Okay, now the rich have their money

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Michael

Great, wonderful, magical. The rich have avoided a marginal tax increase so they can keep money that will not find its way to those at the other end of the massive, Republican-caused income gap. (Trickle down economics. Lol.) So can Congress do something that matters?

  • Maybe they can approve the START treaty. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust Russia, whether in its agenda or its infrastructure and ability to maintain its nuclear arsenal in any manner (such as, I don’t know, keeping track of it). Oh, and Ronald Reagan supported arms reduction. That isn’t a reason for my support. I’m just mentioning it because Dick Morris said exactly the opposite on a radio show last night. He’s a moron.
  • Or maybe they could allow gays to help make us safer. I know, I know. All the right-wing conservative bigots (apologies for redundancy) are going to throw a fit over this – just like they did in response to racially integrating…well, anything. But this is the right thing to do, it will make our 20th century-style military more effective, and there is no rational reason that says we shouldn’t do it. And oh, c’mon. Let’s be honest. We all know what the slime-bag bigots (like McCain) are thinking, and no. No, gay people do not fuck everything that moves. Grow up.
  • Or maybe they could give health care to 9/11 First Responders. I’m grammatically uncomfortable with capitalizing “First Responders”, but I’m more than morally okay with it. I’m just not sure if the Republican’ts are comfortable giving health care to anyone. When Jon Stewart showed his anger over the lack of action on this bill, I figured it really just came down to the Republican’ts sticking together on their crappy do-nothing pledge until the billionaires got their tax breaks. But it looks like it’s going to be tough to scrape together the 60 votes needed to pass this thing. Does it make me a name-caller if I say this group is really fucking scummy? Because I might have to argue that I’m making a descriptive, not a normative, claim.

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I (heart) boobies!

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Michael

Brianna Hawk and Kayla Martinez are suing their school, Easton Area Middle School, for suspending them for wearing breast cancer awareness bracelets which read “I (heart) boobies!” It’s another case of out-of-touch old people who are doing no good with their misplaced fear.

The girls were suspended for what the school considered “disruption, defiance and disrespect” — although they were previously told they had violated the school dress code. According to the school district, the bracelets prompted at least two boys to try to touch girls inappropriately.

“Do you think boys would have a natural attraction to girls’ breasts?” school district lawyer John E. Freund III asked Hawk in one of the day’s more awkward moments.

For real? That’s the issue? Two boys were “prompted” by what the girls were wearing? Didn’t we all learn in Common Fucking Sense 101 that sexual harassment is the fault of the harasser, not the harassed? Besides that, the two boys are in middle school. This is a good teaching moment, as they say.

Schools from Florida to California also have tried to ban the bracelets. The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the Pennsylvania girls on free-speech grounds and described them as good students, successfully intervened without filing suit in a few other districts.

I hate these arguments. I do not care if the girls were straight F students. That is not the point.

The judge plans to hear oral arguments in the case early next year before ruling. She asked the school’s principal for seventh and eighth grades, Angela DiVietro, if the bracelets had caused distractions before the ban was announced in late October.

DiVietro replied that teachers were concerned the bracelets would start to become “a disruption in the classroom.”

What is this, a humanities course? These mamby-pamby answers absolutely do not cut it. DiVietro was asked if the bracelets had caused a distraction, not if teachers were concerned that they could. She continues:

“They were concerned they were making a mockery out of the breast cancer awareness campaign, and some of the kids were wearing it just to wear it,” she said. “It was a fad. It was cute. It was more appealing to that age group.”

The correct, proper, mature, adult, intelligent, developed, sophisticated, effective response would be to hold a school-wide gathering that addressed these concerns with the students, making them aware of what the bracelets mean, what it means to have breast cancer, what is means to know someone with breast cancer, and all the other issues that come with not squashing obvious free speech rights because a couple old fogies are uncomfortable with a little word. If anyone is making a mockery of breast cancer awareness, it’s DiVietro and her crew; by engaging in a misguided attempt at censorship, they’re blocking out an important message, belittling the entire reason behind the creation of the bracelets.

The Keep A Breast Foundation aims to raise young people’s awareness about breast cancer through art exhibits, a pilot school program and outreach at music and skateboard festivals, marketing manager Kimmy McAtee testified.

“I see no sexual message in the ‘I love boobies’ campaign,” McAtee testified.

Crazy, huh? It’s almost like the whole point of the campaign is to raise awareness of breast cancer – especially among kids. I guess the Keep A Breast Foundation thinks it’s sort of an important issue.

