Raven's Ramblings

2011-12-28T07:51:00.001-08:00

Idle pondering: State names.

I have long noticed something interesting in my reading of US news: All the states have nicknames. I'm not sure quite what importance these names have, but I am aware of them because some news sites like to use them. Take, for example, these current stories from OneNewsNow:

Courts in The Golden State are giving the definition of a "parent" a makeover. The Sacramento Bee reports that state courts have assigned the title to individuals who have "no genetic or legal ties" to children, granting the roles to non-traditional figures.

If a lawsuit described by family advocates as "frivolous" is successful, it could have dire consequences on the definition of marriage in The Tar Heel State.

I see the same thing from the FRC frequently - though careful to always give the conventional name as well, they seem to like dropping the state nickname into their news casually.

I'm not sure why they do this. Perhaps it is supposed to be a demonstration of their patriotism via trivia - implying that only a True American would learn the nicknames of the states. Or an effort to appear less formal.

It just seems strange to me. It occurs often enough that the FRC and ONN must have it set in policy, but I'm not sure why.

2011-12-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

Yet more FRC amusements.

The FRC have an entry on their main page titled 'The Twelve Yays of Christmas' - the twelve greatest achievements they have made this year. Perhaps we should see how much they really achieved.

Led the opposition to the President's radical social agenda for the military by helping to pass key amendments to the Defense Authorization bill that protect marriage, chaplains, and the military bans on sodomy and bestiality.

I know of the amendments in question. The first one states that military chaplins cannot be compelled to perform same-sex marriages, which they could not be compelled to perform anyway, and the second clarifies that bestiality is still illegal after it was accidentially sort-of-legalised under a very dubious interpretation of the law - the section of the UCMJ banning it happened to be in the same paragraph as the one about homosexuality, so they were removed together.

So, achievement number one: Successfully lobby to ban two things already illegal. In both these cases, the FRC defeated evil liberal schemes that existed only in their own imagination.

Initiated the first permanent pro-life provision ("rider") in recent memory. FRC encouraged House leadership to draft and add a permanent ban on patenting human organisms and embryos in the America Invents Act.

Again, the FRC successfully lobbied for a law to ban... something already banned. I see a pattern here.

Helped block the Obama administration from overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Given that the Obama administration didn't actually try to overturn DOMA, that isn't a hard goal to achieve.

Worked with House members to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 3), the "Cut, Cap, and Balance" Act, and a ban on the government funding of D.C. abortions.

Finally, an achievement that actually changed something! So they havn't been complete failures.

Exposed and overturned the Walter Reed Military Medical Center Bible ban.

By 'exposed' they mean 'exposed that one over-concerned employee wrote a memo.' There never was an effective ban for them to overturn.

Impacted 460 bills in 48 states, resulting in the passage of 40 new pro-life laws. FRC also supported state marriage efforts in Maryland, North Carolina, and Minnesota.

Can't comment on this - not unless they can name specific bills.

Helped to drive public debate in the media with a record 14,500 television, print, and radio hits.

What is a 'hit' in this context? Yes, they ran an effective media blitz at times, but did anyone listen?

Provided the most sought-after expert opinion on pro-life topics, including stem cell research, ObamaCare, over-the-counter sales of the "morning after" pill Plan B and "emergency contraceptive" ELLA, which can abort implanted embryos.

'Experts?' I wouldn't trust the FRC to be truthful or informed on any of those issues, any more than they would trust a representative from Planned Parenthood. What they mean is that they provided someone with a 'Dr' before their name whenever Fox News wanted an expert ready to support the Republican party position.

Authored an amicus brief on ObamaCare that heavily influenced Judge Roger Vinson's decision to declare the law "unconstitutional." FRC also helped lead the legal strategy on the Utah religious liberty case, defending roadside crosses honoring fallen officers.

Vinson's ruling was overturned on appeal, apart from one narrow section. Not much of an achievement there. The roadside crosses, like most church-state cases, are really just symbolic.

Logged 10,000 miles on the Values Bus.

Now they are just getting desperate. Driving a bus is not impressive.

Hosted 3,100 activists, 371 media outlets, and seven Republican presidential candidates in D.C. for FRC Action's sixth Values Voter Summit.

The FRC claims to be a nonparitsan organisation, yet every single one of the attendees at their summit was a Republican. Given that no-one actually bothered to watch it, not much of an achievement there.

Equipped 43,000 pastors to transform the culture through pulpit-specific materials and videos, national and regional briefings, and a powerful website.

They are now down to listing 'we have a website' as an achievement.

It has been a very poor year for the FRC. They achieved a lot (unfortunatly) when Bush was in office - an administration sympathetic to their policies. This year, the best they have been able to achieve is wasting money and slowing their opponents down.

2011-12-27T01:08:00.001-08:00

Clutching at hamster-straw?

Skimming the FRC website I have not visited in a very long time, I am amused by their article Abstinence is a no-brainer.

If your teenagers are having sex, a group of neurologists say they need to have their head examined! At Ohio State University, researchers have sex on the brain. It's part of a new study on the mental effects of early intimacy. ... "Having a sexual experience... early in life," says John Morris, "is not without consequence." Ohio State found that the group of animals that didn't wait to mate had higher levels of anxiety, depression, mood swings, changes in their brains--even smaller reproductive tissues. ... If this study's any indication, neuroscience could turn the entire debate on its head!

There is, however, one slight flaw in the conclusions the FRC draws from this research.

Obviously, the team says, you have to be careful about comparing hamsters to humans.

I think that may be a bit of an understatement. Hamsters don't even live in the primate social group structure - if Perkins believes this research should be in any way applied to humans, he is either a moron or a liar. Or both.

A rather silly Ken Blackwell column attributes the current economic difficulties to not enough people getting married. In support of this he presents not arguments, but stereotypes.

Economic conservatives need to recognize that stable married families having children are what drive economic growth.

Consider these examples of economic and social activity. Harry is a rock star. Or soon will be. Harry sleeps in his girlfriend's basement. He does a little dope. At night he is the lead singer in the band he has formed. He is softspoken and respectful of his elders. Harry's parents shower love on Harry's daughter by his girlfriend.

Jim is a young husband in the same city. He and his wife have three children under 3. Jim has to work long hours as a lawyer, but he does so willingly. For now, he rents. But he has bought a van.

Harry's daughter is supported by his girlfriend's family and by his own parents. Jim's three children are provided for by Jim.

Does it matter to America whether the rising generation follows the Jim model or the Harry model?

Stereotypes are powerful things, when used or abused with skill. This is a good example. Blackwell is playing to the views his target audience will share, and amplifying them. In this view of the world, there are two fundamental types of people: Hard-working men working to support their family, and lazy dopeheads living off of the work of others. It lines up nicely with the way in which dedicated conservatives like to imagine liberals: Selfish leeches who just want money for no work.

Notice that no-where does he actually draw any solid connection though. He doesn't explain how Harry getting married will get him a job, or how breeding faster will fix the economy. Indeed, some aspects of the characters have no bearing at all on economic issues - does it really matter that Jim is soft-spoken and respectful to his elders?

I'm not criticising Blackwell's skill - as a piece of propaganda, this is excellently written. Like all effective propaganda, it skips straight past reason and goes straight for the predispositions of the audience - exploiting their existing tendency to see their own social ideals as in every way superior, and devients as a danger to society. Blackwell is a loathesome, manipulative piece of scum, but he knows how to write.

2011-12-07T00:26:00.001-08:00

ONN remains amusing.

Today's poll demonstrates what has been a long tendency of ONN's polls: Limited options. They are not willing to risk having the poll results contradict their desired policy, and so usually make sure that there are no options they would disagree with. In this case, the question is "Why would you avoid shopping at a clothing retailer that has a Macy's-like policy accommodating transgenders?" There are three options, none of which is 'I wouldn't.'

Billy Graham, faith healer, gets out of hospital again having defeated his pnumonia not with the power of faith but the power of antibiotics.

The silly War on Christmas continues as the state of Rhode Island, not content with erecting a giant tree outside the statehouse at taxpayer expense to proclaim Christmas, also passes a resolution requiring that it be refered to as a 'Christmas' tree. The first efforts to call it a 'Holiday' tree come after the resolution, and result in the predictable fearmongering about those damn liberals trying to destroy Christmas like an army of socialist Grinches.

Opponents of gay marriage continue to face the problem they have long faced. Unless you happen to be gay, allowing gay marriage doesn't actually do anything significant. It's hard to campaign against something which the vast majority wouldn't even notice. The obvious solution is to

2011-12-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

AFA's heavy promotion.

OneNewsNow.com has a bit of an advertisment going. It'll probably go after christmas, so I'll describe it: The banner takes up the entire upper part of the site, plus extending down both sides in two columns. High-visibility red, and on top of all that pinned by CSS so it stays in place when you scroll. They really want you to see that banner.

The banner is to promote Couragious, a movie the ad describes as 'this powerful film about five men who are encouraged to become Godly fathers.' But that isn't what I am entertained by. It's just some fluff story about how the power of faith makes everyone perfect and triumphant, but it's a Christmas movie - that's standard fare for those. Christmas movies are not expected to be about deep thought, and really even a Christian movie might be a welcome break from the parade of elves and snowmen.

There are but two entertaining things. First, is the timing. The ad is Christmas themed, yes. It even reads 'A Special AFA Christmas Offer' and bears the title 'Couragious for Christmas.' The left column urges readers to buy it for others as a Christmas gift. And yet, something here is wrong...

"Coming soon to DVD and Blu-Ray, January 17th 2012."

Oh.

They are advertising a Christmas movie, to buy as a Christmas gift... and it won't actually arrive until well into January.

FAIL

Well, guess they can't resist the sweet prospect of the Christmas shopping season - even if the movie isn't ready yet.

Even the ads attempt to look christmasy with it's red color theme and prominant featuring of 'Couragious for Christmas' at the top is misleading. A check of the movie's wikipedia page shows that it isn't actually a Christmas film at all - it isn't set in December, it isn't tied into Christmas themes. So the AFAs ad campaign is even more shameless than that. It's just a story of how a few vow to place Christ first in everything they do, and spend the read of the movie finding all their personal, professional and financial problems melt away before the power of faith.

2011-06-24T11:55:00.001-07:00

I am amused - and rather horrified - to learn that not only is there to be a Smurfs live-action film, but it's to be a trilogy.

I look forward to reading the conspiracy sites claiming that Smurfs is an effort by hollywood liberals to indoctrinate children into socialism.

2011-06-12T02:14:00.001-07:00

This is a test of a form of text compression optimisation. The intent is defined as thus:

For each character(excluding the first few), determine based on the preceding characters if it should be a capital according to the rules of grammar as uses in English and other European languages. If it should be a capital, then invert it's capitalisation status: Lower case becomes upper and vice versa. Non-alphabetic characters are ignored. The details of the prediction may be seen in the proof-of-concept source code.

This has the useful property of being self-inverting - any input passed through this program twice will produce an output identical byte-to-byte to the initial input. In theory, this should reduce the number of word-symbols in a text stream by removing most capital letters, and further amplify the skew in character distribution towards lowercase, allowing conventional compressors to more effectively compress the text.

The proof-of-concept is implemented in C, taking a stream on stdin and outputting on stdout. I tested using three compressors on two test streams.

Test 1: Pure text, formed from several concatenated ebooks.

Uncompressed: 12300828
gzip -9: 4584593
textfilt + gzip -9: 4568520
7z 'ultra settings': 3524633
textfilt + 7z: 3521462
bzip2 -9: 3457797
textfilt + bzip2 -9: 3466075

Test 2: Mixed text, pdf, compressed text - typical real-world dataset.
Uncompressed: 17359794176
gip -9: 14301006209
textfilt + gzip -9: 14293741725
7z 'ultra settings': 13108772634
textfilt + 7z: 13106928533

The decapitalisation technique does work. However, even when compressing pure text, it's benefits are on the order of a 0.4% reduction in compressed size even under ideal circumstances. In the case of bzip2, compressed size actually increased by 0.23%. The benefits vary by compressor, with these which already perform best showing the least improvement - gzip seeing a reduction to 99.64%, z7 to 99.91% and bzip2 an increase to 100.23%. I conclude that this method is an academic curiosity, but has no practical applications due to unpredictable performance and only marginal gains.

2011-05-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

Why I should never try to write fiction.
According to my googling, the first Garry's Mod fanfic.

There was the brief flash and a sound of arcing electricity, and Michael-Ita-475 felt the change in the air as he arrived.
The radio-linked computer had done its job well, jumping the car into an empty bay. For a moment he felt the lurch as the hoverballs adjusted before the vehicle settled into its gradual descent. Jumping was not the most pleasant way to travel, and could be disastrous if not performed correctly, but few other means of travel could go from the drive of his alpine home to the outskirts of New York in an instant - and none of those were available to the likes of him, even with his private Energy generator.
Jumping could get one only so far. Within the city itself jump-drive operation was jammed. Too powerful a technology to permit - a jump could take a contraption anywhere without jammers, even inside a person's home or the middle of a factory. The arrival bays were placed just a hundred meters outside of the jamming perimeter - from here travel was on foot, on wheel or by air.
Michael's car was a non-flying drive. As well as the remote-set jump module beneath his seat it bore a set of wheels – it’s hoverballs only for cushioning the landing after a jump. Most commuters opted now for gyropod vehicles, flying through the air to their destination, but Michael had his car since before the gyropods had become available. Many times he has rezed a new one, each identical in every way to the last. It worked. He wasn't going to learn to pilot a whole new class of craft.
The dashboard lights changed from red to green as the jump computer relinquished its control. Michael knew much of that - he was one of the team who designed it. The thousands of wire modules, tens of thousands of gates filled a warehouse, and it was there he was heading today to supervise the installation of the latest extension. It took perfect timing to coordinate the jumping of a whole city of commuters and ensure they didn’t collide.
He took a moment to stretch and feel the warmer air before placing a hand on the controls and hitting the forward buttons. The car shuddered forwards with the feel of solid Props moving together. Precise, frictionless, yet never quite steady. The road ahead was clear, the sky a swarm of fly-by-wire gyropods darting around each other and towards the city spires. Further up he could see the shapes of ships drifting through the air - some sparkling with lights, some dull, and more than a few carrying the advertisements of their owners.
The journey was broken in an instant - the flash, the zap, and a flurry of props. For a moment Michael thought the car had jammed and fragmented, or even crashed completely - but the props weren’t his. Material-tooled a garish neon green, fragments blurred into a storm of shapes.
He panicked, and bailed. Landing on the hard road surface he rolled from the wreck just as it screeched to a halt. From here he could see what had happened - and knew in an instant what has happened. Confusion soon gave way to anger.
"What the hell are you doing!" He shouted at the wreck's other occupants. They looked to be in their late teenage years, sporting dyed mohawks no less garish than the vehicle they had crashed. Not crashed - jumped. Right on top of him. Manual jumping within city limits was banned for just this reason. Trying to save the cost of a jump-computer link. Dangerous to everyone around.
The other drivers ignored him. The intruding car was half-vertical, its back half stabbed through the passenger seat of his own. Unaligned jump, they didn't compensate for the curvature of the planet. Idiots. Worse still, they were laughing at him. They had ruined his car, and they were laughing.
Of a sudden the two cars started to jet cold flames and skid, the crashed hoodlums struggling to get airborne. Fused together in a tangle of props the wreckage took off just as Michael ducked. Sparks fell and the sound of tearing welds filled the air -
And it ended. With the same abruptness as it began the offenders jumped, leaving nothing but the sound of Michael's car hitting the ground and then the background sound of the city outskirts. He opened his mouth to shout at them, but realised it was too late. They had already escaped. Manual jump in, manual jump out. Probably just hit another arrival bay – they can’t have gone far on the car’s own cell.
He examined the car. The back wheels lay twisted out almost horizontal, the frame a tangle of props still sparking in places and emitting the sound of props grinding on props. He didn't need to try to fix it to know it was ruined.
He stared at the vehicle, thought the command to delete it, and it was gone.
It would be a half-hour on foot to get to the jump computer building. He couldn't rez a new vehicle on a public road without ownership, nor on any of the private buildings adjoining. For a moment he thought of prop-surfing - but extreme sports were for the young. He'd be more likely to kill himself hitting a wall and wake up at home again with a pounding headache. Should have kept the car to rez a new one from.
Public transport? Reliable, but notoriously uncomfortable. He'd ridden a harvester once, and had no intention of repeating the experience.
Michael-Ita-475 shrugged, and started walking. Mingebags were a fact of life. It could not be helped.
Maybe he'd build himself a gyro-car after all.

2011-05-10T03:17:00.000-07:00

The change of title.

You might notice this blog has just changed from 'Moronality' to 'Raven's Ramblings.' Or, really, you probably won't, because I believe I had exactly two readers at my peak. Hello, both of you.

This is because I just can't build up the enthusiasm to rant about idiots any more. It's not as easy as it seems when work has you sapped of the will to live. So instead, I'm going to rant about just about anything that annoys me. Today's rant is on Pokemon, movie number seven (the one with deoxys), and the US release.

I've been studying over the last two days the differences between the original Japanese release and the US dub. To put it mildly, the dub is a terrible hack-job. I'm not a big pokemon fan - I've only ever played through one of the games, don't watch the anime, have only seen one film, and find most of the franchise rather annoying and good only as a setting for fan-fiction and fodder for Rule 34. I do still have some respect for writers' intent, which is more than the company that did the US release managed.

It's not just the missing scenes. Lots of them. Cut out from all over the place, often with little reason. As best I can work out it's a matter of paceing: The US release just eliminates anything that's too slow and doesn't have the required level of action to keep the toddlers entertained. I blame this one on the difference in target age, a consequence of the 'animation age ghetto' effect. Pokemon in Japan is aimed at a slightly older audience - not adults, but perhaps ten-to-fourteen. Pokemon in the US seems to be 'for ages three and up.' I also suspect someone wanted the run-time shortened to allow for an expected lower attention span and/or more ad-breaks when shown on TV.

I've found four cut scenes so far, and I'm not even half-way through the movie in making my comparison.

This can also be seen in the soundtrack. It seems that the dubbers have a terrible fear of silence. They find silence, it must be filled. Add dialog, add music, foley in more sound effects - just so something to fill the gap. Pokemon are good for this, as they make sounds that can be easily copied from elsewhere. A quick glance along the soundtracks in audacity makes this clear. The Japanese audio has many period of silence. The US doesn't even have the gaps between words, as background sound or music fill them in.

Interestingly, this also draws attention to another difference. Japanese bird-pokemon make bird calls. Squawks and caws, as birds do. In the US dub, they only ever give the pokemon name-call. No exceptions. I don't know why this is, other than perhaps to make them more marketable.

The end result of all this is really just a butcher job. It's a mess. Something that no fan should ever see. Unfortunatly I do not believe any fansubbing group has yet tackled this movie, for the simple reason that pokemon is not in high demand - it's a series that anime snobs tend to look down on (and rightly so) as a transparent marketing vehicle to sell toys and games with minimal plot and no effort at internal consistancy.

2011-05-07T01:17:00.000-07:00

I just couldn't let this one pass.

I noticed as of late a tendency in OneNewsNow. They routinely get their new stories from Associated Press, and publish immediatly with minimal editing. The story stays up for a day or two, while ONN's editors produce their own version, and the AP story then vanishes from the site to be replaced with their own. This is actually a common practice in news sites, so I'm not complaining about that. AP provides the breaking news, while the site's own writers lag a little behind in adding their own commentary and analysis.

In this case though, it highlights an interesting contrast, because it allows us to see exactly what a ONN article looks like both before and after they edit it.
Before: Obama administration suing pro-life groups
And after: Obama's DOJ ups ante on pro-life groups

The AP story is of how, under Obama's influence, the DoJ has increased it's enforcement of laws passed to ensure access to abortion clinics, and in particular how much of this is nessicated by the increasing use of violence and threats from pro-life activists. The ONN version is how the DoJ under Obama's influence is systematically violating the freedom of peaceful protest of pro-life activists. What surprises me is just how dishonest the edits are. Take, for example, this extract from the AP version:

In civil court, one of the latest cases is a Kansas lawsuit filed last month against an abortion opponent who allegedly sent a threatening letter to a doctor. The government sued Angel Dillard when she wrote that thousands of people across the nation where watching the doctor and suggested she check under her car daily for explosives.

Citing First Amendment protections, Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled that Dillard's letter was not a "true threat" because she did not personally intend to harm the doctor. He refused to issue a preliminary injunction that would have kept her 250 feet away from the doctor, her clinic and her home.

Now compare it with ONN's account of the same incident.

In one case, a Kansas woman wrote a letter to a physician who planned to open a Wichita abortion facility. She was taken to court as a result, but a federal judge ruled in the woman's favor based on her constitutional rights. No laws were broken.

Gone is any mention of the woman's implicit threat of murder. This can't even be blamed upon an honest editor just hearing a different account of events: He wrote that article based upon exactly the same AP piece that I quoted above. The deliberate ommision of the threat in order to turn Dillard into an innocent old lady writing conscientious letters is nothing less than a total lie. And, as if that's not enough of a lie, he doesn't just ommit the violence. No, he goes one better and outright denies that it's a threat of violence at all to warn someone that they may be murdered if they don't do as the letter-writer asks.

Yet, he says, the federal government took a Kansas woman to court for writing a letter to the physician -- a letter containing no threat of violence whatsoever.

The article goes on in a tangent about how Democratic party supporters use violence to intimidate voters.

