More Christian Evil; Why Religion is Child Abuse Reason #1,340,230,000

• State authorities have responded to at least 165 allegations of abuse and neglect in the past decade, but homes have remained open even after the state found evidence of sex abuse and physical injury.
  
• The religious exemption has for decades allowed homes to avoid state restrictions on corporal punishment. Homes have pinned children to the ground for hours, confined them in seclusion for days, made them stand until they wet themselves and exercised them until they vomited.
  
• Children have been bruised, bloodied and choked to unconsciousness in the name of Christian discipline. A few barely escaped with their lives. In addition, in two settled lawsuits, a mother said her son was forced to hike on broken feet; a father said his son was handcuffed, bound at the feet, locked away for three days and struck by other boys at the instruction of the home.
  
• Adults have ordered children to participate in the punishment, requiring them to act as jailers, to bully troublemakers or to chase, tackle and sit on their peers.
  
• Teens have been denounced as sinners, called "faggots" and "whores," and humiliated in front of their peers for menstrual stains and suspicions of masturbation.
  
• Parents share the blame. Some sign away their children for a year or more without first visiting a home or checking credentials. But state officials bear some responsibility because they have not warned the public about programs they believe are abusive.
  
• Florida taxpayers have supported some unlicensed homes with hundreds of thousands of dollars in McKay scholarships — a government program to help special needs students pay tuition at private schools.

Smaller government; YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK! Christan Love! Can you feel it, or do we have to HIT YOU HARDER? Fucking monsters, every last one.

Not My Time Machine

There's an excellent essay documenting the nature of white privilege up over on Lean Left. It's a good read; it highlights the nature of white privilege, and lays bare some important points about it.

Ethical Atheism; A+

There's been some discussion over on FTB about trying to spin a new atheist movement off of the current one; drawing parallels with feminism, it's been likened to "Third Wave". The first two waves were about staking the claim; this one is going to be about cleaning out or own closets. After a discussion (I'll admit, I was not part of), the name Atheism+ was determined, with A+ as the shorthand, for the movement.

For what little it's worth, I like it.

Not only do I get an H+ now, I get an A+, too.

Or maybe I'm an AH+, or a HA+, since my transhumanism is more important to me than atheism - after all, it's hard to build your person and schema around something that doesn't exist. So instead, I'm putting my faith and my belief in the future, and in the advancement and progression of the human species. I don't think we'll have AI Gods anytime soon - although if we do, that might be nice, for a certain value of "nice" - but as a species our best hope for the future is technology and progression. Therefore, I'm Ha+ (there was a chemical joke in here about being a positive ion of Hahnium, but apparently, the IUPAC decided that Dubnium is a better name. Java rejects this, because Dubnium is underlined in red. Of course, so is IUPAC.)

One of the geneses of this movement was the collective of misogynistic assholes that gathered around the atheist movement; snide, dickish, and moronic, these are the guys on Reddit and other internet cesspools. These are also the guys on Dawkin's forum, who deny the existence of racism and misogyny and, if you pull out all of the references to God and the attacks on evolution, don't sound any different than say, the Free Republic.

Well, any new movement has it's own manifesto. This is the first time that I've seen the manifesto for the A+ movement; creating a document that all members of the movement will abide by.

So here it is, in all it's glory.

Shut The Fuck Up, Fascist Dog

Joel McDurmon would like you to know that it has an opinion on the whole situation surrounding Todd Akin's ignorant and hateful admission of just how utterly stupid and psychopathic the Republican Party has become lately. When Todd Akin put on display how knowledgeable he was of 14th century medicine, everyone rightly criticized him. He put on display a core belief in the Republican Party today, once again showing how the Republicans do nothing but show contempt towards women.

To Mr. McDurmon: Shut the fuck up, you fascist pigheaded motherfucker self-righteous unholy coprophilic. You caitiff. You backbiting, contemptible, unscrupulous, reprobate misbegotten shit-eating abomination. You're a Backpfeifengesicht. I'm not going to engage you in a debate. I'm not going to be nice. I'm not going to play with the kid gloves because you know what? A debate is carried out when you think you can change someone's mind, or get them to see your side of the equation. Motherfucker, you won't see any side other than your own. You're not going open your eyes. You cannot reason a person out of a position they weren't reasoned into, and you know what? Fucker, you're not even in the same goddamn hemisphere as reason. So I have one thing to say to you, you self-grandiose piece of human detritus: Shut the fuck up.

No, seriously.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

I'm not a mean liberal. Hell, I'm just warming up, you arrogant douche. To even suggest that what Todd Akin has received (rightfully) received for his obscene and horrifyingly sociopathic comments is like to [WARNING! This link leads to the full article] gang rape - motherfucker, you need to shut the fuck up like right the fuck now. You needed to shut the fuck up yesterday.

No.

This is not persecution. This is me treating you like the contemptible piece of shit you are. Fuck you, fuck your God, fuck your religion, and fuck everything you stand for you degenerate. You abnormal, vile, pusillanimous, beyond contempt wretched Hell-spawn. 

I'll say it one more time: Shut the fuck up, fascist dog*. Don't justify what you said. Don't try to explain it to me because all I hear is "I think rape is only real rape if the victim is [x]" - you don't have the first fucking clue, you rape apologist. And if you think your God believes that, your stupid fucking God can go fist himself. And there's not a fucking thing your pathetic little God will ever do to me, motherfucker. That's got to chaff your ass, knowing that your God won't do a damn thing to me even though I'm standing up and shouting him down. Because he doesn't even exist. Because the demon you worship is not the God that the majority of right-hearted and caring individuals worship. Your Old Testament Monster Under the Bed can go kiss the fuck off. Just like you, you pig-fucking fascist asshole.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
*This comment is not intended to offend dogs. Dogs are intelligent, caring, social creatures. They are friendly, family oriented, and don't care what their masters are so long as their masters feed them, love them, and play with them. DeMar is none of that. He is not intelligent. He is not caring. He might be a social creature, but the social circles he travels through are likely the First or Second layer of Hell. He is not friendly. And he revels in all of the above, believing them to be positive traits. 

Judeo-Christian Mystery Religion

This has been making its rounds on the Internet for a sometime now, and I've been waiting until I got a free moment before I comment on it.

Texas has a new Republican platform. And it's everything we've come to know and love from these motherfucking shit-for-brain idiots on the right. If you thought the Iowa platform was bad, boy howdy, you ain't seen nothing yet...

With this, the Republicans have finally struck a blow at the reality and in the process, created a gaping singularity of stupid that is slowly draining the collective IQ nationwide.

And.... I May Have Been Right

Nasty Robo-Calls may have occurred during the recall election.

Specifically, these robo-calls that may have occurred told people that "by signing the petition, their job was done and they didn't need to come and vote." These are unsubstantiated at the moment and this is a story that's coming out of Wisconsin in the days after the Walker won the election. It's likely that if they did occur, Walker had nothing to do with it. It was likely some rogue, criminal GOP (synonymous? We're getting that way) or sub-GOP organization that did it.

How sad is this? We're taking it seriously. I'd love to think that Walker won this legally. But I just don't believe anything that the GOP says anymore. They could tell me the sky was blue and I'd have to check for myself to make sure. They've lied to their pin-head congregation and the whole of America for years. Ever since Bush was in office, before that, with Regan and Nixon. I would not put this beyond the special interest groups involved in that recall elections; especially in the wake of the FB scandals of people saying they were destroying recall signatures, or trying to impede the signature effort by lying to people. The real election fraud in this country is not done by immigrants. It's not done by blacks, or Asians, or Muslims or any other group that's routinely persecuted. The only group that (acts like it's) carrying out voter fraud are white Christian men. Maybe we need to start gearing our voter suppression "anti-fraud" efforts in that direction. "I'm sorry, you belong to this church? It's our understanding that this church has possibly, at some point in the distant past, likely carried out something that resembles voter fraud, so we can't let you vote. What do you mean your church only goes back to the 1990s? Okay, fine, your church doctrine, then. I'm sure that goes back further."

Republicans are some of the least trustworthy people on the planet. And they're so fucking blatant about it; that's what makes this really bad.

And before you say "well, anyone stupid enough to believe that deserves to lose", remember this: our education system is shit. We're not teaching our children civics. We're not teaching them their basic rights; these uninformed children grow up to be uninformed adults. If this happened, it worked, it's very revealing just how deeply our society has failed its people. It's not they're fault they're misinformed. They live in a society where they're bombarded by misinformation all the time. There are likely tens of millions of Americans who don't even know what their basic rights are. They were never given the mental tools necessary to determine what's true and what's not and in some cases, told the exact opposite. Their epistemological methodology has less substance than aerogel. This is not their fault. It's society's fault, and its the fault of the people - who are almost uniformly right-wing - that perpetuate this in society. Democracy cannot work in this environment. It won't work in this environment.

