Rideaccidents.com is the world’s single most comprehensive, detailed, updated, accurate, and complete source of amusement ride accident reports and related news. The site includes a record of fatal amusement ride accidents in the United States since 1972, and, for the past six years, has recorded all types of accidents, including many from outside the United States.
Pictured at the right is a "flying Swinger" ride in Seville, Spain. The central column collapsed last week, injuring 18.
From Dobson’s Family Research Council’s webpage here comes this piece of utter stupidity:
Chapter 6: Is There a Link between Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse?
· A study of 229 convicted child molesters in Archives of Sexual Behavior found that “eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” (emphasis added)
(W. D. Erickson, “Behavior Patterns of Child Molesters,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 17 (1988): 83.)
That’s right. 86% of the men who molested males were homosexual or bisexual.
Isn’t that like opening up your closet and discovering that it contains clothes?
You know what? I’ll bet that roughly 86% of the men who molested girls were NOT homosexual or bisexual (a statistic that the Dobson website doesn’t give). So what can be said of the "link" between homosexuality and child molestation? Not much.
Ironically, the web page is all about a book called "Getting It Straight". It’s a book designed to dispel some myths about homosexuality, and present the "facts". The really sad thing is that people will read those excerpts like the one above, and not see how disingenuous and laughably unscientific that "study" is.
This is not good news for Bush:
The last month has not been a good one for President Bush and the Republicans. Most people have opposed the President’s proposals for reforming Social Security and most were unhappy with the positions taken by Republicans in the Terri Schiavo case. The result is that the president’s job ratings have fallen to 44 percent positive, 56 percent negative, the worst numbers of his presidency, and a drop from 48 percent positive, 51 percent negative in February (and 50% positive, 49% negative last November).
Marla Ruzicka is one of the heroes of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. While surely there has been heroism and courage shown by the men and women in our military who fight with great honor and courage in what many of us still consider a flawed and stupid war, the courage and heroism is not limited to those Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan who carried a rifle or drove a military vehicle. Marla Ruzicka’s tools weren’t rifles or Bradley fighting vehicles, but clipboards, computers, emails, and a remarkable ability to earn trust and persuade the powerful to do the right thing.
In her mid-twenties, Californian Ruzicka traveled to Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Taliban to conduct an empirically sound count of civilian victims killed by US bombs, and then to lobby for compensation Afghan civilian victims of US bombings. After confirming 824 dead–she figured the actual number was much larger, but those were deaths she was able to confirm–she returned to the US, where she successfully lobbied U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy to sponsor a $3.75 million appropriation for the Afghan victims and their families.
Ruzicka had founded her own NGO, The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC). After returning for a while to Afghanistan, where she helped prod the US authorities on disbursing the funds authorized by Leahy’s legislation to the victims and their families, she eventually followed the US military into Iraq. As in Afghanistan, she conducted extensive door-to-door canvasses with local volunteers, this time placing special focus on Iraqis hurt or killed after George W. Bush’s announced that the mission was accomplished.
The story of an attractive, engaging and resourceful young woman from California who succeeded in bonding with Iraqis victimized by errant bombs and jittery 19 year old’s with M-4 rifles was quite a story, and she began to receive acclaim for her work and attention for her story. She was interviewed on Nightline, written about in plenty of serious news articles, and was even profiled in "lighter" news sources like Elle and something called Travel Girl.
Leahy referred to her as a foreign policy "whistle blower." The BBC declared that the "most reliable numbers so far are the work of this woman, Marla Ruzicka." She spoke before the Soros-funded Open Society Institute, her work was incorporated into reports by Human Rights Watch, and she participated in a symposium sponsored by Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy along with top military leaders and theorists, military and political scholars, and accomplished writers and journalists.
But her focus remained on the innocent victims of war, like the three daughters of an Iraqi couple who were killed when an American tank swerved to avoid an exploding grenade and crushed their car. Doing her work in Iraq meant, of course, that she herself was often in danger. She was asked if she considered doing something safer, but her personal safety wasn’t as strong a feeling as the satisfaction she received from doing work that was important and rewarding. "To have a job where you can make things better for people? That’s a blessing…Why would I do anything else?"
Saturday morning [April 16, 2005] she emailed this photo of herself with Harah, who was 3 months old when her entire family was killed by a U.S. rocket that destroyed the auto they were in. Later that morning Ruzicka and CIVIC’s Iraq director Faiz Al Salaam drove near the Bagdhad airport to visit another little girl, one who had been injured by a bomb. As they drove along the airport road, a car bomb exploded, and both Marla and Faiz were killed.