2010-06-19T01:33:00.000-07:00

I should probably have posted this a long time ago, but you can consider Moronality dead. Since finding full-time work, I just havn't been able to write anything - when I do have time, I am usually too worn-out to do much, and I have so many other demands of code to write and projects to work on.

2010-03-20T03:01:00.000-07:00

IRD and ONN side with terrorists.

Due to political ties, the religious right tends to be very tough on terror. They advocate a strong military, active military intervention in overseas terrorist hotspots (As they would put it, 'fight them over there so we don't have to fight them there'), and so on. Dispite this, they are more alike than either would care to admit - both the typical member of the religious right and the typical islamic terrorist are strongly opposed to gay rights, believe it is the duty of government to enforce morality, and that religion should be the center of live. They merely disagree on exactly which religion, and how to go about it.

This simularity can be seen on rare occasions when the religious right actually goes so far as to side with the terrorists against a common enemy, such as gays.

A religious watchdog organization says the election of a lesbian as a bishop in the Episcopal Church will cause problems in a number of areas.

Mary Glasspool of Baltimore is now an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

According to Jeff Walton with the Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD), Glasspool's election will make it tough for Christians in certain countries.

"Last week there were over 500 people who were killed in three villages surrounding Jos Nigeria," he shares. "These Christian villagers were killed for their faith. The people who attacked them were yelling 'God is great' in Arabic, and one of the charges against the Christians was that they were immoral."

The IRD spokesman is quick to point out that he is not blaming the Episcopal Church for the attacks in Nigeria. But he says Episcopal Church officials in the United States are not taking that factor into account in their race to be "all inclusive."

This is their argument: "If you accept gays as equal, the terrorists will attack us!"

What utter wimps they believe people to be. What wusses, what cowards and what pussies. The religious right, champion of american strength and promoter of agressive forign policy, that likes to be seen wrapped in a flag and waving an M-16, wants people to give in to terrorist demands when it suits them!

They really are more like the terrorists then they admit, even to themselves.

On an unrelated note: The reason I hardly ever post anything new is due to my new full-time employment.

2010-02-22T12:52:00.000-08:00

Raven's Reference #2: The highly condensed outline of the humanae vitae:

Raven's reference: Parts to the humanae vitae.

Introduction
I: PROBLEM AND COMPETENCY OF THE MAGISTERIUM
2: Note on rate of change, acknowledgement of the changing role of marriage along with pretense that it was always thus.
3: New Questions / need for review.
4: Interpreting the moral law / Establishing that the church has supreme and exclusive authority on this matter.
5: Special Studies / Administrative notes / Point regarding the commission of John XXIII
6: Reply / Why the findings of said commission were thrown out the window.
II: DOCTRINAL PRINCIPLES
7: Section introduction and statement of goals.
8: God's Loving Design / On the sanctity of loving marriage as a divine institution.
9: Married Love / Conditions to qualify: Human, free will, total, faithful until death and, most importantly, reproductive in nature.
"Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the procreation and education of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute in the highest degree to their parents' welfare."
10: Responsible parenthood / definition thereof, with particular emphasis on the role of God rather than man in the decision to reproduce or not.
11: Observing the natural law / On the importance of sex within marriage.
12: Union and procreation / Once again establishing that God made marriage for the purpose of reproduction.
13: Faithfulness to God's Design / The conclusion of the above arguments, in which is it established that all forms of contraception violate the will of God and so are unlawful by nature.
14: Unlawful Birth Control Methods / Moving from the abstract theology to more concrete, practical implications, and preemptive counterargument to the 'lesser evil' argument.
15: Lawful therapeutic means / Exception for medical procedures which cause sterilisation incidentally.
16: Recourse to Infertile Periods / Exception for cycle-timing or rhythm method.
17: Consequences of Artificial methods / In which the church additionally argues against the legalisation of contraception by warning that an inevitable social consequence would be an increase in premarital and extramarital sex, that it may lead to women being seen as mere sexual objects, or that it may be used for coercive population control.
18: Concern of the church / Accepting that this policy will be controversial, and a reminder that the church didn't establish the ban on contraception, but only recognised the one already existing in natural law as revealed by God.
III: Pastoral Directives.
19: Climbing on the high horse.
20: An explanation that struggle will be hard, but this makes it more worthwhile.
21: Value of self-discipline / In support of chastity as a means of birth spacing. Spacing, not prevention. One theme of this document is that it's ok for couples to use non-artificial means to delay having children, so long as they do breed eventually.
22: A call to all those involved in education or politics to promote chastity by prohibiting 'every obscenity in the written word and every form of indecency on the stage and screen' so as to avoid tempting people.
23: Instruction to politicians to ensure the law of their countries complies with this document.
24: Instruction to scientists to direct reproductive science only towards natural rhythms.
25: Instruction to married couples not to use contraception and to have children.
26: Instruction to married couples to instruct others likewise.
27: Instruction to medical professionals not to violate the principles of this doctrine by providing contraception.
28: Instruction to priests to explain this document to followers.
29: Continuation of 28
30: Instruction to bishops to support the priests in their instruction.
31: A reminder that the church doctrine is not to be questioned.

2010-02-13T01:03:00.000-08:00

Points for trying.

The public health unit in London, Ont. has assigned a team of superheroes and a villain named the evil "Sperminator" the intrepid task of teaching teenagers about safe sex.

The unit has launched a comic-book inspired interactive game on its website called "Adventures in Sex City," where teens can test their knowledge of sexual health.

To play, they choose one of the characters: Wonder Vag, Willy the Kid, Power Pap or Captain Condom, then must correctly answer 25 questions about sex to defeat the evil Sperminator, a character with penises for arms.

...

If players get a question wrong, the Sperminator shoots their character with sperm, but if the question is answered correctly, their character uses a "condom shield" to shoot the sperm back at the Sperminator. A "Myths Maniac" also addresses and dispels faulty sexual information teens often hear at school or from friends.

But nothing expresses quite how strange this is like the game's title screen.

2010-02-07T23:16:00.000-08:00

One of my more frequent complaints about Christians is the way in which they will attribute anything they consider 'good' to God, and yet refuse to also assign to him the blame for anything bad. Take, for example, this.

n a recent interview with CNA, Fr. Peter Gallagher, chaplain for the Indianapolis Colts, discussed his experience working with the team and explained that many of the members recognize their talent as “a gift from God” and play with gratitude for it.

“It's been my experience with the Colts that a lot of these fellows have a very strong spiritual life and a good, solid prayer life,” Fr. Gallagher explained on Wednesday. “They've come to realize that while they're professional athletes,” their accomplishments “really are a gift from God and in a sense, they are playing in gratitude for that gift.”

If this claim is true, then many of these professional football* players believe that their ability to play well is a gift from God. Do any of them ever ask why they in particuar were granted this gift, or why God would give anyone at all football skills? Do they ask why God makes everyone else physically inferior to themselves? Or why their supernaturally gifted ability can only work if they spend a great deal of time and effort in practice and exercise?

There is a much more rational explanation: They are just at the very best end of the range of natural variation in athletic ability. If they were not, they wouldn't be professional footballers. But, no, this brings back my initial criticism: The tendency to attribute anything good to God.

This isn't quite the worst offender though. That honor goes to a women in Haiti, name unrecorded, who was trapped under rubble when the earthquake hit and pined in place by a crushed arm. When she was finally rescued a few days later, her first action was to pray in thanks to God for saving her. God gets the thanks, and yet somehow escapes blame for an earthquake that is even known in legal circles as an 'act of God?'

That story is reliable, not just some anacdote. I saw her on the TV news.

*Or as I like to call it, handegg.

2010-01-31T03:57:00.000-08:00

More earthquake-induced moral stupidity, as one ministry manages to really screw up. Their plan was simple: Go to Haiti, round up some orphaned children with the help of a local pastor, bus them across the border to less devistated territory and set up a new orphanage.

As for paperwork or permission, well, who needs worry about such things when on a holy mission to save the children? So now they are in jail, on charges of child trafficing.

Nice effort, and if they are being entirely honest, good intentions. Next time, perhaps they'll think before they jump into action.

2010-01-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

I don't often post xxxchurch.com posts here, because in the background level on that site it takes something outstanding to attract my attention. Every other post there is about the supernatural evils of porn, and many of the regulars firmly believe that demons are somehow wandering around bent on corrupting the souls of anyone who doesn't pray them away.

This post, however, has achieved that.

I'm really at loss for who to speak with about this. Let me start from the beginning and keep it brief. Before my son turned two years old, we found him "in love" with Ariel, Disney's Little Mermaid. He would stare at her picture for upwards of 10 minutes (highly unusual for an active boy toddler). I wondered if he was staring at "kiddie porn," as Ariel is basically popping out of a bikini. Needless to say, we limited his access to our daughter's princess books.

Flash forward two years. My son is now 3 and a half, and recently I caught him in the bathroom with my daughter's Barbies--he was sticking their heads down his pants, rubbing them around, and pulling them out. One by one. I watched him from a crack in the doorway, in disbelief. Once he was finished, he walked out and I confronted him. He seemed to not think there was anything wrong.

Today, I caught him sticking a picture of a beautiful woman down the front of his pants.

I am a very concerned parent, and would appreciate some advise, preferrably from a mature spiritual MALE. My husband thinks that there is a spiritual attack on our son. My husband has had struggles with porn in the past. Could he have "opened the door" for our son to be attacked in the same way? If so, how do we "close the door," and save our son?

How am I supposed to reply to this? It's wrong in so many ways, it's hard to tell where to start. Do I accuse the poster of paranoia? Of being so egotistical as to believe that demonic forces are trying to destroy her family and she is the front line of a divine war between good and evil? Or should I try to point out that belief in demons is silly, even though I know that would be like shouting at a brick wall? I could remind her that three-year-olds do weird things, and grow out of them. But what I really want to do is shout at her to get out of the middle ages.

2010-01-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

Where is your God now?

In light of a well-known person who's name I shall not honor by repeating making some much-mocked comments regarding the earthquake and a pact with Satan, I shall be equally insensetive but rather more truthful in quoting this gem from the FRC's latest newsletter:

"Even the Church, which would normally be on the front lines of this relief effort, has been virtually wiped out by the catastrophe. Yesterday, Archbishop Bernardito Auza gave this first-hand account. "The cathedral, the archbishop's residence, all the great churches, all the great seminaries are reduced to rubble... [T]he archbishop of Port-au-Prince perished under the rubble, along with hundreds of seminarians and priests... The CIFOR, [a religious studies group], has collapsed with the students inside... Everyone is calling for help...""

Naturally, this ends in the same way as many of the FRCs newsletters: With a plea for the funding that God has not seen fit to grant them: "Donate today to any number of solid Christian ministries."

Inappropriate as it is to gloat at a natural disaster, this post does have a more serious point. I see here yet more evidence against the Christian God. This disaster struck everyone in the area, regardless of their faith. It leveled secular and church buildings alike. So much for the power of prayer.

2009-12-13T06:13:00.000-08:00

When you crave authority, there is a simple way to get it. Simply claim that a respectable organisation agrees with you. If they don't, lie.

That is the stratagy of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institite.

They write:

Permissive Abortion Laws May Be Hazardous To Mothers' Health, Per New Report
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) A new report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows that countries with restrictive abortion laws are often the leaders in reducing maternal mortality, and those with permissive laws often lag.

There is only one sligt problem with this. The report, which they so conveniently link to (Thanks, C-FAM - at least you attribute your sources, unlike the FRC), doesn't say anything of the sort. In fact it mentions abortion only once, in a small note saying that unsafe abortion is one of the common causes of maternal death in developing countries.

C-FAM then goes on to cherry-pick data in a most unscientific way. Rather than attempt to perform a statistical evaluation, or even to quantify the abortion laws of countries in some way as a prelude to that evaluation, they have simply picked out a few individual countries that support their conclusion and held them up as proof.

This is not how science is done. C-FAM, you fail. You fail not only science and statistics, but professional conduct both in science and journalism for implying your own conclusions are those of another, more trustworthy organisation.

I also would like to point out a nice example of confirmation bias on the blog where I heard of this, Pro Woman Pro Life. Observe carefully how the pro-lifers there read the C-FAM article and, even though they seem to be aware that something is suspicious in the lack of a proposed cause for this claimed correlation, nontheless seem to accept without question that the conclusion is obviously correct.

2009-12-02T11:26:00.000-08:00

Idiots are idiots, be they Irish or Indian

2009-11-25T16:05:00.000-08:00

The Australian government is considering an incredibly stupid idea in the name of, as is the tradition of moral stupidity, protecting children.

Fortunatly it's only under consideration. I should hope that before this idea gets much further a sudden outburst of common sense kills it.

I'm not going to say why it's stupid. That is too obvious to waste the effort of pressing keys on.

I would note though that all the reasons I'm not listing but which I'm sure you can imagine would apply only if the honest intention of the button is to protect children. This being the Australian government, I'm not inclined to trust them, and suspect it may be under consideration as a means of generating Scary High Numbers with which to convince the voters to support their ambitions of filtering all pornography from the internet.

2009-11-25T14:29:00.000-08:00

The ACLU is defending Christians again.

And at a school no less.

I expect, based on previous similar events, to see absolutly no mention of this in any major right-leaning news site and very few blogs. They need to believe the ACLU is a christian-hating communist tool of Satan's baby-slaughtering army, and so have no option but to turn a blind eye to any evidence otherwise.

2009-11-24T08:49:00.000-08:00

Pure, concentrated hate.

I grew curious today when I saw a WND poll titled "Let's not mince words: What do you think of homosexuality?" WND is not known for being politically correct - they take every possible chance to claim that homosexuals are all child-molesting christ-hating monsters in the employ of satan himself. So when when they say that they are actually being honest, I'd expect both them and their reader commants to contain some of the craziest things I have ever read - a concentration of hate and paranoia rarely ever seen.

They do not disapoint. I barely even have to cherry-pick the craziest parts - it's all crazy.

Commenter number 1 - that is the first one on the page - accuses homosexuals of deliberatly engageing in mass-murder to force acceptance.

Don't forget. It was ORIGINALLY called "GRID". Gay-related immuno deficiency disorder. But the homosexual crowd has a large voice in Washington and was able to blackmail the media and the government into changing the name. They threatened a whole bunch of actions with one of the most diabolical being an attempt to flood the blood supply with infected blood.

Notice also how they use the ratchet effect. Things like women on women should NEVER have been tolerated. Now that it has been the male homos use that as justification as to why THEY should now be tolerated as well.

Number two, being your typical wingnut, simply assumes anything he disagrees with must be due to communism:

This is still largely a Christian nation. Take your sickness, and your bisexual chimp-in-chief, and go to a communist nation where your aberrations will be tolerated there.

Another brings some old-fashioned racism... I think. I'm having a hard time decoding this one.

God said it, that settles it, and He doesn't care what that turd in the White House or anyone else thinks about it. And neither do I care what the black god says or enacts: it's against God's law and even as imperfect as I am, I can read and understand it with no help from anyone else.

ME UG, UG BE A MAN, RAWR! UG NO DO SISSY STUFF!

I miss many things from my youth. In the past 20 years or so, gay men have ruined a lot of good things for we straight men who don't want to appear suspect. Time for a rant before I say goodnight. I resent having to pretend I am not interested in things I actually like, for example: going to lunch with just one of your best college buddies, musical theater, flying monkeys, Spongebob, and recently cowboys. They even tried to hijack rail-splittin' honest Abe last year. Furthermore, I did not need to know about Mike Brady, or Marsha, or Jan, or Mr. Sulu and Captain Piccard ...ok? Just stop it. I just don't want to know about those things anymore. Stop coming out. Go back in.

Concentrated hate:

Sodomites are an evil abomination!If you can stomach
what these filthy mentally ill degenerates do to each
other just pull up the photo's and films of there folsom
street party in san fagsisco.Let's do some stats-1.They
have a life expentancy of 43-2.A majority of them are
Pedophiles and pray on vulnerable children that is why
there so involved in the public indoctrination centers.
3.They die from some of the nastiest deseases known to
man-4.They are a dead end and against nature,they cannot
procreate-5.They have the highest rate of alcohol@drug
addiction of all groups-6.They are Anti-God and do all they
can too spit in the Creaters face-7.They have the highest suicide rate of all groups-I could go on@on but most of us
already know this information,it is time we put this evil
filth back in the closet and nail it shut.Where ever they
exist and are allowed to have input those societies always
collapse.Feel free to add to my list!

For those not used to WND readers' secret code, 'public indoctrination centers' means public schools. WND hates public schooling. Oh, and I quoted that unedited - he really does punctuate like that.

More hate:

It's unnatural, disgusting, immoral, and DANGEROUS! Homofaguals SHOULD GO BACK INTO THE CLOSET AND SHUT UP! Just like that pervert Prez that asked the question about Homofaguals and then didn't like the answer that Carrie gave; they are unrelenting and NEVER SHUT UP! If HomoFAGuals don't go back in the closet and shutup, then they should be forced to go back in. And for God's sake... keep homoFAGuals OUT OF THE MILITARY! If I'm in a foxhole, I don't want some sissyazzed lace panty wearing homoFAGual in there with me.

That's all from page one. Of nine. I can't stomach to read any more.

What strikes me is that these arn't arguments. They arn't really an attempt to argue that homosexuality is a bad thing, or that gay rights should not be given political consideration. In the percieved privacy of the WND threads, the posters don't bother to pretend such intellectualism. No, it's nothing but screaming hate, without more than the flimsiest justification, filled with childish name-calling just to make it quite clear how much hate the writer is filled with. I'd expect to see similar sentiments expressed at a Klan meeting, though even they should be able to achieve a slightly higher level of literacy.

EDIT: Ohh, and for anyone who wonders just why fundamentalist Christians are so scarey, here are what some of them wish to do to homosexuals:

Throw them in jail:

Queers are an abomination and they should be tried for crimes against nature instead of receiving special protection under the law.
The lewd activities that they engage in are not sex it is disgusting and perverted behavior and serves no useful purpose but to satisfy sick and twisted people.
Bob

Execute them:

We should do as they do in Iran - stone them......political correctness is all BS - and al quiada looks at that as weakness.....with Ltin Obama in office he is detroying this country along with his demented & crazy czars....

Persecute them:

no way, never; i will never support or accept gays and will do everything i can against them.

clear enough, you deviant sickos?

And, the most damning of all: These comments are moderated. All that hate above, all those accusing homosexuals of being a bunch of murderers and pedophiles, those who call for all the gays to be rounded up and jailed or executed for crimes against nature... Someone at WND actually had to read that, and decide to approve it for posting on the site. This hate is representative of what WND wishes to say.

This is also the reason that, in the five pages of comments I've skimmed, I have not found so much as a single sentence in support of gay rights. The moderator never allows such things to be posted.

2009-11-19T09:16:00.000-08:00

Judgemental Christians.

In 2007 Jeff was asked to step out of ministry after another pastor discovered his secret [viewing of] Internet pornography. Not only were we asked to step away from ministry, we were also asked to leave the area, a community where I had expected to serve the Lord the rest of my life. In an instant, the stability and security I was so dependant upon was gone. I felt like I was in a free fall.

While Jeff was the one who was caught in sin, because we were “one flesh” I was also suffering from the consequences of his actions. I lost my ministry too. I had to say goodbye to dear friends, our first home and a church family I deeply loved. I was overwhelmed by how unfair it all was.

I'd like to know the full story here - I'm sure there is some juicy gossip to be gone over about how a church decided to ruin the lives of not just one of their pastors but his family too in order to punish him for looking at porn. Unfortunatly I won't get it: The faith of the writer remains fully intact, and her account goes on to praise Jesus for supporting her throughout the ordeal inflicted by his followers.

I consider it most worrying that some churches have that much power - not merely to kick out one of their members, as is their right, but then to by some unspecified means force that member and his family to abandon his home and move away, and to ostricise him and his family.

All this because he looked at some porn, about as minor a sin as you can commit today.

2009-11-16T02:10:00.000-08:00

Joseph Farah, nutcase, is a hypocrite.

I don't need to argue why he's a nutcase: He runs WorldNetDaily, and that's quite a damning enough statement without elaboration.

I will argue why he's a hypocrit, and it starts back during the Bush years. At that time one of the frequent subjects of his writings (When he wasn't trying to argue that homosexuals all want to rape children and conservation is a form of paganism) was that liberals were conspiring to lose in Iraq and Afganistan - that they were actively trying to throw the war in order to make Bush look bad. Most often, he accused liberals of wanting to bring the troops home and let the region fall into anarchy again.

His favourate word on this subject was 'defeatest' - the insult with which he branded anyone who didn't share is policy of victory at any cost.

It's a new president now though, and one who Farah dispises, so his position on the war has changed.

I was a supporter of both the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraq war.

But that was then. This is now.

Things have changed and changed dramatically.

The biggest change is one in America's leadership.

I do not believe Barack Obama is capable of achieving anything remotely resembling victory in either Iraq or Afghanistan – at least not victory for the United States of America.

A president incapable of recognizing that war came home Nov. 5 at Fort Hood is certainly incapable of waging foreign wars.

It's time to bring the troops home now!

It's not without considerable reflection and sadness that I make this call. Like most Americans, I hoped to see the forces that attacked our country without provocation eight years ago utterly destroyed, incapacitated, defeated, devastated, annihilated, demolished and obliterated.

It's clear that is no longer an option.

It seems that Farah would rather throw the war himself, would rather admit defeat and let the enemies of the US win, than allow Obama to fight it. He's doing exactly the same thing that a few years ago he was accusing liberals of.

He even realises this himself:

Even a year ago, I would have said bringing the troops home
prematurely would be tantamount to surrender to an enemy determined to do us in.

