A parallel…

Pedophilia  is to clergy what “spending more time with family” is to politicians.

Why would anyone vote for Democrats?

When they are just another party of corporate shills? Case in point, the health care “public option”, favoured massively by Democratic voters in recent polling and by the majority of all voters, dies in committee. Jay Rockefeller, Democratic Senator and champion of the public option says it’s not over, but it ain’t looking good.

I tell you what, if it manages to go through, and Rockefeller is the person that rams it through, he should challenge Obama in 2012 on the “I did shit for you” ticket.

Is anyone else as dazzled by the stupidity of what goes for “debate” on healthcare in United States as I am? It’s almost as insipid and uninspiring as our Parliament.

Sigh.

Not to laugh at someone else’s misfortune…

But “Herring-filled truck crashes into N.S. house” is the funniest headline I’ve seen in a while.

It is time…

80 pastors/ministers participating in the American Pulpit Freedom Sunday have agreed to discuss politics with a Biblical perspective in defiance of the IRS rules that dictate that non-profit organizations with tax exempt status cannot be directly involved in political activity.

“Pastors have a right to speak about biblical truths from the pulpit without fear of punishment,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. “No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights.”

Surely they do, but the rules are quite clear – they do so at the cost of their tax-exempt status. This is not “punishment”, it is the rule by which they are given the right to peddle after-life insurance and moralistic claptrap without having to pay corporate taxes. However, punishment is how they will sell it as the jingle their donation plates, becuase as we’ve seen in recent politics, nothing motivates a flock more effectively than the whiff of victimization.

I’m all for churches telling their flocks how to vote – being told how to vote, being told what to do,  is effectively what goes on there anyway. Sheep need to be led, and shepherds need to lead; but they also need to be treated like the businesses they are. 

The tax-exempt status is the last vestige of the church-state connection that needs to be stricken. Bring it on, you eighty pastors; lead us into a new future!

Tax the churches; tax the fuck out of the churches.

Frank Zappa

Playground arson – I mean, really?

Little fuckers like this should be “shot, hung, and pissed on”, in the lingo of my mis-spent youth.

Seriously, what’s with people that burn down kids playground equipment? Especially in an underprivileged area like Halifax’s north end.

Time for some serious community service for these little bastards.

Where has the NDP gone so wrong?

 

That Lawrence Martin starts singing their praises?

In case you missed it…

Click here to watch Larry King’s interview with Michael Moore last night. Short version: capitalism has failed. He’s right.

Anyone have any idea when it opens in Canada?  More specifically, in Halifax?

Now for a musical interlude, introducing a theme of sanity:

Australia Bites the Dust

A gigantic dust storm, resulting from severe drought conditions in the Outback regions, has blanketed Sydney, Australia for the past few days. Some of the photos are eerie:

Downtown Sydney, looking like an episode of CSI: Miami (Photo: H. Matheson)

The Sydney Harbour Bridge disappears into the dust (T. Gerke)

The storm from above (A. Barker)

The full slideshow, and related stories, can be viewed here.

Stimulus Package? I’ll Say…

In another startling display of rampant incompetence that would be amusing if it wasn’t so disheartening, fishermen looking for details on an aid package which is to provide short-term support for lobstermen were directed to call a particular telephone number – which turned out to be a phone sex line.

Well, let’s just insert the joke about short-term support here, shall we?

Hey, baby – do you like big, firm, glistening, meaty… claws?

It is a fundamental precept of public service to proofread and verify, then do it again, then have someone else do it as well, for any piece of information provided to the public. Either the people responsible for this are understaffed, and therefore rushed, or just don’t care. Given the recent record of the government, I’ll bet on the latter.

Evangelicals: Growing Pains (In the Ass)

Former Growing Pains ‘star’ and current delusional paranoid evangelical xtian Kirk Cameron, has indicated that he plans to distribute to U.S. universities 100,000 copies of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, with a new 50-page foreword, to subvert the 150th anniversary of the publishing of the iconic science text on November 22nd, 2009 – “Darwin Day”.

The following from The Huffington Post:

Cameron explains that this “very special” edition of the “Origin of Species” will include an introduction explaining “Adolf Hitler’s undeniable connection” to the theory of evolution, and highlighting “Darwin’s racism” and “his disdain for women.” Cameron’s edition also exposes the “many hoaxes” of evolutionary theory, while presenting a “balanced view of Creationism.”

From the untalented hack’s own mouth:

A clever response from another YouTube user:

There are no limit to the ways I can object to this, and to how offended this makes me. To suggest that someone has the right to potentially alter the text of a seminal work (as suggested here)  is offensive. There is no requirement to be fair in the discussion of established scientific fact – there are no alternate explanations. What discussion happens in the field of evolutionary science concerns the processes within the general theory, not whether the basic theory is true. There is no internal conflict as to the truth of the statement “Organisms evolve and adapt to their environments”, the question of how it happens in specific instances are the subjects of discussion. There is, nor will there ever be, a requirement for ‘fairness’ or for providing time for alternate explanations, unless these explanations are derived from the same methodology. Otherwise, you are comparing scientific apples to schizophrenic oranges.

I propose to give away, for free, 100,000 copies of the Revised Edition of the Bible, which includes extensive references to historical, archaeological and physical scientific records to disprove the assertions of that book phrase-by-phrase. Hey, it’s only fair, right?

Science has no comment on religion (other than in behavioral terms), and religion should not try to usurp the expertise of science. To rehash the tired cliches about Hitler and evolution (let’s have a chat with the American originator of Eugenics, Charles Davenport, before drawing conclusions – Hitler couldn’t have enacted the idea without an American’s help – nice going), and Darwin’s supposed racism (he was, by all accounts, fairly tolerant – as least as much as an Englishman of his time could be) and misogyny (same notation) are idiotic, and will not convince anyone that evolution is not a scientific fact. You are, if you’ll excuse the phrase, preaching to the choir – the only purpose of this farce is to reinforce the religious views of those who already believe.

The evidence – ALL the evidence: physical, archaeological, biological, geological, etc., etc., adds up to ‘proven’, no matter how uncomfortable an untalented former teen idol is with the concept.

Way to go, Mr. D.

Fuck you, Kirk Cameron.

No matter what you do, Kirk, Charles Darwin will always be more famous than you. Deal with it.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/kirk-camerons-origin-of-s_n_294349.html