Lawyers and atheists

We both have something in common — we both tend to get vilified regularly, although I have to admit, lawyers have it worse — there isn’t a whole category of atheist jokes where the punch line is always something about how they have to die horribly. So I feel it’s only fair to acknowledge that we do need lawyers, and they deserve some credit.

So today I got letter from an ebullient lawyer and regular reader who wanted to tell a tale of triumphant justice. And I thought you might enjoy it, too. The names and details have been changed and obscured to protect the innocent.

Also, it’s about a dreadful rape case, and it does discuss some of the horrific consequences, so some of you may want to avoid it. Let me reassure you, though…it has a happy ending!

[Read more…]

If only we could get the English to vote in our elections

Mitt Romney is off touring England like a boss, and he’s already pissing everyone off. And then this quote from one of his books has just emerged.

England [sic] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn’t make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn’t been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler’s ambitions. Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the earth’s land and a quarter of the earth’s population.

This is great! I hope he visits more strange little foreign countries before the election!

And now, the latest in Romney hypocrisy

This could be a daily feature — but it won’t be, because I’m already gagging at the thought of it. The latest news from Romney is that he’s making political hay out of the fact that Obama made a speech declaring the importance of a national infrastructure — roads and bridges, for instance — to businesses, and he dared to say to businessmen that “you didn’t build that”. So of course Romney is lining up Republican businessmen to say, “I did too build my own business!”, a claim Obama did not dispute.

But here’s the funny bit: one businessman Romney featured in an ad is not only ignoring what Obama actually said, but is the recipient of millions of dollars in government loans. I guess he didn’t build his own business after all, but had an awful lot of help from us taxpayers.

And one more thing: Sally Ride has died, and we now learn something new: she’s been in a committed lesbian relationship for 27 years. Romney is now praising her, without acknowledging that his anti-gay policies would deny her the dignity and benefit of recognizing that relationship. What an asshole.

You’re not actually going to vote for that guy in November, are you? I’m extremely lukewarm about Obama, but I’m going to poke that paper ballot to spite Romney, if nothing else.

Australian PM will answer questions soon!

We won a poll to determine what questions Julia Gillard would have to answer — or try to slickly dodge — and she’s going to be doing it live on the web at 11am AEST … which is in about a half hour! Go to the Deakins University channel for live streaming.

Oh, by the way — while we voted entirely fairly and within the parameters of the poll, I am still getting a lot of hate mail and a few tweets from wingnuts bitterly complaining about how we “stacked the vote” (I think that means “outvoted”) and how it was more American imperialism. Sorry, guys, we voted on an atheist issue, and we atheists are global, and besides, atheists are a larger percentage of the Australian population than the American. So suck it up.

Also, your pal Andrew Bolt is an inflamed dingleberry denialist, so scientists (another international community) were quite happy to see his global warming denial FUD squeezed out of the victory circle. Ha ha and all that. Stuff it, pseudoscientists.

Gotcha!

This is an account from Connie Schultz’s facebook page, so I’ll put the whole thing here for you fb-haters.

Email from conservative blogger, dated July 9, 2012:

Dear Ms. Shultz,

We are doing an expose on journalists in the elite media who socialize with elected officials they are assigned to cover. We have found numerous photos of you with Sen. Sherrod Brown. In one of them, you appear to be hugging him.

Care to comment?

An exposé! Of the elite media! And he’s got the photographic evidence! It sounds so Breitbartian. And the followup is a classic Breitbartian pratfall.

Response, dated July 10, 2012:

Dear Mr. [Name Deleted]:

I am surprised you did not find a photo of me kissing U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown so hard he passes out from lack of oxygen. He’s really cute.

He’s also my husband.

You know that, right?

Connie Schultz.

I’m sure this will make headlines at the Drudge Report or the Daily Caller or The Blaze or some similar right-wing schlock factory.

