Why I Won’t Vote in November

I was trying to explain to someone the other day why I don’t vote. But this picture pretty much sums up the uselessness of doing so.

Rick Warren believes that the Bible is inerrant; that evolution is wrong (Genesis is all you need); that homosexuality is a sin and gay marriage is “non-negotiable” for Christians; that abortion, stem cell research and cloning should all be crimes. He also spends a lot of time and money on projects in the Third World that look nice on paper, but otherwise don’t accomplish anything.

He’s a fundie Bono.

And both national parties decided to elevate this walking ignoramus to a national an arbiter of opinion in the election for the leader of the free world. Oy.

Cokie Roberts — Still An Idiot

Media Matters has a transcript of the August 10 edition of ABC’s This Week in which Cokie Roberts continues to establish her credentials as one of the dumbest talking heads,

ROBERTS: Yeah, that he has certainly come nowhere near closing the deal. As we’ve talked about before, in this year that should be such a Democratic year given all the other indices, he [Barack Obama] is tied in the polls and stage-sided in the polls and going off this week to a vacation in Hawaii —

VICTORIA CLARKE (former Pentagon spokeswoman): Right.

ROBERTS: — does not make any sense whatsoever. I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place. He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he’s going to take a vacation at this time.

Yeah, Hawaii…that exotic foreign place. It’s like Obama is from Mars or something to go to Hawaii for a vacation.

At least Barack Obama actually went to Hawaii. In 1994, Cokie Roberts broadcast from outside Capitol Hill on a very cold, windy day. Except she wasn’t actually there — instead, she wore a heavy coat and pretended to be outside while standing in front of a green screen which editors then inserted an image of the capitol on.

She should have been fired for that, but this is the mainstream media where truth and accuracy is at best second or third on the priority list.

Change You Can Strikethrough

Jonathan Martin at Politico notes that Barack Obama’s campaign went through and purged all of the statements on its website where Obama criticized the Surge (when did we start naming military operations after energy drinks, anyway). This is pretty standard for most politicians who sometimes get upset when you try to actually hold them to the actual content of what they’ve said rather than blindly accepting their politically convenient position of the moment. But, of course, Obama was not going to be just another political clone. And if you believed that . . .

Anyway, just wait until bloggers realize that the Obama campaign also went through and deleted all the press releases at their site that mentioned Violet Blue. When that comes out, expect the mud to really fly.

American Atheists on Barack Obama

The last few weeks have been a bit amusing as Barak Obama seems to have gone from “Change You Can Believe In” to “Policies the Establishment Will Be Comfortable With.”

After all, it wasn’t too long ago when Samantha Power drew criticism for saying that Obama’s 18-month withdrawal plan was a “best case scenario.” Now, Obama himself is clearly distancing himself from his own promise of a quick withdrawal from Iraq (and Obama, after all, is the Senator who said the withdrawal should have begun in 2007).

Similarly, Obama says he’s going to vote for the bipartisan FISA bill which will provide immunity for the telcommunication companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping of Americans.

But, Obama really jumped the shark with his promise to not only continue but expand George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives. For once, I agreed with the American Atheists’ analysis,

“This makes it official – the Democrats are trying to outdo their Republican colleagues in using religion and the lure of more taxpayer money to turn houses of worship into voting blocks,” said Zindler. “Obama wants to continue the discriminatory policy of taxing millions of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists and other Americans who profess no religious beliefs, and give that money to organized religion. That’s unfair, that’s discriminatory, and it endangers our First Amendment freedom.”

Dave Silverman, Communications Director for American Atheists, said that the Obama pledge to continue Bush’s programs is a risky economic and social experiment. “The faith-based initiative allows religious groups to use our money in programs that are poorly monitored, have little or no accountability, and drain resources for their more effective secular counterparts,” said Silverman. “This is pandering to religious groups, and offers the lure of free government cash in exchange for political support.

Apparently either a McCain or Obama presidency will resemble a 3rd Bush term a lot more than people are willing to admit at this point.