GOP Congressman Attempts To Prohibit Atheist Chaplains

If you need to see a counselor
There’s someplace you can go
But it shows up on your record that you went
But a chaplain, if you see one,
No one else will ever know–
An alternative that’s clearly heaven-sent!

If you choose to go to chapel
You can get the morning off
If you don’t, you are free to stay and work
So the floors are mopped and polished
By the folks who chose to scoff–
Just another well-deserved religious perk!

Though the godless here among us
Number roughly one in five
(More than Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu troops combined)
We’ll claim none are found in foxholes
Where religion comes alive–
If their chaplains all are christian, they won’t mind!

Foolish congressmen are singing
Hymns with many sour notes
And it’s frankly disrespectful to the troops
Don’t expect their tune to change, though,
Cos it guarantees them votes…
And it keeps the godless jumping through their hoops

Not content to simply vote down an amendment providing specifically for atheist chaplains in the military, GOP congressweasel John Fleming is attempting to actively prohibit such chaplains, on the off chance the military decided that providing support for the 20% of troops who identify as atheists or agnostics was a good idea. If anyone thought “support our troops” was enough to overcome prejudice against atheists, today’s news will disabuse you of that illusion.

A positive view, with thoughtful legal analysis.

A relatively neutral, unsophisticated view, from the Christian News Network.

Batshit crazy (especially the comments) from The Blaze.

Privacy? Nevermore!

Once upon a conversation, I received a revelation—
Just a tiny aberration in the phone line could be heard
It was near too faint for hearing, all too quickly disappearing,
And it surely had me fearing they had listened to my word
But of course, there is no reason to be snooping for my word
Such a notion is absurd!

With the conversation ending, and my paranoia pending—
Was some listening ear attending? Had a wiretap occurred?
My suspicions were implying what I’d rather be denying;
That the government was spying, and the lines had all been blurred
There had formerly been limits, but those lines have all been blurred—
Ah, but surely that’s absurd!

Could my phone call now be quoted? My associations noted?
Are there data banks devoted, at the mercy of some nerd?
All the data they can hack up, with more copies just for backup
In some cave where servers stack up with the info there interred?
They will long outlast my body, which will rot when I’m interred
This is far beyond absurd!

In a time that seems chaotic, is my worrying neurotic?
Maybe spying’s patriotic—it’s what 9/11 spurred.
Sure, the citizens are frightened, but security is heightened
With the leaky borders tightened and some terrorists deterred
Why, the means are surely justified if terror is deterred
Or they’re not… cos it’s absurd.

GOP Congressmen Debate Atheist Chaplaincy, Display Incredible Ignorance

Shockingly, Mockingly,
Ignorant congressmen
Pandered to Christians, and
Put on a show;

“Atheist chaplains? That’s
Incomprehensible!”
Members then voted
Resoundingly, “NO!”

Via the huffpo, video of the House Armed Services Committee, debating an amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment was quite simple:

Sec. 502. Inclusion in the Chaplain Corps of Persons Available to provide guidance and counsel to members of the armed forces who are atheist, agnostic, or belong to no organized faith group.
The Secretary of Defense shall provide for the appointment, as officers in the Chaplain Corps of the Armed Forces, of persons who are certified or ordained by non-theistic organizations and institutions, such as humanist, ethical culturalist, or atheist.

But not quite as simple as the Republican members of the committee. The video is brief, but you’ll want to watch to the end, for the loud and self-satisfied chorus of “no!”

