The Republican Religious Party is Winning Control…

…Of Women’s Bodies.  The Republican War on Women is alive and well

The Republican Religious Party is winning the war to gain control of women’s bodies, and therefore their reproductive lives.  I am thankful that my daughters are grown now and do not plan any more children.  I am terribly sorry that my 4 years old granddaughter will now have the state control her choices as a reproducing female in America.  Evil religion is behind all this.

• ARIZONA now has the earliest surgical abortion ban  in the nation at 20 weeks, and the earliest medical abortion ban at 7 weeks.   Arizona sucks; it is controlled by a Republican religious junta.
• ALABAMA wants to make it nearly impossible to receive RU-486.  All women move awayquickly…the state of Alabama does not have your best interest at heart
• GEORGIA’S horrendous “women as livestock” bill forces women to carry non-viable fetuses to term.  Women as Livestock…aka women are not allowed to control their own bodies.  Horrendous doesn’t even begin to describe the evilness of this law.  The South Sucks
• TENNESSEE is criminalizing harm to embryos.  Just try drinking a glass of wine, or walking into a smoke filled room there.
• TEXAS women are forced to look at the image of their most likely “trans-vaginal” ultrasound and listen to the fetal heartbeat.  This is actually State Rape…you will not be allowed to opt out of this travesty.  Thank your local Republican politicians for this.  Another failed state.
• MISSISSIPPI will become the first abortion-clinic-free state in July. (Just picture the license plate slogan!)  Everyone with any sense will leave this failed state soon.  Mississippi stands at the bottom of all indicators of a happy place to live
• SOUTH CAROLINA seeks to eliminate abortions in the case of rape from their health plans.  Also planned is to eliminate abortion in case of Incest…this is the grossest form of state control ever.
• WISCONSIN Planned Parenthood clinics have halted all medical abortions.  Quick leave the state.  Republican Religious Party governor Scott Walker is being recalled for being a asshats.

America is rapidly approaching being a State controlled fascist country…and it is the Republican Religious Party and their doublespeak tactics that is leading us there.  They and their church buddies are Evil.

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Republicans and Religion

Since January of this year Religious Republican (and only Republican) legislators in Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and New Mexico have introduced legislation to allow religious teachings in public schools. They deny that it’s for religion, but once again we find otherwise respectable people “lying for Jesus.” And what gets me is everyone knows it’s a lie.

Almost all of them have wording similar to this: “critical analysis” or teaching “strengths and weaknesses” and “Academic Freedom” I’m guessing that these people from the religious groups and the legislators they control don’t quite understand that we’re on to them, because they use the same wording over and over again from state to state.It is evangelical fundamentalist Young Earth RELIGION that they are trying to insert into the curriculum of public (that means state/government sponsored) schools.  They want teachers to lie about the science behind evolution and the history of the earth and humanity; they are trying to move their foundational mythology to the status of science, so they can guarantee the cultural reproduction of their views.

However as the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) puts it;

“Teachers have no freedom to misinform and miseducate students. It is scientifically inappropriate and educationally irresponsible to present ID under its own name or in any other guise as scientifically credible. And it is unconstitutional to do so in the public schools.” (My emphasis)

Some of these views are pretty amazing.  The Reconstructionist faction of the fundamentalists wants to eventually restore Biblical law over the land. They believe that many areas of society now under control of secular government should be under control of family, churches, or private organizations.

“For example, since the book of Deuteronomy assigns to parents the responsibility of educating children, state-sponsored schools are considered a violation of Biblical law.  Under Reconstructionist generally libertarian guidelines, the civil government plays no part in personal retirement plans, welfare, or regulation of business, other than to maintain order and restrain fraudulent behavior.  Minimum-wage laws and Social Security would be eliminated.  All inheritance taxes and gift taxes would be abolished.  Income taxes would rise no higher than 10 percent of gross income.” From: ‘Religion and Politics’, (1992) Bruce Barron and Anson Shupe, Praeger Publishers, Westport Connecticut

Do some of these goals ring a bell with anyone? The Republicans have been leaders in trying to get all government regulation overthrown for big-business, keeping minimum-wages low or non-existent, the elimination Social Security and Medicare is presently simmering under the surface, and they have been trying for years to get the inheritance and gift tax laws thrown out. And they want taxes on big earners to be next to nothing. A lot of these goals are almost attained.  We should really worry about this.  I don’t fancy living under a theocratic dictatorship, which is exactly what it would be.

