tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87896843848952504882024-02-19T01:27:39.284-05:00Greg's TakeJust random thoughts and my perspective on issues.Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.comBlogger136125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-49070657107615380592018-04-01T07:00:00.000-04:002018-04-01T07:07:34.721-04:00<h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for stormy daniels" height="320" src="https://images-production.global.ssl.fastly.net/uploads/images/file/57924/stormy-daniels-donald-trump.jpg?auto=compress&fit=crop&h=1000&q=55&w=750" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Sordid affair started just after birth of Melania's son and into the presidency" width="240" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Donald Trump with Stormy Daniels, 2006</td></tr>
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BOMBSHELL: BILL CLINTON PERSUADED PORN ACTRESS TO HAVE AFFAIR WITH TRUMP IN CASE HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">y now, we all know the name of the porn actress, Stormy Daniels, and that she had an affair in 2006 with reality-star-turned-President, Donald Trump. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">What no one has known--until now--is that former President Bill Clinton, husband of former Secretary of State and failed presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, had a hand in their meeting in 2006. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The following is from an exclusive interview with President Clinton, where he gave the details of the plot to blemish the character of the Donald Trump in case he ran for President. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">GT: <span style="font-weight: 400;">Our understanding is that Donald Trump expressed his desire to run for President someday during his wedding reception with Melania. Is that true?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Clinton: <span style="font-weight: normal;">That's true. He expressed his interest in running for President, and Hillary was there. She took me aside and said, "We need to put some black marks on his moral character. It should be easy. Why don't you fix him up with one of those women you have on the side?"</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">I knew the perfect one: Stormy Daniels, the porn star. I knew Donald Trump had a thing for his daughter, Ivanka. He never said it, not even in private, but it was obvious. There has always been more chemistry between Donnie and his daughter than between him and Melania, and everyone who knows Donald is sure he'd sleep with her if he had the chance. So, I had my people look into Donny's schedule, then I called up Stormy and arranged for her to be at a charity gold event he was attending.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"I knew Donald Trump had a thing for his daughter, Ivanka. He never said it, not even in private, but it was obvious."</span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://imageproxy.themaven.net/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fmaven-user-photos%2Ftheintellectualist%2Fnews%2FTO6g4hQU3EmtYoLt0PDJNA%2FC7ZRa_Tu-k2PO8Rn6puukg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Image result for stormy daniels" border="0" height="282" src="https://imageproxy.themaven.net/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fmaven-user-photos%2Ftheintellectualist%2Fnews%2FTO6g4hQU3EmtYoLt0PDJNA%2FC7ZRa_Tu-k2PO8Rn6puukg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stormy Daniels and Ivanka Trump. Resemblance?</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">GT: <span style="font-weight: normal;">Didn't Donald Trump already have enough self-inflicted damage to his moral character?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Clinton: <span style="font-weight: normal;">You'd think so, but Hillary insisted. Her reasoning was that if an affair occurred right after the birth of his son, it would be especially damaging. I guess the public reaction to my impeachment proceedings didn't teach her the lesson that nobody cares about people's affairs when it comes to being President. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">GT: <span style="font-weight: normal;">What do you know about this affair after their initial meeting in 2006?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Clinton: <span style="font-weight: normal;">I know Stormy was a little creeped out by Trump calling her "Ivanka" and "my little princess" during sex, but I also know the money was good, and ol' Donnie couldn't get enough. It was going on right up to a couple months before it came out in the news, as far as I've heard. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><i>This complete interview has been sold to a major pornography publisher. The brand and the issue where it will be published will be announced soon. </i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Asked about the revelations from this interview, the President said, "Everyone says there hasn't been enough investigation of the Clintons. I said it, everyone has said it. They need investigated, big league." </span></span></div>
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Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-49063891649780741352017-03-13T05:11:00.002-04:002017-03-13T05:11:31.705-04:00Christian media bears false witness against lesbian couple after they were awarded damages for harassment by business owners who refused service to themAaron and Melissa Klein, bigoted owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, were found responsible for the harassment of a lesbian couple with whom they refused to do business. The court awarded $135,000 to the couple who suffered the harassment.<br />
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<a href="http://www.faithwire.com/2017/03/03/we-lost-everything-christian-bakers-emotional-appeal-after-govt-forces-her-to-pay-135000-for-refusing-gay-wedding-cake/">Faithwire</a>, a Christian dog whistle online publication, in true hypocritical, bear-false-witness fashion, published a dishonest article with an attention-grabbing headline that made it seem as if a couple of poor, maligned Christians were having their right to free exercise of religion violated.<br />
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Let's be clear and truthful here: if you have a business that serves the public in the state of Oregon, you cannot discriminate against customers based on sexual orientation. The lesbian couple filed a complaint with the state, and the state found the business owners in violation--but the story does not end there.<br />
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After the Kleins violated Oregon law, they went on to harass the couple and their foster kids.<br />
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The Kleins published the names and the address of the couple who filed the complaint on their Facebook page. Followers of the page harassed the family and sent them death threats. They sent hateful messages.<br />
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Then, the media picked up the story, downplaying the harassment the family faced because of the doxxing the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa did on their Facebook page. The harassment became far worse. Messages came in by mail, phone, and email, because all of their contact information was available for anyone to see and use.<br />
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What's more, the state of Oregon's adoption agency said that if the Bowman-Cryers (the couple who faced this harassment) couldn't protect their kids, they could lose them. They were trying to adopt their foster kids, and they could have lost them because of what the Kleins did to them.<br />
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So...the business owners who refused service to a same-sex couple nearly cost that couple the custody of their kids, and they caused a flood of harassment and death threats that came from all over the country.<br />
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You can read the court's ruling <a href="http://www.oregon.gov/boli/SiteAssets/pages/press/Sweet%20Cakes%20FO.pdf">here</a>.Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-77720054782729280092016-12-18T19:28:00.001-05:002016-12-18T19:29:40.412-05:00Trump's Cabinet nominees: Jeff Sessions, Attorney General<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Donald Trump has nominated Jeff Sessions, Republican United States Senator, for the office of Attorney General. </h2>
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To find out what sort of role he will play and find out what influence he will have, I went to the Organization, Functions, and Missions Manual for the office.<br />
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The <a href="https://www.justice.gov/jmd/organization-mission-and-functions-manual-attorney-general" target="_blank">responsibilities</a> of the Attorney General are as follows:<br />
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<i style="font-size: x-small;">Source: https://www.justice.gov/jmd/organization-mission-and-functions-manual-attorney-general</i><br />
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I'm pretty sure not many people realize just how many offices are under the Department of Justice, and how much influence over the application of the law the Attorney General has. If you want the whole picture, please take a look at the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/agencies" target="_blank">agencies </a>under this department. <br />
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This article is not meant to be comprehensive. I want to give people an overview of Jeff Sessions' views, and how these views might affect the office he will run. <br />
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<b><u>Civil Rights</u></b><br />
As the head of the DOJ, Jeff Sessions would be in charge of the Civil Rights Division, the Criminal Division, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the DEA, the Office of Tribal Justice, and the Office on Violence Against Women, among other offices that will have effects on civil rights and inequality in the justice system. <br />
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Jeff Sessions received the following <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Domestic/Jeff_Sessions_Civil_Rights.htm" target="_blank">scores </a>from civil rights groups:<br />
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<ul>
<li>NAACP: 7% rating, indicating an anti-affirmative action stance</li>
<li>ACLU: 20% rating on civil rights issues</li>
<li>Human Rights Commission: 0% on LGBT issues</li>
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Senator Sessions has called <a href="http://www.naacp.org/latest/naacp-statement-appointment-jeff-sessions-attorney-general/" target="_blank">groups </a>like the NAACP and the ACLU un-<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/politics/jeff-sessions-racism-allegations/" target="_blank">American</a>. <br />
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He voted against renewing the Violence Against Women Act. <br />
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He voted against renewing special funding for businesses for minorities and women. <br />
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He has supported a constitutional ban on flag burning. <br />
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He has supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. <br />
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A head of the Department of Justice who has such a poor record on civil rights will likely neglect these offices under his supervision, at best. At worst, he will use their budgets and power to harm civil rights. <br />
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<b><u>Drug Law Enforcement</u></b><br />
As head of the DEA, Sessions will have the power to take the DEA in whatever direction fits his views. He has used anti-legalization <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/california-today-jeff-sessions-marijuana.html" target="_blank">rhetoric </a> in Senate hearings, and he would be able to use his power--unless Trump stops him--to put a stop to state systems, at least temporarily. <br />
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Since he is also the head of the Bureau of Prisons, expect more enforcement of drug laws, since he is for the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-11-21/sessions-as-trump-ag-positive-for-private-prisons-beacon" target="_blank">private prison industry</a>. The easiest way to fill prisons with nonviolent offenders--the offenders private prisons want to handle--is to enforce drug possessions laws. <br />
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<b><u>Immigration</u></b><br />
The Republican Senator has been said to have a history of stringent opposition to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-11-21/sessions-as-trump-ag-positive-for-private-prisons-beacon" target="_blank">immigration</a>. His opposition of Syrian refugees includes allegations of an <a href="http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2016/8/sessions-refugee-terrorism-increases-while-obama-administration-increases-flow" target="_blank">increase of terrorism</a> on the part of refugees. He has suggested using a religious test to <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/19/trump-attorney-general-pick-jeff-sessions-argued-for-a-religious-test-to-ban-muslims.html" target="_blank">ban Muslims</a> from entering the US. <br />
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<b><u>Domestic surveillance</u></b><br />
Senator Sessions has supported lifting restrictions on warrantless wiretapping. As head of the FBI, the BATF, the DEA, and the US Marshals, deregulation would give him power to use warrantless wiretapping to a much greater degree on the domestic front. <br />
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<b><u>Abortion</u></b><br />
Jeff Sessions is 100% anti-choice, receiving a<a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Jeff_Sessions.htm" target="_blank"> 0% rating</a> from NARAL. As the person who represents the United States in the Supreme Court (although it could be someone from his office), he is most likely itching to overturn Roe v. Wade. <br />
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<b><u>Environmental regulation</u></b><br />
