Southern Baptists Consider Name Change; I Offer Suggestions

Via no one. This is mine.

The Southern Baptists have established a task force to look at whether their 166-year-old convention should adopt a new name with no regional nature and no links to slavery

That is from Politic365.com although you can find the story many places.

Hmm. I have a few suggestions.

"Homophobic Baptists: We're the Ones that Still Hate the Gays"

"American Baptists: Because you don't have to live in the south to be a bigot!"

"Un-American Baptists: Yeah, We're the Ones that Boycotted Disney and Now Huckabee thinks We're Un-American"

"The Forged Pauline Epistles Baptists: Women Need to Keep Their Damn Mouth Shut Unless We're Trying To Stick Something In It

"The Fucking Dick Baptists: Yeah, We Like Rick Warren, Why?"

"American Baptists Who Acknowledge That Barack Obama Tried to Include Us, Yet We Still Hate Him. Because you Know....He's Black!"

"The Fuck Apologizing Baptists. Because even if the world thinks we're Bigots, We're still going to hate those gays!"

"The 166 Year Bigots: Hey, it's worked for 166 years, why change now?"

"The Hypocrite Baptists: Help, We're Being Oppressed!"

Somehow, I think the name they decide on will be less descriptive of their mission.

Huckabee Calls Supporters Un-American

Via the New York Times although Ed Brayton beat me to it.

“This is economic terrorism,” said Mike Huckabee, the former pastor, governor and presidential contender, who is a paid CGBG consultant. “To try to destroy a business because you don’t like some of the customers is, to me, unbelievably un-American,” he said in an interview.

Ok. Is that really your position on this issue, Mr. Huckabee?

Do me a favor quick, will you? Google "Christian Boycotts". Ignore the first hit. What do you find?

Christian boycotts of Disney, Ford, Nickelodeon, The Da Vinci Code, and Action Comics. And that is ignoring the fact that the second hit is a site dedicated to Christian's boycotting those who hold opinions and beliefs that they disagree with.

Un-American, everyone. Don't look at me. I'm just following the lead of Mr. Huckabee.

Jay Sekulow brings the crazy

Via Ed Brayton



Seriously?! Is it April 1st and I slept through the whole fucking winter? You have to be kidding me. Is there any end to the insanity coming from the religious right?

Do you know what it takes for the Constitution to be amended? 2/3rd super majority in both the House and the Senate, and then ratification by 3/4 of the States.

As Ed says at his blog, "Paris Hilton will win the Nobel Prize for Physics before that happens."

Muslims make up 1% of the United States. Only a small percentage of that 1% wants Sharia Law imposed in this country. Almost without exception, everyone else is opposed to the idea. It isn't even an option in my dystopian fever dreams of theocratic future American, let alone the current, modern US.

Sekulow,of the American Center for Law and Justice, is fear-mongering. He can not actually believe the words coming out of his mouth. If he does, he needs serious help. This is a calculated lie to scare the fuck out of Christians that he obviously feels are stupid. We do not live in a country where a significant percentage of the population wants Sharia law. It is a non-issue. It is a scare tactic that insults the intelligence of those it is aimed at. I can only hope that Christians realize this and stop letting people like Sekulow play them.

*sigh*

Paris Hilton winning a Noble Prize for Physics? Hell, it's more likely that Sarah Palin will be appointed Empress for life of the United Christian States of America tomorrow by Barack Obama.

Sharia is not taking over the United States. Get a fucking grip on reality.

United States Murders 2 Citizens Without Trial

Via CBS news

Was al-Awlaki a danger to the United States? Probably.

Was he someone the United States needed to deal with? Probably.

Is execution without trial a dangerous precedent to set? Absolutely.

Realize, this was not Osama. This was an American Citizen. Executed with no due process. "Self-defense" seems to be the justification of this extreme act. I am tempted to agree with that. It sounds right, and will play to the masses, especially after the media spins it. We do need to be tough on terror, right? That is one of the main perceived weaknesses of Liberals, correct?

*sigh*

I understand that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy. But normally, that seems to be due to the slope being taken to the point of absurdity. You don't have to follow the path that far to realize why this is dangerous.

The President of the United States has now claimed the power to execute US citizens without trial, based on classified information, with no checks or balances on this power. The citizen does not need to be on a battlefield. He may be sleeping. He may be playing with his children, eating dinner, anything. This places Obama to the right of George W. Bush, to the right of Antonin Fucking Scalia!

Glenn Greenwald had this to say on April 7th, 2010:

No due process is accorded. No charges or trials are necessary. No evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations (which he has done vehemently through his family). None of that.

Instead, in Barack Obama’s America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens — and a death penalty imposed — is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone’s guilt as a Terrorist. He then dispatches his aides to run to America’s newspapers — cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they’re granted — to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist. It is simply asserted that Awlaki has converted from a cleric who expresses anti-American views and advocates attacks on American military targets (advocacy which happens to be Constitutionally protected) to Actual Terrorist ”involved in plots.” These newspapers then print this Executive Verdict with no questioning, no opposition, no investigation, no refutation as to its truth. And the punishment is thus decreed: this American citizen will now be murdered by the CIA because Barack Obama has ordered that it be done. What kind of person could possibly justify this or think that this is a legitimate government power?

