Religious Politics

At first, I was almost ashamed to be white.  Then I realized that it wasn't being white that motivated these people and their attitudes, it was ignorance.  I'm truly amazed at the amount of ignorance that lives in the United States.  The racial slurs, the radical views, the ignorant propaganda, and the Religious Politics that fuel all these people are the exact reason for separation of church and state and why we need more emphasis on education.

This just sickens me:

Misconceptions

Sidewalk to Nowhere

The True McCain

Poor Bear Cub

What is wrong with these people?  Mainly, misinformation from FOX News and their other "Conservative" media, which I find to just be a nice way of saying "Extreme Christian Fundamentalist" media.  I'm not saying that Religion is to blame for all of this, just the Extreme Christian Fundamentalist that lead the Political Right now, and all the moderate Christian Enablers that follow in their wake.  This is a religious war on a political campaign that is fueled by racism, bigotry, hatred, and ignorance, which ironically enough, are all things Jesus would not be fond of.

Alzheimers in a Political Setting

If someone has one major point McCain brought up last night, that wasn't Joe the Plumber (which was quite pointless in the first place), I'd like to hear it.  All I heard was the same garbage that has been spewing from McCain's mouth in the first 2 debates, and the same unfounded and downright deceitful claims and statements about Obama's policies and past that his dog (Palin's own words, she claimed to be a pit bull) has been barking for the last 2 or 3 weeks.

William Ayers.  He and Obama didn't really have a close relationship.  In fact, if Ayers wasn't brought up daily by the GOP and Press, I doubt Obama would have thought of him a single time during the entire political campaign. Ayers donated $200 to Obama's campaign fund to be elected the first time into the state senate.  That was in 2001.  Sad that there has been no real links between Ayers and Obama since 2002, and the GOP, McCain, and Palin want to pretend and claim that the 2 men are "close friends" somehow.  Let us also not forget that this man is now a Professor at a University, not a radical bomb-making anti-war activist.

ACORN amuses me greatly.  ACORN is required by law in most states to submit all voter registration forms given to them.  ACORN has a great record of effectively flagging most of the fraudulent registrations for officials to throw out instead of registering them as voters.  Officials many times ignore the flags.  Could be laziness, or it could be they are too busy, we don't know.  Some of ACORN's employees (note, not ACORN itself) get caught turning in far too many fraudulent registrations (ACORN also fires them), and the GOP blows up and claims that ACORN, and Obama by association, are trying to steal the election.  This is just a last minute ploy by the GOP to try to win this election, because McCain has no chance without something catastrophic happening to derail Obama.  This is somewhere along the same lines as blaming a department store if one of it's employees demolished a building across town.  However, in order to get the 2 completely in line for a comparison, you'd also have to make that building condemned and required by law to be demolished. (unfortunately, I don't have time to go site hopping trying to find voter registration laws specific to drives to quote for my info here, but I'm sure you can find it yourself if you have more time than I do.  I'll try to come back later and find and post it in an update, if I can ever remember).

Governor Crist (R) of Florida said this of the GOP claims of "rampant voter registration fraud" in Florida.  Even one of their own is now standing up and saying "what are you people looking at to make these claims?" Fitting.

Teaching Grade Schoolers to be gay?

Or just another overblown load of crap from the hate mongering homophobes of the far Right? I'm going to say the latter.

This makes it sound like they're brainwashing children to be gay in a Massachusetts Elementary School.  Or at least very close.  However, you should read the report from The Boston Globe instead of listening to such dribble from the idiotic community that seeks to persecute and alienate the gay community more than it already is.

They say "Kindergarten" in the first site, while it was actually a second grader.  They also love using quotations from MassResistance, which is just another organization of the Religious Right trying to force their religious doctrine down our throat, as if their opinions lend any weight in this:

"The [Supreme] court did not even bother to notify the Parkers or their attorneys," said Mass Resistance, which said what now will be enforced in the judicial district will be the lower bench rulings that the state has not only the right but "even the obligation … to promote homosexual relationships to young children."

They think it's promoting homosexual relationships to read some fairy tales that involve a homosexual marriage.  I guess if I read Jack & The Bean Stalk to that same class, I'm promoting going against your parents orders, since Jack takes the beans instead of money, as his mother had told him to?  Yeah, that's not far fetched in the least, is it?

Normally, I would say that it's a parents right and freedom to be the one to teach their kids these things, but I somehow doubt these parents (and especially the ones who participate in the protests against gay marriage and the like) would ever teach these children anything but contempt and continued hatred towards the gay community, so I'm not sure I can really stand on their side in this situation, as tolerance and understanding are desperately needed in this country which has become so overwhelmed with religious views of intolerance.

Separation of Church & State was one of the key components in setting up the United States of America and it's Constitution.  It amazes me how the Right wants to say the Left is evil and not patriotic when their religious infusion into politics is directly against one of the key rules the Constitution set down.  And the crap the Religious Right likes to spew that claims "the wall between church and state was not meant that way" is completely false.  If you don't believe it, read the constitution and it's amendments yourself, and do some research on sites that are not Christian in origin (as that would give them a bit of bias).

