Political Bunker

Keith Rulez!

The Guardian - The Swedish government has announced plans to clamp down hard on religious education. It will soon become illegal even for private faith schools to teach religious doctrines as if they were true. In an interesting twist on the American experience, prayer will remain legal in schools - after all, it has no truth value. But everything that takes place on the curriculum's time will have to be secular.

AlterNet - James Dobson, the influential founder of the conservative, evangelical advocacy group Focus on the Family, has delivered a blow to John McCain — by saying he won’t vote for him if he’s the Republican presidential nominee.

“I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are … I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

What a terrible selection of nutjobs the GOP has to offer. Their favorite candidate of the day, Gov. Mike Huckabee, will take us straight down that hell-hole known as theocracy!

ArkansasOnline - "I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."

AP - Acting on tips about preachers who ride in Rolls Royces and have purportedly paid $30,000 for a conference table, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said Tuesday he's investigating the finances of six well-known TV ministers.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said those under scrutiny include faith healer Benny Hinn, Georgia megachurch pastor Creflo Dollar and one of the nation's best known female preachers, Joyce Meyer.

In a statement, Grassley said he was acting on complaints from the public and news coverage of the organizations.

At the March 2006 funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq, church members waved fire-and-brimstone placards near the funeral motorcade. Snyder's father sued Westboro and three church leaders for emotional distress and won a nearly $11 million jury verdict Wednesday in Baltimore.

PZ (Pharyngula) introduces us to a battle between D'Souza vs Hitchens where "Hitchens wasn't at his best in the segment D'Souza chose to show, but he is still ten times smarter than the little wingnut pipsqueak."
Ha! Gotta love the prof!

PZ also mentions that D'Souza makes "the usual claim that atheists are the major murderers of the 20th century, which is again silly — blame totalitarian ideologies for that, not philosophical positions on the existence of deities."
I really hate this one! Not believing in fairy tales does not make one homicidal!

I agree, D'Souza obviously didn't pick a clip of Hitchens at his best - figures! So I found this little clip of a 46 second Hitchens rampage! I don't agree with everything Hitchens thinks but I like this one. ;o)

During the October 8 edition of CNBC's The Big Idea, host Donny Deutsch asked right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: "If you had your way ... and your dreams, which are genuine, came true ... what would this country look like?" Coulter responded, "It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention. In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like." She described the convention as follows: "People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America." Deutsch then asked, "It would be better if we were all Christian?" to which Coulter responded, "Yes." Later in the discussion, Deutsch said to her: "[Y]ou said we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians," and Coulter again replied, "Yes." When pressed by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like "the head of Iran" and "wipe Israel off the Earth," Coulter stated: "No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. ... That's what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws."

from Media Matters...

As well it should be!