Farah is either willing to sacrifice the middle east conflicts in order to make Obama look incompetent, or honestly believes that with Obama in charge the US is suddenly incapable of fighting. I honestly do not know which of these is it, and I think it may be a bit of both.

2009-11-15T02:22:00.000-08:00

Extracts from an xxxchurch.com thread.

I sometimes accuse Christians of demonising all sexuality. Here's a forum with Christians who really do demonise it, in a very literal way.

Hi guys,

I'm just wondering. I know that in the other forums on this topic, people mentioned that what you fill in your head in the day, can be the reasons for explicit dreams. What do you think though? How frequent do you get them abstaining, and do you think that God can use them to help in your fight for purity?

Thanks.

i believe its demonic, and heres why when i pray and bind them up in the name of jesus they stop. Also you have to look at it like this, if this is of God then it should bring me closer to God and not the problem that takes me away from Him. Its a demonic seed that is implimented to bring you back into bondage. in the past i have experienced wet dreams when right before i went to sleep and the whole day i was in prayer and worship. So i know it cant be what i was doing during the day especially since i went to sleep praying.

Believe me if you bind them up in prayer and command them to stop in the name of Jesus they will.

But I had two other emissions derivated from sinful dreams. One included a relative and the other was also an homosexual dream; I explain this because I am far from considering them "normal". They looked like the kind of hardcore porn I escaped from. After these emissions I felt very unclean.

A male friend of mine explained to me that a certain demonic oppression might be involved in the DREAMS part, you'll see, Satan would never rest to corrupt a normal body process designed by God himself with these kind of thoughts.

You are responsible for the things you are responsible for. If you are filling your mind with garbage, then stop. Your body may or may not continue with the nocturnal emissions. If you are doing your part, then you are morally clean.

i agree with pryzfighter i believe its demonic, like he said if you bound it in the name of Jesus theywill stop, if they were from God thenwhy would you have to bound them in the name of Jesus , also God wouldn't put an image of sexuality in your head when he wants us to live free of that(unless your married, which in that case would only consist of you and your wife)

"And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and MINDS through Christ Jesus"

yes demonic because although we need no help sinning, the devil isn't going to let us off easy when he could be making it harder for the children of god and his precious favored creation. yes bio, because yes there is a need to release the sperm.some times the wet part of the dream is very short, almost a coincedince that it happened at the time it did.

so i believe it is both demonic and biological. oh and with the way our minds work, the devil only has to plant the seed, throw out the carrot and in our subconcious it takes route and our dream goes somewhere it should not have gone.

you prove it by doing it and trust me God deliverd me from drugs and alcohol and alot of times it is a demon the causes alcoholics to be driven to these things yes we have free will but if we willfully committ sin there is no sacrifice for these things and demons can enter in legaly. That how you pick up a demon. so if you invite demonic thought or even allow them to slide without casting them down you give satan rights to visit you in the night!

If in the book of acts the church used this ministry, what right do we have to ignore it. If demons are not a threat then why did Jesus even give us authority, why tell us to cast demons out. Why does the scripture tell us to...

Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8 NASB)

What about... For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. (2 Corinthians 10:3-4 NASB)

also what about the people of isreal who were demonicly influenced they were Jews and yet they had problems with demons, if Jesus delt with all this then why arent we?Remember...these are the sign to follow believers

"These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover." (Mark 16:17-18 NASB)

Meph i actually have seen the dead raised and the sick healed and in the hospital in my city a church (full of alot of my friends) actually has been allowed to have a healing room and many miracles have gone on there, people have been healed of AIDS and all sorts of stuff. Also my pastor has seen the dead raised as well. Im pretty sure your not exempt from this as well try it God will do it for you too.

Sexual dreams are sinful.

Demonic forces can reach us even in our dreams.( Of which I have first hand experience that this is definently possible.)

That we must persevere in prayer that our dreams may be clean.

And that if we draw close enough to the Lord through prayer, meditation, and study that we will eventually stop having sinful dreams.

NOw, I agree that it's very dangerous to link sexual addiction/sin with demonic oppression. You'll see, I have had experiences when the temptation and the dreams had an obvious demonic source, but those were 3% of all the cases. (Maybe we can talk about it later).

That's just page one. I'm not going to quote-mine page 2, I think that's quite enough there.

I have my own theory about why those forum posters are such strong believers in demonic influence. I think it is about externalisation. Most of them come from communities in which all sex is implied to be dirty and wrong, and this includes even thinking about sex. They are raised to belive that sexual thoughts and dreams are something forbidden - that God himself looked upon their thoughts and judges them. Sex is something for the filthy sinners, and good Christians shall have nothing to do with it, except for within the confines of marriage and strictly behind closed doors, ideally for the purpose of making more Christians. To a mindset like this, demons allow the chance to blame their own sexuality on an outside force - to deny their own sexual nature, thus remaining convinced in their own ritual purity of thought and action. They don't need to admit that they think about sex - they need only claim that it's Satan and his demon minions inserting those thoughts into their mind.

2009-11-06T10:55:00.001-08:00

Pedopriests.... again.

The Middlesbrough Diocese of the Catholic Church was told by a High Court judge this week that it was responsible for a children's home that was the centre of a large-scale abuse scandal. The diocese now faces a potential 8m compensation bill.

The abuse claims centred on the St William's Community Home in Market Weighton, East Yorkshire. More than 140 former residents filed claims of physical and sexual abuse but it was unclear who was responsible for the home - whether it was the Middlesbrough diocese or the De La Salle Brothers, an order of lay teachers.

The case concerns alleged systematic abuse of children at the care home from 1960 until 1992 when it closed. St William's took emotionally and behaviourally disturbed boys, aged 10 to 16, referred by councils largely from Yorkshire and the North East.

Jordans solicitors, based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, took on the case six years ago after an investigation by Humberside Police into the home's former headmaster, Brother James Carragher. He was jailed for 14 years after being convicted of abusing boys at the home. The case also includes claims against other staff. About 2,000 children and 500 staff passed through the home during the 32 years in question.

Judge Simon Hawkesworth QC ruled at the High Court in Leeds that the claims should be made against the diocese, and it opens the way for the biggest compensation pay outs from the Church that this country has ever seen. It is the culmination of a six year battle in which the diocese has tried every legal trick to delay the issue and try to evade responsibility. The Church still has the option of making a further appeal \u2014 claiming that De La Salle should be liable - which would delay matters for at least another year.

Solicitor for the claimants, David Greenwood, said: "It has been a long battle with the organisations responsible for the home. They have used every argument possible to resist the case and I am hopeful that the Middlesbrough Catholic diocese will consider settling the cases now."

The compensation claims, which span a 30-year period and largely involve sexual abuse, could amount to around 4m with the claimants' costs in the region of 2.5m and the diocese's own costs at an estimated 1.5m.

Came in the NSS newsletter for today.

2009-11-03T07:45:00.000-08:00

Laura, poster to the xxxchurch.com prayer wall, has impossible standards.

One of the criticisms often made of devout christians is that they have a very negative, even prohibative attitude towards sex - to the point that they almost worship the concept of asexuality and virginity, though they perfer to term 'purity.' As with many criticisms it's a combination of truth with exageration, and Laura shall now demonstrate the truth side of that.

"[my husband] is having dreams that he doesn't remember but he obviously gets very turned on by them. How can i get him to see that and what does he need to do about it?"

Laura demands not only that her husband show no attraction to other women, but that he doesn't even dream about sex other than with her. As do many Christians, she has set a standard of 'purity' which none may ever reach.

Laura isn't an entirely isolated case. As the poster known only as 'P' points out.

My husband has issues with "bad" dreams also and I have read from other spouses that their husbands have dealt with dream problems also.

Because dreams involving sex are "bad", of course. They are in the view of this overly devout one, and many like her. To them, sex is strictly between married husband and wife, and all other sexuality must be purged from the mind. I've previously covered other christians of similar attitude. The entire xxxchurch.com site and ministry is dedicated to maintaining a 'pure' mind - one devoid of sexual thoughts.

There has been a lot of talk lately of 'thought crimes' in regard to the recently-passed (albeit by trickery and games) extension of hate crimes laws in the US. Those who use such a term might want to be more careful with their accusations, if their own faith recognises and endorses the concept of punishing someone for sinful thoughts.

This

2009-10-31T12:02:00.000-07:00

Raven's Reference #1.

The nine members of the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography and authors of it's final report, also known as the Meese report:

Henry E. Hudson, chairman: Previously recieved a presidential commendation for closing down every adult bookstore in the county where he served as attorney.

Diane D. Cusack: As vice-mayor of Scottsdale, called upon citizens to observe the town's only adult movie theater and report patrons to the police for prosecution.

Park Elliott Dietz: Previously claimed the viewing of pornography was responsible for sexual 'deviancy.'

James Dobson: Influencial anti-pornography campaigner. Yes, that James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family.

Father Bruce Ritter: Priest and anti-pornography campaigner.

Frederick Schauer: Previously argued that pornography should be criminalised and does not qualify as a form of speech.

Judith Becker, Deanne Tilton-Durfee and Ellen Levine: Following the publication of the report, publically accused the commission of deliberatly using biased sampling techniques and distorting data in order to reach the politically desireable conclusion.

The Meese Report was commissioned by President Reagan in order to provide a justification for his desire to intensify the prosecution of pornography distributors. It is now regarded as a prime example of technique of producing a faux-scientificreport for political purposes using a deliberatly biased panel.

2009-10-30T04:54:00.000-07:00

Nothing creates a patential panic in these times quite like the fear of pedophiles.

It leads so such acts of stupidity as banning parents from supervising their own children at a playground.

2009-10-19T04:47:00.000-07:00

Where is your God now?

Delaware's Catholic Diocese of Wilmington filed for federal bankruptcy protection on Sunday night, on the eve of a civil trial in a high-profile sex abuse case against the diocese and a former priest.

The bankruptcy filing automatically delays the case in Kent County Superior Court, the first of eight consecutive abuse trials scheduled in Delaware.

The diocese covers Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland and serves about 230,000 Catholics. It is the seventh U.S. diocese to file for bankruptcy since allegations erupting seven years ago against Catholic clergy in Boston.

Monday's case would have been the first to come to trial under a Delaware law that created a two-year "lookback" window that allowed claims of abuse to be brought regardless of whether the statute of limitations had expired. More than 100 lawsuits were filed before the period ended this summer, with four being settled.

Thomas Neuberger, an attorney representing 88 alleged victims, described the bankruptcy filing as a "desperate effort to hide the truth from the public and conceal the thousands of pages of scandalous documents" from being made public in court.

"This filing is the latest, sad chapter in the diocese's decades long 'cover-up' of these despicable crimes, to maintain the secrecy surrounding its responsibility and complicity in the sexual abuse of hundreds of Catholic children," Neuberger said in a statement.

Civil liability is the only recourse for victims of abuse that happened long ago because the U.S. Supreme Court has said states cannot change the statute of limitations for criminal cases.

Neuberger said he would make court filings in Delaware to "meet this fraudulent tactic with the full and immediate force of the law." He also vowed to seek out all assets of the diocese and its parishes.

Barbara Blaine, president of the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the church has all the resources it needs to take care of victims, and she described the bankruptcy filing as a way of hiding the truth.

"The bottom line is that the bishop doesn't want the truth to be exposed," Blaine said.

The diocese has paid more than $6.2 million since 2002 to settle sexual abuse lawsuits. Like others around the country, it also has paid settlements to alleged victims who did not file lawsuits.

I admire their lawyers - this is a dirty, manipulative, underhanded piece of legal trickery, but I am sure a highly effective one. It's ideas like this which give lawyers their reputation as the putrid slimeballs of humanity.

2009-10-15T02:42:00.000-07:00

Hate Crimes

A came across this interesting account on the website of the Thomas More Society, a primarily pro-life organisation which occasionally also campaigns on other issues of importance to social conservatives.

It starts with an account of some of their protesters being met an extremally agressive stream of profanity and threats and eventually physical attack by a defender of the clinic. A bit of an overreaction in my view - someone has anger management problems. What comes next though...

On Friday, April 3, 2009, the Chicago-based Thomas More Society filed civil Hate Crime charges in an Amended Complaint against an abortion clinic proprietor and ally in federal district court in Rockford, Illinois as part of an ongoing court battle.

Hate crimes? They mean those 'unconstitutional' 'special rights'? Oh, of course. It's unconstitutional when someone else wants them, but they have no problems being protected under the very same law they would deny to other groups at risk of assault.

Even some of their fellow conservatives are upset about this blatant hypocrisy. But not many. Just that one church. All is fair in the culture war. Do whatever it takes to win.

2009-10-14T04:58:00.000-07:00

Biased organisations and breast cancer.

I've been having a debate on Digg recently regarding the claimed link between abortion and breast cancer, and once again someone referred me to abortionbreastcancer.com.

No proof of the abortion/breast cancer link?

http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/medicalgroups/ ...

Many medical groups, including the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, not only agree with what MomOf4 stated, but also believe that it is a travesty that women contemplating abortion are not given these facts.

I've browsed through abortionbreastcancer.com before, but never taken them seriously since the moment I discovered that their front page specifies as a source an article on Conservapedia. As far as I'm concerned, that means their judgement is not just suspect, but absent. Compounding the damage to their reputation, they also link to worldnetdaily.

But I was curious about those medical associations.

For those not aware, the hypothetical link between abortion and breast cancer dates back a few years to a study which appeared to show that women who underwent abortion were at a higher subsequent risk for breast cancer. Later research however showed this to be unlikely, and merely the result of a statistical correlation rather than causation, or due to the non-abortion group completing pregnancy to term with a known protective effect.

As with much science though, this claim was of political advantage to many. Specifically, pro-life organisations jumped on it as a way to attack abortion while appearing more concerned about women's health. Pro-choicers in turn accused them of deliberately promoting inaccurate scientific claims in order to further a religious or political agenda - basically, making up stories of slow death by cancer to scare women away from abortion. I'm one of those making this accusation: I believe the connection to be tenuous at most, and that the risk if any at all has been greatly exaggerated by people who desperately want it to be true.

But, back to the list. It's quite a long list, these medical organisations that have evaluated the research and concluded abortion causes breast cancer. But something feels wrong - I recognise some of these names, and they aren't what I would consider unbiased.

The complete list is thus.

---
National Physicians Center for Family Resources
Catholic Medical Association
American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists
Breast Cancer Prevention Institute
The Polycarp Research Institute
Ehtics (sic) and Medics
MaterCare International
Breast Care Center-EAMC
---

Now, let's have some fun with elimination. First, I'm going to remove all the organisations obviously motivated either by religious conviction or for whom their stated purpose is opposition to abortion rights. That eliminates the Catholic Medical Association, and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

---
National Physicians Center for Family Resources
Breast Cancer Prevention Institute
The Polycarp Research Institute
Ehtics and Medics
MaterCare International
Breast Care Center-EAMC
---

Well, that's a bit shorter. But I only eliminated the obvious ones. A little googling reveals some of the others, despite their names, are also religious in nature. Specifically the Polycarp Research Institute - according to their own website, "PRI will help researchers with projects that are designed to reveal the truths contained within Nature’s laws. TPRI will support research efforts that improve the spiritual condition of men and women, and will not promote methods or intentions that are inconsistent with the ethical and moral guidelines of the Catholic Church;" MaterCare International is also a Catholic charity, and a quite devout one at that to glance at their website with it's frequent admiration of the pope.

The National Physicians Center for Family Resources, on a little research, is revealed to be not a medical organisation but a political one. It campaigns for the promotion of abstinence-only education programs, the 'family resources' to which it's name refers. And, yes, it's an openly Christian organisation.

The list, by this point, is looking rather less impressive.

---
Breast Cancer Prevention Institute
Ehtics and Medics
Breast Care Center-EAMC
---

The Breast Cancer Prevention Institute at first sounds good. Until you check their site. Every single one of their published articles is about the claimed abortion/cancer link (See for yourself, http://www.bcpinstitute.org/factshts.htm ). Oh, and it's founder and entire board of directors consists of pro-life Christians, by their own admission! Single issues campaign, religious board of directors... it's an obvious front, to hide the religiously and politically motivated claims.

Ethics and Medics I cannot comment on - their website is currently unavailable, and their name is too vague to google. But if they cannot maintain a website I am hardly going to trust them.

And the Breast Care Center-EAMC, from what I can find of this elusive organisation, doesn't even have a website or any information at all - other than that the one piece of published material from them is a letter including the words "Here in the Philippines, induced abortion is still illegal...but though glad that it still is, ..." Said by their president.

So, here it is. The complete list of medical organisations who support the claimed link between abortion and breast cancer, after excluding all those who exist for the purpose of opposing abortion rights or are founded upon religious ideals:

---
---

Yes, that's it. Not one. Abortionbreastcancer.com could not find a single medical organisation to support them that isn't obviously motivated by religious teachings or a political goal.

But that is only half the story. I have merely shown that their best are not good enough. I also need to provide a countering view - to see what medical organisations can be found which claim no connection. What finds I have, though - while abortionbreastcancer.com provides liars and frauds, I can cite these prestigious names agreeing with me:

"Research studies have not found a cause-and-effect relationship between abortion and breast cancer." - National Cancer Institute. A world-respected leading institute on the subject of cancer.

"Historical cohort studies, on the other hand, are more methodologically sound. Two major studies have been carried out using this methodology, and neither found an increased risk of breast cancer associated with first trimester abortion." - World Health Organisation.

"Research evidence shows that having an abortion does not increase your risk of developing breast cancer." - Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

2009-10-06T03:18:00.001-07:00

I have two entries now.

The first is brief, and comes from the FRC newsletter:

"And other research has shown that homosexual relationships are far less likely than authentic marriages between a man and woman to last for a lifetime."

The mistake here is blindingly obvious: They are comparing homosexual 'relationships' to heterosexual 'marriages.' Of course the heterosexuals look better - they are excluding all the one-night-stands, cohabitating couples, drama-laden years of high-school on-and-off relationships, and all others who don't consider themselves attached enough to justify getting married. All things that they include for homosexuals. It isn't a fair comparison, and ten seconds of thought would show this to be obvious.

The FRC does not approve of thought. It's far easier just to continue to portray all homosexuals as sex-crazed, even if that means lieing with statistics. The FRC hates education. They even say why, in the very same story:

"This reflects the reality that homosexuals tend to be more highly educated,"

See? Education turns people gay.

I note that in both of those, vague references are made to 'research' but with no reference by which the research may be identified and verified. But then, I can good guess at why that might be.

And the second, it's the Conservapedia I loathe so much stepping up the crazy. In their latest project they have determined that the bible is too liberals, and are planning to make a new, conservative translation.

2009-09-26T02:28:00.000-07:00

FRC is still using the 'genocide' line.

The FRC is a recurring target for my annoyance. I regard them as not just wrong, but manipulative, deceitful, and outright liars at times. Even so, I do respect the skill of their PR people at times - they know how to effectively campaign, and how to target their message to different groups.

I believe this is the reason they keep reviving the genocide line - the claim that abortion in America is a targeted effort to wipe out african-american people (So much to type - it was easier when I could just call them 'black' without risking someone accusing me of subliminal racism). It isn't a good argument on logical grounds, as I shall shortly explain, but it's a powerful one on PR. The memory of segregation is still strong in the african-american population, and in places they still have to deal with what racism remains - fanning these flames of paranoia and suspicion will easily get them to join a cause, and that is the power of the genocide claim.

The most recent use of it by the frc is in a short news article titled, simply enough, Abortion is not Health Care, But Genocide. Nice and to-the-point there.

The issue of abortion is of utmost importance in the African-American community for it is this community that has been targeted by Planned Parenthood and their ilk. ... The targeting of pro-abortion forces is highlighted when you consider that African-Americans make up only 13.5 percent of the population, yet Planned Parenthood's Guttmacher Institute reports that of the ... abortions that are performed annually in the United States, 37 percent are performed on African-American women and their unborn children.

Because nothing will rile up the african-american community like claiming that Planned Parenthood seeks to wipe them off the earth.

The only problem with this argument is that it's one giant lie. The statistic may be true - I do know that african-americans have a higher abortion rate than whites, but I don't know if this applies to other minority groups and wouldn't trust the FRC's repetition of the 37% claim anyway. It just doesn't indicate any targeting.

As politically incorrect as this may sound, african-american people in America tend to be poor. They just are. It's the last vestige of the segregation that ended in the 60s. African-american people have african-american children, poor people have poor children, and so that economic disadvantage has remained correlated with race going down the generation or two up to today.

People of low income and savings also have a higher abortion rate. This is practical. When a financially secure woman has an intended pregnancy, she has the option of carrying it to term and raising it. She may have to abandon her career for a few years, but she can at least be sure she can provide the child with housing, food, clothing, education, medical care and other such essentials. When the financually unsecure woman has an intended pregnancy, she can't be sure of this - the expense of a child could drive them both into poverty, or deeper into it. She wouldn't have the resources to properly raise him, and so abortion looks like the only way out.

From these two facts - african-americans are worse of financially, and those worse off financially are more likely to choose abortion - it follows that african-americans are more likely to choose abortion even though they are in no way targeted.

Could Planned Parenthood really get away with attempted genocide? The organisation is huge - if they had issued an internal 'wipe out the negros' memo, someone would certinly have leaked it by now. Any genocide attempt would have to involve not just the national management, but every state management executive, and many regional managers, and even the PR department. Cover-up for so many years would be impossible with such a large conspiricy.

This is nothing more than a conspiricy theory which even many of it's supporters know to be false, but continue to advance because it's a powerful rallying tool.

2009-09-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

Diggers again.

