You knew it was too good to be true. Julia Gillard has just announced that she is against gay marriage. The honeymoon is over, no more plaudits. At least we still have Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir to admire.
And because it’s Gillard, there’s a poll. Are Australians always this internet-poll crazy?
Do you agree with the PM?
Yes
28%
No72%
The godless Australian PM, Julia Gillard, has sure riled up the pollsters. Here’s three polls at once to slam. Start clicking!
Do you care at all about Julia Gillard’s lack of religious faith?
* Yes 33.71%
* No 66.29%
Hey, what’s the difference between “No” and “Don’t care” in this poll? And what does it mean that it will affect their vote? This is a remarkably meaningless and uninterpretable poll.
Will your vote be swayed by Julia Gillard’s stance on religion?
* Yes, it will affect my vote 29.35%
* No, I’ll still vote the same 45.21%
* Don’t care 25.45%
This one is the only interesting one — does godlessness influence you in a positive way? Too bad it’s an internet poll, because we can’t tell from these kind of data.
Are you more or less likely to vote for Julia Gillard given she is an atheist?
More likely 39%
Less likely 34%
It’s not important 27%
It’s a tiny little island nation in the Indian Ocean, and it sounds like an interesting place. Unfortunately, the people there make it a hellhole.
In the Muslim-majority nation of Maldives, a man stunned an audience during questions and answers period in a lecture given by an Islamic cleric, by stating that he had chosen freedom of conscience not to follow Islam. The man, Mohamed Nazim, was promptly attacked, taken into custody, and has been threatened with death and beheading, or other punishments for choosing his freedom of conscience. Maldives media are reporting that it is the first time in many hundreds of years that a Maldivian has publicly renounced Islam, since Sultan King Hassan IX converted to Christianity in 1552 and was deposed.
Religion is an evil mind-rot with varying degrees of infection, but I think the worst of them all has to be Islam. What a nasty little superstition it is.
Here’s a real twist, though: The Maldives is on the UN Human Rights Council. I like the idea of an international tribunal like the UN, but this is the kind of insanity that makes it a joke.
Nazim was taken into police custody for expressing his conscience, where he received “Islamic counseling” and threatened with execution. The fact that he has now reverted to Islam in the face of such dire oppression does not change the fact that he’s got to be the bravest atheist alive.
Here’s a video of the odious Zakir Naik addressing Mohamed Nazim’s question. Theologians are all the same: he tries to turn it into an argument that god must exist, because otherwise there is no reason to have morality. Naik is a moron.
He does back off from insisting that Nazim be put to death, saying that there’s a difference between leaving the faith and advocating against the faith; the latter warrants killing the apostate, but not necessarily the first.
Australia has a non-religious woman as prime minister! This is nominally promising, but we’ll have to wait and see if she actually follows through with some kind of commitment to secularism (the former PM, Kevin Rudd, was known for recruiting god to his party’s side).
Also, unfortunately, in all the hullabaloo about having two X chromosomes, red hair, no husband or children, and making a secular affirmation instead of a religious oath of office, I’m not hearing much about her politics, other than that she’s more or less expected to continue current Labor Party policies. Is that good or bad? I don’t know. Maybe some Australians can explain in the comments.
I wouldn’t care if she were a red-haired Hindu if she were doing good work, but the last thing we need is a godless prime minister who is also incompetent — and yes, that could happen!
Roy Zimmerman released this one today as appropriate to the dissent at the top in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.
I have to applaud Rolling Stone for exposing the chaos in leadership in the war.
The Rolling Stone article highlights how President Obama has long had an even bigger decision to make. His Afghan team is widely regarded as dysfunctional. There is an astonishing web of animosities and rivalries between key civilian and military players.
McChrystal comes off as an honest — too honest — jerk who is so arrogant that he doesn’t care that the follies of the conduct of war are being exposed. It’s the kind of incompetence at diplomacy that make his firing righteous…but still, I’m so tired of our government lying about the state of the war in Afghanistan.
More worrying for American readers will be a passage in the article where Gen McChrystal visits a detachment of US soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan.
One of their number has been killed by a booby-trap bomb in an old house.