As the head of the DOJ, Sessions also heads up the office of the Environment and Natural Resources. Sessions has said that the views of climate scientists <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/sen-sessions-i-am-offended-by-views-of-climate-scientists-8776da4af37f#.pqdhjrtuk" target="_blank">offend </a>him. Sessions is a vocal climate change denier, reflecting the views of Senator James Inhofe--and these men were on the Environment and Public Works committee. <br />
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As someone who has been strongly against environmental regulation, Sessions is unlikely to enforce them. <br />
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<b><u>Summary</u></b><br />
This is a short list of the issues Jeff Sessions could affect as the US Attorney General. I invite you to look at the list of agencies that would be under his supervision, then compare them with his views to understand just how much impact he can have. <br />
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I will leave you with this: when Ronald Reagan nominated Jeff Sessions for a position as a federal judge, it came out during the hearing that the nominee had, as Alabama's attorney general, joked that he thought the KKK was all right until he found out they smoked marijuana. That was one of the many troubling accusations of racism that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/18/that-time-the-senate-denied-jeff-sessions-a-federal-judgeship-over-accusations-of-racism/?utm_term=.db239e8719fa" target="_blank">killed his appointment</a>--but not his career, unfortunately. <br />
<br />Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-92030615180251125592016-04-15T10:04:00.000-04:002016-04-15T10:18:41.671-04:00Hillary's Excuses: Why You Should Not Believe Them<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When someone calls Hillary Clinton out on a past mistake, she makes excuses that sound reasonable on the surface. She is counting on voters refraining from doing in-depth analysis. <br />
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I have said many times--mostly on Facebook--that the main reason I didn't support Clinton in 2008 was her vote to give Bush the ability to use force in Iraq. There were other reasons, but I saw the 2008 primary as a race between a centrist and someone who was a little right of center. The deal-breaker for me with Clinton was her support of Bush's war. <br />
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The current excuse she's giving for that vote involves her plea to George W. Bush to help her get money to clean up and rebuild in New York after 9/11. She says that because he kept his word to her on his promise to help her get the money, so she thought he'd keep his promise to refrain from attacking until the UN weapons inspectors did their jobs. <br />
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Well, either Hillary Clinton is the most naive politician on the planet, or she's skewing the truth to make herself look like she was wronged by Bush, like he wronged the rest of us. <br />
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Do not believe it. <br />
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Many of the members of the Bush administration were also <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bush_administration:_Project_for_the_New_American_Century" target="_blank">members of the Project for the New American Century,</a> a neo-conservative think tank, whose goals involved invading Iraq, turning it into a democracy, then using it as a base to turn the rest of the Middle East into a conglomeration of US-friendly democracies. The idea was to control the oil flow from that region to Russia and China. This was all on their now-defunct website, which they took down in 2006. Fortunately, the Library of Congress has <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwa00010308/" target="_blank">archived it</a>. <br />
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Members of PNAC <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/27/444438/-" target="_blank">lobbied </a>President Bill Clinton to invade Iraq. There is no way that Hillary Clinton was unaware of PNAC and its members; many were Washington insiders since the Reagan administration, including Donald Rumsfeld and Dan Quayle. <br />
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Hillary Clinton had to be aware of PNAC, had to be aware of their intentions, had to know that members of PNAC were all over the Bush administration. She knew these things, and she trusted Bush not to follow through with the policy positions of people who tried to lobby her husband to invade in 1998. Does anyone believe that she was so naive that she didn't know these things?<br />
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I assert that Hillary Clinton is not naive and never has been. She voted to approve Bush's use of force in Iraq with the full knowledge that members of PNAC were in the Bush administration, and that they fully intended on following through on their strategy, outlined on their website. Her knowledge of who was in the Bush administration and their clear intentions makes her vote--and the vote of every person who supported the use of force in Iraq--all the more egregious. <br />
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I don't believe her excuses regarding her use of the term, "super predators," either, because it was well-known in political circles that racial inequality existed in the justice system in the 1990s as much as now, and that escalation of the war on drugs and calling for stricter sentencing would disproportionately affect black people. <br />
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I don't buy her excuse for not releasing her speeches to Wall Street banks: there is no double standard here. Bernie Sanders has not been paid to speak to Wall Street investors. Hillary Clinton has. If there's nothing in those speeches she has to hide from voters, then she should release the transcripts. She is not releasing them because she knows what she said will hurt her politically. <br />
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The list goes on, as Hillary Clinton has a long history of being wrong before coming over to the right side. She is now, suddenly, for the $15/hour minimum wage; she wasn't supporting it at the beginning of the campaign. She is now for LGBT rights, something she began supporting in 2013; she said in 2008 that marriage should be between one man and one woman. Not long ago ,she was open to the idea of a private component to Social Security; now, she's for expanding it and taxing the wealthy to fund it. She's vehemently anti-gun now; she was so pro-gun in 2008, Obama called her "Annie Oakley" on the debate stage. <br />
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There are no right-wing smears here. These are all valid critiques of her policy positions and how she's changed them. You won't hear me talking about Benghazi, which I think was a witch hunt. You won't hear me talking about Whitewater, because I don't really know a lot about. You won't hear me talking about the Clinton murders, which are pure right-wing fiction. You won't hear me talking about Bill Clinton's affairs or sexual harassment, because I don't think these are relevant to Clinton's campaign. <br />
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No, I'm sticking to the real issues, her real positions. I don't care about the right-wing fiction. What I do care about is that when we cut out the fairy tales, we're still left with someone who is untrustworthy, hawkish, and beholden to large donors.Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-79431329781777287952015-10-01T09:09:00.005-04:002015-10-01T09:09:51.788-04:00Christians, the Republican Party is playing you for suckersThirty-six years ago, David Barton wrote a book entitled, <i>The Myth of Separation</i>. It was full of errors, half-truths, and revisionist history about our nation's founders, various court cases, and the history of separation of state and church in general. Barton attempted to show us a nation in decline by providing incomplete data without historical context.<br />
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Here's n example: he provided a graph, showing the decline in college entrance exam scores (for the SAT, specifically) over a period that began when the <i>Murry v. Curtlett </i>and <i>Abington v Schemp </i>cases were decided, up through 1980 (I think--I am going off the top of my head here; I have the accurate data in my book, <i>The King of Weasels</i>, which I will be publishing in the next year). This graph doesn't show us the complete data, which goes back another decade or so, and begins with a handful of schools--Ivy League schools were the only colleges to use SAT scores in the beginning. A higher caliber of student took the SAT. Later, the testing expanded to around 300 schools, and the test scores dropped--a wider variety of students were taking the test, and the average went down. Then, we get to the era of the war in Vietnam, when many people went to college to avoid the draft. The College Board offered the SAT to a much broader range of students. Eventually, over 3000 colleges and universities offered the test, and every high school student planning on entering college began taking it. <br />
<br />
One would expect these scores to decline accordingly, because the pool of test takers went from the top students in the country to every student planning on going to college. But no, no, it was all the fault of the Supreme Court's decision to ban school-sponsored prayer and Bible recitation, according to Barton.<br />
<br />
That's one example of the kind of deception Barton expects his audience to believe, but there's one that should seem more familiar, and it comes in the last chapter of <i>The Myth of Separation. </i>Barton gives his readers a ten-point plan to bring the nation to theocracy (though he would never say it out loud, the name of his organization, Wallbuilders, comes from the Book of Nehemiah in the Bible, and is about a man who rebuilds Jerusalem with the help of a variety of people, then kicks out everyone but the religious zealots). Part of the plan is to use abortion as a wedge issue. <br />
<br />
And that brings us to the point of the article: the reason we are talking about Planned Parenthood's funding today is because the idea that abortion is murder serves as a banner behind which fundamentalist evangelical Christians and white male Catholics--a huge part of the Republican base--will rally behind. It's no surprise that this fight is taking place as the 2016 Presidential primary campaign begins. <br />
<br />
I assure you, Christians, the Republican Party is using you. <br />
<br />
Abortion is a wedge issue. It really should be a decision between a woman and her doctor, as decided in <i>Roe v. Wade</i>. However, since the idea that abortion is murder is such a power motivator for Christians, the Republicans will continue to use it to energize the base. It also solves another problem for them: poor people getting free stuff. They don't like Planned Parenthood, because they don't like poor women getting free health care services. <br />
<br />
Abortion comprises three percent of what Planned Parenthood does, and not one tax dollar goes to this particular service, but that's what Republicans will bring up, because it's easier to get their base to buy into de-funding abortion (which they are not paying for now) than cutting funds for free cancer screenings for poor people. <br />
<br />
Once again, they are using you. They don't care about the pro-life cause. The same people who are most vocal and proud about cutting funding from Planned Parenthood also want to expand the military and want to go to war with Iran. If you don't think they will, you have a short memory. George W. Bush led us into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers died in those wars, and many thousands more were injured. Many more were displaced. People were falsely imprisoned and tortured. How is this moral? These are people with names, personalities, and families; one would think that a person who is pro-life would be more passionately against war than abortion, where a life that never saw light of day, never knew its name (if one was ever picked out), never developed a personality, never developed family ties. <br />
<br />
And aren't Christians supposed to care about the poor? I read the Bible many times. I remember that the Jesus character specifically commanded people to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. I specifically remember that he told a rich man to give everything he had to the poor, then follow him. I remember that he said that it was more difficult for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (and that may have been the name for a small gate in the city wall that a camel would have difficulty getting through, but the point still stands). Republican policies benefit the wealthy and dismiss the poor as a burden to society. They want to cut funding from the VA, funding from welfare, funding from Social Security. They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which helps poor people obtain health care. <br />
<br />
I assure you, lack of access to health care is murder. <br />
<br />
My Aunt Pam got cancer. She was diagnosed with it, but she didn't have health care, and she didn't have the money to get treatment on her own. It spread. It got painful. By the time it became so bad, she had to go to the hospital again, it was too late. There was no treating her. She died a few days after going to the hospital, of a cancer that was treatable when she was first diagnosed. <br />
<br />
We didn't have the Affordable Care Act when the doctor diagnosed my aunt. We do now, and many lives can and will be saved as a result--many people in situations like my aunt's may now be treated for terminal illness. If Republicans take that away, they will be responsible for the murder of people like my Aunt Pam. <br />
<br />
So, Christians who profess to be pro-life, you have a choice: you can keep rallying behind the party of war, the party of expanding poverty, and the party of taking health care away from poor people with treatable illnesses, or you can keep pretending that you're pro-life by trying to protect fetuses.Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-64668894066117242682015-03-24T16:51:00.000-04:002015-03-24T16:51:58.034-04:00An Open Letter to Phil Robertson, and Every Other Person Who Thinks Atheists Don't Have MoralsDear Mr. Robertson and other religious people who believe atheists cannot have morality,<br />
