Okay, Dear. You’re an Idiot.

An old man on one of my friend’s Facebook walls started an argument about socialised health care and government scholarships for college students.  He was vehemently against all sort of government spending and frequently derided my younger friends as naïve and stupid because they were younger than him.

One of my friends, a young woman, was told to shut up after he ignored everything she said, making it clear that not only did he not want to discuss anything with anyone younger than himself but he especially didn’t want to discuss anything with a woman younger than himself.

Unfortunately, he deleted all of his comments after I eviscerated him the second time, so all I have are my two contributions to the argument.

Okay, dear. You’re an idiot.

What is good for the country is good for its people. Period. It does no good for a person to acquire wealth and have the best health insurance if everyone around him is poor and sick. If the uninsured of the US die from the next big pandemic (say, N1H1), how much of the work force will be obliterated? And if it’s just the poor and uninsured who die, how will the rich people mow their lawns, flip their burgers, park their Porsches, walk their dogs? It is most definitely in the nation’s best interest to insure all of its citizens’ health, and any intelligent person with wealth will concede that. Jon Stewart made a good point of this [2:10 in Part 2]. Paying for the wellbeing of those around you secures your own wellbeing.

As for other areas of government funding, like in education, it is absolutely ludicrous to say that you should pay for your education and your children’s education and no one else’s. How many brilliant people from poor backgrounds should be denied a decent college education because some millionaire’s drool-factory children are filling the desks at Harvard and Brown? Should all bright children with poor backgrounds be resigned to fix auto radiators while the deluded alcoholic children of former Presidents get shuffled through both Yale and Harvard Business on their father’s oil money?

This argument goes back to well before 1821 when President Thomas Jefferson penned his autobiography. Jefferson speaks in it about how, “One provision of the bill [a bill to revise to the constitution of the College of W^m & Mary] was, that the expenses of these schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general tax rate,” and how the public elementary school system was founded. He speaks of the opposition to this bill by wealthy landowners and says, “I shall recur again to this subject, towards the close of my story, if I should have life and resolution enough to reach that term; for I am already tired of talking about it myself.”

The argument that wealthy people should take care of their family alone and that tax dollars should not contribute to putting underprivileged children in schools of higher education, the argument you are trying to make now, was already old and tired in the early 1800s!

The United States military is one of the best and most efficient military systems ever developed. It would take a fool to argue against that. The military is a “socialist” system, to use Conservative lingo. It is entirely funded by your and my taxes and I feel so much safer at night knowing that our military branches watch over our nation as we peacefully sleep. I would not trust that task to Blackwater (now known as Xi) or any other private company. The government does it best. Are any conservatives out there gutsy enough to call a Marine a Commie pawn to his face? Our brave firefighters and police officers are also part of a “socialist” system. Where is Glenn Beck to point out the “evil communist plot” of safety and law enforcement? One of the funniest pieces of mail that the “socialist” US Postal Service has ever sent me was a recent handbill from VA Gov. candidate Bob McDonnell that decried, “government-run health-care.” It was delivered promptly by, “government-run courier service.”

Honestly, the government–your and my taxes–are the best and most efficient way to insure the health and education of its people. The government has greatly maintained hundreds of millions of miles of roadways, power lines, sewer pipes and railways. The government has secured the safety and order of every American and its property expertly. Even with the highest percentage of handgun owners of any other developed nation, the US has managed to keep its murder and violent crime levels surprisingly low, with some admitted room for improvement. The government has protected the security of America and its allies and interests with deadly efficiency in such a way that no government in its right mind would cross us.

Now why can’t the government use that same efficiency to ensure our health and education? Sir, it seems to me that you have a psychological disorder. You gladly fork over money for shooting brown people and jailing black people, but why not for keeping all people healthy and educated? What do you have against humanity at large?

