Can Fox News Be Less Fair and Balanced?

Posted by Cephus as Politics

Alright, Fox News is about as unfair and unbalanced as you can get, but this is getting ridiculous.

The problem isn’t that Fox is biased, I have no problem with that.  The problem is that Fox is biased, then tells people it’s not, then complains about the supposed bias from other news outlets.  They’re being deliberately hypocritical and avoiding all attempts to call them on it.

Heck, look at Hannity and Colmes, arguably the worst of the unbalanced shows Fox airs.  In a recent night of interviews, John McCain got three segments of softball questions from Hannity, where McCain egregiously misstated Obama’s political positions with no correction from Hannity at all, followed by a single segment of Democratic Representative Adam Smith of Washington, where he faced the wrath of both Hannity and Colmes, followed by two more segments with Karl Rove, who got to attack Obama without disagreement.  This is standard practice on Hannity and Colmes, who have repeatedly been criticized for their treatment of Democratic candidates and their undying ass-kissing of anyone from the Republican party.

It’s funny how they jump on any mistakes that Obama might make, such as his statement that we need more Arabic translators in Afghanistan when they don’t speak Arabic in Afghanistan, yet when McCain screws up, as he’s done quite a few times regarding Iraq, they’re loathe to mention it.

How these morons can get away with claiming to be even remotely fair and balanced is beyond me and how they can get away at all with hinting that Obama has anything to do with Osama bin Laden is shocking.  I hope the Obama camp levels a massive defamation of character lawsuit against them.  They certainly deserve it.

The Answer to All Our Prayers?

Posted by Cephus as Politics

Barack Obama has hinted, at least through Joe Biden, that should he be elected, they may pursue criminal investigations against the Bush administration.  It didn’t get a lot of press, coming as it did on the day of Sarah Palin’s family crisis, but if this is true, it holds some hope of finally bringing this entire criminal administration to justice.

According to Biden, “We will not be stopped from pursuing any criminal offence that’s occurred.”  This is certainly good news for the American people who by and large cannot stand their Asshole in Chief.  “If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued – not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.”

Nor should they be, although I’m sure Bush feels differently.  We need to expose the lies and crimes of the Bush administration so that this kind of thing never happens again in the future.

Obama himself said similar things back in April.  “[I]f crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” he told the Philadelphia Daily News. “You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

There’s no doubt that Bush’s activities in the White House need to be looked into, my only worry is that the Bush administration will have a nice little bonfire in the Rose Garden and destroy any documents that are remotely incriminating, rather than risk having their dirty little secrets uncovered down the road.

“Abstinence-only Education is Wishful Thinking”

Posted by Cephus as Education

Chicago Pastor Patrick Shaffer has gone on record saying “The Palin candidacy for Vice President has brought to the forefront a myriad of issues for all Americans to consider: gender, equality, and now parenting and responsible discourse on teen sex. It may be ironic that the conservatives are grappling with theses issues, especially since data has consistently shown that the abstinence-only approach is wishful thinking.”

In Texas, for example, where they enforce an abstinence-only program, teen pregnancy has only fallen by 19 percent between 1991 and 2004, whereas the average nationwide is a decrease of 30%.  Compare that to California where a comprehensive program is mandated and teen pregnancy rates have fallen by 47% over the same time.  Clearly, insisting on hiding the facts from young girls has done nothing to keep them safe or make them more responsible, but the current system of liberal sex education is certainly not producing exemplary results either.  Years of teaching girls to roll condoms over cucumbers has not brought us a more sexually responsible society.

The real answer is somewhere in the middle.  We don’t teach the religious right’s model where all sex outside of marriage is morally bad and makes baby Jesus cry, but neither do we teach the liberal model where hedonistic sex for the sake of feeling good is a positive thing.  In fact, we need to go back to something rarely done in school these days, we need to take out all of the emotional and political posturing and just teach the facts.

The facts, like it or not, are these:

• Abstinence is the only 100% effective means of avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.  All forms of birth control, save permanent sterilization, have some failure rate and all of them leave one open to STDs and other blood-borne pathogens.
• Actions have consequences and some things, once done, cannot be undone.  Becoming pregnant as a teenager does not make your life easier, in fact, it guarantees difficulty in completing your education, getting a job, etc.
• If you do choose to engage in sexual activity, despite the above, then there are some things you can do to lessen, but not eliminate, your risks of pregnancy and disease.
• Sex is neither good nor bad, neither a sin nor a sacrament, it just is.  Questions of morality are personal and have no real bearing on the responsibility that one must take for their sexual activities.

