Saturday, May 14, 2011

We Don't Do That...# who knows anymore..

Turley: 'Torture Isn't a War Crime Because It's Never Beneficial. It's a War Crime Because It's Immoral'

Sunday, April 19, 2009

I Love De Catholic Pope!


The pope is an evil quack

Category: ReligionReproduction
Posted on: March 18, 2009 9:14 AM, by PZ Myers

You've all heard the news by now, I'm sure: the pope was traveling to Africa, a continent plagued with widespread sexually transmitted diseases adn also, coincidentally, one of the few places where Catholicism is growing, and he dispensed a little medical advice:

Speaking to reporters on his way to Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, the Pope said HIV/Aids was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".

The solution lies in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer", the AFP news agency quotes him as saying.

Consistent condom use is associated with a reduction in the incidence of HIV infection of approximately 80%. It does not increase the problem. I know the Catholic church is reliant on the denial of human nature, something demonstrated regularly by the activities of its own priests, but at some point they have to recognize a simple reality: people like to have sex. You aren't going to talk them out of it without warping their psychology in a truly pathological way (again, witness the Catholic priesthood), but you might be able to get them to practice sex in a way that protects their health.

Claiming that condoms increase the problem is disinformation and outright quackery — it's a lie that will kill people. That is what the pope is doing on his little tour, spreading lies, doing harm, and setting back efforts to materially help the afflicted. "Friendship" won't help the children of a woman dying slowly of AIDS, nor will gilt-robed old men whispering about "spirituality" do one scrap of good against a dangerous reality.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

QUIVERFULL

All God's children

The Quiverfull movement saddles women with a life of submission and near-constant pregnancies. One mother explains how she embraced the extreme Christian lifestyle -- and why she left.

By Kathryn Joyce

Vyckie Garrison and family

Photo courtesy Vyckie Garrison

Vyckie Garrison with her children, from left: Berea, 17; Chassé, 16; Wesley, almost 6; Hazelle, 13; Andrew, 10; and Lydia Jean, 8 (Angel, 23, not pictured).

March 14, 2009 | Vyckie Garrison wasn't sure she wanted to use her real name in this article. Until last year, Garrison (then Vyckie Bennett), a 43-year-old single mother of seven living in Norfolk, Neb., followed a fundamentalist pronatalist theology known as Quiverfull. Shunning all forms of birth control, Quiverfull women accept as many children as God gives them as a demonstration of their radical faith and obedience as well as a means to advance his kingdom: winning the country for Christ by having more children than their adversaries. This self-proclaimed "patriarchy" movement, which likely numbers in the tens of thousands but which is growing exponentially, bases its arguments on Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They shall not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull women commonly give birth to families of eight, 10 and 12 children, or more.

Unlike TV's "Big Love" polygamists or traditionally large Catholic and Mormon families, the Quiverfull conviction does not follow from any official church doctrine. It's a cross-denominational movement among evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants who have adopted some Catholic arguments against contraception and who have spread their ideas through the booming conservative homeschooling community.

Quiverfull has gained exposure through cable TV's fascination with extraordinarily large families, including the 18-child Duggar family. The Duggars, an Arkansas couple whose husband Jim Bob was a former Arkansas state representative, have appeared on several Discovery Health Channel specials about their immense brood and currently have a TLC reality show, "18 Kids and Counting," that focuses on the saccharine details of large family life.

Garrison's marriage ended, and she became pregnant with her oldest daughter, Angel, during a short-lived rebound affair. She moved to Iowa to be near her mother and met Warren at a church picnic. After getting married, Garrison followed a new pastor's counsel to homeschool her growing family, which eventually led her to the Quiverfull movement, where homeschooling, Quiverfull and submission are intertwined convictions. As Garrison says, "If you take one, you pretty much have to take it all eventually."

Accepting every pregnancy as a unilateral blessing meant some radical leaps of faith, however. Put into physical practice, Garrison says the lesson of leaders like Nancy Campbell, editor of the fundamentalist women's magazine Above Rubies and author of movement books like "Be Fruitful and Multiply," "was, if pregnancy can kill you, think of the missionaries who go off to foreign lands and put their lives on the line. It's no different if you're risking your own body or life." Indeed, Mary Pride referred to her mothers as “maternal missionaries.”

Garrison complied. She'd had her first three children by cesarean section, but after coming to the Quiverfull conviction, she was swayed by the movement's emphasis on natural (even unassisted home) birth. During one delivery, she suffered a partial uterine rupture and "felt like I'd been in a major battle with Satan, and he'd just about left me dead." The doctor who treated Garrison lectured her for an hour not to conceive again, but she felt that stopping on her own would be rebellion. When she turned to her leaders for inspiration, she received a bleak message: that if she died doing her maternal duty, God would care for her family. For six months, she couldn't look at the baby without crying.

