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:
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).
There has been a serious issue with discussing diversity and sexual harassment within the freethought community. I have written a post or two about the matter and it seems that even a year since the biggest blowup – elevatorgate – the sexism and misogyny has not abated. It seems some immature boys can’t let go of the fact that their harassment is stupid and wrong. I’m declaring right now that I will quit any group that ignores or condones harassment and I will personally shun any person who harasses for any reason or continually makes excuses for such behavior. I didn’t come to this decision lightly but it seems some just can’t move forward and they are holding our freethought movement hostage. Enough is enough.
The other day on the Atheist Revolution blog there was a post about an Atheist blogger filing a DCMA complaint against another “Atheist” blog. The name of the blog is “Elevatorgate”. When I saw the site my jaw dropped. The entire site was devoted to Ad Hominem attacks on several bloggers and activists in the Freethought community who complained about diversity and sexual harassment in the movement and those who supported the bloggers who complained.
Paul Ryan was picked for some reason as the vice presidential candidate on Mitt Romney’s GOP ticket. Ryan is the same douche bag who wrote a budget plan that would turn Medicare into a voucher system. Why did Romney put the senior citizen vote, one of the last groups who would vote Republican, into play for 2012?
Here are the facts about Paul Ryan and Medicare: