War on Christmas!

This Christmas the folks at Fox News have been at it, as if they ever aren’t at it.  What are they at?

That’s right!  Atheists, Agnostics, Muslims, Jews, and Pastafarians beware, Fox News is on to your schemes.

Thanks to extremist action like dubbing seasonally decorated pine trees ‘Holiday Trees’, or erecting a Festivus pole (that sounds a lot dirtier when you read it out of context), to saying “Happy Holidays” at a store instead of “Merry Christmas”.

For those of who are new to the site (welcome newbies!) you might not be aware that I’m not a particularly religious fellow.  You might also be unaware that I am vehemently against the way Republicans have been steadily transforming the nation I once loved into a theocracy, and the way Democrats have just rolled right along with them.

If you’re not new around here, you know my political views are best summarized in this quote by me (you also know I find it slightly abhorrent to quote oneself, so shush!): “The only thing worse than a Republican is a Democrat.  A Republican walks out and says, ‘You’re not a religiously Christian, white, straight, wealthy man?  Well I’m about to screw you over.’  Then he does as promised.  A Democrat walks out and says, ‘You’re not a wealthy, white, religiously Christian, straight man?  Well I’m totally gonna fight for you.’  Then the Democrat does the same thing the Republican did.”

Republicans are all about screwing over the majority of the country; the Democrats are all about hypocrisy.  Welcome to America, folks.

But I have to say that the War on Christmas discussion does bring up valid points, at a ratio of about 1 to 100,000.  Now each of these valid points does have a caveat I must mention.  So here’s my list of Top 5 Valid Points Made by the War on Christmas Idiots.

Hrmm…that’s kind of a very prejudiced title.  Maybe this instead…

Top 5 Valid Points Made by the War on Christmas Argument

Eh, what the hell, works for me.

Point Number 1!

If you’re not Christian and somebody wishes you a Merry Christmas, get off your high horse and just say thank you.  I’m a night owl, I don’t often wake up before the sun rises; more often than not I go to bed as it’s rising (I work evening shifts).  But if someone tells me, ‘Have a Good Day!’ I don’t snap at them say, “I live during the night, I don’t celebrate days!”

So just shut the fuck up and thank them for at least giving a shit about your existence during their holiday season.

Caveat: The first amendment says that the Government will not pick one religion over another.  Therefore we should not have any religious holidays officially recognized by the government.  Christmas should not be a federal holiday.  Now if you want to make a federal holiday in December and call it Winter Holiday, or Solstice Day, or something like that, perfectly fine.  And if a store wants to have a big sale during the Solstice Day season and call it a Christmas Sale, that’s fantastic it’s a private organization, go for it.  Hell stores have Christmas in July sales why not Christmas in December sales, too?  Sure, I’m all for it.  But if the government calls it Christmas, I better get my mail delivered that day.  The Post Office should be open on Easter (well, Good Friday, no mail on Sundays anyway), Christmas, and any other religious holiday.  Thanksgiving I’m okay with, because it just has a semi-religious name.  The actual holiday celebrates a time when a bunch of pioneers got together with the poor bastards they were about to conquer to share food and shelter and give thanks to their chosen deities for being the few survivors to live through the diseases, attacks, cold, and starvation that had killed off so many of their friends, relatives, and neighbors.

Point Number 2!

If you put up a tree…it’s a fucking Christmas Tree!  Don’t call it a Holiday Tree you hypocritical idiot!  If you’re decorating a pine tree with garland and calling it a Holiday Tree because you came from a religious background and you’re just following family tradition, even though you’re Agnostic…you’re an idiot; you’re decorating a Denial Tree is what you’re doing.

Now if you’re calling your garland and ornament covered tree a Holiday Tree because you’re fanatically Christian and you believe that a tree and an old man in a red suit have nothing to do with Christ’s birth, then have at, you are the 1% of Holiday Tree-ers who have a valid excuse!

We don’t put up Menorahs and call them Holiday Candles, we don’t create an Eidgah for Eid-al-Adha and call it Holiday Prayer Field, so why do we put Christmas Trees up and call them Holiday Trees?

It’s stupid is what it is.

