10.24.06
Posted in politics at 10:01 pm by Brandon
If you’d rather not read the rest of this message, here’s the punchline: Vote “no” on proposal 2. Now, go tell your friends to vote no on proposal 2. Okay, you’re now free to go about your business.
Okay, now that we’ve gotten those only mildly committed to reading the drivel I, seemingly semi-annually, toss out into the great wide open of cyberspace, I can have a heart to heart with the rest of you. At least the rest of you who live in Michigan or care to hear about a Michigan election issue.
Perhaps some folks have heard of Proposal 2, perhaps not. This proposal has been titled the “Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.” Sounds great, right? Civil rights, freedom from oppression, social justice, well, that’s what they’d have you think anyway. What the Michigan “Civil Rights” Initiative is about is abolishing affirmative action.
…*silence*…
What’s that? You don’t like Affirmative Action?
Well, first let me dispell a few myths about affirmative action:
1. Affirmative action was first coined by Kennedy in 1961 when he said that government funded entities who were recieving federal dollars because they claimed to value diversity should be making affirmative action toward finding, recruiting, and retaining underrepresented groups (including women and minorities).
2. You heard me right, it’s not all about black vs. white. Women–well, white women anyway–were actually the first real beneficiaries of affirmative action. Of course, the truth is the workforce (males included) benefitted from greater female representation in the workforce–so to say that women were the first beneficiaries of affirmative action is incomplete.
3. Affirmative action affects government funded entities. All those horror stories you’ve heard about a black high school student getting into Harvard with a 22 ACT score–whether it’s true or not, it has nothing, absolutely NOTHING, to do with affirmative action. Harvard is private.
4. Affirmative action does NOT support the hiring of unqualified candidates just to make a quota. If you’re a white man and you’ve been told by an employer that you weren’t hired in favor of a lesser qualified minority or woman just to make a quota, either you’ve been lied to or the employer didn’t understand affirmative action.
Affirmative action IS about seeking to actively create a diverse environment through open and affirming hiring practices.
The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative seeks to ban any affirmative action program. The law of the state of Michigan as set forth in the Michigan constitution allows for discrimination with regard to race in order that a reasonably valid going concern is met by such discrimination. That is, if we use race to increase diversity–which shows all sorts of benefits to things like cognitive complexity and decision making–it has to be because it does show a reasonable number of these benefits.
A PROPOSAL TO AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION TO BAN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PROGRAMS THAT GIVE PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT TO GROUPS OR INDIVIDUALS BASED ON THEIR RACE, GENDER, COLOR, ETHNICITY OR NATIONAL ORIGIN FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION OR CONTRACTING PURPOSES
The proposed constitutional amendment would:
•Ban public institutions from using affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes. Public institutions affected by the proposal include state government, local governments, public colleges and universities, community colleges and school districts.
•Prohibit public institutions from discriminating against groups or individuals due to their gender, ethnicity, race, color or national origin. (A separate provision of the state constitution already prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin.)
The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative seeks to ban any racial preferences EVEN IF THEY PROVIDE FOR BENEFITS TO ALL OF HUMANITY. This is stupid.
There is bi-partisan agreement that this initiative sucks ass. Even Republican man-lover Dick DeVos (Michigan Gubernatiorial-unlikely-but-hopeful) says that this initiative sucks. And Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm has agreed that we should all VOTE NO ON PROPOSAL 2.
Please vote no on 2. But, more importantly, tell your friends. Send them here if you have to do so. If a George Bush-loving Republican can agree with his Democratic opponent (in an election year, no less) that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative is no good, IT REALLY MUST BE NO GOOD!
Tags: Proposal 2, Michigan, Elections, Politics, DeVos, Granholm, Affirmative Action, Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
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10.18.06
Posted in faith at 10:31 am by Brandon
I’m taking a little break in my “revolutionaries” series to share with you a few thoughts that arose after I read the latest tripe at the Christian Worldview Network by “Dr.” David Noebel.
Christian Worldview Network has posted some really off the wall stuff before, and to be honest, I haven’t even really been reading all of it to know that this latest stuff is really the worst, but I can confidently tell you that Noebel’s piece is truly the most horrible piece of writing I have ever read at that site. Please do go read it in its entirity, and know that rather than to waste bandwidth on bullshit, I’ll just be reproducing the particularly flagrant bits of trash.
