“the Department of Defense spends $20 billion air conditioning tents and temporary structures for the military. That’s more than NASA’s entire $19 billion annual budget“
The most interesting bits from this article however are actually the reader comments. While some bemoan such blatant idiocy (air conditioning un-insulated structures) there are a surprising number of comments which rail against anyone questioning this use of money as unpatriotic and immoral.
stratocaster28 wrote, in response to one of these questioning comments:
“In another time, you would have been branded a traitor for what you just wrote, and probably executed.
. . .
You’re a traitorous hypocrite accusing the very people who put their lives on the line so that you can have the right to the same air conditioning i’m sure YOU DO USE, with the peace and the economy to enjoy it in.
. . .
Don’t even try to justify what you wrote, you simply cannot.”
“you should kiss the ass of the next military member you see in thanks for helping to protect the country that makes your life so easy to bitch about the leadership without being hunted down and killed for your viewpoint.”
Lovely. Don’t question authority you ungrateful little bastards, just bend over and take it if you don’t want to be called a traitor. I’ll show you an inefficiency!
It’s 2011 and we still have to deal with these morons? really?
In brief, the number of American non-believers has doubled since 1990, a 2008 Pew survey found, and increased even more in some other advanced democracies. What’s curious is not so much the overall decline of belief (which has caused the Vatican to lament the de-Christianization of Europe) as the pattern. In a paper last month in the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, Gregory Paul finds that countries with the lowest rates of social dysfunction—based on 25 measures, including rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, unemployment, and poverty—have become the most secular. Those with the most dysfunction, such as Portugal and the U.S., are the most religious, as measured by self-professed belief, church attendance, habits of prayer, and the like.
What is also disturbing about this is that the US is considered a country with more dysfunction.
By altering a gene in the brain of a female worm, scientists were able to change its sexual orientation so that it was attracted to other females. Scientists activated the gene that makes male structures develop in the body, but only turned it on in the brain.
Here’s a dirty picture:
Oh sure, you laugh now, but wait until my army of lesbian worms is complete. World domination my friend, world domination.
When one thinks of people like Glenn Beck, Keith Olberman, Bill O’Reily, and Rush Limbaugh, one often finds oneself wanting to stab ice picks in one’s ears. These people are commentators, not newsmen, but this distinction is not understood by a lot of people.
But let’s imagine a world in which these vitriolic opinionated ass-hats didn’t exist. It would be a world of reporting only the facts. “People gathered outside the capitol today and protested the legality of President Obama’s birth certificate.” “Some republicans are upset about the death panels that would be created under the congress’ health care reform bill.”
The point is that there are some truly crazy people out there and perhaps it takes some crazy people to cover them. I’ve seen the so called serious news cover these events and with only a few exceptions they are far more interested in not offending anyone that they don’t say anything at all. They’re afraid that if they point out that there is no way that Obama isn’t a citizen they’ll be accused of being left wing and biased. The right has embraced so many lies that it is impossible to report the truth without appearing to be leftist.
When we have actual US Congressmen (I’m looking at you, Michele Bachmann) who think that the census leads to internment camps, who receives huge amount of campaign donations from the insurance companies and proceeds to act as their puppet, who has consistently worked to incite violence against those who oppose her, who thinks CO2 is natural and therefore harmless to the environment, and who thinks that we need to go through and purge the congress of all of those with what she has determined to be “anti-american” philosophies – why shouldn’t we have crazy people on tv talking about them?
Until we start electing serious people there will be no possibility of serious news. This is not to say that there are not good news sources out there, and it is not to say that all cable news commentators were created equal. But it is to say that the serious news should spend less time complaining about the so-called “fake” newsmen on cable news and start complaining more about the “fake” people who are deciding our fate.
Salon has a great piece about the somewhat more than sketchy health articles on the Huffington Post.
I get a lot of news from the Huffington Post. It is even my homepage on my computer. But I’ve also learned never to venture into the “Living” section – as it is full of almost nothing but metaphysical homeopathic bullshit.