For much of that time, her oldest daughter, Angel, effectively mothered the newborn -- not at all uncommon in the Quiverfull community, where daughters learn early to follow their mothers in domestic service and sacrifice.

The strain began to weigh on Angel as well, though, and Garrison says her daughter began acting out: feigning injuries, bruising her own face and exaggerating stories of trouble at home when Garrison sent her to intern for Nancy Campbell -- embellishments Garrison imagines sprang from Angel's inability to adequately convey her unhappiness to the fundamentalist believers around her. "She knew that something wasn't right, but she couldn't articulate it because we were family of the year."

Desperate, Angel made a clumsy suicide attempt with high doses of Tylenol and Maalox at the age of 21, checking herself into the emergency room after the attempt failed.

The episode shook Garrison, who drove from Norfolk to Nashville to retrieve Angel from a psychiatric ward. She began to see her younger children as joyless and traumatized. Trying to step between the children and Warren, she enraged him with her assertiveness. Her fatigue became overwhelming, and her blood pressure sank.

Garrison began corresponding with an intellectual atheist uncle whose gentle questions helped her acknowledge her mounting crisis of faith. She wrote her uncle: "If, as I kind of suspect, it turns out that I don't actually believe in a personal God, I know I'm going to be exceedingly pissed -- knowing that I've done my best with the hand I've been dealt and it's cost me a lot and it's worn me down -- only to discover midway through that the game is rigged and there's no way I can win."

Garrison fled to a friend in Kansas City for several weeks, though she eventually returned for her children, ending up in an ugly custody battle that she finally won.

When she told an editor at her paper that she was getting divorced, his first words were "Cheryl Lindsey" -- a reference to Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff, an early Quiverfull leader who left her husband and the movement and was subsequently denounced and run out of business by her homeschooling peers. "I think he was warning me," Garrison says.

The experience of Garrison's friend Laura -- a mother of 11 who collapsed under the demands of the lifestyle -- also helps explain why many unhappy women are afraid to turn their backs on the movement, when they'll be left with scant financial resources, years without work experience, and a dearth of references from a community that often shuns them. Laura was near suicide when Garrison helped her leave; her husband took physical custody of all 11 children, and her oldest daughter seamlessly assumed Laura's duties and tended to the younger children, who now view their mother as a backslider deceived by Satan. “She feels so incredibly angry, so ripped off, so used. Her new motto is 'Fuck God.'"Me and Laura both say we hope we don't end up as atheists," says Garrison, with a laugh, though she can't think of herself as anything else. This month, Laura and Garrison began a blog, cheekily named “No Longer Quivering,” to describe their experiences exiting the movement. Currently, Garrison is attending a relatively liberal Salvation Army church in Norfolk. She doesn't go for the faith anymore, but for the people, people in "bad shape" who remind Garrison of her childhood friends. She affectionately jokes with the pastor's wife that she's glad they “don't take the Bible seriously.”

For Garrison, taking the Bible seriously is synonymous with the punishing claims of the Quiverfull movement. But having lost her faith in the Bible-proofed patriarchy principles she was taught, Garrison is unable to accept any of it anymore. "I don't think you can get equality out of the Bible. You can't get away from hierarchy, strictly defined roles for gender, authoritarianism, submission, dominating." Many believers might take issue with that, but to devout believers of Quiverfull, patriarchy is simply "the logical conclusion of what Scripture teaches," Garrison says.

As for herself, Garrison says, "I gave my life to Jesus, and he didn't do with it what I would have done.” She feels as though she's in free fall, her “feet planted firmly in midair,” as the evangelical luminary Francis Schaeffer once remarked of non-Christians.

Sometimes it's exhilarating, but often she wonders when she'll hit the ground. The chaos and confusion that follow leaving the movement is a powerful deterrent to other women who face losing their children as Laura did, or becoming overwhelmed like Garrison. “The only thing that keeps these mothers going is they have incredible motivation,” says Garrison. “They believe they're building the kingdom of God." Though her children are thriving in public school, Garrison struggles to find the energy to mother seven children without the incentive, and threat, that the Quiverfull conviction provides: a promise that obedient Christian wives may, through their meekness, their submission and their posterity, inherit the earth.

From SALON.com

TEABAGING FUCKTARDS



This is what Frank Rich was talking about in his book "Whats the Matter with Kansas?"
How people can be leveraged to vote against their own best interests with knee jerk issues...

The "tea parties" are promoted as a "grassroots uprising" against "high taxes." Tea stands for "Taxes Enough Already." However, 95% of Americans will received a tax cut in the next year if the upcoming Obama budget passes. Only Americans with incomes above $250,000 will receive a small tax increase -- and even then their taxes will be much lower than almost any time in the last 80 or so years. This increase on the top incomes will help pay for some of the Republican-caused economic damage as well as reduce the budget deficits that the country has faced ever since the same income group received tax cuts after George W. Bush was elected. (This is similar to the tax increase in first Clinton budget that led to the great economy of the 1990s and large budget surpluses.)