Caveat: No government entity should ever, ever erect either a Christmas Tree or a Holiday Tree in the U.S.  I loathe and detest the White House Christmas Tree, because my tax dollars are spent on putting up a religious symbol.  If the President wants to put up a Christmas Tree with his own money, then have at, Hoss.  But stop using my tax dollars to fund your religious celebrations!

One of my coworkers, a Christian, argued that it was a very small amount of money from the nation’s tax income that went to the tree and the celebrations around it.

I presented this scenario: We elect a Jewish president and he uses your tax dollars to put up a 40-foot tall Menorah.  Now how do you feel?

How about this one, we elect a legit Muslim president (Obama doesn’t count, because he’s a fucking Protestant!!) and he puts a giant Crescent Moon, fifty feet tall, in the White House Greens.

What if we elect a President who follows the Norse traditions and he slaughters an ox on the White House lawn?  Your tax dollars funded that ox, that knife, and the whole pagan practice.

That kind of shut him up and he nodded and said, “Okay I see your point.”

So stop using my non-Christian tax money to fund your Christmas Trees, Obama!

Obama, I am disappoint.

Point Number 3!

I heard on Fox News (because it’s the only channel they let us watch in the Lobby now! GAHHH!!  Just condemn me to hell already, it can’t be worse than this!) that Festivus Poles are going up in governmental areas.  This is because governmental organizations like state senates and community councils got tired of getting sued by the ACLU and Atheist organizations for using our tax dollars to put up nativity scenes; or even just allowing nativity scenes on government property.

So now they either have to allow just about anything or allow nothing.  Personally I’m in favor of the latter, but I guess including everyone works, too.

So a Festivus Pole is basically, in most of these cases, a long stack of beer cans (Pabst Blue Ribbon seems to be the norm) to celebrate the holiday invented by George Costanza’s father on the show Seinfield.  “Festivus for the Rest of Us!”

I find this hilarious, but Christian fanatics are pissed because Festivus is a made up holiday.  Which is true, Festivus was invented in the 1990s as a joke for a sitcom.

Caveat: Aaand…Christmas was a holiday created by the Roman Empire to validate still celebrating Saturnalia, a date in late December where they celebrated Sol Invictus the “Birth of the Unconquerable Sun” that is celebrated by role reversal among wealthy classes and slaves, the giving of gifts, and maybe even some gay orgies.

Just like how Hanukkah is also an invented holiday, invented by a bunch of Jews who wanted to celebrate an even that occurred during the Maccabean Revolt.  Just like how Memorial Day is an invented holiday to commemorate soldiers who died in the service of the country, invented by American citizens to honor their war dead (actually it was originally invented by the British as Armistice Day, if I recall my holiday history).

All holidays are made up.  The bible never once mentions any of the holidays being ordained by God that, on a particular day you will stop working and hang out with friends, family, and people you can’t stand to see more than once or twice year (usually defined as relatives).

Point Number 4!

…oh shit, really?  I only came up with 3 points for my list?

Uhh, okay, don’t…now don’t panic.  Take this little mini-photopost to make up for it!

~RCS

Enjoy your holidays, all of them…Christmas, Eid-al-Adha, Bodhi Day, etc.

Oklahoma Doctor Supports Rape

Welcome to Oklahoma!  I want you all to know about a nice law in this state called the Conscience Clause, before we start.  The conscience clause allows doctors in the state of Oklahoma to refuse medical treatment if the treatment violates their religious beliefs.

Now between that note and the title, I imagine you can see where this is going.

So here’s a picture of Daphne to keep you off-guard.

A 24-year-old woman was raped in Oklahoma.  Her and her mother filed a police report and then did the next logical step: Headed to the hospital.  It was here where things got sticky–no, no…rape story, no sex puns.  Where things got…really messed up.

The doctor refused to give the woman emergency contraceptives, and the recently-raped woman’s mother even stated that she felt the doctor blamed her daughter for being raped.

Thanks to the conscience clause, the doctor was totally within her rights to refuse treatment to the rape victim.