<br />
When I was nineteen years old, I freed myself of my faith after a long intellectual journey that began with me attempting to prove that the Christian god exists. That journey caused me to read the Bible twenty-seven times, as well as sacred texts from other religious traditions. I did not know any out-of-the-closet atheists personally, so I had to figure out for myself what was moral and what wasn't--but I found out that it was pretty easy, because I possessed a tool that almost everyone on the planet also possesses: empathy. <br />
<br />
The ability to put oneself into others' situations makes it easy to understand what will do harm and what will do good, and we may act accordingly. In most cases, we will not even have to think about the other person's situation, because we instinctively act in a way that does not harm other people, if left to our own devices. It's power, it's politics, it's ideology that causes us to do harm to others. <br />
<br />
Your Bible is full of things I would consider immoral. <br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The genocide in the land of Canaan</li>
<li>The advocacy of slavery in the laws of Leviticus and the stories in Genesis (rules about circumcising slaves exist in Genesis, as well as stories about Abraham using slave soldiers)</li>
<li>The offer of Lot's daughters to the people of Sodom to rape</li>
<li>The fact that every law involving the treatment of men and women in Leviticus and Deuteronomy has women worth half of what men are</li>
<li>The practice of forcing women to marry their rapists, written to look like it's a punishment to the rapists to force them to marry their victims</li>
<li>Corporal punishment for children </li>
<li>The practice of enslaving virgin girls from conquered cities</li>
<li>The idea that one must shun one's family if they don't believe</li>
<li>Death sentences for addiction, homosexuality, non-belief, adultery, and the completely fabricated accusation of witchcraft</li>
<li>The flooding of the entire planet (which, of course, didn't happen, but it's in your myth)</li>
</ul>
<div>
The list goes on. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My morality does not come from the book you hold sacred. My morality comes from empathy, life experiences, and the examples of others in real-life situations. I do not have to be commanded to be moral. Do you know why? It's because we evolved to be moral beings. </div>
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<br /></div>
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It's hard to imagine in a world where we are at war so much, where there's so much murder, rape, theft, greed, and everything else we consider a harm, but we did evolve to band together in tribal units and defend the tribe. In hunter-gatherer cultures, the tribe cooperates to find food and water, to build shelter, and to raise children. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In a secular, industrialized society--like the United States is set up to be--we have set up laws and a justice system to enforce them. Those laws come from the collective morality of the people, which I would rather see come from empathy than from religious edict. Rule of law provides consequences for actions like the one you described in your horrific rape and murder story involving an atheist family. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As the father and husband in an atheist family, I found your story to be a disgusting misrepresentation of how atheists view morality and how we live our lives. We love our spouses and our children every bit as much as you love yours, and we would do everything we could to protect them from harm, because we can empathize with their feelings and pain when bad things happen to them. Evolution has hard-wired us to do it. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Sincerely,</div>
<div>
Greg Reich, an atheist with a family</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
_________</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This letter is in response to this article on Raw Story:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/duck-dynasty-star-fantasizes-about-atheist-familys-brutal-rape-and-murder-to-make-point-about-gods-law/#.VRG_JA7y7iI.facebook">http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/duck-dynasty-star-fantasizes-about-atheist-familys-brutal-rape-and-murder-to-make-point-about-gods-law/#.VRG_JA7y7iI.facebook</a></div>
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Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-90175613142621847422015-02-12T18:47:00.000-05:002015-02-12T18:47:58.845-05:00What's so insidious about 50 Shades of Grey?I complain about 50 Shades of Grey a lot, as anyone who knows me from Facebook groups can attest. I explain over and over, <i>ad nauseum, </i>what I find wrong with this series, but I keep having to explain, so I figured I would write an article about it that I could link to whenever the subject comes up.<br />
<br />
I have a more appropriate blog for this subject matter, but I want this article to be accessible to everyone, and the other blog is not. The other blog is for adult audiences only, and it's for a certain segment of the adult population. It is not for everyone. <br />
<br />
In any case...what do I have against this work of fiction? You didn't hear me complaining about Twilight. You also haven't heard me complain about other works of fiction that have as their subject matter abusive relationships or irresponsible representations of the BDSM lifestyle. <br />
<br />
The truth is this: I would not care what the story was about if it hadn't been turned into a brand used to sell adult novelties and products in a way that deceptively marries this story to the BDSM lifestyle. <br />
It doesn't matter to me that it's poorly written and edited, even though reading it was an assault on my sensibilities as an English major with a writing minor. <br />
<br />
It doesn't matter to me that it's about abuse--plenty of stories have abuse in them. Plenty have rape, murder, torture, and other horrible subjects--and the person or people doing those things is/are not necessarily looked down upon by the author. That does not matter. <br />
<br />
What matters is that <i>50 Shades</i> is a brand now. It's not the book series anymore; it's not the movie that's out or the movies to come. It's magazine article after magazine article, telling people how they can have sex like they do in this series, how they can learn from Christian Grey, how they can bring the play they see in the books into their bedrooms. Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and even Men's Health have published this type of article, as well as a myriad of websites promoting this atrocious series.<br />
<br />
Don't get me started on daytime talk shows. <br />
<br />
E. L. James did no research for this book, and yet, she shamelessly allows her brand to be associated with a lifestyle whose participants live the opposite way of the abusive character she wrote into her books. <br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>A responsible dominant does not set hard and soft limits on kinks with a virgin. Yes, Anastasia is a virgin in the first book. I am not sure if she's portrayed this way in the movie, because I have not seen it yet, but she is definitely a virgin when Christian meets her. A virgin could not sign a contract that sets rules on kinks with hard and soft limits and call it informed consent. </li>
<li>Christian Grey is portrayed as someone whose drug addict mother shaped him into who he is. That's not generally true of lifestyle dominants. Abuse is rampant in society, and yes, some people into BDSM have been abused or had hard lives--but no more than those who aren't into kink. </li>
<li>Christian isolates Ana from her friends and family--huge red flag! This is one of the classic signs of an abusive relationship. </li>
<li>The stalking of Ana is also a huge red flag for abuse, but it's also another misrepresentation of the BDSM lifestyle. BDSM relationships are built on trust--out of necessity. The submissive must trust the dominant in order to give consent and relinquish control; the dominant must trust the submissive not to claim domestic violence for marks they both agreed to in the beginning. Slave contracts are no protection; the submissive could easily say she/he was coerced. If Christian has so little trust of Ana that he had to stalk her, he had no business trying to be a Dom. Furthermore, it reeks of insecurity--and the last thing anyone wants in a dominant is insecurity.</li>
</ul>
<div>
There are plenty of articles out there listing the instances of abuse, but the main point remains that if the author hadn't consented to merging her series about abuse with a lifestyle that has a thriving community whose members warn against it, where healthy relationships depend on trust and consent, where partners care about the physical and emotional safety and well-being of each other, I would not be writing this article to warn against it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-40608556892610420042015-02-09T19:24:00.001-05:002015-02-09T19:24:22.889-05:00A review of Pugliano's, who catered our weddingI wanted to say some good stuff about <a href="http://puglianositaliangrill.com/" target="_blank">Pugliano's </a>at 1808 Golden Mile Highway, in Pittsburgh, PA.<br />
<br />
We were looking for a place to have our wedding and reception, and Pugliano's was the first place we tried. After excellent service, excellent food, and delightful presentation, we decided to look no further. <br />
<br />
On the day of our wedding, the service was just as great as it was when we at there for dinner the day we scoped it out. They made sure everyone had the drinks they wanted, and the food they provided was hot, fresh, and excellent. We had their fried chicken, their stuffed shells, their meatballs, potatoes au gratin, chipotle barbecue wings, a vegetable tray, and a fruit bowl. It was all delicious and looked fantastic. <br />
<br />
It was all reasonably, priced, too--about $16,99 a plate, and better the catering I've had at other weddings. <br />
<br />
I would recommend Pugliano's to anyone who wants to have an event catered. I'm not sure what their total capacity is there--I think 180, but you should check with them before you go. Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-44860402423679438182015-02-09T07:03:00.000-05:002015-02-09T07:03:42.127-05:00An atheist wedding <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4mUhzF0RgIE5Y62DOCPGjdMwQzO_EjUfDB6PFbKX1A7GpM516cGJBtL3PYcWkAEQKzy-Hir6MCf6Pmk3p7QIw69U8MoXVomaOusLl0adkPiXjlY6iJakDs2KyqE8f6pdjMW8jhb4bOgY/s1600/Wedding+021.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4mUhzF0RgIE5Y62DOCPGjdMwQzO_EjUfDB6PFbKX1A7GpM516cGJBtL3PYcWkAEQKzy-Hir6MCf6Pmk3p7QIw69U8MoXVomaOusLl0adkPiXjlY6iJakDs2KyqE8f6pdjMW8jhb4bOgY/s1600/Wedding+021.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I got married! <span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Here is the script of the wedding, in its entirety.</span><br />
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
[DANIEL, OFFICIANT]</div>
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(opening)</div>
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We have gathered here today to witness the union of Greg and Jeanie. Thanks to technology, we in this room bear witness to this ceremony along with people from all over the world. On six continents, people who have watched Greg and Jeanie grow in their love are now witnessing their pledge to a lifetime of love and commitment to each other and their children.</div>
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
(Daniel reads the essay on marriage)</div>
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Why do people get married? What makes a couple sign a marriage license and legally bind one person to another?</div>
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Sure, there are benefits and protections involved. It’s easier to do things in the name of your spouse. It’s easier to get insurance, it protects the assets you’ve built together, it assures that you have a say in medical decisions, and it makes any process involving children easier. It makes your taxes slightly easier to do.</div>
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It’s more than that, though. It’s announcing to society that you are committed to building a life together, that you are on the same page, that you have the same goals, and you are going to spend your life working to achieve them. It says to everyone you meet that you’re proud to call your spouse your husband or your wife.</div>
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It’s no longer “boyfriend” and “girlfriend”. It’s no longer “significant other”. It’s not simply “partner”, “love interest”, or even “fiancé”. You love each other enough to take the next step into the most challenging adventure of human relationships.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
So what is marriage? It’s dedication and perseverance; it’s talking and listening; it’s helping and supporting and believing in each other; it’s intimacy and laugher; it’s learning to forgive, learning to appreciate your differences, and doing little things every day to build each other up. . As you begin your married life, it is my hope that your family gathered here, that your family not present today, and that your friends from all over the world will support your commitment and look to your love as an inspiration in their own lives.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
____</div>
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Greg and Jeanie have prepared some words they would like to share with each other.</div>
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
[JEANIE READS HER WORDS TO GREG]</div>
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Greg, how can I express how happy you’ve made me?</div>
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You make me feel safe. You accept me with all of my weirdness. You and I have similar goals and ideas, and that’s important when we’re staring a life together. We can always be ourselves with each other.</div>
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You don’t just say you care about me; you show it, and it’s not with expensive presents or over the top displays, but with all of the little things you do every day.</div>