The other complaint from tea party organizers is that President Obama is "spending too much." The increased spending in the stimulus package and upcoming budget funds education, unemployment checks, efforts to ward off foreclosures and other programs designed to help bring us out of the recession and provide jobs. These are programs that benefit regular people instead of big corporations and the rich.

So regular people who go to these corporate-organized tea parties are asking the government to undo their own tax cuts and reduce their own government services in order to keep taxes low for the very rich. I wonder if people have really thought this through?

And just so I don't forget:

They are not what they claim to be. They are not "spontaneous" or "grassroots." They are another corporate-funded campaign to trick people into supporting more cut taxes for the rich.

The idea is supposed to have started on February 19, when Rick Santelli of CNBC "spontaneously" complained about plans (click link for video) to help people avoid foreclosure, saying this is the government "subsidizing the loser's mortgages." Santelli called for organizing a "Chicago tea party" against helping people pay their mortgages. But investigators starting finding clues that the on-air rant was not spontaneous, and signs that the campaign was organized by the right-wing, corporate-funded Freedomworks . According to a March 2 New York Times story,

"Mr. Santelli's televised commentary appeared spontaneous to viewers. However, the Internet domain name ChicagoTeaParty.com was registered in August 2008 -- well before his commentary -- but not used until afterwards."

The events have been widely promoted by corporate-funded conservative PR professionals who specialize in "astroturf." This is a term for the use of money to create an appearance of widespread "grassroots" support. Currently the corporate-funded conservative lobbying groups Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity, are organizing the events and conservative media including talk radio and FOX News are widely promoting them. Support appears to be coming from Koch Industries, the largest privately-owned company in the country. According to the Think Progress blog post, Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests,

Dave Johnson

Posted April 15, 2009 | 12:07 PM (EST)

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Just, Go Away!



“It must be Friday night because word leaks of yet another deadly executive order by President Obama,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, calling Mr. Obama’s intention “a slap in the face to Americans who believe in the dignity of all human life.”
Unless they happen to be Brown and from far away lands???

Friday, February 20, 2009

Some thoughts



On the "Requirement" that everyone has to be insured, like having car insurance:

Health care reps — “from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies” — are “inching toward a consensus.” They agree that “comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.”

Of course big insurance wants a requirement that everyone be required to carry insurance. That’s all the more profit for them. If Obama does go for some kind of a hybrid of government coverage/private insurance coverage they at least deny insurance companies the right to discriminate. They also need to take some control over what premiums the companies can charge and put a cap on what profits they can make. But, most of all they need to deny insurance companies the right to overrule doctors when it comes to determining care for patients.

Of course the quickest and best thing to do would to put every American on medicare and then hire unemployed health insurance company employees to do the paperwork. But, that’s not going to happen until we come to a consensus in this country that health care should be a right and not a privilege for all citizens.

On a Truth Commission:

“not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments” means no justice. truth without justice is a public relations campaign. it is, frankly, bullshit. what mechanisms are in place to protect the whistle blowers?

this is just another opportunity to sweep criminal actions by the prior administration under the rug.

Jeez, Dems - show some spine for a change. Charge in with criminal indictments and do the job right! Quit dancing around the issue and either do it and do it right, or leave it alone. Wimps.

And when those facts point to crimes having been committed, what then? I think I know what Congress is doing here. They don’t want to directly go after the Bush Crime Family because that would cause a huge Republican’t backlash. So they will find out the truth and then they will have no choice but to ask for prosecution. At least I hope that’s what they are doing.


Sunday, February 15, 2009

SCUMBAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Bush Aide: Leahy Truth Commission Is ‘Terribly Dangerous’ Idea, Possibly ‘Deadly’»

Marc Thiessen, Bush’s former chief speechwriter, agreed. Not only would the investigations be hypocritcal, he said, but worse, they would be “terribly dangerous” because they would expose the “facts” of the U.S.’s interrogation techniques to Osama bin Laden:

THIESSEN: [T]he facts that they want to get out are the techniques we use to interrogate terrorists. The techniques that we used to intercept e-mails and communications and telephone calls. And when you get those facts out, it’s not just going out to the American people and to the viewers on television. It’s going out to Osama bin Laden. It’s going out to the terrorists who can use those information to get around our intelligence and plan the next attack.

So it’s very deadly — this is very deadly serious stuff. … And it’s terribly dangerous.

He also emphasized that the people Leahy might investigate “aren’t torturers, they’re heroes.” “They should be getting a parade on Pennsylvania Avenue,” he added.

YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SCUMBAG SHIT!

HEROES???!!!

I wonder how he would feel without Geneva Convention articles if he was a prisoner of an enemy of the US?

FUCKING YELLOW REPUBLICAN SCUMBAG!

WE DON'T DO THAT!