Alabmazation of the United States...

Remember Roy Moore, the nut-job judge who put a two-point six ton granite carving of the ten commandments in front of an Alabama courthouse? When told by a higher court that the carving would be a violation of a long tradition of seperating religion from state, he refused to remove the structure. He has since lost his job.

Well now the Bush Administration has adopted Moore’s position. This week, the White House urged the Supreme Court to allow ten commandment displays on government property. That means, an oversized ten commandments monument, may end up in front of your courthouse or other federal property.

From Bloomberg:

The Bush administration, saying that religion ``has played a defining role'' in the nation's history, urged the U.S. Supreme Court to permit Ten Commandments displays in courthouses.

The Justice Department today filed a brief supporting two Kentucky counties accused of violating the constitutional ban on government establishment of religion by posting framed copies of the Ten Commandments.

Regardless of being against everything America once stood for, at the very least right-wing Christian evngelicals can admit different denominations embrace different versions of the Ten Commandments. For that reason alone, this stuff should be thrown out and the Roy Moore's of the world should cease to have any influence in Washington.

In addition, another Alabama native is cozing up in the White House. Gerald Allen, a republican representative in the Alabama State Legislature, proposed a bill to ban novels with gay characters in all libraries, including university libraries. What does Allen want to do with such classics as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Lynne Cheney’s lesbian novel, Sisters? He said he wants to “dig a big hole and dump them in.”

This wing-nut is meeting with President Bush on Monday – his fifth meeting with the leader of the free world. He is Bush's base. Last week, Allen introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". That's why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

Dig a hole and dump them in? How far behind are the pink triangles with these people in power?

Plane crashes in Ironic Metaphor Lake...

 
This is one of the most satisfying news items I've read in some time. A cargo plane crashed in an Aventura lake in Florida on Saturday morning. The Miami Air Lease plane had the words "Eelect George W. Bush" running the length of the fuselage. And no that is not a typo. The plane's owners decided to make a statement by writing on the side of their plane. Little did they know that their poor spelling would result in that message being: "Bush supporters literally too stupid for words."

The plane had trouble with one of its two engines shortly after takeoff and crash landed a nearby lake surrounded by condos. No one was hurt, so I feel okay in laughing about it.

A lie a day keeps the doctor away...

Bill Frist, doctor and Republican Senate Majority Leader, was on This Week this past Sunday. Host and former teen heart-throb George Stephanopoulos asked him about federally funded abstinence-only education programs -- the ones trying return the children of the nation to a time before wardrobe malfunctions and condoms when everything was repressed and holy. Which I guess would be back in the mid-80's, at te height of the AIDS catastrophe, for all the success these programs have. Stephanopoulos began the discussion with Frist by noting that a recent report on these abstinence-only programs found "11 of 13 of these programs are giving out false information."

STEPHANOPOULOS: There was a bit of an uproar in Washington this week about this issue of these abstinence programs that are funded by the Federal government, the funding has doubled over the last four years but there was a report by the minority staff at the House Government Affairs Committee that showed that 11 of 13 of these programs are giving out false information. I want to show some of the claims they identified in the curricula. One of them was, one of the programs taught that "The actual ability of condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS, even if the product is intact, is not definitively known." Another, "The popular claim that condoms help prevent the spread of STDs is not supported by the data." A third suggested that tears and sweat could transmit HIV and AIDS. Now, you're a doctor. Do you believe that tears and sweat can transmit HIV?

FRIST: I don't know. I can tell you ...

STEPHANOPOULOS: You don't know?

FRIST: I can tell you things like, like ...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, wait, let me stop you, you don't know that, you believe that tears and sweat might be able to transmit AIDS?

FRIST: Yeah, no, I can tell you that HIV is not very transmissible as an element like, compared to smallpox, compared to the flu. It is not, but the first slide, because I think it's dangerous to show that and then sort of walk away.

...About condoms for example, we know there's about a 15 percent failure rate. You know, this is a deadly virus. And you know it is directly transmissible, with a relatively high degree of infectivity by sexual relations. If there's a 15 percent failure rate in condoms, itself --

STEPHANOPOULOS: But this is suggesting that they don't work even if the condom is intact.

FRIST: No, no. But let me just say, because the whole success, if you look in Africa today, where as you know, 28 million people are infected today, is on this A - B - C:
"Abstinence," which is sort of the initial thrust itself, which is the only way to prevent, only way to prevent --

STEPHANOPOULOS: Only sure-fire way.

FRIST: That's right. Only sure-fire. Very hard culturally, and [there are] lots of approaches. "Being Faithful." Again, one partner, and in certain cultures, that's very hard. And then third, "Condoms." If you take out, just condoms, and say that is the answer, with a 15 percent failure rate, with a highly infective virus through sexual relations --

STEPHANOPOULOS: But not "that's the answer," these [programs] are suggesting that they're really "never the answer."

FRIST: No, well that's, clearly -- I'm telling you that the program that the federal government supports, is officially, this A - B - C approach. We put $15 billion into this, what I would regard as one the great moral and public health tragedies of the last 100 years, fighting HIV/AIDS.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But do you think these abstinence programs should be reviewed, and that they should be required to be give out scientifically accurate information.

FRIST: Oh, I think of course they should be reviewed...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me just, I wanted to move to another subject, let me just clear this up, though. Do you or do you not believe that tears and sweat can transmit HIV?

FRIST: It would be very hard. It would be very hard for tears and sweat, I mean, you can get virus in tears and sweat but in terms of the degree of infecting somebody, it would be very hard.

This intereaction is filled with such crummy sceince I hardly know where to begin. How can a doctor say he doesn't know if tears and sweat can transmit HIV? And still keep his medical lisence? How can he get away with saying that the virus can be found in sweat, when there has never been a reported case of it? Just because he says it would be "very hard" to transmit HIV through tars and sweat, only after he was backed into a corner for his ignorance, that should not get im off the hook for his lies. It still gives the impression that it has happened. AND IT NEVER HAS.

He then goes on to assert that condoms should be de-emphasized because of their 15 percent failure rate. Did this man go to a crooked medical school in the Carribean Islands? Has he not read a single thing about condoms in the last 15 years? He makes it sound like the condoms themselves are defective 15% of the time. But that is the approximate rate of failure when human error is taken into account. When condoms are used properly, the failure rate drops to 2 or 3%. But that is why we need proper sex ed! So people have the correct information and know how to use condoms properly. Abstinence only leads to misinformation which leads to vulnerability to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

Bill Frist's repeated lies and distortions about this medical issue should be enough to report him to the American Medical Association.