Bye Bye, Bachmann

She fought for our dear Constitution
Though on further inspection, we find
That Michele’s Bill of Rights
That’s for which she led fights,
Was a fantasy version that’s all in her mind

She would lecture her listeners on history
And a few finer points of the law
But her facts were all fictions
And odd contradictions
Reflecting a vision that only she saw

With muskets and pitchforks and torches
You could see she appealed to her base
She protected our right
To a more wasteful light
A conservative stance, when Michele made the case

Oh, Congress was clearly the problem
Or it was, when Michele came to call
She did her bit ending
Big government spending
By passing no new legislation at all

And now, as she rides to the sunset,
With her brief fifteen minutes long spent
Her history speaks
Of the strangest of streaks…
And we’ll all disagree about what Michele meant

I’m a bit late to this one–Ed and PZ have already noted that Michele Bachmann will not run for re-election. What’s utterly bizarre, though, is the analysis and commentary on what will be her legacy. For instance, NPR’s story (subtitled “A Trailblazer, For Better And For Worse“), seems remarkably free of anything really positive. It’s as if Bachmann is famous for being famous, not for any accomplishment. But (of course) that does not stop the handful of right-wing commenters that now call npr.org their territory from trolling the comment section singing her praises.

I don’t have any idea what her place in history will be. What I’m hoping is that this post marks the last time I will ever type her name.

Battle Of The Prayers In Arizona Legislature

“I will not ask you bow your head
But look around the room instead”
The state rep, Johnny Mendez said,
In giving invocation.
“This is a time for us to share
With people here, and everywhere,
The fact that we’re alive, aware—
This is our dedication.”

His words, of course, were not a prayer;
He doesn’t think a god is there,
To answer, hear, or even care,
But people do exist.
It was his choice; it was his right,
But one man didn’t see it, quite—
He took it as a sinful slight
Steve Smith was truly pissed.

And this is where it should have ended;
Sometimes, Smith, one gets offended.
Church and state must not be blended
You’ve bowed your head too long.
But Christian privilege has its way
So Smith took time the very next day
To say the things he had to say—
That Mendez had it wrong.

“When given time to pray to God,
Don’t stain this room with mere façade—
A godless prayer? That’s more than odd;
This chamber must repent!
I’ll say one prayer, then one prayer more
And all must join me, I implore!
Give God his due! We must restore
Each godless minute spent!

Some thirty people—half the house—
Then prayed with Smith, the lordly louse,
Though many there do not espouse
The Christian point of view.
But Smith believes the right is his
And though he’d fail a civics quiz
I must admit, it seems it is
The Christian thing to do.

Ed reported on the initial atheist invocation delivered by Juan “Johnny” Mendez, calling it “pitch perfect”. But it seems there’s no accounting for taste; Mendez’s fellow legislator Steve Smith didn’t like Mendez’s tune, and what’s more, took offense on behalf of God, who declined to give His own opinion.

Smith then offered not one but two prayers–an invocation, and then a prayer of “repentance of yesterday” [the day of the godless invocation], and urged representatives to pray with him. About half did. Some of the others, though, were not shy to denounce the second prayer (why not the first?) as inappropriate. Representative Jamescita Peshlakai, a traditional Navajo, reminded Smith that she herself is “not Christianized”, and that his god is no more powerful than hers. She has been respectfully participating in house prayers, despite the fact that they did not represent her beliefs. I wonder if that will continue. (I suspect that it will, though I hope it will not.)

I wonder if rep. Peshlakai took any offense at Mendez’s invocation. I would have thought it was something pretty much everyone could agree with.

Guess I was wrong.

The Problem With The VAWA

A woman lies battered and bleeding and bruised,
As so often, reports CNN
And as always, a clamor—a group much abused—
Won’t somebody think of the men?

In a CNN opinion piece, Senator Patty Murray writes of yet another example of the failure of the Republican leadership to do the right thing:

This week, just over 250 days since the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan and inclusive bill to extend the landmark Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives allowed the clock to run out on protections that bill would have provided to millions of women across our country.

The act had been renewed many times since it was first introduced in 1994; there were a few changes this time:

Specifically, the bill included increased protections for women on college campuses across the nation following the brutal 2010 murder of Yeardley Love at the University of Virginia. It included new law enforcement measures to safeguard women on tribal reservations, one in three of whom will be raped in their lifetimes. It included nondiscrimination language for those in the LGBT community who had been unfairly left out of previous bills. And it provided protections to immigrant women, regardless of their status, who are often scared into silence at the hands of their abusers.

