The End of DADT

I am very proud of my country today!

Noah --

Moments ago, the Senate voted to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

When that bill reaches my desk, I will sign it, and this discriminatory law will be repealed.

Gay and lesbian service members -- brave Americans who enable our freedoms -- will no longer have to hide who they are.

The fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this one.

This victory belongs to you. Without your commitment, the promise I made as a candidate would have remained just that.

Instead, you helped prove again that no one should underestimate this movement. Every phone call to a senator on the fence, every letter to the editor in a local paper, and every message in a congressional inbox makes it clear to those who would stand in the way of justice: We will not quit.

This victory also belongs to Senator Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and our many allies in Congress who refused to let politics get in the way of what was right.

Like you, they never gave up, and I want them to know how grateful we are for that commitment.

Will you join me in thanking them by adding your name to Organizing for America's letter?

I will make sure these messages are delivered -- you can also add a comment about what the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" means to you.

As Commander in Chief, I fought to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" because it weakens our national security and military readiness. It violates the fundamental American principles of equality and fairness.

But this victory is also personal.

I will never know what it feels like to be discriminated against because of my sexual orientation.

But I know my story would not be possible without the sacrifice and struggle of those who came before me -- many I will never meet, and can never thank.

I know this repeal is a crucial step for civil rights, and that it strengthens our military and national security. I know it is the right thing to do.

But the rightness of our cause does not guarantee success, and today, celebration of this historic step forward is tempered by the defeat of another -- the DREAM Act. I am incredibly disappointed that a minority of senators refused to move forward on this important, commonsense reform that most Americans understand is the right thing for our country. On this issue, our work must continue.

Today, I'm proud that we took these fights on.

Please join me in thanking those in Congress who helped make "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal possible:

http://my.barackobama.com/Repealed

Thank you,

Barack

Takedown of NOM's Misleading Iowa Ad

Gina Trapani Schools Us on Facebook Security

Gina Trapani does great work and here is a good article from her. Here she is trying to help educate folks about some of the moves Facebook recently made that affect your privacy and then shows you how to take control of how much you share through your use of Facebook.

If you are so inclined, please leave a comment thanking Gina. She does good work. If you are a huge Google fan, then you'd want to learn more about Gina. A lot of her work is focused on Google products.

Time to Audit Your Facebook Privacy Settings, Here's How

Yet Another Threat From the World of Islam

Islamic group threatens Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Yet another of the COUNTLESS examples of why it is dangerous to believe in the supernatural. You can't make sound decisions about how to lead your life when those decisions are founded on the delicate navigation of and the impossibility of deciphering any meaning from supernatural beliefs.

Praise God! Oh, that's the Devil.

I have to admit that when I hear someone attribute a personal achievement to god or a personal failure to the devil, it really annoys me to no end. How does actually believing this make for a healthy perspective on what it means to live in the real world and embrace how life actually works? From my perspective, this kind of thinking is a symptom of a person who is still struggling to grasp the reality of their lives and this world.

When you attribute an accomplishment to god, you are not honoring what it is that YOU have actually accomplished all on your own. You are denying yourself the full praise for what YOU have done. I think that is bullshit and self destructive. At the same time, we often achieve accomplishments through the help of others. Typically those others would be people who care about you. So here you are also disrespecting or dishonoring their efforts to help you achieve what you did.

When you pawn your failures or shortcomings off on the devil, you are not taking full responsibility for your own actions and mistakes. This is clearly an issue in any society considering that your actions and decisions will always affect someone else to some degree or another and here you are skirting some or all of the responsibility to closely and fully evaluate the results of YOUR decisions and actions so that you can determine if there are better ways or even what those other ways are.

That touches on the concepts of what critical thinking and intellectual honesty are all about. These are two things that people in the scientific, skeptic and free thinking worlds strive to honor and raise up above most other things. It baffles me that apparently most of the world prefers to live their lives and often force decisions onto other peoples lives based on how they have personally been able to decipher a bunch of contradicting made up non-sense about a vengeful yet loving sky daddy thing that cannot be proven exists and that we quite certainly could never truly know the motivation or desires of even if it did.