And it doesn't work in the United States anymore, either. The mere fact that such voter fraud can be taken serious shows that. Democracy? I'm sorry, we're all out of that. We exported the last little bit we had to Iraq, and you see how well that's turned out. However, we're having a discount sale of fascism in this country, it's 50% off and we've got both kinds - country and western!

Platform Shoes

So the Iowa Republican Party has issued their party platform; this is like a mission statement, but likely written in crayon on a piece of construction paper. This outlines all of their beliefs, neatly bundled in one little blackwhite package, proudly proclaiming how they miss the 17th century and how they're going to work their damn hardest to take us back.
I read this and I think about the Party from my novel, but that's nothing unusual. I modeled the Party on the political right. So naturally, there's overlap. Your pot can only get so cracked before it starts looking like every other crackpot. So let's gear up and follow this train over the edge, skydiving from reality into, to borrow a term from Ed Brayton,The People's Republic of Wingnuttia.

The New Misogyny

So, I've read a few pieces online and I've been neck deep in political activist blogs (I need to stop doing that. My blood pressure is in bad enough state is it is most of the time). I came across an interesting article the other day detailing what's called "the new misogyny", which is decidedly different from "the old misogyny."

A Teapublican's Paradise

This came across my feed this morning, and when something like this comes up, it's always worth a look-see. It posits itself as a response to God's Own Party, and with it, the Randian fantasies and Teabagging Rhetoric that seems to be tying together the Big White Tent of "boys-only" bootstraps and bigotry.

It even starts off with an awesome pitch, too:


Imagine, if you will, a country where there is:

No Obamacare
No Obama
The Fair Tax is the law of the land
The Income Tax code is simple and the forms are easy to fill out
The IRS is as toothless as a plate of Jello
There is a complete Laissez Faire free market
No Labor Unions
No Government involvement in Business, Health Care, Labor matters or pretty much anything else except national security.

So where is this mythical Tea-paradise?

Ignatius Reilly Issues Notpology

I've been watching this unfold for the last few days, but I haven't had much time to comment on it. So now that I have some time, I'm definitely going to say something.

For those who aren't caught up, the last couple of weeks have been nothing short of an all-out attack on the rights of women to be human beings in the United States. The Right-Wing is bringing it hard and fast; one assault after another. You almost get the sense they know they're gonna get their shit trashed this coming election, so they're doing everything they can to leave a mark and failing. This panic has lead to some strange, circus-like situations over the last few years. The strangest of them all, perhaps, is the fact that Ignatius Reilly could somehow become respected among the Republican Party as one of the most speakers for the regressive, backwards, wrongheaded movement.

Well, the Democrats managed to get a young law school student named Sandra Fluke to testify before congress. While the Republicans, in typical form, tried to silence her, she still managed to get some important things said. This, together with a general empathy towards human begins and a belief that a woman should control her own body as opposed to the government controlling it, pretty much shoots down the clown posse that Issa had testify before congress on the BC issue (for the record; all of these clowns were men. Speaking about women's biology and bodies. And the Republicans gave it their best shot to block an expert, so to speak - that is, someone who knows what women go through by virtue of being one). So, naturally, Ignatius Reilly wasn't pleased and he made some typical remarks expressing his disgust and thereby making everyone sick:

This is Absolutely Amazing

I can't muster full commentary on this, other than how absolutely incredible this video is.

Listen in awe as Irish President, Michael D. Higgins, trashes the shit of this TEA Bagging ignoramus.

Full video found here.

"So be proud to be an American, rather than a wanker whipping up fear"
- Michael D. Higgins

Why can't we have politicians like this guy? Why?

The Third Position of Centrism

In the United States, there is this mythical existence called "centrism." If you listen to our media, or our political parties, there's always a call for bipartisanship. There's always this idea that, if you call the right out for being the frothy fucking liars they are, then you've got to be "balanced" and reassure the population that the leftists are just as bad. You have to appeal to this mythical centrist unicorn; this rare, neigh invisible creature that exists less as a corporeal entity and more as an idea that is aspired to.

