…..by being willing to simply stop running for re-election, she is making it likely that another Republican will inherit her seat in Congress rather than her being defeated by a Democrat, as she deserves.
Bachmann Won’t Seek Re-election Next Year
Continue reading
Mark Sanford won the South Carolina special election comfortably Tuesday, emerging victorious in a competitive race for what in normal circumstances is a safe Republican seat.
The former governor beat Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert Busch, for the state’s 1st congressional district.
In the end, Sanford won by nine points, 54 percent to 45 percent, according to the Associated Press’s tally.
In remarks at a victory rally Tuesday night, Sanford tipped his cap to Colbert Busch and her team for a “well-run race.” But the campaign, he said, “was based on two very different ideas on what ought to come next in Washington.”
Sanford also sounded a spiritual note in his address, thanking “god’s role in all of this,” and calling himself an “imperfect man” who was “saved by god’s grace.”
Oh sure, involve God’s grace and you can recover from anything, even things that should guarantee that you never hold public office again! Blasphemous prick!
This is the home state of pro-slavery advocate John C. Calhoun, who threatened to lead his state in a secession from the Union in the 1830s. This is the state that actually was the first to secede from the Union in 1860, starting the Civil War. This is the state that was the home of racist hypocrite Strom Thurmond. This is the state that has now taken back another hypocrite. Ethics and honor mean nothing to the people of this state, it seems. All they care about is being bigoted against non-whites and liberals. After nearly 200 years of arrogance and stupidity, they have learned NOTHING!
Maybe we should EXPEL South Carolina from the Union now?
Read this, which I have edited for the sake of brevity:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/05/08/policing-their-own/
We want religious believers to police their own.
We want religious believers to stop being silent about atrocities committed in the name of religion. …….And when they don’t, we call them hypocrites.
So why is it that when atheists speak out against screwed-up shit that other atheists are doing, it gets called “divisive”?
I have been hearing a lot of calls for unity in the atheist community. I have been hearing a lot of calls for an end to the debates, an end to the infighting. I have been hearing a lot of calls for atheists to stop focusing on our differences, and look at our common ground….But all too often, calling for unity equals silencing dissent. All too often, calling for unity equals a de facto defense of the status quo. All too often, calling for unity equals telling people who are speaking up for themselves to shut up.
I do not want to be in unity with atheists who [speak, write, or behave in misogynous ways]. And I do not want to be in unity with atheists who consistently rationalize this behavior, who trivialize it, who make excuses for it.
And I don’t think I should be expected to. I don’t think anyone in this movement should be asking that of me. I don’t think anyone in this movement should be asking that of anyone.
And when people, however well-meaning, make generic calls for unity — when they tell all of us to stop fighting and just get along — they’re basically telling those of us on the short ends of those sticks to shut up.
The right of the people to bear arms, as stated in the Second Amendment, does not mean any idiot should be allowed to have a deadly weapon, just as one that is an incompetent driver should not have a driver’s license. At least cars can be used for things that do not hurt anyone, unlike guns.
This statement was made by a woman on Facebook who used to be an anti-abortion activist. Her name will not be mentioned, but her words should be shared far and wide:
Sometime in college it occurred to me through logical, empathetic thinking that [having an abortion] must be a very scary and difficult position to be in and I couldn’t help but have the utmost respect for any woman who made a choice for herself and her life, whatever her choice was. That was a turning point for me, somehow suddenly recognizing the human involved in the situation.
I was fed a lot of false statistics about the relationship between abortion, depression, breast cancer, etc., and I believed it all. They (youth pastors) told us too that there were far fewer abortions before Roe v. Wade, and that was proof that banning it would decrease the number happening, that the back alley abortion was an insignificant number, mythical almost. I’ve since learned international statistics don’t support that and that all the other stuff is false, too.
I was skeptical about different aspects of the Church since about middle school, but I had no support for those thoughts, and it took a long time to get to where I am today on my own.
First, it is never acceptable to lie to support a cause, however well intentioned. Second, if banning abortion will not save the lives of unborn children, but instead endanger the pregnant women, then anti-abortionists have no right to call themselves “pro-life”. NRA members often say, “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.” The same is true of abortions.
Traditionally, fetuses have never been considered citizens; personhood was always said to begin at birth, not conception, which is why you always to this day see birthdates on gravestones, followed by the date of a person’s death; the date of conception would be irrelevant even if it were known. Indeed, the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (emphasis mine)
A pregnant woman who was born in the United States is unquestionably a citizen, unlike her unborn fetus. And nothing could be more depriving that woman of her liberty than forcing her to bear a child she does not want to carry to term!
And that is the legal basis for the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973.
