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Monday, November 14, 2005
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o let's ask Target if they also support the following Target employees: - Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips? - Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ. - Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a "Satanic counterfeit" (read: "The Pope," in fundie-speak). - Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS. - Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it." - Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone? - Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed. - Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?Interestingly, Target responds in the email below, just issued today. It seems that Target will ONLY honor its employees constitutionally-protected (so THEY claim) religious beliefs IF that religious belief deals with Plan B. So Target is now saying that it will NOT permit its employees to exercise their supposed religious rights under the 1964 Act if the medication or product in question is anything OTHER than Plan B.
(Via .)
10:01:54 PM 
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Clues hint that elite women partook in ancient drinking ceremonies.
(Via news@nature.com.)
Well, of course they're elite! Especially after a few of those beers.
9:41:41 PM
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Great display in the sky tonight. When I came home from work around 6, the moon was directly to the West of Mars. Now, a couple hours later, I can see how it's moved, and is just a few degrees away, nearly due North.
9:08:43 PM
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Religious conservatives are claiming a victory in their war on teen pregnancy. According to some, abstinence education has helped reduce teen pregnancies. At the same time, births to unwed mothers have increased - led by young unwed mothers. So what...
(Via About Agnosticism/Atheism.)
The number of teenage birth has increased, but since they no longer lead when it comes to unwed births, that’s victory. Steve M. asks why young women now lead when it comes to unwed births and suggests that it may be due, at least in part, to having had to endure abstinence-only education in high school and thus now don’t have the knowledge or skills necessary to prevent pregnancy. That sounds plausible, though we’d have to know what percentage of those giving birth outside of marriage did indeed get such “education” in high school.
8:30:24 PM
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Great post from Father Dan:
From the latest issue of Swift: I belong to a professional association and we have a little get together once a month to chat and catch up, etc. Last week was most illuminating when I learned that one in our group is a “psychic.” She was passing out flyers advertising an animal fair for a worthy cause. On the flyer, among the list of things to do, was PET PSYCHIC. Well I wasn't about to let this go.
"Pet psychic?" I queried. "Yes," she replied, "I can tell you what your dog is thinking and how he feels. You should come." "I don't have a dog," I said. Not to be thwarted from a possible sale, she retorted with, "I can talk to cats, too."
"I had a cat but it died. I have an Umbrella Cockatoo now," I said. Her: "You should still come. It will be fun." "What do the animals tell you?" "I ask the dogs how they're feeling, if they're happy, if their food is good, stuff like that." "If I bring my neighbor's dog, can you ask the dog its name and then tell me?
It was here the conversation went from mildly amusing to absurd.
"You could bring your parrot and perhaps I could (pause).... can your parrot talk?" she asked. "Yeah," I replied "so I guess I really don't need a pet psychic."
The person sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, "You do realize you're going to hell don't you?" To which I replied, "You wanna play, too?"
[What Do YOU Think? Comment on this Post!] [Testify!]
(Via Father Dan.)
8:28:02 PM
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The thing about conspiracies is that - once they pass a certain point - you can no longer count on either whistleblowers OR the FBI to root them out. If 1% of this had happened under CLinton, the radio-hypocrites would have burnt out their antennas. (Note this is trimmed from a missive sent to me by someone generally reliable. Each item originally had four sources which I trimmed to one, for space.)
20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA
Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on v otes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
11. Diebold is based in Ohio. http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm
12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years. http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio. http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother. http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation. http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
(Via Contrary Brin.)
8:26:16 PM
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Great review of a terrific book.
(Via SFSignal.)
8:06:28 PM
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Dick Nixon's enemies list was on paper in file cabinets, which placed some intrinsic limits on its utility and secrecy. George W. Bush's enemies list, on the other hand, is electronic, searchable, comprehensive and until recently completely unknown.
(Via Futurismic.)
7:55:32 PM
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This is one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. The author has stitched together sometimes dozens of astronomical images of some of the most beautiful objects in the heavens. This image of the center of M31 in Andromeda is breathtaking, as are lots of others. Visit when you have some time.
7:07:40 PM
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Amazing!
9:46:04 AM
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Once you tell a lie, you're tied into a series of lies, each one necessary in order to validate the first. Josh Marshall draws a clear picture of Republican Ken Mehlman's mountain of lies piled, one on top of the other, during a visit with Russert this morning.
(Via Prairie Weather.)
8:41:18 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 12/2/2005; 7:09:27 PM.
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