Sour grapes from an Australian conservative

Hey, we successfully pharyngulated that Australian poll. Now Prime Minister Gillard is expected to answer the top 3 questions: a question on her opposition to gay marriage, that godless question on the state-supported chaplains, and a question about veteran’s pensions. Two wingnutty questions intended to cast doubt on addressing global warming did not make the cut, and the author of those two, right-wing wing columnist Andrew Bolt, is a bit peeved.

Blogger and News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt, who drove a surge of votes for two climate questions last week, yesterday posted that the voting push from atheists was ‘‘most odd and suspicious’’, suggesting atheists had enlisted overseas networks to mobilise votes.

Mr Nicholls said he had circulated his question to Australian supporters but anyone could forward it on to others, and dismissed Bolt’s objections as “just because he’s not winning”.

‘‘This is the internet age. The comments (on my question) appear to be just Australians. I have no knowledge or control (over any foreign voting). I’d rather it just be Australians voting but you can imagine why America is interested,’’ he said.

On Bolt’s blog, he complained about us…that is, the Pharyngula readers who voted on the poll.

It seems the author has got US Internet forums to help.

…

Should blog readers fight fire with fire? It does seem odd having US readers demand answers from an Australian PM that they’ll almost certainly won’t hear about a program that doesn’t affect them in the slightest.

Nothing odd about this at all. Of course Americans have an interest in seeing good government in other countries, just as Australians are interested in seeing American not sliding back into tea-party barbarism. The question we voted in were suggested by Australians, and reflect Australian interests. And Pharyngula has a world-wide readership, so it’s kind of silly to claim that a link here just brought US interests to the table.

Also, should I point out that the previous post in Andrew Bolt’s blog was Bolt expressing his opinion of the American presidential elections?

Tennessee’s embarrassing tea party

Tennessee’s governor, Bill Haslam, recently appointed a well-qualified resident of the state to be the new international director of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. Her name is Samar Ali. And you can guess where this is going.

The state tea-partiers and Republicans are hysterical. SHE’S A MOOOSLIIIIM!

They bought ads in the newspaper decrying the hiring of Ali because she’s Muslim. Various county leaders are outraged and are passing resolutions condemning Haslam because he hired a Muslim. Oh, and as long as the bigots are emboldened, they’re also tossing in complaints about the fact that Haslam hasn’t fired enough homosexuals.

You know, this is why government is supposed to be secular. As long as the people doing the work of administration keep their religion out of their work, as long as they are responsible to everyone in their state, as long as they are competent, I don’t care whether they’re Christian or Muslim or atheist. Unfortunately, our privileged, selfish Christian conservatives have this mistaken notion that the purpose of government is to act as an arm of the Christian church, and that evangelical fervor is an adequate substitute for competence, and that is doing us great harm.

Not-so-pointless poll on Australian chaplains

The Atheist Foundation of Australia would like their prime minister to answer one simple question:

Dear Prime Minister. Against the strongly expressed concerns of mental health professionals, teacher unions and secular organisations, why do you allow the outrageous situation to continue where largely unqualified, religious evangelists have access to young children in public schools, in the form of the National School Chaplaincy Program?

She’s been dodging it, of course, and I suspect that if she were backed into a corner she’d be entertainingly frantic in her efforts to escape. So let’s corner her! And she has made the mistake of making that possible.

Dear members and supporters,

OurSay is giving us the opportunity to directly ask Prime Minister
Julia Gillard a question, and we have chosen to focus on the
outrageous taxpayer funded National School Chaplaincy Program.

This Saturday, Gillard will answer three of the most popular questions
as chosen through OurSay. One of these questions could be ours.

Please follow these simple steps to make sure that we have a seat at
the table:

1) Sign up for OurSay

2) Vote seven times for our question:

3) Recruit a friend to do exactly the same

Click here to get started: http://oursay.org/s/2ea

We only have until Thursday but, if we all came together – we could
make sure that this important issue is being heard by Prime Minister
Gillard and all of Australia that very Saturday.

Regards, David Nicholls

President – Atheist Foundation of Australia

PS. Make sure that you sign up and vote seven times to get an answer
from Gillard on Chaplaincy.

It’s a poll with some teeth. Let’s make Gillard dance!