……neither should Pakistan. BOTH states were founded after World War II by followers of a specific religion who wanted to establish a society in which that religion would dominate it. Pakistan excluded Hindus and remains a hotbed of Muslim extremism to this day (which is why it was stupid for President Bush Jr. to accept Pakistan as an ally in his “War on Terrorism”, when in fact Osama Bin Ladin was hiding out in Pakistan for years until President Obama finally had him killed). And Israel continues to violate the rights of Palestinians by building and keeping Jewish settlements on the West Bank, thus stealing land the United Nations said was not theirs in 1947. Yet the United States also continues to support Israel, no matter what. Why is Jewish extremism more acceptable than Muslim extremism? Either accept both and the states made from them or condemn both and the states made from them. Not only one or the other, unless you are a religious bigot.
This understanding came to me after reading this:
http://skepchick.org/2013/03/whitefeminism/
While other countries are “Muslim” or “Islamic” because they just so happen to have a large Muslim population, Pakistan was founded by Muslims as a Muslim country in rather deliberate fashion.
Likewise, Israel was founded by Jews as a Jewish country in rather deliberate fashion. If one is illegitimate, so is the other. Can you discuss this too?
That isn’t at all part of my focus or within my scope as a blogger. There are plenty of critics of Israel and Zionism who can speak to such matters better than I can.
I understand. My actual point is that I know of no anti-Zionists that also attack Pakistan for its existence as a Muslim state founded to separate its people from mostly Hindu India. Proving that they are more biased towards Islam and against Jews than any just person should be.
As an non-theist, I’m one of those “a plague on both your houses” people that gets it from both sides.
Check out this nonsense on the official U.S. Libertarian Party website. I will post the original statements in red and my responses in green.
http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/a-libertarian%E2%80%99s-new-year%E2%80%99s-resolutions
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
A Libertarian’s New Year’s Resolutions
Not again!!!!
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/women-shouldnt-teach-at-christian-schools/
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/women-shouldnt-teach-at-christian-schools-round-2/
And now……
http://www.inquisitr.com/550024/pregnant-woman-fired-for-premarital-sex/
A pregnant woman was fired for premarital sex, according to a lawsuit she filed that claims wrongful termination.
The woman, Teri James, was a teacher at San Diego Christian College when she was called into her supervisor’s office in October.
Her supervisor got straight to the point when she asked if James was pregnant, reports TODAY. James, unmarried at the time, confirmed the news.
The admission was a violation of the school’s rules, according to the lawsuit filed by James in San Diego County superior court. She explained in the lawsuit that the termination letter included:
“Teri engaged in activity outside the scope of the Handbook and Community Covenant that does not build up the college’s mission.”
James added that her then-fiance was offered a job by the school, even though they knew he engaged in premarital sex. James added of the meeting where she was fired:
“I had to leave right after the meeting. I had to go into the office with all of my co-workers and say I’m leaving. I never came back so I don’t know what my co-workers thought, but for me, it was humiliating.”
ABC Local notes that Teri James isn’t suing to get her job back. Instead, she is suing for damages because of wrongful termination and invasion of privacy.
The school’s community covenant states that Biblical character is highly valued and desire. It also states that the school frowns on sexually immoral behavior, including premarital sex, though it doesn’t say what the consequence would be for a violation. Teri James added of her termination:
“San Diego Christian College did not show any mercy or grace towards me, and acted completely un-Christ-like. They made more of a business decision than showing God’s love.”
James’ attorney, Gloria Allred, added that the college, while a Christian school, still has to “comply with the laws of the state of California.” This means they cannot discriminate against an employee based on gender, marital status, or pregnancy.
Do you think the college was right to fire Teri James for having premarital sex?
Even Jesus was quoted as saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Clearly, those Christian schools and their “Biblical” values are a load of crap!
Here is a classic statement of misogyny by some bastard called Roosh:
Let’s take a look at who he calls ugly. Continue reading
I have never played Everquest, though I certainly read a lot about it years ago, and most of what I read made me NOT want to play it; the lore in the game was entirely racist in nature, with “good” races, “evil” races and “neutral” ones. It is still that way today. Continue reading
Last week, the people of the United States dodged a bullet by re-electing Barack Obama to the Presidency rather than accept a hypocritical plutocrat as his successor. Also, some of the strongest advocates for social Conservatism among Republicans went down to defeat in many races. At least two states legalized gay marriage by popular vote, something unheard of until this year, and also marijuana for medicinal and/or recreational purposes was legalized in several states.
And next year it will get even more hilarious to behold, because somehow the Republicans, despise losing several seats in the House of Representatives, still held on to control of that body. And they are about to face a most upsetting challenge.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/politics/election-puerto-rico/index.html
(CNN) — In an overshadowed Election Day contest, Puerto Ricans voted in favor of statehood in a nonbinding referendum, marking the first time such an initiative garnered a majority.
Puerto Ricans were asked about their desires in two parts. First, by a 54% to 46% margin, voters rejected their current status as a U.S. commonwealth. In a separate question, 61% chose statehood as the alternative, compared with 33% for the semi-autonomous “sovereign free association” and 6% for outright independence.
While the results may be an indicator of what Puerto Ricans want, statehood will not be possible without congressional action in Washington, something that is not guaranteed.