Later…

Sir, I assume by your political views and the country of your residence that you are a Christian. I would ask you what you think about Jesus in Matthew 19:21-24. “21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. 22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. 23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Or Mark 12:28-31: “28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? 29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”

Matthew 25:31-46 has some good stuff too. “31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 For I was hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in; 36 Naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 For I was hungred, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.”

Or, I guess, Jesus was talking to people, “of that time,” because, “things are different now.” Or maybe it was, “a metaphor for blah blah yadda hmmph.” That’s what I usually hear in response to that argument, but honestly, it’s a weak argument to begin with. The argument from authority is weak, especially when said “authority” is a figment of our imagination… but I would imagine that people who believe in that crap would at least try to follow it. Nowhere in the Bible does it advise its followers to horde their cash.

Reed Braden’s Failed Pick-Up Lines

These have never worked for me.  Let’s see if they work for you!

• I want to ride you like Shadowfax into the Battle of Helm’s Deep.
• I want to ride you like a Saturn V to the Moon.
• I want to ride you like a black stallion into the dawn-grey misty woodland in search for the missing princess.
• I want to ride you like a James Bond villain rides the top of a train:  Dangerously, recklessly and on camera.
• I want to ride you like an overly enthusiastic heavyset person rides a really fast rollercoaster that goes on forever.
• I want to mount you like a valiant white knight mounts his steed on top of a hill, silhouetted by by the setting sun over the misty moors of Renaissance England in a film starring Sir Laurence Olivier.
• I want to lick you repeatedly like a slow child trapped in a doorknob factory.
• I want to lick you like a gratuitously large menstruating female standing in front of a conveyor belt in the world’s largest chocolate-frosted cupcake factory.
• I want to take you inside me like Tupac took bullets:  Hard, fast and over and over again.
• I want to blow you like Katrina blew New Orleans and then fuck you like George Bush fucked all of the poor black people who lived there.
• I want you to ride my cock like it was a nuclear submarine:  It’s big, wet and full of seamen.
• I want you to ride my cock like it was a trolley in San Francisco:  It’s big, red and full of violations of the book of Leviticus.
• Hi.  I’m Reed Braden.

Let’s see if you have better luck with those than I did.

Keep the Government Off of [Male] Genitalia!

Yay hypocrisy!

Rush Limbaugh still wants the government to regulate what women can do with their genitals, but the moment that the government even suggests that men should get circumcised, OH MY FUCKING GAWD, OSbAMA, KEEP YER BLACK COMMIE KENYAN HANDS OFFA MAH CAWCK!!!

(Gabriel Winant via Hanna Rosin)

Beck Logic

Here’s a video from Media Matters of Glenn Beck’s fuckwittiness.

After a minute into the video, I couldn’t stop twitching.  Some guy from some anti-capitalist organisation influenced the stimulus bill.  We don’t have complete records of everyone who has visited the White House.  Therefore, Obama is being secretly advised by commies.

I can do the same thing.  Osama bin Laden greatly influenced George W. Bush’s foreign policy.  We don’t have complete records of everyone Bush met with.  Therefore, George W. Bush performed oral favours on Osama bin Laden every Thursday evening and Glenn Beck sat in the Oval Office and fapped to the scene.  YOU CAN’T DISPROVE IT!  BUSH WAS GAY!  OMG!

About two minutes into the video, Beck found vague connections between President Obama two Weather Underground founders.  Therefore, Obama is a terrorist.

Big deal!  Under George Bush, Sarah Jane Moore, who tried to kill President Ford, was paroled and released from prison.  Recently, a parole board that was in place during the time of George Bush freed Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a Mason Family member who also attempted to shoot Ford, from prison.  Therefore, George Bush endorses the assassination of US Presidents and is a flaming homosexual.

About four minutes in, Glenn Beck flipped over a chalkboard with a diagram that looks like a less-coherent version of a prop from the movie A Beautiful Mind.  It links Obama to a bunch of people that Beck calls “anti-America.”  So Obama hates America!

Pshaw!

Bush is a faggy Mexican who assassinates US Presidents!

Beck’s guest then blathers on about how this anti-capitalist is bad.  Therefore, Obama is bad.

