J.B.Forbes P-D

BY Denise Hollinshed

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

04/09/2009

ST. LOUIS  Julius and Hazel Watkins are expecting to be in their own place this weekend.

While it isn’t exactly their place, it beats moving among relatives’ homes. That’s what they have been doing in the month since fire heavily damaged their home.

The new quarters, in Hillsdale, have been offered free by Garry Session of Florissant, who read of the Watkinses’ plight last week in the Post-Dispatch. A construction firm has offered to repair their damaged home for free, and a fund set up to help the Watkinses now contains $2,000.

“It’s wonderful,” Julius Watkins, 84, said Wednesday. “I just think it is wonderful, and like I said, ‘God is good.’”

via 04/09/2009 – St. Louis couple has a place to call their own, at least for now – STLtoday.com.

Whatever. By your logic “God” burned your house down, too. So now he’s given you somewhere to stay and $2,000? What a guy.

No. Random chance burned your house down. Poverty or carelessness or both meant you had no insurance. PEOPLE are helping you. PEOPLE gave you a place to live. PEOPLE are repairing your home, and donating money to your little fund. Imaginary omniscient beings had nothing to do with it.

And even if there was a “god” who had something to do with burning down an 84 year-old woman’s house – he’d kind of be a cocksucker, wouldn’t he?

Saturday morning, a Palestinian doctor who reports for Israel’s channel 10 television witnessed three of his daughters killed by Israeli bombs, even as his first moments of insane panic and grief were broadcast live.

Israeli officials said shells were dropped in response to sniper fire in the area.

Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Ashi is an uncommon man. A Palestinian who works for an Israeli hospital, Dr. Ashi has been giving Israelis daily reports on the military campaign in Gaza.

“No one can get to us,” he screamed in Arabic on a live phone call with a channel 10 anchor. “My God … My God …”

via The Raw Story | Palestinian doctor’s daughters killed during live Israeli TV report.

“Those of us who are free from religion like to imagine a world where instead of wasting our best efforts on some unprovable afterlife, we humans could concentrate on leaving this world a better place for future generations. We should strive for ‘heaven’ here on earth,” noted Dan Barker Foundation Co-President and author of the new book, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists.

via Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc..

Protests Over a Rule to Protect Health Providers – NYTimes.com
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: November 17, 2008

WASHINGTON — A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job discrimination laws.

The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

…

But the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, 28 senators, more than 110 representatives and the attorneys general of 13 states have urged the Bush administration to withdraw the proposed rule.

Pharmacies said the rule would allow their employees to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives and could “lead to Medicaid patients being turned away.” State officials said the rule could void state laws that require insurance plans to cover contraceptives and require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims.

The Ohio Health Department said the rule “could force family planning providers to hire employees who may refuse to do their jobs” — a concern echoed by Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

It could only be better if Sarah Palin were riding!

The point he tries to make with Jon is that there’s a difference between Palin’s “policy” and her child. There’s a difference between “policy debates” and what goes on in families. And what I don’t get how THEY don’t get, is that the policy they make AFFECTS REAL FAMILIES. JUST AS REAL AS YOUR FAMILY. Duh.

You can’t separate your policy and the laws you’d enact from what you want for your own family. This world is made up of other people’s families. You can’t say “This is my public viewpoint, but at my kitchen table it’s all different.”

Well, I guess you CAN say that, but that’s what makes you a dipshitted conservative “nothing applies to me” asshat. Isn’t that really the conservative’s disease? That mindset that rules don’t apply to them? So they can cheat and lie and steal and fuck and drink and do drugs and fuck some more and start wars and talk bad about people and create havoc and Jeebus forgives them and it’s all OK once they go to rehab but there oughta be a law, by golly, to keep anyone else from doing those things?

