We won’t have Dianne Mandernach to kick around anymore

Our Minnesota Health Commissioner, a Republican appointee who was supported by our Republican governor through a number of startlingly clueless incidents, has finally resigned. Here’s a short summary of her career:

This summer, Mandernach was criticized over her suppression of a state study about 35 cancer deaths related to taconite mining on Minnesota’s Iron Range.

In 2004, her credibility suffered when a website posting by the department suggested that abortion might have a role in breast cancer. Critics denounced those claims as junk science, and the wording was removed from the website.

So she hid real cancer risks and promoted fake cancer risks. She got it wrong coming and going! How could that be? Could it be…ignorance and arrogance?

Marty said his misgivings began about a year after her appointment, when Mandernach was forced to remove the wording on the website that claimed a link between abortion and breast cancer.

“She told me it was her judgment to override all of the scientific information at the time,” Marty said.

What were the qualifications of this paragon to override scientific evidence? She was “a former nun and teacher, was chief executive of the Mercy Hospital & Health Care Center in Moose Lake”. Doesn’t that fill you with confidence?

So how did he grow up to be such an intolerant, hate-baiting jerk?

This sounds like it’s got to be a spoof, but it’s so weird it could also be true. Karl Rove’s adoptive father was a cover model … for a magazine about genital piercing. That’s fine by me, it’s just that it does make me wonder what’s going on in Karl Rove’s head — an honest biography of the man would be fascinating.

The apologists will now explain to us that these people don’t actually exist

The wingnuts are still outraged that there is a Muslim in congress and that a Hindu delivered an opening prayer (which was pretty dang lame, anyway). Now look at this silly little man (R-Idaho) ranting about the death of America:

Last month, the U.S. Senate was opened for the first time ever with a Hindu prayer. Although the event generated little outrage on Capitol Hill, Representative Bill Sali (R-Idaho) is one member of Congress who believes the prayer should have never been allowed.

“We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers,” asserts Sali.

Sali says America was built on Christian principles that were derived from scripture. He also says the only way the United States has been allowed to exist in a world that is so hostile to Christian principles is through “the protective hand of God.”

“You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike,” says the Idaho Republican.

According to Congressman Sali, the only way the U.S. can continue to survive is under that protective hand of God. He states when a Hindu prayer is offered, “that’s a different god” and that it “creates problems for the longevity of this country.”

We’ve been having a little discussion in the comments here about the insensibility of satire and parody in this age of Christian lunacy. Take a look at the comments on that article — they are almost all effusive in their praise for Sali and are howling about how America must be ruled by the One True God™. These recent parodies of various Republican presidential candidates are amusing, but there’s a reality out there that’s far crazier and far scarier.

But these people don’t exist, I have often been told. The religious are thoughtful, progressive, inoffensive types.

Do you want people who respect Stephen Baldwin to run your army?

I mentioned the growing entanglement of fundamentalist religion in the military the other day, and here’s another example: proselytization in the military by evangelical freaks like Stephen Baldwin.

Baldwin became a right-wing, born-again Christian after the 9/11 attacks, and now is the star of Operation Straight Up (OSU), an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among
active-duty members of the US military. As an official
arm of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, OSU plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU is also scheduled to embark on a “Military Crusade in Iraq” in the near future.

Hang on there … maybe we shouldn’t worry too much. If the evangelical arsenal consists of the dumbest of the Baldwin brothers and an exceptionally lame video game, all it’s going to succeed in doing is recruiting the dregs and dullards…

…who will then be lofted into positions of leadership in the most powerful military force in the world.

Hmmm. Maybe we should be concerned.

I get email

Here’s an odd correlation for you: whenever I take a swipe at the foolishness of Scott Adams, I get a major uptick in the usual trickle of Christian email. I don’t quite see Adams as a friend to Christianity, although he does seem to foster the kind of shallow thinking on which religiosity thrives. Anyway, for your delectation, I’ve put a couple of samples below.

[Read more…]

What Would Jesus Do … with a cruise missile?

It’s frightening to see religion poisoning our military, but it’s happening. A group of generals is facing disciplinary action for promoting an evangelical religious organization, and they admit to being oblivious to the problem of a general declaring that his “first priority is his faith in god”, or in supporting a fanatical Christian group that wants to target foreign diplomats, ambassadors, and other representatives for conversion to Christianity. These fellows lent the dignity and responsibility of their positions to a weird cult, and now they defend themselves with this particularly chilling argument:

Brooks told investigators he believed he did not violate any rules. Due to Christian Embassy’s long tenure of working with Pentagon employees, Brooks said he saw the group “as a sanctioned or endorsed activity.”

Catton’s response was similar. Christian Embassy had become a “quasi-federal entity,” he told investigators, and he believed he was taking part in a program approved by the Defense Department.

So because they blindly assumed that Christian proselytization was a normal activity for high-level military leaders, they went ahead and contributed to a movie that portrays our government as a hotbed of Christian crazies … which is true, unfortunately, but we don’t need to pretend that that is a good thing.

You can watch the whole movie — it’s an embarrassingly treacly pile of crap in which politicians and soldiers profess their reliance on morning bible study and advice from the Lord to do their jobs. For instance, it’s got representative Gresham Barrett of South Carolina piously declaiming the moral guidance he’s been given, saying “You have to think about what’s right, what’s right for the country” while the video shows a picture of him smilingly shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld. It’s got Pentagon chaplain Ralph Benson providing his solution to the “war on terror”: “What more do we need than Christian people leading us?” Christian Embassy, by the way, seems to be affiliated with Bill Bright and the Campus Crusade for Christ — that’s all we need is crusaders taking over the military.

These displays of piety from our leaders always make me want to sit them down and pin them down on precisely how Jesus is advising them. They seem bereft of any sense of ethics at all, which is making Jesus look like a right clueless bastard whose sole interest is in promoting the careers of self-serving maggots like Tom Delay.