Category: Religion

Final Child Trafficker Released in Haiti

No Comments

Laura Silsby, the leader of the “missionary” expedition to rescue Haitian “orphans”, wasconvicted on charges related to human trafficking and sentenced to time served, so she has been released, and I assume that she is heading back to Idaho:

All 10 of the Americans were initially detained by the Haitian authorities, but only Silsby was charged.

Prosecutors first accused her of abducting the children, but the charge was downgraded to one of “irregular travel” – a crime which covers people smuggling.

Prosecutor Jean-Serge Joseph said she had been sentenced to three months and eight days in jail – the exact time she had spent in custody waiting for her trial.

IMHO, she used the tragedy, as well as the fervor of her fellow church members, who believed that they were rescuing from Catholicism and damnation by raising them as Evangelicals, to get the ball rolling, and I think that at least part of her motivation was money.

Considering her own problems with her failing online shopping business and her association with a man under investigation for sex trafficking, there is a strong stench of corruption and the profit motive.

Older posts are here.

Questions that Need to be Asked

No Comments

Is Every Right-Wing, Anti-Gay Christian Bigot Sucking Off Rent Boys?

I think that the answer is, “Yes”:

That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami—the callboy’s client and, as it happens, one of America’s most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.

Reached by New Times before a trip to Bermuda, Rekers said he learned Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. “I had surgery,” Rekers said, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” (Though medical problems didn’t stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.) Yet Rekers wouldn’t deny he met his slender, blond escort at Rentboy.com—which features homepage images of men in bondage and grainy videos of crotch-rubbing twinks—and Lucien confirmed it.

Moron

No Comments

California Republican Senate Candidate, Carly Fiorina, who appears to intend to do to the Golden State what she did to Hewlett Packard,*, has now Jewish voters to “break bread” over Passover:

This week, as we break bread and spend time with our families and friends, I hope we also take a moment to say a word of thanks for our freedom and for those who have given their lives in freedom’s name. Let us also look ahead with hope to the opportunities to come.

(emphasis mine)

For those of you who don’t get it, Jews are not supposed to eat bread during Passover. What we eat is Matzoh, which is an unleavened biscuit which has more in common with the box that it comes in than it does with a loaf of bread.

This is really, really stupid, and statement from her PR flak, that, “We meant all bread, leavened and unleavened, and matzo is just unleavened bread so that’s what we meant by that,” is just plain lame.

Matzoh is not bread, as any of the millions of Jews who are Jonesing for a piece of bread right now can tell you, and the idea of describing a Passover Seder (ritual festival meal) as “breaking bread” is wrong on so many levels.

The stupid, it burns us!

*When she was fired employees sprang into spontaneous song, singing, “Ding, Dong, the witch is dead!”

Full letter follows

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Carly Fiorina
Date: Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:09 PM
Subject: Best wishes for a safe and happy Passover

Carly for California

Passover is a time of remembrance and thanks. This festival provides us all — Jewish, Christian and all faiths — an opportunity to reflect on the challenges we have faced and the triumphs we have achieved together. It is also a reminder of the resilient spirit that has carried people through trials of every kind through every generation.

This week, as we break bread and spend time with our families and friends, I hope we also take a moment to say a word of thanks for our freedom and for those who have given their lives in freedom’s name. Let us also look ahead with hope to the opportunities to come.

Best wishes for a safe and happy holiday.

Sincerely,

Carly Fiorina

contact@carlyforca.com
www.CarlyForCalifornia.com

915 L Street, Suite C-378
Sacramento, CA 95814
877-664-6676

Paid for by Carly for California

Best Apology Ever!

No Comments

Writer J.D. Shapiro, apologizing for being the 1st script writer for Battlefield Earth.

Seriously, I cannot do justice to this, not can I provide excerpts that do justice, but here is a sample:

During my Scientology research, I met an employee who I instantly had a crush on. She was kind of a priestess, and had dedicated her life to working for the church by becoming a Sea Org member. She said that she signed a billion-year contract. I said, “What! Really?” She said she got paid a small stipend of $50 a week, to which I said, “Can you get an advance on the billion years, like say, a mere $500,000?” And then she said as a Sea Org member, you can’t have sex unless you’re married. I asked her if she was married. She said yes. So I said, “Great! That means we can have sex!”

It is simply exquisite!

Go read.

Well, Both of You are Going to Get More of My Bloggy Goodness

No Comments

The client firm, which is doing a maintenance manual for a Post Office mail sorter, did not get a bridge contract for the next stage of the contract, so they let the contractors go today, so as soon as the Passover Yom Tovim* are over, I back to calling around for a job.

Damn.

Sometimes life sucks.

*Some Jewish holidays, like Purim and Hanukah, come from somewhere other than Torah, and so there are few, if any restrictions on what you are supposed to do, while others, like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, are mentioned in Torah, and so activities are restricted by Jewish law, much in the same way that they are for Shabbat, where “work” (long story) is forbidden. (It’s marginally more lenient). Days 1, 2, 7, and 8 of Passover are Yom Tovim outside of Israel (longer story), and so, out of respect for my wife, and her mother, who will be visiting, I won’t be online those days.

Maybe Before They Try to Control What Women Do With Their Bodies ……

No Comments

The Catholic Church should consider controlling what their priests do with their bodies:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, [note: until 1965, it was called Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition], led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

We should note that Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, did more than ignore allegations, he aggressively pressured priests and lay people to cover up abuse and to not report it to authorities under the penalty of excommunication.

While the statutes of limitation have expired, or at least I think that they have, it’s still obstruction of justice.

