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Tag: separation of church and state

Bush Loyalists Admit Impotence

Bush Loyalists Admit Impotence

Governor Sonny Perdue is joining lawmakers and ministers on the steps of the Georgia state Capitol to pray for rain.

How totally embarrassing.

Well, Bush let ’em down – “Tough luck, Georgia.”

Water is not a partisan issue. You have water or you don’t.

They’ve known about the potential problems of a rapidly-expanding state (and city) population for some time.

Instead of planning and accountability, we get prayers. They’ve made noises about it being interdenominational, but here that probably means something like Presbyterian, along with Methodist and Bapist.

Dry, dour, hypocritical prayers.

I doubt they’ll even have any good chants or dances… they don’t really have a good relationship with the environment anyway.

They have handed the problem off to a higher power, one that doesn’t really get into micromanaging local weather systems.

I’m waiting for some evangelist to claim that the drought is God’s punishment on Georgia for tolerating Atlanta (or some equally fluffernut theory that might play into the fears of the dreadfully misled and manipulated).

Main Page – WikiThePresidency

Main Page – WikiThePresidency

People For the American Way believes that “a healthy democracy is an informed democracy,” so they have created WikiThePresidency.org to establish a single place for the public to both acquire and share information about Executive Branch wrongdoings.

It’s a Wiki, so anyone can edit the site, but there are rules. You must post factual claims (no op-eds), with links to credible supporting material. No spouting off.

Take a look. It’s interesting reading.

Main Page – WikiThePresidency

A Question to the Religious Right

A Question to the Religious Right

A question to the so-called “religious right” who want to abolish separation of church and state altogether:

How would you feel if the religion expressed on the national stage were some equally skewed version of Islam, or Wicca, or … ( – insert your personal choice for “least appealing religious path” here – for me it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses), rather than this particular view of Christianity?

What if they found some “wedge issues” and became the majority in Congress?
What if they rallied their base to write laws, and control the media, and spy on you, and limit your choices and your freedoms?

Would you still think separation of church and state was a bad thing?

Don’t you understand even now that that your freedom of religion is dependent on the state and church being separate?

How can something so fundamental to your own success be so maligned?

Tyranny of religion was opposed by the colonies, and then by the country. A glance through any history book (or newspaper) will give ample evidence of some of the reasons why.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Flying Spaghetti Monster made it into the Wikipedia, nice!

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the deity of a religion, known as Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, started on the Internet by Bobby Henderson as a parody of the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught in science classes alongside evolution. Henderson submitted an open letter to the Kansas Board of Education demanding that the Flying Spaghetti Monster be given equal time in classrooms along with Christian and all other creation myths. The “religion” has since become an Internet phenomenon garnering many followers preaching the word of their “noodly master” as the One True Religion.

The doctrine of this emergent religious movement centers on the belief that the Universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster and mandates that His followers shall wear full pirate regalia to ward off natural disasters caused by the decline in numbers of pirates.

Shiver me timbers and ahoy! Ra-men.
(Thanks Jean-Marie!)

Way Beyond “Republican”…

Way Beyond “Republican”…

Some people want to argue with me about the effects of this administration on this country. I say words are cheap, propaganda is more effective than it should be, and I judge by actions and evidence. What we are seeing is not a Republican agenda, but a wholesale reorganization of what America is all about. A must-read is Howard Zinn’s article in the Guardian, “It is not only Iraq that is occupied. America is too.”

I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water or the air, or what kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren.

More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong.

Starting a new category today called Alien-nation (from “American Idiot” by Green Day). If I have some extra time, I’ll go back and add the category to some archived posts. Meanwhile, here are the Alien-nation examples for today.

Depleted uranium – a weapon of mass destruction for all.

The KBR division of Halliburton, which is responsible for carrying out the no-bid Pentagon contracts, experienced a 284 percent increase in operating profits during the second quarter of this year, including $70 million in “award” fees. Although government auditors have repeatedly cited the company for apparent fraud, improper billing, bribery, and gross overcharging for services there, the administration (and our representatives) have ignored even the auditors’ requests to withhold a portion of payments to the company.

The Christian right was saved from dying out with the Bush administration’s tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to their grassroots organizations – while they starved out family planning and AIDS-related organizations. So much for separation of church and state.

From the Progress Report

D’OH FOR JOHN DOE: ” …playing to the interests of John Doe — belies a reality that Treasury Secretary John Snow recently acknowledged, “the fruits of strong economic growth are not spreading equally to less educated Americans.” A notable characteristic of  the recent economic growth is the “unusually uneven“ economic gains distribution: ”exceptionally fast growth in corporate profits [has been] coupled with exceptionally slow growth in wages and salaries.” In what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan referred to as “a very disturbing trend,” the income gap has widened to a chasm that “by some measures is the biggest in the United States since the Roaring ’20s.” Though infamous for his belief in the free-market, Greenspan testified to Congress that “a free market, democratic society is ill-served by an economy in which the rewards are distributed in a way” that excludes the majority. How much of the majority? According to the Labor Department, “the nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages [have] barely maintained their purchasing power.” Unfortunately, President Bush continues to champion his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, despite the fact that they “were too slanted toward upper earners to be particularly effective economic medicine.”