While I admit that the drug companies have too much pull over health-care in this country, I also know that they are not ones to turn down a profit. The drug companies are not engaged in a conspiracy in which they convince the American people that only their drugs work for any given illness. If drinking wormwood tea made cancer go away they wouldn’t try to cover it up, they would try to sell it.
I often hear people say we just need to give homeopathy a chance – that we are too biased to traditional western medicine. What they don’t understand is that we did give alternative treatments a chance. We gave all treatments a chance, and those that worked became medicine and those that didn’t became “alternative medicine”.
The scientific method applies the same to western medicine as it applies to gravity or to the nature of matter. Just because you want Aloe Vera Gel to cure your arthritis doesn’t mean it will. Either accept everything that the scientific method gives us or accept none of it. If you pick and choose than you undermine it’s very usefulness as a system.
The government is spending an increasing amount of money by investigating the legitimacy of so-called alternative medicine. And so far all they’ve found is that they are simply an alternative to effective. And yet they through more money down the well.
Like the family that was recently held responsible for the death of their child (for not taking her to the hospital in lieu of prayer) people put themselves and others at risk when they turn away from western medicine.
Our culture’s growing appetite for natural and organic foods cannot be allowed to spread to far. Soon there will be a movement against penicillin and the very plastic that makes the syringes that carry it.
Our intellects enable us to create things from other things – it is why we’re on the top of the food chain, it is what makes us human. Homeopathy is a move away from progress, from evolution. It is a move to simpler times, with simple remedies, simple sickness, and simple death.
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man;
so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:
they shall not be ashamed,
but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
Psalm 127:3-5 (KJV)
Morning Edition had a piecetoday about the Quiverfull movement in which Christian families keep having children until God tells them to stop (no word yet on that ever happening).
Why would you have so many children that you can only afford to live in squaler? God – obviously.
If you’re up for a laugh I recomend visiting Quiverfull.com:
We exalt Jesus Christ as Lord, and acknowledge His headship in all areas of our lives, including fertility. We exist to serve those believers who trust the Lord for family size, and to answer the questions of those seeking truth in this critical area of marriage.
It seems that these people take things from the bible that speak of children way too seriously. Which makes me wonder what they do when they come across passages like this one:
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
Actually, that might not be a bad money making scheme – and if ever prosecuted you could just say it was all religious observance. Have a lot of children so that you can sell the daughters as sex slaves! It’s bible-condoned!
Benedict told reporters Tuesday aboard the plane taking him to Cameroon that AIDS was a tragedy “that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.”
The solution lies in a “spiritual and human awakening” and “friendship for those who suffer,” he said on his first trip to Africa.
In response, Spain is pledging 1 million condoms for those countries worst hit by the AIDS epidemic. So thank you, Spain . . . but can’t you spare a few more than that?
In any case, only have unprotected sex with the pope, because apparently his condoms are lubed with AIDS.
Two people that could have been avoided if their parents had only used a condom.
I’ll admit something. I think I’m a fan of Mike Gravel. Now I know what you’re thinking – why support a man who has absolutely no chance of becoming president – who in fact admits that he has no chance and considers just a few percentage points a victory? Well, I would not ask myself those questions here on this blog if I were not planning on explaining, so here we go:
Barack Obama recently said:
Let me tell you something, the real gamble is having the same old folks doing the same old things and expecting a different result. That is not an approach we can afford.
I agree completely. Which is one reason why I don’t like Mrs. Clinton. Her speeches, her actions, everything about her screams ‘politician’. I’m one of those people that thinks we don’t need more politics as usual – we need a change in the white house that will actually affect change in the country (and the world). While Mr. Obama is not as bad as Mrs. Clinton, he’s no Mike Gravel. Mr. Gravel is not only advocating a change in leadership, but a change in how we go about running this country. He is proposing a “National Initiative” – something which he alone is advocating.