It should be noted they also want to restore the death penalty for numerous offenses outlined in the Old Testament.  You know like: Adultery (I suspect this will backfire on them), homosexuality, dissing your parents and old bald guys, etc. 🙂
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Creation, Evolution, Texas State School Board

You gotta hand it to those Texans…they just won’t let religion and schools alone. A Doctor of Urology is running for a position on the school board in District 11 of the Texas State school board (Southwest of Ft. Worth) and he is outspending the opposition by about 12:1

Doctor Barney Maddox, the candidate, has been quoted as saying: “the theory of evolution is a “myth” and a “fairy tale.”

This fits right in with mainline Texas thought. I spent time in Texas a while back and I still vividly remember meeting workmates and people in the community. Their top 5 questions always included…”and what church do you go to?” They had to know this to place you on the social scale, to know if they would continue socializing with you. I could just visualize them getting home and taking out their little score-cards to grade newly introduced people.

It probably won’t be very long before creationism is somehow slipped past the US constitution and taught in their science classes at schools. Well, they’ll get what they deserve. If creation theory gets well established in the state it will head downhill scholastically pretty quickly, as the religious faction behind this is very conservative and anti-science. Once they feel that they are in control and the mainstream in their community…”I pity the fool.” You’d better try to fit in if you live there–and are atheist or non-church going.

To give you an idea of what was going on, I remember leaving the state when my job was done, (3 years) and literally breathing a sigh of relief when crossing over the border into another state. It was like overcast skies suddenly cleared to bright blue. Never been back, don’t ever plan too. Oh yeah, and they still have ‘dry’ counties…no drinking.

Texas is a lot responsible for the negative feelings I have for the conservative, evangelical, fundamentalist movement in the US. If they would ever get in full control of a society like ours, I would have to become a freedom fighter. You can’t reason with them, you just have to leave or fight…well maybe not literal fighting…but really strong political and intellectual counteroffensives.

I have my fingers crossed for them….but, I’m not optimistic.

Biblical Flood Was Not Worldwide

The following story is semi-true, or maybe semi-false, I don’t remember. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

“So, tell me Fred, what do you know about Noah’s flood?”

“What do you mean, what do I know?”

“You know, do you think it’s true; do you have any thoughts about it at all?”

“No, I don’t think it’s a believable or true story, I think it’s probably allegory.”

“Why would you think that? There are flood stories from civilizations around the world.”

“That may be, but most of the stories don’t have a close correlation to the Bible story. The only flood story that closely resembles it is The Epic of Gilgamesh, and it is written 400 to 500 years before the biblical one. I think it’s possible that someone took the Gilgamesh story and changed a few things and made it theirs. Besides, there is no real evidence of a worldwide flood, and no evidence at all for a flood around about the time mentioned in the Bible and in the area that Noah was likely to be at that time.”

“Well, I’ve heard that the evidence is all over the world and in all civilizations.”

Don, I don’t think that is true. Yes, there is evidence for floods all over the world, but it is for all different times in history. There was never a time when all the flooding occurred at the same time. And some civilizations that didn’t live near oceans, rivers, lakes, etc. never did have flood myth’s.”

“Well, a speaker at our church told us that all of the archeological evidence, you know, the layers of earth and such, are explained by the flood waters churning around on earth for a year or so.”

“I really don’t think that’s possible Don.” You look at the layers of rock and dirt and bones and artifacts in a archeological dig or in oil well cores that geologists take when they are trying to determine were to drill for oil. If you look at enough of these things and from all over the world you can’t help but notice that the first mile depth of the earth is sorted in exactly the same sequence. All the dinosaur bones are in one layer, all the trilobites are in another layer, all evidence of certain critters that have gone extinct are in another, and evidence of man is at the top. The layers that are found are the record of millions of years of life and death on earth, not only 4,000 years like they teach in church.”

