Check out this video of Rick Perry trying to defend the Texas school policy of teaching abstinence only sex education in public schools.

This is one of the reasons why I can never vote for this guy…no matter what the facts are, he won’t change his views.  It doesn’t matter that abstinence only sex education doesn’t work, to him that’s the only way to teach it.  It’s not effective, but he doesn’t care.  No amount of evidence will change his mind.

I don’t have an issue with trying different approaches, but once it is determined an approach doesn’t work, it’s time to try something else.  If you’re not willing to look at the data and make modifications, then you’re not interested in solving the problem.

So what is his goal?  To prevent teen pregnancies? To prevent the spread of STD’s?  No, he either doesn’t want to ruffle the feathers of the religious voters in the state or he truly believes it’s okay to withhold vital information that can in all reality save young peoples lives.

My daughter went through the sex education program last year in middle school here in Texas.  At the end of it, I asked a simple question.  Did they talk to you about condoms?  She said yes they did.  Ok,  I said, what did they tell you about them?  She said “that they didn’t work”.

Wow…not that they are effective but can fail, but just that they didn’t work.  Sure, condoms have a failure rate, but that failure rate is rather small and is greatly reduced when people learn how to properly use them.  Condoms have been shown to be an effective way to prevent pregnancy and to prevent the spread of disease.  But that’s not what they teach here in Texas.  Abstinence is the rule of the land.  And I guess, as Perry says, that works….well, most of the time.

If Texas was smart and paid attention to the facts, it would realize that abstinence only education isn’t the answer.  If it were, Texas wouldn’t be #3 in teen pregnancies.  I would prefer Texas have a comprehensive sex education program to insure out kids know the facts and how to protect themselves from what they inevitably will do at some point in their young lives.  But that just makes me a godless liberal in Perry’s eyes.

So Texas will continue with a program that has failed over and over again expecting a different result in the future.

I’ve certainly been known to have strong opinions, but during a recent trip to Denver I stopped to get some breakfast and parked next to this guy.  I think he puts me to shame.

You really need to click on the image and view it at full scale to get the impact.  Not only are there stickers on the bumper, but even more on the rear window.  Obviously, not an Obama supporter.  The one tame bumper sticker shows his Oklahoma roots.

I sat stunned as I watched  the President announce the death of Osama bin Laden.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about this.  Sure, this was the man who headed the organization that rammed planes into buildings on 9/11/2001 killing thousands of innocent people.  And he certainly had a hand in many other terrorist attacks around the world, but should I now be happy that he is dead? and that the United States had killed him?

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The Republican majority in the house is busy working on legislation to make sure Americans can get back to work.  One example is this piece of legislation reaffirming the National Motto of “In God We Trust”.

What??

Yup, instead of working to make sure Americans can compete in the global economy or to reign in needless government spending, your newly elected Rethuglican representatives are busy pushing God down our throats.  I think they’ve forgotten the actual National Motto of “E Pluribus Unum”, which was there long before the one they’re pushing.  In fact, it was adopted in 1782 and if you didn’t know, it means “out of many, one”, signifying the joining of the states into a union.  A much more fitting motto than the more recently adopted “In God We Trust”.

In God We Trust was installed as a national motto in the 1950′s as part of the McCarthy Communism scare.  We had to prove we were different than the damn dirty Atheist commies by institutionalizing God into our nation to the point of printing it on our money and in many cases engraving it into the walls of our national and state legislatures.

And now, apparently, we need to be reminded of this.  I’m sure glad our elected officials are working hard on our behalf.  This crappy piece of legislation has no less that 56 co-sponsors.  Well, if nothing else, it gives me a lost of douche-bags who have no right to be in office.

Along with everyone, I’ve noticed the large spike in gas prices recently and have listened to the news reports blaming the turmoil in Libya and increased demand as the causes.  But something doesn’t seem right, so I decided to do a little digging for myself to see just how much oil Libya produces.  Here’s what I found.

Reports indicate that under normal conditions, Libya produces 1.2M barrels of oil per day for export and that during this recent turmoil output is down to around 500,000 to 700,000 barrels per day, so a drop of about 0.5M barrels per day for the entire world.

Now, the United States imports oil from many countries, including Libya, where during the month of December 2010 we received about 68,000 barrels per day of the nearly 11.5M barrels per day we import.  This works out to about 0.6% of the United States oil imports.  So assuming the amount coming from Libya has dropped by half, then we’ve lost about 0.3% of our oil imports.

The data came from this site:  US Oil Imports for December 2010

So, the amount of oil coming into the U.S. hasn’t really changed that much or for the entire world for that matter.  Libya just isn’t that big of a supplier.  But what about the other factors, worldwide demand and fear.  Sure, demand is increasing, but it hasn’t spiked.  We’ve all heard about the increasing demand from countries like China and India as they modernize and their middle class populations grow.  But this is a gradual thing, there’s no evidence demand has suddenly increased.

So there’s really no explanation for the large increase in oil prices and hence gasoline prices other than fear and greed.  It seems every time oil spikes and gas prices with it, we get the same rhetoric from the media, as if to placate us into believing the markets are efficient and everything is reacting as it should, instead of doing some analysis and realizing that there might just be some over-reaction in the markets and potential price gouging by the oil companies.

I for one remain skeptical.

Only in America can we come up with stuff like this.

A bill introduced in South Dakota that would effectively make it okay to kill abortion doctors.  Luckily, it was aborted before getting to a vote.

A bill introduced in Wisconsin to take away collective bargaining for state workers as a way to balance the budget.  I’m not saying all unions are great, but there needs to be some ability for workers to protect their rights.