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Follow-up: Praying a child to death

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Michael

I wrote last year of a Pennsylvania couple who prayed their child to death. The 2 year old toddler, Kent Schaible, would have survived if his parents weren’t nut jobs motivated by their religion. We can’t bring Kent back, but the more we convict monsters of praying their kids to death, maybe the fewer kids we see needlessly die.

A fundamentalist Christian couple who relied on prayer, not medicine, to cure their dying toddler son was convicted Friday of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. Herbert and Catherine Schaible of Philadelphia face more than a decade in prison for the January 2009 pneumonia death of 2-year-old Kent.

“We were careful to make sure we didn’t have their religion on trial but were holding them responsible for their conduct,” jury foreman Vince Bertolini, 49, told The Associated Press. “At the least, they were guilty of gross negligence, and (therefore) of involuntary manslaughter.”

The Schaibles, who have six other children, declined to comment as they left the courthouse to await sentencing Feb. 2.

This is great news, but I have very little faith in the system to dole out an appropriate sentence. As we’ve seen in the past, some parents get a slap on the wrist for praying their child to death. I hope to see something more substantial for the Schaibles. After all, the point of the system ought to be to correct the behavior of individuals for the better (as the article said, the Schaibles have 6 other children; any that are very young may be in danger) and to make sure society is safer. If parents think they can get away with praying for their sick children instead of seeking real medical help – 30 states have protections for faith healing – then we’re going to keep seeing awful stories like this because children of religious nut jobs will not be safe.

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Imagine

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Michael

30 years.

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You Christians don’t get to do whatever you want

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Michael

Is it really that hard to understand? Is it really that hard to understand that one group does not get to impose its religious beliefs on everyone else? Church and state are separate; freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. I suspect if anti-theist atheists or Muslims or Scientologists started reciting their beliefs through a government entity, you Christians would start to actually understand all this.

The Hawaii state Senate, as Christian-dominated as anywhere in the U.S., is, however, with you in their intentional ignorance.

When Senate President Colleen Hanabusa introduced a reverend to say the invocation, Mitch Kahle stood from his seat in the gallery of the Senate chambers and said, “I object. My name is Mitch Kahle and I object to this prayer on the grounds that it’s a violation of the first amendment of the constitution of the United States. I object.”

Kahle’s protest lasted about seven seconds. Then he stopped talking and sat down. The Senate’s Sergeant at Arms was determined to remove Kahle. When Kahle resisted he was forcefully removed and roughed up. The incident was caught by several video cameras including a camera belonging to Hawaii News Now.

“Then what they did to add insult to injury was, they arrested him for disorderly conduct,” said William Harrison, Kahle’s attorney.

Fortunately, the courts are more and more frequently getting it.

District Court judge Leslie Hayashi needed less than an hour to find Kahle not guilty.

“Number one, there was no disorderly conduct. Number two, he has a first amendment right to speak in a public forum such as he did. And number three, the legislature was violating our U.S. Constitution as well as the Hawaii constitution by having these invocations,” [Kahle’s lawyer] Harrison said.

Fortunately, Kahle and his photographer, Kevin Hughes, are suing.

via Pharyngula

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Fighting obesity

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Michael

Laziness and greed are cloaked in “liberty” and “freedom” by fundamentally stupid and effectively bad people like Sarah Palin and many of her fellow Republicans, but sometimes pragmatic, common-sense ideas are still able to break through the bullshit.

US lawmakers on Thursday passed a 4.5-billion-dollar bill that will give more US kids school meals and let the government set child nutrition guidelines.

The bill pledges 4.5 billion dollars over 10 years to child nutrition programs, increases the reimbursement paid to schools by the federal government for free meals provided to children, and expands access to school lunches and after-school meals.

It also allows the US Department of Agriculture to set nutrition guidelines for foods sold in schools, including in coin-operated vending machines, and provides money for school gardens and farm-to-school programs.

The most common legitimate objection to this bill is that it might not help in the fight to keep kids from getting fat and disgusting. But a quick look at the facts ought to remove such an objection: Most kids are going to eat between 160-180 lunches a year at school. They’re going to eat a total of about 1100 meals a year. That’s (conservatively) about 15% of a kid’s meals every year. I would say that making those 160-180 meals healthy is a good and it will make a notable difference. And if that wasn’t enough goodness, this bill also provides for kids who otherwise go without or, at best, with something even less healthy than the shitty Lunchables every other kid gets for lunch.

Or we could just be polemic assholes and feed them plates of cookies, a la Palin.

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Thoughts on WikiLeaks

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Michael

I have two primary thoughts on Wikileaks. First, I find it cute how so many people immediately started throwing around the word “cables”, as if they’re totally, like, in the in! Pfft. Second, you know Julian Assange is doing something right if he’s getting governments to freak out this much.