Don smiles. “How do you know about oil wells Fred?”

“Didn’t I ever talk to you about it before?”

“No.”

“Back in the early 70’s I worked in the oil business in West Texas, around Big Spring, Midland-Odessa, Snyder, and Brownfield. The company I was with surveyed oil wells to determine at what depth and in what quantities the oil was coming from. By the late 70’s the oil business in Texas went into the toilet, but anyway I learned a lot about Geology at that time. Also if you read any modern Geology book you’ll find much better explanations than I can give you. I don’t think the explanation you got in church is even close to the real facts.”

“Well, that’s only one thing. I’m sure there are more things that back up the Bible story.”

“There are a lot more things that don’t back up the story, than do. For example Greenland ice-cores go back about 40,000 years and there are things that you would expect to find such as sediment, changes in salinity, oxygen ratios, stresses, and more that I can’t even remember—and there is no evidence for this. The Polar ice caps are another example. A worldwide flood would float the ice caps off their beds and break them into pieces, and there would not be enough time to regrow them to the size they are now. Another thing is that we have tree ring data going back some 10,000 years and there is no flood indication for the appropriate time. Some scientists have said that a flood like that of Noah would leave certain traces on the earth’s seabed’s that they don’t see. But, you know what seals it for me?

“What?”

“Egypt was building pyramids, had a written language and recorded everything, and they were right next door to Noah. They have no written OR geological evidence of a flood on that scale…Nada…Nothing. And another thing, in the UK the druids were building Stonehenge at this time…no evidence there either. There is much more, but I’m not a scientist and I can’t remember it all. You might want to do a little research before believing that story from church.”

Corrupt Government?

Do you believe that Vice-President Dick Cheney is not profiting from the hiring of Halliburton as a “no-bid-no oversight” contractor for support services in the Iraqi war?

Having worked in the oil business in West Texas, I know how that ‘Good old boy’ network works. You can bet your bottom dollar that there was a lot of fishy, underhanded signing of illegal contracts going on at the beginning, and probably going on now…that Blackwater deal comes immediately to mind.

The following links will give you an idea of how many dollars were/are changing hands:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/politics/main575356.shtml

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheneys_stock_options_rose_3281_last_1011.html

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0403-10.htm

More recently we have learned that Cheney along with Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, buddies since the 1970’s Ford administration (Ford’s Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney), misrepresented intelligence in 2002 to send us into Iraq which greatly increased the wealth of cronies in the Military/Industrial complex, and added the burden of over 3,000 dead American servicemen and women, as many as one hundred thousand wounded, and probably well over a hundred thousand dead Iraqis, also added was a level of worldwide instability not seen since the run-up to World War Two.

Another interesting thing I came across is a former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s ties to the Tamiflu fiasco of the last few years. Immediately before hiring on with George Bush he was Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences (1-97 to 1-01). Now Gilead is the developer of Tamiflu, a drug that George W. Bush urged Congress to pass $7.1 Billion in emergency funding to purchase, to prepare for a possible Bird Flu pandemic. This was in 2005 and Donald was still employed by ol’ G.W.

Federal disclosure forms indicate that Rumsfeld owned over $5 million dollars worth of Gilead Sciences stock at that time. The resultant rise in stock prices alone was thought to have added over $2.5 million bucks to his net worth.

The Donald at a press Conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, June 6, 2002
“Now what is the message there? The message is that there are known “knowns.” There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that’s basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.”
Boy, that’s real leadership, a clear-eyed vision of reality, by one of the Bush family’s favorite buddies and trusted leader of our countries military, in the most important endeavor of the new century.

Boy is our country suffering. We really need a change of leadership, an end to corrupt politicians, and wide-ranging investigation into what is going on in the internal workings of our federal government.

And, just maybe…indictments.

Write your elected officials.
Senate: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Congress: http://www.house.gov/writerep/