A news organization that seems to be all for democracy until it might bring to power a group they don’t like.  This along with a religious right that is worried about an Islamic theocracy arising in Egypt while working to install a Christian Theocracy here in the US.  Oh the hypocrisy.

A congress who thinks defunding Planned Parenthood and promoting Abstinence only education will eliminate the need for abortions.  This is the latest in the rights attempts to defund other organizations they don’t like such as NPR, PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Governor of Mississippi refusing to speak out against a proposed license plate in honor of a confederate General who also happens to be an early leader of the KKK.  As a side note, there is still a Sons of Confederate Veterans group active in Mississippi.  Who would’ve thunk it.

An Iowa Senator who likened preschool to Nazi indoctrination.  That’s right, as opposed to taking your kids to church every week and telling them a big boogey man in the sky will torture them for all eternity unless they get on their knees and worship him…no indoctrination there.

State legislatures mimicking the Oklahoma law to outlaw Sharia law…as if it could ever happen.  And at the same time pushing to install the 10 commandments in our schools and courthouses while spouting something about biblical law.

Minnesota House of Representative member Mike Beard thinks God will provide unlimited natural resources and prevent global warming from destroying the planet.  All this to lift the carbon emission curbs on coal plants in his state as opposed to investigating other “natural” resources such as solar or wind.

After all that, I really don’t know what else to say.  I guess the crazy speaks for itself.

A Florida church’s decision to hold a Qur’an burning event this year on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks is a sad reminder of the hate that can be directed toward a group of individuals as if they were a monolithic entity.  By the way, this is the same church that sent kids to school with shirts that said "Islam is of the devil".  And they have the gall to call themselves the Dove World Outreach Center.

This upcoming event, along with the recent protests of a planned Islamic community center in New York or the planned expansion of a mosque in Tennessee are showing the willingness to vilify an entire community for the actions of a few misguided fanatics.

It would be like saying all Christians are like Fred Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church and therefore we should be protesting churches across the country because of his actions.  Or condemning the Christians for actions of a few who went around shooting doctors who performed abortions or who vandalized abortion clinics.  Are these actions not terrorism?

It’s amazing to me that some within these two religions who at their heart pray to the same God, the God of Abraham, can hate each other so much.  And these types of attacks, although propagated by a minority, fuel the flame of the idea of a religious war being waged between Christianity and Islam.

The US has some history of this type of stereotyping.  We’ve all heard of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.  You would think we had learned our lesson, but then again, history tends to repeat itself, especially for those who ignore it or fail to learn its lessons.

The United States of America has long been a melting pot for many diverse cultures and faiths.  And because of the idea of religious pluralism, we’ve all gotten along just fine.  If we forgo this tenet of our society, we could be heading down a path that will lead to internal strife like that seen in countries around the world.  Should we become like Bosnia-Herzegovina? or Sudan? or even Iraq?  Where vying religious factions resorted to genocide to cleanse the country in what became brutal civil wars?

We need to step back and ask ourselves if we would want to be judged based on the actions of another?  Are you willing to let a distorted stereotype define you?  If not, then look at your actions and ask yourself if you’re being fair to the community at large.  And then direct your energies in a way that will reflect positively on you and the country.

I haven’t been following much of the health care debate going on lately in the Congress.  I kind of tuned out after the infamous (or famous, depending on you affiliation) "You lie!!" comment.  But of course, it’s hard to miss the talking points being blasted at us by a media more than willing to skim the surface of an issue for what they feed us as "news".

The most recent ruckus I’m hearing about is the mostly Republican backed amendment to the health care reform bill (that they won’t vote for) that would deny coverage/funding of abortions.  Isn’t this the same party that keeps harping that government run health care will lead to rationing?  Well, isn’t denying a procedure the same as rationing?  The difference is just the degree to which it is unavailable.

The last time I checked, it was legal for a woman to have an abortion in this country.  What other legal medical procedure will they ration away from Americans in the name of our freedoms?  How about denying coverage to have a vasectomy?  Let’s not be sexist here and screw with a mans reproductive rights as well as a woman’s.

So come on, stop being hypocritical in the name of "family values" and just step back and look at what you are proposing.  You’re the ones always saying you want the government to stay out of the lives of citizens, so back off and just leave it alone.  Let the patients and their doctors make up their own minds about what legal procedures they should have and stop legislating your view of "morality" on the rest of us while you prostitute yourselves to the health care companies so you can get re-elected.

A couple of videos came out recently that just need to be shared.

The first is a new Mr. Deity video that features PZ Myers as a Science Advisor to God.  It’s got some great humor and the bit at the end with the banana is a bit of an inside joke.  If you like this, check out the rest of the videos at the Mr. Deity website or on YouTube.

The next video is a parody of the defense of marriage…this time, defending marriage against divorce.

Just like the people in the segment Jaywalking from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, you can find a few idiots in any crowd.  The video below is an example of this from the recent Tea Party gathering in Washington DC.

The best quote from the video

"You know this how?"

I would answer that question with this.  All it takes is a little skepticism.  People need to consider who is feeding them the information and what their motives might be.  Try listening to both sides of an issue instead of tuning out opposing views.  Then based on as much information as you can get your hands on, come to a rational conclusion based on real information instead of hysteria and lies.  That’s all it takes.  But we’re in America and we can’t be bothered to work to understand anything.

I’m sure there were some well informed people at the gathering, but I do think the majority are more like the people highlighted in the video, having been easily manipulated by lies and fear to the point of protest.  Somewhere there is a room full of people laughing and patting themselves on the back for what they’ve accomplished.