Further, I’ll be addressing the rest of this thought directly to “Dr.” Noebel, in case he’d like to respond–though, frankly, I think probably he won’t have much to say.
Dear “Dr.” Noebel,
First off, I’d like to ask you why you happily let people refer to you as a doctor? Being a doctoral student myself, I would never dream of not completing my doctoral degree and allowing thousands of misguided followers attribute more source credibility to myself than they should. So, why, when (as stated in your profile on the Christian Worldview Network site) you did not complete your doctorate in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin (the reasons for which we can only guess), why would you allow–in an official publication sent out to thousands of readers–yourself to be referred to as “Dr. David Noebel”. Why on your own Summit Ministries site would you refer to yourself as “Dr. David Noebel” That’s not just misleading, or a half-truth. It’s a bald-faced lie.
This point makes the claims you choose to make in your most recent article “Will the Real Sodomy Party Please Stand Up?” a little more clear. Frankly, no Ph.D. worth their salt would ever make some of the claims you make. Here are a few examples:
There hasn’t been a homosexual issue that the Democrats haven’t either backed or initiated since the ACLU determined that homosexuality would make a great stick to poke in the eyes of conservatives, traditionalists, and all natural law advocates. There hasn’t been a gay pride parade which hasn’t been led by a Democratic politician! There hasn’t been a gay pride book for first graders not endorsed by Democrats.
Bold claims, these are Mr. Noebel. Can you back them up? Can you cite evidence? You see, had you successfully completed your degree in Philosophy, you would, no doubt, have been required to take a course in basic logic. Perhaps you took it and just didn’t care or understand what was going on. In order to be able to prove this claim, sir, you would need to have knowlege of EVERY instance of EVERY homosexual issue, and EVERY democrat would have needed to back or initiate UNILATERALLY. I defy you to turn the rest of your life’s work to documenting EVERY instance of EVERY homosexual issue, and demonstrate that EVERY democrat backed or initiated those issues UNILATERALLY.
Then, when you complete that work (this should only take about 20 or so years) you can begin to start finding evidence to support your second claim: There hasn’t been a gay pride parade which hasn’t been led by a Democratic politician. Frankly, I’m not sure what it would prove if you could demonstrate this, but in order to demonstrate it you’ll need to document EVERY instance of EVERY gay pride parade ever. In each of those instances, you’ll need to demonstrate that a democratic politician led the parade. I defy you to support your claim.
Then, when you complete that work (and please work quietly, being people who value results–as doctoral students like you and I do–you wouldn’t want to report your findings before you’d completed your investigation) we can then turn to your next claim: There hasn’t been a gay pride book for first graders not endorsed by Democrats. Again, and I think you’re getting the drift here, you’ll need to document EVERY instance of EVERY book you label as a “gay pride” book, and demonstrate unequivocally that a democrat endorsed each one. I defy you to support your claim.
But, it’s not just Democrats you claim to know the “truth” about Mr. Noebel, you’re an equal opportunity “hater.” Here’s what you had to say about Log Cabin Republicans:
The truth is that every Log Cabin member knew of Republican Foley’s homosexuality, and I would be surprised if the Log Cabin didn’t know of his hitting on the pages for years. Homosexuals keep close tabs on these things and are really good at defining exactly who is and who is not “hitting on the boys.”
Wow, I never thought I’d be in the business of defending Republicans. And, honestly, I’m not sure they need defending from your cartoon arrows. In order to defend, to cite evidence for, the above claim, you will need to identify EVERY Log Cabin Republican, and be able to show evidence that EVERY Log Cabin Republican had knowlege of Foley’s homosexuality. I defy you to support your claim.
Finally, you make an implicit claim–a little easier for you to defend–that you’d be surprised if the Log Cabin didn’t know of his hitting on boys for years. How many Log Cabin Republicans would it take for you to be surprised at how few knew of Foley’s follies. 10%? 20%? 50%? Perhaps you can do a survey, I’m sure the Republicans in question would truthfully answer a survey from you about how many of them knew a member of Congress was having inappropriate relations with boys. I defy you to support your claim.