A recent discussion has been given on Digg over proposals to tax high-sugar soda drinks as a public health measure. As in any discussion, there have been arguments for and against. Some of those arguments are good, and some are stupid. One in particular strikes me as noteworthy not because it's stupid - which it is - but because it's symtomatic of a particular kind of poor thinking.

I am not refering to those who argue that taxing soda is an infringement on personal freedom, or that it encourages an oversized government, or that it opens the door to further taxation. I do not agree with these arguments, but I can understand them. They are perfectly sane and reasoned objections.

The argument to which I refer is this:

'another tax that would disproportionately hurt those can't afford it.'

This one keeps cropping up through the thread:
'A poor soda drinker will spend a much higher proportion of their income on soda than a rich soda drinker even if the rich one drinks several times as much; thus, the poor will pay a higher effective tax rate under such a tax.'
'A tax like this will do nothing but hurt the poor even more.'
'try feeding a family of four if you don't make a ton of money, it's very hard.'

That's four seperate people trying to make the argument that a soda tax would hurt the poor. And now, in four words, I shall destroy them: "Tap water is cheaper."

Soda is not an essential. It is a luxury. If someone can't afford to keep chugging down three-litre bottles of coke, that is not a serious impediment to their health, freedom or lifestyle. There is always water.

It's a luxury. Therefore, anyone who can't afford it shouldn't be buying it.

I am pleased to note that the number of people pointing this out far exceeds the number attempting to make this look like an attack on the low-income.

2009-09-11T17:16:00.000-07:00

The Birthers have reached a new low. Though in their defence, this latest variation of the crazy is coming from merely Free Republic blog commenters, not from anyone of actual influence. At least not yet.

2009-09-06T04:05:00.001-07:00

God does not provide quite so well as many believers assume. Focus on the Family, perhaps the most influencial national pressure group for the social conservative faction, a out of money, even according to a website favorable to the organisation.

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO - Focus on the Family says it's laying off 8 percent of its work force.

Lisa Anderson, a spokesman for the evangelical ministry founded by Dr. James Dobson, says the cutbacks are necessary because projections show Focus falling 5 percent short of a $136 million budget for the fiscal year ending this month.

Anderson says 75 employees will lose their jobs and an additional 57 vacant positions will remain unfilled, leaving the ministry with about 860 employees, down from a peak of 1,400.

Last fall, budget problems prompted Focus on the Family to eliminate more than 200 positions, the largest staff reduction in its history.

You don't need to read the page now, that's the entire story quoted.

This is hardly surprising - the economy is doing poorly, and FotF is entirely dependant on charitable donations that grow increasingly hard to get. Still, it raises the question of why the God they worship so highly isn't willing to throw a little divine intervention their way.

2009-08-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

Rush Limbaugh has a form of immunity from critcism now. It's an immunity built up through exposure - he says crazy stuff so frequently, noone cares any more.

Take this latest piece, the veracity of which can be checked on his own official transcript of his show.

I would remind the rapper Jay-Z: Mr. Z, it is President Obama who wants to mandate circumcision. We had that story yesterday; and that means if we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama.

Obama wants to mandate circumcision? Sounds like a crazy claim to me, but that's what Rush said. Clear, and unambiguous. No odd wording. But what can he possibly mean? Obama has never said he wants to mandate circumcision, if he had it would have been all over the news. He doesn't even have the authority to do such a thing.

So on what grounds does Rush make the claim? As far as I can figure out it might be related to the CDC looking at some research from Africa suggesting that circumcision reduces HIV infection rates - but that's only a guess, because the CDC hasn't made any sort of official announcement, the research would not apply to the different infection vectors dominant in the US anyway, and Obama has personally said absolutly nothing on the subject.

I think Rush just made this up. He knows his audience well. He wants them to be afraid of Obama, and what better way to get the men scared than tell them Obama wants to cut their foreskins off?

2009-08-18T15:39:00.001-07:00

Honesty.

For some months I've been engaged in a feud with LastVisibleDog of Digg - a hyper-partisan nut, a birther, a conspiricy-loving crazy and all-round idiot. But now he has made a post which I think reveals a lot about the workings of his mind.

News Flash

*** Glenn Beck is number ONE in his time-slot ***

*** Lefty Loonies are still bed-wetters ***

Lefty Loonies are still bed-wetters. Behold the scatheing wit, the devastating intellectualism of his argument. Never again will the left dare to raise their gaze from the ground, for they have been humbled by the greatest insult crafted in recorded history. They have been called bed-wetters.

2009-08-10T02:53:00.001-07:00

Operation Rescue has a problem. For years they have been running a vicious campaign against Tiller - demonising him, organising personal harassment campaigns, and campaigning for hundreds of criminal charges to be filed against him without grounds. Then one of their followers took it a bit further, and killed Tiller. Now they have no enemy to fight.

Tiller was the best thing Operation Rescue could have wanted - a human face of evil, and an individual against which they could direct their self-proclaimed rightous anger. Having a concrete target to get worked up against bought in the funding and let them get people worked up. Without him, what can they do?

The obvious answer is get a new one.

Operation Rescue is formally launching a campaign called "Keep it Closed" that targets Nebraska abortionist LeRoy Carhart.

Yes, they have found a new face of evil - someone else to set to work destroying. And, given time, they will. Either they'll make his life and the lives of his family so unbearable with their harassment he will have to admit defeat, or again their rhetoric will escalate until the point where a fan of the organisation turns to murder.

Already, Operation Rescue has commenced it's campaign of lies:

"One thing that we found in his medical records was that he would often come to work so fatigued [that] he couldn't perform the abortions or he would do them half-falling asleep, and then he would have to go back and make log entrees into the medical records after the procedures were done,"

This sounds scarey, until you consider that these are medical records - why would Carheart include such information, if he is the uncareing monster Operation Rescue believes him to be? And the last sentence is just obvious - of course log entries are done after the procedure. Do Operation Rescue imagine doctors work with a scalpel in one hand and a pen in the other, making notes as they work?

Other than this, all they have so far is an accusation of an unclean theater from an unnamed 'former staff and women who had abortions.' I imagine this means that someone at Operation Rescue made them up, but as they will refuse to reveal their sources (Citing privacy, of course), there is no way to prove or disprove their claim.

Give it a few months though, and it'll be in full swing - Carheart can look forward to having an angry mob shouting insults, threatening phone calls and mail to him and his family, a high risk of assault, frequent vandalism of his workplace and home, and a hundred criminal charges filed against him if he so much as sneezes without a tissue.

2009-07-24T08:13:00.001-07:00

Another persecution-seeker.

While making my last post, I noticed this.

A Boise, Idaho, resident plans to make a difference in that city's homosexual pride parade on Saturday.

IdahoTom Munds, a member of Canyon Springs Christian Church, knows the risks he may face in handing out water to homosexuals.

"My intent was to just go down there as an outreach, you know, and the message is simple. We put the living water scripture from John 4:13 on the water bottles," he explains. "And in this single case, I found a church to help support me to do this, and so he offered to put his logo on the bottles."

It's not unusual for Christians to go to a gay pride parade to hand out a few leaflets. Bottled water, though, is a stange choice.

A lot of participents, seeing someone who clearly is opposed to homosexuality handing out bottled water, are going to be highly suspicious. They may be worried the water is poisoned in some way - there are enough stories of anti-gay violence to stir up such concerns. As a result of these, there is a significent chance this bit of missionary work is going to end with Munds being asked to leave by security because he is scareing people, or even being arrested for disrupting the parade - though I have no doubt he will be released as soon as the water is confirmed to be harmless.

This is obvious to me, and it should be obvious to Munds too. Rather than handing out leaflets as is usual - or even novelty items, hats, sunshades, pocket-fans, anything like that - he deliberatly chose to distribute one of the few items which has a chance of getting him kicked out or arrested.

I think I know why this is. Munds is a persecution seeker - he *wants* to be kicked out or arrested, because when that happens it will be the trigger for a series of articles about how those 'intolerant gays' refuse to allow this Christian his right to free speech at one of their parades. Munds gets to become a temporary living martyr, while his fellow anti-gay christians build up a story of how the parade security brutally oppressed and silenced him for his faith.

2009-07-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

I've not been reading the news sites much, but by chance I stumbled upon a link to a guest column at OneNewsNow, one of the more prominant right-leaning news sites (though not extreme-right like, say, WND).

The column is by the appropriatly named Randy Sharp, and it details the lengths he believes all men should go to in order to protect their marriages.

... a book titled Hedges: Loving Your Marriage Enough to Protect It.

From the precepts found in the book, I learned how building “hedges” is important to a marriage. Just as in Scripture, hedges are a protection and direction against infidelity ...

Hedge #1 -- I do not allow myself to be alone with a woman who is not my wife or immediate family member … EVER … EVER! By doing so, I’ve completely eliminated the possibility that anything inappropriate will take place. I am especially careful at work, where most extra-marital relationships begin. Therefore, I also make it a practice not to engage in conversation with another woman regarding her or my personal life.

Hedge #2 -- On work-related trips out of town, I take a family member with me if at all possible. My wife or one of my daughters goes with me.

Hedge #3 -- I will not stay at hotels where pornography is available.

This guy either completly lacks self control and knows it, or is just another nutcase. He believes that he must never have any sort of non-professional conversation with a woman, ever?

Forget any possibility of a friendship - as far as Randy is concerned, any contact with a woman is dangerously close to adultery. Saudi Arabia would be proud of him.

If he wants to go to these extremes, that's his own choice - but he is plugging this book that teaches such measures are required!

The book itsself is by one Jerry B. Jenkins - the author best known for the Left Behind series, and the accomponying 'factual' books. Yes, it's marriage advice by someone who believes that any day now demons disguised as aliens are going to stage a mass-teleportation of christians to a fake colony world in order to provide a cover story for the rapture. I only know two people crazy enough to believe that, and Jenkins is one of them (The other, for the curious, is Dave Hunt).

Now, the reason I object is that I know people like Sharp quite well from my experience in debate, and I know that such people arn't going to be satisfied to just limit themselves. He refuses to stay at a hotel with pornography, that's fine - but I guess he also desires to make pornography illegal, so that noone else may look at it either. He is the type of person who would like to see the return of single-gender schools, and segregated workplaces, to eliminate the temptation to talk to someone of the other gender which he blames for ruining marriage. He probably wants to close down all strip clubs and impose decency codes on entertainment to make sure that no man can ever glimpse a breast not belonging to his wife - because if he can't trust himself to see such things, he isn't going to trust anyone else to see them either.

I'm not just guessing his polititcal positions - he works for the AFA. I don't recall them ever talking about gender-segregated schools, but they do hold all the other positions I've listed - they call for a complete ban on pornography, media 'decency codes' to be made manditory, the closing of sexually orientated businesses, and so on.

Randy Sharp, and those who share his extremally conservative views on sexuality, will never be content to shield themselves from temptation - they will strive to purge all of society of those things they consider may lead other people into sin.

2009-07-12T02:08:00.000-07:00

Jews, this time.

Every now and again I hear someone criticise me for objecting to religion, arguing that I have no right to do so - that people can believe what they wish, and it is no concern of mine.

To which I always respond by explaining that people can believe what they wish, but frequently this belief motivates them to perform actions or take political positions which effect others. For many people their religion isn't a private affair - they consider it their duty to make sure everyone abides by the laws they believe their God has given them.

The latest example is a rather violent protest in Israel, by ultra-orthodox Jews. This is the fundamentalist, legalistic version of judaism. They are upset because a car park is opening on sabbath.

Noone is forcing them to use the car park on the sabbath. Or to do anything on the sabbath. But this isn't enough for them - they have appointed themselves the implimenters of God's laws, and are dedicated now to ensuring that noone in Israel, absolutly noone, may work on the sabbath - ultra-orthodox jew or otherwise.

If their holy book says don't do it, they they must ensure not only they they don't do it, but that noone else is allowed to either. An attitude common enough in religion that I feel a need to argue against it.

2009-07-03T06:59:00.001-07:00

Judging science.

One persistent problem in commenting on scientific matters is that my knowledge is so limited in many areas I cannot tell serious science from politicised nonsense - but there are times when an example of the latter might make a mistake so blatant as to reveal the ignorance of the writers. Take as an example this this piece from the anti-environmentalist blog Not Evil Just Wrong.

This week he is in Uganda where he writes about Malaria and DDT. However instead of illuminating us on the subject he perpetuates the same worn out myths that continue to cause enormous death across the world.
We know a lot about Malaria in Uganda which kills 370 children a day. It is a painful death. It kills mostly pregnant women and children because it is particularly fatal to those with compromised immune systems.

But this death toll does not illicit an emotional response from Mr Jackson. However one aspect of this issue does alarm him. The use of DDT to stop the spread of malaria is a serious problem for Mr Jackson.

And so on - it's the standard old argument: That environmentalists are allowing children to die because they will not permit the use of the strong pesticides best suited to controlling the spread of malaria. I don't know if this is true or not - I'll admit ignorance on that. I don't know much about the commonality of malaria, the effect of intensive pesticide usage on mosquito populations, how long DDT lingers, how bioconcentration might effect it, or anything much about it's toxicity. On this issue I am completely ignorant.

The last line reveals that the writer of that page is just as ignorant though:

Perhaps the readers were alienated by reporters who shudder at the use of a harmless compound but remain emotionless at the daily slaughter of 370 children.

Harmless? DDT is harmless? Now, I don't know exactly how harmful it is, but I am quite sure it cannot be fairly described as 'harmless.' If it were harmless, there wouldn't be any debate over this at all. The very purpose of DDT is to kill insects, and it only takes a little googling to find a long list of suspected or confirmed long-term effects. The UN classes it as "moderately toxic" and the WHO as "moderately hazardous."

So when NEJW calls DDT "harmless" this is clear evidence that the writer has no more knowledge of the subject than me - that he is making scientific claims, while unfamiliar with even the most basic areas of the science.

What this mistake tells me is that NEJW isn't attacking the ban on DDT because they have analysed the numbers and determined the lives lost to malaria outweigh the lives saved and environmental gains. They are attacking the ban on DDT because environmentalists support it, and what environmentalists support, NEJW is obliged to oppose.

This fits in very well with the NEJW style. My characterisation of it as 'anti-environmentalist' was not intended in sarcasm. The purpose of the blog is to promote a film of the same name which criticises the environmentalist movement for placing the interests of conservation above those of economic development. It's a well-deserved criticism, but if the intellectual standards of the blog are anything to go by, I would not trust the film to be honest or trustworthy either. I have not yet seen it, but to base my judgement on the writings of it's associated website I would expect it to contain lies, emotional manipulation, personal attacks and mockery rather than honest analysis in the scientific flaws of prominent environmental policies.

2009-06-29T06:07:00.000-07:00

Another blood donation, and another renewal of my right to act superior to everyone else. Because if I'm going to spend an hour walking and get sharp objects poked into me, I insist on at least getting to boast about it for a while.

2009-06-26T11:57:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson has died.

I do not care in the slightest.

But, for all of those who are now striving hard to ensure he is remembered as the King of Pop, I ask that they remember also what he turned into - he died not as a great star but as Wacko Jacko. I can see no way better way in which he should be remembered than by mocking the tribute to himself that he produced.

2009-06-12T13:04:00.001-07:00

Hello!

2009-06-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

A conspicuous silence.

On June 3rd, the state of New Hampshire passed a bill legalising gay marriage. I waited at the time for the FRC's response, anticipating an entertaining read. Their traditional response to states legalising gay marriage is to complain about courts overruling the will of the people, but no such option for them exists in this case.

I have grown impatient though. It is now the 10th, and yet no word from the FRC on the subject. I thought perhaps I had skimmed without realising, but a check through my email trash and spam folders finds no mention at all - though it does find emails prior to the 3rd calling upon supporters to oppose the bill, there is nothing following it's passage.

This silence seemed curious, so I checked the FRC's website and blog. Again, I found the same. There are mentions from before the third, but not a single mention afterwards. As far as the FRC is concernd - in website, in email, in Action Alerts and in blog - the bill never passed.

It is impossible for the writers at the FRC not to be aware of the successful passage, so they must have chosen to remain silent. I can only assume this is because either they do not feel their rhetorical skills are up to the task of claiming a legislature exceeded it's authority by passing an act, or because their defeat is too humiliating to speak of.

The FRC has been on a prayer binge recently - publicising a 'Call to Fall' mass prayer event, and holding organised pray-ins to supernaturally defear such things as gay marriage in New Hampshire. It must be greatly discourging to see that their pray-in was ineffective - perhaps they realise that to report on it's failure would demoralise the followers.

2009-06-05T08:57:00.001-07:00

More Tiller

And I hope the last of it. The worst of the fuss has passed, as Tiller's murder fades from the headlines - nothing left for me but to check the aftermath.

Operation Rescue continues to handle the event with skilled PR - after carefully excising the murder's posts from their own website in their effort to avoid all apparances of being associated, and the making of a well-crafted denounciation, they have even gone so far as to issue a disclaimer of their founder's rather more offensive comments.

They have also had the foresight to disable comments on the newer Tiller stories on their front page. A sensible choice - it would not do for their expression of regret for Tiller's death to be followed by pages of celebrating readers.

However, this decision came after their first post, for which comments were enabled - so it is at least possible to see a small sample of what the readers of Operation Rescue's website have to say on the matter.

The general theme of the comments can be summed up as 'I don't support the murder, but I'm not at all sorry it happened.'

Some of my favourite highlights:

Get ready; now the hammer falls. This is all the excuse Obama, Napolitano and jackbooted “law enforcement” at all levels need. This shooting will be spun by the anti-life lobby to demonstrate that all pro-lifers are latent terrorists.

A successor rises:

Some days I don’t know if “peaceful, legal means” would ever get the job done with such an inactive court system here in the U.S.

Witness the birth of a conspiricy:

I wouldn’t put it past Obama and Napolitano to have done this so they have an excuse to start rounding up pro-life “radicals” and “terrorists”. Fits right into the way they seem to operate.

I had just been praying every night for two weeks when it came to abortion to save their souls or slay them dead! and now Tiller is dead!

Now I know God does NOT condone murder and this was not an order from God’s thrown…yet God ALLOWED it to happen. Even though Tiller was a heartless murderer of children I DO feel sad that he was killed. He was a human life too and now he is forever cut off from God. He never repented and you can read in the Bible what lies in store for those who do not repent of their sin (ANY sin–not just “big” ones) Tiller’s killer will suffer the same fate if he doesn’t repent of his sin too!

To say I am conflicted over this murder is an understatement. I am vehemently opposed to abortion and everything Tiller did. He killed over 60 THOUSAND babies during his “career”.

Every legal means was employed to stop him and every time, he walked away free. Had this not happened, he probably would have killed yet another 60 THOUSAND babies.

I am curious how strictly Operation Rescue is moderating these comments - they have so far demonstrated a high level of PR skill, so I imagine that they have someone going through and deleting all the really gleeful ones. As a test, I'm about to post a celebratory one-liner myself to see if if OR allows it to stand.

EDIT: Or not. It appears Operation Rescue has disabled the posting of new comments entirely. Very sensible.

2009-06-03T16:27:00.000-07:00

Two things to post in this quickie.

First, a correction: In my last post I claimed that Tiller was one of only three doctors in the state of Kansas willing to perform late-term abortions, even in those rare cases when the life or health of the women would be at risk otherwise. I have since learned that Tiller is actually one of only three doctors in the entire US willing to perform these abortions.

Secondly: A self-proclaimed moral organisation has done something that is by far not stupid, if viewed from the persepective of their own interests. Operation Rescue, the organisation accused by many (espicially me, in my last post) of implicitly encouraging violance against Tiller, has been doing some revision of history. Following the discovery that probable murderer Scott Roeder was a regular poster to the public forums of the Operation Rescue website, OR has now taken the precaution of erasing every occurance of his name and every post he has written, in an obvious attempt to hide any association with him. In addition the Tiller Watch section of the website was taken down for some days. I do not know exactly what changes were made during this time, but my educated guess is that Operation Rescue has been toneing down their previously published articles - removing the references to Tiller the Killer, the places where they refer to his clinic as the Murder Mill, and the frequent comparisons of him to the Nazis.

This could be called revisionist, manipulative or underhanded - but I do admit that it's great PR. To deny stiring up violence is one thing, but to actually revise post-dated webpages is one of the few occasions when the adjective 'Orwellian' actually applies.

2009-06-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

Evaluating the Tiller aftermath.

I imagine that by now, anyone who is likely to read this blog is familiar with the recent murder of George Tiller.

It's been just long enough now for me to assess the situation so far, and decide who to brand an idiot.

Number one: The person who killed him. Possible Scott Roeder, but I won't say with certainty until conviction or guilty plea. I'm guessing guilty plea - I know how extremists like that think, and whoever it was probably never intended to get away with it. They'll either want to be a martyr, or fully believe they will be hailed as a hero.

I'm labeling this one as an idiot because their action is counterproductive to their aim. Yes, they have killed one of the only three doctors in Kansas willing to perform late-term abortions - but in doing so they have become the bad guy. Their actions make all pro-lifers seem like murderous fanatics (I personally find them to be mostly fanatics, but not murderous ones). Further, they have deprived their own movement of one of it's rallying points: Their campaign of legal harassment against Tiller was a highly effective fundraiser, and a great way to stir up enthusiasm in their ranks.

Number Two: Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue. After an incident like this, it's important to handle things well - Operation Rescue will likely get it's share of the blame (more on that shortly), and to minimise this share the organisation needs to appear as condemning as possible, and not milk the situation for political gain. Which is why it was a mistake for the founder to give this gem of a quote the media:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder. Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches."