Indeed, given their dwindling power in society, the Republicans that still dominate the House may decide to reject Puerto Rico’s bid for statehood, because as a state it is most likely to send two Democratic Senators and several Democratic Representatives to Congress. But if they do this, it will only enrage millions of Hispanic voters all across America. They are already rejecting the Republican Party by a wide margin because of the illegal immigration issue and this will only harden their rejection. The result may be the Republicans finally losing control of the House in 2014. Then when Puerto Rico DOES become a state and sends those additional Democrats to Congress (and can also cast electoral votes in the 2016 Presidental election) then politically the Republicans will be finished as a viable party.
I can hardly wait to see them go down!
A friend of mine, Michelle Parsneau, made the following extraordinary public statement about the issue of gay marriage:
https://www.facebook.com/michelle.parsneau
https://www.facebook.com/michelle.parsneau/posts/4332476863607
For all those who talk about “traditional marriage based on the Bible”…
Now would that be Abraham and Sarah (half siblings), Jacob, Rachel and Leah, (not only bigamy but also cousins), David who loved Jonathan “better than any woman” and had multiple wives, or Solomon with his 300 wives and 900 concubines, or the one where a raped virgin is now ‘married’ to her rapist? Biblical marriage has never been one kind only, nor are all of them particularly just constructs.
At the end of the day, a marriage in the U.S. is a legal, civil contract. We only give pastors and religious leaders the courtesy of having the power to perform those ceremonies with legal binding. Preventing two adults from entering into that contract of their own accord based on gender is discrimination, and is not Constitutional, nor is it an American value.
In Minnesota, gay/lesbian marriage is currently illegal already. Can’t bring yourself to vote NO on the amendment? Then, I respectfully ask that you refrain from voting on that issue, as it is only mean spirited and discriminatory to vote for it. Utilizing empathy would be a good way to evaluate this issue.
I want to live in a country and a state that practices full equality as well as freedom of and from religion. Nothing in the idea of gay/lesbian marriage will force people of any religious faith to do anything against their faith. Concerned that pastors and clergy people will be forced to perform marriages they don’t agree with? Get over yourself. They aren’t forced to perform marriages for anyone they don’t like now. How do I know? A narrow-minded pastor who didn’t like what he thought were weaknesses in Kevin and my faith refused to marry us. Of course, he was wrong and 15 years has pretty concretely proven that one. Am I saying that religious leaders can be wrong? Um, hell yes I am. They are just as human as the rest of us.
I want that statement to be seen everywhere!
George McGovern, the liberal Democratic Senator who ran for President of the United States in 1972 and ended up losing badly to Richard Nixon, died on October 21, 2012. Two days later, a blog entry was written about him. But that is also revealing about the conservative mindset that defeated McGovern and has been a problem for liberals ever since.
http://vereloqui.blogspot.com/2012/10/an-american-hero-george-mcgovern-rip.html
I grew up in a family of conservative Democrats who were increasingly at odds with their party, and who mostly abandoned it on election day in November of 1972 to vote for Nixon. They voted for the crook: it was important. None of them liked McGovern’s politics, a dislike that overshadowed anything they felt about him as a man. His personality was lost in the distaste for his political positions.
Indeed, most of the former supporters of Democrats among southern whites would eventually become Republicans. As many of them might have said, “I did not leave the party, the party left me.” But that was because racism is wrong and should have been abandoned in the 1970s by any person with a sense of right and wrong. The stubborn opposition among Conservatives to Barack Obama to this day seems to stem from a racism that is no longer openly expressed by many of them but is still simmering just beneath the surface.
But there were two things that later rehabilitated him in my mind, and brought me to an appreciation of him that has stayed with me ever since. The first was seeing him speak when I was in college. He co-taught a class at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the early 1980’s. As part of that class he gave a lecture at Campbell Hall which my girlfriend (who was later to become my wife) and I went to see. The stereotypes that I had formed over the years were exploded when I saw a man who was incredibly intelligent, witty, and well-informed. This was not the political demon I had been raised to revile. We attended a number of lectures during my junior and senior years, and the three that stood out as truly outstanding were those by Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley, Jr., and George McGovern.
Indeed, ignorance and dishonesty seems to fuel both support for Conservative politics and condemnation of Liberalism.
The 35 missions that George McGovern flew were the maximum number a pilot could fly. After 35, you were done: They sent you home. Very few reached that number. When I read this, I thought back on his opposition to the Vietnam War, a position I strongly disagreed with as a very confident but fairly ignorant adolescent. It took on a completely different color. A man who flew 35 missions in a B-24 over Germany, I concluded, has won the right to say anything he wants to about war and he has earned the right to be listened to.
I would also add that in 2004 the same could have been said about Sen. John Kerry and his opposition to the Iraq War, having fought himself in the Vietnam War. And yet Kerry lost that election for the same reason McGovern lost in 1972: political bigotry and lies by Conservatives.