Yeah… no. That’s unacceptable to the right wing of the Republican party, and those extremists are in control.

But that’s not what my verse is about. No, as usual, I took an ill-advised peek into the comments at the article, and found… exactly what I expected to find. The real victims in all this?

Men.

Any sort of legislation aimed at protecting women from rape is clearly anti-equality and anti-american. Any concern over some victims of sexual assault (read: women) ignores the bigger picture, that equal treatment under the law means that privileged groups might have to settle for being treated equally, and that’s just not fair.

Never mind that the Violence Against Women Act’s nonexclusivity clause directly states that protections apply to male victims as well. Never mind that “what about the men?” does not apply to this story at all. The Republican extremists apparently don’t like LGBT, native Americans, or women in college–that is the hold-up. But CNN commenters aren’t always that nuanced.

One comment even suggested that the act is completely unnecessary, that other laws already cover everything that is needed to combat sexual assault. This commenter, of course, was referring to concealed carry laws. The solution to every problem.

Here’s hoping the new House of Representatives does a better job.

God Is Not An Endangered Species

There’s freedom of religion, which we all acknowledge, but—
While true freedom seems a rare thing… of religion, there’s a glut.

The New York Times today has an Op-Ed piece by Frank Bruni that is well worth reading, entitled “The God Glut”.

We have God on our dollars, God in our pledge of allegiance, God in our Congress. Last year, the House took the time to vote, 396 to 9, in favor of a resolution affirming “In God We Trust” as our national motto. How utterly needless, unless I missed some insurrectionist initiative to have that motto changed to “Buck Up, Beelzebub” or “Surrender Dorothy.”

We have God in our public schools, a few of which cling to creationism, and we have major presidential candidates — Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum — who use God in general and Christianity in particular as cornerstones of their campaigns. God’s initial absence from the Democratic Party platform last summer stirred more outrage among Americans than the slaughter in Syria will ever provoke.

God’s wishes are cited in efforts to deny abortions to raped women and civil marriages to same-sex couples. In our country God doesn’t merely have a place at the table. He or She is the host of the prayer-heavy dinner party.

That’s just a meaty bit out of the middle; the whole essay is powerful. None of it will come as any surprise to long time FtB readers–perhaps the surprise is that it is in the New York Times.

Well worth reading; well worth sharing.

Ok, So Maybe I’m A Little Envious

It’s not like I would wish harm to befall him, and thus open up his staff writing position at The Nation. But Calvin Trillin, well, comments on things, in verse, and makes a living at it.

You can see where I might have mixed feelings toward the man.

He was on the Daily Show last night (video down below), with Jon Stewart singing the praises of his new book, Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign In Verse. The presidential campaign in verse? What am I, chopped liver?

You want political doggerel? You’ve come to the right place! Being paid to write it for a magazine can’t hold a candle to obsessively writing it to get it out of your skull. You want Mitt? We’ve got Mitt. A meaningful percentage of Mitt. You want Newt? We got Newt. Plenty. Perry? Lots. And lots. Bachmann? Santorum? Yes, Santorum. Value Voters Summit? The Republican Primary Race? Tons. Seriously. The Convention? And a few commentaries on the voters themselves.

Akin? Beer? The debates? More debates? Horses and bayonets? The debate over whether polling works?
It’s enough to drive one mad. But despite it all, encouragement.

Ah, the video. Trillin has a poem title that alone is worth the price of the book. He mentions it at about the 6 minute mark.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Calvin Trillin
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Now… Retire, Mr. Trillin. Call me, Nation.

The sad thing is… this isn’t even my whole collection of appropriate verses. Just a sampling.

Would You Vote For An Atheist?

You may have already seen this, but there are the beginnings of what might be a vigorous but civil discussion over at NPR, on the subject of voting for an atheist candidate.

NPR gets some great commenters, but I happen to think mine are even better… so I’m pointing you that direction so you can cross-pollinate. After all, FtB discussions have pretty much already looked at everything in the NPR article many times over, so you are more than prepared.

Back to grading…