I personally am grateful to the Supreme Court for putting down this petty attempt at continuing the hate against the gay community.  I do believe Jesus preached tolerance and love, not intolerance and hate.  Read your Bible before you start trying to preach it to the rest of us and make us live by it's outdated warnings and cryptic passages.

Catching up

Well, it's been well over a week, a VP Debate, a Presidential Debate, and a lot of school work since my last post, so I figured I'd chime in (between attempting to get 5 minutes worth of a speech out of the scattered knowledge and the few tidbits I printed on the Knights Templar).

The VP debate:  Palin didn't drool all over herself, and didn't get steamrolled by Biden. Naturally, the GOP is claiming a victory there.  I personally nearly blew my T.V. up while listening to her nasal passages talk.  Her voice, her religious views, and her scowling face just make me want to move to New Zealand immediately if McCain somehow wins this race.

The Presidential Debate:  Obama was on the defensive WAY too much during this debate.  McCain nearly ate him alive, and would have if McCain's policies weren't retarded to begin with.  That said, McCain did an excellent job of selling his garbage and spitting on Obama's policies.  It made me quite sick.

That's about all I have time for, more to come later, hopefully.

Big Bang... or not?

I'm one of the first people to jump in line and say that everyone has a right to believe in what they want to believe in, but sometimes, the stupidity of people amazes me.  I know there are plenty of people (even people I love and respect their opinions) who disagree with certain controversial science.  Such as certain parts of Evolution (normally the "monkey to man" part of it), or the Big Bang, though many religious people take the "And God said 'let there be light'" part of the Bible as a possible metaphor for the Big Bang.  But to just outright say "There was no Big Bang. Period. God created the world in 7 days, end of story," is just plain ignorant.

If you don't really believe the Big Bang happened, that's your deal, I don't really care.  But when you start insulting other people because they believe a widely accepted scientific theory on the beginnings of the universe, you're going beyond not believing at that point.  Religion and the people who follow it amaze me anyway.

All you have to do is look at the past.  Just take a look at how Christianity has handled new scientific discoveries in the past (such as Earth being the center of the universe, or the earth being flat, etc.) and how unbelievably wrong they were.  Yet people still cling to the old views of their religion instead of paying attention to the scientific evidence.  I just don't get it.

Science & Tech Advisors

This blows my mind.  Well, if I hadn't already lost all faith in the judgement of McCain with his selection of Sarah Palin for VP it would blow my mind.  It's still a little surprising however.

Obama Science & Tech Advisers:

Harold Varmus: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Don Lamb: University of Chicago

Gil Omenn: University of Michigan

Henry Kelly: Federation of American Scientists

Sharon Long: Stanford University

Jason Grumet: Bipartisan Policy Center

Dan Kammen: University of California, Berkeley

Not a bad line up, even though I'm sure most of us haven't heard of any of them before.  At least they're employed by Universities or other science related facilities (aside from Jason Grumet).

McCain Science & Tech Advisers:

James Woolsey: Former CIA Director

James Schlesinger: Former Secretary of Defense

Robert McFarlane: Former National Security Advisor

Carly Fiorina: Former Chief Executive of Hewlett-Packard

Meg Whitman: Former Chief Executive of eBay.

WHAT THE HELL?!  Only 2 of those are even related to Science & Tech, and I'd call their experience in the field on the business side, not the Science & Tech end of things.  Not surprising, McCain would be a horrible choice for the already battered (thanks to Bush) Science & Tech fields.  It is pretty surprising that a weak point for McCain and he doesn't at least have at least some qualified and experienced scientists on his panel.  The man lacks anything remotely close to vision, though I guess that should be expected of a man at his age.

Group Projects

So when was the last time that you were forced to work with near complete strangers for a common goal given to you by someone else?  If you exclude class projects, which are often argued to help you in the real world, the answer is almost certainly "never" for a majority of the population.  So then why do professors love giving group projects and saying things like "you should get used to it, because you'll be doing it in your profession for years to come" or some such nonsense?

That argument doesn't even touch on the topic of getting stuck with the lazy stoner who you wonder how he remembers to get the class each week, the dumb blonde ex-cheerleader who doesn't stop smacking her gum long enough to contribute, and the overbearing perfectionist that has to have the entire project done his way and cries that nobody else is doing it right in your group.  Luckily, I'm not actually stuck with any people like that in my group for my current "group project," but it's annoying anyway.  I work full time, have a girlfriend that I actually want to see sometimes, and am taking this class, as are most of my fellow group mates.  Attempting to actually get together outside the classroom is a near impossibility because we all have lives.   I just find the college group project to be a waste of time in the "preparation for the future" category and lacking in the overall learning experience.  Instead of learning what the project was supposed to teach, you spend most of your time worried about where you're going to find time to actually meet with the other people in your group.  And yet, every professor seems to have some favorite group project he must throw at you after the drop date has passed and you're stuck in the class!