I have said before that the problem with liberals is not that they’re evil; the problem is that they are good, too good. They are so good they are a danger to themselves and others. As a true liberal, McGovern possessed the fault characteristic of his political tribe: he projected his goodness onto his fellow men and assumed that they would what he would do under the same circumstances.
I would answer that the problem with Conservatives is not that they are evil either, but that they are cynical: taking the corruption of mankind as a given, they assume that the only way to defeat their opponents is to embrace the corruption and use it to their advantage against those who are consistently honorable, perpetuating the cycle of abuse to the next generation instead of trying to make things better for all of us.
We forgive dead men for their badness. Can we forgive them for their goodness?
I do not want your forgiveness for liberals, sir! I want you to recognize that just as you were wrong about McGovern in the past, you are wrong about liberals even now and that the conservative perspective should be abandoned completely. Even Jesus himself would have expected you to return good for evil, as he taught, but that lesson has been totally lost on conservatives throughout history!
A preacher actually went before a city council to argue about gay rights legislation being proposed and debated there. Look at what he ended up doing!
Such a stunt never would have occurred to me…..but I’m not a preacher.
To be honest, I did not watch for very long the Presidential debate last night, because I was quite sure I would only hear what I’d already heard a great many times from reading Facebook posts and articles in news sources, hearing personal comments from friends and relatives and seeing political ads on TV. Five minutes of the debate was all I could stand, because Obama compared his economy policies to that of President Clinton before him, which I already knew about. Neither candidate impressed me much.
I was therefore surprised to learn afterwards that most people thought Romney won the debate because he was more aggressive and charismatic than Obama, never mind that before Obama became President he was known for being quite charismatic. So what happened?
I could not care less how slick a person’s presentation may look or sound if it is full of nonsense or lies. You win a debate, in my view, by doing two things: Telling the truth consistently, and having a position that treats fairly the most people possible. And by that criteria, Obama is the superior candidate. If people vote for Romney and not Obama because one of them is better at the gift of gab, why not just elect someone like Hitler, who was one of the most dynamic speakers of the 20th Century?
First, read this:
http://skepchick.org/2012/10/secular-coalition-picks-anti-woman-leader-for-pennsylvania/
Doing so, I felt profoundly disgusted that such a misogynous bigot as Justin Vacula would be allowed to have any position of influence in an atheist organization. What are the leaders of the Secular Coalition for America trying to do, discredit their own cause?
Rebecca Watson said:
If I were a woman in Pennsylvania, I would never, ever want to get involved in any way with Justin Vacula. In fact, I will never, ever get involved with SCA so long as someone like him holds a position of power anywhere, let alone in a state I live in. So Vacula is actively driving people away from SCA. I’d like to know how they expect to overcome that – how they hope to reach out to progressive people, and particularly women in Pennsylvania, while an MRA is a co-chair.
Well, I am a man in Texas and likewise I want nothing to do with that guy. He just seems sick!
Men’s Right’s Activists (MRAs) are to sexism what the Ku Klux Klan is to racism. As I commented on the Skepchick blog:
Read this story and note especially the phrases I have bolded:
Savannah Dietrich, a Kentucky teenager who was sexually assaulted and then threatened with jail for naming her attackers, has reportedly destroyed the life of at least one of the perpetrators.
“He’s had to move,” David Mejia, the attorney for one of the attackers, told The Huffington Post. “He has lost all the potential that was there. He was attending high school and was kicked out. He was on course to a scholarship to an Ivy League school to play sports and that may be jeopardized. He’s in therapy. He’s just overwhelmed and devastated by what started from the conduct of this young girl saying false things as she did.”
Mejia filed a contempt motion against Dietrich in July. She had tweeted the names of two teenage boys who assaulted her back in August 2011.
After naming the boys, Dietrich, then 16, tweeted, “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.”
Dietrich’s anger stemmed from a June hearing in which the teenagers confessed to felony sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism. She and her family were reportedly frustrated by the plea bargain the boys made with the state.
“If reporting a rape only got me to the point that I’m not allowed to talk about it, then I regret it,” Dietrich wrote on Facebook. “I regret reporting it.”
Mejia said that he and his client were angry about the posts and that Dietrich was not entirely honest.
“The victim, in a fit of anger, tweets my clients name, calls him a rapist — something he was never accused of — and said the court system was corrupt and he got away with what he did,” Mejia said. “She also said he videotaped her and put it on Internet. There never was a rape, there was no video and there was nothing on the Internet. But he did admit to the conduct as charged which was criminal sexual abuse or touching.”
The two boys charged were juveniles, and the court therefore kept the details of the case confidential.
Dietrich, now 17, told ABC’s “Nightline” what happened the night she was assaulted in an interview Monday.
She said she was drinking with friends when she passed out. When she later awoke, she discovered her clothes were disheveled and felt like “something wasn’t right.”
“I had my dress back on but my bra was shifted all weird and then my underwear was off,” Dietrich told “Nightline” host Juju Chang.