Here’s a good one: “Homosexuals keep close tabs on these things and are really good at defining exactly who is and who is not ‘hitting on the boys.’” But, not one citation. Nien. Nada. Clearly, for such an erudite and respected intellectual it would be mere child’s play for you to, off the top of your head, cite some social scientific study that supports such a claim. Perhaps academia is too liberal for you to trust their findings…then certainly you yourself have conducted some survey, some focus groups, done an experimental manipulation, even a quasi-experimental design, done an ethnography–maybe an auto-ethnography, perhaps, hmmmm… 
–maybe you’ve COLLECTED SOME DATA to support your wild claim!!!
But finally some evidence:
I have come to the personal conclusion that pedophilia and gayness go together like Mary and Mary’s little lamb. I may be wrong, but every “chicken hawk” that I have known has been on the hunt for “chickens.” Congress and church are just the playgrounds where the hunt occurs.
Above this claim you do offer some evidence! Kudos to you Mr. Noebel. Your “n” is now equal to one. Only 199 more instances of homosexuals that are pedophiles and people might start listening to you. Of course, the argument you make implicitly is that pedophilia is somehow unique to homosexuality. Your study design unfortunately does not test for this. You’d also need to sample (randomly, mind you) among both homosexuals and heterosexuals and determine if the rate of pedophilia is greater among one population or another. Of course, contrary evidence (and I do have citations) is rampant (Bickley & Beech, 2001; Freund et al., 1989; Jenny et al., 1994; Marshall et al., 1988; McConaghy, 1998). Even if you did conduct the aforementioned study, you still wouldn’t have evidence of a causal relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia. The aformentioned design doesn’t allow you to rule out, by randomization, spurious causal agents. I defy you to support your claims.
Science is important Mr. Noebel. I want to know if you’re right. Unfortunately, you’ve given me absolutely no reason to think you are.
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10.16.06
Posted in revolutionaries at 5:46 pm by Brandon
I’m a fan of this one…a big fan. This guy brought revolutionary to a new level.
You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler,
The gambler,
The back biter
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut ‘em down
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut ‘em down
Well my goodness gracious let me tell you the news
My head’s been wet with the midnight dew
I’ve been down on bended knee talkin’ to the man from Galilee
He spoke to me in the voice so sweet
I thought I heard the shuffle of the angel’s feet
He called my name and my heart stood still
When he said, “John go do My will!”
Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler,
The gambler,
The back biter
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut ‘em down
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut ‘em down
You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand
Workin’ in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light
You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler,
The gambler,
The back biter
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut you down
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut you down
Tell ‘em that God’s gonna cut you down
5 points to the first person who can correctly identify this revolutionary (without googling the lyrics, you cheating bastards.)
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10.11.06
Posted in revolutionaries at 12:11 pm by Brandon
So, ah, here’s my deal. I’ve been busy.
Now, I’m not talking “mildly occupied”, I’m talking “holy-crap-balls-Lucy-I’ve-fallen-asleep-doing-reading-for-
class-every-night-for-the-past-three-weeks busy”.
Anyway, because I’ve been busy, and for whatever reasons, some of you have been ever so kind enough to keep popping by, I’ve decided that I’d do a series of low-work (for me) and high bang for your buck (for you, given that you can read here for free) posts on revolutionaries of the web. I’ll try to pick out some quotes from web-revolutionaries of the faith that are making their voices known. That’ll make me feel a little better about taking the more reclusive posture I’ve been taking, and it’ll give those of you who waste your time here feel like you have something to read.
So, here’s the first revolutionary tale from a 40-something gentleman. Whether he’s a person of any faith or no faith I don’t know. Frankly, it doesn’t much matter. His message, a destinction between Christians and christians is, I think a helpful one:
Christians– those people on TV and in government who are always judging and condescending (see also Idiots & Pussies). Not to be confused with christians (lower case ‘c’) who are feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, clothing the poor, consoling the heartbroken, standing up to the Man in support of the People. You find Christians on TV and in public office calling us to assasinate the president of Venezuela or kill innocent Arabs; you find christians in the poorest areas of your city handing out food and clothing and along the US/Mexico border handing out water.
Food for thought.
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