No expressing of regret. No statement of sympathy for his family. And above all, no condemnation of the murder itself. No, Terry's concerns are limited to how he can best use this to stop more abortions, and a worry that political opponents may use it to their advantage.

Of course people will use it to their advantage - on both sides. That's just how politics works. But to acknowledge this so soon is breaking the basic rules of public relations. Throwing around 'George Tiller was a mass-murderer' after the man was killed is not going to defend against all the people (including me) who are about to blame his organisation for stirring up so much hate against Tiller that someone thought his murder was justified.

Number Three, as promised: Operation Rescue. Actually most of the pro-life organisations, but especially Operation Rescue. The structure of this political movement is interesting - it mirrors in some ways, for example, animal rights organisations. The bulk of the members are reasonable, calm, sane people with common sense and no inclination to extremism - but the leaders, the ones who publish the letters and appear on television, are often far more extreme than the low-level members of their organisations they head. Perhaps because of this, pro-life leaders have been intensely demonising Tiller for years. Operation Rescue has a section on their website titled 'Tiller Watch' where they organise a semi-permanent protest. It frequently refers to him as Tiller the Killer, or Tiller the Baby Killer. Many pro-life organisations have referred to him as a murderer, and frequently he was compared unfavorably to the nazis. This was an organised attempt to stir up as much hate as possible and direct it all at just one man, and as a result of this he has had his clinic vandalised several times and firebombed once. He had already survived one attempted murder. Even his family have suffered threatening phone calls. Some years back, Operation Rescue stirred up some controversy when it posted on it's website Tiller's home address and phone number along with photos of his immediate family, along with similar details of some other doctors willing to perform abortions - a page shortly after removed. I've seen them accuse him of covering up rape, unsanitary clinic conditions, and even of murdering the women who go to his clinic. In their relentless filing of groundless civil actions and criminal charges via a sympathetic attorney general, they sent the message that even dirty tricks could be justified. That Tiller must be stopped, no matter the cost.

Operation Rescue - it's founder aside - has now issued a statement saying they condemn the use of violence. As have several other pro-life organisations. That's what they should do, under the rules of public relations - but though they condemn now, it was their screaming personal attacks, nazi comparisons and demonisation that created the environment in which it was inevitable that sooner or later someone would try to kill him.

They even still have Cheryl Sullinger working as their director of media relations - a women who attempted to bomb a clinic in which abortions were performed. Tried, convicted, and sentence served - and now she works for a pro-life organisation. What message does this send to their members? "We don't endorse violence, but if you want to blow up a clinic we'll still give you a job when you get out of jail?"

Operation Rescue and similar more extreme pro-life organisations may not have given the order - but they can still get some of the blame. I focus my personal blame allocation on Operation Rescue in particular because they were the most extreme in their attacks, and because of their very close interest in Tiller - he was to a large extent the focus of the organisation for many years.

I note that Operation Rescue's 'Tiller Watch' section now returns a 403 error - it appear they are trying to hide all the evidence of how hard they worked to drive others towards violence.

2009-05-28T14:56:00.000-07:00

Christopher Fogle, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, loved to fish. It was a break from his fast-paced, 25-year career with the Perkins Restaurant chain.

But when Fogle got severe cancer, his relaxing fishing trips, which he sometimes took with his children, ended. It was a devastating blow for the active 45-year-old. But for Todd Bentley, television preacher and self-proclaimed healer, the cancer represented an opportunity to "proclaim the glory of God."

Indeed, last year Bentley began his "Lakeland Outpouring," a months-long series of "healing services" that Bentley and his Fresh Fire ministry started April 2 and ended under a cloud of controversy Aug. 11.... In between, the meetings attracted hundreds of thousands of people to a huge tent in Lakeland, Fla.

At the height of what many called a revival, Bentley [was asked to tell] about the healings, like Fogle's, and asked for a list of people who had been healed at the services. [Six] weeks and more than a dozen requests later, the ministry eventually sent a list of 13 names. Fogle was No. 12 on the list, along with this note: "Healed through the Outpouring and is back to fishing."

That was on Aug. 8, 2008. There was just one problem. Two weeks earlier, on July 22, Christopher A. Fogle-according to his obituary in the Keokuk (Iowa) Daily Gate City, "left this life . . . after a courageous battle with cancer."

A review of the list nearly one year later reveals that Fogle is not the only person "healed" who is now dead. When I called Phyllis Mills, of Trinity, N.C., on April 22, to hear the testimony of her healing, a polite family member said, "Phyllis passed away a few days ago. In fact, we're on our way to her funeral now."

Mills, 66 at the time of her death, had lung cancer and was undergoing aggressive treatments when she was, according to the list, "healed at the revival." Mills "was taking radiation, but was sent home," according to notes on Bentley's list, with "no trace of cancer in her body."

World Magazine, a dubious-looking Christian magazine, as quoted by pastor Dave Hunt in his ministry newsletter to which I subscribe.

Todd Bentley's claims are so dodgy that even World Magazine, a Christian publication which feels it needs to qualify it's article with the opening statement "While the Bible shows that God can heal people supernaturally," will not believe them. It doesn't get much lower than that.

2009-05-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

Why are there so many pedophile priests?

They just keep coming. Just this week saw the release of a report revealing large-scale and systematic abuse of children over a period of years by priests in Irish catholic schools, and now half-way around the world there are reports of three more in the diocese of Davenport.

Conveniently, the diocese has produced a list of all the priests it has or had in the last sixty years for whom it has determined accusations of abuse are 'credible.' The list runs for four pages. They only released this list because it was part of the terms of their settlement with victims.

It's not just the catholics - the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, too, has plenty of scandal. Not just of a pedophile priest, but of a systematic cover-ups by the church, moving the obviously guilty child molester around in order to avoid the spectacular embarrassment of his existence becoming publicly known.

It's just one after another now - they are discovered so fast it barely even makes the news.

I can make a good guess as to why the priestly profession is so riddled with pedophiles - it's just a perfect setup to attract them. No criminal background check required, ready access to children, often in a position of authority. And, best of all, the title of priest, vicar, pastor or any of the others awarded to Christian men of faith brings with it an air of such great moral authority that until recently even to accuse one of wrongdoing would be an unthinkable violation of the social order. Combine all this with strict rules forbidding sex - I'm not sure about the Anglicans, but the catholic rules forbid even masturbation (Catechism 2352) - which must lead to a lot of pent-up lust, and evidently churches who are willing to either hide pedophiles to avoid scandal. All together, this creates the ideal conditions for child sexual abuse.

2009-05-10T05:52:00.001-07:00

This time it's sikhs.

One of the persistant irritations I have with legalistic aspects of religion is the way in which followers insist on obeying strange rules, then act like they are being attacked when others refuse to adapt to accomodate their often uncomprehenseable requests. Take, for the latest example, Sikh police officers, and their new spokesman:

"Sikh officers have been prohibited from becoming firearms officers because our religion does not allow us to remove the turban."

This is a very misleading statement. Sikhs are not prohibited from becoming firearms officers. Nowhere in the rules is there a statement that sikhs may not be firearms officers. What the rules do say is that firearms officers must wear a protective bullet-resistant helmet along with other protective gear.

The sikh officers refuse to obey this rule, and so they are now claiming they are 'prohibited' from the role.

If they want in, all they need to do is wear the regulation gear like everyone else. They arn't prohibited - there is nothing to stop sikhs becoming firearms officers except their own refusal to abide by the safety standards required for the role.

This isn't a one-off. I've previously criticised a muslim nurse who claims she is being discriminated against because hygene rules require she show her forearms, and Jews demanding the city government rewrite property ownership laws in order that they might carry objects on a saturday. Those are just what I've covered here - go to any blog or website campaigning against political correctness and you can find many more examples of religious people who claim they are above the law when their religion is in conflict.

2009-05-05T14:13:00.001-07:00

The FRC is lying again.

Right now, the FRC is busy opposing public healthcare program expansion. I could go on a rant about their reasons for doing so - it's just political games as per usual - but I want to call them out on a very specific lie. This is a quote, verbatim, from the speaker on FRC's Washington Watch Weekly (20090501).

"The big deceit in this is they'll say well the European system and the Canadian system and the united kingdom system of single-payer healthcare is so much less expensive. Well, yes it is - once you reach age 72 you don't receive any more treatment - you get a pill and if you want an assisted suicide you take your own life. That's how they limit healthcare costs in these other states."

This is a giant lie. From beginning to end, this claim holds not a shred of truth. I happen to live in the UK, and I have some familiarity with it's laws - enough to know that in this country, assisted suicide is illegal. It doesn't happen, at least not legally. Further, I can say conclusively that not only does the NHS have no 'age 72 limit' policy, but that a relative of mine is a professional respiratory nurse who works for the NHS, and from the general 'how was your day' discussions I know that at least a few of her patients are well into their 90's and still under her care.

A little googling reveals that in Canada, too, assisted suicide is illegal. No exceptions, same as over here. And over in Europe, it's legal only in two countries: Germany and Belgium. Neither of which has enough people take this option to make any significent difference to healthcare costs.

The FRC's claim is nothing but baseless fearmongering - spreading their vision of a dystopia, and threatening that it will come true if the plans of their enemies are not stopped. They are ignoring rational debate, and turning instead to 'the democrats will kill your parents' arguments as their tool of choice.

2009-04-30T16:23:00.000-07:00

Worldnetdaily claims "Censors for talk radio expected within 90 days"

In 90 days, I shall gloat at their predictive failure.

2009-04-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

Douglas Miller, pastor of the Link Church in Birmingham, has just earned himself a place on Moronality.

A story on Digg in turn brings my attention to another account of religious people demanding that no one be allowed to insult them. The source of this latest upset is a flash game, Faith Fighter, depicting the gods and prophets of various religions beating each other up. Fairly standard stuff on the internet.

Miller, who appears to consider any right to free speech is outweighed by his imagined 'right' not to be upset, says the game "should be taken off the internet."

The Federation of Muslim Organisations has similar statements, though it stops short of calling for censorship.

Both use the political word of power, 'offensive,' making the unspoken claim that anything offensive should be prohibited. It's a popular claim in the UK, and to a lesser extent in the US - one never made outright, but which spreads through subtext because almost everyone has seen something said they would like to see banned.

With the Streisand Effect kicking in, their objections have served only to popularise the game. Though the original distributor has taken it from their website, at least two mirrors have appeared. A third now resides on one of my harddrives, to be kept forever safe.

2009-04-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

Vatican diplomacy.

The Vatican has now rejected three ambassadors appointed by Obama in protest over their pro-choice political positions. An interesting situation.

Obama could have found someone pro-life easily enough to satisfy the demands, but at least twice he has chosen to ignore this request. The possibility of a political contest of wills comes to mind - Obama trying to assert his dominance, while Pope Ratty tries to show that his church will not submit.

Whatever the backroom story, I don't imagine much will come of it. The vatican has the unusual status of formal recognition as an independant country, but doesn't really have any direct political or economic contact with the US - and if it held enough power to harm Obama, it would have been able to prevent him becoming president. The ambassador serves mostly as a public display of acceptance.

There is a history of ambassador positions in friendly countries being given as political rewards by both Bush 2 and Clinton administrations - a cushy, low-stress job which still earns very high pay and a life of luxury. US ambassador to the vatican sounds like such a job to me. Laze around, get rich, eat italian food.

2009-04-13T17:23:00.001-07:00

Digg's Biggest Idiot.

The title goes to world0rder, for... well, for everything he posts.

2009-04-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

SB 200

The FRC is distorting it's opponent once more. The issue with which they are being so skillfully manipulative is known as SB 200 or, to use it's official title, "Expansion of Prohibitions Against Discrimination." It's a Colorado prohibition against discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The FRC, obviously, is opposed.

But it's a tricky one to argue against - it could be done on the old religious freedom basis, but these arguments are meeting increasing indifference. No, to really get the campaigners into a frenzy, the most powerful words in politics must be uttered: 'Protect the children.' From the FRC's email,

Bathroom Bills, which allow men who dress as women access to women's bathrooms -

Interesting, because while I havn't read the bill entirely, I have skimmed and run a few phrase searches. It doesn't say anything about bathrooms. Or toilets, or restrooms, or changing rooms, or washrooms. What it does say is 'public accommodations' which could, yes, imply public restrooms too. I concede this could be an unforeseen consequence of a literal reading - but good luck getting it to stand up in court! After all, the US has had many laws forbidding gender discrimination for years now, as has the UK and I expect much of the rest of the world - and yet can you imagine a man successfully suing because he was denied access to the exclusive women's facility?

Even if the FRC is right though, and by some twist of luck and law this bill results in a few transgendered people being able to use the other restroom... So what?

The FRCs entire argument rests upon the idea that letting men into a woman's restroom or vice versa endangers children. What evidence do they present? None. Not a shread.

They have lots of scary numbers:

In New England, home to 27,010 registered sex offenders, parents are watching in horror as left-leaning legislators aggressively seek to provide the unnatural closeness to women and children that predators and rapists must have to perpetrate their crimes. According to 2006 data, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that 637,989 sex offenders are registered in America.

Well, here is something the FRC should consider: I don't think any 'predator' is going to be stopped by banning him from the girls' restroom. Would it really be that hard for one to sneak inside? It's not as if those are high-security areas. They don't even have security cameras, usually, for reasons of privacy.

That caused endless trouble back at my former workplace - someone kept vandalising one of the toilet rooms, and due the lack of CCTV that someone was never caught.

If the FRC really wants to protect the safety of the toilets, they should be going the other way, and campaigning for them to be unisex. Twice the users means twice the traffic, and half the average uninterrupted time in which to commit any crime.

Here, is essence, is the FRC's argument against the bill:

1. Equal treatment for those of all sexual orientations.
2. ???
3. CHILD RAPE!

They are trying to use the powerful emotional attack of the third line to distract from the omission of the second. It's an underhanded piece of manipulation, and one for which I must confess my admiration. It may be cheating, it may be dishonest, but it's also going to be extremely effective - by branding the bill a 'bathroom bill' they have managed to turn a debate on equal treatment, ground on which even the FRC knows it is weak, into accusations that their opponents would put children in danger of being raped, and at the same time managed to imply that transgendered people are a danger to children. That is a very impressive way to manipulate the public.

2009-03-28T06:45:00.000-07:00

Alfie Update.

I earlier criticised some people surrounding the case of Alfie, the thirteen-year-old father.

While those criticisms remain, I now have a new one to direct at the mother. Additional information is now available revealing that she is, to put it rather bluntly, a total slut - and Alfie is not even the father.

Now, I have no objection to promiscuity at all. If she wants to sleep around, that's fine with me. It's her right, it's her choice, and it's none of my business. But if she is going to be promiscuous, she should be doing so in the correct manner - with condoms, and some additional form of contraception.

It's also very dishonest of her to claim to know who the father is, when she should have had no idea at all - to try to rope the most convenient member of her boyfriend collection into supporting the baby. I can only guess she choose Alfie because his young age ensured media attention and thus a sudden inrush of cash from interviews and photos. Or maybe the other possibilities were even poorer than he is.

2009-03-28T04:18:00.001-07:00

Future problems.

There was a period here in the UK in which the law could not recognise the existance of any attempt at human cloneing, and so such attempts were unregulated. The issue was the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Act, which defined an embryo for legal purposes as 'an egg fertilised by a sperm' - a definition which worked until the point someone realised it's possible to make an embryo without any sperm. The act has now been ammended to correct this mistake.

Some Americans are failing to learn from the mistake. According to the FRC's email,

North Dakota: Good news, part 2! H.B. 1572, which defines a human being as "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens," is inching closer to becoming law. It now heads to the North Dakota Senate for consideration.

The law is just another pro-life declaration of princible - nothing remarkable about that one now, you see them all the time - but I can see a flaw in which even as a declaration of princible the writers have shot themselves in the foot. As soon as some scientist starts experimenting with transgenics or makes an attempt at solving the egg shortage issue by inserting a human nuclear DNA into an animal egg, there will exist an embryo which, according to this legally-binding definition, is not human.

In unrelated news, the FRC email also brings this interesting account:

New Hampshire: After defeating the same-sex "marriage" bill on the House floor yesterday by one vote, supporters of the legislation called for a sudden re-vote. In a stunning turn of events, several legislators abruptly reconsidered their position and passed H.B. 436 by 186-179.

Such an abrupt change suggests that the legislators were doing exactly as politicians can be expected to do: Voting with what they anticipated the outcome to be anyway, in order to be part of the majority regardless of their actual position.

2009-03-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

Teens being teens, fearmongers being fearmongers.

Maybe it's just the natural tendency to see patterns in randomness, or maybe it's an example of reporting bias, but it often seems that news comes in bursts - something happens, and similar things shortly follow.

A recent discussion on digg covers an event becoming increasingly common: Teens facing child pornography charges for sending pictures of themselves in various states of undress to their teen partners.

I understand why this is happening. It's a combination of string anti-child-porn laws that were written by people who couldn't imagine any minor could voluntarily have a naked(ish) photo taken and people in politics or law enforcement who are motivated by a combination of old-fashioned prudishness and a desire to win the anti-sex vote in varying ratio.

In the above case, the individual on which most blame can fall is Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick, the prosecutor who made the decision to persue legal action instead of something reasonable like, for example, telling their parents. He also gets additional abuse-of-power points for using the prosecution as a threat to force the girls in question to take a course which the ACLU describes as a 're-education program' for girls and which even Skumanick describes rather creepily as something to help them 'identify nontraditional societal and job roles.'

Enough on Skumanick the Zealot, and on to example number two. Much the same here - just substitute 'myspace' for 'mobile,' and take out the creepy course and the DA who threatens to put teenagers on the sex offender register if they don't take it. It's becoming a familiar story now: Teen (always a girl - I guess the boys arn't such headline-grabbers) takes some pictures of herself either nude or suggestively posed*, the pictures find their way into circulation, and some overeager person decides to charge them with "possession of child pornography and distribution of child pornography."

I choose this incident because it demonstrates in subtle way the problems posed with applying child porn laws to computer use. A spokesman for the sherrif's office - tis remaining, for now, a entirely local matter - claims that "It is not a crime to view the photos, but it is illegal to download them." An interesting claim, because anyone with some basic knowledge of computers knows that to view is to download - it is impossible to do the former without the latter. I can only assume that the intended meaning is that only posessing the photos is illegal, and the misused word is a consequence of poor computer literacy in the sherrifs office, but even this doesn't work: Any computer that views the photos also posesses them, stored in the browser's cache.

These is no solution for this problem. Teenagers certinly arn't going to stop showing around pictures of themselves - they are, by definition, immature, and this unfortunatly is the time when they are coping with a sex drive higher than most adults. The law can't be altered - to make laws against child pornography less strict is just not politically viable. No matter how sensible an idea it may be, it could destroy a career to just attempt it. Prosecutors arn't going to stop so long as there are votes to gain, power to grab and a personal agenda to push. So this will just have to continue - teens will do what you can expect teens with cameras to do, a lot of them will get a stern telling-off from parents or teachers, and every now and again someone will try to put on a vote-winning demonstration of how dedicated they are to protecting the children by ruining a few random victim's lives to make an example of them.

The best that can be hoped for is that teens posting nude photos will become such a common occurance that any attempts to enforce the law will stop. It will become such a common crime it'll just be ignored.

* Obviously I can't say just how suggestively, or how nude - these photos are never made available for the general public to inspect and judge themselves.

2009-03-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

Post-scandal Bristol Palin.

The Palin family's time in the spotlight drew to a close, thankfully, shortly after the presidential election. As Sarah fades into obscurity once again, one last scandle bubbles up to mark her departure.

Sarah chose to make her family a part of her campaign. Her purpose was to appeal to the religious demographic, and key to that was her ability to not just speak out on pro-life views and traditional views of the ideal family, but to demonstrate her ability to live them. This she did with a son suffering Down's Syndrome, and with the story of her daughter.

The daughter was a skillful save. When Bristol, unmarried, became pregnant this could have been a serious threat to Palin's reputation with a demographic that considers it almost a form of abuse to allow one's daughter to have premarital sex - but Sarah turned it into a triumph. By embracing the pregnency she scored pro-life points, and when she got the husband to pledge marriage she demonstrated that he was not, as people had believed, another scumbag who couldn't keep it in his pants but a dedicated and mature man willing to give his life to Bristol and devote himself to raising their accidential, but certinly not unwanted, child.

As the BBC reports, In December, Mrs Palin said that her daughter and Mr Johnston were "committed to accomplish what millions of other young parents have accomplished, to provide a loving and secure environment for their child." What a charmingly sweet image of family life.

Many at the time did suspect that this was a lie - that he had been pressured into marriage by Palin and her political advisors. The whole 'perfect marriage' might be just an act, put on for the aid of Palin's career.

Unfortunatly for Bristol, they were right.

After the election, it took less than five months for the relationship to fall apart. I say 'less than,' because Mr Johnston told Associated Press (AP) that the couple had mutually decided "a while ago" to end their three-year relationship. An unspecified delay exists between the decision to split and the announcement, a delay possibly to allow Sarah to fade from the news so the breakup wouldn't impact her career so severely.

Interestingly, Bristol Palin said in an interview with Fox News last month that Mr Johnston saw the baby every day and described him as a "hands-on" father. This means that either "a while ago" means less than one month, or that Bristol was lying in that interview. I find it hard to accept a three-year relationship could crumble from perfect to breakup in such a short time, so I'm leaning towards her lying.