— "Death of a Hero", The Next Hurrah
From WaPo:
Bolton Often Blocked Information, Officials Say
Iran, IAEA Matters Were Allegedly Kept From Rice, Powell
By Dafna LinzerWashington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A04
John R. Bolton — who is seeking confirmation as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.
In some cases, career officials found back channels to Powell or his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who encouraged assistant secretaries to bring information directly to him. In other cases, the information was delayed for weeks or simply did not get through. The officials, who would discuss the incidents only on the condition of anonymity because some continue to deal with Bolton on other issues, cited a dozen examples of memos or information that Bolton refused to forward during his four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.
A punchline is needed for this.
Mesa police want to add monkey to SWAT team
Associated Press
Apr. 16, 2005 03:10 PMMESA, Ariz. – The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it’s looking to a monkey.
"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."
Truelove is spearheading the department’s request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.
The monkey, which costs $15,000, is what Truelove envisions as the ultimate SWAT reconnaissance tool.
Since 1979, capuchin monkeys have been trained to be companions for people who are quadriplegics by performing daily tasks, such as serving food, opening and closing doors, turning lights on and off, retrieving objects and brushing hair.
Truelove hopes the same training could prepare a monkey for special-ops intelligence.
Weighing only 3 to 8 pounds with tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills, Truelove said it could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command. Dressed in a Kevlar vest, video camera and two-way radio, the small monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go.
It has been a little over a year since Truelove filed a grant proposal with the U.S. Department of Defense under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and he is still waiting for word.
If the grant goes through, Truelove plans on learning how to train the monkey himself and keeping the sociable monkey at home, just like a K-9 officer would. He projects that $85,000 in grant money would outfit the monkey with gear and pay for veterinarian care, food and habitat for three years.
This can’t be good:
THE wartime past of a leading German contender to succeed John Paul II may return to haunt him as cardinals begin voting in the Sistine Chapel tomorrow to choose a new leader for 1 billion Catholics.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose strong defence of Catholic orthodoxy has earned him a variety of sobriquets — including “the enforcer”, “the panzer cardinal” and “God’s rottweiler” — is expected to poll around 40 votes in the first ballot as conservatives rally behind him.
Although far short of the requisite two-thirds majority of the 115 votes, this would almost certainly give Ratzinger, 78 yesterday, an early lead in the voting. Liberals have yet to settle on a rival candidate who could come close to his tally.
Unknown to many members of the church, however, Ratzinger’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service.
"It’s really cute that the citizens of Wingnuttia, who truly should be given their own homeland somewhere (they can call it the Christian States of America, or whatever, I don’t care), would prefer women to die of cancer if the alternative is maybe, just maybe, increasing the likelihood of them engaging in any sexual activity", says Atrios.
He’s referring to the religious right, who is gearing up to oppose vaccinations for sexually-active women — vaccinations which might give them a chance against the growing problem of cervical cancer (the death rate worldwide is expected to reach 1,000,000 per year by 2050 — four times the death rate now).
Dobson’s Family Research Council is opposed to the vaccine because young women "may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex".
You have to wonder about these wingnuts — they are soooo concerned about society’s moral purity that women dying is preferable to women not being chaste until marriage. Truly frightening.
Reprinted in full from here, because it’s that good:
I am edified to learn that Dr Bill Frist, cat slayer, and Dr James Dobson, dauchshund beater, are joining hands to kill the independent judiciary. (As I have said before, while it’s true that not all animal abusers become serial killers, it is true that the vast majority of serial killers were once animal abusers. Not that I’m saying that Frist and Dobson are serial killers … let’s just say that they are in some pretty disgusting company.)
As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush’s nominees.
Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."
The filibuster is being used against people of faith? Man, these wingnuts are feeling their oats.
Gawd I hope that the liberal media feel it is their duty to cover this telecast in great depth — to show that they are not hostile to religion, of course. This would be a wonderful way for them to prove once and for all that they are fair and balanced and believe that these religious issues should be well covered in the press. I think we need to write to all the networks and demand that they cover this important story. We need to tell them that the people have a right to hear what their leaders are saying.
I cannot stress enough how important I think it is to draw the contrasts between the Democrats and Republicans right now. Their ducky president looks lamer and lamer by the day and both GOP leaders of the congress are overreaching badly with this public soul kissing of the extremist religious right. (Giving them any cover for this wacky morals crusade is just dumb. Don’t go there, please.)
All we need to do is say we are defending the constitution. Most people may know nothing about civics in this country anymore, but they know damned well that disembowling one branch of government is not business as usual. This is a case where the Republicans have not done the spadework and spent years preparing the public with relentless soothing rhetoric meant to give the impression that this is a natural and inevitable political evolution that will disrupt nothing. Instead their rhetoric is uncharacteristically shrill and nervous. They are lurching around now, reacting to their riled up constituency and making mistakes.
