Nah, they’re both still just apes.
Food for thought: look at Perry’s record and plans. Then consider this: 54% disapprove of Obama’s job performance so far.
We should be very, very scared.
Why? This makes no sense. Ken Ham is putting up a for-profit theme park, has already got big sales tax breaks from the state of Kentucky, and now we learn that he’s also getting a major break on property taxes.
The property tax agreement means the Ark Encounter would pay 25 percent of the local taxes due on 800 acres of property where the $150 million theme park will be built. Mayor Rick Skinner says the reduced property taxes will generate far more revenue than unoccupied land.
Well, with that logic, we all ought to get tax cuts on our homes to just slightly more than the valuation of an undeveloped lot.
Besides, we’ve been hearing all these glorious promises from Answers in Genesis about how they’re going to be raking in big bucks and getting amazing attendance and creating all these wonderful jobs for Kentucky — but at the same time they go begging for special privileges like a bunch of desperate paupers.
Christians. Yeah, they believe in that poverty crap, all right.
(Also on Sb)
…but Rick Perry is a traitor by his own confession and a murderer.
So the best the Republicans can field in this election cycle is a crazy church lady and a Confederate seccessionist? Looks like I’m going to be reluctantly voting for Obama again.
You must read the profile of Michele Bachmann in The New Yorker—scary stuff all the way through. It goes right down to her philosophical foundation, and it’s all this crazy Dominionist crap from Frank Schaeffer, with nods to the notorious creationist Nancy Pearcey. Do we really want an apocalyptic believer in Christian tyranny to be in the White House?
A study in the Journal of the Royal Society of medicine has assessed the effectiveness of health care in 19 western countries and come up with a simple ranking system: a measure of the the number of lives saved relative to expenditures proportional to the GDP. One parameter, called the GDPHE, or GDP Health Expenditure was a measure of how much money the country was sinking into health care per citizen; by dividing this by the mortality rates, they got a measure of the effectiveness of the health care system.
This is a ranking system, and I have mostly a hyper-competitive American audience, so you all want to know whether you win or not, right? You want the data that shows that the US is #1! And here it is, the one result that shows us at the top of the ladder, our average health care as a function of GDP.
Look at that: we don’t just win, we win big, leaving our closest competitor, Germany, in the dust. We spend 125% of the money Germany does per person. Does it feel good, America? We are tossing bigger buckets of money into health care than anyone else.
But now for the number that really matters, the GDPHE ratio. How many lives are we saving with all that money? Here’s the answer. Look at the last column, which is the ratio of money spent to lives saved.
Oops. We’re…#17. We’re almost the worst — thanks, Portugal and Switzerland, for neglecting the medical needs of your citizenry more than we do.
Our health care is miserably inefficient, and we pour extravagant sums of cash into it, but you might ask whether it works at all. And the answer is a bit of good news, yes, it does. This study also compared death rates over time and came to the conclusion that, in the US, more than half a million people are alive today who would not have been with the medical care we offered 25 years ago. Medicine in the US is good, it’s just far more economically wasteful than it ought to be.
I’m still thinking I ought to retire to Ireland.
(Also on Sb)
Governments that aspire to oppressiveness love to restrict the flow of information and communication, and that’s happening in Brazil right now. The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies is considering legislation to control internet access.
Next week, Congress could vote to radically restrict internet freedom in Brazil — criminalizing everyday online activities like sharing music and restricting fundamental blogging tools. We have just six days to stop them.
Public pressure defeated an attack on internet freedom in 2009, and we can do it again! The bill is in three committees in the Chamber of Deputies to stop the bill from passing. These politicians are carefully watching public response to the proposed bill in the days leading up to the big vote — now is our chance to launch a national outcry and force them to protect internet freedoms.
Brazil has over 75 million internet users — we can be deafening if we join together. Send a message now to leaders of the Constitution and Justice, Science and Technology, and Public Safety Committees, then share it with your friends and family across Brazil!
Sign the petition and save Brazil’s internet!
I can’t believe we elected any of these hypocritical loons to office anywhere. Look at the shenanigans in Dayton, Ohio.
Kelly Kohls, who was elected in Springboro on a platform of fiscal responsibility two years ago, requested last week the district’s curriculum director look into ways of providing “supplemental” instruction dealing with creationism. Fellow member, Scott Anderson, who was elected with Kohls when the district was struggling financially, supports his colleague’s idea.
“Creationism is a significant part of the history of this country,” Kohls said. “It is an absolutely valid theory and to omit it means we are omitting part of the history of this country.”