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It’s when you stroke my hair and hold me close when I come to sit down next to you. It’s the times you say “I love you” out of nowhere. It’s you taking care of me when I’m sick or have a headache, doing the dishes without a word when I’m in pain, and when you kiss my nose to make me smile. It’s when you write expressions of love for me out of the blue and make me so happy, it moves me to tears. It’s when you stop what you’re doing to spend time with me, not because I complained, but because that’s what you’d rather do.</div>
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It’s always the little things that matter the most.</div>
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I promise to love, honor, and cherish you, as long as we live.</div>
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
[GREG READS HIS WORDS TO JEANIE]</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
Jeanie, I fell in love with you early on, within eight days of talking with you. We talked almost around the clock for all eight of those days, learning a great deal about each other. The more we spoke, the more I realized that I could not see a down side. There were only positives. On day nine, I told you that I love you. I can’t tell you how elated I was to hear you say you love me too.</div>
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Words are words, of course, and no one can be sure until those words are tested. Everything I learned about you in words passed each test with flying colors. It did not take long to learn that you are completely genuine.</div>
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I never knew I could be so happy with anyone. I thought I knew what love was, but you proved that everything I labeled “love” in the past was a shadow of the real experience.</div>
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Love is not just a feeling. Love is a blend of emotions, trust, cooperation, affection, intimacy, and bliss. It is holding hands on car trips, cuddling on the couch during a movie, getting lost in each other’s eyes, raising children together, making long-term goals, building each other up, and growing old together. It’s making each other laugh and supporting each other through both good times and more difficult ones.</div>
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I promise to love you, cherish you, adore you, and never take you for granted. You make life better, and I promise always to strive to make life better, too.</div>
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[DANIEL READS THE VOWS]</div>
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Dan: Do you, Greg, take Jeanie to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, to love, honor, and cherish for the rest of your life?</div>
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Greg: I do.</div>
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Dan: Do you, Jeanie, take Greg to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, to love, honor, and cherish for the rest of your life?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
Jeanie: I do.</div>
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Dan: By the power vested in my by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.</div>
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Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-13097818473840779442015-01-04T11:57:00.000-05:002015-01-04T11:57:07.450-05:00Noah: High budget movie made to piss off fundamentalists<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>This movie is stupid and boring. --Jeanie</b></blockquote>
<br />
Spoiler alert! I'm going to give some details, so if you really want to see this film without knowing what's going to happen, don't read any further. <br />
<br />
This movie served as a comedy until Jeanie lost interest. We both agreed that it would have been far better to watch in a theater, where we could catch the reactions of folks who thought they were going to see the equivalent to "The Ten Commandments", starring Charlton Heston. That would have been so much fun. People watching often is. <br />
<br />
It's clear this was a high-budget film. Russell Crowe is Noah, Jennifer Connelly is his wife, Emma Watson is Shem's wife (I'm bad with names, people, and can only remember the ones mentioned in the Bible, which I've read 27 times, so please don't read into the fact that I don't remember the names of the women--blame the Bible's author for never mentioning them), Anthony Hopkins plays Methusaleh...they really shelled out the big bucks for the cast. <br />
<br />
Okay, I'm looking it up on IMDB now.<br />
<br />
[minutes go by]<br />
<br />
<br />
Jennifer Connely is Neemah, and Emma Watson is Ila. Anyway, they dragged some big names into this film. I had to go look because these actresses are accomplished, and it's wrong of me not to care which characters they played.<br />
<br />
Anyway, first off all, the movie is nothing like the book. If you're going into this film thinking it's going to be anything like the Genesis account, you'll be disappointed. There's a loose framework and a few elements in common, but that's about it. I had already heard plenty of Internet buzz about how it wasn't like the biblical account, and I didn't care--I have no love for the Bible. However, it seems like they did things just to piss off fundamentalists. They explain "fallen angels" as beings of light who tried to help mankind after the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, who then became rock monsters. They helped mankind, but mankind turned on them. Anyway, they end up helping to build the ark and defending it from the men who turned on them, which had to piss off fundamentalists. These "angels" disobeyed their creator (never called "God" in the movie); they belonged in hell, right?<br />
<br />
Things that the movie had in common with the Bible: a few of the names of the characters, the crow failing to find land, the dove succeeding to find land, two of every creature ending up on the ark, the ark itself, the genocide the flood represented, Ham spurning his drunken father at the end of the story, and that's about it. <br />
<br />
Here are the differences, off the top of my head, without doing a detailed analysis:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Only Shem had a wife when the flood began. Ham and Japheth both had wives when they entered the ark in the Bible. </li>
<li>Conflict is created when Methusaleh makes the barren Ila fertile with his blessing, and Noah, who has it in his mind that his creator intended for mankind to be destroyed (he thought his mission was simply to save the animals and die), believes he has to kill Ila's and Shem's offspring if they have a girl. It's clear in the Bible that God intended to save Noah's family because they were the only righteous ones left on the corrupted Earth (except at the end of the story, he decided that wickedness in men will never be cured, and the flood was basically a wasted endeavor--seriously, read the book. I'm not making that up.). </li>
<li>More conflict is created when Ham decides to try and find a wife, finds a girl who wants to be his mate, then loses her in a stampede of humans who are trying to get to the ark when the rains come, all because she gets her foot stuck in a trap.</li>
<li>Tubal-Cain (descendant of Cain and the king of the wicked people) leads and army to try to take the ark, because of course there needs to be suspense right when the flood begins. </li>
<li>The fallen angels get back into heaven when their bodies are ripped apart. </li>
<li>The "creator" never talks to Noah. He communicates in visions and dreams, which Methusaleh needs to help along because Noah's never shown what to do to avoid the flood in his dream. He does it through the use of a potion of some sort.</li>
<li>Noah has to decide whether or not to kill babies.</li>
<li>Tubal-Cain ends up on the ark, the only survivor of the wicked people, all to create more conflict and suspense by tempting Ham to kill his father, and giving Tubal-Cain a chance to kill Noah. </li>
</ul>
<div>
I'm sure I can come up with more differences and similarities with a full analysis, but I'm sure people will get the idea: this film is a re-imagining of the Genesis story. So...what's the point? Why make a film about Noah that not only isn't like the Genesis account, but also contains downright blasphemous elements (like fallen angels helping Noah build the ark and getting back into heaven)? I'm pretty sure the whole point was that human beings corrupted the planet, made conditions horrible, and would be judged for it; that message is pretty heavy-handed and blatantly stated by Noah when he recounted the story of the fall of man when they got onto the ark. He also revealed at that point that his family were to be the last humans (until he found out Ila was pregnant), so an extension of the message is that the world would be better off without humans. I think.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>This is nothing like the book, and they're all white! --Jeanie</b></blockquote>
Yeah...that's another thing. This all-white cast looks nothing like the first humans, who most certainly had a high melanin content in their skin. <br />
<br />
As far as movies go, religious connections notwithstanding, I didn't find it unwatchable. I found a lot of comedy in it, which I'm sure wasn't the intention of the filmmakers. If you want to waste two hours of your time on a fantasy that doesn't really have a message of any importance, this film is for you. If you are expecting to have your religion validated or receive a more palatable version of the Genesis flood on film, you're not going to get it. I really do think that the intention was to piss off believers. <br />
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<br />Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-87770480454265059512014-12-30T10:40:00.000-05:002014-12-30T10:40:52.892-05:00I don't believe in unrequited loveRecently, someone revealed that he is "in love" with someone who is in a relationship. I commented that I don't believe in unrequited love. I think two people can fall in love and never be together, but I don't think it can be love when the feelings aren't mutual. If there's no reciprocation, the person who thinks he's in love is fixated on the idea of this other person being with him. It's infatuation, not love. It's putting the other person on a pedestal, thinking she's the perfect person for you, when you haven't been with her to know her quirks and flaws. You don't know what it's like to be intimate with her, and you won't get the chance because she's in a relationship (at least if it's a happy one, and not failing already). <br />
<br />
This person said that he liked certain qualities of her personality and the fact that she makes him happy with ease. That's what friends do. The fact that the friend happens to be the gender you prefer doesn't make it a romantic relationship. That idea is only coming from one side. She's with someone else; she isn't looking for intimacy with you. <br />
<br />
If he's waiting for her relationship to fail, he does not respect her. Who wishes the pain of a failed relationship and a breakup on someone, just so he has a chance of being with her? That's selfish, and love isn't selfish. It's unkind, and love is not unkind. It's an "If I can't have her, nobody can" mentality. <br />
<br />
There are plenty of single people out there. Finding someone compatible is difficult, to be sure, but if you're looking at people who already believe they've found someone compatible, you are looking in the wrong places. <br />
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<br />Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-22894574038690766322014-12-28T22:30:00.004-05:002014-12-29T09:24:02.683-05:00God's Not Dead: A Movie For People Who Don't Know How College Works...or introductory philosophy classes, or relationships between atheists and their significant others, or their parents, or motor vehicles...<br />
<br />
If you watched this film and your intelligence wasn't insulted, you either weren't paying attention, never met an atheist, aren't familiar with college, aren't familiar with philosophy, aren't familiar with the Bible, or any combination, if not all, of the preceding. <br />
<br />
Ultimately, the movie attempts to reinforce the myth that atheists are former Christians who have lost their faith because they were mad at the Christian god. I can't speak for all atheists, but having been part of several atheist groups in the flesh and also the online community for the past 23 years, I assure you that most atheists are not believers because the evidence for gods is lacking. Yes, I said "gods". It's not just the Christian god atheists reject; it's all gods. All of them are myths. All of them require faith to believe. The "evidence" presented in the film isn't evidence at all, and dismisses all of the magic and mysticism required to accept the Bible as a whole--which the film clearly wants the viewers to do. <br />
<br />
For my part, it started with reading the Bible and asking questions in Bible study classes. I had long given up on Catholicism; confession killed Catholic dogma for me. I could not get a straight answer on why I needed an intermediary for confession of my sins. It was based on the precedent of Paul's confession in the New Testament, but the Catholic priests in the Middle Ages used absolution as an income source. Penance could be bought. Before this discovery about the practice, I had already asked the question this movie suggests can be turned around on me: who or what created God? The movie's main character, Josh Wheaton, tells us that they believe in an eternal god, but that belief requires faith and has no evidence to support it.<br />
<br />
In any case, getting back to why I lost my faith: I read the Bible twenty-seven times in the span of a few years. I've forgotten more of the Bible than most people have actually read, and I find it absurd to believe it's a basis for morality or a practical guide for life. The genocide in the land of Canaan alone kills it for me, but that's one problem among hundreds--perhaps more. Do people really expect me to believe that genocide was necessary? Even enslavement of the people who were in the "promised land" would have been more moral than genocide. Let's discard the talking snake, the magical trees, virgin birth, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, incantations, magic, and all of the other unprovable parts; where is the morality in genocide? The explanation offered to me for this genocide is that it was God's mercy that spared the potential descendants of the people in that land from being damned, containing the numbers to those who lived at that time--which brings me back to the idea of slavery. <br />
