Tuesday's turgid tidbits

It appears that Christine O'Donnell has been caught fibbing again. Not that it will matter one iota to the party faithful. She's a god fearing christian, brother, and that's good enough for me. Going to stop people from having sex and masturbating. Got to give her a hand for that. Gaybaited her republican opponent, Mike Castle like a seasoned pro. Wants to take another look at all that evolution nonsense.

I guess someone decided to check her bona fides in reference to her education at the University of Oxford. Well, she may have stretched the truth a teensie weensie bit, you see she didn't actual take any classes from the esteemed University. She took classes from the Phoenix Institute that rented some class space from the University. It's a fine line so I hope that you can follow along from home. The title of the course was "What is it to be human?" And they said we liberals were touchy feeley. Hey I went to Harvard.*

This was not the first time that Ms. O'Donnell had fudged a bit regarding her academic record. According to the WaPo, she has long claimed to have a bachelors from Fairleigh Dickinson, although it was not received until last summer. She claimed in a deposition to be working in the master's program at Princeton but later admitted to not having taken a single class at the esteemed Ivy League institution.

A copy of her linked in page, via the Wapo:

Christine O'Donnell's Education
Fairleigh Dickinson University 1989 -- 1993
Claremont Graduate University
Constitutional Government
University of Oxford
"Post Modernism in the New Millennium"

Seems like she has all the standard qualifications to be a good republican! I will let you fill in the blanks.

postscript - another O'Donnell lie uncovered.

***

In all of my years in business I have never joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The locals always seemed a bit creepy and I could never accept the national policies. Today the chamber came out against a bill that was designed to keep American businesses from outsourcing about 4 million jobs. Senate Repugnanticans successfully repelled an effort by Democrats Tuesday to end tax breaks for companies who send jobs offshore only to import products back into the United States. The House has passed a series of similar bills over the past month. Joe "Benedict Arnold" Lieberman carried water for his newfound conservative pals in sending the bill down to defeat. Filibustering Repubs argued that revoking the tax breaks would punish American companies and make them less competitive with foreign firms.

According to the Wapo again: The U.S. Chamber fought efforts to include a provision that would encourage taxpayer money to be spent on products made by domestic companies. It opposed the outsourcing bill, arguing in a letter to the Senate that "the concept of economic growth is not a zero-sum game. Replacing a job that is based in another country with a domestic job does not stimulate economic growth or enhance the competitiveness of American worldwide companies." Chamber head Tom Donohue made the case that outsourcing shouldn't be a concern because only "two, maybe three million jobs, maybe four" would be lost. The bill included a payroll tax holiday for companies that bring jobs back from overseas, ended tax breaks for plants that shut down to go elsewhere, and blocked companies from deferring their tax bill year to year by keeping money out of the U.S.


The U.S. Chamber, in a letter to the Senate, outlined its opposition to the measure and said that it may use the vote to rate how friendly to business a senator is in the lobby's annual scorecard. The bill, argued the Chamber, would "significantly curtail [tax] deferral [of earnings], reversing longstanding tax policy and subjecting American worldwide companies to immediate double taxation on the earnings of their foreign subsidiaries. Limiting deferral would hinder the global competitiveness of these American companies, impede U.S. economic growth, and ultimately result in the loss of jobs - both at the companies directly impacted and companies in their supply chains." 

Compassionate conservatism once again raises its ugly head. Once again they stiff the american worker. Who are they working for again?

***

The pastors are at it again, trying to initiate a squabble and test case with the I.R.S. to challenge the law that limits them from backing candidates from the pulpit and losing their tax exempt status. Nearly 100 pastors took part in pulpit freedom Sunday, another attempt by Christians to further their political agenda.
Several of the churches made political endorsements.


Pulpit Freedom Sunday is an initiative organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian nonprofit organization, which according to its website seeks to "defend the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation."

ADF spokesman Erik Stanley said, "We believe that a pastor has a right to speak whatever he believes without fearing the government will somehow censor what he says or threaten to take away his tax exemption."

The group believes that the 1954 amendment, sponsored by then Sen. Lyndon Johnson, D-Texas, is a violation of the Constitution. According to the ADF, the government's monitoring of the content of pastors' and churches' speech is a violation of the Free Speech Clause.

It is obvious that 99% of these evangelical churches support republicans. Like the power of the christian right isn't already a behemoth swallowing up everything in its path like Jonah's whale, now they need to start pushing their own candidates. I would like to see the IRS get more aggressive and start pulling tax exempt status from these partisan preachers.


 Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, has made it clear that participating churches have plenty to lose.

"Tax exemption is not a right; it's a privilege that comes with certain restrictions," Lynn said.

***

New Pew survey poll shows that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers. Can we surmise that the more you know, the more difficult it becomes to swallow? That all the religious malarkey and mumbo jumbo doesn't stand any rational test.


 The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life posed 32 basic religious questions and found that atheists and agnostics answered, on average, 20.9 correctly. Jews were right on 20.5, and Mormons on 20.3.

The survey of 3,412 people, conducted between May and June of this year, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, while the margins of error for individual religious groups was higher.

The survey found atheists and agnostics to be more knowledgeable about religion than Protestants and Catholics.

People in the South – the Bible Belt – tended to score lower on the survey than those in other regions. What a surprise. The survey found that most American Protestants don't know Martin Luther inspired the Protestant Reformation. Forty-five percent of American Catholics are unaware Catholicism teaches that bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ during communion, the survey showed.

Hey believers, how does it feel to know that the pagans and pariahs know more about the swill you are peddling than you do?

I salute those brave atheists and agnostics who dare not to believe in a society where so many fall victim to rank superstition and religious guilt.   Of course if you have sufficient faith, thinking becomes overrated.


Theocracy Watch.


*I didn't go to school there but I went there to watch crew once.