Faith-Based Funding

Despite my misgivings about his economic policies, I've pretty much decided I'm going to vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming election. My business partner makes a strong case for McCain, but franky, I'm tired of old, white guys running the country.

But then I read a story like this, and it makes me wonder if there really is any point in voting for anyone.

On the second day of a weeklong tour intended to highlight his values, Mr. Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio on Tuesday to present his proposal to get religious charities more involved in government programs.

Planned Parenthood has always attracted its fair (or perhaps unfair) share of protesters hell bent on doing the right thing regardless of who they hurt. This, needless to say, can be quite annoying, especially considering that pro-life protesters have a habit of using grotesque pictures to make their point. Well some Planned Parenthood locations got tired of it and decided to try to turn lemons into lemonade. Pledge-a-picket was their answer, it is a program where you can pledge to pay your local Planned Parenthood money based on how many picketers show up to protest abortion. At present the Planned Parenthood featured in the story has raised $1200 through this method.

Needless to say, the protesters are rather miffed by the idea that their effort is funding the very organization they seek to protest. This leaves them in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between stopping protesting to stop the funds or continue protesting knowing that they are, in effect, giving money to Planned Parenthood. It's enough to make a young atheist girl cry (from laughter).

Neighboring businesses, particularly restaurants whose patrons are often turned off by pictures of chopped up babies, are happy at the prospect that the picketers days may be numbered. Similarly anyone who stands a chance of being harassed by protesters as they go into or come out of a Planned Parenthood building will be glad to know the picketers now have incentive to back off.

So, after you get through the funnies and catch up on the news, pour yourself another cuppa and sit back to be completely terrified by this diary from dKos: BREAKING: George W. Bush closet "Joel's Army" member?

No, I didn't write it. I didn't even comment in it. But it sets forth a pretty convincing case that our president is actually an end-times dominionist, of the most strident premillennialist variety.

And when seen through this filter, a lot of the otherwise almost-insane words and actions of the president make a lot of very frightening sense.

So, read it. But be prepared to be scared.

Jim Downey

A veteran, crippled by excruciating pain from kidney stones and 100% disabled, goes to a VA hospital for a medication refill. The doctor refuses to write a prescription, and tells the veteran: "You're a religious Jew. Why don't you try prayer and meditation?"

I have been hospitalized three times at the Iowa City VA for symptoms of angina, and all three times, while in bed, wired to a heart monitor, I have been visited by Christian Chaplains and handed Christian tracts. Twice the Assembly of God Chaplain insisted on proselytizing me - telling me about how Jesus loves me, how Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews too. And although each time I had informed the staff both verbally and in writing that I did not want to
be visited by a Chaplain, they came anyway - carrying their message of love. Each time I objected, as vigorously as I could. But the hospital's answer to my complaint regarding these visits was that I should have objected more strenuously. What am I supposed to do, hang on to my heart monitor and jump up and down?! (Link)

Welcome to today's dominionist armed forces. With the encouragement and support of the George Bush Junior regime, an extreme fundamentalist movement has hijacked the US military from the highest levels down, and is turning it into one giant faith-based tax-supported proselytizing machine, in blatant defiance of the Constitution and everything the military stands for (not to mention the Hippocratic oath, as in the above outrageous story).

This is beyond unacceptable and despicable - it's incredibly scary. The Pentagon has become the Pentacostalgon, and the Christian Taliban and its Crusaders have control of the most lethal military force the world has ever known!

Visit the Military Religious Freedom Foundation website and consider how you can help oppose this unbelievable, appalling and unacceptable assault on our freedoms and our most important institutions.

(Cross-posted at No More Mr. Nice Guy)

In a Salon article dated today, Michelle Goldberg (author of "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism") interviews Chris Hedges, a reporter with decades of experience looking at totalitarianism in such places as the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central American, and has a new book out: "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America". Hedges now sees the rise of the religious right in the US in the same terms of totalitarianism:

Some quickies for a Sunday morning...

Via MeFi is a long and engaging article about a Christian nutter who thinks that he's the next Walt Disney. Except, you know, he builds houses and stuff.

The NYT has a nice piece about funding faith-based prison programs, part of their Christ's Mission, Caesar's Money series.

There's also a good story on the problems that the National Geographic Society has encountered with trying to establish a model for human settlement around the world through DNA samples of isolated indigenous people. They've run into problems with these societies being concerned that it may challenge their origin myths, among other concerns.