I can twist the words of experts too!  I have, next to me, my friend Maggie.  She is an expert on things that aren’t nice.

She says that Osama bin Laden, who Bush sucked off many times, is a not-nice person.  Not-nice people often kick puppies.  George W. Bush kicks puppies.

George W. Bush is a cocksucking “wise Latino” who kicks puppies and kills Presidents with his bare hands.

Beck finishes by saying that because Obama has never specifically said that he, “rejects Marxist principles,” he is a Marxist.

Well, I urge you to find an instance of George W. Bush stating explicitly that he, “rejects paedophilic principles.”  You can’t.

George W. Bush is a “wise Latina woman” who puts kittens and puppies into a woodchipper and puts terrorist cocks in his mouth and ass.  He also is a card carrying member of NAMbLA and murdered at least one US President with his mutated bear hands.

It makes just as much sense as Obama being a Marxist, Kenyan, radical Muslim terrorist.

BECK LOGIX!!!

Ted Kennedy Has Died

Senator Ted Kennedy has just been reported dead after his long battle with brain cancer.  I know he would have loved to have had the chance to vote of the upcoming healthcare reform bill, and I hope we can get this bill through, intact, as soon as possible.

Fred Phelps on Crack

This guy is going to get arrested.  Fred Phelps is, I’m sad to say, very well-versed in the law and knows exactly how much he can say about a person without being sued for libel or slander.  This retard called Rep. Barney Frank a paedophile.

Orcinus: Gospel of Hate: Arizona pastor Steve Anderson spews bile toward Obama, Frank, and gays

I’m here to preach the Bible. And I’m sick to death — hey, let me tell you something. Our country is run by faggots. You know who wrote this 700-billion-dollar bailout bill? You know who was the man who was the architect of the bailout? His name is Barney Franks, he is a pedophile, he has been arrested for uh, interacting with boys that are in their teenage years when he’s in his 50s, it’s in the news, he’s been arrested for it. He is a pedophile, he is a homosexual, he has stood up in the floor of the sacred halls of justice and said, ‘I am gay, I am a sodomite.’

That’s Barney Frank, that’s who just sold our country into fascism. That’s who just sold our corporations to the government. That’s who sold out our country, a faggot! And I’m here to tell you something! I’m not going to stand for it, and let a faggot run the church! It’s bad enough that we’ve got a bunch of faggots running the government!

I’ll be following this guy more closely in the future and calling him out on his illegal slander.

Help a Starving Artist Out

I uploaded a bunch of my photos to Redbubble.com where they are for sale as matted, laminated, mounted or framed prints and also as greeting cards.  Go check it out and buy something.  If you make a purchase over $50 and email me with the details of your purchase and your mailing address, I will gladly send you a personal note of thanks.

I also have more tee shirts up for sale on Redbubble.

Future Republican Tactic: Drooling On Themselves

Over the past year, the Republican party has gotten exponentially more stupid with every fake grassroots movement the organise.

It boggles my mind how people can still take them seriously!

First it was Obama’s a Muslim, then he’s a terrorist-sympathiser, then Obama’s a Kenyan, then he’s going to let the evil wizards out of Azkaban dangerous, active terrorist-cell members out of prison and into your living room, now he’s going to kill grandma with “Deathcare^®”… because he’s the black Hitler.

If Republicans get any dumber, they will need illustrated instructions on how to breathe that will be laminated, devoid of sharp corners and safety-pinned to their suit coats.

At least Representative Barney Frank knows how to talk to these idiots:

Why can’t other Democrats see this nonsensical raving for what it is and support the President 100%?  We voted for Congresspersons who would promote Democratic ideals and we voted for President Obama to define what those ideals are.

HG Reader Survey

While we’re all waiting on my life to settle down enough for me to be able to blog more regularly, please fill out this anonymous 10-question survey so I can better know to whom I’m writing and what I should focus on.

It won’t take but a few minutes and it would help me greatly.