Why the Religious Right Opposes Abortion

No Comments

Because the Talibaptists make good coin selling babies, and so they want to have a good supply of pregnant women, particularly white pregnant women, without options, so that they can cover a few medical bills, and then extracting fees from desperate parents:

American websites currently offer[ ] mouth-watering
incentives to would-be buyers. “Delivery within four months”, “Discounts of up to $19,000”, they proclaim. If it were cars they were selling this would not seem
odd, but it’s babies that are for sale – bright, smiling newborns to tempt the childless into parting with about £20,000.

There is no shame in treating babies like any other purchase in America, where the adoption industry is largely privatized… (“Why adoption is so easy in
America” Telegraph.co.uk 10/31/07)

………

The Brits have also rightly pointed to U.S. restrictions on birth control and abortion as a contributing to “marketable” infants in the U.S. The religious right’s imposed morality is perfectly partnered with those whose livelihoods depend upon the redistribution of children.

In May, 2007 Evangelical Christians organizations such as Focus on the Family and pastors from across the nation held a three-day summit in Colorado. members of to promote adoption via a media blitz.

While there are any number of people who do good work in adoption, there is a lot of money sloshing around, and it’s driving the way that business is done, and the Mega-churches and their ilk are taking their tithes, which keeps the pastors in SUV’s and business jets, I guess.

Are There Republican Moles in the Lay-Staff of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops?

No Comments

I was listening to NPR this morning, and they were talking about the position of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding healthcare reform and abortion.

Any time that anyone talks about their position, this morning, it was a law professor, the consensus is that the position of the Bishops is coming from somewhere in the Twilight Zone: There is simply no basis in realities of law, precedent, legislation, or the manner in which regulation is derived from statute to suggest the Senate language will allow for federal funding of abortion.

This raises an obvious question: Why does the professional staff of the Conference hold a position at such extreme odds with every lawyer, and almost every other Catholic organization out there, most recently the Catholic Health Association and 59,000 nuns?

The only answer that I can come up with is that the professional staff working in their offices have been captured by partisan Republican operatives.

Either there are Republican operatives working and generating legal and legislative opinions, or the staff has been browbeaten by the loud right wing lay activists, most notably Bill Donohue and his Catholic League, and so the staff is taking its talking points from Republican operatives.

In either case, it is clear that the staff is NOT providing competent or good faith advice.

Perhaps a look at the senior lay staff at the organization, and their backgrounds might be warranted by some news gathering organization. (I sent an earlier version of my theory to Josh Marshall, if you know of any other investigative organizations, please forward this to them.)

Note that I am not suggesting that the Bishops themselves are operating as partisan political operatives, simply that their staff may be operating as such.

James Dobson Forced Out of Focus on the Family

No Comments

My view of the conflict between Dobson and the FoF board is, but to quote Henry Kissinger, “too bad they can’t both lose.”

In any case, he’s stepped down from all corporate positions and his radio show, and starting a new radio show separate from the organization.

The cause of the split between appears to be the unwillingness of the board to make his son heir apparent, because they don’t approve of divorce, and Ryan Dobson got one in 2001.

Gee, self-importance masquerading as morality is a bitch, ain’t it?

This is Literally the American Taliban

2 Comments

It appears that there is a group of Talibaptists in Amarillo, Texas who have decided to spend their time engaging in a concerted program of harassment and intimidation directed at the local swingers club.

I could lambaste them, but PZ Myers does so well at the above link that it’s not necessary.

I would note that their targets, in addition to swingers and strip clubs, includes:

  • Buddhists.
  • Moslems.
  • Unitarian Universalists
  • Shriners (the Masons)
  • The Local Episcopal Church
  • Earth Day
  • Breast Cancer Awareness Day

And of course:

  • Rock and roll

Unsurprisingly, the local Sheriff’s department has been unwilling to respond to this, though, according to the Texas Monthly, the state troopers have been actually doing their job after a fashion.

Brilliant!

No Comments

Atheists sponsor a pr0n for for religious groups.

They are arguing that religious texts are in their own way violent pornography.

Speaking as someone who is religious, I understand that holy scriptures say different things to different generations, and that the moral and social development of people a few millennia ago rather closely resembles what we would call today “psychopathic sadists.”

As such, my opinion of people who find look at these works, and take them literally as “inerrant” and “perfect” is not particularly charitable.

I Can Still Tell the Difference Between Dick Cheney and Alan Grayson*

No Comments

It’s Purim, and I am not yet drunk enough to satisfy the Rabbis, so it’s time for some more alcohol, or as I like to call it, “Bourbon Renewal.”

*According to the Talmud, a person is required to drink until he cannot tell the difference between ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordecai,’ though opinions differ as to exactly how drunk that is. A person certainly should not become so drunk that he might violate other commandments or get seriously ill. In addition, recovering alcoholics or others who might suffer serious harm from alcohol are exempt from this obligation.

Haiti Will Shortly Free Last Two American Kidnappers Missionaries

No Comments

This is not an exoneration. It’s an acknowledgment that the courts in Haiti are a shambles, and that they are getting a lot of pressure from the US.

It’s clear from the back story that something very wrong was going on:

A judge in Haiti has said the last two Christian US missionaries being held on suspicion of abducting children after the earthquake may be freed in days.

Bernard Sainvil told Reuters the case, which involves 33 children, should be closed this week because there were no criminal grounds to pursue it.

A lawyer for the two said he thought they would be freed by Thursday.

Eight fellow missionaries were released last week but their leader and her assistant were kept in custody.

The other 8 are claiming that they had been scammed by Silsby and Coulter, and I am inclined to believe that something more than inattention to the finer points of Haitian immigration law is involved.