Defining Democracy.

This needs to be shared.

With everybody.

Yes, yes you can.

I think this guy has a pretty firm grasp on what it means to be a Christian in this day and age.

Richard Dawkins states the obvious.

The The Times printed an article about the changing demographic in England and Wales.

In it they made the following observation:Almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, a breakdown of census figures shows. 

The percentage of Muslims among the under-fives is almost twice as high as in the general population. In an indication of the extent to which birthrate is changing the UK’s religious demographic, fewer than one in 200 people over 85 is Muslim.

This resulted in the following Letter to the Editor from Dawkins.

Dawkins is of course completely correct in making this point.  However since we know giving birth to new adherents is one of the primary ways that religions compete on this planet for dominance, it is not a change that will be adopted any time soon.

Personally I hope to live long enough to see the day when it is illegal to indoctrinate children into any religious belief until they are at least in their teens and they have developed the critical thinking skills to evaluate what they are being told is the "truth" behind whichever religion is making its sale pitch.

How long do you think I need to live to see that? Twenty years? Fifty years? Yeah, probably a lot longer than that.

Oh well, one can dream can't they?

(H/T to The Friendly Atheist.)

Perhaps the BEST letter ever written by an elected Republican politician.

His name is Rep. Doug Cox and he represents District 5 in Oklahoma. That's right OKLAHOMA!

Here is what rep. Cox wrote in a letter to the Oklahoman:  

All of the new Oklahoma laws aimed at limiting abortion and contraception are great for the Republican family that lives in a gingerbread house with a two-car garage, two planned kids and a dog. In the real world, they are less than perfect. 

As a practicing physician (who never has or will perform an abortion), I deal with the real world. In the real world, 15- and 16-year-olds get pregnant (sadly, 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds do also). In the real world, 62 percent of women ages 20 to 24 who give birth are unmarried. And in the world I work and live in, an unplanned pregnancy can throw up a real roadblock on a woman's path to escaping the shackles of poverty. 

Yet I cannot convince my Republican colleagues that one of the best ways to eliminate abortions is to ensure access to contraception. A recent attempt by my fellow lawmakers to prevent Medicaid dollars from covering the “morning after” pill is a case in point. Denying access to this important contraceptive is a sure way to increase legal and back-alley abortions. Moreover, such a law would discriminate against low-income women who depend on Medicaid for their health care. 

But wait, some lawmakers want to go even further and limit everyone's access to birth control by allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraception. 

What happened to the Republican Party that I joined? The party where conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater felt women should have the right to control their own destiny? The party where President Ronald Reagan said a poor person showing up in the emergency room deserved needed treatment regardless of ability to pay? What happened to the Republican Party that felt government should not overregulate people until (as we say in Oklahoma) “you have walked a mile in their moccasins”? 

Is my thinking too clouded by my experiences in the real world? Experiences like having a preacher, in the privacy of an exam room say, “Doc, you have heard me preach against abortion but now my 15-year-old daughter is pregnant, where can I send her?” Or maybe it was that 17-year-old foreign exchange student who said, “I really made a mistake last night. Can you prescribe a morning-after pill for me? If I return to my home country pregnant, life as I know it will be over.” 

What happened to the Republican Party that felt that the government has no business being in an exam room, standing between me and my patient? Where did the party go that felt some decisions in a woman's life should be made not by legislators and government, but rather by the women, her conscience, her doctor and her God?

By the way Rep. Cox is also doctor who has delivered more than 800 babies. So he kind of knows what he's talking about.

Is this guy SURE he's in the right party?

Proof of Frank Bailey's allegation that Palin had fake Letters to the Editor written to sway public opinion.

In my opinion one of the most interesting things that Frank Bailey revealed in his book was that Sarah Palin, and others on her staff, wrote Letters to the Editor and then had supporters sign them as if THEY had written them before submitting them to the ADN, or other local newspapers.

Now I have written a few letters to ADN myself, and I know that they call you to confirm your identity before they will publish your letter.  This means that Palin convinced people to lie in order to cover for the fact she and her staff were falsifying letters to gin up support for her side of an issue.

That is absolutely despicable.

And the proof of that can be found in Palin's very own emails.

From: gov.sarah@yahoo.com
Govemor Sarah Palin
To: Frank Bailey
Cc: Kris Perry
Cc: Rosanne Hughes
ReplyTo: gov.sarah@yahoo.comSent: Jul 26, 2008 10:25 AM

Subject: Letter to Editor

(Fm looking for someone to correct the letter writcr's goofy comments, but don't want the letter to ADN in response to come from me. Also, Frank - do you have Bonnie Faulk's phone she's pageant director)

Dear Editor:
To address Judi Spry's Anchorage Daily News letter-to-the-editor on July 26 asking where the Govemor was during this years Miss Alaska Pageant: 2/ I 9/2008

Always ready to lend her queen a helping hand Ivy Frye jumps right in.

From: "Ivy Frye"
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:43:53
To: gov.sarah@yahoo.com
 Subject: Re: Letter to Editor

Kristen Cole would be perfect as she knows the pageant world but also she knows how busy you and
Todd are. I'll touch base her today, and Frank too to make sure we're sending variations and not
duplicates of this letter.

Also, we're rallying the troops re: letters for and agia. Phil Schneider's should run this wkend.

Palin then suggests making sure not to use the same people over and over again so as not to reveal what they are up to.

From: gov.sarah@yahoo.comDate: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 lB:50:04
To: ivyfrye@yahoo,com
Subject: Re: Letter to Editor

Phil had one yest about kopp so won't run more from him presume. Yes, make sure no dups if letter
goes out

Sent from my BlackBerry(R) device from Cellular One

From: "Ivy Frye"
To: gov.sarah@yahoo.com



Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2008 10:11 AM
Subject: Re: Letter to Editor

Oh good, they ran it early. I missed it.
Support is pouring in; other letters on deck.

(Here is the link to the email.)

Now one of the reasons that this is so important is that it establishes for an absolute fact that Palin has NO qualms about faking support and essentially lying, and getting others to lie, in order to create a false impression concerning her public persona. Bailey goes on to say in his book that Palin also used this same approach to drive up poll numbers, giving the impression that Palin was far more popular than the truth would have revealed.

So when, in this light, we consider the vicious attacks that have come from Palin's Flying Monkeys against her detractors, the attempts by her supporters to change the Paul Revere Wikipedia page to match her misstatements, and the cheating that occurred on Bristol's behalf during DWTS, I think we cannot help but realize that these actions were most likely NOT undertaken by her supporters of their own volition.

It is far more likely that these pathetic mouth breathers were prompted to do the things they did in support of their idol, and her daughter. And that the person behind those prompts was none other that our very own half term Governor.

She might not have been the one to directly give the order but, much like when RAM orchestrated the attacks on Joe McGinniss, the initial direction surely came from Sarah Palin herself. However she is cagey enough to always maintain just enough deniability so that if there is any blowback she can proclaim her innocence, and suggest that any accusation that she was involved is merely the result of the "Lamestream" media and haters attacking her, and her family, again.
But now with Frank Bailey's book out for everybody to read, and with Palin's OWN emails backing him up, there is no place for the Grizzled Mama to hide from the truth.

And hey, we have only just begun to dig through this email dump. There is still so much to discover.