I Am Not Yet Dead!

Between family visiting, sister’s wedding, boyfriend visiting for a week, helping out an old friend, zeroing in on a new job and basically being an all-around awesome sonofabitch, I’ve been keeping busier than a hungry velociraptor at a convention for body builders covered in barbecue sauce (BBBBQCon).

I haven’t forgotten about you, and I have many more posts and tee shirts ready for you guys as soon as my life settles down a bit.

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme Released

I’m shocked. My local news ran a teaser saying on of the Charles Manson Family, but not saying which one, has been released from prison. The first words out of my mouth were, “Well, it can’t be Squeaky Fromme. Who was it?”

It was Squeaky Fucking Fromme, member of the Charles Manson Family and attempted assassin of President Gerald Ford.

That’s right! In America, you can attempt to assassinate the President and, one day, earn your freedom back.

I don’t believe any other person in the history of this nation has ever attempted (or succeeded) to assassinate a President and regained their freedom… except Sarah Jane Moore… who also attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford and was released in 2007. Maybe parole boards just hate Gerald Ford…

The 2010 Gaytheists Calendar

Do you want a calendar filled with nothing but pictures of me, almost completely in the nude and doing rude and/or sexy things to The God Delusion?

I thought not.

Let’s make a Gaytheists calendar instead!

I got the idea when looking for when the 2010 SkepDude calendar would be available for sale that there should be a gay version of the SkepChick/Dude calendars, one that features only LGBT Atheists and skeptics baring it all (but covering certain bits in entertainingly gay-geeky ways) that can be sold to raise money for The Trevor Project.

If I get 12 amazing, funny, risqué photos by the randomly chosen deadline of 9 November 2009, we can do this thing.  If not, I’m going to create a 365-day picture-a-day calendar of myself, completely nude, and mail it to every single one of your grandparents, addressed to you.

Mua ha ha.

Anyhoo, a list!

• Photos should be fairly high quality–6 or 7 megapixels and up is good.  They should be in landscape format.
• I may have to crop a little off of some of the pictures, but I will not crop a portrait photo into landscape.
• Pictures can be in black and white or colour, but I ask that you please don’t go crazy with Photoshop filters before sending me your submission.  That’s my job.
• People of all shapes and sizes are welcome.  I go by the Mika philosophy of beauty.
  
• Tell me a little about who you are, what you do, how you define your disbelief and your sexuality.
• I’m not looking for uber-famous folks, so yes you do have a shot.
• Don’t put me in an awkward position.  If you’re under 18, don’t send a me a picture of yourself.  Don’t send me pictures of illegal things.  Do illegal things in your apartment with your friends–and invite me to smoke with you when I’m in your town–but DO NOT send me pictures of you with your bong.  I don’t think I can say this enough:  No cock or cooch.
  
• Send your submission to reedbraden@gmail.com.
• PLEASE no vag and peen!

Calendars will be created by and sold through RedBubble.com.  All proceeds from the calendar will be donated at the end of the year to The Trevor Project.

By sending a photograph of yourself to me, you agree to have it featured in the 2010 Gaytheists calendar.

140,000 Died! It’s a Miracle!!!

I stumbled across this article on a stupid Catholic blog this morning:

Rosary miracle at Hiroshima

There was a home eight blocks (about 1 kilometer) from where the A-Bomb went off in Hiroshima, Japan. This home had a church attached to it which was completely destroyed, but the home survived, and so did the eight German missionaries who prayed the Rosary in that house faithfully every day. These men were missionaries to the Japanese people, they were non-military, but because Germany and Japan were allies during WWII they were permitted to live and minister within Japan during the war.

Not only did they all survive with (at most) relatively minor injuries, but they all lived well past that awful day with no radiation sickness, no loss of hearing, nor any other visible long term defects or maladies.

Naturally, they were interviewed numerous times (Fr. Schiffer, a survivor, said he was interviewed over 200 times) by scientists and health care people about their remarkable experience. The Jesuits say,“We believe that we survived because we were living the Message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.”