<br />
I do not condone slavery in any form, but if we look at the example of the slaves who were brought to the United States (and the colonies before it), we can find arguments some Christians made for the morality of the practice which include the idea that they saved pagans from damnation by forcing them to convert under bondage. That's amazing reasoning to me, but it's totally biblical. Abram (before he was Abraham) used an army of slaves to achieve military victory. There were rules for slavery--for buying and selling and beating, for pricing based on gender, for circumcision. How does one justify the ownership of people as moral? <br />
<br />
I could go on, but the point is that it's not anger that led me to reject faith, but lack of evidence and the absurdity of the evidence offered. My questions were met with "You have to have faith." People offered me books, like Josh McDowell's <i>Evidence that Demands a Verdict</i>. People have sent me more apologetics since. It's all easily torn apart--and that leads me back to the movie's situation.<br />
<br />
The writers of this screenplay either do not know how college works, or they expect their audience not to know. First, an introduction to philosophy will usually begin with Aristotle, not a discussion of atheism. In fact, the discussion of the necessity--or lack thereof--of gods will usually be reserved for epistemology courses. Secondly, if this was a state university--and I'm not sure if it is ever revealed that it is a state college--the kind of practice in which Kevin Sorbo's character engaged would not go unanswered. There would be legal action. An agent of the state cannot force a captive audience to agree to an idea or go against one's religion. It's a violation of the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment, as well as the Fourteenth (which applies the Constitution to states and provides equal protection to all classes of people under the law). Finally, the notion that there is only ONE Christian who would resist the initial class exercise anywhere in the United States is insultingly absurd. <br />
<br />
The whole premise for this movie seems based on urban legend stories about evil atheist professors who berate their students about their religion, and some Christian gives each professor his comeuppance. There's the one where the atheist professor tells the class that if God exists, he will keep chalk from dropping on the floor. When it catches in the cuff of his pants twice, he runs screaming from the room, and some Christian student gets up and witnesses to the class. In a more noxious urban legend, a Marine gets up and punches the professor for some reason, saying that God was busy protecting soldiers in Afghanistan, so he was sent as the agent of God. There are more, but the point is that there is this ignorant notion that college is a place where professors force atheism on students. Nothing could be further from the truth. I couldn't even tell you the religion of any of my professors. I can guess, but I don't know for certain, because they were all professionals who taught the subject matter at hand.<br />
<br />
I dropped religion on my own, and when I did drop it, I felt totally alone. I felt free, but I felt alone in my thinking. <br />
<br />
Christians have always had support networks. The persecution portrayed in this film is such a lie, it's an insult to those of us who have had the courage to come out in favor of reason, who have stood up to religious bullying to say that we don't accept the myths. When I came out, there was no Internet widely available. There wasn't an atheist group on my campus, and I had difficulty even finding another atheist. I met a couple before I rejected faith, but most of the people I met after were religious to some degree. There was a Campus Crusade for Christ. There were other religious organizations. There were churches available. There was nothing for atheists. This film wants us to believe that the Christian who stands up for faith is alone, but it would be far more believable that a Christian student would be on his own on a campus in Europe than any in the United States. <br />
<br />
The final point I want to make is that every single atheist in this movie is an asshole. The woman who gets cancer likes to ambush Christian celebrities with insipid interview questions and a hostile attitude. Her boyfriend is a complete jackass who doesn't care about his mother with dementia, and who breaks up with the girlfriend after she finds out she has cancer. The atheist professor is a dick to not only students, but to his wife? Girlfriend? I'd have to watch it again to find out for sure, but she's a believer, and he ridicules her faith in front of his professor buddies at a dinner party she helped prepare. All of them seem to come to faith in the end (we're not sure about Dean Cain's character, but he's left speechless by something his mother says about the devil's deception of people), which is also a bit sickening. A preacher telling a dying atheist that he has a second chance to accept Jesus is rude and unwelcome. I'd tell him to go away and let me die in peace--or better yet, stop trying to get me to accept Jesus and call 911!<br />
<br />
Can I shred the arguments the Josh Wheaton character made in the film? Certainly, but people have already done that. Check out the following link:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2014/03/a-philosophy-professor-analyzes-gods-not-deads-case-for-god/">http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2014/03/a-philosophy-professor-analyzes-gods-not-deads-case-for-god/</a><br />
<br />
There are many videos on YouTube where atheists have picked apart the movie, as well.<br />
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Perhaps I'll give my own take on the arguments made in the film at some point, but what bothers me the most is that there really isn't a case made for the existence of God; it's mostly quote-mining of scientists and taking them out of context. And making a case for Genesis...that's just funny. I have a Facebook page called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SkepticalBibleReadingPage" target="_blank">Skeptical Bible Reading</a>, where I have gone through several chapters of Genesis already to point out the problems. Check it out. I'll be doing more writing there.<br />
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I'm also thinking about reviewing the films Pure Flix--the producers of "God's Not Dead"--makes. I think there's a lot of comedy in them. At least, that's how my fiancee and I treat films like this one.<br />
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<br />Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-10426547339642018832014-12-23T12:25:00.003-05:002014-12-23T12:25:48.629-05:00Stop forcing religion down our throatsI love how atheists are always the bad guys for wanting religious displays removed from tax-supported land. <br />
<br />
"But it's tradition!"<br />
<br />
Yes, it's a long tradition of shoving your religion in our faces, using money that partially came from us. <br />
<br />
"But God is on our money. It's part of our motto. It's on our coins." <br />
<br />
Yes, because in the 1950s, religious hysteria about "godless" communism (which wasn't actually godless--they just taxed churches in the USSR, and religious leaders feared that) caused Congress to legislate religious entanglement with the state. Most of your parents were born in the 50s or a decade or two before. It was on the coins sooner, but that was a sneaky little piece of work on the part of two members of the National Reform Association (now the American Family Association--a rabidly anti-gay group), who, after failing to get the United States to acknowledge Jesus in the Constitution, got Congress to pass a bill with vague wording that gave them carte blanche on the coin design. Teddy Roosevelt wanted to put out a coin without "In God We Trust" on it, but religious bullying pushed it through Congress.<br />
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You have private property. You have church property. You have all the rights in the world to put up religious symbols. I've driven by your houses, though, and they have plastic snowmen, Santa, reindeer, lights, candy canes--everything but nativity scenes and other religious symbols. I don't see a placard with "In God We Trust" over your doors. I've seen crosses in your houses, but not on your front lawns. <br />
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You have 365,000 churches (approximately) in a country with 300,000,000 people (again, approximately), but only 39 million of you attend church on a weekly basis. That means that there is a church for every 107 people who actually attend weekly (there area lot of tiny churches in cities). You have more than enough facilities for religious fellowship. You have more than enough places to put your religious ideas on display. Why do you need our money and our cooperation? <br />
<br />
You don't see atheists trying to ban churches, but when we respectfully ask you to keep your religious symbols off of tax-supported property, we're the bad ones. When we ask you to keep religious out of schools, we're the jerks. I don't get it. You want to force religion down our throats and simply expect us to shut up and take it. <br />
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I'm not going to take it, and I don't feel sorry at all that atheists are trying to use the courts at every turn to get religion off of public property. Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-2097809729263641032014-11-05T09:21:00.002-05:002014-11-05T09:21:33.405-05:00Get ready for two years of suckWith the Republicans taking over the Senate, both houses of Congress have Republican majorities. The Republicans do not have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but now that they have a majority in both houses, they have all kinds of opportunity to wreak havoc on the country. Here's what I expect to see:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Attempts to repeal parts or all of the Affordable Care Act</b>: House Republicans have attempted to repeal Obamacare several times in the past few years without success, because the Senate squashed these attempts. Now, the Republicans in the Senate will rubber-stamp them, most assuredly, so either the Senate Democrats have to filibuster, or President Obama will have to veto. Will the Democrats bend or stand firm? That's what remains to be seen. </li>
<li><b>Attempts to pass a "defense of marriage" amendment</b>: Chuck Todd, whose analysis I have pretty much despised since I first saw him on television, claimed that the Republican victories are a repudiation of President Obama. I strongly disagree. In every race where Democrats distanced themselves from the President, they lost. In races where Obama was involved in the campaign, they won. Tom Wolfe won in Pennsylvania, and he had no problem siding with Obama. I think the Republican victories have to do with a few things, and one of those involves all of the states having their anti-marriage equality laws declared unconstitutional. Given that the victories occurred in largely red states--religious states--it stands to reason that anti-gay bigotry fueled Republican turnout. </li>
<li><b>Way too much compromise in order for Democrats to remain relevant</b>: This is the big potential mistake that scares me the most. To get around the filibuster, which Senate Republicans used a record number of times during the Obama Presidency, the President and Senate Democrats compromised far too often with Republicans. The best possible thing the Democrats could do right now is go into damage control mode and not let anything Republicans try to pass go through. Make the Republicans compromise--which they are loathe to do--or don't let anything pass. Unfortunately, I envision Democrats bending, just to make it look like Congress is doing something and the President is not a lame duck. </li>
<li><b>Mandate: </b> Even though the Republican victories came in mostly red states and during a mid-term election where voter turnout is usually down, the Republican politicians and their media cheerleaders will label the takeover of the Senate a "mandate". Now, to NBC's credit last night, they did not make that assessment; they said that the elections were too tight to call any of these victories a glaring indictment of Democrats. </li>
<li><b>Impeachment:</b> I don't know if they're going to go this far, but I can envision a huge waste of taxpayer money on impeachment proceedings with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress. Then again, impeachment could get them destroyed in 2016. </li>
</ul>
<div>
My advice (for what it's worth) to Democrats: stay on the people who represent you in government. Tell them to stand firm and use the tools available to them to stop Republicans from running roughshod over our country. Look forward to 2016 and work for overwhelming victory till then. And take a lesson from this mid-term election: these were tight races, and every vote counted. If turnout would have been better for Democrats, we wouldn't have a Republican Senate. Your vote matters in EVERY election. </div>
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Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-81243903841085656212014-10-30T09:28:00.000-04:002014-10-30T09:28:11.021-04:00About letting the market decide"Let the market decide."<br />
<br />
The free market ideologues will have you believe that the market is perfect when it's unregulated, or, at the very least, that it is at its best and most efficient. They would have you believe that an unregulated market would be the best option for the most people, or at least, that's the line they sell you, while they are fully aware that it would be what's best for those who already have wealth. They would have you believe that an unregulated market would result in more competition, not less, in better products, not lower-quality ones, and in lower prices, not higher. <br />
<br />
I have huge problems with the concept of an unregulated market, especially after working with the people who would control that market for most of my adult life. The one thing that people must bear in mind is that business is only about profit. That's its aim. Whatever concepts people add to it to make it more bearable, profit is the only goal that ultimately matters, because without profit, business won't exist. Sure, there are not-for-profit businesses that exist for charitable/humanitarian/philanthropic purposes, but no one expects the people who sell most goods and services to do it for free. I don't. However, I have several problems with the market that make it worrisome for me to dispense with regulation entirely.<br />