After the party, Dietrich said she was told the two boys had taken photos of her.
“They told me that it was me on the kitchen floor, passed out, my eyes are closed,” she said. “My clothes are — I’m exposed. Someone said one boy had his arm broken at the time and said his cast was in the picture.”
The details of the punishment the boys ultimately received is unknown, since court records have been witheld.
“Due to the confidentiality and privacy of the whole thing I am constrained except to say that what she is saying is a mischaracterization. It’s not accurate. It’s not true. What is the truth? That I cannot say,” Mejia said.
In the motion Mejia filed, he requested that Dietrich be held in contempt for violating the confidentiality of a juvenile. Dietrich could have faced 180 days in jail, but Mejia said that was not what he wanted. The motion, he said, was not to punish Dietrich, but to have a judge force her to delete her online posts about the boys.
“I was hoping she would even have some remorse or an apology to give. That didn’t happen,” Mejia said Monday on ABC’s “Nightline.”
The veteran attorney echoed those remarks during an interview with HuffPost.
“When we filed the motion, we wanted our client’s names off the Internet and wanted her to know that what she was doing was wrong,” he said. “[She should] acknowledge what she’s done, remove the name and promise not to do it again.”
But the motion prompted a flurry of national media attention and was quickly withdrawn. According to Mejia, canceling the motion did nothing to stop the influx of hate messages he and his client received.
“Everybody got hate letters and worse for this young boy — this high school kid was getting tweets, Facebook [messages], all kinds of terrible things. He even got death threats,” the lawyer said.
Dietrich told “Nightline” she identified her attackers because she felt like their punishment was a slap on the wrist. “I was upset,” Dietrich said. “I felt like they got less than the minimal punishment … I knew that they were manipulating the system to silence me.”
Mejia said that his client is devastated and would like to move on with his life, but that the Internet has made that impossible.
“I think it’s rather astonishing how the Internet changes everything,” he said. “Look at [Rep. Todd Akin], the politician from Missouri who was on the news a few days ago and made a comment about ‘legitimate rape.’ Those comments have now gone viral and he is ruined. Twenty years ago it would not have happened like this. These things just stream with enormous speed across the whole country.”
Dietrich’s attorney, Emily Farrar-Crockett, did not return a call for comment from HuffPost on Tuesday. Speaking on “Nightline” Monday, she was unsympathetic to Mejia’s complaints.
“They took the pictures, they disseminated it, they told people about what they had done. To come back and blame her now for ruining their reputation I think is despicable. They did this to themselves,” Farrar-Crockett said.
Yes, it is such a terrible thing when a girl who was assaulted is able to strike back at the boys who did it!
Actually, the plea agreement to keep the boys’ names confidential because they are juveniles was itself a violation of the girl’s free speech rights as provided under the First Amendment. It should be voided and the boys should be tried for any charges that can be made to stick. Age is irrelevant here.
The girl should be allowed to testify in open court, under oath, about what happened to her. Once that is done, she can be cross examined by the defense attorney. If her testimony is still credible after that, the offenders should be imprisoned and their names should be known to the public for what they are: sex offenders.
There are two types of corruption in society: direct and indirect.
Direct corruption is when someone engages in unethical actions to make a gain for himself. An example is a public official taking funds that were paid to the government in taxes and embezzling the money to make himself rich.
Indirect corruption is when someone enables the corrupt acts of someone else by not taking action against the other person or, even worse, taking action against anyone who tries to stop the direct corruption. Like a Catholic bishop who may never molest children himself, but upon learning that a priest under his jurisdiction has done that, he simply moves that priest to a different church and digs up dirt on the accusers of the priest to try to blackmail them. It is easier to do that than do the honorable thing, because the entire system is corrupted and removing all the corrupt members would make it fall apart.
Of course, one might argue that both types of corruption are equally bad. Indeed, if there were no examples of the indirect kind, the direct kind would not be able to do as much damage as it has. Therefore, we must have zero tolerance for either kind. A system with both direct and indirect corruption for too long will eventually rot from within and will have to be torn down anyway.
Chick-Fil-A’s signature chicken sandwich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was disgusted to read this:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/chick-fil-gay-marriage-201108120–finance.html
Chick-fil-A president slams gay marriage
The president of Chick-fil-A, the fast food chain with more than 1,600 restaurants and $4 billion in revenue, has come out against same-sex marriage.
“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,'” Dan Cathy, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said in a recent radio interview. “I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.”
In an interview with the Baptist Press published this week, Cathy doubled down on his stance against same-sex unions.
“Guilty as charged,” Cathy said. “We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”
“We know that it might not be popular with everyone,” he added, “but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”
The company, founded by Dan’s father, Truett Cathy, in 1946, has a history of “unapologetic social conservatism,” as the Daily Caller put it. All 1,608 of its stores are closed on Sundays, a day of rest for most Christians.
