Choices, choices
Greetings, fellow Dot Calm Readers, Freedom Fighters, and Truth Crusaders!
Well, what a week I've survived! Between three deadlines from hell at work and my parent's ransomware incident, I'm amazed I'm still standing. But here I am.
I woke up this morning thinking, "What on earth am I going to blog about today for Dot Calm?" I thought about Wednesday's post, and my mind started wandering through the star banners. I decided to rework and reuse the "ted"-word star banner simply because I like it and want to see it again. And then my mind landed on the star banner about choices. Hm, I thought--there's definitely enough for a post introduction in that.
In case you weren't tuned in, the star banner I have in mind lists a few human traits that are not choices: sexual orientation, gender identity, height, handedness, intellect, and skin color. It concludes, "You know what IS a choice? IGNORANCE."
It really bothers me that the Christo-fascists think that the first two human traits are conscious decisions but the rest are not (not to mention how spectacularly unaware they are of their own ignorance).
Landover Baptist Church's forum pages burrow all the way down to the rawest absurdity of Christo-fascists' choice to believe that humans can consciously, deliberately choose to be homo- or heterosexual by illustrating quite clearly that, by the exact same reasoning, the other traits I list are indeed conscious, deliberate "choices," too. Here are some examples that straddle hilarious and frustrating because there really are people who think this way:
...How can a person be a Christian and a midget at the same time?
...STOP being left-handed!!!
...ASPERGER’S SYNDROME – Another word for ‘EVIL’ ??!
...Confessions of an Ex Negro
If you're brave enough to read beyond the original posts, you'll see additional supporting arguments from the forum's True Christians(TM). And you'll learn a lot about the Bible.
The reader's digest condensed version of the general argument is that all "deviations" from "perfection" are caused by sin--your own in the womb or your ancestors'--and you can be "freed" from the resulting infestation of (rectal) demons by giving your life over to Jesus, begging His forgiveness for being who you are, and asking Him to "heal" you and make you Biblically perfect. Yep, if you have the faith of a mustard seed, Jesus can make you a tall, white, right-handed, heterosexual, intelligent True Christian(TM) incapable of sin (by definition because even your worst atrocities are commanded by God).
And, yes, the Bible really does say all that. All the Landover True Christians(TM) do is point that out and connect the dots (la la la la la).
Now let's talk about the choice to be ignorant.
Ken Ham and his ilk choose ignorance over knowledge and truth when they teach and accept creationism. They ignore the reality under their noses in favor of twisting carefully cherry-picked "evidence" to conform to their pre-determined conclusion that the Bible is literally true morally, historically, and scientifically--a conclusion that is so not-even-wrong that it makes my blood boil to think that they are abusing children by forcing them to learn it. There's so much more to this that I could discuss...but I digress.
Ken Ham teaches the "were you there?" "theory" of history. It really makes me wonder: does the man watch crime dramas? Has he ever seen the old-school Hawaii Five-O (my favorite)? What does he think when he sees these shows--does he yell at the TV set? "Oh, no--forensics is not a science! The only way to solve a crime is to ask an eye witness. If there is no eye witness, then you can't prove that there was ever a crime!"
See how ridiculous that is?
If you don't, or if the absurdity strikes you so strongly that it tickles your funny bone enough that you want more, then check out DarkMatter2525's hilarious video, which I post here from time to time.
I wrote and posted a script for a satirical creationist crime show not too long ago on the related theme that, if Christianity were true, science were useless, and the Bible contained all knowledge, there would be no need for forensics because the Steve McGarrett character would instantly know whodunit as soon as he learned of the crime. (Do go read it...at least, I still think it's funny.)
What strikes me is that even the most loudmouthed creationists who claim to be devout Biblical literalists refuse to believe the whole Bible literally. Even Ken Ham refuses to believe that the earth is flat, as the Bible clearly says. Even Ken Ham doesn't teach the hard-as-a-"terrible crystal" firmament that the Bible clearly describes. Even Ken Ham "believes" in DNA, which is arguably the most un-Biblical chemical compound on the planet because it disproves Genesis (If DNA exists, then God did make Adam and Steve), Noah's flood (biodiversity, as this video on Noah and the cheetah demonstrates), and the story of Jacob breeding spotted, speckled, and striped goats by having solid goats look at striped scenery while mating (according to God, it's the scenery, not heritable parental traits, that determine the offspring's traits). Arguably, DNA also disproves the virgin birth because, without sperm, Jesus would have been haploid female if he existed (i.e., survived to birth) at all.
Whom do these people think they're fooling?
Do they really think they're fooling God?!
philhellenes makes a powerful case that the Ken Hams of the world really do understand enough of the science to know that it works. Unfortunately, though, Ken Ham's followers are not in on that little secret--and they are too ignorant to know and too brainwashed to care.
