The Progressive Puppy

Right-Wing Values: Arrogance, Greed, Bigotry and Ignorance

Herman Cain has ordered his minions not to speak to him unless he addresses them first.  (Just like Catherine the Great!)  One wonders if Cain's underlings must also avert their faces while backing away from The Presence, bowing and cringing as did the courtiers of old.  Do they grovel over his ring before or after they kiss that flaccid ass?

Multi-millionaires will be wallowing in even more (mostly inherited) wealth under Rick Perry's much-ballyhooed tax proposal.  There is both more and less to the governor's "20% flat tax plan" than meets the bloodshot eyes of Tea Party activists.  (As with all GOP economic schemes, low income families will suffer the worst.)  Seth Hanlon reports that "billionaire Warren Buffett, who has lamented the fact that he currently pays only 11 percent of his adjusted gross income in federal income taxes, would pay as little as 0.2 percent under Perry’s plan." 

Corporate entities might shower contributions on the Republican presidential hopeful from Texas, but independent voters are unimpressed by the politician's debating skills.  Recognizing his weakness in this area, Perry has announced that he may skip future televised debates.  The decision isn't sitting well with Perry's fellow GOP candidates.  (If Perry is too timid to debate opponents who share his ultraconservative views, he would truly be out of his depth in a debate with Obama.)

This video will make you nauseated and incensed at all those sanctimonious "Christians" who defend anti-LGBT bullying.  (In this instance, the homophobic student who attacked his gay classmate was suspended for only three days.  The principle of the school called the brutal assault "unfortunate."  Local prosecutors are twiddling their thumbs.)

The spouse of that gay soldier who was booed during a Republican debate speaks out on MSNBC Live.  At the behest of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Josh Snyder is suing to overturn the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act.

Andrew Brown refutes common talking points presented by a young earth creationist (and really, religious fundamentalists are the best argument we have for human beings evolving from lower life forms).

Despite numerous arrests and heavy-handed police tactics, protesters involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement (now gone global) show no sign of abandoning their acts of civil disobedience.  After cops injured an Iraq War veteran during a confrontation in Oakland, leaders of the demonstration vowed to "shut the city down."

Professor PZ Myers doesn't understand why Texas politicians even bother consulting climate scientists since the state's GOP officials invariably ignore their findings.

Mississippi conservatives are getting serious about providing "personhood" rights to two-celled zygotes, criminalizing birth control, and keeping their "little ladies" pregnant and submissive.  (Suggested reading: Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome)

A federal judge is hearing arguments on whether or not Missouri's Camdenton School District can continue using Internet filtering software that blocks websites dealing with LGBT issues.  From the Associated Press via CBS News:  In 2010, Camdenton schools began using an Internet filtering service provide by URL.BlackList.com that the ACLU contends infringes on First Amendment rights by grouping some non-sexual websites related to gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender issues into a blacklisted category of websites dealing with sexuality...  (Defense attorney Thomas) Mickes argued that the school had not censored any websites based on their viewpoints.  He said sites dealing with gay and lesbian issues that get blocked by the filtering software are treated the same in the review process as any other website that gets flagged by the filters.   (As you know, the Old Testament is chock full of incest, rape, human slavery, torture and mass murder.  Do these filters block sites like Bible Gateway as well as, say, the It Gets Better Campaign?)

And finally ... I-Couldn't-Make-This-Shit-Up-If-I-Tried:  Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who drinks from the Jug of Fame by burning copies of the Koran, has decided to run for President of the United States.  (Honestly, who would this idiot choose for his running mate?  Shirley Phelps-Roper?)  Needless to mention, Preacher Jones needs your cash donations.

(Bottom illustration courtesy Lisa Towers.)