According to Queerty.com, the WinShape Foundation—Chick-fil-A’s charitable arm—donated more than $1.1 million between 2003 and 2008 to anti-LGBT groups, doubling that amount to $2 million in 2009.
Earlier this year, students at Northeastern University protested a proposal to put a Chick-fil-A on its Boston campus because of the company’s history of supporting anti-gay organizations. The school abandoned its plan.
I have been eating that restaurant chain’s food products for many years, and I love them, but I cannot accept this expression of homophobia and religious bigotry. So as a matter of principle, I am calling for a boycott of this company by all those who support gay marriage.
“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,'”
What arrogance! Assuming that there is a God, that this God is that of the Bible, and that this God of the Bible is still against gay marriage because of statements made in his name thousands of years ago is the height of hubris, not skeptics like me casting doubt on all three claims, which are empirically UNFOUNDED. And being willing to alienate a large portion of your customer base because of unfounded claims is stupid!
This is the website for Chick-Fil-A: http://www.chick-fil-a.com/Home
The company’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ChickfilA
And the company’s Twitter account: https://twitter.com/chickfila
And a webpage to make comments directly to the company: http://www.chick-fil-a.com/Connect/Contact-Us-CARES
Previous references on this blog to her:
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/battle-on-youtube-between-two-atheists/
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/laci-green-your-warning-is-too-little-too-late/
Imagine my horror when I saw this:
http://lacigreen.tumblr.com/post/26843554247/hey-peeps-i-am-going-to-be-taking-a-break-from
hey peeps,
i am going to be taking a break from tumblr. i’m not sure how long. i have been getting a slew of people (who i can only guess are from “social justice” tumblr) telling me to kill myself, making violent threats, sending me my home address they somehow found. my inbox this morning was graced with pictures of my apartment building.
i honestly have no words.
love you all.
lace
To the bastard who sent those sick things to Laci, you are nothing but a worthless coward. Maybe someone should take a sledgehammer and slam it on YOUR face!
And if he wants to come after anyone for insulting Islam, what about me?
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/category/religion/islam/
Except I never threatened the life of anyone for being Muslim, did I?
The Baha’i Faith claims to support the ideal of equality of men and women as a basic teaching. Equality implies that members of both genders, all else being the same, have the exact same rights and opportunities in society. Continue reading
First, read this:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/rodney-king-dead-swimming-pool-160339712.html
Rodney King, whose videotaped beating by police in 1991 sparked the L.A. riots, was found dead at his California home on Sunday. He was 47.
Police said King’s fiancée discovered him at the bottom of the swimming pool at their Rialto, Calif., home, about 55 miles east of Los Angeles.
Police responded to a call at 5:25 a.m., pulled King out of the pool and attempted CPR, but could not revive him.
King’s representative Suzanne Wickman confirmed to his death to KABC-TV. According to TMZ, King’s fiancée, Cynthia Kelley, told friends King spent the bulk of Saturday drinking and “smoked marijuana at some point,” before she went to went to bed at 2:00 a.m.
The cause of death is unknown, but police are investigating it as a drowning. Rialto Police Capt. Randy DeAnda told CNN there were no preliminary signs of foul play.
King was beaten by four white LAPD officers following a DUI stop on March 3, 1991. Footage captured by an amateur videographer showed the officers hitting King 56 times with wooden batons.
“I just got lucky that night to have the cameras on me,” King said in April, marking the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots. “When I saw the tape, I was so happy that it was on tape and then looking at it, it was like I was in another body. I felt like I had died in that one, and was just watching it.”
The four officers–Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Sgt. Stacey Koon–were acquitted of criminal charges, sparking the riots that left 55 people dead. (Koon and Powell were later found guilty of federal civil rights charges and sentenced to 30 months in prison.)
In hindsight, it appears that Rodney King was an example of a soul who could not be saved and was doomed to pass away prematurely due to his own failures instead of being able to live a full life. Even so, he had a few good qualities that society should have done a lot more to nurture, instead of treating him like he was disposable.
There was simply no excuse whatsoever for the beating King received from the cops; they were clearly out of control and lawbreakers themselves. So why were they acquitted at the first trial? One reason was because the jury was all white, a racist practice that was all too common in the South, where blacks would be sent to prison for crimes they did not commit, while guilty whites would be exonerated.
Another issue was the misperception that it is better to have a few corrupt and abusive cops on the beat than too few cops to keep order in society. That is simply wrong; I think I’d rather have no cops at all than ANY cops that are themselves criminals and never held accountable for their misdeeds because such corruption can feed on itself to ruin a whole society from within. The riots that broke out resulted from people seeing lawlessness among the cops and in that courtroom and thus thinking, “If they will not uphold the law and promote justice, why should we?!” No, I do not blame them at all!
Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Stacey Koon, if they are still alive, should never work for any police force ever again, nor should any cop caught being so abusive. And no jury involved in a case involving a black person and white people should be of one racial makeup!
