The elections yesterday had some surprises, and some not too surprising results.
In the local election, the race for King County Executive was a hotly contested one between former newscaster Susan Hutchinson, and King County Council member Dow Constantine.
I found it ironic that after watching the 2008 election where Obama won by promising change from the day to day politics as usual, here in King County, the opposite held forth. Hutchinson’s ran on a campaign of asking to end the business as usual attitude that has lead to King County’s financial messes. Constantine on the other hand ran on a campaign of “she’s a Republican”.
Seriously, his closing comments at a debate as well as TV ads said pretty much nothing else, even trying to smear her by likening her to Sarah Palin. It was one of the cheapest dirtiest campaign ads I have seen.
Well, that apparently is enough in Seattle; either that or a pretty woman need not apply.
The Mayor’s race is still up for grabs. Hope and Change already won there with incumbent Greg Nichols getting knocked off the top two primary ballot.
So in the last few weeks, I have given thought to an exchange I have been having with a coworker.
He (we’ll call him ‘Bob’) is a liberal, and an atheist. He is also what I would affectionately describe as passionate and a bit argumentative. I mean that too, by the way, as I like Bob a great deal. Politically we are actually both much closer to the center and too each other than our peers might think. Where we are close in opinions, we find a great deal of value in our debates.
But, there are a couple of problems in there too, which is where the revelation comes in.
Take the debate that lead me to this blog. I was making a mention to another coworker about an article I had seen on Drudge, I believe, regarding the Global Climate Change proponents famed Hockey stick chart. The article was noting that a chief contributer to the chart, Keith Briffa, had never released the raw data his studies were based on. This was (or should have been) a serious issue in the scientific community, as your science must be demonstrable and verifiable, and the only way to do so is to examine the data. After 10 years of fruitless and frustrating requests by a statistician named Steve McIntyre, Briffa was finally forced to give it up, and the data was shocking. It appears that Briffa cherry picked his data to deliberately give the results he wanted, the hockey stick.
I heard this on the radio in passing earlier today, and confirmed it on Hot Air this evening.
This sort of intimidation pisses me off.
Let me say before I post the story details that until I read this, I had no intention of joining the fray for referendum 71, which seeks a public vote to overturn the recently signed same sex partnership laws here in Washington.
If anything, I thought that addressing this out of the marriage arena brought back the reality of what this is about without the rhetoric.
And since so many companies are already providing this, I was not surprised to see it pass the Washington legislature and be signed by the Governor.
When I heard about the attempt to overturn it by Referendum, it just made me tired. I am all for churches wanting to maintain their religious doctrines but I also see no problem with the State imposing equality in benefits, while leaving marriage alone.
But now…quite frankly even though I don’t really care about overturning it, I plan on signing the petition.
The US Homeland Security Department, under fire for saying US forces returning from the Iraq and Afghan wars were potential right-wing extremist recruits, said Wednesday it honors US veterans.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sought to douse anger among conservatives and veterans groups like the American Legion over a report from her department warning of a rising threat of right-wing extremism.
“We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not — nor will we ever — monitor ideology or political beliefs,” Napolitano said in a statement amid charges that the department had done just that.
Which, in fact, they have.
American Legion chief David Rehbein on Tuesday blasted the report as “incomplete, and, I fear, politically-biased” and took special aim at its warning that returning veterans having difficulties reintegrating society could be recruited by right-wing groups for possible terrorist attacks.
I find the whole thing ludicrous really. A couple atheists led by a comedian decide to show some intolerance toward religion. So they advertise on the bus:
It’s real, it’s happening: you can sponsor the first atheist advert on a bus – and Richard Dawkins will match your money
The atheist bus campaign launches today thanks to Comment is free readers. Because of your enthusiastic response to the idea of a reassuring God-free advert being used to counter religious advertising, the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” could now become an ad campaign on London buses – and leading secularists have jumped on board to help us raise the money.
Hey, being a free speech minded guy, more power to ya. If you want to waste you money trying to diss religion, I guess you have that right.
I do think it is disappointing that people cannot just live and let live, but oh well.
This is a goofy lawsuit on its face except for one element that I will comment on in a moment.
Nikolai Grushevski, a man from Corpus Christi, has filed a lawsuit because Hooters wouldn’t let him work as a waiter, which we guess would be called a Hooters Boy.
“Hooters tries to circumvent the law by referring to its waiters as ‘Hooters Girls.’ Hooters is wrong,” claims the lawsuit, filed yesterday in federal court in Corpus. “Just as Southwest Airlines attempted nearly three decades ago with stewardesses, the waiter’s position addressed herein is being limited to females by an employer ‘…who merely wishes to exploit female sexuality as a marketing tool to attract customers and insure profitability.’”
Exactly. Thankfully, the lawsuit says that Grushevski isn’t trying to stop the restaurant from hiring Hooters Girls.
OK, on the face of the lawsuit, the guy suing is actually correct. It is a practice that sexually discriminates, as it applies a job that is traditionally gender neutral, a waiter/waitress, and locks it into a female only model.
This is par for the course for atheists: Take a practice that harms no one and try to suppress it because it might force them to confront the fact that some Americans believe in God.
The head of an atheist group that has filed a lawsuit against prayer at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration says the government is picking a winner between “believers” and “those who don’t believe” and subjecting atheists and agnostics to someone else’s religious beliefs.
Let me take a moment and note that watching someone pray is not subjecting them to religious beliefs as much as it is allowing them to practice their beliefs, which is supposed to be a part of our freedoms. The person who should make the call is the guy getting sworn in, who wants the prayer, no one else.
No one can force an atheist to pray, and you would think that decency and respect would suggest that the atheists might just be quiet.
But no.
Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has joined with Michael Newdow, who fought to have the words “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, in a federal lawsuit seeking to enjoin the Presidential Inaugural Committee from sponsoring prayers at the official inauguration.
For years the Washington State Capital has had a Christmas tree in the Capital rotunda. yes, they wimped out years ago and labeled it a “holiday tree”, but for all the political correctness, it is a friggin Christmas tree.
A Jewish group added a Menorah to the display, then another religious group petitioned to add a nativity scene, and won.
That brought us to the present debacle.
An atheist group placed a “winter solstice” sign that denounced all religion.
And the fun started, as local groups expressed outrage. The was transparently intended to be insulting and it worked.
It even made Bill O’Reilly’s show, featuring local horses ass David Goldstein (who also has a blog called horsesass)…
…twice, as it made his show again when he went head to head against Megyn Kelly of Fox News.
And the two latest news stories are that someone took the sign, it conveniently turned it in to a radio station, and it is back in place; and that a local pastor is seeking to place a clear anti atheism sign nearby
Amazing, the things that are litigable these days. This wasn’t the public prosecution hinted at by the Dutch government last week but “merely” a private suit filed by the Netherlands Islamic Foundation to have criticism of Islam deemed an “incitement” under Dutch law and thereby worthy of being censored. Note the rationale:
The NIF wanted to know if Wilders had broken the law with his public declaration in August last year that the Koran is a fascist book and comments that Mohammed was a barbarian.
According to the judge, the term fascism must be seen in a broader context. The NIF associated it with the Holocaust and ‘other evil practices from Nazi Germany’. But fascism should, said the judge, be seen as ‘a collective term for ideologies which fundamentally embrace a totalitarian political system which leaves no room for people with other ideas’.
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