rules?

Bush's Legacy: AIDS in Africa

Shorter Bill Frist: Bush saved 10 million lives! He did! As a physician I can tell these things! He saved Africans from AIDS with his anti-AIDS program!

Really?:

Although the U.S. has been looked upon as a leader in the fight against
HIV/AIDS, the Bush administration has been criticized for playing to
fundamentalist views at the expense of girls and women and effective
comprehensive approaches.

[snip]

The U.S. has also been under fire for its Global Gag Rule that withholds
funding from any organization that even mentions abortion to its clients as
a family planning option. As a result, many clinics providing condoms to
clients shut down for lack of funds,.

In 2003, rather than put all the U.S. funds for AIDS into the multilateral
Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS established the previous year, President
George W. Bush set up a separate unilateral program called the President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Though widely seen as insufficient for the enormity of the task, the $9
billion in new money spread out over five years was a significant
contribution and encouraged other nations to do their share. Yet PEPFAR came
with restrictive funding requirements that, according to Boonstra, have hurt
countries in combating AIDS.

In accepting U.S. money, countries must use one-third of all funding to
promote abstinence. As a result, countries had to cut back on other
essential programs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that
the cutbacks included slashing programs that prevent mother-to-child
transmission and others using comprehensive approaches such as condom
distribution to high-risk, sexually active teenagers.

What was that about saving lives?

BUSH LIED ABOUT THE AIDS FUNDING HIS ADMINISTRATION IS PROVIDING, AS WELL AS ITS TIMING "Mr. Bush's other foreign aid initiative, announced in his State of the Union address, is $10 billion in new money to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean over five years. But his budget falls short of that promise. He is proposing only a $550 million increase over the global AIDS money in this year's spending bill now in Congress. Since the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria would be an effective channel for the aid, there is no excuse for the initiative's leisurely start. Mr. Bush's 2004 budget for the Global Fund, $200 million, actually cuts in half what Congress is likely to do in 2003. Mr. Bush has also found part of the money for his AIDS programs by cutting nearly $500 million from child health, including vaccine programs. Child survival is the biggest loser in the foreign aid budget — a scandalous way to finance AIDS initiatives. With the budget dominated by defense spending and huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the White House should not be forcing the babies of Africa to pay for their parents' AIDS drugs." 2.17.03

Did Frist just phone this in after watching Bush on videotape?

Roger Ebert takes on Ben Stein

A violent stomping ensues. Very satisfying.

Throwing a sop to the religious fanatics

The outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new "right of conscience" rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.

It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to "an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments," the draft rule said.

The "conscience" rule could set the stage for an abortion controversy in the early months of Barack Obama's administration.

[snip]

Health and Human Services Department officials said the rule would apply to "any entity" that receives federal funds. It estimated 584,000 entities could be covered, including 4,800 hospitals, 234,000 doctor's offices and 58,000 pharmacies.

Proponents, including the Christian Medical Assn. and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, say the rule is not limited to abortion. It will protect doctors who do not wish to prescribe birth control or to provide artificial insemination, said Dr. David Stevens, president of CMA.

"The real battle line is the morning-after pill," he said. "This prevents the embryo from implanting. This involves moral complicity. Doctors should not be required to dispense a medication they have a moral objection to."

Critics of the rule say it will sacrifice patients' health to the religious beliefs of providers.

The American Medical Assn. and the American Hospital Assn. in October urged HHS to drop the regulation. The Planned Parenthood Foundation and other backers of abortion rights condemned the rule as a last-gasp effort by the Bush administration to please social conservatives.

"It's unconscionable that the Bush administration, while promising a smooth transition, would take a final opportunity to politicize women's health," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.

Despite the controversy, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said he intends to issue the rule as a final regulation before the Obama administration takes office, to protect the moral conscience of persons in the healthcare industry. Abortion-rights advocates are just as insistent that the rights of a patient come first.

The article lists the dangers of healthcare personnel who refused to participate:

In calling for limits on “conscientious refusals,” ACOG cited four recent examples. In Texas, a pharmacist rejected a rape victim's prescription for emergency contraception. In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital.

Allowing people to get in between a doctor and a patient is bizarre. What do these people want, religious police as in Saudi Arabia? Being able to deny women all forms of contraception because using birth control will make women promiscuous? Not allowing women to control their bodies? Trying to ban sex toys? Refusing gay people their civil rights?

All I see are lawsuits. Although this technique is working in more impoverished states, what doctor's office, pharmacy, hospital, outclinic really wants to be known as a denier of such services? How ugly and hateful do people have to be to refuse to do a job when they have gone to school to learn medicine or pharmaceuticals in order to help people? Does it give them savage pleasure to thwart such evils as sex? Do they really want to force women to have babies? Does their belief in God include the concept of Love?

Where are they intending to go with this? And why on earth are we letting them affect our laws?

Forgetting Sarah Palin

Won't happen any time soon.

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof:

I know we're all tired of hearing about Sarah Palin, but as Andrew Sullivan noted, she still matters because she is the icon for a Republican Party that thinks the most important thing is winning an election, not governing after. And they have a cynical view of the electorate: give 'em red meat and they'll follow you anywhere.

It's the same as the last eight years. Vote for someone who hates government and will not govern.

Then you have to ask... What are the Republicans THINKING when they let Palin have more air time? When she gets the spotlight at the governors conference? You guys didn't learn from Bush's two terms what horrific damage an uneducated, incoherent, neoconservative, fundamentalist, ideological, yet want-to-drink-a-beer-with whackjob can do to the country?

One plaster cast convinces Palin that Adam walked with dinosaurs?

Even if the cast is so badly done that people laugh when they see it?

Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and running mate of John McCain, believes that the world is only 6000 years old.

Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.
...
Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks..."

Gee... if she believes that, then it would take very little to convince her that Bush and Cheney were right, that the surge worked; that leaving Iraq means defeat but victory cannot be defined; that the fundamentals of the economy are strong; that the vice president's office needs to be expanded; that habeas corpus was unnecessary; that John McCain is right no matter how many times he lies and flipflops....

um....

But she sure did well in the debates, don'cha know! You betcha!

Update: I had to include this fantastic pic posted by PZ Myers at Pharyngula!



Read the rest, it's hilarious!

No. I don't think so.

The sign should actually read: We can do it! McCain will finish what Bush started.

NTodd of Dohiyi Mir's photoshop is excellent.

Extremism

Morse of Media Needle makes a video:



Juan Cole:

John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

McCain pledged to work for peace based on "the transformative ideals on which we were founded." Tolerance and democracy require freedom of speech and the press, but while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin inquired of the local librarian how to go about banning books that some of her constituents thought contained inappropriate language. She tried to fire the librarian for defying her. Book banning is common to fundamentalisms around the world, and the mind-set Palin displayed did not differ from that of the Hamas minister of education in the Palestinian government who banned a book of Palestinian folk tales for its sexually explicit language. In contrast, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it."

Holy shit!

Really.

JJ of Unrepentant Old Hippie has the link:

"Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.

The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.