Racism is normally thought of in America as whites hating blacks, but it is clear that members of any race can be bigoted against members of any other race. That’s clearly what we see here: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/beauty-pageant-winner-caught-ugly-controversy-150938019.html
Beauty pageant winner caught in ugly controversy
A newly crowned beauty queen in Fiji, who sparked an outcry because of her mixed heritage, was asked to give up her title because of her age, not her race, according to pageant officials.
Torika Watters, 16, was chosen last month to represent Fiji in the Miss World contest. The pageant drew the likes of supermodel Rachel Hunter, who was a judge.
But after Watters won the title, she faced heavy backlash because of her mixed European/Fijian descent, and some said she did not look Fijian enough.
Hundreds of derogatory comments had to be deleted from the Miss World Fiji Facebook page, according to reports.
Watters had to step down because she did not meet the minimum age requirement of 17, Miss World Fiji pageant director Andhy Blake told the Fiji Times. Koini Vakaloloma, 24, the first runner-up, will take her place at the Miss World competition in Inner Mongolia in August.
Watters issued a statement saying that she had been approached by Blake to be in the contest and at the time expressed concerns about the age requirement. Blake told her she was still eligible. “I had no intentions of doing anything sneaky or wrong and like the other contestants entered the competition for what I believed to be the right reasons—to be an Ambassador for Fiji and raise money for charitable causes,” she wrote.
She went on to say: “I am proud of my identity as a Fijian and have never considered my people as racists.” She is not challenging the decision and has chosen to walk away.
Blake confirmed that he was under the impression Watters could compete, but was told later by organizers that contestants had to be at least one month away from turning 17 by the start of the pageant.
A posting on the Miss World Fiji 2012 Facebook site says, “Please be informed despite media reports—Miss Torika Watters was never stripped of her title. We wish her well in her future endeavors and offer an apology to her, her beautiful family and friends for any distress this competition would have brought upon her! She will always be the very 1st Miss World Fiji!!”
Watters is eligible next year for the pageant, according to Blake, if she chooses to compete again.
But I’d be willing to bet $1000 that she even if she does compete again, she will not win, because they will find another excuse to exclude her. Indeed, even if the pageant organizers are not guilty of being racist, they ARE guilty of discriminating against Watters because of her AGE, another thing she had no control over. And since she was allowed to compete in the first place, she should have been accepted, period.
I would be proud to have this girl be Miss America, Fijian heritage and all!
First, look at this:
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/women-shouldnt-teach-at-christian-schools/
Are all Christian schools this bigoted? Appearantly!
Former coach of the year fired from Christian school for out-of-wedlock pregnancy
In an incredibly bizarre situation that appears headed for a legal challenge, a Dallas-area volleyball coach and science teacher was fired by the Christian school at which she worked for becoming pregnant before being married.
As first reported by Dallas Fort Worth network WFAA, Rockwall (Texas) Heritage Christian Academy volleyball coach and science teacher Cathy Samford was fired during the fall semester after she became pregnant out of wedlock. Samford had led the volleyball program for three years and had been named the school’s coach of the year once during that span.
Still, that couldn’t help save her job when she first admitted her pregnancy during the fall semester, with the school terminating her based on a violation of her contract’s morals clause because it was determined her pregnancy meant she could not serve as “a Christian role model.”
“I looked it up and thought, ‘They can’t do this,'” the 29-year-old Samford told WFAA. “We all have different views and interpretations. It’s not necessarily the Christian thing to do to throw somebody aside because of those.”
While Samford and her lawyer, Colin Walsh, are working toward filing a discrimination suit against the school, their case may be complicated by the fact that Heritage Christian Academy is a private school, and recent Supreme Court decisions have defended the right of Christian schools to exert more influence on their hirings and firings because they consider teachers to be “ministers in the classroom.”
“The Supreme Court, as a matter of fact in the last month, has ruled 9-to-0 that a Christian school does have that right, because this is a ministry, so we have the right to have standards of conduct,” Heritage Christian Academy headmaster Dr. Ron Taylor, who acknowledged that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had contacted the school, told WFAA. “How’s it going to look to a little fourth-grade girl that sees she’s pregnant and she’s not married?”
While the two parties attempted mediation, those efforts failed quickly because the school refused to consider a settlement for the case.
That has left Samford uninsured and in financial distress as she heads towards giving birth, a situation she never considered possible when she was a proud member of Heritage Christian Academy’s faculty.
Would it have been better if this teacher and coach had chosen abortion to hide that she was ever pregnant? According to traditional Christian morals, isn’t having an abortion even worse than having the baby out of wedlock? And have any men been fired for getting a woman pregnant out of wedlock? I’ve never heard of that happening!
This is why I will never teach at or send any children I have to such a school….most of them seem to be run by sexist hypocrites! This is not about enforcing morals, this is about a school trying to save money by denying an insurance claim, something you would expect only from corrupt private businesses! And even if having a baby out of wedlock is considered immoral, the BABY should not be punished for her parents’ mistakes!
