condoms don t belong in school, and neither does al gore

A fellow in Washington state is seeking to keep the Al Gore documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, out of their public schools, and, somehow, inexplicably, it seems to be working. Here s a clip from the :
After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a PowerPoint presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists' findings.

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old.
Well, actually, Frosty, he kind of a school teacher, but don't let me interrupt you.

Tell us about this magic book of yours that can tell the future.
"The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD".

..
That's a wonderful point, Frosty.

I've seen the film and it's absolutely true at no point does Al Gore try to connect the scientific reality of what we're seeing take place around us to any ancient pieces of prophecy, not a single one. Instead, Mr. Smartypants focuses on how we might be able to reverse the trend.

Can you believe that? It's like the whole film is just one long, slow motion shot of him hocking up a big loogie and spitting right in our Lord's beautiful, white face. It hadn't really occurred to me until right now, but how dare he try to stop these end times from coming.

If God wants there to be wailing and gnashing of teeth, then that s what he should get.
What has Frosty told you to think about all of this Mrs. Hardison?

"From what I've seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of 'bad America, bad America,' I don't think it should be shown at all," Gayle Hardison said. "If you're going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don't think the video should be shown"
And these are exactly the kind of people we need deciding our public school curriculums. I say we round up all those college-educated school administrators and string 'em up, and put some good, god-fearing, patriotic people in control.

And, if something makes me think, even for a moment, that I as an American am not inherently great, then whatever it is should be destroyed immediately, whether it be a person, a video, or a book. No questions asked. There is no place for doubt.

Everything we see and hear should reinforce the truth - that we, as the chosen people of God, are infallible.
A few days ago, I mentioned Chris Hedges and his new book, . My inclination at the time was to say that Hedges, a former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief, was overstating the threat that the radical, evangelical right posed to the U.

S. military. (The article I was responding to was on that particular aspect of "The War on America.

") Let s just say that right now, after having researched a bit more into the , and learned a bit more about Hedges background (not only is he an award-winning writer, but his father was a Presbyterian minister, and he is a graduate of Harvard Theological Seminary), I m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and at least hear him out The rest of my evening is going to be spent reading , which is available online for free (something that I just learned about thanks to a comment in ).
For those of you who aren t going to check out the chapter, at least consider the following quotes, which I ve just liberated from .
First, here s a clip from the intro:
Part of his outrage is theological.

The son of a Presbyterian minister and a graduate of Harvard Theological Seminary, Hedges once planned to join the clergy himself. He speaks of the preachers he encountered while researching "American Fascists" as heretics, and he's appalled at their desecration of a faith he still cherishes, even if he no longer totally embraces it. Writing of Ohio megachurch pastor Rod Parsley and his close associate, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, he says, "[T]he heart of the Christian religion, all that is good and compassionate within it, has been tossed aside, ruthlessly gouged out and thrown into a heap with all the other inner organs.

Only the shell, the form, remains. Christianity is of no use to Parsley, Blackwell and the others. In its name they kill it.

"
...

You know, I come out of the church. I not only grew up in the church but graduated from seminary, and I look at this as a mass movement. I give it very little religious legitimacy, especially the extreme wing of it.

...

The level of manipulation is quite sophisticated. These people understand the medium of television, they understand the despair and brokenness of the people they appeal to, and how to manipulate them both for personal and financial gain. I look at these figures, and I would certainly throw James Dobson in there, or Pat Robertson, as really dark figures.

..
If there's a historical period that's analogous to the situation we have now, it would come close to being the 1930s in the United States.

Obviously we're not in a depression, but the situation for the working class is very bleak, and the middle class is under assault. There has been a kind of Weimarization of the American working class, and there's a terrible instability in the middle class. And if we enter a period of political and social instability, this gives this movement the opportunity it's been waiting for.

But it needs a crisis. All of these movements need a crisis to come to power, and we're not in a period of crisis..

.
The economy is not in healthy shape. I covered al-Qaida for a year for the New York Times.

Every intelligence official I ever interviewed never talked about if, they only talked about when. They spoke about another catastrophic attack as an inevitability. The possibility of entering a period of instability is great, and then these movements become very frightening.

The difference between the 1930s and now is that we had powerful progressive forces through the labor unions, through an independent and vigorous press. I forget the figure but something like 80 percent of the media is controlled by seven corporations, something horrible like that. Television is just bankrupt.

I worry that we don't have the organized forces within American society to protect our democracy in the way that we did in the 1930s...

For me, the engine of the movement is deep economic and personal despair. A terrible distortion and deformation of American society, where tens of millions of people in this country feel completely disenfranchised, where their physical communities have been obliterated, whether that's in the Rust Belt in Ohio or these monstrous exurbs like Orange County, where there is no community. There are no community rituals, no community centers, often there are no sidewalks.

People live in empty soulless houses and drive big empty cars on freeways to Los Angeles and sit in vast offices and then come home again. You can't deform your society to that extent, and you can't shunt people aside and rip away any kind of safety net, any kind of program that gives them hope, and not expect political consequences..

.

if there really is a god, do you think pat robertson would still be here with us?

I don t know that he s ever been right about one of these predictions of his, but Pat Robertson says .

(He heard it directly from The Big Guy himself.) Here s a clip from The Scotsman :
PAT Robertson, an American Conservative Christian broadcaster says God told him a terrorist attack will result in "mass killing" in the United States in the second half of 2007.
"I'm not saying necessarily nuclear, the Lord didn't say nuclear," Mr Robertson said on his television show The 700 Club.