This, I hope, will be the last of it. Palin is back in Alyaska, and I hope she never returns to the national stage or headlines again. Sarah the Scandelous has accumulated a ridiculous amount of dirt already.

2009-03-05T03:22:00.000-08:00

A lie too far.

WND provides a good example of the thoughts of the rabid pro-lifers. Not the ordinary pro-lifers, the sensible ones who are capable of debate and reason, but the lunatic fringe of the movement - which, unfortunatly, has somehow come to have far more influence than it's numbers deserve.

One of the flaws of pro-life in general is a strong tendency towards demonisation - such as the article I recently criticised condemning pro-choicers for supporting child porn, or branding George Tiller, one of the very few doctors left in Kansas willing to brave protestors and legal threats to provide abortion services, 'Tiller the Killer.'

Now I have seen what happens when these two intersect. When the lunatic fringe puts some effort into it's demonisation, you get gems of propaganda so extreme I can't believe they could possibly be true. Such as this accusation.

An inadvertent beneficiary of Sebelius' good cheer toward abortionists was Krishna Rajanna, who owned a Topeka chop shop. After it was discovered he kept a filthy mill with evidentiary photographs of a dead mouse in the hall and aborted babies in the refrigerator, the latter which staffers said they saw Rajanna eating in soup, legislators introduced clinic regulation legislation. Sebelius vetoed that twice.

A dirty clinic I could believe. Some doctors are negligent, that's just unavoidable. But... turning fetuses into soup? A little checking is involved here.

I can find *no* serious news site reporting on the soup incident. I can find blogs screaming about it, linking to other blogs, but I can't find anywhere the story seems to have origionated. In addition, some of the reports refer to 'a' coworker, singular, so the tale may have been growing in the telling. Nowhere can I find a name of the accuser.

Krishna Rajanna I can find information on: What WND fails to admit is that his clinics was declared unsanitary and closer and his medical licence revoked, all without those pieces of legislation they mentioned.

In addition to this, I note that I've never heard of this before. If it had happened, it would undoubtably have been such a massive outcry I could not possibly have missed it - it wouldn't just have been in the blog news, it'd have been headline news on TV all over the world. A fetus-eating doctor is just more than any news service could resist.

So I can only conclude that WND, in their eagerness to demonise, is publishing a claim based only on rumors so outlandish I find it amazing anyone could believe them without any attempt to determine if it holds any truth.

Swy81, commenter in one of the places I went while researching, has a much briefer conclusion:

"I have a feeling this story is complete bullish. It's nowhere to be found on any major news website or anything. This is about real as those chinese restaurants which supposedly had packaged rats in their freezers. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:"

EDIT: Jill Stanek from ProLifeBlogs found the best evidence so far - the Lawrence Journal has the only non-blog reference:

In a police statement taken during a theft investigation at the clinic, an employee who was a suspect in the fraud told police that Rajanna had been seen putting a fetus in the microwave and stirring it in his lunch.

I still wouldn't consider that a reliable source - it gives the impression of someone trying to throw their boss to the prosecution in order to save themselves - but at least it's a source for the origin of the rumors. Maybe Rajanna, for some reason I cannot imagine, did try eating a fetus. It's impossible to say conclusively either way.

Even if this accusation is true, I can still accuse WND of lying - they said that 'staffers' witnessed the fetus-eating, while Stanek's research finds only one staffer made the accusation.

2009-02-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

Someone needs a mirror.

ProLifeBlogs demonstrates a complete lack of self-analytical ability.

Anti-life organizations incessantly portray pro-life and pro-family activists as radical, right-wing, woman-hating, clinic-bombing, Bible-thumping nuts. ... See, the thing is, pro-aborts do not 'convert' people to be pro-abortion. They assimilate. They target kids who are still in school and inundate their world with false stereotypes of the angry anti-choice extremists and the big, brave, beautiful pro-choicers.

Serious accusations, indeed. But at the same time as PLB accuses pro-choicers of demonising pro-lifers, they also say this:

Aside from simply being bitter, ignorant, domineering bullies, there is a reason why this false façade is being carefully crafted and propagated. ... The group that supports pedophilia, the Chinese forced-abortion program, child pornography and third-trimester partial-birth abortions for convenience have successfully labeled individuals who oppose child murder as the extremists! These are the same psychos who view little old ladies with rosary beads outside of abortion clinics as 'scary'.

As I read this, it looks like while ProLifeBlogs accuses pro-choicers of lieing and exagerating to make pro-lifers look like monsters, they are doing exactly the same thing in return by claiming that all pro-choicers support child pornography and forced abortion.

I'm not sure where they pulled the child porn association from, other than that it's standard procedure in online debates today to accuse your opponent of supporting child porn.

The whole article continues this trend. At times it can even make the accusation in the very same sentence in which it uses the same technique:

While we're off playing nice, groups like Planned Parenthood continue to systematically attack, slander and smear the image of lifers - all the while innocent children nationwide are being killed in nazi-esque assembly lines.

2009-02-19T06:04:00.000-08:00

In a previous post I invented the term pulling an AFA to describe the practice of quoteing a poll or study while deliberatly ommiting any information which could cast doubt on it's accuracy. I've caught another group at it. This time the organisation is not the AFA, but the FRC, in one of their newsletter emails:

On the heels of a U.K. study that found teenagers spend two hours a week watching pornography, FRC's Dr. Pat Fagan uncovered some important research that may help parents protect their kids from the X-rated culture.

I can only assume this to be the same study that I already criticised here, pointing out that it was conducted by a company that sells home porn-filter software. I would also call it a 'study' only loosely, considering that it has undergone no form of review and was not published by any respected journal, but instead released to the tabloid media.

None of which I see the FRC explaining when they quote the statistic they want.

2009-02-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

Alfie Patten, aged thirteen, is now a father.

I'm not going to criticise him here, because he does not fit the criteria - his stupidity can be excused by age, and nothing he did was done in the name or morality. He comes across as naive, but only due to his age.

I can, however, criticise a lot of people who surround this incident.

First up is Chantelle Steadman, the girlfriend who he managed to knock up. She was fourteen, an age at which anyone of reasonable intelligence should at least have learned that sex makes babies. That's what we have sex ed for.

The two get a collective statement of moronality for this:

They found out about the baby when Chantelle was 12 weeks pregnant.

But they kept it a secret until six weeks later when Chantelle’s mum Penny, 38, became suspicious about her weight gain and confronted her.

“We didn’t think we would need help from our parents. You don’t really think about that when you find out you are pregnant. You just think your parents will kill you.”

Pregnant at fourteen? Keep it a secret from your parents, and it'll all work out in the end!

The way to make it work is through blind optimism:

“I’ll be a great mum and Alfie will be a great dad.”

Neither of the two have any job, or have completed school - and their education will suffer. They are entirely dependant on their parents, who do not sound like the most financially well off of people.

Chantelle and Maisie were released from hospital yesterday. They are living with Penny, Chantelle’s jobless dad Steve, 43, and her five brothers in a rented council house in Eastbourne. The family live on benefits. Alfie, who lives on an estate across town with mum Nicola, 43, spends most of his time at the Steadmans’ house.

No they have no income of their own, barely any income leeched from others, no employment prospects for some years and little after that - and see, they intend to raise this baby on the power of love alone. In the words of Chantelle's mother:

“I told her it was lovely to have the baby but I wish it was in different circumstances. We have five children already so it’s a big financial responsibility. But we are a family and will pull together and get through.

“She’s my daughter. I love her and she will want for nothing.”

And how is she to want for nothing, when there is so little income? Just pull together and it'll work, somehow? Don't ask how.

The possibility of adoption, a very sensible choice, isn't even mentioned in the Sun article. It's a very good idea, but if the couple or their parents have even considered it, it's clear they decided otherwise. For, I have no doubt, equally soppy and emotional reasons probably involving their fantasy of love and hope being magically transmuted into hard cash.

That's them done. Next is the Sun's token Christian commenter, "Michaela Aston, of the anti-abortion Christian charity LIFE." A textbook example of who this blog was made to mock, for making comments like this:

“At the same time this is symptomatic of the over-sexualisation of our youngsters and shows the policy of value-free sex education just isn’t working.”

Firstly, it shows that she is extrapolating from a sample size of two. One pregnancy, as far as she is concerned, is representative of the entire country. Secondly, he was twelve and she fourteen at the time - which means they havn't had a whole lot of that 'value-free' sex education. I can't remember what I was taught at twelve, but I don't think I 'officially' even got the 'penis goes in here' bit until some years later. And thirdly, according to the inconveniently fertile boy's own father, “I will talk to him again and it will be the birds and the bees talk. Some may say it’s too late but he needs to understand so there is not another baby.” Which means he hasn't had the birds-and-bees talk, which means he hasn't had any sex education at all!

Aston demonstrates the ease of jumping to a desired conclusion without any need to justify the route taken.

2009-02-12T05:41:00.000-08:00

More dodgy stats.

Two accounts of the same story hit the Digg fron page recently, one from the Daily Mail and one from TechRadar. This isn't another media comparison, they say more or less the same.

Teens spend average of 87 hours a year looking at porn online boast the headlines. Both accounts are free of the general fearmongering tht appears whenever sex and under-eighteens approach together, much to my surprise. I have no doubt that much of this will appear when the blogosphere gets to work.

However, an important factor is being overlooked here: These figures are worthless. Because, according to both accounts:

The research was conducted by CyberSentinel.co.uk, a computer software that enables parents to block websites and monitor use of the internet.

The figures that show teens are looking at large amounts of porn (as well as various other sites that parents may disapprove of) are produced by a company that sells software for parents to monitor and block their childrens' internet access. This is a clear conflict of interest: The greater the fear, the greater the sales. Even though CyberSentinel contracted out most of the work to a research organisation, this still means that the figures are completly untrustworthy. Worthless. Very possibly outright lies, and more likely than not constructed from a biased sample.

2009-01-30T18:13:00.000-08:00

PETA once again has a hilariously ineffective advertising campaign. Though not so offensive as their tradition of comparing meat production to the holocaust, the 'Save the Sea Kittens' idea is so terrible it becomes funny. As PETA explains:

People don't seem to like fish. They're slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least. Plus, the small ones nibble at your feet when you're swimming, and the big ones—well, the big ones will bite your face off if Jaws is anything to go by.

Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You've done enough damage, buddy. We've got it from here. And we're going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it's time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

I think the strangest of all the sections is Sea Kitten Stories. I can't describe why, you'll have to read it yourself.

2009-01-29T07:54:00.000-08:00

Youtube, nudity, and British humour.

A video has been making the rounds of the internet lately. It's not a new video, but it has somehow had a brief return to fame in my small social group. Three and a half minutes long, a short piece of comedy. It's titled 'A Heap of Trouble,' though has also become known as 'Nine Naked Men.'

It could probably be deconstructed, and turned into a criticism of social rules, but as with any good comedy you don't need to analyse it to find it funny. It just is funny, in a way that can only be properly described as 'absurdly British.'

The circulating link was to youtube, until the video was pulled for a 'terms of service violation.' The reason is clear enough: The video contains nudity. The nudity is part of the humor. It's not pornographic nudity. It's silly nudity. In a way, it's making fun of the way people will overreact to nudity.

Ironic then that the very overreaction it's making fun of is the reason the video was pulled. I know youtube lacks the resources to inspect it's own videos, and so relies on community reports - which means that, even though viewers were shown a warning about mature content before looking, enough people must have clicked the 'report' button to have the video pulled. All those people who obviously believe that the sight of a few naked men - and not even naked men doing anything sexual - must not be tolerated, and such such views should be purged from the internet.

Those are the moral morons I am complaining about today. This is also a rare chance though - usually my grumbling can achieve nothing, but today I can spite those self-appointed guardians of the eyes of the internet by distributing a link to another copy of the very video they demanded be pulled.

It's available as embedded quicktime on the maker's own website. However, I found this video wouldn't work for me, as I lack the appropriate plugin. Rather than mess around with quicktime updates, it'll probably be easier to just download the .mov file itsself and open that in videolan.

It should go without saying that the above links are NSFW.

This video is, in it's rather strange way, funny. It's a video that deserves to be seen. I see no reason such a video should be forbidden.

2009-01-26T08:12:00.000-08:00

I like to sometimes highlight individual idiots because I find them to be representative of a larger subset. While the person I pick may be insignificent, they serve as an example of a common viewpoint. So I bring you quackmire, from Digg, for this comment:

If this guy where heterosexual he'd be gone NOW. In some states he'd also be in jail.

I think this illustrates one big problem that the gay community wants everyone to overlook when it comes to homosexuality as a political issue. That is that most homosexual men are in fact pedophiles.

This is an issue that should be heavily studied and then brought up each and every time homosexual activist try to force gay marriage, gays in the militay and gay clergy upon us.

As for the mayor of porland goes. Do you know what Sam stands for?

Sexual Assault on a Minor.

I see one slight problem with this. Quack complains here that the mayor of portland sexually abused a minor, thus proving that all gay people are pedophiles. Putting aside the issue of extrapolating from an undersized and biased sample, this means that Quack must be extremally selective in his reading - for this is a comment on this article, which presumably Quack must have read if he posessed even a shread of intellectual honesty, and which clearly states:

Mayor Sam Adams publicly apologized this past week for lying early in his campaign about the relationship with an 18-year-old man in 2005.

Not only was the 'minor' to which Quack refered on the right side of puberty by a safe margin, but on the right side of the law as well. Quack wasted his post accusing a mayor of being a pedophile when the very article he was commenting on clearly states that this is not true.

I see only three explanations for this:
1. Quack has the reading comprehension skills of a primary school pupil.
2. Quack commented on an article he didn't actually read.
3. Quack deliberatly lied in order to create the false impression that all gays are child-molesters.

It it a tactic I recognise well though - the word association trick. The objective is to bring up the subject of pedophilia every time homosexuality is mentioned in public - repeat it, associate them, connect them. Lieing isn't needed, though it helps. Create the link in the minds of the readers, until every time they see the word 'gay' they will think of pedophiles and their immediate hate and disgust will be transfered. It's a dirty, manipulative, dishonest and underhanded trick - and it works very well, because even by explaining how it works I have further glued the two together in the minds of my readers.

2009-01-21T04:40:00.000-08:00

WND came up in a discussion on Digg. It appears I am not the only one to produce a list of WND stupidity.

The inaugeration is over, so it's time to check out the right-leaning news sites and see what they have found to take exception too. I notice a lack of comment on his using a bible - a lack I find interesting considering that WND and Anne Coulter both predicted that he would be sworn in on a Koran.

ONN disapoints with it's sanity. Though they have many criticisms of Obama, these are all just basic policy disagreements with him - understandable, and reasonable. They express concern that abstinance funding may be cut, that gays might be allowed in the military, that funding for organisations with ties to abortion may once more be permitted, and so on. They have none of the crazy conspiricy theories that frequent WND.

Speaking of which, WND is not being so uninterestingly sensible. They have some mountains-from-molehills outrage over a minor speakers anti-racist comments as their current headline, the standard lies saying that Obama seeks to imprison christians for speaking against homosexuality, and an entire article dedicated to gloating that Obama mispronounced part of the oath. And, of course, their eternal quest for Obama to release his birth certificate for inspection - a demand they continue to make of him in spite of the fact that he has already done so.

2009-01-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

Good as You tips off the latest AFA Boycott. The AFA holds these quite often - they rarely have any effect, and are barely worth noticing. This one is, because it shows a little about their priorities.

Many people aren't aware that when their school participates in Campbell's "Labels for Education" program they are supporting a company that has openly come out in support of homosexual marriage, and it has no intentions of stopping that support.

"Labels for Education" provides equipment for schools in exchange for proofs of purchase from the family of Campbell's brands.

Many of the schools that participate don't know that Campbell's supports the homosexual publication The Advocate with advertising. The Advocate is a leading promoter of same-sex marriage.
...
Take Action!
* Check to see if your school participates in Campbell's "Labels for Education" program. If so, ask them to stop participating. These labels support a company that openly supports homosexual marriage.
Campbell's labels help support gay marriage [AFA]

I shall just repeat the last paragraph for emphesis:

Check to see if your school participates in Campbell's "Labels for Education" program. If so, ask them to stop participating. These labels support a company that openly supports homosexual marriage.

The AFA - the American Family Association - believes that it's members need to prevent schools from accepting what amount to free educational equipment because it comes from a company that advertised in a gay magazine.

If asked to choose between education and fighting a program run by a company that has some minimal association with a gay publication, education goes out the window.

2009-01-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

Math fail.

By OZme of Digg:

WE CAN DO IT! and so can the US Govt. But first do the math. You'll need a calculator....ooopps! It doesn't have enough zeros. Now keep in mind 40% of the housholds don't pay any income tax and there are 3 Billion people ( and about 170 billion housholds ) so figure on a liberal 140 billion taxpaying housholds. You can do the math any way you like. NOW how to pay it back? EZ
Release and sell some of the strategic oil reserves so this way the noney FLOWS BACK to USA instead of overseas countries. If they did this last year USA would be very rich at $140 a barrel and it would have kept oil prices a tad lower.
NEXT US Govt owns the most part of California ocean front property.This is the most expensive property in the world! They can sell part of it and make near a trillion or might be 2 trillion
Just business sense

Those numbers sound a little unreliable...

2009-01-04T17:58:00.000-08:00

No headlines this time.

I know there have been lots of moral idiots in the news recently - but they are all high-profile. My two readers must have heard of them by now. Instead, have a low-profile bit of moronality: Whoever censored the film I recently watched.

I know it was censored, and not very well. Gaps in the audio, moments of silence while lips continued moving and context made swearing implicit. In one case the silence came a moment too late, allowing a character to state that the monsters of the film take 'a shi--- bullets to die,' with the interval perfect for 'a shitload of' to fit.

The film was a generic vampire film. It involved impalings, shooting, decapitation, enough blood to fill a swimming pool, several throats being bitten open, and all the other expected parts of a good gore-fest. During the more personal fights, characters beat each other up with weapons from bare hands to metal rods.

But there was no swearing. That was silenced out.

2008-12-25T05:26:00.000-08:00

Compare three stories.

I know I said I wouldn't cover the War on Christmas, but this incident offers an insight into the functioning of media too. It's a simple enough story - a women is fired from her retail position, and claims it's because she refused to say 'happy holidays' due her her religious belief. The employer denies this is the cause.

Given the basic outline, read it from three sources.

- The liberal-leaning NWF Daily News.
- The conservative-leaning Fox News.
- the conservative-to-an-extreme One News Now.

The political progression is clear:

NWF is rather clear in reporting the employers side, complete with their accusations that the woman is lying and the legal brief is inaccurate. Note details such as the 'claimed' in the headline. Note also that this is the only one of the three news sources to mention this:

Andy Phillips, president of Counts-Oakes Resorts Properties Inc., told The News Herald Thomas wasn't fired for saying "Merry Christmas," but for several episodes of insubordination and "gross misconduct."

Thomas, he added, is "a disgruntled employee," and both she and the legal group representing her are presenting a one-sided version of what happened when she was fired.

Now compare to the conservative, but not fanatically so, Fox News. It's almost the same. The employers side is once more presented, but now in a shortened and less detailed form. The woman gets a higher proportion of the words.

Finally, the extremally conservative One News Now. While the other two organisations at least made an attempt to be neutral, avoided judging who is in the right and presented both sides, One News Now is quite open in taking sides.

It starts with the headline. Both NWF and Fox said in the headlines that the woman 'claimed' to have been fired as a result of refusing to say Happy Holidays, and were careful never to report her story as either true or false. ONN's headline is simple, direct, and one-sided: "Christian employee refuses to secularize Christmas, gets fired." Her version is repeated as pure fact, undisputed, uncountered. Not a single word is given to the employer.

2008-12-25T04:42:00.000-08:00

Today's moronality is going to be anything except the War on Christmas. I'm sure everyone is quite sick of hearing about that one now.

So for now the Amish shall provide.

Amish people in several American towns are having problems complying with local building codes.

The Amish often shun society, the government, and modern societal norms. When building their homes, they often lack building permits and clash with town ordinances. Eighteen legal actions have been filed in Wisconsin and New York in the past year-and-a-half for building without proper permits.

I'm not surprised about a few conflicts with building codes. As the article explains, the codes are written on the assumption that buildings will be supplied with electricity, water and a sewer connection - Amish construction just doesn't fit the framework.

I was not previously aware that the Amish refuse to get building permits. I know of a few churches that do this, out of a refusal to recognise any earthly authority, but this is the first I heard of similar views in the Amish community.

This looks like the latest variation on a common theme. A religious group finds a conflict between their faith and the secular laws of the state in which they live. The usual result of this occurance is for the religious group to declare that they must be above the law in the name of religious freedom, the case goes to court, and the court could go either way depending on the popularity and significence of the law being violated.

Considering the Becket Fund is providing legal support, I expect that to be the chain of events to occur in this case.

2008-12-21T04:20:00.000-08:00

The nazi parents.

I don't try to update this blog with breaking news. I instead wait until a story is over, the speculation complete. This means that when I report some piece of news, it's already widely-known.

So I shouldn't need to explain much about the Campbell family. Heath and Deborah Campbell, and their children Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell.

For once, it's acceptable to call the families Nazis. They really are, and named their children accordingly. Three years later, they find a shop refusing to write 'Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler' on a cake and, like the stereotypical American, they sue.

I'll expect to hear from them again in a few years, when Adolf starts school.