Of course the secular scientists are speechless and incredulous at this explanation. They are sure there is some “real” explanation. But at the same time over 50 years later the scientists are still absolutely bamboozled when it comes to finding a plausible scenario to explain the missionaries’ unique escape from the hellish power of that bomb.

First thing’s first, I want to establish that the beneficiaries of this incredible miracle were evil, Jew-slaughtering, scum-sucking Nazis.  The article mentions that the governments of Japan and Germany were friendly to each other as a reason for the missionaries being allowed in the country… so it follows logically that the missionaries were friendly with both the Nazis and the Japanese forces.  Japan wouldn’t let an anti-Nazi group into the country if they were buddy-buddy with Hitler’s regime, and in Nazi Germany, one couldn’t take a neutral position.  It was Heil Hitler or GTFO.  And they certainly wouldn’t let in a group of people who would not compromise a small part of their religious beliefs to kiss Hirohito’s hairless god-king ass.

When America nuked Japan, God let the nuke kill all the heathen Japanese, but he spared eight Nazi Catholics.  It’s a fucking miracle!  140,000 people all died in instant flaming agony at the same time, but eight Nazi Catholics survived because they were counting beads and mumbling nonsense under their breath when the bomb went off!  Fucking amazing!

Never mind that the story only comes from the guys whose accounts made themselves famous, with no reliable witnesses and no collaborating evidence.  We don’t know they were praying the Rosary… maybe one was baking a cake and one was taking a poo and one was masturbating.  We don’t know.

And who cares that the house was connected to–and shielded by–a gigantic stone church, and there were dozens of structures in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were spared in a similar manner?  Never mind that almost every photograph of the explosion’s aftermath shows sporadic structures still standing!  It’s a goddamn miracle because we say it is!

And as for the 140,000 that died in that city at that time?  Fuck ‘em!  They were just heathen emperor-worshiping Jappies!  We’re talking about eight racially pure (WHITE!) Aryan Nazis!  God saved his blond-hair blue-eye Jesus look-alikes from the righteous slaughter of Hirohito’s minions.  Someone canonize those Nazis RIGHT NAO!!!

And I know just the man for the job…

Guess what prominent religious figure this Hitler Youth became!

The Private Healthcare Industry Failed Me

I am currently unemployed and working a number of under-the-table small jobs and two private contractor gigs that I’m rarely called upon to work for.  I’m over 18, I’m not in school and I don’t live with my parents, so I am not covered under my parents’ insurance plan.  The only way I can be insured at this moment, between jobs, is if I buy my own personal insurance plan.

I am not insured.

When I was in high school, I made a stupid decision, and, for a variety of reasons, decided it would be a good idea to end my life.  This happened again, for a completely different variety of reasons, in February of this year.  Both times, I went to the hospital to check into the psychological unit and receive proper care.  I’m still ignoring bills from the February visit after refusing to sign a consent to payment form at the hospital.  The hospital has waived their fees but the group that was privately contracted to staff the hospital wing, Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare, still periodically sends me bills, the last one in excess of $500, which is considerably more than a month’s rent for my apartment.

(Completely unrelated:  Anyone who accuses Atheism of being exclusively for those white people with buckets of money and easy lives—“Why are there no Atheist janitors?” goes the ignorant quip—should go back and re-read that paragraph.)

Because I sought help, both of those instances are on my medical record and most insurers will refuse to insure me out of fear that I will again become depressed and cost their company money.  Those who might consider insuring me will only offer me basic coverage plans covered in red ink and exceptions for much more money than an average customer would be quoted.

Many teenagers and parents of teenagers are wise to this now.  When they—or their children—feel suicidal, they don’t seek help.  They instead mutilate their arms and legs—or turn a blind eye to their children doing so—and turn to heavy drugs, both to try and dull the pain of feeling depressed without professional help.  They want help for their depression, and they don’t really want to end their lives.  (Or else why would thought of health insurance be an issue to them?)  They want help and they can’t get help without being penalised for it.