While the Democrats are firmly united under President Barack Obama, the Republican Party has been badly split among its Presidental candidates. After some of the loonier and less competent candidates have quit, there remain:
Notice what all these current front runners have in common? THEY ARE ALL WHITE MEN! And that is really all the Republicans are appealing to these days, as well as Christian bigots. And these different candidates are engaged in a brutal fight for the nomination that is splitting the party up.
Four years ago, there was a simular fight between Hiliary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hiliary had a slight advantage because of her previous position as First Lady, while Obama was still only serving his first term as a Senator, so by all appearances Hiliary should have trounced Obama quickly. But in fact she did not, because blacks were so eagar to get one of their own as President that they pushed hard for him. Likewise, women wanting one of their own as President pushed hard for Hiliary. Blacks and liberal women are two of the Democratic Party’s strongest constituencies. The result was a battle that lasted for months and threated to severely damage the Democrats’ chances at winning in 2008. And yet in the end the Democrats were so determined to defeat the Republicans who had disgraced themselves so badly under Bush Jr that they were able to put aside their differences and win the election.
So why can’t the Republicans do the same and thus win this year? Because the differences between the front-runners are trivial compared to their simularities, yet they fight bitterly. In addition, all of them are appealing to a core constituency, white males, who are no longer the overwhelmingly dominant segment of the American population, even though they are still slightly more privileged than those who are non-white and/or female. The fact that John McCain lost in 2008 to Obama should have showed the futility of continuing to appeal to a base that is growing impotent. But the Republicans have not learned how to grow and diversify, have they?
So keep losing, Republicans! In a few more decades your party will be irrelevant! Like the Ku Klux Klan is now.
Conservative media activist and trickster Andrew Breitbart died today at the age of 43. As far as I’m concerned, that was simply justice after all the contemptible lies he told using media manipulation to advance his right-wing agenda, which I see as itself dishonorable. He was even responsible for the unjustified downfall of ACORN shortly after Barack Obama became President, which ACORN had helped get elected.
I think we need to do what we can to either reestablish ACORN or replace it with a simular organization. I only regret that Breitbart will not live to see that happen. But there are plenty of other Republican bigots out there we can seek to punish! Their day of reckoning will come if we just have enough backbone to go after them and make them pay!
During the television broadcast of this years SuperBowl, former Congressman Pete Hoekstra had the gall to put out a ridiculous commercial attacking his opponent in the 2012 U. S. Senate race, Debbie Stabenow. It has since been removed from Hoekstra’s YouTube account.
Fortunately, another person made a copy of that video with an explanation for how stupid it really was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4F_rv9i9s8
Feel free to comment there.
Indeed, Republicans have actually been the biggest “spend it now” lunatics since Reagan was President. We had a chance to start paying off the U. S. public debt under Clinton, but Bush Jr ruined it with his absurd tax cuts for the rich! Pete Hoekstra is a LIAR!
Oh, and when he was a Congressman, and even Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he committed some blunders which should have got him removed from that Committee, if not expelled from Congress outright!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKI2j1zezCw
Don’t allow this bastard to come anywhere near the U. S. Senate! We already had a disgusting racist, Jesse Helms, in the Senate for decades. We don’t need another!
The structure of the United Nations (UN) reflects the political realities shortly after World War II. Since that war ended nearly three generations ago, it’s time for a change in the UN, starting with its Security Council. Until such reforms are made, it will only be a laughingstock for decades to come.
There are five permanent members of that Council: The United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, and China. These have veto power over all Council decisions. I would recommend that the veto power within the Council be done away with; it only makes paralysis of the Council more likely than not. I would also recommend that Germany, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Brazil be made permanent members of the Council, with at least 20 others subject to election. The number of nations on the Security Council must always be a prime number to prevent tie votes. Only the UN Secretary-General could veto a UN resolution, but his veto could still be overridden by a two-thirds majority vote of the Security Council. In any case, no single nation should have the power to veto a resolution, because as the chart above shows, the Soviet Union abused that power more than any other nation in the early years of the UN. One wonders how many innocent people died in wars or armed uprisings of one kind or another because of this.
Liberty means nothing if you are starving, homeless and in rags. Remember that when some right-wing bigot shrieks about socialists taking away your rights. Since socialism is an ECONOMIC policy, it cannot take away ANY rights as defined in the U S Consitution. But a government under FASCISM will! Fascists WILL leave you to starve so you will give up your liberty; socialists will not!
As much as I support the Occupy Wall Street protests and similar movements in America and even around the world, I do have my limits of tolerance to the tactics of protesters. I thought, for example, that Jane Fonda should have been charged with treason for her meeting with the North Vietnamese as a way of protesting America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
But at least she was classy about it. These women in Ukraine were not!
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 
A Voice for Men? How about a Voice for White People, a Voice for Christians, and a Voice for the Wealthy? Oh yes, we must always ensure that those who are already privileged in society get to yell louder than their opponents, to maintain the status quo in society, even if they are abusive and dishonest.
Damn them!