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First, the current philosophy of capitalism involves paying labor as little as possible. The idea that "capitalism is the greatest engine for freedom" couldn't be more false. The market built itself on the exploitation of labor, and it continues to exploit it. The slave trade thrived for centuries to support capitalism, and was itself the worst example of unbridled capitalism. When people argue over the causes of the US Civil War, there is a crowd that says it's about states' rights, and there's a crowd that says it's about slavery. They're both right, but they both miss the truth. It was really the fact that slavery was the backbone of capitalism in the South that caused the South to secede. As country after country abolished the slave trade, capitalists in the South saw that the United States was going to abolish it soon, and they wanted to preserve the institution as long as possible to preserve plantation profits. Preservation of profit not only prolonged the enslavement of millions of people, but also resulted in the lost of hundreds of thousands of American lives, all over capitalism. <br />
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Secondly, there is no interest in the greater good built into the idea of making profit. Business only has interest in profit, so the only important consideration in business becomes how to maximize profits and preserve cash flow. There's no interest in making life better for the maximum number of people, nor is there consideration for future generations. Some people involved in business might consider these concepts, but there's no guarantee. Of course, the concept of "the greater good" itself is problematic; who determines what constitutes "the greater good"? What is "good"? We would have to agree on a definition in order to work toward that end. I think a decent example of a standard would be what medical professionals use in patient care: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. At its base, the hierarchy has survival needs, then moves on to things people need for emotional well-being and intellectual growth. I think society becomes better when more of these needs are met by the greatest number of people. Will everyone agree on this standard? I would say "probably not" if I wasn't sure that the answer was "definitely not." <br />
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Next, the marketing of goods and services relies on manipulation and the presentation of the least amount of information to the public. The market is best served by an ignorant population, not an informed one. Ignorance breeds poor decision-making, however, and leads to poor representation in politics. It leads to all kinds of disaster, as well. Take, for example, the introduction of a species to a an area foreign to it to rid crops of a pest. That species has no natural predators, so they infest the area, and their numbers get out so out of control, they become pests themselves, leading to ecological disaster. Arguably, the levees keeping New Orleans from flooding broke because of bad decision-making regarding their maintenance, and anyone who watched the news in 2005 knows that result. Ignorance led to unjustifiable war in the Middle East. Can we blame the market on these things? Well, the introduction of species to foreign environments had a direct capitalist cause, but the examples illustrate what happens when ignorance reigns, rather than what happens when the market is in control. Still, the market wants ignorance, because it's easier to sell products that either do nothing or cause harm to a few--or even many--if the population remains ignorant, and ignorant politicians are a by-product of a culture of ignorance fostered by the market.<br />
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Finally, capitalism leads to a greater quality of life for the few, not the many. The ultimate result of an unregulated market would resemble the medieval feudal system in Europe; most of the wealth will remain in the hands of a few, and the rest of the people will work for scraps. Right now, people are kept far too busy and too poor to do anything substantial about the disparity of wealth that exists globally, and the market will work hard to preserve the status quo. They will be entertained with junk food for the brain on the Internet, television, and radio. Take a look at the news in the United States, for example: there's rarely anything of substance in a news broadcast. How does news of a murder many states away affect life where you live? It doesn't. It doesn't inform you. It only serves to shock you and keep you watching. Look for in-depth investigation into anything on the news; you'll be hard-pressed to find it. Very few journalists engage in it. Why? The news is a for-profit industry, and it's easier to provide superficial stories than it is to infiltrate organizations and businesses to provide investigative reporting. The responsibility is to the bottom line and to the shareholder, not to the consumer. <br />
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If we are going to have a market, it should be a well-regulated one, tempered with information and consideration for what's best for the maximum number of people, not one that fosters ignorance, has no responsibility to labor or the consumer, and not one that influences politics. The market should not decide how much freedom we have. The market should not be the sole arbiter of what direction science should take. The market should not be the determining factor in what makes the news. If capitalism is going to survive, we need to regulate the hell out of it. Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-7578873394952106742014-10-10T11:57:00.000-04:002014-10-10T11:57:29.550-04:00This atheist doesn't give a damn about Carrie Underwood's songThere's a rumor going around about atheists being angry about an overtly religious song by Carrie Underwood. I wouldn't even have known about it if people didn't post this nonsense on social media. Without checking sources to find out which atheists are trying to get the song banned, conservatives perpetuate a falsehood that raises the ire of the ignorant against people who aren't doing anything to harm them.<br />
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<ul>
<li><b>The United States Constitution prevents legislation that would get any song banned</b>. Sure, atheists might boycott overtly religious music, but get it banned? How? The claim is ridiculous on its face, and even if some atheist or group of atheists tried, it would be legal folly. Expensive legal folly. </li>
<li><b>They're assuming that atheists would care about Carrie Underwood's music</b>. I don't think I've heard a single Carrie Underwood song. She doesn't sing in a genre where I'd have the opportunity to listen to her. What is it, country? Atheists who listen to country have to be used to religious themes by now; they've been part of country music for as long as I can remember. </li>
<li><b>There are so many music choices out there, no one need be bothered by a single song by a single artist, ever</b>. Unless the music industry decided collectively to only produce religious music, atheists have and will always have plenty of opportunity to listen to music without religious themes. Radio stations limit what they play, so this song might get a lot of attention on certain stations, but no atheists need be subjected to religious music against their will. </li>
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I don't even have to ask if people are stupid enough to believe that atheists would be angry--as if atheists all think with one mind and speak with one voice--at a religious song, because I know they are. If they weren't, this nonsense wouldn't be all over Facebook, Twitter, conservative blogs, and fake news sites. </div>
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Just stop it, idiots. We don't give a shit. I don't know the lyrics, I haven't looked it up, and it's doubtful I'll ever hear the song. </div>
Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-57684313770358996332014-10-07T11:30:00.000-04:002014-10-07T11:31:00.946-04:00Meltdown on the roadDuring the most recent IEP meeting I attended for my daughter, the superintendent of Student Support Services informed me that the school district sees no reason why Caitlin needs an aid on the bus, if I should ever allow the transportation company they contracted to take her to school again. Well...we have very good reason to ask for an aid, and it was driven home to us in a big way yesterday.<br />
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Caitlin forgot a Ziploc storage bag full of little toys at school and realized it when we were five minutes away. I told her they would be there tomorrow. She had a meltdown. People with kids who have autism know the difference between a meltdown and a tantrum, and this was a meltdown. She threw her backpack into the front seat, threw toys, tried to pinch Jeanie (my significant other), and tried to grab and hit me. She started crying and screaming. Then came the big scare: she unlocked her door, unbuckled her seat belt, and opened the door while we were moving. I immediately slowed down and pulled over. We got out of the car. Caitlin wanted to walk back to her school. I wouldn't let her. While I calmed her down, Jeanie set the child safety locks so Caitlin couldn't open the door from the inside again. <br />
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If I didn't have Jeanie there, I wouldn't have known she unbuckled her seat belt--which already had me slowing down to pull over. If I didn't have her there, I might not have slowed down in time to make the opening of the door less dangerous. If she wasn't there, I might have lost my child to a meltdown. And here's another thing: I found out this morning that Caitlin knows how to switch the child safety locks. Even if she hadn't seen someone do it, she can read, and the instructions are pretty clear on the door. She tried to switch it before I could catch her this morning.<br />
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So...no aid on the bus? No bus. I suppose I should tell the story of what happened with the bus in the first place. Caitlin was taking a van to school at first, but they switched her to another van after they added another child to the route. It's understandable; they didn't want the other children to be in the van for an hour and twenty minutes one way (we are forty minutes away). However, they put her in a van with a driver who apparently doesn't care whether kids get to school. He didn't show up at the end of my driveway on September 12th, and he claimed to have stopped. I can't trust someone who will blatantly lie to me and his supervisor to transport her to school. I asked for alternative transportation, but the school will not provide it. They said she can take the van she was on, or I have to take her to school.<br />
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They had a nurse on that van. She was rude and combative with me from day one. She seemed to be nice enough to my daughter, but I had two major problems with her. First, she didn't even try to listen to Caitlin. She mistranslated her constantly. Secondly, she got Caitlin to repeat, "God bless you." No. "Bless you" is a cultural expression that has lost its religious meaning, but when someone throws "God" in there, it invokes religion where none is needed. For fuck's sake, the expression comes from a belief that you're more vulnerable to demon possession when you sneeze. Virtually no one who says, "Bless you," believes that nonsense anymore, but when you put "God" back in, you hearken back to medieval belief systems that have no place in this age of information. I don't want my kid mentioning a deity she can't understand, either. She is in a house full of atheists; "God bless you" has no place here. It's not cute or funny to introduce religion to an autistic child with a language delay that prevents her from discussing and comprehending abstract concepts.<br />
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The school assured me that the nurse wouldn't make any religious references again, but I have trust issues with religious people since I was harassed at work years ago, and I will not trust the driver, no matter what. He didn't get reprimanded, and the director of transportation even had the gall to tell me that he was "doing a fine job." Really? He not only neglected to show up at the end of my driveway on September 12, but he also lied about it and is okay with making me out to be a liar. Would I spend an two hours and forty minutes of my day driving my kid to and from school if I thought there was any chance I was mistaken about the time I was at the end of my driveway? Caitlin was watching the time. We were there at 7:15. She said at that time: "Van number of minutes?" I said, "The van should be here in five minutes, kiddo." Five minutes went by, and I heard, "Van number of minutes?" I replied, "Any minute now." Every couple of minutes until 7:35, I heard "Van number of minutes?" I finally decided he wasn't showing up, so I went back into the house and called. They said he called twice, the last time at 7:21, and said that I wasn't at the end of the driveway. What I wonder is: where was he when he called? It wasn't anywhere on my street. <br />
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<br />Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-16931407738106301592014-09-26T10:18:00.001-04:002014-09-26T10:19:09.378-04:00Figuring out how to get my daughter to get along with the catsYesterday, Caitlin punched one of the cats, Paco, in the ribs, after becoming frustrated. Obviously, this behavior is unacceptable. Paco is as lovable as a cat can be. He's friendly to everyone, playful, curious, and not at all skittish. He's very social. To his credit, he didn't retaliate at all, as one might expect (either fight or flight would be the result in most cases with the other two cats, I would think), but we have a real problem here. Caitlin has to learn to get along with the cats and can't be allowed to think abuse of animals is acceptable. <br />
