About a decade ago, I wrote a post Why Pro-Choice is Pro-Life. It wasn’t very detailed. Though, some good stuff came up in the comments.
Given the extremism in the U.S. today, I think this topic requires a much more detailed and well-thought out post. This post contains information that may be relevant anywhere, but is deliberately U.S. focused. I am a U.S. citizen. I am seeing increasing extremism in my country. I am appalled by the treatment of women in the U.S. today. Increasingly, we are passing legislation that turns women into incubators. I only wish that The Handmaid’s Tale were more far-fetched than it actually is.
These days, I’m even seeing people on the reddit sub /r/atheism arguing from a non-religious standpoint about why they think the anti-choice stance makes sense. I can’t understand that and want to have an answer on hand ready to explain all of the very many reasons why the so-called pro-life but really pro-fetus, anti-choice, and anti-woman stance is horrifically cruel and cannot be supported rationally.
Exactly what it sounds like. I think this could sell very well in Latin America (especially in Mexico) where most toilets throughout the entire region cannot flush paper. So, you wad up used toilet paper and put it in a covered trash can next to the toilet.
Robert De Niro would like to punch Donald J. Drumpf in the face, a worthy goal indeed. But, disturbingly, he insults animals by comparing them to Drumpf in the process of telling us why he’d like to punch the Donald.
On this day 15 years ago, the United States experienced the largest terror attack in our history. It is a day that we will long remember. My heart goes out to the families of the victims.
On this day, I would also like for us to remember that Osama bin Laden who orchestrated the attack was of the house of Saud. 16 of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. In response to our attack by Saudis, we attacked Iraq in what is now considered to be an enormous blunder of epic proportions.
We still treat Saudi Arabia as a friendly nation in that region. I don’t know why. We still talk about selling arms to Saudi Arabia. I don’t know why. We still buy oil from Saudi Arabia. I don’t know why.
Further, if we assume that every 3,000 lives lost prematurely is “one 9/11” then we have ten 9/11s on our highways every year. We have another ten 9/11s every year as a result of lax gun laws and a nationwide obsession with the damn things (should we consider the NRA a terrorist organization? perhaps). We have sixty-five 9/11s every year as a result of air pollution which we might have reduced tremendously if we took action on climate change (is ExxonMobil a terrorist organization? perhaps).
So, will we do anything for safer roads, stricter gun regulations, and strong regulation of pollution to actually prevent some or all of these 9/11s going forward?
I am not hopeful.
I grieve not only for the 3,000 victims 15 years ago, but also for the 3.9 million lives lost prematurely just from these causes and from many other causes as well since then. And, I grieve for the 260,000 we will lose in 2016.
Perhaps I should subtract out the highway deaths? We do, last I heard, have the safest roads in the world. Maybe we are already doing as much as we can about that. But, the other 230,000 every year can certainly be reduced by at least several 9/11s, if we were to pretend to care.
Not just yet. But, I finally do see a potential for the existence of this abhorrent construct to be vindicated for the first time in my lifetime.
Some of you may know that for years or even decades, I have been outraged by the existence of the electoral college in the United States. This constitutional load of horseshit undermines both our pretense of being a nation and our pretense of being a democracy.
A democratic nation would have a national election. We do not. We have state elections and the states send representatives to vote on our behalf … unless they don’t.
A democracy would be a country where every citizen had an equal vote. We do not. Individuals in some states have 3 times the voting power of individuals in other states.
I have hated this construct with a burning, seething, fiery passion since I first learned the details of it. It makes me sick that the founders of this once-great non-nation thought that people should not be allowed to vote for president of the United States.
How could I change my mind so radically on this important subject?
I’ve been talking about the Great Human Die-off for years and have felt like somewhat of a crackpot for doing so. I’ve usually qualified it as just my opinion based on hearing and reading a lot of environmental science.
Now, it seems that the idea of human extinction within the time frame of those alive today is no longer such a crackpot idea.