The local commander had asked permission several times to demolish the house to eradicate the risk to his men, but Gen McChrystal’s own rules of engagement mean that permission was denied.
When the general asks the soldiers if they think they are losing, one of them tells him that some of them do.
I really don’t like that song because one of my boys has elected to join the army, and is in basic training right now; he might well end up in this wretched war. I don’t want him or anyone to be the last man; I don’t want any Afghan citizens harmed in this futile exercise which isn’t likely to end happily for anyone. I don’t need reminders that we’re going to be heartsick with worry for a few years.
At least the song is protesting the war. I look at our leadership and feel only disappointment that Obama has increased our commitment to this nightmare, along with his pathetic efforts on domestic issues, and the only thing keeping me from disgust at having voted for him is the fact that our alternative was far, far worse.
Ophelia Benson is having a giggle over the Texas Republican Party Platform, which you can download, too. It’s the usual: guns, US out of the UN, immigrants must be controlled, etc. They really don’t like homosexuals.
We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, refuse to recognize, or grant special privileges including, but not limited to: marriage between persons of the same sex (regardless of state of origin), custody of children by homosexuals, homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.
They don’t like heterosexuals, either, since they want to arrest a bunch of them.
We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.
I wonder if they’re going to go high tech and install surveillance cameras in everyone’s bedroom, or if they’re satisfied with the old school system of spot checks and bashing in bedroom doors?
Probably low tech, since Texas Republicans don’t care much for that sciencey stuff.
We oppose any legislation that would allow for the creation and/or killing of human embryos for medical research. We encourage stem cell research using cells from umbilical cords, from adults, and from any other means which does not kill human embryos. We oppose any state funding of research that destroys/kills human embryos. We encourage the adoption of existing embryos. We call for legislation to withhold state and/or federal funding from institutions that engage in scientific research involving the killing of human embryos or human cloning.
Evolution gets a mention, too — it’s one of those suspicious theories, along with global warming and “political philosophies”…I guess there are no such things as “political philosophies”, only the one true absolute political reality of Ronald Reagan.
Realizing that conflict and debate is a proven learning tool in classrooms, we support objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories, including evolution, Intelligent Design, global warming, political philosophies, and others. We believe theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught as challengeable scientific theory subject to change as new data is produced, not scientific law. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind.
Hang on, though, let’s not just laugh at Texas: they also did something right recently. A Texas federal court has refused the Institute of Creation Research’s plea to be allowed to hand out science degrees. That’s got to sting, after the ICR left California to settle in Texas, hoping for a more lenient, accommodating atmosphere for lunacy. Even Texas has limits.
Now if only Texas’s limits weren’t so slack as to tolerate the Republicans down there…
The good news, first: the Mormon church has been found guilty on 13 counts of lying about their involvement with California’s proposition 8. Mormonism is now officially a faith of convicted liars.
Now the bad news, or more accurately, the pathetic news. The church lied about spending only $2078 on campaigning in California, when they’d actually raised over $30 million, but admitted to spending $190,000, and certainly spent much more than that to influence the election. The penalty for this ethics violation was…
$5538.
The lesson learned, I’m sure, is that when evil religious masterminds are plotting to commit serious ethical violations, they should plan ahead and budget 0.02% of their investment to paying off slap-of-the-wrist penalties.
Guess who has been the recipient of state funds for their superstition scam? Michele Bachmann and her husband!
Bachmann and Associates, Inc., a counseling center that receives state funds and is owned by Rep. Michele Bachmann and her husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, uses counseling methods steeped in fundamentalist Christianity, raising questions about its use of taxpayer money.
Founded in 2003, Bachmann’s clinic has taken in nearly $30,000 in state funds since 2007. Dr. Bachmann has said publicly that God heals people at his clinic and that Jesus Christ is the “Almighty Counselor.”
“We are distinctly a Christian counseling agency here in the Twin Cities,” he told KKMS radio in 2008. “We have 27 Christian counselors, Christ-centered, very strong in our understanding of who the Almighty Counselor is, and as we rely on God’s word and the Almighty Counselor, we have the opportunity to change people’s lives.”