WikiLeaks had become an Internet vagabond Friday, forced to move from one website to another as governments and hackers hounded the organization, trying to deprive it of a direct line to the public.

EveryDNS — a company based in Manchester, New Hampshire, stopped directing traffic to the website wikileaks.org late Thursday after it said cyber attacks threatened the rest of its network.

But while wikileaks.org remained unreachable Saturday, the organization has found new homes. Its German website wikileaks.de was reachable Saturday, and so was its Swiss domain.

The Swiss address directs traffic to servers in France, where political pressure quickly mounted with Industry Minister Eric Besson on Friday saying it was unacceptable to host a site that “violates the secret of diplomatic relations.”

The web hosting company OVH confirmed that it had been hosting WikiLeaks since early Thursday, after a client asked for a “dedicated server with … protection against attacks,” adding it was now up to the courts to decide on the legality of hosting the site on French soil.

Probably the worst thing in all this is that with all these government attacks and arrest warrants, the sexual assault and rape charges Assange faces in Sweden are only being undermined. Honestly. Who actually believes those charges are at all legit? I certainly don’t. And, unfortunately, I’m sure many other people hold the same doubts. That isn’t to say it’s unfortunate that people doubt what are probably bogus charges meant to make Assange look like a bad guy; that doubt a good thing. The bad thing is that those charges only serves to undermine all the real charges of sexual assault and rape that go doubted all the time.

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Religious have no monopoly on virtue

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Michael

That’s according to the Queen.

The Queen, who is supreme governor of the Church of England, said: “In our more diverse and secular society, the place of religion has come to be a matter of lively discussion. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none.”

Now she just needs to point out that religions also not only don’t have a monopoly on science, but they barely have a toehold.

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Bigot questions military study

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Michael

A bigot has raised bigot-based questions on a military study.

Directly challenging the Pentagon’s top leadership, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain on Thursday snubbed a military study on gays as flawed and said letting gays serve openly would be dangerous in a time of war.

McCain also said Adm. Mike Mullen’s opinion didn’t matter as much as other military leader’s opinions because he doesn’t directly lead troops. Mullen had one hell of a response.

“With all due respect, Mr. Chairman and Sen. McCain, it is true that, as chairman, I am not in charge of troops. But I have commanded three ships, a carrier battle group and two fleets. And I was most recently a service chief myself. For more than 40 years I have made decisions that affected and even risked the lives of young men and women.

“You do not have to agree with me on this issue. But don’t think for one moment that I haven’t carefully considered the impact of the advice I give on those who will have to live with the decisions that that advice informs. I would not recommend repeal of this law if I did not believe in my soul that it was the right thing to do for our military, for our nation and for our collective honor.”

McCain would absolutely not question this study if it gave him the results he wanted. He’s just a typical bigoted Republican, arguing from his biases, not any sort of objectivity. What’s worse, he’s making our military weaker by allowing this unconstitutional law to remain in place.

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Republicans and being just a little fat

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Michael

In my daily news trawl, I came across two articles listed right next to each other. Here’s the first:

House Republicans have temporarily blocked legislation to feed school meals to thousands more hungry children.

Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday to try to amend the $4.5 billion bill, which would give more needy children the opportunity to eat free lunches at school and make those lunches healthier. First lady Michelle Obama has lobbied for the bill as part of her “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity.

…

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has also taken a swipe at the first lady’s campaign, bringing cookies to a speech at a Pennsylvania school last month and calling the campaign a “school cookie ban debate” and “nanny state run amok” on her Twitter feed.

It has been abundantly clear for a long, long time that Sarah Palin is intellectually inferior to most people. I really don’t see how this can even be debated. But it hasn’t always been clear that she’s also just a bad person. Now it is.

Now, if she was scientifically literate, maybe this second article would have an impact on her thinking:

The latest research involving about 1.5 million people concluded that healthy white adults who were overweight were 13 percent more likely to die during the time they were followed in the study than those whose weight is in an ideal range.

“Having a little extra meat on your bones — if that meat happens to be fat — is harmful, not beneficial,” said Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, senior author of the study.

The study’s conclusions, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, are similar to three other large studies, said the lead author, Amy Berrington of the National Cancer Institute.

“Now there’s really a very large body of evidence which supports the finding that being overweight is associated with a small increased risk of death,” Berrington said.

This is what I’m talking about when I say human beings are more important than the abstract ethical principle of liberty. Letting kids get fat is going to have real world consequences that no one wants. Human lives matter.

But kids do like cookies.

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