I don’t want to generalise and say that every cutter and drug user is trying to avoid a stain on their medical record, but I can name many of my friends and acquaintances who do these things for that reason.  And THAT is how you know that our nation’s health insurance industry sucks.

Like I said, I am not currently legally employed and, as such, am not offered employer-provided health insurance.  Even if I can find a job in this dismal local economy, it probably won’t be one that will allow me to work enough hours a week or for a long enough period of time so that they would be mandated to provide insurance.  Business owners just can’t afford that right now.  The only job listings I’ve found and qualified for so far are part-time and with no benefits.

Why is my country the only industrialised nation that does not insure its people across the board?  Whatever happened to governments operating to secure the welfare of their people?  My country is in a recession and many of us can’t afford to ensure ourselves and can’t find employers who can afford to either.  The least my country can do for me is to insure my health and keep me safe, so I can find work to do for it.

I hope I could offer some people who may oppose the public option a different viewpoint on the argument.  If that’s not the case, and those people are still going to throw scripted lines at me, then I’ve just wasted both our time.

Criminal Child Negligence, As Promoted By the AVN

I signed the “Stop the Australian Vaccination Network Petition” online here.  Unfortunately, I got carried away with my comment and it was too long to post to the petition.  I reproduce it here for your reading pleasure:

With no reasonable evidence, the Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network–along with their international partners and the “not-a-doctors” Jenny McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey–has convinced millions of parents globally to refuse vaccinations for their children on the paranoid grounds that vaccination is a scam.

This is obviously dangerous for those parents’ children and those parents who refuse to vaccinate their children without the recommendation of a qualified doctor for a legitimate reason should be put in jail for child endangerment and have their children taken away and given to a family that will love them enough to put their health over idiotic anti-establishment dogma.

For those children who have weak immune systems due to childhood cancers or poor prenatal health and cannot receive vaccinations against preventable diseases, their lives are put in immediate danger by the parents who refuse to vaccinate their healthy kids.  It’s called herd immunity, and if one of these non-vaccinated children brings mumps or whooping cough to school, the child with the weak immune system is at great risk of catching it and dying.  Even with all of the stories of non-vaccinated children getting over should-be-eradicated illnesses "due to" wheat grass potions or chiropractic or whatever new-age bull faeces the anti-vaccination movement wants to promote next, the unhealthy children will not be so lucky when the next epidemic makes its way through the schools.

Here are some examples of lies directly from http://avn.org.au.

- The dead and deactivated viruses that are in vaccines to provide the body with the required information to fight the living viruses later are, "combining with our own DNA to form new diseases such as HIV, Ebola virus and Hansa virus to name just a few."
- A Hepatitis B vaccine gone awry caused a young boy named Robert to have, “trouble reading, performing basic mathematics and has severe shortterm memory loss.”
- “Almost all” vaccine research has been, “paid for either in whole or in part, by the company producing the vaccine.”
- Several pages prior in the same pamphlet, they claim, “Vaccines have never been tested,” in direct contradiction to the claim that all testing has been paid for by pharmaceutical companies.
- They outrageously claim that prevention of diseases which have bloody histories of killing large portions of child populations a hundred years ago, “may not necessarily be in the best interests of the child.”
- They claim that measles, which has a fatality rates of 30% in people with immune systems not prepared to fight the disease, “can help to mature the immune system, may help prevent auto-immune illnesses such as cancer, asthma and allergies.”
- Rubella, in the UK and US in the early 1960s caused, “11,000 miscarriages or therapeutic abortions and 20,000 cases of congenital rubella syndrome.”  2,100 of those 20,000 affected with CRS died, “12,000 were deaf, 3,580 were blind and 1,800 were mentally retarded.” [Info via Wikipedia, with citation of “J.B. Hanshaw, J.A. Dudgeon, and W.C. Marshall. Viral diseases of the fetus and newborn. W.B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, 1985”]  The Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network claims that Rubella is, “An extremely mild disease of childhood. If a woman gets rubella as a child, she develops life-long immunity which will protect her unborn child from the adverse effects of congenital rubella syndrome,” which is patently false and extremely dangerous.