It isn't an idea we need to aspire to reach. Centrism is not a good thing. Being middle of the road doesn't make you more "mature", and it doesn't mean you put anymore thought into your positions than someone on either extreme of the political spectrum. A centrist is someone who hasn't decided anything, doesn't believe in anything, and doesn't take a stand for anything. A fence-setter - that is, someone who always answers poll questions like "Do you think the sky is blue" with "undecided" - is a centrist. I'm not saying you need to be an extremist, I'm just saying that centrism is not a state to aspire to. In a way, centrism is every bit as dangerous as extremism.

Centrism is not revolutionary. Centrism is reactionary. Centrism is a toxic, destructive force - it is not "capitalism with a human face." It's "corporatism with a Citizen's United mask".

The Klan, Operation Rescue, and Al Qaeda

For those who don't know, Operation Rescue is a terrorist organization, just like Al Qaeda. They're a terrifying mix of violent extremism and anti-woman, anti-life, anti-human self-righteous blindness, run by a man who can only be described as a corrupted, soulless monster.

The right to not have to use a coat hanger for abortion in the United States has come under fire. Like all other third world countries, a patriarchy convinced of it's own conceited worldview has stepped up and deemed women as unacceptable human beings. No where is that more visible than in Operation Rescue, the Orwellian named group who's sole purpose seems to be bombing women's health clinics, killing gynecologists, and lying about how they didn't want any of the above to happen.

So yes, sort of like the Klan. But the Klan had the guts to stand up and say it was what they wanted. Like other Right-wing cowards, Operation Rescue can't do that.

And just like the Klan, I hope they become shunned really soon. Because these theocratic cryptofascists have adopted a new technique in their battle against female human rights: these radical clerics have started adopting a database with the names, pictures, work hours and work locations of all the doctors who preform abortions.

Does this scare you? Because it scares me. And we know exactly what it will be used for. It's getting a bit hot in here, and the law needs to step in. Now. Before someone else dies.




h/t the Slacktivist

Conservative Love!

If you couldn't tell by the title, this has to do with love as only Conservatives are capable of showing it. So, heads up, because things can only go down hill from here.

A few Trigger Warnings - Animal Abuse for sure, with discussion of Slavery and racism in the Modern TEA Party - you know, the party that isn't racist - included.

School's Prayer

Here's my new version of this school's prayer:

Our Heavenly Father

Grant us each day so that we may regress and stay ignorant; so that we may express our intolerance and bigotry towards those who are different from us. To remain mentally and morally stunted, as well as physically confrontational, for we are not adults, and have no other recourse for expressing our feelings. To be cruel to the helpless and the downtrodden, the unprivileged and those with a different view, so we and our teachers may mock our classmates for disagreeing with us. To be as utterly dishonest as possible, to others and ourselves. Help us be as self righteous and arrogantly hypocritical as possible. Teach us the value of hate and ignorance, as well as intolerance and inhuman cruelty, so that we may express it towards those whom we disagree. Help us conduct ourselves as such so that we can bring due credit to the Christians of Rhode Island in general and Cranston High School West in particular.

Amen.

Oh, but she won. Congratulations, Jessica Ahlquist - stay strong in the face of adversity. She's won so far, and she'll win here, too. Those Christians are full of shit - they're all talk, without the moral fortitude to back up their immoral words. Not that this takes away, nor should it take away, any fear that their words inspire. They should all be taken seriously - so seriously I'm posting their names here, along with their comments.

Taste the Christian love. If it tastes sorta like shit, that's because it is.

WTF Is Wrong With This Man?

I've ripped into Mike Adams before. Politely, he's a fucking idiot who's stupidity wouldn't even be worth my time if he didn't spread his obscene arrogance over some of the most sensitive topics. Honestly, he's an obstinate moronic fucking idiot twit well versed in the arts of the anti-logic and anti-thought who's dribble wouldn't be worth the throw-away bib that it's on, were it not for the fact that he shoots his mouth off while knowing negative knowledge about sensitive topics. The article of him that I ripped into before remains one of the most popular articles I've ever done - Real True Men(TM), in which this dimwit decides that because he had a borderline bromance back in middle school, gay children are automatically women (and that's an insult, mind you) if they don't stand up and fight back against their bullies, rather than relying on the system in place to protect them (which is an attitude that, if anything, benefits the bullies). That article was a wonderful display of lack of empathy and his misogyny.

