I will not be adding to this blog any more. In fact, this blog may disappear at any time. This website will be solely devoted to my professional, job-related interests.
If you simply must see my blog entries, I have a separate blog site at http://papastuck.wordpress.com.
C-ya!
Happy Religious Freedom Day! Every January 16th, we celebrate the diversity of religious thought in the US. Religious freedom, to me, means the freedom of a wide variety of people to hold and express (in appropriate situations and contexts) an incredible variety of religious beliefs, or even no belief at all.
Religious Freedom Day celebrates the fact that the US has no “official religion.” The founders saw what happened in Europe when religion and politics mixed, and wisely drafted a constitution that erected a Wall of Separation between them.
So today, celebrate our religious freedom. Don’t let politicians (Mike, Mitt, W, I’m looking at you!) turn their offices into pulpits. Be glad you aren’t required to defer to a religion that is not your own. Happy Religious Freedom Day!
I found this over at the Crisis Papers. It’s a very good description of the way our elections are just so much manipulation. Here’s the opening:
In the United States of America, the public selects the candidates of each of the two parties. Several candidates of these parties offer themselves to the citizens of a number of states, the free US press presents the policy positions of the candidates to the public, and the free broadcast media conduct debates in which the issues are openly discussed. Then the states hold primaries and caucuses, in which delegates are chosen by the voters, whereupon the delegates choose the parties’ nominees at open national party conventions.
And little George Washington really did chop down his daddy’s cherry tree.
It gets even better. Check it out.
Taylor County, Florida, just decided to oppose evolution. They want evolution “presented as one of several theories as to how the universe was formed.” First off, they misunderstand the term “theory” as it is used in science. Second, they do not seem to understand that evolution describes how organisms change over time through inheritance and adaptation, not how the universe was formed. That’s physical cosmology, not evolution.
Taylor County, you are ijits.
Mitt Romney is a liar of the “pants on fire” degree. This excerpt explains it:
Romney sternly replied, “I don’t describe your plan as amnesty in my ad. I don’t call it amnesty.”
This denial earns Romney a “Pants on Fire” ruling because two ads he released in recent days use that exact language. The only thing possibly saving the former Massachusetts governor is that the ads feature other people using the controversial word, not Romney himself.
How many five-year olds can you take in a fight? I can take 28!
FactCheck.org has a list of some of the biggest lies the presidential campaigners told in 2007. Here’s a good one:
Giuliani claimed in a radio ad that men suffering from prostate cancer have only a 44 percent survival rate under England’s system of “socialized medicine.” The true figure is 74.4 percent. Giuliani’s bogus statistic was the result of bad math by a campaign adviser with no particular expertise in cancer research. It was denounced by any number of cancer experts including one who called it “nonsense.” Giuliani stubbornly refused to admit his error, claiming the 44 percent figure is “absolutely accurate.” It isn’t.
And:
Romney claimed that Democratic President Clinton “began to dismantle the military,” but really it was Republican President George H.W. Bush who started making deep cuts in defense budgets years before Clinton took office.
And this one about the “Fair Tax”:
Proponents of the so-called “FairTax,” prominently including Huckabee, claimed that a national sales tax of 23 percent could replace both the federal income tax and Social Security taxes, and eliminate the Internal Revenue Service.
In truth, the actual rate of the proposed tax would be 30 percent, when calculated the same way as state and local sales taxes. And it would have to be 34 percent to raise the same revenue as the taxes it would replace, according to a bipartisan presidential commission. The FairTax would, for example, raise the price of gasoline by roughly $1 per gallon at today’s prices and cause a $150,000 new home to cost at least $195,000 including the 30 percent tax.
Read the article for more.
Today is HumanLight! Some info from the website:
In Western societies, late December is a season of good cheer and a time for gatherings of friends and families. During the winter holiday season, where the word “holiday” has taken on a more secular meaning, many events are observed. This tradition of celebrations, however, is grounded in supernatural religious beliefs that many people in modern society cannot accept. HumanLight presents an alternative reason to celebrate: a Humanist’s vision of a good future. It is a future in which all people can identify with each other, behave with the highest moral standards, and work together toward a happy, just and peaceful world.
I’m celebrating. Are you?
I was reading through the archives at Saint Gasoline and came across this one. As a self-professed grammar snob, I took umbrage. Then I realized that he’s just jealous.
My wife and I put up a holiday tree last night. Of course, she calls it a Christmas tree. We’ve been sending out our holiday Christmas cards this week. Sigh. sometimes I feel like Kyle on South Park. It’s tough to be a Humanist on Christmas. I’ll just have to pretend it’s really HumanLight. Maybe, if I disbelieve hard enough, the Happy Human will appear and give me a present!