“You people”

You can hardly blame Hobby Lobby for refusing to serve Christ-killers on Christmas, now can you?

Beginning your shopping list for Hanukkah gifts and decorations? If so, make sure to avoid Hobby Lobby, a swiftly growing U.S. crafts store with 561 stores, which sells zero Hanukkah merchandise, and hires Jewish intolerant employees.

On September 27th, Ken Berwitz took to his blog to explain what happened when a friend of his entered Hobby Lobby seeking Hanukkah goods. To the customer’s surprise, a sales associate callously replied, “We don’t cater to you people.”

Understandably, Mr. Berwitz had to hear this supposed truth for himself, and quickly made a call to Corporate to ask why Hobby Lobby didn’t put Hanukkah goods on their item list this year.

The response: ”Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he’s a Christian, and those are his values.”

My values involve never setting foot inside a Hobby Lobby store.

Republicans hate science

The Republican-led government shutdown has also shut down the NSF.

National Science Foundation: Pretty Much Screwed. The NSF is the organization in charge of doling out government dollars to valuable scientific research that could cure fatal diseases, improve quality of life, or create new amazing things. Lest you forget, the MRI machine, voice control, multitouch displays, the internet, GPS, and many, many more advances were funded all or in part by the NSF. This isn’t frivolous. This is important work that will grind to a halt. The NSF will stop making payments to researchers, and government-funded programs the researchers need, like websites and document downloads, will not be operational.

They’ve also sent NASA and all of their active projects off on a vacation.

That now includes the Mars rover Curiosity, which has been shut down, taking a furlough in safe mode like 97 percent (!) of NASA employees. (Safe mode, which Curiosity has gone into for technical glitches before, means it won’t be completely turned off, but won’t be collecting new data, either.) More or less everyone who isn’t working on keeping the International Space Station astronauts safe will be receiving an unexpected vacation.

And have you seen the banner on PubMed?

Due to the lapse in government funding, PubMed is being maintained with minimal staffing. Information will be updated to the extent possible, and the agency will attempt to respond to urgent operational inquiries.

Updates regarding government operating status and resumption of normal operations can be found at http://www.usa.gov.

Thanks, you bastard shit-sucking dumbass Republicans!

Oh, and how about the USDA?

Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available.

After funding has been restored, please allow some time for this website to become available again.

This is embarrassing.

ransom

Ex-Muslims of North America

While I was in Washington DC a while back, I got to talk with Sarah Haider for a bit. She’s one of the leaders of the Ex-Muslims of North America, and they are trying to build up a greater profile — slowly and cautiously, though, because as she explained to me, there are a lot of non-ex-Muslims who want to infiltrate their group and expose their membership for apostasy. So if you’re an ex-Muslim who is in the closet about it, and you’re looking for a group that takes sensible precautions to protect their membership, you might want to reach out to EXMNA. I was very impressed with their professionalism and thoroughness.

I also wanted to mention this other aspect of their work. Sure, there are Muslim fanatics they have to be on the guard against, but also they’re imbedded in an unfortunately xenophobic culture that has turned all Muslims, even the ex kind, into boogeymen; and then there are the apologists who go too far the other way and pretend that hard-line Islam is benign and must be sheltered.

These days, there is a stark polarity that exists in media, academia and public life when it comes to discussions about Islam and Muslims. There are those who propagate racist, bigoted and xenophobic ideas against Muslims, against anyone who comes from a Muslim background, and even against people who are not Muslim at all (e.g. Sikhs). These types of people (the bigots) tend to treat all Muslims (or all those perceived to be Muslim) as a monolith, a horde without internal differences or dissent. On the other hand, there are those who react to the bigoted, xenophobic types by trying to justify the violent parts of Islam and the harsh actions of some Muslims. This second type (the apologists) often shields Islam and Muslims from any and all critique and scrutiny, even the kinds of critique and scrutiny they themselves apply to other ideologies like Christianity, Capitalism, Communism, and others.

I don’t envy them the narrow tightrope they have to walk, but these are people doing it as well as possible. Check out Ex-Muslims of North America. Don’t expect them to embrace you immediately, though — they’re understandably wary.

Thanks, Republicans!

Our broken party of ignorant zealots, the Republicans, have shut down the government in a tantrum over our very limited healthcare proposal. Here’s what we can expect to see happen:

  • State department will be able to operate for limited time

  • Department of defence will continue military operations

  • Department of education will still distribute $22bn to public schools, but staffing is expected to be severely hit

  • Department of energy – 12,700 staff expected to be sent home, with 1,113 remaining to oversee nuclear arsenal

  • Department of health and human services expected to send home more than half of staff

  • The Federal Reserve, dept of homeland security, and justice dept will see little or no disruption

  • US Postal Services continue as normal

  • Smithsonian institutions, museums, zoos and many national parks will close

I might have seen a bright side to this if the military and homeland security had felt the bite, but no — health and human services, the department of energy, education, and our parks and museums are being hit. It’s always the stuff that makes us better people that suffers the first cut when the Republicans have their way.

There is no further excuse for them. The Republican Party must wither and die. It is no longer the loyal opposition, the party of conservatives, or the cautious, fiscally responsible party: it is the fringe party of lunatics, demagogues, and irresponsible lackwits.

By they way, if you go to Google right now, their doodle is celebrating the 123rd anniversary of Yosemite National Park.

Why do the Republicans hate Yosemite?

“it is time for the genitals of all children to be protected from people with knives and strong religious or cultural beliefs”

Taslima has the news: experts in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland are proposing a complete ban on circumcisions of all types. Unfortunately, it’s a little premature to say it will happen: what we have right now is a group of ombudsmen for children, paediatricians, and paediatric surgeons passing a resolution at a meeting. There is no law yet.

But it certainly makes sense. Hacking up babies’ crotches is perverse and bizarre and unnecessary.