I said that the annual CPAC conference that was held last weekend is where the most extreme right wing crazies come to strut their stuff and have aspiring politicians pander to them.
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Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
African countries like Uganda and Nigeria that recently passed appalling laws that subject gays in those countries to harsh penalties have been deservedly criticized. Some Christian leaders in those countries who supported the governments’ moves have hit back at their critics, saying that this whole idea of equal rights for gays is a western colonial import that is being foisted on the local population.
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Max Blumenthal writes that although there have been many people who have been criticizing his book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel that takes a hard look at what Israeli society has become, they have been reluctant to share a stage with him and debate the issues.
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There has been a concerted effort by the wealthy class in the US to get the media to think that cutting the debt is the biggest issue facing the nation and that there is only one way to do that and that is by cutting earned benefits. Peter G. Peterson, the billionaire former commerce secretary and co-founder of the Blackstone private equity group, is one of the leaders of this movement.
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Aasif Mandvi takes a close look at the claims made by some that the US provides the greatest health care in the world. As part of his investigation, he goes with Stan Brock and his Remote Area Medical (RAM) team that goes to remote areas around the world to provide free medical care to people who need them.
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The shindig known as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) wound up yesterday. This is the annual occasion when the craziest of political crazies get together and Republican politicians fall over themselves to outdo each other in pandering to them. The rule-of-thumb for any aspiring Republican is to say the most extreme things using the most incendiary rhetoric while clinging tenuously to some semblance of reality and not veering off into total lunacy.
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The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) recently released the results of a new survey showing that public support for same-sex marriage has jumped by 21 points from 2003. It is now favored by a 53%-41% majority, compared to the earlier 32%-69% minority. All parts of the country now have majority support except for the South where opinions are evenly divided.
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About a decade ago the university center at which I work hosted Elaine Langer, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of the book Mindfulness, that discusses the benefits of concentrating on whatever we happen to be doing at the moment and avoiding the trap of falling into autopilot mode. As I introduced her to the audience, I said that she was the first woman to reach the rank of full professor in the psychology department at Harvard.
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I don’t like snakes. Sri Lanka, being a tropical country has a fair share of snakes that are both poisonous and non-poisonous and so I have encountered them, though not too many because I always lived in urban areas and snake sightings are rare, though not unheard of. But despite having encountered quite a few of them in the wild in my lifetime, I have never overcome my desire to get the hell as far away from them as possible.
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