Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
The Republican National Convention was held this week and although I didn’t watch it live, I did read the speeches and reactions to them and one thing jumped out at me. Republicans were serial liars. These weren’t just political misstatements or hyperbole but out right LIES. What does it say about our political system when people don’t seem to be concerned that serial liars want to be in charge of our government?
Paul Ryan told some whoppers:
Being a swing state I am being bombarded by political ads as we get closer to the 2012 elections. But I saw one this week that actually caught my interest and concisely summed up why President Obama should be re-elected. It was no surprise that the speaker in the ad was President Bill Clinton, the king of political media.
Monday August 27th starts the US Political silly season with the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL followed on September 3rd with the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC. I will be barely paying attention to them as to me they are nothing but an expensive pep rally before the final three months of the campaign. Conventions lost their usefulness years ago and the only solace I have is the broadcast networks won’t be having gavel-to-gavel coverage. I’ve got better things to do.
I rarely agree with David Frum but on this issue I do:
The go to talking point on the campaign trail for Republicans is to blame President Obama for the state of the economy as if the President is the only person who had a chance to deal with the broken economy he got when he took office in 2009. What Republicans don’t do is point out their party was the party of NO! blocking many of the President’s initiatives to better the economy. If the economy is not doing as well as it should be, the fault rests with the Republicans in Congress.
Here is what was seen in a recent Romney Super PAC ad:
In the wake of some very public and nasty debates about diversity and lack of respect for women in the freethought community, Jen McCreight, author of the blaghag blog on the Freethought Blogs Network created what she is calling a “new wave of Atheism” whose name evolved into Atheist+. Her goal was to move Atheism from just dealing with the god question – Atheists don’t believe in a god – but to also deal with issues like diversity and social justice. It seems to me that Humanism addresses all the issues McCreight feels is missing from Atheism and Humanism is non-theistic. One question I have is why not be a Humanist?
Some of the issues Jen McCreight sees Atheism+ dealing with include Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, Classism, Ageism, Neurotypicalism, Animal welfare, environmental issues, and political issues (Health care, crime, drug laws).