2008-12-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

There are some people who are just so obviously incapable of thought I cannot resist taunting them. I've been following this Digg user for a while, pointing out all the times they act like an idiot. This is a typical post from her:

@Suricou, lets general lize you now, your a Pro-Gay Agenda spokes person who will hear no other side, your for Abortion killing of Children, you Hate anyone who stands for any Moral grounds, your Anti-God unless God fits into your lifestyle, your against Families teaching their children about Godly ways and having Good Moral backgrounds. So that about covers it really. Obama will he has enough problems already before he gets into office with this scandal in his home state of Illinois, the scope of this investigation may show Obama has something to do with this selling of his seat to Jesse Jackson Jr, or others. Obamas Birth Certificate also maybe revealed before he takes office and will show he is not a American Citizen. Bush might say to all of you Obama kool-aides "If the SHOE fits wear it'' and sorry Iraq will do better that BUSH took the chance to liberate Millions from death, at the hands of Saddam and all of you who wished Saddam was still in power killing his own people,you are just losers....

- Hope4God from Digg.

It's almost perfect... the one flaw is that she forgot to say Obama is secretly a muslim. She has said that in other posts, but it would have been the cherry on top of this rambling nonsense if she had remembered it.

It wouldn't be fair to judge someone by just one post though, so have some more recent examples:

he guy who threw the shoe was probably a Saddam loyalists, who didnt like the fact that BUSH got rid of a murderer like Saddam, you people need to wake up and see some of the posts here from Liberal band wagon hate America crowds (Goons) who just cant stand America, but have no where else to go because they suck....if an American reporter did that to a Muslim Pres oh the same goof crowd would be condeming it, your all fake that you care about America, Thats the truth you want to believe the Media and The Libs that Americas always wrong.

---

So you would rather see the Saddam murdering machine to continue then, wow your such a catch..................

---

I dont see the humor of someone insulting a sitting President and with the Iraqi people as a whole are better off now not being murdered by a ruthless person dead Saddam anymore I think that person who threw the shoe liked it the old way when Saddam would kill anyone who dared to say anything

---

@Lumpastradum-az, you feel the need to bag on Bush and support attacks against a sitting President, regardless of how you feel he has handled the war is what i am getting at dork....try growing some brains and be smarter I know its hard but try. As far as your statements, Liberals and fear mongers like yourself who cant stand that Iraq is better off sorry dude Iraq is better off then it was when Saddam ran it and murdered people, but that was ok with you dork....

---

@Lady, I disagree with your assumption of 1Million died because of BUSH, did you know that Saddam in his what 30 years there in IRAQ has probably killed 20 Million? Children, and Woman and men I guess you give Saddam a pass now that's stupid imop. Bush did something based on intelligence reports, same ones Democrats got, you know Clinton, Kerry, and other higher Democrats and they ALL agreed Saddam was a threat what 17 UN and other requests for inspections per Desert Storm1 agreement signed by Saddam to comply, I guess you thought like Saddam we were all kidding? and what about the threats Saddam was making in public that he had Weapons of Mass Destruction? again I guess we all should have said he is kidding...ha ha ha.......face it BOTH parties were wrong and after 9-11 Saddam only made things worse by his threats. Easy for you and others to second guess BUSH but based on the imfo he got he did what he had to do, any new attacks on the US since 9-11? I rest my case. Obama now you will get what you want Obama will appease The Muslims who hate America, bring America down further, bankrupt Capitalism and have Big Brother govt in everything, and we will probably be attacked again like VP Biden says we will at least Bidens being honest, he knows Obamas not ready for this job..................

---

What? your happy President BUSH was attacked? your a unAmerican creep please feel free to leave the US asap we don't need your unneeded services to this country and disrespect for America.

---

@jdarkling, you are the worst person on this posts, your a foul mouth no talent hater of America and Freedom, you liked it when Saddam murdered and raped women you had no problem with that your a complete embarassment I hope you never are called upon to protect anyone, because we all know what you would do crawl into a hole and hide like the PUNK you are. Loseerrr.............

---

@77, your a dork Millions of Iraqi love the US for it did, you just are a hater of Freedom and America.

---

And one very stupid brain..........typical Muslim nut case wonder why he is so mad? maybe because people who desire Freedom, then Bush brought it and got rid of a mass murderer like Saddam, maybe this dork liked it the old way you know rape, murder, helping terrorists attack US and Western countries.........he should have been shot.

2008-12-13T07:52:00.000-08:00

Selective reporting.

The ACLU is currently defending the rights of a preacher in jail. This is a bit of a problem for social conservatives - having spent many years demonising the ACLU as some sort of christ-hating communist oppressive monster, how are they supposed to react when it actually takes their side.

Easy. They don't. This story is dated the 9th, plenty of time to respond, and yet...

The story is not mentioned on Fox News.
It's not mentioned on OneNewsNow.
It's not mentioned on WorldNutDaily, though they do have a story about how the ACLU is trying to ban the bible.
It's not in the FRCs newsletter, or on their blog, both of which are talking of how the ACLU is trying to ban Christmas.

This is why many conservatives consider the ACLU to be the embodyment of all evil - because conservative media shouts loud every time the ACLU even hints at something they disapprove of, but on the times when it does something they would like the only response is silence.

2008-12-09T06:06:00.001-08:00

Post the Third.

This one is a quickie.

Tax-exempt status denied for televangelist's jet

An appraisal review board in Fort Worth, Texas, has ruled that Kenneth Copeland Ministries' $3.6 million jet does not have tax-exempt status.

The Tarrant appraisal district denied a protest filed by the televangelist's attorneys because the ministry refused to release salaries of its directors, including Copeland, his wife and other ministers.

Copeland's lawyers say the ministry, also known as Eagle Mountain International Church, will consider its legal options.

Copeland is among six large televangelists whose organizations are targets of a Senate Finance Committee investigation into allegations of questionable spending and lax financial accountability.

One fact that ONN ommits here may be of interest. Copeland's ministry does not own a private jet. It owns three private jets.

Not satisfied with making such a huge amount of money that he refuses to disclose how much, he is still trying to play the system in order to avoid paying taxes on his private jet. Dispite being under investigation for abuseing his tax-exempt status.

The ministry has words of warning for all those who might dare to infringe their religious freedom by asking them to pay their fair share of the tax burden though:

They add that revealing ministers' salaries should be a concern to
all churches.

Exactly why is this the case? What is it ministers have to hide? Why should this be a concern? The only possible reason I can see for a minister to be concerned about revealing his salary is if he makes such an obscene amount it would be a scandal were people to discover where their donations are going.

But, we must not question him - for he is a good Christian minister, and so his ethics are infallable. To so much as suggest he may be exploiting the tax system or his followers to live a life of luxury tax-free is a brutal assault on freedom of religion, demonstrating my deep hate for Christians and desire to jail them all.

To give some idea of how corrupt this minister is:

The Church provides a parsonage to Kenneth and Gloria Copeland to reside in. In addition to being a residence for the church's senior pastors, it is also used to host visiting ministers, Board members, and Church partners. The parsonage is owned by the Church; neither the Copelands nor any other individual has any ownership interest in the parsonage. - Copeland's own website, created to rally opposition to financial accountability.

He doesn't own a house. His ministry owns his house. His fully tax-exempt ministry. He is so great a tax weasel, he has his ministry own his home so he need pay no taxes on it.

2008-12-09T05:32:00.001-08:00

ONN, Part Two.

Two posts in one day. After my previous entry criticising ONN's article/advertisment, it's now time to condemn someone else they are promoting - The documentory "Not Evil Just Wrong" made by 'filmmaker' Ann McElhinney. If ONN is going to put scare-quotes around the words 'global warming' whenever they appear, I can put scare-quotes around 'filmmaker' for reasons that I shall elaborate on shortly.

I havn't seen this 'documentory' (Oh, those wonderful scare-quotes!), so I can only condemn it based on McElhiney's statements to ONN. These statements are quite sufficient to condemn it. I am imagining that NEJW is to climatology as Expelled is to biology.

"But one of the very interesting things he says is if the world did get slightly warmer, which is by the way the only thing that they [global warming alarmists] are ever talking about, I mean the kind of amounts of heating they are talking about, even if it did happen, is very, very small."

This makes sense, in a way. To one not familiar with the debate, it would seem that a change of a few degrees doesn't matter. This shows that McHlhiney is no expert in the field, because she is simplifying so such a huge extent that the truth is lost. I don't know how to interpret climate models, but I do understand that it's a hugely complex system - and I would rather listen to those scientists who ONN describes as 'alarmists' then to a filmmaker.

As a filmmaker, she has made a single film in the past - a film that calls into question her motivation for making this one. It's full title is Mine Your Own Business: A Documentary About the Dark Side of Environmentalism. According to Wikipedia, "The movie portrays western environmentalists as wealthy elites who are working counter to the interests of the local people." So, her one past project is a one-sided attack on environmentalism.

She mentions that one of the contributors to the film is Patrick Moore, a founding member of GreenPeace. McElhinney notes that he has since left GreenPeace because the organization has an anti-human, anti-science agenda.

Ohh, nice attack! Notice it's not 'because Moore believes' or 'moore claims' that Greenpeace has an anti-human, anti-science agenda. It's just given as a stated fact. Arguably a true fact - Greenpeace has been largely taken over by extremists - but ONN should have at least had the decency not to just present it unquestioned. His departure was a bit more complicated than that, too - a lawsuit was involved.

Enough on McHlhiney - I don't want to make this one big ad hom, so I should criticise some of her other ridiculous arguments.

It would be a good thing because ice and cold is the enemy of life. And where you have ice and where you have cold you have no biodiversity. And when temperature rises, even slightly, you have a great burgeoning of biodiversity."

Oh, where to start. "Ice and cold is the enemy of life"? Perhaps she would like to go for a camping trip in the Sahara and find out the problem with that first hand? It's just some vague, meaninless statement. Her claim on biodiversity may hold some truth, but once more it's simplifying to the point I imagine her reading from a textbook made with chew-resistant plastic pages. A rise in global temperature would also result in the expansion of very un-diverse deserts and a reduction in icey habitats.

"With biodiversity, McElhinney says a person can feed the world."

How? This statement is a flat-out lie. It would be true in a hunter-gatherer society - but by far the highest food production per area comes from intensive farming, which uses possibly the *least* biodiverse approach possible. One field, one species. Anything else there is a pest or a weed, with the exception of bees. Her 'science' is a few millenia out of date.

"For example, in Britain in a very severe winter, up to 20,000 people die of the cold. But that number is much, much less in [hotter weather]."

Now she is just being silly. Firstly, because she is deliberatly ignoring the effect of hot weather on deaths - the 2003 heatwave killed 2100 deaths in the UK, 3000 in italy, 4000 in spain, 14,800 in France, and a lot more for which no figures are available. It also caused a 10% fall in EU wheat harvest.

Besides that, she is also completly wrong about how climate change works. It's not a uniform rise. Some places will get much hotter, some will get colder. Some wetter, some dryer. Britian might even get a lot colder due to a reduction in the Gulf Stream, the ocean current that brings equatorial warm water up to a country which sits at roughly the latitude of Moscow. Then there is the effect of the flooding, and the increased frequency of hurricanes... Hurricanes can only form and remain stable over a warm body of water. More warm water means more hurricanes. It also means more evaporation and so more rainfall in many places - mostly wet places already - while conversely increased evaporation can also make dry places dryer. In a worst-case scenario, that means agricultural collapse and mass starvation.

This is why the term 'global warming' has been largely superceeded by 'global climate change.' It's misleading to claim everywhere gets a little hotter.

Floods, droughts, hurricanes and famine... but at least fewer people will freeze to death.

All of her claims are based either on meaningless statements, complete lies, or the false assumption that a global rise of n degrees only results in everywhere growing n degrees hotter than it would be otherwise. She has no idea what she is talking about.

But her 'documentory' will still be popular with the large crowd that wishes to believe all environementalists are human-hating mudhutters. Which is why it's being promoted by ONN.

2008-12-09T05:12:00.000-08:00

Another One News Now.

While ONN does not decend into the depths of insanity which WorldNutDaily resides in, it still has it's moments. This week it has two of them.

The first is an article titled The worst video games your kids may be playing.

An organization that conducts research on publicly traded companies has released a list of the most violent and sexually explicit video games.

Nothing worthy of my attention in there - articles worrying about the effects of video games are commonplace, and their concern has sufficient merit that it deserves at least a fair consideration. However, it goes on...

The Timothy Plan is a pro-life, pro-family mutual fund group, which only invests in family-friendly companies. Recently, The Timothy Plan released a report detailing the content of some of the most popular video games on the market this Christmas season.

Ah, now this sets off suspicion! What ONN initially describes as "An organization that conducts research" is, in fact, a mutual fund group. Which only invests in 'family-friendly' companies. That is, a group which stands to profit financially from people who worry their current mutual fund might be going to produce suggestive games. Never a good sign, 'research' done by a group that profits from the outcome they reach.

Even if parents do not allow their children to play the controversial games, Ally points out they could still be supporting the manufacturers through mutual fund plans.

The article reads like an advertisment. 'If you don't want your money to destroy children, invest it with us!'

When it comes to the actual report, it's nothing unexpected. GTA, Manhunt, some lesser-known violent games. The standard titles for condemning gaming in general. The only entry on the list that surprises me is Bioshock - a violent game to be sure, but not espicially so. Reading their description, it appears they consider it as promoting illegal drug use and the murder of children - suggesting that possibly they don't actually play these games before reviewing them. I have played it - the drugs they mention are responsible for destroying the city and turning it's inhabitants into mindless monsters, and killing the children will change the outcome to one considerably less pleasant. Strangely, they also criticise it for 'sexual themes' because at one point the enterance to a stip club is visible. It can't be entered.

More ONN strangeness coming soon.

2008-12-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

Straw Man Time.

Today's demonstration of moronality comes from the commenters of ProLifeBlogs. Take a look, for example, at this article's comments. Ignore the article itsself - I could try to explain it's flaws, but that would take hours of evaluating assorted studies in a field that I have no more experience in than ProLifeBlogs, so it's best avoided. Skip to the comments.

Comment number one: Bring on the racism:

Interesting, are you saying that you agree with African Patriarchy; that women should spread their legs and allow every single man who wants to fornicate and spread his seed, like most black women do; and we should aim for a world population of say 40 billion (or would you prefer more??) [In Afrika such 'fucking anything that moves, to breed unwanted, hated, unloved, destitute children is called 'love']

Comment two: Straw man, and a hint of conspiricy:

Lara, it's the Pill-pushers who are telling women that they belong on their backs with their knees in the air. If women got off their backs, abortion sales would go WAAAY down.

Comment three: Stuff in more straw:

. Women are being trained that sex is no big deal and condom prevent most of the problem. There appears to be no moral dilemma for men and women having random sex when in fact many of them suffer the consequences of poor self-esteem.

So... 'pill-pushers' (Advocates of contraception) are trying to oppress women by turning them into breeding slaves just like black people do? I'm lost.

And if I quote-mine some other threads:

Irony, parodox, hypocracy, schizophrenia or just a plain diabolical nature? Almost all of the animal rights advocates(of which I am one) are pro-abortion. This country is a vast insane asylum.

There is so much straw here, I wonder if they have Rumplestiltskin on their blogging team:

The biggest marketing ploy we can use is to tear down the pro-abort's marketing campaign. Show the "pro-choice" appeal for the lie that it is. Every time the pro-aborts try to stop legislation to prevent coerced or forced abortion, jump up and scream how they are campaigning against a woman's right to choose--to give birth.

So, exactly whan have 'pro-aborts' ever opposed legislation like that? Oh, it makes more sense if you realise that to someone as extreme in view as that commenter, *every* abortion is coerced - it must be, because there can be no other reason any woman would choose it. No woman could possibly choose an abortion, therefore every single abortion performed is performed by force.

Ok, here comes the big one! This is by the same commenter as above. And so hilarious do I find this lie, I'm going to use formatting for a change and increase the text size.

Did you know that once a woman enters an abortion clinic to have an abortion, she has no right to change her mind about it? If she tries, there are many clinics that will have none of it. If she tries to leave before the abortion is done, some clinics will gather the clinic staff around to hold her down so that the abortion can continue.

I challenge anyone to find me just one instance of this happening in the US. It apparently doesn't occur to the commenter that if this did happen, charges of assault would probably be pressed at the very least.

It's nice to see that even PLB can't stand to see such obvious lies, as shortly after another commenter calls the bluff:

Where did you get your facts? Never heard of that women were forced to have an abortion. please tell me where this occured.There could be some cases where someone could force an abortion but i don't think this is the practice of the clinics you mentioned . Give me some statistics with source of your facts.

If you want to laugh - the name of the insane one is CeeCee - then you may witness his conspiricy theory here. He is of a type I know well - he will believe any rumor that supports his political view, and if asked for proof or documentation will simply ask people to google.

2008-11-26T11:53:00.000-08:00

Pick your liar:

The violence is nothing new in Orissa, India, where India's Communist Party estimates that more than 500 Christians have been killed by Hindu mobs in Orissa since late August, 12 times more than official government claims of only 40 homicides.

- From the Berean Call newsletter.

I wouldn't trust the government estimates either. Governments lie - that's just what they do. The British government lies, the American government lies, the Australian government lies, and if I can't think of lies from any others it's only because they didn't lie in english.

And why, exactly, would the Communist Party *not* lie in order to make the incumbent government look back?

The Berean call is picking the numbers that they wish to be true. The official estimate doesn't make Christian's look persecuted enough, so they grab numbers from somewhere that looks scarier. They couldn't even go for a respected, international NGO. They went for the figures from the extremally unreliable Communist Party, because they are the ones with the desired lie.

This is also the only time I have seen someone on the social extreme-right (The Berean Call is the ministry of Dave 'UFOs are a gover story for the rapture' Hunt) agree with a communist party.

2008-11-23T10:05:00.001-08:00

Mark Driscoll and his book 'Porn Again Christian'

A few instant highlights:

First, masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.

...

Fourth, masturbation can establish a pattern of laziness. If a single man wants to
have an orgasm, he needs to first become a man and undergo the hard work of courting
and marrying a woman. If a married man wants to have an orgasm, he needs to first
undergo the hard work of loving, leading, and romancing his wife. But, lazy men are
prone to rub one out in the shower each morning rather than undergo the labors usually associated with responsible masculine married life.

My two readers are invited to tear him apart in the comments. It shouldn't be hard. I suggest an ad ridiculum on the second.

The church alone has access to the living water from God’s perfect Word, but largely fails to teach men masculinity in any area, particularly regarding their sexuality.

...

Men who have erotic dreams must first be sure that they are not spending their days filling their minds with images that rattle around their imagination as they dream at night. They should also pray before they sleep each night that God would protect them from the enemy inside of them (their flesh) and the enemy outside of them (the devil).

I also congratulate him on a first - never before have I seen someone quote Ezekiel 23:20 except for entertainment or criticism.

2008-11-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

I'm better than you, except when I am.

There was a time when to be a social conservative meant opposing womens rights and equality - anything that would take them out of their God-ordained position as cook, cleaner and incubator. Today, such open sexism must be concealed to prevent contriversy - but at times it still peeks through.

Good as You mentioned a new brocure on biblical marriage published by Focus on the Family, demonstrating that sometimes no amount of linquistic indirection can hide an oppinion:

Among the different roles assigned to men and women in the Bible, men are assigned the role of leadership. This is true in the church and in the family. This is not a signal of male superiority or of the greater importance of men. It is simply God’s design and assignment of equally valuable roles among spiritually equal beings. Men initiate, women respond.

So men are the leaders. Men are to lead the church. Men are to lead the family. Men initiate, women respond. Oh, but it wouldn't do to suggest that men and women are unequal. No, they are perfectly equal - both have their place. Men decide, women obey. Equality, FotF-style.

A few more highlights:

First, the man should initiate asking the woman out. Whether this means approaching the woman herself or her father or someone filling that role instead of her father, it should be the guy that starts things off. He should not do this until he is “ready” to marry. If you’re not ready to marry, you’re not ready to date.

So, first time lucky? If not, sorry, no divorce allowed.

Part of your role even at this early stage is to protect the woman of your interest from unnecessary risk and vulnerability by providing a safe context in which she can respond.

Women need protecting. Only men can do it.

So your goal should not be to date a girl long enough until you’re confident marriage won’t be hard, but to date her just long enough to discern if you’re willing to love her sacrificially, and if she’s willing to respond to that kind of love.

Rush in, and don't think too hard.

Have you ever heard the fairytale about the princess in shining armor? You know the story. She crosses an ocean, slays a dragon and rescues the man she loves? Wait. You’ve never heard that one? OK, neither have I. Why? Because fairytales are always the other way around — the man fights for the woman. He takes the risks. He battles the beast. He pursues her. Now I realize that fairytales are stereotypical, admittedly even a little sexist. But they do contain a measure of truth. These whimsical tales we learn as children mirror a deep-seated longing in the soul of every man and woman.

'I know this sounds sexist, but all women are wimps who can't do anything without a man to sweep them off their feet.'

Intimate friendships between men and women almost always produce confusion and frustration for at least one of the parties involved. Close friendships by their very nature tend to involve extensive time talking and hanging out one-on-one. They tend to involve a deep knowledge of the other person’s hopes, desires and personality. They tend to involve the sharing of many aspects of each other’s daily lives and routines. In other words, they tend to involve much of the type of intimacy and companionship involved in — and meant for — marriage.

Would you want to date someone knowing that he or she had a significant, pre-existing, and ongoing emotional bond with another single membmber of the opposite sex?

Pornography represents one of the most insidious attacks upon the sanctity of marriage and the goodness of sex within the one-flesh relationship. ... The Christian worldview must direct all consideration of sexuality to the institution of marriage.