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Caitlin has autism with a language delay. Although her vocabulary is large, she does not have two-way, meaningful conversations. She communicates her needs and answers yes or no questions, but an open question will not work with her. Teaching her about respect for animals through reason simply isn't going to work in her case. <br />
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I did some research yesterday and this morning. After encountering absolutely awful things people said about kids with autism, I did happen upon some useful information. There are camps and programs, but they aren't accessible to me here (they are in New York; maybe I can find something in PA, though, given time). The most useful thing I've seen so far is the social story. Creating a social story with pictures about the correct way to interact with the cat and the correct way to handle her frustration seems like it could work. <br />
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Another bit of advice was to have rules. Jeanie (my significant other) suggested that idea last night, and the presence of success stories regarding the use of clear, written rules reinforces her good idea. Still another approach that we can use in conjunction with what I've mentioned so far is reinforcement of good behavior. We've been using the promise of a visit to Chuck E. Cheese as a reward for being good all week. Being good meant staying out of the "grumpy chair" at school and listening at home, but we can't let abuse of the animals slide at all. However, the all-or-nothing reward approach doesn't do anything to reinforce all of the good things she's done this week. She attended Jeanie's son's IEP meeting, where there was a room full of adults--a situation where she doesn't normally do well. She behaved admirably. She has been doing her shower on her own--turning on her own water, checking it, washing her own hair and body. She has finally brushed her teeth willingly, without a fight. She is doing very well in school, and has even received a reward from her principal for it. All of these good things should certainly be rewarded immediately. I think reinforcement of these good behaviors will encourage her to follow the rules and behave, as well as trying to do more things idependently. <br />
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Finally, a chart might help, or maybe a calendar. Every time she demonstrates good behavior or does something new independently, she gets a sticker or a note on the calendar that says what she did and when. She will get a mark on the calendar if she just gets through the day well, even if she doesn't do anything new or out of the ordinary. If she does something bad like hitting the cats or refusing to listen, she will get a negative mark. If she goes a whole week without getting negative marks, she gets a bigger reward, like going to Chuck E. Cheese or Guitar Center (she loves Guitar Center). A park with a playground would be good, too. <br />
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I am hopeful that all of these ideas in combination will get her to stop hitting--or even trying to hit--the cats. Any advice from anyone who has been through a similar situation would be helpful. Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-16017844598608808352014-08-29T11:06:00.002-04:002014-08-29T11:06:20.461-04:00EscalationI really love my life at the moment. I have a great woman in my life who makes me incredibly happy. I love her kids, and I love my kids. We have a nice house in a rural setting, set far off the road and away from neighbors. I work from home the majority of the time. <br />
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Sometimes, though, parenting challenges me, and I hate myself for failures in administering discipline and keeping calm. <br />
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Last night was an example. My daughter, Caitlin, gets more and more frustrated when things don't go her way, then does things that are rude and inconsiderate--but doesn't realize that they are rude and inconsiderate. The following sequence of events led to her melting down and screaming at the top of her lungs:<br />
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<ul>
<li>She requested that we call my mom, so after work, we called her. We got her onto Skype.</li>
<li>Caitlin wanted my mom to take the computer into the kitchen. My mom didn't feel like unhooking everything and taking the laptop into the kitchen, so she refused. It's a valid response. </li>
<li>Caitlin didn't want to see my mom anymore, because the view wasn't changing to the kitchen, where she would see the microwave, the oven, and the refrigerator. She is obsessed with these appliances.</li>
<li>After she asked to see "grandma's flowers" (when my mom doesn't have the camera on, it's a picture of flowers on Skype, Caitlin would not stop interrupting. She became more frustrated the more I told her to "stop" and "wait". I stopped the conversation with my mom.</li>
<li>I told Caitlin she was being rude, and she smacked the laptop. I became angry and snapped at her, telling her that she is not to touch to laptop. </li>
<li>She wanted me to do her "Knocking on ____, bye bye _____" game (e.g., knocking on yellow flute, bye bye striped flute), and I refused, telling her that she needed to listen to what I was saying. She became more frustrated.</li>
<li>The more frustrated Caitlin became, the more violent she was. She finally slammed the laptop closed, and I lost it. I yelled at her to get into her room. </li>
<li>She laid down and put the blanket on her, but she came back out of the room. I yelled more and got her back into her room. She became more agitated and belligerent. I became more irritated and frustrated, which made me more angry. </li>
<li>After she throw her Spongebob Squarepants keyboard at the door, I finally went into her room, put her on her bed, and held her down like they told us to do in a class I took in Michigan. Supposedly, the child will eventually calm down. Not Caitlin! She screamed at the top of her lungs and cried. </li>
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I finally gave up and got off the bed, repeated a few things, then turned of the light and closed the door. She stayed in her room finally. </div>
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Then I started hating myself for my actions. </div>
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Yelling doesn't do a thing but make my daughter more irritated and frustrated. Refusing to do that game she does to calm her does nothing but make her more frustrated and agitated, then violent. Getting angry does nothing to resolve the issue.</div>
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So what should have I done? How do I even discipline her? Where do I go from here?</div>
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One approach would be to calm her down first, but instead of doing what she wants, take her into her room calmly and read to her, maybe with a little bit of her calming game on the way. When she is calm, explain to her what she did and how she should behave. Unfortunately, I have my doubts that she will recognize that she's done wrong and about whether or not she will understand my explanation.</div>
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Another approach, suggested by Jeanie, is to mentally prepare her for my mom's refusal to go to the kitchen. Mental preparation seems to work with her more than most things, and we prevent the incident altogether. This might work.</div>
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Still another thing I could do is print out a picture of my mom's kitchen to show her, rather than asking my mom to move into the kitchen for us. </div>
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I know for certain that I have to take an alternative approach, because what I did last night didn't work. All it caused was anger, frustration, and--for me--pain. I have injuries that the activity aggravated. We need to work on remaining calm, no matter what. </div>
Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-54294578582300674552014-08-27T12:11:00.000-04:002014-08-27T16:27:23.646-04:00Why it's wrong to put an assault rifle into the hands of a 9-year-oldI can't believe I'm even having to write this article, but I live in 'Merica, so I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose.<br />
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A 9-year-old girl <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/26/us/arizona-girl-fatal-shooting-accident/index.html" target="_blank">killed her instructor</a> on the firing range with an Uzi in Arizona. Later in the article, the revelation that this isn't the first accident involving a child and an Uzi; an 8-year-old in Massachusetts killed himself with one at a gun show. <br />
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I am not anti-gun. I am not pro-gun. I am fine with adults owning guns for protection (within reason), for firing on a range, and for hunting. I am fine with older kids learning to hunt with rifles. However, it's wrong to put an instrument of death into the hands of a young child. A weapon designed only for killing is not something that should be included in childhood recreational activities. I have several problems with this idea.<br />
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First, a child has not developed the judgment necessary to respect the danger guns represent. How many children her age even have a grasp on the concept of death? Why put a weapon designed for hitting multiple targets at once in a military situation into the hands of a person who isn't even allowed on a battlefield? <br />
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Secondly, a young child isn't going to be able to handle the recoil of an Uzi. These are not toys, and should not be handled by non-military personnel. A child doesn't have the strength to keep this gun stable. <br />
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Next, there is no reason to teach a child how to "safely" use a sub-machine gun In what situation would a 9-year-old actually use an Uzi? Do the parents think their child will fight in the upcoming revolution or something? <br />
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Finally, a child should be shooting squirt guns, Nerf darts, or, at most, an air rifle. A paint gun might be within reason. It is not reasonable to have a nine-year-old firing real guns, unless it's for hunting with family or something along those lines.<br />
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I'm truly angry at this incident. The parents, the instructor, and the owners of the gun range are all responsible for this senseless death. I hope some rules change at the range over this horrible tragedy. I call it a tragedy only because of the scars it will leave on the child's mind; the adults in this situation should have known better.Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-79426926064580143332014-07-31T09:48:00.001-04:002014-07-31T09:48:01.970-04:00Irresponsible Autism Story at Good Morning America<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
This story really pisses me off. I'd love to think that my child can get to the point where she doesn't need an IEP. Here are the problems with it:</div>
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<ul>
<li><b>These boys received upwards of 48 hours of therapy PER WEEK in their home</b>. Anyone who has gotten therapy for their children knows how expensive that can be. How on Earth do I pay for that? I can't.</li>
<li><b>The one mother said that they told her she should institutionalize her child and have another baby.</b> I call bullshit. That kid<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"> wasn't born in the 1950s. He was born in the late 1990s. They weren't going to institutionalize her child in the late 1990s.</span></li>
<li><b>The story starts out by talking about new research suggesting that children can be moved off the spectrum, then you get an expert saying "There's no magic bullet; no secret sauce. More research is needed."</b> That statement sums up the difference between media hype and actual science. The media seize on a story about two boys--TWO--who APPEAR to have moved "off the spectrum" (when they probably had high-functioning Aspbergers in the first place, and just had therapy to get around the behaviors associated with it), and they run with it as hope to all parents that they can move their kids off the spectrum.</li>
<li><b>They bring in another expert who says that it puts pressure on parents to say that they can move their kids off the spectrum.</b> He suggests that early therapy can get kids to reach their potential, WHATEVER THAT IS. The experts in this program in no way suggested that ALL children can be moved off the spectrum. Good Morning America is irresponsible for showing this story and hyping it to be hope for all kids to "move off the spectrum." Recent research has demonstrated that there are physiological differences in the brain in people with autism. You don't get off the spectrum; you get around the symptoms of the disorder.</li>
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Here's the link to the story:</div>
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<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/research-suggests-parents-move-children-off-autism-24786501" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/research-suggests-parents-move-children-off-autism-24786501</a></div>
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Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-46955302181331083252014-06-23T17:41:00.002-04:002014-06-23T17:41:57.228-04:00Is this rape? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRqugbqEgOP7KwU60uCsK7kHaODOwxURjdl5jKaPqJX32i69052k9U1ShrhVRgzQJcO31N9A1C7PwDJzMRhKx0yOCdo1zyxaE1YM8sJUnYz_zXJfcLFahyphenhyphent4Gedtlz4iJ9O33panLhvFkr/s1600/Is+this+rape.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRqugbqEgOP7KwU60uCsK7kHaODOwxURjdl5jKaPqJX32i69052k9U1ShrhVRgzQJcO31N9A1C7PwDJzMRhKx0yOCdo1zyxaE1YM8sJUnYz_zXJfcLFahyphenhyphent4Gedtlz4iJ9O33panLhvFkr/s1600/Is+this+rape.jpg" height="144" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">*I apologize for the grammatical errors. I did not write this scenario; it's an image.</span></i></div>
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The above scenario appeared in a group I frequent on Facebook, and I found that I read it wrong at first, then got something else wrong when I re-read it. I wanted to separate it from the group and parse it for clarity, although there is one thing I got right about the scenario off the bat: it is definitely rape. You can disagree with me, but consent was withdrawn. When consent is withdrawn, it's a full stop. You do not keep going. If you do, you are committing the crime of rape. </div>