They are leading the Senate to a big dramatic showdown and the stakes couldn’t be higher. But we should not flinch. They are the ones in the spotlight, they are the ones who look hysterical, they are the ones who have the stink of desperation all over them, not us. Tone will be important, here. We should make sure that in the debate we are defending the constitution and tradition and we should do it in modest language with common sense rhetoric. The media will cover this and it will be a perfect chance for us to persuade the public through our temperate but unyielding approach that we are operating from principle and committment. The other side is going to work itself into a frenzy. We need to be calm and cool and united.
The media will trivialize the Democrats’ position but we have to remember that this is also the kind of conflict they love so they’ll cover it and give Democrats some time to make their case. We should be preparing right now for that opportunity with a set of strong and persuasive talking points that we stick with throughout the controversy. According to this widely reported recent WSJ poll, people are already nervous. They want the Democrats to act as a backstop for this wild nonsense. And that was before Schiavo. We should be prepared to say over and over again that we feel it is our duty to prevent the Republicans from radically altering our way of governance. Do you suppose that most people agree with this?:
I blame Congress over the last 50 to 100 years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that’s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn’t stop them.
That’s the most powerful man in the US House of Representatives saying that, not some no-name preacher from Arkansas.
Luckily it seems the Harry Reid has the smarts and the cojones to realize that this is as much a defining issue for us as is social security and he’s not going to flinch:
Alexander said Democrats "are badly misreading this politically" if they think the public would blame Republicans for a Senate breakdown orchestrated by Democrats. GOP aides say Frist has drawn the same conclusion. Nonetheless, Senate Democrats are vowing a scorched-earth response, noting that a single senator can dramatically slow down the chamber’s work by insisting on time-consuming procedures that are normally bypassed by "unanimous consent."
They also are portraying Frist as a tool of GOP extremists. Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), asked this week if the radical right is driving Frist and his lieutenants, replied: "If they decide to do this, which it appears they are going to, the answer is unequivocally — underlined, underscored — yes."
Frist’s political instincts are not very good as he has proven over and over again and it seems to have precipitated this showdown too:
"I think Senator Frist has backed himself into a corner where I don’t see how he can avoid pulling the nuclear trigger," said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. In terms of a presidential race, Cook said, "it hurts if he doesn’t come up with the votes. But it also hurts him if the Senate comes to a grinding halt and can’t get anything done. I think the guy’s in a real jam."
I think Reid has the argument here and I think we will prevail. Just as newt failed to realize that it was his intemperate over-the-top rhetoric during the government shutdown that turned the people against him, these guys don’t understand that allying themselves with the most extremist wing of the religious right is bound to do the same thing. Bubbles breed hubris and I think these people spend way too much time talking to each other.
Update: Does anyone out there know of any examples of moderate Republican religious types who have publicly come out against these recent extremist moves? I know that the polls indicate that a large number of them disagreed with the Schiavo matter, but I’m not aware of any of the people for whom morals are a voting issue moving away from the GOP because of it. Where I’m seeing the movement is in the libertarian, scientific and professional factions of the party.
For instance, I have not seen any full throated repudiations of the GOP by Republican religious moderates such as this from Bush voter, John Cole. My hunch is that people who vote on "morals" issues aren’t actually moderates so they aren’t disturbed in the least by what they are seeing. Therefore, posturing about the issue won’t get us anywhere. But, who knows? It sure seems to me that the way to win is to go where the votes are up for grabs — which seems to me to be among the people who really don’t want James Dobson and Pat Robertson running the country.
First, a Bush lie:
Bush on the Armstrong Williams payola scandal in a press conference, January 26, 2005:
And we didn’t know about this in the White House . . .
Page 8 footnote of the Inspector General’s Report, Department of Education, concerning the Armstrong Williams payola scandal, released Friday:
"During a meeting between the White House and Department officials on July 13, 2004, pertaining to communications strategy, the Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy briefly questioned the Deputy Director of OPA about the status of the Williams’ work request…"
And remember how Michael Schiavo supposedly abused his wife Terri? That was a lie put out by Frist & Co.:
State investigators in Florida have found no clear evidence that Terri Schiavo was denied rehabilitation, neglected or otherwise abused, according to documents released yesterday by the state’s Department of Children and Families.The agency completed nine reports of abuse accusations made from 2001 to 2004, including neglect of hygiene, denial of dental care, poisoning and physical harm. The accusations, which have been widely reported, focus on Michael Schiavo, the husband of Terri. Ms. Schiavo died on March 31, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed. … Judge George W. Greer of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court, who has presided over the dispute between Ms. Schiavo’s parents and her husband over her care, ordered the agency to make the documents public before Monday. Lawyers for Mr. Schiavo and Ms. Schiavo’s parents did not return calls seeking comment.