The unfortunate reality is that kids often have little or no factual knowledge about sex.  Few parents are comfortable enough to talk to their kids about the subject, preferring to leave it to the schools which are already overloaded as it is.  Truth be told, sex education is something that should take place in the home, it really isn’t the place or responsibility of the schools to teach morality, but so many parents completely ignore their parenting responsibility, it’s become a necessity.

We, as parents, need to take back the responsibility for raising our own kids and stop pretending that the schools can do everything.  They can help, they can pass on facts, they can give information, but they cannot raise a child.  Unfortunately, we have parents who are just as ignorant about topics of sexuality as their children, probably moreso, and because our system, since the 1960s at least, has so utterly failed, we have generations of people who have no knowledge and are therefore unable to pass on knowledge and, in fact, are afraid of knowledge.

That’s why these abstinence-only programs fail, they’re based on superstition and fear, both of the unknown and of our bodies.  We need a program that is going to pass on the facts, teach people the reality and let them deal with the responsibilities that all citizens have.  It’s the only way back to some semblance of sanity.

Schwarzengger Comes Out Swinging

Posted by Cephus as Politics

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, angered by the ongoing budget crisis in California, today attacked lawmakers for collecting per diem checks, vacationing at political conventions and refusing to leave their political comfort zones and come to the table to solve the problem.  “I think it is very important for the California people to know that while the state is 2 1/2 months late on a budget, and while there are severe consequences…to education and health care and hospitals and law enforcement and firefighting, there are absolutely no consequences for the legislators,” Schwarzenegger said in an appearance at Marshall Medical Center in Placerville. “Absolutely none.”

Personally, I’ve always said there needs to be severe consequences for legislators refusing to do their jobs.  Now, they don’t get paid during the times a budget isn’t in place, but they collect their entire paycheck retroactively when they finally get around to it.  Bull, I say.  It’s their job to have a budget in place by July 1, if they cannot do so, then they don’t deserve to get paid at all.  Their paychecks should go into the General Fund to pay for services that aren’t otherwise getting funded.  Why should you get paid at all for failing to perform your duties?  Further, they should all be fined heavily for failing to do their job.  I’d like to see every legislator, including the governor, get fined at least $1000 per day, out of their own pocket, for each and every day they do not come to an agreement and pass a budget.  I’ll bet you you’d never see July 2 without one again.

Unfortuantely, it all comes down to plain partisan politics and that’s where it stinks.  They’re certainly not being hurt, they can hold out for as long as they want and when people complain, they just point fingers at the other guy and blame them.  It seems impossible to trust politicians to do what they promise to do.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in 2003, during the recall election of Gray Davis, he’s always said he’d refuse to raise taxes and he’d control state spending because he had no interest in running for re-election.  He violated that promise in 2007 when he won re-election.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only promise he broke and now he’s off to break another one, in fact, the biggest one he ever made.

Schwarzenegger wants to raise the state sales tax by 1% for the next 3 years, then… get this… lower it 1 1/4% down the road.  Sure, we all know that’ll happen.  Taxes, once raised, are virtually never reduced, no matter how many promises you make and of course, since Arnie will no longer be in office when it comes time to drop the rate, he can pretend it isn’t his fault.  The real issue here is that their income figures for the tax increase are based on current rates of spending and we all know that when you raise taxes, spending decreases.  If people will pay more to buy products, people will simply not buy as much.  Currently, California has the highest gasoline taxes in the nation and airliners, knowing this, will land outside of California, fill up their tanks, then fly into California so they don’t have to pay as much.  This is basic economics that Arnie doesn’t seem to get.

The real problem is out-of-control spending, another of Arnie’s failed campaign promises.  He guaranteed he’d control state spending, but since 2003, spending has increased more than 40%! That’s not what I call fiscal control.  Actually, that number is probably even higher considering all the bond measures he’s put on the ballots over the years, locking us into long-term deals to pay back money that shouldn’t have been spent in the first place.

But where does all this money go?  Are we seeing a 40% improvement in our lives for all that extra money we’re spending?  Last year, the state of California spent $145 billion, that’s $41 billion more than in 2003 when Gray Davis was recalled.  Where is it all going?  Well, I’ll tell you.