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This might not be a necessary exercise for everyone, but since people had all sorts of things to add and all sorts of questions to ask, it might be good for other folks as well. That's why I'm doing it here, and not simply in a Notepad document for myself. It's important, because there seems to be question about consent where none should exist. </div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<b><i>This couple was having consensual sex...</i></b></blockquote>
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So, consent was there initially. So far, so good.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>...she reached her climax before him...</i></b></blockquote>
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When I first read this part, my tired mind (I've slept about three hours in the past 48) inserted a "because" in front. I realized my error after I re-read it. Because of the initial misunderstanding, I interpreted her action as selfish, but there is no actual evidence of selfishness on her part in this scenario.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>...and wanted him to stop thereafter.</i></b></blockquote>
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Someone questioned this part of it. Did she actually communicate her desire for him to stop explicitly? When I went back and re-read it after that question was asked, I didn't re-read it all the way, so I said that assuming it was communicated at all, he should have stopped. It didn't have to be assumed, as we will see later.<br />
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<b><i>He didn't stop right away because he also wanted his orgasm...</i></b></blockquote>
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Now here, we see evidence of selfishness. He wanted to get off, so he kept going, even though she said to stop. Why did she want him to stop? Obviously, he was not sensitive enough to her needs, emotional or physical, to find out. He just wanted his orgasm. She wanted him to stop, but he didn't. Rape. Clear-cut. Consent withdrawn.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>...she later</i></b> <b><i>reported him for rape, claiming that he didn't stop after she said, "Stop." </i></b></blockquote>
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The only problem she's going to have is that it's her word against his...sadly. If she did say, "Stop," she meant for him to stop. Whatever her reason, he should not have continued. There's no other way to interpret this scenario, based on the information given. It is rape, and he should not have raped her. He should have at least stopped to find out why she wanted to stop, and shouldn't have continued without her consent in any event. She might have had to urinate, might have a medical concern, might feel nauseous all of a sudden, might have a cramp...it doesn't matter. It's a full stop scenario. That's it. <br />
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<b><i>What's your take on this? Was she raped?</i></b></blockquote>
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Yes. Yes, she was. He ignored her when she communicated that she wanted him to stop. There is no scenario where it's okay to continue after she withdraws consent. <br />
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I hope this helps more people to understand the scenario and understand that consent can be withdrawn for any reason at any time. <br />
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Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-70006470637957905072014-06-09T23:02:00.003-04:002014-06-10T00:50:14.037-04:00On marriage and important considerations for menToday, a group where I'm a member was discussing marriage, and one member brought up some objections to the practice, making some claims that I would like to address. He said, "Marriage is for girls," going on to say, "Guys get married for only a few reasons: they are 'godly', they have control issues of some sort, they are insecure at some level, they just want to make their woman happy...or they're gay." Someone also added "Hence why marriage is gay," at one point, which I will get back to later, because I think it's important to address the other points first.<br />
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<b>Marriage is for girls?</b><br />
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In American culture, at least, marriage seems slanted toward women, because all of the marketing appears to be for the bride. Engagement rings still appear mostly on women's fingers, not men's (although men's engagement rings appear here and there, and may become a trend). A vast amount of money goes into the wedding gown, bridesmaids' dresses, the engagement ring (which is what began the discussion in the first place), and the bands. The man's band typically is plain and less costly. Men wear tuxes, traditionally, and those are usually rentals. Unless he and his groomsmen are difficult to fit, they're pretty simple and much less costly, because wedding gowns and bridesmaids' dresses are not typically rentals.<br />
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Most websites geared toward what I will term "marriage marketing" focus on the bride. I'm gotten emails from them, having signed up for the lists and for contests/sweepstakes, and they tend to address the bride only. <br />
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I think the slant has two major causes: one is tradition. The other is the market. The market perpetuates the tradition and feeds into it. It sets up expectations for generations who grow up with marriage being marketed in traditional ways. In capitalist society, the market will change if entrepreneurs perceive a demand and meet it with a supply, so unless there's a market for things men will wear, use, or consume at a wedding, there won't be equality in this regard--unless women stop buying into it.<br />
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So far, I've only really been talking about the wedding, and how it's marketed. That's not marriage, though. Marriage is the commitment, and it takes two. So, do men really get married for the reasons this member claimed? I haven't conducted a study, but I will go through the claims and speak for myself. Other men can speak up if they want--and they should. You really should think about why you're getting married, because I did it once already, said I wasn't going to do it again, and here I am, engaged. Why would I do that? It's because there are still plenty of good reasons, and I know what to look for and what to avoid now, from my failed marriage and from relationships prior to it.<br />
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<b>Men get married because they are "godly"?</b><br />
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This claim certainly doesn't apply to me. I'm an atheist, and have been for twenty-three years. I gave up religion when I was nineteen. <br />
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<b>Men get married because they have control issues?</b><br />
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I'm not getting married to control my wife-to-be. In fact, with the way divorces work, marriage gives the woman more power than she would have otherwise in the relationship. With no kids involved, I could abandon a woman with whom I've been living (since many states have given up common law marriage), leave her completely destitute, and she'd have no recourse in divorce, because there wouldn't be one. If you're getting married in 2014 because you think you're going to be able to control a woman, you're pretty ignorant of marriage/divorce law. <br />
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<b>Men get married because they are insecure on some level?</b><br />
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If was insecure, I would never have talked to my fiancee in the first place. If wasn't confident in myself, I wouldn't have attracted her, given her past relationships. I'm not marrying her to bind her to me so no one else can have her; that would be insane, given the fact that marriage doesn't stop infidelity. I don't understand this argument on any level, unless someone believed that if he didn't marry his significant other, he'd lose her to someone who would, and that possibility is laughable in my case. She wouldn't want anyone else. I am completely confident in that...for reasons that are personal, private, and between us.<br />
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<b>Men get married because they want to make their women happy?</b><br />
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Yes, I want to make her happy, but I'm not marrying her to make her happy. I make her happy without the legal binding. I'm doing it because I want to.<br />
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<b>So...why am I getting married?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Marriage gives couples certain legal protections they can't get otherwise, or have to jump through many legal hoops to have. Some of these legal hoops involve expense that would be unnecessary if you're married. <br />
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Your tax status changes when you're married. It's a lot more difficult to claim someone as a dependent when they're not married to you, if you've supported that person. <br />
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She can easily do business in my name while I'm working. She can use my credit card at the store, if necessary. I don't have to jump through hoops to get her onto the medical benefits I have through work. She can advocate for my daughter when I'm not around if she shares my last name and my daughter's. <br />
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There are around 250 legal protections for married couples, and I won't list them all here. Conversely, there are reasons marriage carries risk. You are married to a person's credit. It isn't easy to get divorced, and your assets might have to be divided (if a prenuptial agreement isn't in place, that is) if you split up. If your spouse gets pregnant by another man, some states consider the resulting child a product of your marriage (this is not a concern in the case of my current engagement, but it did become a concern in my first marriage). <br />
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The fact is, I love my fiancee. I love her more than I've loved anyone. I have a high degree of compatibility with her. She shows me affection on a level I've never received. She works with me, supports me, encourages me, and cares for me. She's loyal, honest, intimate, and diligent. She's an advocate for her children, and has become an advocate for mine. She's attractive, too--bonus! I am committing to her on the level of being legally bound because I fully understand both the benefits and consequences, and have certainty that we have something that will last. Other examples of happily married couples who have lasted for decades look a lot like what we have now. <br />
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<b>Marriage is gay?</b><br />
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I think calling anything "gay" speaks of insensitivity and intellectual vacuousness. People who say that things are "gay" usually aren't thinking about how their words might disparage gay people, but worse, it typically isn't what they mean. They mean that they don't like whatever it is, or that it's lame...which gives "gay" negative connotations. I think people in the LGBT community can speak to this one better than I can, but as an ally, it didn't sit well with me at all. <br />
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<br />Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-56426502390320862252014-05-30T18:01:00.000-04:002014-05-30T18:01:03.987-04:00Marriage Equality Church: Becoming an Official Non-Profit OrganizationI have my EIN number, and I have the forms filled out to incorporate in Pennsylvania. Once the papers are filed with Pennsylvania, I can make the Marriage Equality Church (its corporate name, but perhaps not its DBA) an official 501(c)3 organization, which means all donations would be tax deductible.<br />
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Since it is a church, no determination letter is required for the donation to be tax deductible. I can understand if people want to wait until the status is official to donate, but if you do donate now, the 501(c)3 status will be in place before you file taxes next. Stay tuned. I will post here when the status is official, for those who want to (understandably) wait.<br />
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In the meantime, I am drawing up a statement regarding the mission of the church and its core system of ethics, which are based on love, empathy, and altruism.<br />
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Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8789684384895250488.post-79293552582079602522014-05-30T00:06:00.002-04:002014-05-30T00:06:34.428-04:00Prospective sites for the marriage equality churchI've found two properties for sale that will work for the purposes of the marriage equality church. Take a look:<br />
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Here is the one I really want to buy:<br />
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I am not doing this because I suddenly got religion or I want to start a religious church. The purpose of this project is to bring people together, no matter what their sexual orientation. I will perform secular ceremonies, but people who want something else are welcome to bring their own officiant.<br />
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I would love to rent out offices in the one home to marriage counselors and wedding planners, possibly. We'll see. This property comes with two homes.<br />
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Now all we need are donations. If you support this cause, any level of donation will do. $1.00, $5.00, $10.00--whatever you can spare at the moment. <br />
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<br />Master Ghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782498101243679417noreply@blogger.com0