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Monthly Archives: March 2012
Taken out of context
I have noticed something that is becoming increasingly common. After a politician says something pandering to appeal to some constituency, and is then quoted those words back and asked to explain it to a different constituency that may not share the same sympathies, the politician simply says that the quoted words had been “taken out of context”. . . .
But if someone makes that claim, at the very least they should provide a clarification of what they actually meant to say and provide the context that provides evidence that supports that that was what they meant. But that is not what happens. . . .
Our $14.3 Trillion National Debt
How to do nothing and still think you’re helping
Andrea Bocelli: Somos Novios
Neil DeGrasse Tyson calls out John Stewart on Earth’s spin
Quote: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Does Conservatism Have to Be Synonymous With Ignorance? [You Bet’cha!]
The Catholic Church [the well-renowned international child raping organization] has long been an enemy of emerging technology, especially when it comes to reproductive health, opposing any technology that alters the ‘natural’ scheme of sex and reproduction. . . .
But it is Mr. Santorum whose vehement opposition involves not only emerging reproductive technology but also almost any form of medical intervention in reproduction, positive or negative. It would be tempting to chalk up Mr. Santorum’s medieval views to a devout Catholic fundamentalism, but that is unfair to Catholicism. Mr. Santorum instead represents the very epitome of many among the modern breed of conservative Republicans: Ignorant and proud of it.
Mr. Santorum has steadfastly maintained throughout his career an almost perfect record of opposing the well-known evidence of empirical reality. . . .
Santorum’s proud ignorance is unfortunately not unique. Over the past decade, since the success of George W. Bush’s candidacy for President, conservatism in this country has become synonymous with such ignorance. . . .
Choosing to censor or distort knowledge rather than risk the possibility that such knowledge, or the technologies that result from it, might challenge faith or confront preexisting ideological biases is a something that should better characterize the Taliban or al Qaeda rather than the Republican Party.
Catholic Church [the well-renowned international child raping organization] tired of being ‘whipping boy’ for that whole molesting kids thing
And the Lord said, “Thou shalt not charge priests who rape and molest children because after all, they do some good stuff sometimes too, and besides, those brats should just get over it already because it happened years ago.”This story is just gonna break your heart:Cardinal [Timothy M.] Dolan criticized a legislative proposal that would, for a year, drop the statute of limitations for filing civil claims for sexual offenses, allowing for lawsuits by people who say they were abused long ago. The cardinal said he was concerned that a flood of lawsuits over abuse by priests could drain the church of money it is using for charitable purposes.
“I think we bishops have been very contrite in admitting that the church did not handle this well at all in the past,” he said. “But we bristle sometimes in that the church doesn’t get the credit, now being in the vanguard of reform. It does bother us that the church continues to be a whipping boy.”
Aw. Poor bishops. They are just so sick and tired of being blamed for that whole covering-up-the-widespread-rape-and-molestation-of-children thing. Don’t you secular ingrates understand that they can’t do really important stuff—like . . .
Heaven Can Wait: Was I wrong about the afterlife? No. / By Christopher Hitchens, as told to Art Levine
At the end, the manner of my “passing,” as the pious so delicately refer to death, was as much a disappointment to the dewy-eyed acolytes of god-worship as it was to me, although for rather different reasons. For more than a year after I publicly announced in June 2010 that I would begin chemotherapy for esophageal cancer, the stupidest of the faithful either gloated on their subliterate Web sites that my illness was a sign of “God’s revenge” for having blasphemed their Lord and Master, or prayed that I would abandon my contempt for their nonsensical beliefs by undergoing a deathbed conversion. The vulgarity of the idea that a vengeful deity would somehow stoop to inflicting a cancer on me still boggles the mind, especially in the face of the ready explanation supplied for my illness by my long, happy, and prodigious career as a smoker of cigarettes and drinker of spirits. . . .
Always Question Authority 