Since chessdev is raggin' on crackers, I throw this out.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Valerie Hodges,
R-Clueless Piece of Church Furniture 

WATSON — Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.
“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.
“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said.
Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.”
HB976, now signed into law as Act 2, proposed, among other things, a voucher program allowing state educational funds to be used to send students to schools run by religious groups.


Other members of the local legislative delegation, including Senator Dale Erdey, Rep. J. Rogers Pope and Rep. Sherman Mack, opposed HB976. They argued that public school funds should stay with the public schools.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s staff pushed hard to get the educational bills approved in the early days of the session, which ended June 4.
Hodges, who represents District 64 on the northwest side of the parish, and another freshman lawmaker in the local delegation, Clay Schexnayder from Dist. 81 in the southwest, voted with the House majority in favor of HB976.
The school funding mechanism, however, did not come up for a vote until the end of the session. By then, a Muslim-based school had applied for support through the new voucher system.
During debate over the MFP (Minimum Foundation Program) funding formula, Hodges learned more about the consequences of the educational changes. She voted against the new MFP funding formula; Schexnayder voted for it.


“Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion,” Hodges said. “We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

Rest of the dumbo-gumbo here.

In my opinion, this is the type of leadership that can get a country in trouble. When one is so densely wrapped in one's religion (apparently, no matter which religion),one does not consider the broader blowback of one's agenda. This woman did not run for office to lead, she ran to further enriched the chances of her "one true" religion got the money that the abortionists won't.

That there is this trend of people living in the 21st century talking open bigotry based on ignorance of basic facts hopefully serves as a purge of idiocy. I wonder who put the money behind this ditz's campaign.

Comments

[kawaiimamimi.livejournal.com]

Damn! You beat me to posting this.

I can't believe she would be so... oblivious.

[kawaiimamimi.livejournal.com]

Also, your picture there is totally not okay.

Christian Bale is easily the most kick ass Batman, I-just-ate-gravel-voice or not.

[mickeym.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I read that and thought, "ahh, another politician who doesn't really know their history."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Especially when we consider things like Thomas Jefferson deleting all the supernatural elements from the Bible........

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Why do you have to be persecuting the christians though?


/trololol

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

As I did to find the meme image, google the phrase "Muslims killing Christians" and try to hold on to your lunch.

I've never seen such gore in propaganda as I saw in those images. No wonder the jesus natives are restless; they are actually scared shitless of The Caliphate™.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The greatest persecution that Christians face is the prohibition against their persecution of others.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Dershowitz was a damn prophet. He might have been talking about the second amendment ("[Those] who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution... [are] courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like") but the lesson applies here as well. How many times have people warned (for example, during the Bush administration) that abuses of executive power (ignored by those supporting the administration) would open the door to those same abuses by a future administration (now decried by those same former Bush supporters?)

Too many politicians are focused on short-term "let's get all the money and power for my group" instead of long-term "what's good policy for the future?" The blowback you're talking about is the unintended consequence of playing fast and loose with rules when your own party's in power. To complain that others are taking advantage of the door you opened is the height of idiocy. Perhaps even hypocrisy.

And, in a way, I'm laughing my ass off as these morons bend over backwards to try to get out of their own mess without looking like bigots (they're failing.)

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Do the moderates enable the extremists?

Does someone declaring "god exists" contribute to the delusion of those who conclude "god exists and has ordered me to commit nefarious acts"?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually I for one would welcome Madrassas using public dollars as it's the only thing that'd smack the Dominionists with clue by fours about what theocracy really means implemented in the USA. It'd make the pseudo-medievalists finally realize that in modern reality what you intend and what you get are always irreconcilable and incompatible things.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

The Sufi school in Berkeley offers nice meals for cheap. Not sure about the Madrassas in Alameda. Their windows are boarded up, but they do hold services. I see draped people coming and going. Its kitty corner from a church called "the first american nationalist church of jebus" or something like that, I joke its Homeland Security's church for spying on the muslims across the street.

When I was 12 I had a catholic priest inform me that people who committed suicide (like my mom had) were doomed to hell for the eternal roasting. Asshole. He also described (to the entire classroom) an exorcism wherein he claimed a girl floated up to the top of a church while possessed by a devil and then fell to her death after the demon was excised. I recall thinking they probably killed that girl and made the story up, and I had better watch my ass. You cannot make this shit up.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

I hate Livingston Parish

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Jesus said, "hatin' gives you ulcers."

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

She's so darn overt about it that you'd almost think it was some SNL parody of the Religious Right but oh, no, she's dead serious, isn't she? It's like something Pat Robertson would say, e.g. "9/11 happened because of abortion and teh gayz."

But, it's not surprising. You gotta realize that, to a certain subset of fundamentalist Christian, the normal person's concept of religious terminology is alien. To these folks, "religion" = fundamentalist evangelical Christianity; mainline Protestantism = traitorous liberals diluting the Word of God; Catholicism = hellbound pagans masquerading as Christians, although the radical traditionalist wing of Catholicism is apparently acceptable; everything else, be it Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, Wicca, or what have you, = "a cult," or, if of the non-believing type, "secular humanism."

When they say "bring religion back to the public schools" or "provide vouchers for children to attend to religious schools" they definitely are not meaning "religion" in a general sense, but narrowly defined as fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. Even other Christian churches aren't "real" religions; like I said, they're either traitors, pagans, or a cult.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

PREACH!


wait...

[mijan.livejournal.com]

She's the personification of Poe's Law.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

A parent should prefer a human being with free will who chooses a religion or none for themselves, not a clone parroting what they've been taught as toddlers.

Indoctrinating a child into Islam, Hinduism, Buddism, or Christianity: all abusive.

Comparative religion in the later years of study is fine by me. You need this information to understand our culture.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

What about indoctrinating a child to speak only one language or to belong to a specific culture? Is that also abusive?

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Ok I'm starting to like this guy.

I'd smoke a bowl of falafel with him anyday.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

As for the topic, it's natural for a parent to include a child in thing they attend to in their early years, like taking them to church or even just to family functions, can't see how they'd be able to leave the baby at home. One of the reasons I like public schools is it's a way for a child to be exposed to the greater world around them, hang out with kids different from them and their family so they get plenty of that comparative experience and learn to appreciate diversity.

But, anyways, I have no interest in raising a child of my own, I let my younger brother pass on the family genes. :p

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I want to use the funding to build Louisiana's first Satanist school.

A place where students can truly make the most out of their highschool years!

And the school's motto would be:

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

And a school fight song by Iron Maiden!

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Garbage in, garbage out.

Also, LULZ:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Valarie-Hodges-for-State-Rep-District-64/223198947723654

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

I dropped a few troll bombs on her 'facts' before I got banhammered. Tit was an alias anyway. Someone is spending a frustrating Friday afternoon deleting thousands of comments from her FB page.

She said 70-100% literacy rates as far back as 1776, but she kind of neglected a significant 'insignificant' part of the population such a Native Tribal people, blacks, and, um, women. It's probably deleted by now.

What a useless piece of Church Furniture.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

People don't like the Bale Batman? He's my favourite!

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

It is too bad that these religious fundamentalists fail to recognize the religion of Thomas Paine as a "Founder's religion." He was attacked as an infidel by the fundies of his own time. He once said that doing good was his religion. Such things are seriously frowned upon by the Hodgeses of the world.