And lastly, if you didn't catch this entry over at PZ's place yesterday, go take a look. It links to this insane site, chock full of creamy nuttiness. Be sure to turn off your speakers before following that second link. Trust me on this.

I'm almost comforted by the idea that the Bush administration is as cynical and manipulative as I've always thought of them. Almost.

In case you haven't been following the latest news and rants from the right, David Kuo, formerly the deputy director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has a new book out. A book that is a tell-all of how the pols in the Bush administration sought to use the Religious Right to bolster their power in Congress, all the while mocking the leaders of the Religious Right.

Last night there was a segment on 60 Minutes in which Kuo elaborated on this betrayal of his compassionate conservatism. You can find the transcript and video here.

Anyway, as I said, I almost find it comforting that the Bush administration was perfectly willing to use the Religious Right to advance their own agenda, in a way that Kuo describes as the melding of God and political power, calling politics "...the fourth part of the trinity." In some ways, it is better to know that the White House is in the hands of someone capable of such cynicism rather than in the hands of someone who actually believes all the crap they've said.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is now available for all of your Christian friends. I got it last night and have already read it (it's not even a full 100 pages). Harris hits many of the same topics he did in The End of Faith except this time he is talking more directly to American Christians (of all denominations). With it being a rather slim volume Harris moves quickly from point to point, with great clarity and making a very strong case for the abandonment of religious faith. The apologists will have their hands full with this quick read for quite some time (I'm sure several of them are already hard at work).

This is really something Darksyde should've posted, but there's an episode he told once, of his attempt to post a science article on Redstate. The regulars' reactions ranged from cautious to downright hostile, and eventually he got banned only hours after being promised he wouldn't be. In contrast, Daily Kos made him a frontpager for a year for posting about science and science policy.

The claim that the left and the right are equally anti-science doesn't hold that much water. Thirty years ago, the Western left hated science and considered it a tool of the oppressors, whereas the right embraced it. Then the religious right resurged in the US, and in several countries the population started getting scared of scientific claims about global warming, and the trend reversed. Now in the USA it's the right that systematically attacks science and the left that, well, does nothing.

Even Jerome Armstrong's post about astrology doesn't strike me as being that odious. In the comments, The Commissar challenges Darksyde to denounce astrology publicly on Daily Kos. But what Armstrong says seems relatively innocent to me - he says that he used to dabble with astrology, but that he doesn't do it anymore. So calling him an astrologer makes as much sense as calling me a warmonger for having supported carpet-nuking Afghanistan back in October 2001.

Check out Mark Crispin Miller discussing “Fooled Again” at UMass Amherst on April 9. The recording is up at KPFA - Guns and Butter Archives. Miller’s passion is clear and he points directly at the fundamentalist religious energy behind stolen elections.Listen to the audio.

Miller makes it quite clear how a subset of the right is trying to build a theocracy. It is 40 minutes well spent and much faster than reading his book.

Tagged: mark crispin miller fooled again elections religious right election fraud

All right, take a deep breath, here we go. Please be gentle. What do you all make of Roy Hattersley's comments in the Monday September 12, issue of the Guardian Ul? Could he have a point?

www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1567604,00.html

Here is the provocative byline:
"We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings..."

Regarding relief efforts from Katrina:

"Notable by their absence are teams from rationalist societies, free thinkers' clubs and atheists' associations - the sort of people who not only scoff at religion's intellectual absurdity but also regard it as a positive force for evil."

WG

I think it is wonderful that the President has decided to throw his support behind Intelligent Design Creationism. Endorsement from an intellectual of his calibre can only bring more acceptance and funding. Despite the good it brings, it truly saddens me twofold that it took the President himself to get the cabal of science to open their minds to new possibilities. In one way it's sad that the President had to take time himself to endorse expanding the education of our children. He does have more important things to worry about; there is a war on for heaven's sake! The other thing that saddens me is that I know that certain science fundamentalists (such as a certain university professor who live in Minnesota and has a blog) will not listen to their own President. Why do they hate their President? Why do they hate America? Don't they know we are in the middle of a war?

But, as time has shown, wartime is prime time for research and investigation. From jet aircraft to thermonuclear bombs, war is a real boon to science. So I figure now is the perfect time to open up new lines of IDC research. I want to go ahead and carve out my own niche in this new field before the hallowed halls of our universities are too full of researchers working tirelessly on the cutting edge making their own homestead in this brave new world. (Once we get rid of all the scientific fundamentalists, that is.)