My perspective on this also goes for "random" or "uncontrollable" events beyond the individual. One could say that the insanely low quality of the infrastructure in many of the poorer countries that have been hit with all these various natural disasters was to blame for the resulting horrific numbers of deaths. Of course, there are also psychopaths like Pat Robertson who have their own unique perspective on things. The answer is quite simple in my eyes. WE, as a whole planet full of the same human race, are to blame for the fact that WE are failing in our responsibilities to ensure that we are all protected and provided the same safe guards equally or at least much more equally then they are now.

Price Drop for TV Shows in iTunes Store

A single song can easily stand alone. People don't mind buying them individually. I personally prefer full albums from the artists I love, but again I seem to be the minority rather than the majority. As a fan of a TV show though, someone isn't going to just want one off episodes. Maybe for some series you can get away with that, but there are plenty of series these days with a clear overarching theme. Why would people only buy a single episode here and there? They want to see the whole series. If the prices were cut, I agree with  that you would see many more people snatching up whole seasons of shows through the iTunes store. I know i've been waiting for this moment to start snatching them up. I just hope I do not turn out to be the minority once again in this case.

Apple arguing to have iTunes TV show prices cut?

How To Find My Representative and Senators

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

District Office
	87 North Raymond Ave, Ste. 900 Pasadena, 91105M Phone: (626) 304-2727 Facsimile: (626) 304-0572
	Washington, D.C. Office
	326 Cannon House Office Building Washington D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4176 Facsimile: (202) 225-5828

Boxer, Barbara - (D - CA)	Class III
112 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3553
Web Form: boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/

Feinstein, Dianne - (D - CA)	Class I
331 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3841
Web Form: feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactU...

Spiritual Health Care

This is the letter I am sending to my Representative and Senators. I hope enough people take the time to speak out on this. The only part I wrote is the last paragraph.

January 17, 2010

Dear Representative Schiff,

Dear Senator Boxer,

Dear Senator Feinstein,

Tucked into the health care reform bill passed by Sen. Harkin’s Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee is a mandate that insurers reimburse for “religious or spiritual health care” that is classified as a deductible medical care expense by the Internal Revenue Service. See S.1679, Section 3103(a)(1)(D).

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on which Congressman Bruce Braley sits has added a similar measure to the House health care reform bill. See Section 125 of HR3200.

If the federal government forces the insurance industry to pay for prayer, the Christian Science church and other faith healing practitioners will use the federal law as another argument that Christian Science “treatment” or prayer should be a legal substitute for medical care of sick children.

Between 1 and 5 children currently die in the United States, per month, from religiously-motivated medical neglect. If the Congress passes into law these provisions equating prayer with medical care, this number will surely increase.

There will be more laws like West Virginia’s religious defense to fatal neglect of a child when parents withhold medical care and instead rely on prayer-treatment “if fees and expenses incurred in connection with such treatment are permitted to be deducted from taxable income as ‘medical expenses’ pursuant to regulations or rules promulgated by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. (West Virginia Code 61-8D-4a(b)).

Iowa’s religious defense to felony child endangerment and manslaughter at Iowa Code 726.6(d) has been justified on similar grounds.

The government should not be forcing anyone to pay for prayer. We urge Congress to remove all provisions in the health care reform bills that require insurers to reimburse for prayer or any other “health care” that is not evidence-based.

The irony here is that it is typically people of faith who pull the "but it's to protect the children" card to evoke the emotional reaction they need to sway people to an irrational stance that supports their side of many arguments. Now here we are, many of the non-believers of the world, having to pull that exact same card. Yet, we are having to pull it for the REAL and PROVABLE abuses that WILL occur under the kind of measures such as the one in question. They would be abuses perpetrated by people of faith no less. What is happening to our country!? It floors me that this and many other kinds of atrocities perpetrated in our world, of which are fueled by ridiculous ideas stemming from the Abrahamic faiths, are not enough to convince more of the world how dangerous religion and belief in god is. This kind of lunacy needs to be stamped out of our country not turned into law. Contrary to popular belief this country was founded on secular principles and it survives as well as it does because of those secular principles. Keep faith in churches and especially out of our government. I will not be forced to pay my tax dollars to people who will get paid for abusing and killing children!

Sincerely,

Mr. Noah Wiles
5019 Santa Anita Ave
Temple City, CA 91780-3618