That’s not true. It is neither a significant part of our history nor is it a valid “theory” — it doesn’t even deserve the label of theory, since it doesn’t integrate a large number of scientific hypotheses and observations. It doesn’t even deserve to be called a hypothesis, since it’s made in direct contradiction to the evidence. It might best be called a myth, nothing more.
One other fine piece of hypocrisy: she and many Teabaggers are getting elected on promises of fiscal conservativism. Clearly, they didn’t mean it: peddling creationism in the public schools means they’re going down the Dover path, and we all saw how much that cost the school district. This should be seen as a ploy to destroy public education.
Also, how’s this for irony? Kohls filed for bankruptcy. They own a house valued at $450,000 (in Ohio? What kind of mansion did they splurge on?), on which they owe… $829,000. Yeah, she’s a smart money manager.
I can’t believe we elected any of these hypocritical loons to office anywhere. Look at the shenanigans in Dayton, Ohio.
Kelly Kohls, who was elected in Springboro on a platform of fiscal responsibility two years ago, requested last week the district’s curriculum director look into ways of providing “supplemental” instruction dealing with creationism. Fellow member, Scott Anderson, who was elected with Kohls when the district was struggling financially, supports his colleague’s idea.
“Creationism is a significant part of the history of this country,” Kohls said. “It is an absolutely valid theory and to omit it means we are omitting part of the history of this country.”
That’s not true. It is neither a significant part of our history nor is it a valid “theory” — it doesn’t even deserve the label of theory, since it doesn’t integrate a large number of scientific hypotheses and observations. It doesn’t even deserve to be called a hypothesis, since it’s made in direct contradiction to the evidence. It might best be called a myth, nothing more.
One other fine piece of hypocrisy: she and many Teabaggers are getting elected on promises of fiscal conservativism. Clearly, they didn’t mean it: peddling creationism in the public schools means they’re going down the Dover path, and we all saw how much that cost the school district. This should be seen as a ploy to destroy public education.
Also, how’s this for irony? Kohls filed for bankruptcy. They own a house valued at $450,000 (in Ohio? What kind of mansion did they splurge on?), on which they owe… $829,000. Yeah, she’s a smart money manager.
A member of the Australian parliament, Fred Nile, has been pushing an interesting cost-saving measure. You know how Australian schools are saddled with chaplains and religious instruction? Well, he wants to keep that nonsense and kill the ethics classes that students can take as a secular alternative.Seems backwards to me, but then he is presumably a Christian, and so is perverse and backward by nature.
So Charlie Fine wrote an op-ed defending the ethics courses. Fine is 11 years old, and smarter than a member of parliament.
The facts show that only 33 per cent of the world is Christian, and in NSW a quarter of children choose not to attend lessons on theological scripture. I think it is possible to be non-religious and a good person.
By all means, Mr Nile, you go out and be as Christian as you want; I respect that entirely. But that does not give you and your supporters the right to attempt to shape a future generation of adults in your mould – that is a religious conservative.
Your views are out of step with modern society, so I would ask you to reconsider your actions and continue to allow parents and children a choice in their classrooms.
There’s a poll with the opinion piece. I guess Charlie Fine is very persuasive.
Where do you stand on ethics classes in schools?
For them
92%
Against them
8%
Oh, sure, you can go vote on the poll too, but I think Charlie has it all well in hand.
A member of the Australian parliament, Fred Nile, has been pushing an interesting cost-saving measure. You know how Australian schools are saddled with chaplains and religious instruction? Well, he wants to keep that nonsense and kill the ethics classes that students can take as a secular alternative.Seems backwards to me, but then he is presumably a Christian, and so is perverse and backward by nature.
So Charlie Fine wrote an op-ed defending the ethics courses. Fine is 11 years old, and smarter than a member of parliament.
The facts show that only 33 per cent of the world is Christian, and in NSW a quarter of children choose not to attend lessons on theological scripture. I think it is possible to be non-religious and a good person.
By all means, Mr Nile, you go out and be as Christian as you want; I respect that entirely. But that does not give you and your supporters the right to attempt to shape a future generation of adults in your mould – that is a religious conservative.
Your views are out of step with modern society, so I would ask you to reconsider your actions and continue to allow parents and children a choice in their classrooms.
There’s a poll with the opinion piece. I guess Charlie Fine is very persuasive.
Where do you stand on ethics classes in schools?
For them
92%
Against them
8%
Oh, sure, you can go vote on the poll too, but I think Charlie has it all well in hand.