Well, Adams is at it again. In another astonishing article, Adams freely reminds the world that he lacks intelligence, empathy, and is well versed in misogyny in a way that makes one want to exile him from the species.

(h/t Ross on the Slacktiverse; original comment found in this thread here)

We Will Lose Autonomy Over Our Beings...

Transhumanism post - I haven't done one of these in a while.

I've had this article locked away in my favorites for sometime and I've been intending to get around to writing about. Transhumanism is one of the thing that sets my blog apart (I should like to think) for other blogs. I'm not sure how many other transhuman blogs there are, but I haven't been doing a very good job of making this one transhumanist despite it being my personal philosophy.

There's a lot more to transhumanism than just mind-uploading and body surfing, although those are two currents that do make up a lot of transhuman thought. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about mind-uploading personally; I'd like for it to be true, but it seems to reek of mind-body duality, which current advances in neuroscience are suggesting isn't the case. In fact, current advances suggest that consciousness is just an illusion brought about by the chemical reactions inside of your brain; your ego, your identity, all of it, is just an illusion that's created by firing neurons. Now, we're not sure if this is the case or not. There may be some kind duality present that allows for the "conscious" as we recognize it to be transferred over to a new source much like a program can be, and so far, there's nothing either for or against it. There's a reason Eclipse Phase is set some 100-200 years in the future.

Wait, I take that back. There's a lot against it, and transhumanism in general, as this article suggests. In Is Transhumanism Coercive: Forcing humanity to remain relatively stupid and sick doesn't make us freer by Ronald Baily, he recounts a debate that he had with a bioconservative named Peter Lawler. Now, Lawler was he president of George W. Bush's "Council of Ethics," and like most individuals, Lawler presents an irrational fear of biotechnology and the future development of technology. Or, rather, I'm sure he'd like everyone else to have an irrational fear of biotechnology, even if he himself does not. For the most part, Ronald does a good job, but I want to take a closer look at it, and bioconservatism in general.

He's Killing that Jacket

So, I'm behind the curve (yet again). Apparently, wannabe presidential-hopeful Rick "Texas Teabagging Thug" Perry has a new political ad out. One of the reasons I'm behind the times is because I really don't watch TV, so I don't see this stuff. Another reason is because I don't deliberately go looking for information on this man, it just has it's way of gravitating to me. And because I'm opinionated, it goes without saying I've got something to say about this abomination of a political ad.

So, without further ado, let's watch this magnificent, Shakespearean-in-its-elegance political ad (am I damning with false praise? Now, now, be fair: Perry is so far lost he deserves all the praise he can get):

#Occupy: Bahrain

To the average American, the "Arab spring" is this thing we see on TV between reports about how loopy and spiteful our congress is being and what celebrities are dating who or going into rehab. We saw videos of Egypt, and we saw videos of Libya, and we got some info, but not much.

Of course, we're not seeing videos from Syria. We're getting the occasional new feed, but really, not much. Syria isn't an ally of the the United States, but neither was Libya, and Egypt was neutral at best. So, it's no surprise that we hear about that.

But what about the places that are the ally of the United States?

Let's take a look at what the "Arab spring" looks like in Bahrain, a close ally of the United States, and one generally considered a "liberal" Arab country (I suppose when your neighbor is Saudi Arabia, any morals more advanced than the stone age can be considered liberal). Keep in mind - the United States supports the regime in Bahrain.

WARNING: The video below the fold is extremely graphic; it contains graphic in images of death, mutilation, and general mercenary brutality. And even this disclaimer won't prepare you.

Unleash the Dogs of War!

Somethings never sleep.

At it's height, the British Empire never slept. It spanned the entire globe, and while it might be dark in one place of the empire, it was day somewhere else. The Mongol Empire was like this, too.

Modern businesses don't sleep. If you want to stay ahead in this world, you have to be going 25/8, but because there's only 24 hours in a day (23.24 hours) and 7 days in a week, you have to settle.

Right wing lies never sleep. Christmas never seems to sleep either. And the combination of the two, while it spends most of the year lying low, seems like it kicks into gear earlier an earlier each year. I log onto Facebook this morning and I see a couple of complaints about how we're taking the "Christ" out of Christmas. How we're censoring Christmas, or how we're discriminating against Christians. That's right, kiddos - it's more than just a privilege check. 'Tis the season - JENKINS, UNLEASH THE HOUNDS! THIS MEANS WAR!