Full article is HERE

Honestly? This scares the living shit out of me. This is not a power I trust the Government to have. Innocent people are executed in this country with due process. I trust no one with the power to unilaterally decide who lives and who dies.

Can the media please stop claiming Obama is a liberal now? Seriously?

Nothing to see here......

Restarting blog soon. New look, new purpose, new posts.

Be back in a day or two.

Dr. Frank is an asshole.

Dr. Frank's Pet Pain Spray

Homeopathic pet pain relief. 5 sprays in your pets water bowl everytime you give it water. 20 bucks for a 200 spray bottle.

I have a blind dog. He had poor vision as a puppy when I adopted him from the humane society (who found him left along the side of the road. How can anyone leave a puppy on the side of the road to die? Anyway,....) and lost the rest of his vision before he was a year old. He gets around pretty well. He has a habit of picking up one of my sneakers and carrying it around the house. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he uses the sneaker like a blind person uses a cane, carrying it so when he runs into something, the shoe hits first instead of his head.

I bring up my dog because I feel the pain of the people in the commercial for Dr. Frank's. I wish I could give my dog sight. I feel horrible when he runs into something, especially something new I just brought into the house that he isn't familiar with. I know that a lot of people, myself included, consider their pets part of the family. Ranger (my dog) dislocated his shoulder one day, and I held him, comforted him, and cried until he stretched out and popped it back in place. I can not stand suffering, and I would do anything that I could to prevent any member of my family from suffering.

And now, for 20$ to start, Dr. Frank will take advantage of our love for our pets, and sell us a bottle of flavored water.

I hate people.

Evidence? Who needs evidence to start a panic?

Oh what the fu....

I remember the good ole days, when a flawed study actually had to be released for the panic to hit the streets. You may remember it as well. Power lines. Childhood Leukemia. Well meaning social scientists. Lack of control groups. Lack of proper methodology. Logical fallacies. The end result being widespread panic as people began believing that the electromagnetic radiation from power lines was causing cancer in little kids. An entire industry sprung up to take advantage of it, and it took real scientists years of real science and proper studies to convince people of the truth. Living near power lines is not going to kill your child. There is no increased cancer risk from the power lines. Hell, even today, you will find people who still believe the lines are giving tons of innocent children a horrible disease and the scientists are covering up the truth. All from a couple poorly done studies.

Well, now you don't even need a study. You can just wake up in the morning and decide to freak half of the United States out.

Front page of my local fish wrap today, Ronald B. Herberman, MD, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute has issued a warning linking cell phone usage with brain cancer.

So I know what you must be thinking. The head of a major cancer research center issues a warning that using cell phones can cause/causes brain cancer, he must have some hard evidence to back it up. Surely he wouldn't freak out the country and start another cancer panic without knowing what he was talking about, right?

Right?

Nope. Dr. Herberman issued his warning based on "early unpublished data." And you know, if this "early unpublished data" was coming from the first study ever done on the possible link between cell phones and cancer, I may give him a pass and assume that the "early unpublished data" actually backs him up on his claims.

But this is a subject that has been studied before. And the results are always the same. There is no link between cell phones and brain cancer. The study that his "early unpublished data" comes from, a multinational research project known as Interphone has already released peer reviewed results. And guess what? No cancer link so far.

So why issue the warning? Well, the good doctor says that "it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children." JENNIFER C. YATES and SETH BORENSTEIN AP News

Let's let Dr. Herberman speak for himself.

"Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later"

So rather than letting science work, and seeing if there is a risk involved, let's throw it all out and go with our gut feeling.

Pushing this man to yell, "fire!" in a crowded theater, apparently, was Devra Lee Davis, the director of the university's center for environmental oncology. She says:

"I don't know that cell phones are dangerous. But I don't know that they are safe."

Isn't that precious? Well, let's warn people about breathing. I mean, I don't know that breathing is dangerous, but I don't know that it is safe either! 100% of all people who breathe end up dying, after all.

Seriously. Technology comes with a price, whether it's pollution, health risks, or just that it makes us a little bit lazier. We really don't know the looooooooong term effects of cell phone use. But we really don't know the long term effects of countless new inventions. Maybe my ipod is giving me herpes and my flat screen is turning my brain into lettuce. Right now, all available evidence shows no link between cell phones and cancer. The FDA states on their website that if there is a risk from using cell phones, while stressing that they have no evidence that there is a risk, the risk would be very small.

We can live in fear, or we can live. Each and everyone of us has so many real terrors to worry about. To issue an unsupported warning like this is irresponsible and a slap in the face to science. Dr. Herberman probably thinks he is saving lives, but all he is causing is this:

Susan Juffe, a 58-year-old Pittsburgh special education teacher, heard about Herberman's cell phone advice on the radio earlier in the day.

"Now, I'm worried. It's scary," she said.

She says she'll think twice about allowing her 10-year-old daughter Jayne to use the cell phone.

"I don't want to get it (brain cancer) and I certainly don't want you to get it," she explained to her daughter.

Thank you for giving millions of people something new to worry about, for no reason at all.