Daily Archives: 4 February 2010

Oy! Fundies are everywhere!

The Rabbinical Alliance of America, an Orthodox Jewish organization, has a reputation for being a fundamentalist but usually reasonable group of clergy.

No longer. Here is their spokesman, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, letting his homophobia and wingnuttery hang out where everyone can see it:

“When Americans are suffering economically and millions need jobs, it’s shocking that the Administration is focused on its ultra-liberal militantly homosexualist agenda forcing the highlighting of homosexuals and homosexuality on an unwilling military. This is the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military to satisfy the most extreme and selfish cadre of President Obama’s kooky coalition.

“We agree with Eileen Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness that this will hurt the cohesiveness of the military, cause many to leave the army, and dramatically lower the number of recruits, perhaps leading to the reinstatement of a compulsory draft.

“Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.

“We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough.”

Sodomization. Oooookay.

Religious wingnuts are everywhere, it would seem.

Fuzzy-headed thinking and the University of Minnesota

(Here is a copy of a letter I’ve sent to the contact at the Center. I cc’d the office of the University of Minnesota president, and bcc’d Pharyngula, Joe bless him)

The Center for Spirituality and Healing appears to be an organization, supported by my tax dollars through the University of Minnesota system, for spreading non-science and wishful thinking to both the academic and non-academic community.

If the Center supports “rigorous research” (their words), how could it possibly pass off as true such disproved practices as homeopathy? What does taking a “holistic approach to 2010 to foster total well-being, nurturing your mind, body, and spirit” have anything to do with academic achievement?

A news link on the CfSaH website trumpets “Healthy Giving, Healthy Living”. Visiting the web page, one sees the claim:

“[S]tudies show that with even the most modest of giving, people actually feel better about themselves, and that translates into improved physical and mental well-being. Giving strengthens the sense of connection to family and community, and offers a concrete way to improve the lives of others.”

This is followed by

“So please give a generous gift to the Center for Spirituality & Healing, another way of Taking Charge of Your Health.”

Quite aside from the abuse of language (poor syntax, grammar, and logic abound), using a “news” item to stage a request for donations is quite appalling. Trying to disguise a blatant request for money as something “spiritual” and “healthy” smacks of fraud.

The Center recently sponsored a Homeopathy Acute Care Workshop in the Health Sciences Tower on the UM main campus. How a paragon of learning and science like our state university could possibly condone such a travesty of science and medicine is far beyond me.

I urge the president of the University of Minnesota to review the activities of the Center and take an opportunity to ask why the hell a group that promotes quackery, wishful thinking, and a complete disregard for truth, scientific method, or reality continues to enjoy being under the auspices of an institution of learning.

Paging Michael Moore!

I went to see Moore’s Sicko when it came out, and I must admit that I fell for his spiel hook, line, and sinker.

How naive I was when I was younger.

Moore, a documentarian whom I used to admire, has turned into a propaganda machine worthy of Faux News Network. He regularly takes interviewees out of context, distorts facts to match preconceived conclusions, and very carefully lies by omission.

Moore waxed poetic about Canadian health care in particular. (“Oh, we only had to wait 20 minutes to be seen in the ER here.”) Have a look at how well the socialist health care system in Canada really works:

  • MRIs are scheduled an average of 100 days out (shortage of technicians and machines). Heart bypass surgery is scheduled 45 days out (hope the patient holds out that long).
  • The average wait time for emergency room treatment in Quebec province is 16 hours.
  • Windsor, Ontario, has only two hospitals for a city of 330,000 inhabitants. Two others were closed years ago in a move termed “consolidation”.
  • The salaries of Canadian doctors are legally capped.
  • More than a third of Ontario hospitals — 61 in total — couldn’t balance their books last year, amounting to a $154-million shortfall (too much outgo, not enough income).

I had a recent news article wafted in my direction (thanks, Cindy!) that underlines this point well. The premier of Labrador/Newfoundland had to come to the United States to get proper heart surgery. My favorite quote from the story?

“Having the surgery done in the province was never an option”