Tennessee Lawmakers Drag Their Knuckles With Anti-Evolution Bill

A stench of ignorance is seeping from the Tennessee House of Representatives where ultraconservative lawmakers plan to inject superstition into the minds of impressionable youngsters.  With an astonishingly lopsided 70-23 vote, the GOP-controlled legislature seems determined to encourage "Creationist" educators to sow seeds of Un-Intelligent Design in the state's public classrooms, condemning students to learn Old Testament fairy stories tarted up as science.  

Andy Sher reports for Chatanooga Times Free Press:  The debate ranged over the scientific method, "intellectual bullies," hair spray and "Inherit the Wind," a 1960 movie about the 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennesssee Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, said the bill’s intent is to promote "critical thinking" in science classrooms.  Critics contend it’s a shield to allow the teaching of evolution alternatives such as intelligent design and creationism.  Bill supporter Rep. Richard Floyd, R-Chattanooga, said that "since the late ‘50s, early ‘60s when we let the intellectual bullies hijack our education system, we’ve been on a slippery slope."  Ted Rayburn at The Tennessean notices that the Emporer wears No Clothes:   (W)hen a piece of legislation is so distorted in fact, so misleading in its intent, and so fraught with the potential to do more harm than good to the people and the reputation of Tennessee, it must be shown for what it is.  Such is the case with House Bill 368. Knoxville Republican Rep. Bill Dunn's bill purports to "protect a teacher from discipline for teaching scientific subjects in an objective manner.'' The bill actually is an attempt to discourage and eventually suppress the teaching of evolution...  The bill goes on to require that school officials "assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies,'' and orders that a teacher may not be prohibited by those officials from teaching about the "strengths'' and "weaknesses'' of the so-called controversies.  By the time you reach the end of the bill, where it claims not to promote any "religious or non-religious doctrine,'' any truly critical thinker can tell they're being duped. 

Christian fundamentalists are known for many things.  Critical thinking isn't one of them.  (Pictured: Dunn)

Kern's "Intelligent" Design: Keeping Kids As Uneducated As She Is

There are three things you can always count on:  Suffering, income taxes, and Rep. Sally Kern's intense loathing for gays and science education.  As newshounds know, Kern is a Christian fundamentalist representing  District 84 in northwestern Oklahoma.  The homophobic legislator and her dour Baptist preacher/spouse (who proposes forcing LGBT folks into "treatment centers") won't be satisfied until every youngster in the Sooner State believes that our planet is six thousand years old and agrees to worship the same intolerant Deity that they do.  Kern is notorious for inspiring hate crimes by declaring that "gays are worse than terrorists."  If Palin's American Taliban ever seizes power, Rapture Sally and her prayer warriors will be the very first to grab the torches and pitchforks.  These are "family values" at their most destructive.  

Think Progress reports:  State Rep. Sally Kern (R) has proposed the second anti-evolution bill this year in Oklahoma.  Entitled the "Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act," the bill, which will be first considered next month, would require the state and local authorities to "assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies" (which do NOT include evolution, according to every legitimate science organization) and permit teachers to "help students understand, analyze, critique, and review" the scientific strengths and weaknesses of "existing theories."  (Sounds almost benign, doesn't it?)  But the only topics mentioned in the bill as contestable are "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." ...Kern has frequently used Oklahoma’s education system as a prop for her grandstanding.  As the Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo points out, Kern fought vehemently against educational reforms to bolster Oklahoma's chances in winning grants through the Race to the Top program, saying: "These are standards that are not American standards. 'Race to the Top' is Obama's baby."  (How typical of a narrow-minded GOPer:  'Progress must be avoided.  God preserve us from an educated black man.')

Of course Oklahoma is not the only place in America where Christianists are trying to shortchange students by dragging Old Testament theology into science classrooms.  Visit the Texas Freedom Network and learn how the group "Foundation for Thought and Ethics" (publisher of the creationists' jerk off manual indoctrination primer Of Pandas and People) is attempting to roll back curriculum standards in the Lone Star State.