The biggest increases went to education ($13 billion), transportation ($10 billion) and health ($10 billion), but I doubt any of us ever saw any noticable improvement in any of those.  Certainly in education, where the teacher’s union eternally whines about how underpaid teachers are, we don’t realize that the state of California pays teachers the most in the nation at an average of $59,900 per year.  We pay one of the highest amounts per student ($10,377) and we certainly don’t get it back.  Teachers continually complain that they need more money in the classrooms and this is simple mismanagement by the public school system.  Likewise, the $10 billion spent on transportation certainly isn’t going into constructing new roads or maintaining the ones we have and the massive increases in salaries to things like prison guards doesn’t really help anyone in the real world.

Currently, California’s state sales tax rate is 7.75%, the highest in the nation.  Income taxes, topping out at 10.3%, are also the highest in the nation, but what many do not realize is that you only have to make $43,000 to qualify for the highest tax bracket.  In California, making less than $43,000, especially for a family, is almost poverty level.  Further, since the majority of businesses in California are sole proprietorships which pay individual income taxes, not business income taxes, it’s no wonder that businesses are fleeing the state at a record rate.  Large businesses fare no better, our business tax rate is the highest in all of the western states.

It’s no wonder we’re in such a mess, we have a liberal legislature that never met a social program it didn’t like and never met a tax increase it wouldn’t approve.  We’ve allowed legislators to become safe in their own gerrymandered districts so they don’t have to care what their constituents want and they can tax and spend to their heart’s content.

This has to stop and it has to stop now.

Contact Schwarzenegger and tell him hell no.  Suggest maybe he actually carry through on his campaign promises.  Wouldn’t that be nice?

Governor’s Office: State Capitol Building
Phone: 916-445-2841
e-mail

District Offices: Fresno Office
Phone: 559-445-5295

Los Angeles Office
Phone: 213-897-0322

Riverside Office
Phone: 951-680-6860

San Diego Office
Phone: 619-525-4641

San Francisco Office
Phone: 415-703-2218

Washington D.C. Office
Phone: 202-624-5270

The Vicar Likes Them Little Kids

Posted by Cephus as Christianity

The Reverend Richard Hart of Horsell, Working, in the UK, has been arrested and charged with possession of a massive amount of child pornography, including pictures that he took himself during the years of 1991-2007.  Police seized his computer which held an astonishing 55,000 indecent images of children, 44 of which fell into the most serious category under British law, Category 5.

After the case, Canon Robert Jones, the child protection officer for the Swansea and Brecon diocese of the Church in Wales, said: “We are deeply saddened and shocked that one of its clerics should plead guilty to such very serious offences involved indecent images of children.  It is of particular concern that these offences should have occurred at a time when he held a very responsible and privileged position in one of our church communities.”

What’s so shocking isn’t yet another pedophile priest, these things happen with alarming regularity.  It’s the fact that they have to hold a hearing to see if Hart can remain a priest!  Yes, that’s right, they have to determine if the screwy guy with thousands of naked pictures of kids is still able to retain his clergy collar.  Isn’t this the point where any rational individual would be saying “Oh hell no!”  Well, most of us would be saying “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Canon Robert Jones, representative of the church, had this to offer: “We have offered pastoral care and support to those affected and obviously the Church in Wales gives the highest priority to the care and protection to children and vulnerable members of the community.”

Yeah, but you didn’t manage to protect any of them from a predator priest who was taking naked pictures of them, did you?  These kinds of things just don’t happen in a vaccuum.  Someone had to have found out in all those years and kept it hushed up.  Someone had to have noticed inappropriate things going on, someone must have come forward, perhaps even those children that Reverend Hart snapped pictures of, and the church leaders must have kept it under wraps.  It’s inconceivable that no one could notice for more than 15 years.

This becomes another in the endless entries for the Religious Horror Show, not even so much for the photographic pedophile, but for the fact that the church has to wonder for one second whether this guy should retain his collar.

Yet More God-Talk on the Right

Posted by Cephus as Christianity

Now that Sarah Palin has been declared to be the Republican VP candidate, everyone is looking closely at her beliefs and her performance as governor of Alaska.  What we’re finding is that she’s a religious fucktard without a clue.

Here we see her speaking at her church in Alaska, Wesalia Church, at a graduation ceremony.  Just listen to the crap she’s got to say, she’s nuts.  She says that the War in Iraq is God’s plan.

What a shithead.

Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage…

Posted by Cephus as Atheism

I ran across this over on the Richard Dawkins Forums and wanted to respond.  While I know everyone there is bitching about it being a religious screed against pre-marital sex, the fact is that it has a lot of good points, albeit often for the wrong reasons.  Considering the majority of posters over on RDF are hard-core liberals, it’s no surprise they’re opposed to anyone that tells them to keep their pants up, although it’s also likely that there’s a knee-jerk reaction to it being from a theological source, therefore it must be bad.  I know that I get lots of nasty e-mail from atheists every time I post something on conservatism because, apparently, atheists can’t be conservative.  But I am.

Rather than repost the whole thing here, I’ve linked to it above and I’m going to simply respond to the points one at a time, rather than repost the reasoning behind it.

Dating Advice #1: I now know that sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

That’s something that a lot of people, especially young people, aren’t going to comprehend, but it’s true.  We live in a culture that is on the one hand terrified of sex and on the other, over-emphasizes it.  The reality is that sex is a natural part of life, but that we, as evolved animals, have the ability, and in fact socially, the responibility to override our natural impulses into a more socially acceptable form.  Now I know that the young glamorize sex and the culture encourages, at least through television and movies, the pursuit of it, but the simple fact is that it really isn’t that big a deal.  I can pretty much guarantee that all of the people posting negatively about this statement are in their teens and twenties.  By the time you reach your thirties and beyond, hopefully at least, you’ve matured enough to realize that sex is not the end-all-be-all of reality.  Yes, it’s fun.  Yes it feels good, but having fun and feeling good are not really solely admirable reasons for getting up in the morning.  If that’s all you care about, you’re a poor, sad, shallow person.

Dating Advice #2:  I now want to be more honorable toward women.

It’s not so much being more honorable toward women, but being a more honorable person in general that is important.  The argument that sex is natural and therefore giving into your base instincts is a good thing is really idiotic.  We’re evolved social creatures who exist in organized societies.  Our base instincts dictate that we steal, rape and kill as well, but our intellects override these impulses for the good of society.  Yes, our genes want to be spread, but that doesn’t mean that you turn off your higher reasoning and sow your wild oats in any willing field out there.  The fact is, honorable men attract honorable women and vice versa, being responsible and respectable, both toward yourself and toward others, is much more likely to get someone who is going to be responsible and respectful toward you.

Dating Advice #3:  That’s somebody else’s wife.

That’s very true as well.  The reality is that someday, this woman, whoever she is, will likely be someone else’s wife and mother and you owe that some modicum of respect.  Like it or not, a person’s past matters.  It shows how they conduct themselves and whether they are worthy of respect and admiration.  I did a post a while back on responsibility and brought up those idiotic Valtrex commercials.  “I have genital herpes but I don’t want to pass it on to my partner”.  Okay.  Don’t fuck them.  There you go.  But that’s not how liberals think.  They don’t want there to be consequences to bad decisions, they just want to pretend that they get a clean slate whenever they want it and reality doesn’t work that way.  If the person above had kept their pants up, they wouldn’t have had genital herpes in the first place and their partner wouldn’t have to worry about it.  How long will it be until we have commercials that say “I have AIDS but I don’t want to pass it on to my partner…”?

Dating Advice #4:  Sex has killed my best relationships.

While I can’t speak from experience, I have a lot of female friends, my friendship with whom would be irrecoverably changed for the worse if they went from being friends to being sex objects.  Like it or not, sex changes things and once you cross that boundary, it’s virtually impossible to go back.

Dating Advice #5:  Sex before marriage ruins the other parts of the relationship.

I disagree with this as stated, but in more general terms, sex before marriage, at least where sex is the point of the relationship, is detrimental to having a deeper and more long-lasting relationship, certainly.  I really don’t mean to keep harping on marriage as an institution because what’s really important isn’t the piece of paper from the state but the relationship itself.  It’s far too easy to get married these days before you have any idea whether or not you should and that leads to widespread divorce.  Much more important is the relationship between two people, whether they have that paper or not.  My wife and I have a very deep, mature relationship on many. many levels, that would remain whether we were legally married or not.

Dating Advice #6:  Waiting to have sex with my wife will mean better sex in my marriage.

This is just wrong and in fact, the advice I’ve offered to all of my virgin friends who were getting married was not to wait.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying just go hop in the sack at the drop of a dime, but once you’ve made the decision to get married, once you have that deep, meaningful, lifelong relationship, then by all means go get it over with before the wedding.  One of the highest listed  causes for divorce in this country is sexual incompatibility and regardless of what it says in #8, there is a degree of physical compatibility that cannot be known until it’s actually tested out.  Beyond that, let’s be honest, it takes the edge off and it’s certainly going to make the honeymoon a lot more fun, which while not fundamentally essential, is certainly a consideration.

