I often wonder if it is my strict fundamentalist upbringing that allows me more skepticism when someone is trying to sell me swampland in Florida.

I have seen this comment before, I started this campaign pro-Hillary, I loved her since the Clinton era.

I knew that the attacks on her were on her because she was a moderate female. It is a rare thing to have a moderate “equalist” woman anywhere. The top 50 pundits had 7 women only one was a feminist and she was also a moderate.

I am tired of obama supporters, really tired of them.

I will not be blogging as much as I start back to the grind next week.  Read more 

St HOPE is one of private companies Michelle Rhee wants to have take over some DC public schools. She was formerly on the board of St HOPE:

SACRAMENTO BEEAfter a Sacramento High School teacher’s report last year that a 17-year-old student told him she was inappropriately touched by Kevin Johnson, Johnson’s personal attorney and business partner investigated the complaint for the campus.  Read more 

Texas’ DFPS officials say they have evidence that children taken from the Eldorado FLDS compound had broken bones, and that based on interviews with the kids and journals found at the ranch, some of the boys were sexually abused.
A lawyer for the church denies the claims, saying it’s the result of a disease among the sect’s children.  Read more 

and although perhaps one, or maybe two, of these young women might be actually legally married to the men who fathered their children, Texas law suggests NONE had a legal marriage.

State officials took custody of all 463 children at the ranch controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, saying a pattern of teen girls forced into underage “spiritual” marriages and sex with much older men created an unsafe environment for the sect’s children.

Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but none of these girls is believed to have a legal marriage under state law.

Under Texas law — or any other state law in the US — only the first non-divorced female partner in a marital relationship is a wife, legally.

So even if you don’t want to call this child abuse, and I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to call it that,  Read more 

According to a 2003 article, the FLDS’ “Bleeding the Beast” strategy extends to keeping school-district posts, with the attendant salaries and control of the schools’ budgets, at least in Arizona, even after the FLDS withdrew its own children from the “apostate” schools. In a session of the Texas legislature about that same time, at least one Eldorado lawmaker was paying attention:

Rep. Harvey Hilderbran of Kerrville, alarmed by reports from Eldorado, the Utah attorney general and sect members who had fled the group, helped push new legislation into law in 2005 that raised the legal age of consent to marry in Texas from 14 to 16, that made it illegal for stepparents to marry their children and made officiates liable for performing illegal wedding ceremonies.

“We didn’t want to facilitate the things we knew they had been involved in before, including child abuse, sexual abuse, forced marriages, that were clearly detrimental to the safety and welfare of children,” Hilderbran tells NEWSWEEK.

“It’s not in the best interest of a 14-year-old girl to be forced to marry her uncle or stepfather or any other man in this cult, because the men are being rewarded for their obedience with these child brides.”

That, right there, is the key to it all —  Read more 

The when the news is bad, don’t they? More than 4000 GIs dead in Iraq, and now 462 minors in foster care after that FLDS raid in Eldorado. That’s right — CPS determined today that among the more than 100 mothers who had stayed with their young children, at least 25 are themselves minors.

Harry Reid thinks the Feds aren’t doing enough to investigate and prevent child abuse among polygamous communities. In San Angelo, meanwhile, the DNA testing and foster placement continue.

Responding to a question arising from the FLDS raid about Texas’ rules on home-schooling, the Houston Democrat said this today:

Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, a House Public Education Committee member who has served in the House since 1993, said the issue is a legal one.
“In all the years I’ve been in the Legislature, nobody has come to me with anything near a compelling case, or even a suggested case, that we should make a priority of greater inspection or regulation of home schools or private schools,” he said.

Y’all wonder how W got away with so much in Texas,  Read more 

In the words of the old joke…

AP:

Christians clash at Jesus’ tomb on Orthodox Palm Sunday
Dozens of Greek and Armenian priests and worshippers exchanged blows at one of Christianity’s holiest shrines on Orthodox Palm Sunday, and used palm fronds to pummel police who tried to break up the brawl.

The fight came amid growing rivalry over religious rights at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built over the site in Jerusalem where tradition says Jesus was buried and resurrected.