Here's an interesting side note about the prideful, self-righteous Kern: After receiving international censure concerning her 2008 comparison of gays and terrorists, the unapologetic lawmaker announced:  "If it costs me my seat, that's OK.  I am going to stand up for what is right!"   Alas, it hasn't - and likely won't - cost Sally her seat.  Kern's fearmongering tactics are regularly applauded by Bethany's bitter rifles-and-Bibles constituency, values voters who keep sending the crazy bitch back to office.  I sense no change in the political winds.

(What? I suppose if she can call me a terrorist I can call her a bitch.)

Related Posts:  It's OK to Bash Queers In OK
Oklahoma Hard On Gays AND Science
America's Five Most Intollerant Christians
Pious Sally's Economic Profundity

Science versus Superstition in the Classroom (Video)

"The people of Louisiana are quite entitled to have whatever scientific evidence there may be against evolution presented in their schools."  - Supreme Court Justic Antonin Scalia

Of course the key word here is "scientific" - and it goes without saying that one man's science is another man's voodoo.  Take Creationism.  Please.  Take it and shove it into the nearest landfill, with the rest of society's trash.

In the following video from the National Center for Science Education, Dr. Eugenie Scott eloquently explains the mostly specious differences between creation "science" and "intelligent design" and how red state politicians are doing ther damndest to encourage Bible based learning in the classroom.  Dr. Scott takes aim at Texas and Louisiana, which boasts two of the most backwards (read: fundamentalist Christian) school boards in the nation.

This is the first of a new semi-regular segment on Progressive Puppy called Sunday Lecture.  The video runs an hour or so and for those of you with enquiring minds, I believe it is sixty minutes well spent.  For those Americans who look to the Book of Genesis for their science education, please don't let us interrupt your search for termites with a stick.

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The Faces of Our Ancestors

From Discovery News:  To put a human face on our ancestors, scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute used sophisticated methods to form 27 model heads based on tiny bone fragments, teeth and skulls collected from across the globe.  The heads are on display for the first time together at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.

Anyone interested in evolutionary biology will find eleven of these amazing recreations in slideshow format on Discovery's website, along with histories of the fossils and their probable dates.

Creationist Propaganda in Tennessee Schools (with video)

So what happens when a fundamentalist Christian teaches high school science in Dayton, Tennessee?  Find out in the disturbing video below.  This is a man who's supposed to be teaching students about evolution.  Instead, he looks on his charges with benign approval as they spout their religious views in his biology classroom.

Student One:  Basically it's not been proven. I mean, we had to be here. Some supernatural thing, I mean. We couldn't have evolved from such a simple organism into what we are now.
Student Two:  You gotcher supernatural, which'd be God, He actually, like, He said that, He put us here and then put all the animals and plants and stuff to make us survive.
Christian Teacher (speaking to the camera):  How could I say to a student, You're ideas are trash?  Keep them out of this room, I don't want to hear 'em.

What would this man say to students who claimed the earth was flat, or that animals don't feel pain?  In a geography class, what would he tell a student who insisted that the Untied States has the largest land mass of any other country, or that Alaska is located in the Southern Hemisphere?  The answer: You point our their error and move on.  That's what a teacher does. He teaches. But not this Christianist educator.  As with most religious zealots, justifying his Biblical worldview comes first, and science must fit within those narrow parameters.  (Hat Tip: The Blend.)

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PZ Myers writes on Pharyngula:  These students are simply expressing uninformed incredulity - they can't imagine how anything could have evolved.  And the incompetent apologist of a teacher, who is sympathetic to creationism himself, isn't doing his job, which is to explain to them exactly how biology explains these phenomena. Instead, he makes excuses: "How could I say to a student, 'your ideas are trash'?"  It's not hard. One student at the end says this:  "How can like an African-American person evolve from a white person? We're different skin."  Hey, student! Your ideas are trash!  So's your teacher if he can't address these trivial questions. You must be able to tell your students when they are wrong if you're going to teach at all.