What’s worse is that…they refused to give use a ‘rape kit’, a test that determines the validity of a rape and can acquire DNA evidence to try to track down the rapist, because no nurse trained in its usage was on duty at the time.  Why is a hospital allowed to have no rape kit trained nurses on duty, at any time?  With how much money hospitals makes they should have every nurse on duty trained in rape kit usage; budget cuts, or not.  Not to mention the victim’s mother claimed the doctor wouldn’t refer the victim to another hospital where they could get a rape kit done and try to get the EC.

So the victim and her mother went to another hospital where they got the rape kit, and presumably the emergency contraception (all of the stories I’ve read omit any news on that part, so I don’t know for sure).  I’ll bet a dollar that the doctor still bills the poor girl for ‘treatment‘ (or lack thereof).

I’m going be totally honest, this pisses me off.  What kind of useless country are we living in where this is acceptable?  If you are a certified doctor, especially in a hospital emergency room, you should be held to do anything to help a patient; much less a rape victim.

People like this doctor need to be dragged out in the street and euthanized, they do not deserve to live.  She has no human qualities to her, clearly; as far as I’m concerned she’s as much to blame as the rapist, if not more so.  We can give the rapist the benefit of the doubt…maybe he’s mentally challenged, off his meds, or just otherwise not a toal douchebag that should be eviscerated with a dull spoon.  Unlikely, but benefit of the doubt.  But the doctor?  A doctor is supposed to be someone you can trust.  Trust with your life, literally.  I wouldn’t trust this woman to watch my seat while I used the restroom, she’d probably donate it to the Pope while I was taking a piss!

Why are we fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, when they run the country here at home?  That’s what these people are.  The Ultra-Conservative Republicans like Rick Santorum, Rush Limbaugh. and Ted Nugent.  They started a war with the Taliban even though they agree with Taliban beliefs 9/10 times; but they won’t admit it, because their very similar beliefs come from different books.

And you know what else?  They’re incredibly hypocritical, too.  In the past few weeks we’ve had a Christian pastor say you should abuse your children for being gay, even if they aren’t really gay and just act outside of their gender stereotype; we’ve had a pastor say we should arrest and detain homosexuals in death camps without trial; there was another pastor who said that he’d really like to kill all the homosexuals, although he at least admitted Christ would be displeased with that idea.

Then on top of that we have a Republican Congressman’s aide saying that you should throw acid in Democratic women’s faces, and now a Christian-Psychotic doctor refuses to treat a rape victim, judges her for being raped, and has a law to back her up so she gets away with it all, too?

But if I were to sit here and type into this post something like, “Liberal men of Oklahoma, I call upon you to track down this doctor and rape her!” I’d be considered the bad guy.  It’s okay to rape, unlawfully detain, and even murder if it’s in the name of God.  But if it’s in the name of humanity and common decency, then I’m just a nutcase, right?

Fuck Ultra-Conservatives, Fuck Christian-Psychos, and Fuck American Talibanners.  And y’know what?  Fuck ’em against their will, they seem to support that kind of thing.

~RCS

North Carolina Has Failed Humanity.

As you may or may not know, North Carolina has recently passed an amendment to their state constitution that bans gay marraige.  It also bans civil unions for homosexuals and domestic partnerships (i.e. engagements) for straight folks and gay, alike.

This bill passed even though a poll suggested that 55% of the populace of NC actually supported civil unions.  The PACs supporting each side were, the last I heard, split up like this…

Pro-Gays: 95% personal donations

Anti-Gays: 95% corporate donations

So if you want to fight corporate corruption, vote in favor of gay marriage.

Rather than get off into a rant about how stupid the general voting populace of North Carolina apparently are, and quite frankly if you vote for any bill that supports straight-only marriage, you don’t deserve the right to vote.  It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of idiocy.  If you think your religion is better than love, then you probably just misunderstood your own frickin’ religion.

So rather than rant…I’ll just put up some pictures…

Incest should be legal; gay marriage should be illegal. That’s the Christian way of thinking?

And you won’t let gay folks adopt, either. Maybe if you’d let gay folks adopt, you’d start getting some straight kids once in a while.

Welcome to Straight Parenting.

Not a hard high-water mark to hit.

Why can’t straight people make decent signs?

And finally, I’ll leave you all with this one last one to consider.

~RCS