“Palm fronds to pummel the police…”  Read more 

Authorities in British Columbia believe some children among those taken from the Yearning For Zion ranch outside Eldorado are actually Canadian-born.

Some B.C. children are believed to be among the 416 children seized from a polygamous cult in Texas last week, B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal said Friday.
Oppal said he was alerted by federal officials Friday morning because of a similar situation in Bountiful, B.C., although the province has no jurisdiction in the matter of the B.C. kids in Texas. …
Some B.C. children are believed to be among the 416 children seized from a polygamous cult in Texas last week, B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal said Friday.
Oppal said he was alerted by federal officials Friday morning because of a similar situation in Bountiful, B.C., although the province has no jurisdiction in the matter of the B.C. kids in Texas.

IF the FLDS did, in fact, send children across state and national borders in connection with the sect’s practice of “spiritual marriage” between girls as young as 13 and powerful or connected adult men in the community, how is this NOT a violation of the Mann Act?  Read more 

Contrary to popular opinion in the press, the Texas judge who ruled Friday night that all 416 children in the Eldorado FLDS case will stay in state custody wasn’t sniping at religion, but working to keep children safe.

“It’s dangerous for our children to even know your philosophy exists!” With Dems like these, who needs Iran? Seriously, I’m with Zorn: if this had been a Jew or Christian sitting in that chair and an elected rep harshed on their brand of faith? We’d never hear the end of it. But atheists are fair game, because we hurt children, or something.

Nice to see so many supporting comments at the original post, too. We’re legion, a true silenced but growing population and the fundies should fear us. Because they do our work for us, and make belief look bad all on their own.

The parents of an 11-year old girl with diabetes let her die because they believe that faith in the will of God forbids doctors or any kind of medical care. Relatives called authorities after they learned the girl was in a coma, but help came too late to save her life.  Read more 

Hilarity ensues.
Great quote from the director:

Mark Mathis, a producer of the film who attended the screening, said that “of course” he had recognized Dr. Dawkins, but allowed him to attend because “he has handled himself fairly honorably, he is a guest in our country and I had to presume he had flown a long way to see the film.”

Nice spin on “fairly,” don’t you agree? Because, after all, only the religious can be truly honorable….  Read more 

God Damn America!

From The Truth About Trinity United, a blog run by a parishioner of Barack Obama’s church, we see that in 1966, Hospital Corpsman Third Class Jeremiah Wright was personally commended by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s physician for his part in caring for President Johnson, who was a patient of HC3 Wright’s when he had his gallbladder removed. You can see him in the photo above on the right, although part of his face is obscured by the IV pole. photo and letter at link
…
The letter of commendation reads:

Dear Hospital Corpsman Third Class Wright,

The President thanks you for your help at the time of his recent hospitalization.

He greatly appreciates your skill and competence in your field which added greatly to his comfort and speedy recovery from his operation.

With warmest personal regards,

Sincerely,

George G. Burkley, Vice Admiral MC, USN, Physician to the President

Kinda hard to be Killing Whitey when you’re helping keep a president alive, isn’t it?

I’m just saying. Maybe we shouldn’t judge Pastor Wright’s 30 years of service to his country and his community by 30 seconds of passionate, mid-sermon remarks.

Although when I stop and think about the Tuskeegee experiments, where black American citizens were treated worse than lab-rats, injected with toxic chemicals, lied to, and systematically denied proper medical treatment from 1947 to 1972, well, all I can really think is “God damn, America”, myself. I mean, goddamn.

But why on earth are black people so angry? I can’t imagine, can you?

Facts are such annoying things.

Because eventually, all of us will face the player whose dice never lose. Please take your helmet off and roll some dice in silence, to honor a man who had more influence over many of us than is generally understood. This is a ’religious people’ post because wow! Could anyone slaughter ancient mythology and superstition that badly, and to so much fun effect? The conversations, the late night sessions, the ubergeekdom…that’s a gift it’s hard to place value upon. Thank you, Mr. Gygax. I’m sure there are at least some orcs in heaven, and you’re rolling with them in friendship right now.*  Read more 

So we’re asking why some people won’t stop it, and why others who don’t deserve it must suffer. I guess the moon is in that phase, or something, because driving around running errands today, I caught a few minutes of this guy on the radio. Ehrman’s journey is one I can completely understand: from teen evangelical who converted to save himself from “hell,” to ministry student and biblical scholar, and finally to atheist. I guess he’s written some famous books too; they said Misquoting Jesus was a bestseller and that makes me glad. Today, he was talking about the book of Job (among other stories) and although I didn’t catch all the show, I wondered if he considered that part of the story that has always increased my atheism. Specifically, Job’s wife and kids.  Read more 

AL gets letters:

A friend writes from Tehran:

Here the political weather is terrible. You might know that the parliamentary election is near and the reformist nearly are not allowed to be involved. About 80 per cent of reformist candidates has been labeled as unqualified by the Government. Mr Khatami and Rafsanjani had a meeting with the Supreme Leader but it had no fruit. We are waiting for much worse days.

The Iranian film festival has been just finished with no movie by great directors of the country. All movies were about Islam, religious rites and Imams. Good for Ahmadinejad!

I love my country but i really hate it. That’s iranian life. Always dealing with dilemmas.

To which I’d like to respond:  Read more 

Nice people are respectful of religion.

Occasionally, a journalist just doesn’t play nice enough:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Conservative clerics and elders demanded Thursday that the Afghan government not interfere with a controversial death sentence handed down to a young journalist convicted of insulting Islam for distributing a report questioning polygamy.

…clerics and elders worried that Kaambakhsh would be let off the hook like Abdul Rahman, a Christian convert imprisoned in 2006 on charges of apostasy who was whisked off to Italy, where he had been granted asylum.

I don’t think I’ll ever wonder what a bad acid trip is like again.

The LA Daily News brings us the facts: a four-year-long ICE investigation has nailed a pair of 60-plus California teachers, one a religious studies teacher at a religious school, for possession and trafficking in child pornography.  Read more 

In Lowell, MA, a churchgoing woman undressed her 4-year-old nephew and her 5-year-old niece, and dragged them into oncoming traffic on I-495.

“I never saw any signs of problems,” said the Rev. David Mullen, pastor of St. Brendan’s Church in Bellingham, where Thibault was a frequent volunteer. Mullen described her as “very positive and very generous.”

If I were a praying man, I would pray for the day that morality and guidance were no longer trusted to sanctimonious charlatans.

Again, I have no idea of what the cause and effect relationship is between religiosity and these horrible stories— which all but inevitably intersect — except that at best religion is very weak tea for helping the mentally ill, and possibly quite a bit worse.

Maybe you’ve got a stronger constitution than I do, but I can’t bear to read the details of how Banita Jacks allegedly killed her four daughters because she thought they were “demons.”

I’ll leave you with the one detail from which I didn’t and won’t avert my eyes:

Once inside, marshals found religious writings on the walls, authorities said, according to the Washington Post.

Religion is an element in so many of these horrible stories. What’s the cause and what’s the effect, I couldn’t tell you.

But how many of these things have to happen before we stop conflating “faith” with “morals” and “values”?

The power of religious belief:

A man who believed he bore the “mark of the beast” used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.

Josh at TPM has got a new Christianist Dog Whistle catch from Hucklebee’s campaign, and I think he’s underplaying it. It sounds simple to the point of simplistic (like a lot of Hucky’s stuff) but it is a deep and foul pit indeed once you dig into it.

The word is “Vertical.” Josh has a screen shot with the quote “I think the country is looking for somebody who is vertical, who is thinking, Let’s take America up and not down.”

So what is a “vertical thinker” anyway? Horizontal brings to mind Fred Thompson, but resist that thought and think in terms of society, and communities, and how we organize ourselves and agree to follow certain rules: i.e., government.

The short? “Vertical” means that rules—which is to say laws—come down from God Above, and all we can, and should, and must do is obey them. “Horizontal” thinking by contrast is what us old time freethinkers thought was the social contract, agreements, the coming together of people to agree, one person one vote, on what the laws would be.

Not in Huck’s world.  Read more