It really bothers me that these people choose ignorance and that they let that choice drive their votes, which drive this nation's policies. I never thought I'd live to see such a firestorm of Christo-fascist backlash against recent decades of progress in civil and human rights. These people demand to discriminate against others who are no less than they are for reasons that are obviously false. They demand to destroy the planet by actively bringing on apocalyptic wars and global warming.
Instead of learning how to be scientists themselves, solving the word's problems for a not-so-extravagant average salary of $80k a year, they let their choice to be ignorant harm other, innocent people.
Objective reality is a thing, folks, and all the evidence you need is right out there on teh Intert00bs if you'd just care enough to look it up for yourselves.
But you know what?
They won't look it up because they won't risk giving up the comfort they cherish of seeing all those they hate frying in hell for all eternity while they themselves stroll the streets of gold with Jesus.
How they could wish that on anyone--or worship a being that demands it--is beyond me.
It kills me that we are stuck with these people who want nothing but death and destruction while we have lost someone amazing and wonderful like Dot Calm, with all her intellect, compassion, and desire only to heal the world.
Grrr...
Don't forget to read Dot Calm's shadow's favorite independent sources of news and information:
Daily Kos
AlterNet
Democracy Now!
Conservatives are Destroying our Future
Conservative Clown Car
Americans Against the Republican Party
Americans Against the Tea Party
...And, whatever you do,
Please send him a buck o' five--California is coming!
Thanks for reading, thanks for being you, and have a great weekend!
- Dot Calm's shadow
Obama is coming
for your guns 'n' Bibles
November 8, 2016.
DO NOT
LEAVE YOUR HOUSE
THAT DAY
FOR ANY REASON!
The rights you save
may be your own!
From the mailbag
- Rebuild our country’s crumbling infrastructure. A $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure will create at least 13 million jobs all over America - jobs that cannot be outsourced.
- We must rewrite our disastrous trade policies that enable corporate America to shut down plans in places like West Virginia and move them to Mexico, China, and other low-wage countries.
- We can create 1 million jobs for disadvantaged youths through legislation I introduced with Rep. John Conyers of Michigan.
- We need to increase the wages of at least 53 million American workers by raising the minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour.
- At a time when women workers earn 79 cents for every dollar a man earns, we need to sign the Paycheck Fairness Act into law. Equal pay for equal work.
- We need to make health care a right for every man, woman, and child through a Medicare for All single-payer system.
- We need to treat drug addiction like a mental health issue, not a criminal issue.
- We need to ensure every worker in this country has at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, two weeks of paid vacation, and one week of paid sick days.
- We need to impose a tax on Wall Street to make public colleges and universities tuition free while substantially reducing student debt.
- At a time when half of older workers have no retirement savings, we’re not going to cut Social Security, we’re going to expand it so people can retire with dignity and respect.
From Rep. Diane Russell--NO MORE Super-delegates!
Tomorrow, at my state's Democratic Convention, I will offer an amendment to finally do what should have been done years ago: End super delegates.
Will you stand with me in the fight to end super delegates by making a donation today?
Let's be clear: Whether you're for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, we should all agree that voters, not party insiders, should decide who wins.
But this year, in state after state, we've seen super delegates override the will of the voters so that the candidate who got the most votes ended up with fewer delegates.
In my state of Maine, Bernie crushed Hillary by a 2-to-1 margin. But because of super delegates, she could end up with nearly as many delegates as he gets.
As I've said before, this is NOT what democracy looks like.
Click here stand with me in the fight to end super delegates by making a donation today.
After winning Indiana, Bernie Sanders now trails Hillary Clinton by just 321 elected delegates with 1,159 delegates still up for grabs.
And yet super delegates are on the verge of shutting down the election before millions of Americans even get a chance to vote.
For the last several months, I've been networking with progressive activists and elected officials from around the country to craft state party convention resolutions demanding an end of super delegates.
And if we win at tomorrow's state convention, we will unite in at the national convention Philadelphia this summer to push to end the super delegate system once and for all.
Will you stand with me in the fight to end super delegates by making a donation?
Thank you,
Rep. Diane Russell
"2011 Most Valuable Legislator," The Nation magazine
From David Cicilline for Congress
SIGN THE PETITION: Tell North Carolina’s Governor to reverse their anti-LGBT law >> >>
Last month, North Carolina passed a hateful, discriminatory law aimed at LGBT individuals.