It’s finally here. Check where your favorite candidate falls on the official political compass. And, please do click through and read the analysis below the chart. It’s quite enlightening.
The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of the Christian States of America is just around the corner. We (the former USA) are at risk of becoming a totalitarian theocratic nation. Please please please vote! Vote early. Vote often.
This is scary as all hell. Please do read the article in detail. You may find it hard to believe. But, it’s chock full of links backing up the statements it makes.
A new PPP survey reveals that Republicans are afflicted most, with 44 percent now favoring installing Christianity as the United States’ official religion. (Lest we forget, the GOP’s roster of potential 2016 candidates is stocked with rabid believers, and even faith-faker Donald Trump is courting evangelicals.) A shocking 28 percent of Democrats are also theocratically inclined. Only 53 percent of Republican and Democratic voters combined oppose declaring Jesus jabberwocky our national faith.
As someone with type 1 diabetes, I can assure anyone who thinks otherwise that the effects of undiagnosed and untreated type 1 diabetes are beyond unpleasant. I ripped a hole in a lung and a hole in my esophagus from extreme vomiting.
These have healed, though my doctor still checks carefully 26 years later.
Once diagnosed, it took some time to get under control. I was on nothing by mouth for 2 more days after vomiting my guts out for a day or two prior to the hospital. I got motion sickness in a wheel chair on my way to radiology. I passed out quite thoroughly on a cold, hard, metal x-ray table.
26 years later, I am a healthy diabetic in tight control with no complications.
Children of the Followers of Christ, Christian Scientists, and other psychotic morons who believe they should prey on pray for their children rather than actually doing something to help them regularly allow children (yes children) to suffer far more than I did at age 25. It makes me physically ill to think that such people exist and worse, reproduce.
President Obama is seeking an international climate accord that would not require cooperation from either the Senate or the House of Representatives. I don’t love the idea of completely going around our political system on this. But, with the survival of humanity and most of the multicellular life in the biosphere and in fact, the health of the biosphere as a whole on the line, it may be necessary.
We all know that if he tries to get this through even the senate, he’ll never get the required 67% for a treaty. After all, the repugnicans have proven that they would rather kill off humanity and cause another Permian/Triassic level extinction (where 95% of all multicellular species go extinct) than actually allow Obama to accomplish so much as brushing his teeth.
So, for now, with the means being not too bad and the ends being necessary for survival, I’m going to go with the ends justify the means on this limited case, even though I strongly disagree with the philosophy for most issues.
Lately we seem to be constantly confronted with examples of religion creeping in and trying to infringe on our science education. The latest I have come across is a young earth creationist donating a huge grant to a technical and scientific university. What’s more worrisome is that this university is a leading educator of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) teachers. Will this donation influence the curriculum of this university is the big question. And, what does accepting this money say about the university and their commitment to real science? I guess for organizations that accept grants, money is always taken no matter what the source or any potential consequences may be.
I personally find this very disturbing.
Greg Gianforte is an alumnus of the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. He is also a presumed young earth creationist who helped fund a creationist museum in Glendive Montana. And, now he’s funding Stevens Institute of Technology, among other things, a leading educator of our STEM educators.
So, what does it mean when the largest donation by a living donor in the history of Stevens Institute of Technology, $10 million, is being given to the institution by a presumed young earth creationist who also funded a museum that teaches that humans and non-avian dinosaurs coexisted in a world that is less than 10,000 years old?
Yes, the video is 48 minutes long. It’s worth it. I’ll wait for others to comment, if any bother to watch the whole thing, before adding my $0.02. Seriously, do watch it. It’s well worth the time. And, I don’t say that about a lot of 48 minute videos.
Also, check out the incredibly impressive Heart of the Adirondacks project in the Adirondack State Park, the largest park in the continental United States at twice the size of Yellowstone.
Posted by Misanthropic Scott 