Every friend I’ve ever given this advise to and who has taken it, has told me it was the right decision to make, even the very religious ones.

Dating Advice #7:  Not having sex with other women will mean better sex in my marriage.

I wouldn’t say better, I would say more meaningful.  I can’t speak for everyone, but I can’t imagine feeling the same about a woman who has been the town bicycle (she’s been ridden all over town) as I would about someone who saved that special moment for the person she was going to spend the rest of her life with.  Now granted, there are a lot of people who place no stock in lifetime commitments, who have no interest in marriage, who don’t think that giving yourself totally to another person forever is a good idea, but those people, sorry to say, are sad, sad people in my opinion.

Dating Advice #8:  I don’t have to sleep with a woman to know if we’re “sexually compatible.”

See #6 above.  Sexually compatible, no.  Physically compatible, yes.  Even more important, finding out if your drives, which are hard-wired into your genes, are compatible is essential to a long-lasting relationship.

Dating Advice #9:  I have found something more satisfying than sex.

Obviously this is where the whole screed begins to go downhill.  The whole “I found God” crap is idiotic, but the arguments above hardly rest on it.

Dating Advice #10:  God has given me the strength to wait.

It’s a good thing God also gave you the ability to masturbate, isn’t it?  Oh wait, you’re not allowed to do that either!

In the end, these are important rules for anyone who actually hopes to grow up and mature into a decent human being.  I know not all people do, I know not all people have any interest in it.  Some just want to screw random people all of their lives and never actually take responsibility for their actions.  Those people, in my opinion at least, are pretty sad and pathetic and they miss out on so much of what close human relationships have to offer.  I guess some people are happy being shallow.  I just know I never could be.

How Do You Know What You Know?

Posted by Cephus as Atheism, Religion

This is a collarary to the story I did over the weekend on Pastafarian Discrimination.  Over on one of the debate boards, we’re having a discussion on the story and I think it demonstrates quite well why discussions between theists and non-theists never go well.

I made it very clear that I didn’t really buy the kid’s claims, but in much more general terms, this story illustrated a double standard in American life.  The more socially-accepted mainstream religions get special rights but the more niche religions are simply ignored by most theists.  What they mean by “freedom of religion” is “freedom for my religion and other religions that I decide I’ll put up with”.

What’s worse, however, is what happened next.  I had a couple of people declare that Pastafarianism is a stupid religion and no one, not any person on the entire planet, now or in the future, has ever taken it seriously.

Ah, but therein lies the rub, doesn’t it?  Exactly how do they know?  What basis are they using to make that determination and what evidence do they have to back it up?  If they have none, they are just making a ridiculous statement that can and should immediately be discarded.  I pointed out a couple of examples that showed them wrong.  Just because Pastafarianism was invented as a silly religious counterpoint to Intelligent Design and was not intended by it’s founded to be taken seriously, that doesn’t mean that people may not come to take it seriously down the road.  After all, Jedi was a fantasy religious concept in a series of movies and today it has thousands of adherents worldwide.  Scientology was a get-rich-scheme by an underpaid science fiction writer and now some of the most wealthy and powerful people on the planet follow it.  Now that I think of it, I wish I had pointed out the same kind of statement could have easily been made by the Romans in first century Palestine.  “Nobody will ever take that silly Christian religion seriously!  Come on, a Jewish zombie?”

In the end, it all comes down to how you know what you claim to know.  Once you claim knowledge and fact, you are obligated to back it up and demonstrate that you have a rational basis for making the claim.  Unfortunately, for theists, simple belief holds the same weight as objective evidence, so just believing something strongly enough means the same as having well-reasoned arguments or empirical evidence to back you up.  To a theist, the words “I believe” magically transubstantiate into “I know” and nothing anyone can say, no amount of logic or reasoning, can ever dissuade them.

The other issue I had in another debate was someone who was trying desperately to prove that Jesus actually existed.  He tried to trot out the Josephus quote which I quickly shot down, demonstrating that it was virtually universally accepted as a fourth-century Christian forgery.  He immediately came back with the claim that because fundamentalist Christian apologists claim that Josephus is valid, it must be so and couldn’t comprehend the difference between statements based on evidence (mine) and statements based on faith and wishful thinking (his).

