Daily Blend: 04/24/13

Deepak Chopra

I promise I’m not dead! I think. Just reading a lot. And trying to work on my songs.

Also, the searchbar to the right now includes an image search. Just so you know.

A proposal: How about parents put on probation after killing one sick child with prayer lose custody of their remaining kids before they kill another one?

CNN is just actively trying to punish its viewers at this point.

What’s more hilarious than über-crackpot Deepak Chopra ^[pictured] whining about TED “censoring” pseudoscientific talks? (No, really, what?)

And finally, I’ve updated ‘A Morning by the Sea’ over at Creativitas.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Blend: September 20, 2011

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

DADT officially and finally dies three months before it turns 18. Now, where are those sweaty gay barrack orgies the Right’s been promising us?

• Maricopa, AZ sheriff Joe Arpaio ^[pictured] hires five-man “Cold Case Posse” to investigate President Obama’s birth certificate. Guess he wasn’t laughable enough yet.

• Atlanta, GA cop manhandles and arrests disabled woman for sitting in vacant lot in wait of ice cream.
  (via The Agitator)

• “The grave site of David Arthur Hickman is one among dozens of children buried at the Followers of Christ cemetery outside Oregon City.”

• Ex-fan exposes “Britain’s best-loved psychic” Sally Morgan for hearing voices from the other side … via a hidden earpiece.
  (via @BadAstronomer)

• Bill O’Reilly’s ego now has its own moon.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: DADT • Don't Ask, Don't Tell • US Military • Joe Arpaio • Barack Obama • Birtherism • Birthers • Cold Case Posse • Shequita Walker • Kenneth Thomas • disorderly conduct • Dale Hickman • Shannon Hickman • David Hickman • faith healing • Followers of Christ • Sally Morgan • psychics • frauds • con artists • Bill O'Reilly • Barack Obama

Daily Blend: Saturday, June 18, 2011

Gov. John Kitzhaber (D-OR)

• Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) [pictured] enacts law removing protection for parents who let kids die through faith healing.
  (via @breakingPDXnews)

• Dilbert’s Scott Adams: Feministic society unfairly prohibits manly men from indulging in their happy-go-rapey instincts.
  (via Zon)

• This “gender guesser” test informs me that my writing is that of a weak European hermaphrodite. Or something.

• God Diagnosed With Bipolar Disorder.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Oregon • John Kitzhaber • Followers of Christ Church • Scott Adams • Gender Guesser • Hacker Factor • men • women • God • Christianity • Judaism • The Onion

Daily Blend: Saturday, June 11, 2011

Alayna May Wyland (8 months old) with untreated hemangioma

• Faith-healing parents who let their baby girl become deformed by illness [pictured] convicted of criminal mistreatment, “likely to receive probation or possibly some jail time”.

• Malaysian group “Obedient Wives Club” wants to help women “serve their husbands better than a first-class prostitute”. Uh … huh.

• Orlando, FL arrests 5 more activists for feeding homeless people in a park, bringing total number to 12.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Shocking: Nonsense about “space station on Mars” is, well, nonsense. A graphical artifact, specifically.
  (via @BadAstronomer)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Alayna May Wyland • Timothy Wyland • Rebecca Wyland • Obedient Wives Club • Malaysia • Orlando, FL • Bio Station Alpha • Mars

Oregon Legislature votes to repeal faith-healing exemption [updated]

Alayna May Wyland (8 months old) with untreated hemangioma [source | full size (454×511)]

Some great news today out of Oregon for those of us who are more than a little disturbed at how easy it is for parents who let their kids die from preventable illnesses because they chose to pray rather than get them actual medical help to get away with it with no more than a slap on the wrist under excuses of “religious freedom”. Both the State House and Senate have voted nearly unanimously to repeal “faith-healing” exemptions, thus allowing such indefensibly irresponsible parents to be punished to the full extent of the law:

Back in March, the Oregon House of Representatives voted (unanimously, 59-0) to remove “faith healing” exemptions from the law.

[…]

The House did away with that exemption in HB 2721. I’m happy to say that the Senate has finally joined them!

The Senate voted 25-5 to approve the measure. It was drafted largely in response to the 2008 deaths of children among members of the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City, who rely on spiritual treatments instead of medical care.

The bill puts these child-killers up for charges of manslaughter or murder, and offers sentences ranging from twelve to 25 years in prison. What’s more, the bill has been amended to take effect immediately upon enactment. Maybe this will force religious nuts with kids to comply with the fundamental principle of medical reality that if you want someone to get better, you actually have to do something about it rather than chant some silly incantations.

Also, for those who complain about this being another case of the government infringing upon citizens’ privacy and religious liberty, asks yourselves whether a parent’s freedom to impose their irrational and often detrimental religious beliefs upon their children is worth the cost of letting innocent kids suffer and die from incompetence and medical neglect.

That is absolutely what this all boils down to.

(via Friendly Atheist)

---

UPDATE: (06/18/11 3:35 AM) – Gov. Kitzhaber signs bill into law.

Daily Blend: Saturday, March 12, 2011

DA Richard Brown [source]

• In addition to forcing women to undergo an additional rape, Texas Republicans also want to ban all elective abortions in the state.

• Great: Oregon kills legal protections for parents who pray for their sick kids rather than get medical help.

• Maryland same-sex marriage bill sent back to committee until next year in “strategic step” to secure more supporting votes. Good, I guess.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• Queens, New York district attorney [pictured] wants to continue tricking people out of their Miranda rights.
  (via The Agitator)

• Peeved photographer tries to legally intimidate Regretsy into removing her pics from their site. Hilarity ensues.
  (via The Agitator)

• I shiver at the thought of how many hard-ons Christian-Rightists will get reading this Onion piece.

• When Human Evolution Adapts to Modern Gadgets. Some of them had me LOLing.

• Could be put to use as a feline sundial.
  (via The Agitator)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: The Onion • Christianity • Cracked.com • Technology

Suffer the little children, courtesy of religion

Pictured: Not fucking medicine [source]

Mindless belief in ridiculous superstitions and the well-being of the vulnerable seldom go hand-in-hand with positive results. And nowhere is this made more evident and poignant than when it comes to all the young ones who suffer and perish at the hands of the supposed grown-ups who are charged with their health and security, yet who end up sacrificing them on the altar of religion, whether intentionally or not.

Here’s yet another case where a presumably loving parent chose to help her ailing yet easily curable child, not with actual life-saving medicine, but through magical incantations and supplications to an imaginary sky-being:

A woman was charged with child neglect Tuesday in connection with the death of her 9-year-old son, for whom she had not sought medical attention because of her religious beliefs, court records state.

Susan M. Grady, 42, formerly of Broken Arrow, prayed with others over her son, Aaron Gregory Grady, when he became ill on June 2, 2009, according to an affidavit filed Tuesday in Tulsa County District Court. His condition worsened, and he died June 5, according to the affidavit.

The medical examiner listed complications of diabetes mellitus as Aaron’s cause of death, the affidavit states.

Susan Grady told Detective Mikka Mooney that she is a member of the Church of the First Born and “believes in faith-based healing through prayer,” according to the affidavit, which was written by Mooney.

[…]

Grady could face up to life in prison if convicted.

The article goes into some detail about the degenerative development of poor Aaron Grady’s illness and what his guardians did (or failed to do):