But now, the Department of Justice has declared this violates civil rights laws, and have ordered North Carolina to repeal this harmful bill. Will you join him in calling on North Carolina Governor, Pat McCrory, to reverse its anti-LGBT law >> |
From ColorOfChange--did you know that Black people's bail is set far higher than white people's bail? Did you know that Blacks and others too poor to pay get punished for their poverty by being left to rot in jail?
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From CPD Action--boycott Verizon
Verizon workers taking on corporate greed have pledged to strike for as long as it takes. So far, it's been over three weeks.
From Massachusetts to Virginia, nearly 40,000 strikers are standing up against Verizon. The corporate goliath has refused to negotiate a fair and mutually beneficial agreement with workers and is eager to move jobs overseas and undo decades of collective bargaining progress.
CPD Action is standing with workers, but we need your help. Sign our pledge to boycott Verizon stores until they meet and settle a fair contract with workers!
Last August, Verizon workers began renegotiating a contract with the corporation that would protect their right to a union, push back on the outsourcing of jobs, and prevent the company from relocating workers away from home. The negotiations have lasted over ten months, with Verizon refusing to budge on some parts of the contract that would benefit and protect workers.
Nearly 40,000 employees finally went on a strike last month. Up and down the eastern seaboard, workers have left their posts to stand up for their colleagues, families, and friends. According to the Communication Workers of America, one of the unions representing workers, Verizon insists that layoff protections for employees hired after 2003 be removed from the contract. Verizon also wants to force technicians to work for up to two months away from home.
This fight is more than just about Verizon and the strikers. Across the country, corporations continue to grow at the expense of working families, and the rich continue to accumulate wealth without paying their fair share. Last year, Verizon pulled in over 13.5 billion dollars — CEO Lowell McAdams got to take home $18 million of it.
These injustices are happening everywhere. Workers aren’t demanding million dollar paychecks. Workers are on strike for fair salaries, collective bargaining, and to keep their jobs in their neighborhoods, close to their families.
Show your support for Verizon workers: sign the pledge and don’t shop at Verizon until the strike is over!
Today, CPD Action and our partners will join the Verizon strikers at events that will be taking place all over the country. You can help by attending an event, or refusing to go into a store until Verizon settles with workers.
Three weeks is too long to go without a paycheck, and Verizon needs to make a move now.
But for now, it’s your turn to make a move. Take the pledge to boycott Verizon.
In solidarity,
Brian Kettenring
Co-Executive Director
From Change.org--these women's babies DIED at day care
Under ordinary circumstances, two mothers as different as we are would never have met. One of us is married from Oklahoma and is a registered Republican. The other is an unmarried liberal who lives in Brooklyn. But last year we both lost our babies, infant sons who died at daycare, and we are now coming together for a cause.
Neither of us wanted to leave our babies when we did, but neither of us had the luxury of choice. Our respective employers would not grant us any more time for parental leave, and we couldn’t afford to quit our jobs. The U.S. is one of only 2 nations in the world that does not guarantee paid parental leave, and our families relied on the money we earned at work. So we made the same hard choice that so many other parents in our country do.
Reluctantly, on an April morning in Oklahoma, baby Shepard was left at daycare. A childcare worker swaddled him for a nap, placed him in a car seat, and didn’t check on him. He slipped down and suffocated, still too little to lift up his own head. Just as reluctantly, in July, baby Karl was dropped off for his first day at daycare near his mother’s Manhattan office. When she came back to feed him at noon, Karl’s lips were blue and a childcare worker was performing CPR. A medical examiner could not determine why this healthy baby died.
The pain we have experienced is unimaginable, and we do not want any other parents in the United States to go through it. That is why we are calling on each candidate running for president to commit to addressing paid family leave in their first 100 days in office. Will you join us?
1 in 4 American moms have no choice but to return to work just two weeks after the birth of a child. 87% of parents have no access to paid leave through their employers. Most babies don’t die in daycare, of course, but America currently has the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation in the world. No parent should have to choose between leaving their baby too soon and making ends meet.
An important study released last week found that for each additional month that a woman has paid parental leave, infant mortality goes down 13 percent. Every American baby would be safer, healthier, and have a better start in life if given time with their mother or father during the first months of life.
If our political leaders claim to be pro-family, they need to put families first by supporting paid family leave.
Given that 73% of Republicans, 87% of independents and 96% of Democrats agree it is important for Congress and the president to consider a family leave insurance system, we are jointly calling on the candidates for president, Republican and Democrat, to publicly commit that, if elected, they will take action for national paid family leave policy in their first 100 days in office.
Thank you,
Amber & AliPL+US
From Change.org--oil pipeline could poison Sioux tribal water
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Deputy Campaign Manager
CONTRIBUTE |
Stop the Republican assault on healthy meals for kids | |
The petition to the U.S. House reads:
"Recent changes to child nutrition standards have been a huge success. They are providing vulnerable and low-income school children with healthy nutritious food and have reduced obesity and chronic disease. Reject the House version of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization that seeks to roll back this progress."