And I didn’t have to search far and wide for these damning quotes.  They were all in the same brochure found at http://avn.org.au/library/images/pdfs/iverell_forum.pdf.

I am not an Australian, but I care deeply for the protection of children worldwide.  I’m begging the government of Australia to recognise the threat that the Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network poses to Australian children–and the international community in general–and shut down this illegal and highly dangerous group of compulsive liars.  It is time to get rid of the Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network and punish those parents who refuse, under the AVN’s advice, to vaccinate their children as recklessly dangerous to their own children and any other children their children may come in contact with.

That brochure I mentioned ends with large text covering an entire page:

“Margaret Mead
Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

I’m glad that even the AVN can call themselves a small group of people.  But they are already changing the world by murdering children.  Let’s hope we can stop this madness before the world, and the progress the world is making, is changed further by these lunatics.

Racism and Guns

Daily Kos reports that the National Rifle Association is threatening Congresspeople that they will put, “a blackmark on their NRA scorecard,” if they don’t completely ignore the hundreds of amazing things Sonia Sotomayor has done in her career to focus on a guy who was denied the “right” to walk around New York twirling Nunchaku and an illegal immigrant who was denied the “right” to carry a pistol while carrying 1.2 kilos of pure fuckin’ bouncing powder.

And Democrats are starting to buy into this shit!

Because Sonia Sotomayor doesn’t want people to twirl Nunchaku, a dangerous martial arts weapon, on the sidewalks and she doesn’t want your friendly neighbourhood Mexican coke dealer to have a handgun, she’s not suitable for the Supreme Court, says the NRA.

It can’t possibly be because she’s… you know… browner than the overwhelming majority of NRA members!  No, it’s because she’s anti-Nunchaku and… there was that one time she took the right to own a handgun from that one guy.  Yeah… the guy with the cocaine on him.  Who was illegally in the country.

It would be insane to allege that the largest advocacy group for gun rights in the US had a racial bias.  That would be absurd!  Surely the most politically powerful lobby of mostly white people who FUCKING LOVE their multiple handguns and assault rifles can’t possibly be racist.

Or maybe that’s why gun violence is so often a racially-motivated crime in the US… … … Nah!  It’s all about the Nunchaku!

Why We Need Healthcare Reform

The reason that most conservatives are against healthcare reform is that the average conservative family is middle class, 35-60, and are for the most part, employed somewhere that provides health benefits, and have been for so long that they have never even thought about being without insurance. Unfortunately I am one of the millions of Americans without health insurance, and have recently learned that a small injury can be costly without it. I injured my thumb with a sharp hunting knife, I lost enough blood to be weak and pale, and did enough damage that without holding the gauze tightly on my thumb, it would have been twitching uncontrollably. I arrived at the emergency room on a relatively uncrowded Sunday afternoon, around 1:10. I was taken to see a male nurse at 2:15 who asked me a brief questionnaire (including awkward questions like the addenum to “Are you sexually active – what persuasion?” and “Do you feel safe at home and in relationships?”) and sent me to wait on a hospital bed until a doctor saw me, cleaned and dressed me wound, around 2:40, and then left again. During the 25 minute wait for the doctor to return, I was given a tetanus shot and a pamphlet about tetanus that was illegible medical-speak. The doctor returned, and spent 15 minutes preparing her instruments and having a nurse assist holding my hand still, stitched the wound with three stitches, which took all of 10 minutes, and then left for another 20 minutes before returning to find I had already dressed my own wound. I left the hospital at 4:10, and the whole procedure cost $103.00. Now, that may not seem like a lot of money at first, but consider again that I am unemployed, and to me $103 is a tank of gas, and a week’s worth of food.

Now do you see why we need healthcare reform?

-CJ