Pornography is a slander against the goodness of God’s creation and a corruption of this good gift God has given his creatures out of his own self-giving love. To abuse this gift is to weaken, not only the institution of marriage, but the fabric of civilization itself. To choose lust over love is to debase humanity and to worship the false god Priapus in the most brazen form of modern idolatry.

Priapus? Generic, low-importance fertility god. Not the god of sex.

Paul instructed men to love their wives even as Christ has loved the church. Even as wives are commanded to submit to the authority of their husbands, the husband is called to a far higher standard of Christ-like love and devotion toward the wife.

'Equal! She submits to his authority as an equal!'

Let me give you three reasons why physical intimacy with a woman — at any level — to whom one is not married is potentially fraudulent, dangerous, and just as unacceptable for a man prior to marriage as it is after marriage.

Too often, past physical relationships become impediments in the marriage bed. We do not want a brother standing at the altar on his wedding day looking at his beautiful bride only to imagine behind her the boys and men who took advantage of her and robbed her of the trust and confidence that she now needs for her husband. We do not want a sister standing at the altar on her wedding day looking at her handsome groom only to imagine behind him a string of relationships with girls and women he failed to honor, and knowing that images in his head from pornography use and past flings may stick with him for a long time.

Scripture is replete with statements that sexual immorality leads to death.

Finally, FotF sums up everthing they have to teach on marriage:

2008-11-19T09:23:00.000-08:00

Denialism offers some insights into What the family values folks don't get about family.

I was watching Dan Savage and and some Family Research Council talking head on Anderson Cooper the other night. The were talking about the Prop 8 debacle in California, and it finally hit me for the first time---the "family values" groups have no idea what family is, not even a clue.

The anti-gay marriage folks think that family is all about fear, sex, and violence. For them, marriage is about control---control of who marries and why, control of the woman by the man.

These folks who fought for Prop 8 don't understand the real meaning of family, of love, of comfort. For most of us, it's not about fulfilling one fringe group's idea of what God wants. It's about creating a life with another, sharing a physical and emotional space with someone, rejoicing together when things are good, and holding each other when things are tough. It's human.

2008-11-17T19:06:00.000-08:00

From the Berean Call newsletter:

The prophet Yahweh, a self-proclaimed American seer who claims to have the ability to summon UFOs to appear on command, has accused spirit channelers of stealing his latest UFO 'prophecy'. Last month Australian author Blossom Goodchild reported on her blog that an intergalactic organization calling themselves the Federation of Light were planning to cause a UFO to appear over the skies of the southern United States for a three day period. The purpose of this encounter was to present undeniable proof that mankind is not alone in the universe, and to pave the way for full disclosure of the UFO phenomenon by world governments. The Federation of Light also warned that our world will soon enter a period of great trouble, and their purpose in making contact with us is to guide us through it. But the UFOs never appeared and access to Blossom Goodchild's blog has since been restricted to invitation only. Now the prophet Yahweh is claiming that UFOs will appear over the skies of Las Vegas for a three-day period at the end of October. He says the purpose of their appearance is to convince the American public to vote for Obama, whom he believes God has chosen to lead the world through a time of great trouble ahead.

In a first-ever event, the Berean Call provides a sensible comment of it's own at the end:

[TBC: It is now November. We can now objectively evaluate this "prophecy" to see if it came true.]

Still, if a sufficiently large number of predictions is made, sooner or later one of them will come true - in the same way that if enough people pick random lottery numbers, it becomes probable one of them will win.

2008-11-17T12:20:00.000-08:00

In addition to the earlier mini-morons,

I bring you these3remain of Digg:

"I have found that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer can even offend people when one is absolutely silent - because we have no control over the Holy Spirit in us. Surely you have been in situations where you have done nothing whatsoever to offend a person, in fact, you may have just met them - yet the vibe you get from them is one of rejection. At one time it puzzled me; I'd be wondering what I did to offend the person. Over time I realized that they were responding to the presence of the Holy Spirit - not me - and that was Who they were rejecting."

Ah, so it is the holy spirit inside him that causes rejection. And not, perhaps, that he is a self-rightous idiot? Or perhaps he is just really ugly. No, clearly if people don't like him the only possible reason could be that the sheer power of the divine energy shineing invisibly forth from his faith-saturated soul is intimidating people.

2008-11-17T08:58:00.001-08:00

Mini Morons

Rather than go after one huge idiot, I'm bringing you lots of snippets today.

First, anyone familiar with the concept of a neutral study? This isn't it:

A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned. The research, commissioned by the Countryside Alliance’s Campaign for Shooting.

Yes, a study showing that gun control increases gun crime has been carried out by an organisation that opposes gun control! The Countryside Alliance is best known for being opposed to the fox-hunting ban, back when that was news. Thanks to The Midnight Sun for the tip-off.

It's no great secret that education and religiousity are inversely associated - the better educated a group is, the lower their expected level of religious dedication. The Bishop of Lancaster sees education as a danger.

The Rt Rev Patrick O'Donoghue, the Bishop of Lancaster, has claimed that graduates are spreading scepticism and sowing dissent. Instead of following the Church's teaching they are "hedonistic", "selfish" and "egocentric", he said.
While not naming names, he suggested that such people had been compromised by their education, which he said had a "dark side, due to original sin".

Bishop O'Donoghue, who has recently published a report on how to renew Catholicism in Britain, argued that mass education has led to "sickness in the Church and wider society".

In the case of education, we can see its distortion through the widespread dissemination of radical scepticism, positivism, utilitarianism and relativism.

I've commented before about anti-intellectual trends - the uneducated taking pride in their ignorance. It's refreshing to see someone being to open about it. If the educated people disagree with the church, education must be dangerous.

Next award goes to the parents of Motl Brody, just another braindead minor. It's not too unusual to see something like this hit the news - boy braindead, hospital wants to let him die, parents refuse. A little difference here though. Usually in cases like this, it's because the parents are clinging to hope - the slim possibility, even if it is only one chance in a billion, that just perhaps their child will recover. A view that shows a poor grasp of medicine and statistics, but given how emotional the parents are a forgivable confusion. These parents, however, have a different motivation altogether:

His parents, who are Orthodox Jews, had clashed with the hospital over the hospital's desire to disconnect the ventilator. Although Motl had been pronounced dead, his heart was still beating with the help of a cocktail of intravenous drugs and adrenaline.

That heartbeat prompted Motl's parents to refuse the hospital's request to remove all artificial life support.

Under some interpretations of Jewish religious law, including the one accepted by the family's Hasidic sect, death occurs only when the heart and lungs stop functioning.

They have no delusions of hope. These parents accepted that brain-death is perminant, and recognised that there was not the slightest hope for recovery. Their motivation was pure religion - the ancient superstition of their ancestors overruled the knowledge of modern medicine.

The incident may have reached the courts, had luck not ended it first - modern medicine reached it's limit, and the boy's body became as dead as his brain.

I'm not going into the prop-8 protests, because there is just such a lack of information. The Christian news organisations have been churning out hundreds of stories to circulate the blogs about how gays are raiding churches, attacking christians, smashing windows, and in one case setting a church on fire. Scarey stories, but of very dubious origin considering that there have so far been only two arrests and those were both released without charge. It's obvious that there is a huge amount of exageration taking place to create the impression of some type of gay Mafia, but it's impossible for me to show the stories false as fast as they are being fabricated.

Not that I think the claims are entirely without merit - in any protest of this scale, it's unavoidable that a few people will get carried away. I'm just going to consider every accusation of violence to be false until I hear that someone has actually been found guilty in court.

The great debate at Pro Life Blogs continues. Some time ago I questioned on this blog why 'pro-life blogs' carries to many stories about homosexuality. This dragged on for a while, ending with a most unsatisfactory answer which boiled down to a flowery-worded equivilent of "Only Christians are capable of being pro-life, and all Christians are obliged to hate gays." It's gotten on now to the point where commenter Lou has revealed himself to be in the lowest class of anti-gay excuse user: The plumbing obsessed.

"Human anatomy and physiology speak loudly about homosexuality. They are manifest evidence of how foolish it is. Women are meant for men and men for women. There is no anatomical or physiological proof for homosexuality."

The plumbing-obcessed argument is a rehashed form of the old and easily dismissed argument from nature - the idea that natural is good, and unnatural evil. It's an argument that can only be applied inconsistantly, for a consistant use would require that even glasses be banned.

If the anatomy not fitting together is proof that homosexuality is wrong, then the diseases of old age are proof that people should be dead by fifty - all attempts to prolong life after that are immoral.

From the argument from nature, it's one quick jump to the lowest of the scum of debate. The tactic for which there is no answer, for it does not even rely on the pretense of logic. No axioms, no derivations, no chains of reason. Lou demonstrates the immensely powerful, and totally unreasoned, appeal to disgust:

"A rectum is not a vagina. Strictly scientifically speaking, a rectum is the last part of the large bowel. It is a poop warehouse, not a sexual organ.

When you prented it is a sexual organ you tear the tissue and make it easy to transmit disease like AIDS. Contact with poop is a reason why homosexuals get a lot more hepatitis than people who know what a rectum is for, particularily when anal contact is accompanied by oral contact."

Humans, as a rule, dislike feces. This is a deep-seated instinct, driven into our brains by evolution, because it's dangerous stuff. It's full of bacteria, many of them harmful. Wired deep into the human brain is an aversion to it - to the sight of it, and to the smell of it. The appeal to disgust goes past reason and concious thought, and goes straight to this deep primal programming: "Gays stick their penis into a bag of sh|t? EEEEWWWwwww, icky!" It's an adult version of claiming your opponent has cooties. It's cheating.

It's powerful because I can't address it. What can I say? It's not an argument. I could say it's not an argument, but the very act of saying this just keeps it as the subject of discussion and in the minds of the readers the 'gays = filthy' association grows.

As for the hygine argument, it is true that anal sex can spread disease - but that's just as true of heterosexual vaginal intercourse, and the solution is exactly the same: Use a condom.

2008-11-12T04:55:00.000-08:00

The Unofficial XXXChurch Prayer Wall Masturbation Summary!

Time and again, the same question is asked on the XXXChurch forum - 'Is masturbation acceptable?' Each time the question is asked, a ritual is performed. The same arguments are traded, countered, and defended by all factions involved. It's getting old.

So, to head off future occurances, I am going to list all the commonly presented arguments from both sides.

No
-Argument from scripture: 1 Corinthians 7:3,5 "but among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality..." - This, and other verses, show that masturbation is wrong.
-----Counterargument (1) This is circular. There isn't a single mention of masturbation in the bible - blanket prohibitions on 'sexual immorality' abound, but you can't apply these to masturbation unless you already know it to be immoral. The argument depends on it's own conclusions, and as such is no argument at all.
-----Counterargument (2) Applies only to Christians - nonbelievers and members of other religions do not recognise this text as having any authority.
-Divine purpose: God created sex, and all the required anatomy and instincts, only for use by married man and woman for the purposes of reproduction and love-making. Masturbation, violating God's design, is offensive to Him.
-----Counterargument (1) If God disapproves so much, why did He make it so enjoyable?
-----Counterargument (2) Masturbation doesn't detract from those purposes for people not currently in a relationship. No interference, no problem.
-----Counterargument (3) There is no objection to using other parts of the anatomy in ways for which they seem unintended - injecting into veins, blood transfusions and organ transplants, etc.
-----Counterargument (4) As with the previous arguments, applies only to a subset of theists.
-Relationship argument: In a relationship (Non-married relationships may be included, optionally), sexual exclusivity is a requirement. Masturbation is choosing self over partner, depriving him or her of your full commitment and sexual capabilities.
-----Counterargument: Applies only to those who are in a relationship. All others are free to masturbate.
-Cross-temporal relationship argument: As above, but extended: The sexual exclusivity requirement should be about loyalty to your future partner, whoever that may be - people have a duty to save themselves.
-----Counterargument (1): Now it's just getting silly. There is no assurance that this hypothetical partner will ever be found, and even so, why do they get a preemptive claim on the sexuality of someone they don't even know?
-----Counterargument (2): Masturbation today is no way affects a relationship in the future. There is no point in saving something that will never run out, like enjoyment of sexuality.
-----Counterargument (3): How can one commit a person they are not yet aware of?

Yes
-Argument from lack of harm: While masturbation is no great ideal to uphold, nor is it capable of causing harm (Unless carried to a ridiculous extreme) - this makes it a morally neutral act.
-----Counterargument (1): Various attempts to show that masturbation is harmful, to self or to others. A few worth discussing, most laughable, all listed in the 'no' section.
-----Counterargument (2): The argument from scripture given above - the claim that the standard of morality is not what causes harm, but what the bible says is right or wrong.
-Argument of sexual experience: Masturbation creates an increased awareness of one's own body, with potential benefits during sex. Ie, if you know your own responses and are used to controling them, you can better please your partner.
-----Counterargument: Utility does not equal acceptability.
-Stress relief: Masturbation has some temporary benefits - it relieves stress and aids relaxation. Given there are no harmful effects, there is no reason not to make use of these. It could even be argued that God intended it this way.
-----Counterargument (1): Again, utility does not equal acceptability.
-----Counterargument (2): The counterarguments to the 'no harm' argument apply again..
-----Counterargument (3): Suggestions that God intended masturbation are typically met, not with counterarguments, but outraged anger.

There. Isn't reading this so much easier than working through five pages of forum?

2008-11-10T02:35:00.000-08:00

OneNewsNow is at it again.

Once again making substantial alterations to an Associated Press story to turn it's neutrality into something more favorable to their political view. Not just the usual substitution of words this time, but excising entire paragraphs that make gays look too human for the AFAs taste.

2008-11-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a day since the election results, so I thought it may be good to round some of the indignant ramblings of the supporters of the loser. Saving me some work though, the hyperpartisan Aurora has done it for me. A few highlights from her list:

"What is it with Conservatives all over “congratulating” this horror of a man, who surrounds himself with radical, terrorist, white hating, America hating and Jew hating associates and friends?"

"Yea. Congrads Hussein, on an illegal election, stolen by deceit, voter fraud and media manipulation."

"Welcome to the United Socialist States of America ya’all with the election of the most liberal candidate ever! Congrats Saul Alinsky, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farakahn, Rashid Khalidi! Congrats! I suspect we can stop worrying whether there will be riots in the streets!! Kiss your money, guns, and Rights goodbye! and finally kiss Jerusalem goodbye!"

"The voters allowed this to happen. They allowed Black Panther members wielding weapons at potential McCain voters, to be security at voting precincts. They were correct when they said “The black man is going to win this election, no matter what."

"A lying crypto-Muslim, with close ties to terrorists, hate-mongers, gangsters, race-hustlers and hard-core communists..."

"the sad thing is that generations of americans fought and died to protect us from just such a threat as obama. if this election was not rigged though i suspect it was, then americans who voted for obama should be ashamed, for they have betrayed the core values that america was built on."

"I wonder what the military fighting in Iraq will think of a Muslim in the POTUS position now. If it were me, I would not be feeling too secure with this so-called “Commander-in-Chief”."

"Perhaps this is the most opportune moment to or better contemplate the nexus of evil and good – when a Murdering –Raping -pillaging Paedophile that is Mohammed; the messenger of doom, death and destruction, become a prophet of a Good God- Just as the Leftoids has made Barak O Bin Laden as the new messiah and only elevated to an Inept God status ; but being only the Prince of darkness with a candle."

All that from one page! Perhaps I should go upmarket? Reasoned Audacity would have something to show, had the former media director of the FRC not had medical problems. Never one to pass up a chance though, even these may be turned to advantage:

"Late Saturday Charmaine felt another set of pains that felt too much like a heart attack.

But her pains persisted and we dropped The Dreamer and The Dude at McCain HQ on Clarke Street in Arlington to work with the team.

And we went to the Emergency Room.

It wasn't her heart. Not life threatening. But her gall bladder was causing her a world of hurt -- 72 hours before the election.

The timing was, of course, Satanic."

Yes, Satan caused her gall bladder to fail. No need to worry, she is recovering now.

How about this from Pro Life Blogs - the blog I take smug pleasure in reminding every time they post in glee about the defeat of same-sex marriage that they are getting off topic. They have a clear statement on their thoughts following the election:

We decided, as a collective whole, to "follow the wrong god home."

[I know of] the President-elect and the many lies, misinformation and omissions of truth he utilized to get where he is now. Sorry. That's just how I think and feel right now. And those of you who are supposedly so adamant about "free speech" and people's "choices", let us see how "tolerant" you are in reality.

I'm very tolerant - ProLifeBlogs has the right to say that, and I have a right to mock them for it.

To add to it, they also quote some more blogs:

"This is a time to stand up. We do not give up. We do not roll over. America is too great of a nation to fall prey to the evils of Socialism. America is too great to roll over to the tyranny of abortion. America is too great to turn in her freedoms for false promises of "prosperity", "change" and "hope""

"Good job America! The devil is prevailing as we speak!"

Just to make this clear, I don't think these idiots are representative of republican voters. I think they are representative of idiots. There are some idiots on the democratic side too - the 'obamamessiah' comments are not lacking in targets. But they won, and so are not providing me with a stream of frustration, lies, and attempts to rewrite history for me to tap in to.

2008-11-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

More Charity Moronality:

As has been reported by a few other gaming blogs and news sites, the Charity Auction at this year's GenCon Indianapolis was held to benefit Gary Gygax's favorite charity, which I will not name here for reasons that will soon become obvious. The fine folks at GenCon raised over $17,000 for this charity, which helps starving children in impovershed areas of the world--only to have that money actually turned down by the charity. The charity refused due to the fact that the money was raised partly by the sales of Dungeons and Dragons materials, which as we all know, puts an irrevocable taint of evil on the filthy lucre that us demon-worshipping gamers might want to use to, say, donate to starving children. Not only is this a slap in the face to every gamer, but it is especially insulting to Mr. Gygax himself, who I understand donated to their cause many times over the years. Plus, I'm sure the children who would have gotten food or clean drinking water with that money would be sort of upset, too.

- GITP blog. It's a roleplay game culture site. Gary Gygax is the recently-deceased creator of D&D.

Alternate rumors claim that CCF refused the donation not because it came from a D&D-fan community, but because they believe to accept it would be endorseing a RP con where much of the money would be collected. This looks just as bad to me.

The money has now been given to a less discriminating charity with a similar mission.

2008-10-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

Conservapedia editors, you have truely outdone yourselves.

The news feed of Conservapedia has standards so low they are on a par with World Net Daily, but this is a masterpiece of paranoia:

Doctors expose the mind control techniques used by Obama.
Is Barack Obama a brilliant orator, captivating millions through his eloquence? Or is he deliberately using the techniques of neurolinguistic programming (NLP), a covert form of hypnosis developed by Milton Erickson, M.D.?

Oh, to avoid sullying his name: Milton Erickson didn't write this. He died in 1980. He did work on something called neurolinquistic programming, but it's nothing like what the article goes on to describe.

2008-10-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

NSPCCs turn.

A break from the politics and American focus. It's not that I try to focus on America, it's just where most of the stupidity is in the english-speaking world by virtue of it's larger population and poor educational standards.

For a change though, two organisations here in the UK have worked together to achieve stupidity in the service of morality - the NSPCC (For you non-brits, that's the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a non-governmental charitable organisation turned pressure group), and the BBC. This is annoying, as I would expect far higher from the BBC.

The mistake can be seen in a BBC report on the NSPCC's poll:

Three out of four children have seen images on the internet that disturbed them, an NSPCC poll suggests.

Seems simple enough, but a statistic so high should be treated with suspicion. And disregarded completly on finding this paragraph shortly after:

The NSPCC, which polled visitors to its children's website There4me.com, said it was "alarmed" by the accessibility of potentially disturbing material.

Yes, the NSPCC's poll finding three-forths of children are disturbed by things on the internet was conducted by polling a site intended for children who are disturbed. I shall call this "pulling an AFA".

I find it hard to believe the BBC would fail to realise this, so I can assume they are aware the number is worthless but were presented by their notorious neutrality rules from pointing this out - as doing so would be editorialising, by drawing a conclusion for the reader.

2008-10-18T04:55:00.000-07:00

I was right!

I quote here my own post, from the 14th:

Yes, the AFA is conducting a poll to ask how many people consider Obama qualified. And their sample is their own mailing list - a list populated almost entirely by AFA supporters. Religious conservatives, with a scattering of people keeping an eye on them. Every one of them subscribed to the email newsletter of an organisation that is actively opposing Obama, and admits to it. This sample is so non-representative that the resulting poll is worthless. It's as lacking in integrity as any poll can possibly be, and anyone with even the slightest trace of common sense or education will know this.

They are perfectly aware that this poll is worthless, but are carrying it out anyway in the hope of laundering the results into something that gives a false impression of respectability by quoteing the statistic in isolation without mention of it's origin or obviously invalid means of sampling. So you will later on see something like "Majority of Americans consider Obama not qualified to be president" as a headline on One News Now, and nowhere in the article would it describe that the sample was taken from the subscribers to an anti-Obama newsletter.

That was written by my, on October 14th.

On October 17th, One News Now published the story Poll question: Is Obama qualified?

As of press time, more than 400,000 people had voted in AFA's poll, with statistics showing roughly five percent believe Obama is qualified to be America's president, 95 percent do not believe he is qualified, and less than one percent are unsure.

Note that, after reading the ONN story carefully, twice, it is clear that they have made no mention of the fact that the poll was of people from the AFA's own mailing list, nor have they done anything at all to question the validity of the poll or the integrity of the methods used to carry it out.

My prediction was perfect, down to every last detail. The AFA's deliberate misleading of readers is predictable.