Abortion Doctor Is Murdered. Yes Randall Terry, You ARE At Fault.

I’m not a zealot on abortion in any sense of the word. I view abortion as at best, a conflict of rights, and sometimes, morally reprehensible.

But I also think the idea of giving a 6-week-old fetus co-equal rights with a woman who must spend the next 8 months pregnant and give birth to it is just silly. One person is here and has rights which cannot be argued. The other is at best, a potential human being.

At some point the choice becomes significantly more morally daunting. For me this is the third trimester. This is because a preemie born at seven months has a pretty good chance of survival, even without heroic life-saving measures. And let’s face it, if you haven’t been able to make up your mind after 6 months, asking you to wait another couple isn’t the end of the world.

There are exceptions to this.

1. The life or long-term health of the mother.  This is an inviolable rule. A potential human being does not have the right to kill, permanently sterilize or otherwise wreck the health of a person already here.

2. In the case where only late-term tests can tell about the viability/health of a fetus. For all you zealots out there arguing this point, Either show me your adopted Downs Syndrome, Autistic or Crohn’s disease children or STFU.  No one should be forced to go through with a pregnancy, usually a very much wanted one, when the child will be horribly disabled.

Enter the latest case of abortion doctor murders, Dr. George Tiller.

Tiller was gunned down in his church, in front of his wife today. No doubt in connection with his work as a physician who provides late-term abortions.

Perhaps Dr. Tiller was not a nice man. I don’t know. What I do know is that he operated within the law and was one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions. Something as I’ve already said I have mixed feelings about, but also something that in some cases is clearly a moral choice. -Unless you’re a religious fanatic like Randall Terry, Godfather of the nut-job organization Operation Rescue.

This organization has been calling doctors who perform abortions of any kind at any stage of development murderers for over 20 years.  Of course they never bother to mention in their disgusting literature that fetuses are spontaneously aborted (miscarried) in about 40% of all early pregnancies. Most women never even know they are pregnant when this happens. So their God is the biggest abortionist of all, but that doesn’t count I guess.

Here is Terry’s Statement on the murder of Doctor Tiller:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

When you repeatedly call someone a mass murderer and inject God into the mix, people will take you at your word. They will say to themselves: “Hey, this is a mass-murderer for Gosh sake!  Killing him will be saving thousands of lives!” And do the deed. Terry knows this very well. And he doesn’t even bother to express sorrow that the doctor was murdered. Merely that “We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.”

If you want to know why I’ve com to truly despise the right wing-crazies in this country, look not further than Terry’s statement. What a dirtbag. He’s an unindicted co-conspirator to multiple murders. We can’t prosecute his speech, but we can sure as Hell call it what it is: Incitement to murder.

Hitchens on Warren: And you thought gays were pissed off!

Remind me never to arouse the ire of Christopher Hitchens.

Rick Warren has (and he warrants every bit of it). If you thought gay people were writing screeds, you haven’t heard anything yet.

A choice bit:

But if we must have an officiating priest, let it be some dignified old hypocrite with no factional allegiance and not a tree-shaking huckster and publicity seeker who believes that millions of his fellow citizens are hellbound because they do not meet his own low and vulgar standards.

I concur. Since prayer is guaranteed to be an utter waste of time, why on earth are we doing it at the inauguration of our political leaders? And if we are just bound and determined to continue this bronze-age superstition, does it absolutely have to be delivered by someone who adheres to the most disgusting, least educated and most bigoted brand of that superstition available?

You go Hitch!

Stupidity of the Day

From CNN:

Lisa Valentine, also known by her Islamic name, Miedah, 40, was arrested for ‘violating a court policy of no headgear’, Chris Womack, deputy chief of operations for the Douglasville Police Department said on Wednesday.

Valentine was in court with a nephew who was facing a traffic citation. She was wearing a hijab, the head covering worn by Muslim women. When she refused to remove it she was handcuffed and taken to Judge Keith Rollins’ chambers. He cited her for contempt and ordered her held in jail for 10 days.