It’s no wonder theists are so fucked up.

Palin-drome

Posted by Cephus as Abortion, Christianity, Politics

As admirable as it may be, I don’t really accept Obama’s statement not to use the unwed pregnancy of Republican VP pick Sarah Palin as a point in the campaign.  Of course, we all know why he did it, he just wants something to hold over the Republicans the next time his wife, Michelle Obama, says something stupid, but the fact is, what is happening to her daughter is important to the campaign in a general sense.

It does come off as respectable however, when Obama says “Let me be a clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.”  The problem is, it has plenty of relevance to Palin’s potential performance as a vice president, or even more, as a potential president after McCain drops dead.

The problem is that Palin is a long-time moral crusader and holyroller, well known for her unreasonable demands for abstinence-only education, elimination of abortion and pretty much the whole fundamentalist Christian party line.  She’s a Dominionist, probably the most dangerous form of Christian perversion there is.  She also has very limited international political experience, meaning the only things we have to evaluate her potential performance on the world stage are her state political career and her family.

If she is so completely incapable of raising her daughter to follow her deeply-held values, how then can we trust her to run the entire nation?  This is like having James Dobson’s kid turn out to be an atheist or Fred Phelps’ brat turn out to be gay.  It goes against everything that they’ve been raised from day one to believe and if their parenting methods are so bad, their belief systems so unconvincing, even for those who are essentially a captive audience, how can we expect them to reign in world dictators and combat foreign terrorism effectively?

Even more, for such a holyroller, how can the fundamentalist Christian neo-conservative base of the Republican ticket respect or accept her?  James Dobson, fundie asshat and head of Focus on the Family, details what should happen for mothers whose daughters become pregnant teens and it isn’t pretty for Palin’s political career.  According to Dobson, “You might be asking: “How can I be with my teenagers morning, noon and night? I have too much work to do.” You simply have to decide what is most important to you at this time. It won’t matter as much a few years down the road, but your availability right now could make the difference for your child between surviving or plunging off the cliff.”  So if she’s really a Christian, at least a Dobson-style Christian, the only thing she can do is quit, not only the VP nomination, but her Alaskan governorship, to be with her daughter.  In fact, she should have done that all along.

I’m hoping that Palin really backfires on McCain and costs him the White House.  One thing is for certain, Palin isn’t the moral beacon she’s pretended and her ideals, no matter how wonderful she claims they are, certainly didn’t convince the person closest to her, why should they convince us?

Damn Independent Women, Bury ‘em!

Posted by Cephus as Other Religions

This story was pointed out to me by red herring, one of my readers, for which I am very grateful.  Red, take a bow.

Israr Ullah Zehri, representative of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, went before a stunned Pakistani Parliament and told them that he supported the right of northern tribesmen to engage in the ancient tradition of burying troublesome women alive.  “These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them,” he said, “Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.”

Five women, whose only apparent crime was that they wished to decide who they should marry, were put to death a month ago in Baba Kot, a remote village in the Jafferabad district.  They were still alive as they were placed in a shallow hole and mud and dirt were shoveled over them, although “luckily” they had been shot first, as if that’s any small consolation.

The Parliament, to their credit, were rightfully horrified by this, calling such honor killings “barbaric”, which I suppose is also rather hypocritical when you realize how many other honor killings that the traditionally Muslim Pakistan doesn’t seem to bat an eye at.  Yes, that’s right, what these tribesmen are doing isn’t specifically Islamic in nature, it goes back to much older pagan origins.  Sorry, friends and neighbors, but Islam doesn’t take it on the chin for this one, although they are guilty of many, many others.

The idea that “these things worked at one time, therefore we should allow them to continue today” seems rather idiotic.  There was a time in this country where slavery was deemed right and it certainly helped the overall economy, does that mean we should continue to do it today?  Zehri told lawmakers that the Baluch traditions helped stop obscenity and told them to get over it.  I’m pretty sure they helped generate a lot of obscenity in the Parliament that day, and around the world.

I was trying, however, to figure out examples I could use in the widely-Muslim world of Pakistan however, of things that were at one time considered good, but now were considered bad and I couldn’t come up with anything.  We are taking about a culture, or series of cultures, that pretty much embraces every primitive idea that most of mankind has rid themselves of, and holds them out as being wonderful.  As much as this specific example isn’t the fault of Islam, how is it any worse than some of the other things that Islam does itself?

Ah well, another one for the Religious Horror Show.  I have a feeling it’ll never be full.