Digby has an excellent article comparing the right-wing vs the left-wing blogospheres. The thrust?
The right blogosphere operates largely as part of the greater Republican message machine.
***
By contrast, the left blogosphere is populated by “citizen bloggers,” who work in non-political occupations for a living and blog for reasons of personal interest. This sphere actually operates as a unique and potentially powerful political constituency rather than a part of the Democratic Party apparatus.
Treasury Secretary John Snow, 4/15/05:
President George Bush shares your desire to make paying taxes simpler.
Fort Wayne News Sentinel, 8/16/04:
Bush, despite his professed desire for simplicity, has not exactly acted that way. During his term in office, there have been 227 tax-code changes that added 10,000 pages to the monstrosity known as the tax code.
From Knight-Ridder:
The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
Some current and former officials charged the report was stopped because it "raised disturbing questions about the Bush’s administration’s frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism." You think?
Take a look at this poster:
Now what is it saying?
It is saying that in order to serve as a judge, you must abandon your Christian faith, because you cannot do both, yes?
Apparently, the right wing is in favor of the idea that judges should be able to follow their faith over what judges are supposed to be doing, i.e., following the law.
Excuse me, but isn’t ignoring the law and making decisions based on some outside influence (e.g., the Bible) a prime example of "judicial activism", the very thing that Republicans have been squalking about these past few weeks?
The truth is that judges can and do and always have been able to set aside their faith in the courtroom, while still worshipping (outside the courtroom) in according to their conscience as individual men and women. Just as mail carriers can deliver the mail without lapsing into scripture, judges of religious faith can easily uphold the laws of the country, state, county and/or municipality that they have sworn (often on the Bible, ironicly) to uphold.
Check out this study, as reported in the Baptist Standard, from 2001. Do "religious" judges then to make more "pro-religious" rulings than their "non-religious" colleagues? Well, yes and no. Although Baptist and Catholic judges tended to ruling more often in a "pro-religion" vein, it was not statistically significant. In fact . . .
Being not religious did not make a significant difference in the outcome, since the non-religious still, in general, adopted a pro-religion position.
Furthermore, Lutheran judges "were more likely to take an anti-religion position". Mmmmmm.
So what is the meta-conclusion? Well, it’s hard to say. And that’s the point. Some judges with religious faith might take a pro-religion stance (although not consistently), but others might lean anti-religious (although not constistently). The same holds true for non-religious judges — no consistent statistically-significant pattern. Apparently, the only real conclusion is that there is no strong conclusion, only shades of tendancies.
So why does the ad make it seem like it is a pure "either-or" choice?
The answer is that the ad is a lie, creating a false choice where, in reality, none exists. And don’t think the people behind that ad aren’t aware of the deception. After all, the manipulative ad was their own creation.
But more importantly, apart from the ad’s duplicity, the ad reveals what the religious right is truly seeking — not judges who will fulfill their oath to the Constitution or the laws passed by the peoples’ elected representatives, but instead — judges who will act according to a higher law.
Which begs the question: Whose higher law? (Not those of Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, Native Americans, Deists, Atheists, etc., etc., I assure you. The religious right hates pluralism when it comes to religion.)
A final observation about the ad: the small print says "The filibuster was once used to protect racial bias, and now it is being used against people of faith." No, morons. It is not being used against people of faith — it is being used against religious bias. Because BIAS in judges — any kind of bias (racial, sexual, religious, etc.) — is BAD! Got that? B-A-D! Not too mention anti-American.
So we see what the religious right is really whining about. They WANT judges to be biased. They don’t want the scales to be balanced; they want them weighted. Weighted in their favor. And when they can’t have it, they act like they are victims of religious discrimination.
For centuries, our judicial system has been the envy of the world simply BECAUSE we strive for fairness and equality in the courtroom. Fairness and equality — that’s what the judicial scales actually represent, you know. Now, the krazy kristian kooks want to tip those scales. Because to them, God outweighs all. Well, their God anyway.
But I ask you this: Can anything be more un-American than to create a court system where the faith and religion of the judge (attorneys, litigants, etc.) affects the outcome of a case? And to help answer the question, pretend you are a patriotic, voting, taxpaying American whose life, liberty, and property depends on the decision of a judge (1) who holds a religious belief starkly different from yours AND (2) who has carte blanche to act on his religious belief rather than the religion-neutral law.
You want that? Is that your America? Because that’s what they want. They want service to (their idea of) God to be the basis of public service.
Don’t kid yourself. This is the beginning of the American Taliban. And I say, kill it where it breeds.
Another Friday, another Friday Random Ten from the shufflin’ of the iPod: