You can tell a lot about a neighborhood by its…

…ads.

It’s another travel day for me — there have been too many of these lately, and no respite in sight — and I just now got off the road, the usual I94 to the Minneapolis/St Paul airport, and I noticed a remarkable change in the character of the billboards as I passed Albertville and entered the outer ring of middle class suburbs that surround the city. Suddenly, in addition to the usual billboards advertising gas, food, hotels, and the evils of abortion (seriously, people, don’t get too excited about those sporadic atheist signs, because Pro-Life Across America has saturated the rural Midwest, at least, with Smilin’ Baby ads), I saw jewelry stores, Colorado ski vacations, and cosmetic surgery ads everywhere. I had entered Michele Bachmann’s district.

The place was also full of billboards touting the perfidy of Amy Klobuchar (Democrat, don’t you know), urging me to vote for the anti-gay marriage amendment, and even more irritating, ads claiming that Minnesota is number one in voter fraud, and we must do something about it. The ad didn’t give specifics, but I wondered how many handfuls of cases it takes to reach #1.

What bugs me about those ads is their frothing rabid indignation at the thought that a few people, not enough to make any significant difference, might place a vote they are not entitled to…in the complete absence of any concern about the tens of thousands sanctioned Republican voter fraud might disenfranchise. But at least you can see where the priorities of Bachmann’s base lie.

Hypocrisy alert

Representative Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee is a fanatical Tea Party Republican who campaigns on his fanatical pro-life stance and his fanatical ‘family values’ who fanatically touts the importance of traditional marriage.

You know exactly where this is going, don’t you? I could just stop writing right here and you’d be able to fill in the rest of the story.

Yep, his marriage fell apart thanks to his philandering, and now we have a recording of a phone call with his ex-mistress in which he’s urging her impatiently to get an abortion. The only thing we’re missing so far is a gay fling and voting “yes” on a Democratic health care bill to confirm his demonic status.

Not that it matters. He’s still leading in his election campaign. The Tea Baggers don’t actually give a damn about their so-called values — you don’t have to live them if you just shout them angrily enough.

Give me more politicians with this kind of passion

I’m off to another long day of meetings, but at least I begin inspired by Julia 'badass' Gillard. This is so awesome.

Please. Someone tell Barack Obama to sit down and watch this speech a few dozen times until he realizes that this is the tone he must take in his debates with Romney. Gillard not only addresses endemic misogyny, but rebukes Tony Abbott for the actions of his whole party: “Has he taken any responsibility for the conduct of other members of his party?”

Uh-oh, he’s on to us!

Rats. Paul Broun (Ridiculous, Ga) sees right through us.

All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.

So…this guy gets elected down there in Georgia?

Nerd life forever

Oh, no, there are more reasons I can never run for public office in the United States.

Colleen Lachowicz is a Democrat running for the state senate in Maine. The Republicans are running attack ads against her, arguing that she isn’t fit for office because she plays an orc rogue in World of Warcraft. It’s not clear whether she’d be OK if she’d been playing an elf paladin.

Alas, I think I’m worse. I play an undead warlock. Also, I’m an atheist. Doooomed.

Oh, no! I just noticed in that picture…I’m also wearing a dress! Crap, I’m just going to have to resign myself to spending the rest of my life sucking at the public teat, never contributing anything, aren’t I? I’d move into my mother’s basement, but she doesn’t have one.

Christian zealots really can’t identify with anyone else

The Canadian government is firing all their non-Christian prison chaplains. Not all their chaplains, which would be a move that would be both smart and fair, but just the ones who don’t love Jesus enough.

The federal government is cancelling the contracts of all non-Christian chaplains at federal prisons, CBC News has learned.

Inmates of other faiths, such as Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews, will be expected to turn to Christian prison chaplains for religious counsel and guidance, according to the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who is also responsible for Canada’s penitentiaries.

Toews made headlines in September when he ordered the cancellation of a tender issued for a Wiccan priest for federal prisons in B.C.

Toews said he wasn’t convinced part-time chaplains from other religions were an appropriate use of taxpayer money and that he would review the policy.

In an email to CBC News, Toews’ office says that as a result of the review, the part-time non-Christian chaplains will be let go and the remaining full-time Christian chaplains in prisons will now provide interfaith services and counselling to all inmates.

"The minister strongly supports the freedom of religion for all Canadians, including prisoners,” the email states. “However, the government … is not in the business of picking and choosing which religions will be given preferential status through government funding. The minister has concluded … [Christian] chaplains employed by Corrections Canada must provide services to inmates of all faiths."

I’d like to know how Vic Toews would react if all the Christian chaplains were kicked out of the prisons and all the Jebusites had to turn towards “interfaith” services provided by rabbis and imams. I suspect he’d suddenly see a major problem with such a decision.

One other interesting note: Canada has about 15,000 prisoners, and their religion breaks down like this:

There are nearly 15,000 inmates in federal custody and a large majority of them identify themselves as Christian:

  • 37.5% are Catholic.

  • 19.5% are Protestant.

  • 4.5% are Muslim.

  • 4% First Nations spirituality

  • 2% are Buddhist.

  • less than 1% are Jewish.

  • less than 1% are Sikh.

Hang on, that adds up to less than 70%. What are the other 30%? Polls show that less than 20% of the Canadian population has no religious affiliation (recent polls bring that up closer to 30%). Have we finally found a country where the criminals are as godless as the general population?

Well, that was a waste of a few hours

I sort of watched the presidential debate last night (actually, I was working on my computer the whole time with the debate on in the background — I am so far behind in everything). It was…disappointing. Both sides swapped exaggerations, Romney, as usual, dodged on all the specifics and successfully avoided mentioning any details that he could be pinned down on, while someone slipped Obama a mickey. He was sluggish and hesitant, and seemed to be taking the safe strategy of avoiding any conflict. In a debate. In a campaign he could still lose. It was a debate about domestic issues and the economy, and Obama didn’t bother to mention that Romney has written off 47% of the electorate as moochers.

Getting sucked into bickering over how many billions of dollars are going to which program is pointless when it fails to expose the substantial ideological differences between the two parties. It was like watching two accountants bicker. Except I did notice one of the accountants invoking God at length near the end.

Can Jim Lehrer retire now? Please?

An anatomy quiz!

The Australian department of health distributed these posters to aboriginals and Torres Strait islanders to improve understanding of their bodies. I’m forced to conclude that either aboriginal peoples in the southern hemisphere are aliens with a remarkably deviant body plan, or the Australian government doesn’t give a damn.

Can you spot all the errors?

Answers:
Heart is reversed
Right kidney is not a pancreas
Ovaries are not kidneys
Stomach is not a respiratory organ
Small intestines are not a pear-shaped organ called the stomach

The poster has been withdrawn. The real mystery is whose understanding of anatomy at the health department is this bad.