I'm subscribed to a Google Alert for web, blog, and news updates daily which is how I find 99% of the things I post here. Very handy, especially since the three categories are nicely separated when you get them via daily digests. My problem and the reason for the last of posts over the past four days is that almost all of the new news articles are about old news, primarily Edwards health care plan. Different people come across this stuff over time so you keep getting the same old stuff every day, and I won't post redundant material.
While the blog posts tend to be more unique, they've all been stuck on the manufactured paid-blogger controversy lately. Not all of it is constructive or worth talking about. In fact, I don't think a lot of this crap deserves to be repeated here, or anywhere. On the other hand, I'm bored, so I shall expound for a moment. Just scroll past this stuff if you're only interested in news links.
I don't know if the entire site is this way, but I keep getting alerts from townhall.com which amount to biased rants from conservatives that just love to apply their "rigid" morals selectively to people they didn't really like in the first place. I guess they are just as bored as I am, because they keep writing about it, and they keep missing the point.
As one looks back at John Edwards and his Potty-Mouthed bloggers, that's the question that keeps springing to mind. What circuit misfired in the Edwards campaign that led him to hire two of the blogosphere's most notoriously bilious, hate-filled and obviously controversial denizens?
To which I would reply, there was no controversy until the leader/spokesperson of a private religious group started complaining as loudly as he possibly could. Not so much because these two bloggers aren't eight-years-old and know that swearing isn't going to be ending the world anytime soon, but because he perceived them to be anti-Catholic. Problem is this guy and his organization happen to be anti-gay and anti-choice. The latter is a debatable issue for another place and time, but come on, let's be open and honest about all of this. We're talking about a professed bigot calling other people intolerant. Just because the man doesn't swear (in public anyway) doesn't sweeten the stench coming from his side of the fence in the least. Hate speech and intolerance don't recognize party lines and nobody can claim morals as their own.
That has been said over and over but you don't hear it in the media, or from the conservatives, because intolerance is only bad when it comes from liberals when it concerns the right, and the media just doesn't care. If there is something they can run with to get attention, they'll do it.
Also, I'm calling out Dean Barnett for lying about these two being fired. This was dated the 10th, two days after Edwards personally announced that he was keeping Marcotte and McEwen. Note to the Senator: There is nothing wrong with being anti-Calothic per say, there are over 40,000,000 anti-Catholics in the United States and another billion world-wide; they are called Atheists.
Edwards acted promptly. He fired Marcotte and one of her colleagues in potty-blogging. His campaign, however, maintained a curious radio silence pertaining to the terminations. Other than a background notice to Salon that alerted Salon alone of the firings, no one knew exactly what was going on at Edwards HQ.
Neither person were fired, and no proof of this exists outside the imaginations of the right. I'm sure they'd love to believe they had some effect on the deal, but all they've done is blown up nothing into even more nothing. Marcotte and McEwen are still happily employed by the campaign, and that doesn't figure to change anytime soon.
But after his ill-advised hire, Edwards had the choice to offend the blogosphere or to offend the "godbags." He chose to offend the "godbags." Since the country is composed of 98% "godbags," this was a decision every bit as short-sighted and idiotic as was the original hire that kicked off the controversy.
It must be very liberating to just make up statistics, but I can tell you based on information I gathered for a recent article, it just ain't true. A person of faith once stated that America was a strong majority of believers and that it wasn't ever going to change. The statement on face is silly since everything in nature is subject to change, but this particular thing I figured was only getting stronger over the past few years, so it was worth looking into.
What did I find? I was wrong.
If you bundle all of the various sects of Christianity together, and compare it with the combination of atheism and agnosticism, the difference is quite striking when compared to Barnett's uneducated guess. The non-believers in America accounted for nearly 15% of the population six years ago, and was the fastest growing category in a measure of faith. Christianity has in contrast lost nearly 24 million faithful between 1991 and 2001 and only accounted for 79% of the faithful in this country, a drop of 8.5% over that span. All other religions combined only amount to 1.7% of the total population, so it's not even close.
As wrong as the "98% godbags" statistic is, I'm sure Barnett would be even more horrified than what Marcotte and McEwen are saying to find that the vaunted religious establishment in the United States is actually beginning to fade away.
That said, I'm hoping the stench from this manufactured crap will roll out of here soon as we can get back to real news like the thirteen million men all claiming to have impregnated the late Anna Nicole Smith.
Note:Given how much I ranted on the above stuff, I'm dropping the news into another post.
