The nutting of America · Sunday May 6, 2007 by colin newell
According to a University of Minnesota study, Americans distrust Atheists more than Muslims.
Really?
Let’s dig into the article shall we.
Penny Edgell, associate professor of Sociology writes:
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in sharing their vision of American society. Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society.
Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.
Rampant materialism huh?
Last time I checked, every small American town had a Walmart, a Target Store and a CostCo…
and its aisles sure as hell weren’t full of Atheists on Sunday.
Anyway – it’s a scary and funny read.
The moral majority is neither · Saturday May 5, 2007 by colin newell
I close out most days listening to KGO 810 khz on the AM radio dial. I often have 2 choices of who I am going to get to listen to at this late hour; Bernie Ward or Dr. Bill Wattenburg.
I like Bernie. He is an apologist left-leaning, terrorist loving Liberal just like me… obviously hates freedom and everything that stands for it.
Dr. Bill Wattenburg is the other side of the coin. He swaddles himself in the American flag, supports the troops and those that support the troops and thinks Nuclear power is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Afterall, Dr. Bill Wattenburg invented Nuclear power, the transistor, electricity, the i-Pod and the internet. You name it.
Anyway – it is a good night when Bernie is on.
When he is not pontificating on the never-ending attack on freedom in America he is hitting the proverbial nail on the head on just about everything else clear-thinking Americans (and us Canadians to the North… we are all, afterall, linked at the border…) should concern themselves with.
And I might not be the most gifted listener around, but when Bernie brings something up, I tend to remember it, follow-up on it and dig a little deeper.
One of the things that scares Bernie more than anything else is the incursion into all levels of government by the nut-job religious right.
The federal government. Local governments. State governments. Municipal governments. No governmental agencies has been spared this frightening new cancer.
Enter freelance writer and author Michelle Goldberg.
After a year of traveling and reporting in India and East Asia, Michelle Goldberg moved to New York City and took a job as a news and politics reporter with Salon.com. There she covered all aspects of the ascendant political right, from the neocons to the theocrats. She was one of the first to expose how a tiny far-right Catholic sect convinced President Bush to cut off support for the United Nations Population Fund, which promotes reproductive health care and safe childbirth in the third world. She wrote about faith-based abstinence-only education and crisis pregnancy centers and about the right-wing attempts to take over the federal judiciary.
Scary stuff. Well she wrote a great book called Kingdom Coming
“In Kingdom Coming, Goldberg demonstrates how an increasingly bellicose fundamentalism is gaining traction throughout our national life, taking us on a tour of the parallel right-wing evangelical culture that is buoyed by Republican political patronage. Deep within the red zones of a divided America, we meet military veterans pledging to seize the nation in Christ’s name, perfidious congressmen courting the confidence of neo-confederates and proponents of theocracy, and leaders of federally funded programs offering Jesus as the solution to the country’s social problems.”
“With her trenchant interviews and the telling testimonies of the people behind this movement, Goldberg gains access into the hearts and minds of citizens who are striving to remake the secular Republic bequeathed by our founders into a Christian nation run according to their interpretation of scripture. In her examination of the ever-widening divide between believers and nonbelievers, Goldberg illustrates the subversive effect of this conservative stranglehold nationwide. In an age when faith rather than reason is heralded and the values of the Enlightenment are threatened by a mystical nationalism claiming divine sanction, Kingdom Coming brings us face to face with the irrational forces that are remaking much of America.”
We are living in truly dangerous times when bible thumpers have stolen the key to the White-house.
Read it and weep.
Comment [2]
Rage against the machine - part 1 · Saturday May 5, 2007 by colin newell
Imagine a convention of men. All one color. Let’s say white… for the sake of argument.
They are all jockeying for the position to be the future president of a country.
See if you can guess the country by the following hints.
1.) They do not believe women should have domain over their bodies or be able to make informed decisions about their reproduction.
2.) They wish to limit a doctors right to attend to their female patients by offering severely limited medical options for women.
3.) Virtually all of them are religious extremists.
4.) Some of them do not believe in evolution.
5.) Some of them would have homosexuality criminalized.
6.) Most, if not all of them, want the state in the bedrooms of the nation.
7.) Most, if not all of them, want Chuch and State unified.
Ok. Any guesses?
The Taliban you say!
Nope. Try again.
Uhm. The Mullahs of Iran!
Close, but not quite.
Give up?
It was the GOP leadership debate in Simi Valley this weekend at ten white men debated the future of the Republican party.
“Former Arkansas governor and Baptist pastor, Mike Huckabee repeated his position endorsing intelligent design on Saturday, but joked that he would allow for his own evolution if it gives him a better shot at winning his party’s nomination.”
And he wants to be President!
What would a successful President and member of the dangerous religious right do with the Sciences in America?
Pray tell.
Whoops. Maybe pray is the wrong word.
Politics, Gas and the World... · Wednesday May 2, 2007 by colin newell
So. A panel of 3 people set out to decide what kind of money British Columbian MLA’s should get…
and the best they could come up with was 29%
for the MLA’s no less.
Don’t ask what they have suggested for the Premier…
link
Okay. 53%.
A 53% increase for the leader of the Liberal party and our Province’s Premier.
Sick people are sleeping in hospital corridors and this is on the table.
In other news, gas prices are increasing in Canada almost daily. For some reason the price of gas in Vancouver is just shy of $1.30/litre.
There is a 35 cent variation in the price across Canada.
Meantime the weasels in the refining industry claim the following reasons for high prices at the pumps.
-fires at the refinery
-refinery is down for maintainence
-the dog ate the refinery.
Whale Oil Beef Hooked anyway.
Oil companies are reaping mind boggling profits and we are taking it up the hoo-hoo.
Sing a happy song.
I had a friend head down to Australia for a couple of weeks. They had to transit through LAX on their way from Vancouver to Honolulu and Fiji. While in LAX they were forced to give finger prints and a retinal scan…
One more reason we will not be travelling to America anytime soon. I have another dear friend and colleague who is travelling overseas via the U.S.A. and will go through the same intrusive song and dance over what?
As Naomi Wolf writes in her blog on HuffingtonPost.Com – America is taking one significant step after another down an obvious path to a police state.
We shouldn’t be afraid friends. We should be angry… very angry.