*head shake*

*sigh*

This isn’t perfectly transcribed, there’s a reason I am not a transcriptionist by trade, I suppose. But the video is below (this convo starts around the 4:30 mark)

Jon: So what she’s in essence saying is “Respect my family’s ability to make this decision, and elect me so that I can keep your family from having the same opportunity.”
Newt: No. That’s not true
John: That strikes me as hypocrisy.
Newt: No. What she’s saying is… you and she can have a policy debate about whether or not Obama’s position defending infanticide by abortion doctors was appropriate in the Illinois legislature…
Jon: No this isn’t about Obama – I’m going by her words, no abortion even in the case of rape
Newt:… That’s right. You can say Obama’s position was one extreme, and her position may be the other extreme. That’s a policy debate. But the minute you mention her child…
Jon: But when it down to her family she says “respect her decision”
Newt: No she says respect the privacy of the family
Jon: “It was Bristol’s decision.” That was their press release.
Newt: She said respect the privacy of her daughter which is very different than…
Jon: She says respect Bristol’s decision. That’s another word for choice.
Newt: And she could make the choice, because I assume they have choice there.

Most Americans Believe in Higher Power, Poll Finds – washingtonpost.com

A belief in God or a higher spirit is pervasive. Even Americans who describe themselves as atheist or agnostic have a robust sense of a higher power: Twenty-one percent of those who describe themselves as atheists expressed a belief in God or a universal spirit, and more than half of those who call themselves agnostic expressed a similar conviction.

Smith said some people may identify with the term atheist or agnostic without fully understanding the definition, or they have a negative view of organized religion, even though they believe in God.

If millions of Christians suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth as the opening act for Armageddon, Threat Level thinks most nonbelievers will be too busy freaking the hell out to check their e-mail. But if they do log in, now they can be treated to some post-Rapture needling from their missing friends and loved ones, courtesy of web startup YouveBeenLeftBehind.com.

For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when — according to Christian end times dogma — Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.

“You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ,” reads the website, which is purportedly run “by Christians, for Christians.” The domain name is registered through an anonymous proxy service, presumably to protect the proprietors from the Forces of Darkness, and not because they’re up to anything shady.

The e-mails will be triggered when three of the site’s five Christian staffers “scattered around the U.S.” fail to log in for six days in a row — a system that incorporates a nice margin of safety, should two of the proprietors turn out to be unrepentant sinners or atheists.

This is just TOO damn awesome. Christians rock. Harvesting the unGodly power of teh internetz to use 4Jesus! Who would have thought?

I can’t wait until this system fails in some way, sending out the taunting pious “you’ve been left behind” emails prematurely and causing millions of the devout (primarily histrionic teens) all over the earth to kill themselves, thinking they’ve been left behind for the beast to make his mark on. Oooh! Hacker alert. That would be a worthwhile pursuit, eh?

BALLA, India Reuters – Five armed men burst into the small room and courtyard at dawn, just as 21-year-old, 22-week pregnant, Sunita was drying her face on a towel.

They punched and kicked her stomach as she called out for her sleeping boyfriend “Jassa”, 22-year-old Jasbir Singh, witnesses said. When he woke, both were dragged into waiting cars, driven away and strangled.

Their bodies, half-stripped, were laid out on the dirt outside Sunitas fathers house for all to see, a sign that the familys “honor” had been restored by her cold-blooded murder.

A week later, the village of Balla, just a couple of hours drive from Indias capital New Delhi, stands united behind the act, proud, defiant almost to a man.

…

“From society’s point of view, this is a very good thing,” said 62-year-old farmer Balwan Arya, sitting smoking a hookah in the shade of a tree in a square with other elders from the village council or panchayat. “We have removed the blot.”

The Oklahoma State Legislature is playing doctor again. Last year they dictated how specialists at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center may care for pregnant women who have medical complications. This week, despite intense lobbying efforts and the Governor’s veto, the legislature passed Senate Bill 1878, which mandates invasive and unnecessary medical testing for women.

Under the guise of obtaining informed patient consent, this new law requires doctors to withhold pregnancy termination until an ultrasound is performed. The law states that either an abdominal or vaginal ultrasound, whichever gives the best image of the fetus, must be done. Neither the patient nor the doctor can decide which type of ultrasound to use, and the patient cannot opt out of the ultrasound and still have the procedure. In effect, then, the legislature has mandated that a woman have an instrument placed in her vagina for no medical benefit. The law makes no exception for victims of rape and incest.

…

In a further reversal of standard medical practice, this bill defines failure to perform this unnecessary medical procedure as “unprofessional conduct” and suggests that the state medical board may remove the physician’s license. Failure to perform the ultrasound also leads to fines beginning at $10,000 and increasing to more than $100,000. By comparison, the highest fine for negligent homicide or driving under the influence in Oklahoma is $1,000.