Apology not accepted.

I realize that dumping a candidate this late during an election is something any leader would want to avoid, and I commend Ignatieff for having cut Andre Forbes over his racist comments, although a more rigid background check would have prevented his candidacy in the first place.  His words weren't a mistake.  They reflect his attitude and beliefs, an attitude and beliefs the Liberal party claims it condemns.

John Reilly, Liberal candidate for Wildrose also said some things that the Liberal party claims it condemns, but this time, Ignatieff forgives him and leaves him in place.  The man regrets it, Ignatieff tells us, and even tries to appeal to our sense of pity by saying that the former judge will have to live with the comments the rest of his life.

Oh?  And the consequences?  He still gets to run in the election.  I guess living with it won't be so bad after all.

Like Forbes' words, Reilly's reflect an attitude and beliefs.  In fact, even after apologizing, he said he made a political error but still believes not all sex offenders should be incarcerated.  He claims he used a clumsy example first time around.  OK, so what sexual offense crimes deserve a walk?

It doesn't matter if Reilly had a "long and distinguished career."  It doesn't matter if he made many good choices.  This one stance is not one a progressive party should give a pass on.  Sexual assault cannot be deemed anything else simply because the guy was young, or stupid, or helplessly turned on because the unconscious woman was naked.  That just gives would be rapists permission to abuse situations.

That’s some magic spell

Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”  - Bill O’Reilly, while declaring that such unexplained, magical events are the basis for his belief in an invisible sky monster.
                           
O’Reilly isn’t alone in his avoidance of reality in favour of grasping at sorcery to spoon feed him answers to everything.

Pope Benedict has asked Catholic priests to do a better job preparing people for marriage, saying that no one has an automatic right to wed.

But a bunch of old guys who have never been married are the best people to decide who is fit to marry, and who isn’t.

Because they have their magic book, their spells, and a direct line of communication with the invisible sky monster.  You know, the one who uses magic to make tides go in and tides go out.

That’s some spell they cast over people like O’Reilly who trip over themselves to bow at the feet of these old bachelors in their wizard robes.  Despite ongoing reports of child rape committed by the men in funny clothes, some people still hand the most important decisions of their lives over to them.

How can any sane person believe that leaders of a group which claims to have taken vows of celibacy and has no experience of the day to day struggles that married couples face trust such out of touch people to decide whether or not they should marry?

How can they even consider the words of people who preach celibacy as a virtue but rape and shelter rapists in their own group?

That is far more difficult to explain that why tides go in and tides go out.

We are an amazing species, capable of manipulating our environment, able to do long-term planning, capable of spatial/time thinking.  We wake up each day knowing we are free to make choices and decisions that will shape our day, our future, yet some of us cheerily hand over this freedom to those old guys in dresses who can’t even follow their own doctrines and laws.

I’ve heard many people try to excuse religion by saying that it gives people strength.  I don’t agree.  It allows them to avoid making difficult decisions.  It stops them from learning how strong and capable they are by facing challenges without a belief in magic.  It helps them avoid consequences to their actions.

Religion belittles what we are by giving credit for our strengths to some myth handed down through generations by ancestors who did not have the tools and understanding to explain the world around them and came up instead with explanations based on magical beings and supernatural events.

Now we can explain how tides go in and tides go out, but some of us choose not to.  We can also decide on our own whether we are fit to marry.  Some societies have fought dearly for that freedom, yet some people still choose to consider the dictates of the old, unmarried pretenders who claim to have some special, magically conveyed wisdom that the rest of us lack.

Benny the Rat does say one thing that carries some truth -

On Friday, Benedict said that public officials must set a good moral example for society.

He was referring obliquely to Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his escapades, feeling the spirit of the ghost bird no doubt inspiring him as to what is moral for a married man, but really, before looking to what married men do what their dicks, he should look to his own group of sorcerers and lecture them on setting good examples.

You know, little things like don’t go around raping kids, and don’t help members of your group cover up such rapes.