This is a whole new kind of stupid. All I can say is, I hope Douglasville, GA is well insured, because they’re about to get socked with a multi-million dollar verdict.  I wonder if this redneck muni court judge would have also made this demand of someone wearing a yarmulke? Something tells me no.

Yet another piece of sheer brilliance from the State that brought you the dildo ban.

Note to self: move to GA, convert to Islam and have the wife get a speeding ticket. -We could use the money.

-Nuff said

Theocrat watch: update

Ayatollah James Dobson has written a new screed, denouncing Kathleen Parker for daring to voice the opinion that a theocracy plank in the GOP platform might not be wise.

Some choice bits:

“Ms. Parker cites the election of Barack Obama as evidence that Americans no longer care much about the moral-values issues that have historically driven conservative voters to the polls.”

No, you fucking twit, it’s evidence that having an ignorant, uneducated, religious nutbag who believes in  WITCHES and thinks the world is 6,000 years old isn’t appealing to sane people as a potential president.

“The problem with that analysis is that it doesn’t hold up when you look at the results in the three states that voted on marriage-protection amendments Nov. 4. Residents of California, Florida and Arizona voted to define marriage in their constitutions as the union of one man and one woman”

That’s nothing to do with the GOP and you know it. What was voted on was fear and homophobia. If you  cock-craving closet queens would just go suck a few penises and get it out of your system, maybe you’d stop feeling so moved to inspire hate and intolerance for people whose only crime is wanting to make a life-time commitment to each other….unless you think having the two guys next door married to each other will be such a disturbing element that you’ll start uncontrollably feeling up other men in airport restrooms like the rest of your ilk.

“…it’s the notion that, because there are people of many faiths in the United States, those of the Christian faith must not think or act like Christians when engaging the public square.”

No you disgusting little troll, if you wackjob hate-mongers would actually act like Christ instead of the Scribes and Pharisees, people wouldn’t be so upset with you. Everything you do slaps Jesus in the mouth. Christ stood for love, tolerance and forgiveness. The ONLY things he repeatedly condemned and got angry with were the people who sowed hate, judgement and intolerance. Read your own book you bloody ignoramus. According to your own religion, the LAW is not the road to salvation. If Jesus was here today you’d be calling him a Socialist Fag-lover.

“That is similar to something then-Sen. Obama said a couple of years ago, arguing in a speech before a gathering of liberal Christians that “democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.”

“It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason,” he added. “I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

That is, as my theologian friend Al Mohler called it, “secularism with a smile” — offered in the form of an invitation for believers to show up, but then only to be allowed to make arguments that are not based in their deepest beliefs.

No you fucking Theocrat. It’s called reason. It’s call common sense. And it’s called democracy. We don’t live (yet) in your bloody-minded fundamentalist theocracy. If you had your way, homosexuals would be hanged, young girls would be forced to bear horribly deformed and soon-to-die children which were the result of being raped by their fathers, Women who exposed a breast would be stoned to death and no woman would be allowed to disagree with her husband.

WAKE UP AMERICA.  This isn’t Christianity. It’s the TALIBAN wearing a Jesus suit.

The GOP and the GOD: let go and get rational

Kathleen Parker has written a column excoriating the GOP’s Christianist base, and receiving the usual death threats and hate mail from the followers of the “Prince of Peace” as a result.

Parker writes:

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

It’s gratifying to see Parker continuing to speak the truth. Whether she actually believes this stuff I don’t know, but nonetheless it’s nice to see conservatives at least publicly, coming to grips with the dangers of theocracy.

Actual conservatives, as opposed to the demagogues have remained mostly silent until now over the ridiculous and blatantly religious positions adopted by their party. On abortion, the GOP platform can only be arrived at from a religious perspective. Specifically, the notion that an egg fertilized five minutes ago is morally and ethically indistinguishable from a newborn baby. This isn’t anything BUT a religious view. Since we know that something like 30-70% of all these fertilized eggs never make it past the first few weeks, God must be the biggest “abortionist” of them all. Nevertheless, the GOP continues to take this position, a position the overwhelming majority of rational people disagree with, and wonder why they get rejected.