"It'll be mass killing, possibly millions of people, major cities.
"The evil people will come after this country and there's a possibility, not a possibility, a definite certainty, that chaos is going to rule."
Mr Robertson told viewers they should not be afraid because "if you get blown up or something, you go to heaven; that's the worst thing that will happen to you".

I m not sure why God didn t tell him about the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Maybe Pat s done something to earn his trust since then, and moved up in the organization a little. (I bet it was that stunt where he prayed for the deaths of those Supreme Court justices he felt were too liberal.

I suspect that God like chutzpah, and rewards it.)
My favorite part of the article, and the reason I m mentioning it here now, is the last sentence. Here it is:
(Robertson) claims on his website that he can leg-press 2,000lb, thanks to an energy drink he promotes.

Yup, I think you can pretty well tell what the author thinks of Mr. Robertson. (Snake oil, anyone?

)
I don t know that I d be so quick to dismiss this if the right had held on to the House and Senate in the last election, but this article by former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief, Chris Hedges, right now on just seems a bit overblown to me Here s a clip:
...

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America s open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy
Maybe I m wrong to let my guard down, but right now, for whatever reason, I just don t see this happening.

It s certainly a threat that needs to be discussed and addressed, but it doesn t have me planning my escape route to Canada. What do you think?

the grand canyon is not 6,000 years old

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees.

Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology, stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is no comment.

If you re interested in the origins of this debate over the Grand Canyon, check out .
"This American Life" had a good piece last week on a Muslim student who was subjected to repeated . (The teacher at one point uses a candy cane, which students were told was shaped like a "J" for "Jesus," to illustrate the healing powers of Christ.

The red stripe on the candy cane, they were told, was symbolic of his blood.). Then, today, I saw this story in the New York Times on a student that taped his high school teacher .

Here s a clip from that article:
Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.
If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong, Mr.

Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he s saying, Please, accept me, believe. If you reject that, you belong in hell
It makes me wonder how many instances like this happen every day that aren t caught on tape.

And I wonder how long a teacher would be able to get away with this if, instead of Jesus, it was Mohammed or L Ron Hubbard that he was recruiting for.
A few days ago, Pat Robertson made the statement that . It reminded me that, in spite of the fact that Becky Fischer's Kids on Fire summer camp has closed its doors, and that hypocritical meth-addicted fuck-junkie Ted Haggard has relinquished control of the American Evangelical Society, there s still one hell of a lot of work to be done here in the U.S.

before we're out of the woods.
We criticize moderate Muslims around the world for not stepping up and condemning fanaticism within their ranks, but what do we do here in our own country? Have we been any more effective at combating fanaticism here?

Sure, our problems aren t as serious - as our suicide bombers presently only target abortion clinics - but isn t what we re dealing with here pretty much the same thing? We sit back and we allow people to twist the teachings of Jesus unchallenged. We allow them to make the Bible into a book about low taxation, preemptive warfare and the indecency of homosexuality, when it had much more to say about forgiveness and the way we treat the poor among us.

Yes, it bothers me that moderate Muslims don t do more to challenge the trend toward extremism in their cultures, but it also sickens me that moderate Christian leaders here sit back and allow Pat Robertson to pray for the deaths of so-called liberal Supreme Court judges, and suggest that people not of his faith worship demonic powers. Yes, it was nice that the small-minded, self-absorbed and fearful among us lost so resoundingly in the last elections, but we ve still got a hell of a lot of work to do.
Speaking of Becky Fischer s camp, the documentary about it, Jesus Camp, is .

If you aren t going to see it, at least check out a few of the on YouTube. It s amazing what s going on right here in America and to what extent it mirrors the very things our young men and women are risking their lives to fight against oversees.
[The image above shows Pat Robertson leg pressing 2,000 pounds, something he says that he can do at 76 years old thanks to his specially formulated, God-endorsed .

]
It s being reported that four days prior to his repulsive and dark hidden life became known to the world, pastor Ted Haggard, the nation s foremost evangelical, said the following from the stage of his mega-church in Colorado.
Heavenly Father give us grace and mercy, help us this next week and a half as we go into national elections and Lord we pray for our country. Father we pray lies would be exposed and deception exposed.

Father we pray that wisdom would come upon our electorate
Let that be a lesson to us all to choose our words very carefully, especially when speaking with our angry and vengeful God. (If Haggard only added the phrase, "of the Democrats," this very well might not have happened.)
I can't help but think that God's laughing his big, majestic ass off somewhere.

And the good news just keeps rolling in. It seems as though Kent Dr. Dino Hovind, one of the anti-science evangelical leaders at the forefront of the "Dinosaurs Coexisted with People Just a Few Thousand Years Ago" movement, is headed for prison.

Here s a clip from :
Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and the Dinosaur Adventure Land creationist theme park in Florida ("where Dinosaurs and the Bible meet!"), and his wife face more than 200 years in jail for tax fraud.

(Previous post with background .) Yesterday, Dr. Dino was found guilty on 58 counts, including not paying an $845,000 employee-related tax bill
Now, if only we could just start turning over some rocks around the compound.

With any luck, not only will we take back our country from the Republicans next week, but Christianity will finally be returned to the world of rational thought I don t want to jinx it, but it really does feel like the tide may finally be turning against the fundamentalist anti-science hate mongers who have been leading our country into the abyss these past six years.