Add your name:
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From David Franke, my favorite true conservative--Trumpism and the future of the GOP and...everything!
The Crisis in the Republican Party is even worse than it looks http://www.businessinsider.
I didn’t know anything about Josh Barro, the author of this article in Business Insider, so I looked him up. He seems to be a product of the establishment (Harvard, New York Times) with an establishmentarian outlook that pretends to be objective: http://www.businessinsider.
First, I think he is right about his first point: that Trumpism marks the end of conservatism as a major movement with discernible intellectual and political clout. Actually, I think it marks the formal end of the conservative movement. Conservatism as a philosophical movement had already committed suicide by choosing loyalty to the GOP over loyalty to conservative principles during the George W. Bush administration. And that was a double suicide, in that the Republican Party was marching to permanent minority status as a result of the demographic and electoral changes taking place.
(Of course conservatism as a minor footnote will continue as long as the countless donor mailing lists exist. But those mailing lists keep getting older and its members inevitably die. Last I looked, even the Prohibition Party had a mailing list, but nobody pays any attention to it. The conservative movement will not reach that lowly a status during our lifetimes, but….)
Second, there’s the matter of the status of the Republican Party after Trump. I for one would not weep over the destruction of the GOP, just as I wouldn’t weep over the destruction of the Democratic Party. Both are evil and have outlasted any usefulness. But they have survived this long as a duopoly (one party pretending to be two) because of the institutional processes they have locked into the system, and I think the odds favor their continuation—especially in the case of the Democratic Party and its elitist/welfarist power base.
However, the emergence of Trump and Bernie opens at least the possibility of their breakup. I think it would be exciting, and perhaps beneficial, to have a six-party system—Establishment (Clinton) Democrats, Progressive (Bernie) Democrats, a Viking Party (Trump), Conservatives (Cruz), Establishment Republicans (Ryan?), and an Independent Party (which no doubt would be my party). Unfortunately I see no electoral possibilities for libertarians, but they would have some clout in the Independent Party. Then let the wheeling and dealing, the deal-making, begin in earnest!
Third, there’s the future of the Establishment: Wall Street, the Fed, the Surveillance State (NSA, FBI, IRS, Homeland Security), the Pentagon and the Merchants of Death, the global corporations, the corporate media—have I left anyone out?). Alas, I am much too much of a realist (probably the last word you associate with me!) to think that Trump can make a serious dent against this zillion-dollar empire. They will do their best to co-opt him, but if he proves to be un-cooptable and has a chance to become President, let us not forget that assassination is an established protocol of the American Empire. And if that results in a widespread uprising, all the procedures for martial law are already on the books.
No, the only hope for destruction of the Establishment—the American Empire—is implosion resulting from the collapse of the debt bubble, the greatest bubble by far in world history. And the only hope against martial law lies with the great equalizer, the millions and millions of guns in the hands of private American citizens. (April marked the twelfth straight month of record gun sales.)
Unfortunately, collapse of the establishment and the empire would be no fun for mere peasants like me. And most unfortunately, collapsing governments and empires always find a foreign enemy to blame everything on, and that way lies nuclear winter. America is the only nation that has used nuclear weapons for political purposes during wartime, and we seem to relish using them on Orientals. Can you connect the dots?
But, hey, this is getting much too dark. This is bread-and-circus time, so let’s have a Bud and enjoy the show. Pretend that your vote counts, and let the games commence between the Viking and the Wicked Witch of Oz!
Addendum:
Here’s the best explanation I’ve seen of politics today and what a sane non-addictive response could be:
http://www.internationalman.
Democracy Now!
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God wasn't serious
when He told Rafael "DEFEATed" Cruz,
Ben Carson,
John Kasich,
Jeb!,
and the rest of the Christo-fascists
to run for President...
He was just dicking with them.
Just like when He told Abraham
to slice and dice Isaac and burn him.
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Daily Kos
AlterNet
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DEFEATed
Movie time!
Ah, I just love Bernie. Pieces like this remind me why.
TYT and the hypocritical millennial who trashes her fellow millennials to get attention
The language of lying
Look at your body--you'll see signs of evolution!
In case you missed it last time, philhellenes's the lie too big for creationists and DarkMatter2525's "Were you there?"
A bit of pure silliness from Jimmy Kimmel and some scientists on climate change
To know Rafael "DEFEATed" Cruz is to wish you didn't
--did you know that Cruz's chances in Indiana dropped the more he campaigned there? Oi....
Lastly, God's top 10 life hacks for a giggle from DarkMatter2525