They’ve also remained silent over the continuing encroachment of government into people’s sex lives. Whether it’s been sodomy laws in Texas, putting people in Jail for having a dildo or spearheading efforts to let the majority declare a minority group less than full citizens, the Radical Christianists have launched all-out war on personal freedoms, held back only by a sometimes tenuous Supreme Court majority.

Absent Supreme Court decisions, all over the country you would have laws which made homosexuality a crime, possession of pornography of any kind a crime, sex outside marriage a crime and no doubt marital sex which included anything Pat Robertson defines as “kinky” would be a felony as well. (So much for oral sex, a practice the Catholic church considers a sin). And of course let’s not forget the mandatory Christian prayers in schools every day. In short, if the GOP’s Radical Christianist base had it’s way, we’d be living in a theocracy which would look a lot like a Christian version of Taliban Afghanistan. There is precious little difference between the Radical Christianists and the Radical Islamists; mostly just the particular flavor of religion.

The GOP has been courting this group since Nixon’s southern strategy, and Ronald Reagan openly embraced people like Jerry Falwell. Pat Robertson actually came in second in the GOP Iowa Caucuses in 1988. But the Radical Christianists have gone from a fringe group with a lot of useful votes (read useful idiots for the GOP) to a controlling interest. And this group’s continued warm welcome from the party will only guarantee the downfall of the GOP.

Why do I care? Well, I don’t specifically care about the GOP. What I do care about is an effective opposition party to the Democrats. The libertarians will never amount to anything until they can get rid of their own kooks (a platform based on the gold standard, eliminating medicare and reducing the size of the armed forces to pre-WW2 levels is not going to fly). There simply isn’t an alternative at the moment to the GOP.

What might be possible however, would be the creation of a new party altogether. A party which rejects intrusion into the bedroom, takes a rational anti-abortion policy (as a newly fertilized egg is not a human, a 6-month old fetus is clearly not a “tissue mass.”) and is firm and reasonable about fiscal responsibility and low taxes. Throw in libertarian ideals about federalism and a rollback of the Fed’s ability to regulate us into oblivion and you’ve got a winner.

I’d vote for a party like that. I’d vote for it consistently. Hell, I might even become a member.

Until people who are actually conservatives as opposed to religious fanatics, control freaks or shills for mega corporation welfare can get hold of the GOP or form a new party altogether, the Democrats are going to rule the roost. And that’s not a good thing.

Has the Catholic Church learned anything since Galileo?

Sometimes I wonder.

The Catholic Church continues to attempt to interfere in U.S. Politics and declare as Heresy any deviation from their particular teachings.

This just in:

The Vatican has fired a warning shot over the bows of Barack Obama in response to the President-elect’s intention to lift the US ban on embryonic stem cell research.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan of Mexico, who acts as the Vatican health minister, said that stem cells taken from human embryos and involving the destruction of the embryos “serve no purpose”.

Asked whether the Vatican was concerned about reports that Mr Obama might reverse the Bush Administration’s ban, the cardinal said that embryonic stem cell research had not resulted in any significant health cure so far and was “good for nothing”.

Well thank you so much for your profound and no doubt expert medical and scientific advice Cardinal. Of course the fact that you hold no scientific credentials, medical degree nor any qualification whatsoever to have an informed scientific opinion on the issue shouldn’t make us any less ready to accept your verdict as the final say in the matter.

After all, you speak for Holy Mother Church, no doubt far more versed in matters of science than those silly upstarts like The American Medical Association, The Australian Medical Association, The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and on, and on, and on…

And of course the record of the Holy Mother Church on matters of science speaks so well of your authority on these matters, no doubt the Obama Administration should just take your word for it.

After all, 4 cells are certainly the exact equivalent of newborn baby. How could we doubt you?