Here’s how the quacks at this place describe their work:
“Jesus as the Son of God is the Savior, Healer, and intimate Lover of my soul,” said one therapist on the clinic’s Web site. “He invites those He calls to join Him on a personal journey to the Cross. Our entire being is healed and restored (body, soul, and spirit) as we surrender ‘our way’ for ‘His way.'”
So this ‘organization’, basically a front for the Bachmann family con game, is getting state money…and on top of that, it’s flamboyantly religious, little more than a church masquerading as therapy.
It’s corruption, plain and simple. But then, that’s what these Republicans do best.
(via Religion Clause)
British Petroleum isn’t so awful after all — it turns out that they have an almost 600 page long emergency response plan to deal with blowouts on their offshore oil wells. All the answers are in there, and I’m sure that they’ll soon be implemented. You can read those plans yourself and feel the warm glow of confidence that all is in good hands.
Lists “Sea Lions, Seals, Sea Otters [and] Walruses” as “Sensitive Biological Resources” in the Gulf, suggesting that portions were cribbed from previous Arctic exploratory planning;
Gives a web site for a Japanese home shopping site as the link to one of its “primary equipment providers for BP in the Gulf of Mexico Region [for]rapid deployment of spill response resources on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis”; and
Directs its media spokespeople to never make “promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal,” implying that BP will only commit candor by omission.
I have reviewed the plan myself. It’s amazing.
The walruses in the Gulf of Mexico are all safe. I repeat, the walruses are safe. This part of their plan was executed perfectly. We have to give them credit here.
The site for primary equipment providers is extremely technical, and it’s also almost entirely in Japanese, so I’m afraid I can’t extract all the details. It does say in English “@nifty” on many of the pages, and nifty sounds like exactly the quality I want in my industrial gear. I think this is a picture of the rapid response team, dressed for deployment to the warm Gulf waters:
I poked around a bit and found this cryptic diagram of a mysterious machine of some sort. I’m pretty sure it’s the device that will be lowered deep into the ocean to seal off the gushing wellhead. It is in Japanese, so I can’t tell how it will work, but it definitely looks nifty.
That third part of the plan is also a whopping success. Candor is completely absent. BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward, has in fact done a sterling job of being an unctuous, lying ass, saying that the spill will have only a “very, very modest” impact on the environment, and doing a fabulous job of trying to get his life back.
One other relevant point is that they do list worst case scenarios for various wells, and they’re spot on. The worst-case oil spill for any well is the sum of the amount of oil in various flow lines plus one day’s output from the well, and I’m sure it would be accurate if, as they assume, every catastrophic failure were quickly fixed within one day. Or in some cases, the well is simply instantly shut off. That it’s been flowing for 7 weeks instead of a single day is a fairly trivial difference, and even that estimates are in the range of 20 million barrels lost instead of the predicted 20 thousand barrels, is easily explained if we simply assume that there are creationists in charge of the schedule. We can even estimate when the pipe will be closed by simply using the kind of creationist math with which I am familiar, so we can be confident that the gusher will end within 134 years.
I think we can safely say that BP’s response to this disaster has been as effective as promised in their official response plan, filed almost a year ago. It is so eerily accurate I’m almost ready to credit them with psychic powers. They have the competence of a Sylvia Browne, the infallibility of the Pope, the steely-eyed acumen of Pat Robertson, and the forthright honesty of a Republican senator’s opposition to gay marriage.
I shall sleep well tonight in the knowledge that industry has prepared many such environmental response plans.
An LA Times story brings up the troubling possibility — nay, near-certainty— that we aren’t the global good guys our right wing brethren keep telling us we are. I know, it’s hard to believe, since we are so obviously the good guys in all that we do, but sometimes, there are trivial little incidents that make a fellow worry. Like when we have doctors doing experiments in torture. That’s the sort of Ming-the-Merciless kind of thing that baddies do.
A prominent human rights group accused the CIA of conducting illegal human experiments and unethical medical research during interrogations of high-profile terrorism suspects under the George W. Bush administration.
Physicians for Human Rights charged Monday that CIA doctors and other medical personnel collected data to study and calibrate the use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, severe pain and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, but did so under the guise of trying to protect the detainees’ health.
Well, at least we don’t have elite military units prancing about with skulls on their uniforms, reveling in death imagery.
Oh, crap.