Mr. Gravel seems to hold some pretty common sense positions – but positions that are nonetheless radical compared to the norm. I recommend this interview to get an idea of how he thinks:
Some highlights:
3:00 Vietnam and Iraq
15:30 Gravel on Nukes and Iran
17:50 Joe Lieberman is “sick in the head”
21:30 Gen. Patreus is a liar
24:25 “We got a religious nut running our country”
25:00 We will bomb Guantanamo bay
28:00 Meanmar and global governance
31:00 National Initiative and political theory
50:00 Marijuana and crystal meth
56:45 quality of vote, not quantity
59:30 free trade and south america
61:00 Where you’ve lost your sovereignty
A lot of what he says leaves me more than a little sceptical (granted, I have not read the literature about the National Initiative). But mostly I’m impressed with his attitude. He seems more concerned with doing what is right and what is needed than political posturing and all the related bullshit.
Now, it is obvious that he won’t even come close to getting the nomination – but as he himself has said, it is just good that he is out there saying what he thinks needs to be said. And god damn it, he’s right. I think Gravel is maybe not a great candidate for president, but he can be useful in creating a national atmosphere for change.
I’d be interested to hear what other people think about his role in this race. He has been left out from at least two debates – and of course at the debates he does attend he isn’t permitted to speak much. If you’d like to see more of his speeches, just do a YouTube search for “Mike Gravel”.
*Update:
Here are some more videos that are short:
”the only thing worse than troops dieing in vein is more troops dieing in vain.”
“Hillary, your lips are moving and you’re lying”
“Addiction is a public health problem, not a criminal problem”
As part of their Off The Bus series, Huffington Post has an interesting pieceon Huckabee’s views on religion and environmentalism.
When it comes to Earth and the environment, Mike Huckabee has never been shy about bringing God into the conversation. In 1998, while speaking to the Arkansas Farm Bureau, Huckabee said:
“God made us, and God made the Earth. . . . He gave us the privilege to use it and enjoy the resources, but never to worship it. We’re to worship Him, not the thing He made. To me, environmentalists are those who worship the things that He made rather than He who made them.”
This wasn’t the first time Huckabee had had harsh words for environmentalists. In 1996, he said:
“Wacko environmentalists, who get out of their concrete towers one weekend a month and go look at a tree, believe they know more about the care of the land than farmers. They want to tell us what deodorant we can use and what kind of gas to put in our car.”
And on evolution . . .
I think schools also ought to be fair to all views. Because, frankly, Darwinism is not an established scientific fact. It is a theory of evolution, that’s why it’s called the theory of evolution. And I think that what I’d be concerned with is that it should be taught as one of the views that’s held by people. But it’s not the only view that’s held. And any time you teach one thing as that it’s the only thing, then I think that has a real problem to it.
Sweet jesus. Evidently the man can’t read. If he could, he would see that the title of the class is “science” – and so it is only natural that only scientific theories be considered. ID has absolutely nothing to do with science. I mean go talk to the FSM people.
I’m also sick of these conservatives who think that since the earth was created for us we can exploit it all we want. This human-centric view I thought had gone the way of the earth-centric view (you know, that the sun orbits the earth). Evidently there are still dipshits out there who think they’re the best things since sliced bread. Which, in my opinion, is a very childish world view.
The EDGE of Existence programme aims to conserve the world’s most Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species by implementing the research and conservation actions needed to secure their future.
They have a list (with photos) of their top 100 endangered species – there are some truly amazing animals . . . that need your help. (wink wink, nudge nudge). I highly recommend you go to the EDGE website to find out more.
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now, he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s become extinct, the climate’s ruined, and the land grows poorer and uglier.
A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.
Will this new report help in the efforts to legalize pot? Probably not. Will it give stoners everywhere an excuse to take another bong hit and contemplate the economic implications of large scale marijuana production in the United States? Probably.
There’s an environmental case going on somewhere in Nebraska. My inside sources say that the defending lawyers argued (while no press were present) that unless half of the affected population dies they shouldn’t be held responsible. They also say that the victims can’t testify to what they were diagnosed with because the diagnosis are ‘heresay’.
Nothing like good old fashioned American accountability.
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