Malta votes to enter the 20th century

In a referendum, Malta has voted to legalize divorce. From CBC News:

Malta, a tiny, staunchly Catholic Mediterranean island, has voted in favour of legalizing divorce, according to the results of a referendum.

[snip]

Sunday’s final results of the polling the day before showed that 52.67 per cent of people voted in favour of divorce, according to the Times of Malta.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who had campaigned against divorce, said parliament would respect the will of the people in the nonbinding referendum and work on legislation to legalize divorce….

This is an excellent move, and it should be no–fault divorce that is legalized. In a civilized society we do not force people to remain together if they do not want to. It should be no–fault divorce It should be emphasized that no–fault divorce has no long–term effect on the divorce rate (cite). From the previous it is clear that it is utterly ridiculous to argue that no–fault divorce threatens marriage. In addition, no–fault divorce reduces female suicide by 20%, likely reduces the number of women killed by their spouses, and reduces domestic violence against both men and women by up to a third (cite). With this information in mind, it is clear that anyone who would rather that people commit suicide and be murdered than get divorced clearly has seriously fucked up priorities.

The following is a message from God

Dear not-raptureds:

You may have seen lots of people being raptured today. However, they weren’t the ones you expected. For example, the Robertson, Dobson, Fischer, and Barber types are still here. There are numerous reasons for this.

One is the consistent false predictions. There are far too many doomsdays that didn’t.

One reason is that you accuse me of “creating a fake”. Evolution is a fact supported by overwhelming observable evidence. The cdesign proponentists and creationists dispute this, therefore committing the sin of blasphemy by accusing me of being deceptive. This is why members of the Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis et al are still here.

Another is the few–issuesism. You focus almost exclusively on abortion, school prayer (even though you are told not to show off your faith), and same–sex marriage. How could it possibly be reasonable for my “followers” to be few–issue voters, when I, the creator of the universe, are clearly not a few–issue diety? You give the whole faith a bad name, making all Christians look like judgmental, sex obsessed fundies who cannot mind their own businesses. This therefore excludes the Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, et al are still here.

One other reason is how you promote the heresy of “prosperity theology”. Rather than acting following the reality that a camel going through the eye of a needle has a better chance than the rich man has of getting into heaven, you claim that the rich are especially favoured by me. You even go so far as to falsely ignore one entire book of the Bible. Instead you lie and whine about “redistribution”, while at the same time having no problem running million dollar megachurches and living in mansions funded by the proceeds of your members. This is why pretty much everyone who is a member of a megachurch is still here.

Lastly, you promote hypocrisy and make a complete farce of the idea of being saved. You claim that once you are saved you are always saved and guaranteed to get to heaven, no matter what you do. This provides no incentive for being moral, hence you high divorce rate, rampant child abuse, and the oppression of women. This is why all fundamentalist and theocon types are still here.

For those reasons, this is why the Lunas of the world have been raptured, and why you wingnuts have not.

Have a nice tribulation.

From: God

What is the point of voting out a future appointee?

The Prime Minister has appointed three new senators. All three of them ran for the Conservative Contempt Party and lost in the recent election.

Two of the new senators aren’t really new, as both Larry Smith and Fabian Manning had resigned their senate seats before unsuccessfully running in the recent election. In other words, so much for personal responsibility. The last new senator is Josée Verner, who lost her seat to the Orange Crush. Manning will represent Newfoundland and Labrador, while Smith and Verner will represent Quebec.

Besides merely being an affront to the electorate who rejected them, the appointment of these two senators from Quebec is especially insulting. Contrary to every other province, Section 22 of the Constitution Act, 1867, requires that the senators representing Quebec represent special “electoral” (sic) divisions in the province, rather than merely being resident as is the case elsewhere.

In other words, two politicians who couldn’t even muster a plurality of people in their ridings to support them, have now been appointed to represent other “electoral divisions”.

Two quotes

I’ve found two quotes in the blogosphere, and they basically summarize my view of the Tea Party, Rand, and the GOP.

I don’t know who came up the first, but I found versions of it at both Dispatches from the Culture Wars and at DAMMIT JANET!:

A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate that holds a dozen cookies. The CEO grabs 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.”

I’m pretty sure that the other one comes from someone named John Rogers, writing at the blog Kung Fu Monkey:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Clark elected

Just as I and pretty much everyone else predicted, Christy Clark has won the by–election in Vancouver–Point Grey. She will officially take her seat later this month. This also ends a streak of governing parties losing by–elections that stretched back to 1981.

Amongst other things, Clark only got a (large) plurality of votes. I was expecting her to get a majority, and therefore this by–election was closer than I thought it would be.

This you have to read

A too funny thing this is.

Evolving away the non–existent “species barrier”

Creationists and cdesign proponentists often argue that microevolution (changes within a species) occurs, while macroevolution (gradual change from one species to another) does not. Of course, those types are merely in denial of reality, as they are never able to explain what’s going on with this mythical species barrier” they keep positing.

The reason for this is, of course, the fact that macroevolution and microevolution are the same thing. This picture (via) stunningly illustrates the fallacy of the “species barrier”.

Click to enlarge