THIS is snow!

Ho, Ho, Ho

Cate gets back from Moscow today. Yesterday it was -28 and her nose froze in the short time she was between hotel and car. She got herself back into working order with some Horseradish Vodka.

It was positively balmy here by comparison – although I ventured out only briefly.  Sissi on the other hand was busting to get out into the snow all day and kept sitting at the terrace door - looking sad until I opened it.

Well thank goodness the Republicans have stopped pretending that they give a rat’s arse about America and its common or garden variety people.  

Senate Republicans promised Wednesday to block legislative action on EVERY issue being considered by the lame-duck Congress until the dispute over extending the Bush-era tax cuts is resolved and an extension of current government funding is approved.

They have rejected the Democrat’s offer to extend all those tax cuts except the ones to the top 2% of income earners in the USA.

That’s right – the long term unemployed - whose benefits stopped on 30 November - can go fuck themselves until those rich Americans – and I mean the ones who earn more than $250,000 per annum (net not gross) can get their tax cuts.

There is really not much you can say about a political party that has these sorts of priorities.

Perhaps Ho, Ho, Ho - to the unemployed and to President Obama (if indeed he really did think at any stage that there was ever ANY possibility of a bipartisan approach to anything).

PS: Last chance to get Justin's bio before Christmas - it's 65% off. If I see him when I have my cricket bat with me I will help him take the Second Step 2 Forever.

Sticks and Stones

It's coming down in droves today.

Here I was sitting in Vienna thinking I was quite happy when who should pop up out of his burrow but my old mate Cardinal Pell.  

And yes he’s slagging off at me again because I do not share his completely irrational belief of the invisible man who lives in the sky. According to him I am not happy. I am frightened, insecure, discontented. 

He chose the time of goodwill to all men to say things about us Atheists such as we have  ''nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss''.

He also made a number of other very offensive comments along the lines that if you are not religious your life is shallow and meaningless and not worth living.

It takes a large amount of blinkered Chutzpah for someone like the Cardinal to talk about ‘constructs to confect the abyss’.  He lives in the biggest fairy tale the world has ever seen. He is part of a vast and corrupt organisation that has been built on foundations of sand – with not a scintilla of evidence to support any single one of the beliefs and practices of the church.  And this from Cardinal Pell who is a world class Bigot, Misogynist and Homophobe.

I find it astonishing that when any prominent Atheist – such as Richard Dawkins – makes a statement about religion – he is accused of being an ‘Aggressive Atheist’. Cardinal Pell and his brethren blithely slag off Atheists every day of the week without censure and barely a comment in passing.

Mainly of course because to Atheists it does not matter what Cardinal Pell and any other member of any other church say.

They are irrelevant. They inhabit a world of their own making where everything they do is determined by someone else – who no one has ever seen – but who is so mighty and powerful that he must be worshipped, bowed to and scraped to every day.

Atheists live in the real world. We understand that this is all there is. That does not frighten us. We appreciate the world for what it is and we appreciate the wonders of creation and nature.

I have a joy for life and the world around me. Once I was religious and was afraid of death. Now I am free of that burden and am content in the knowledge that I am a creature of creation. I have a limited time span here – as every other creature does – and then I will disappear. I don’t particularly want to go (this may change after then next US Presidential election) but I am not worried about it.

To quote the Australian Atheist Foundation

“Far from seeking to cover the abyss, the atheist looks a hostile universe full in its face without recourse to the emotional security blanket of religion and the supernatural. Unlike Pell’s Church (which has become a byword for superstition and resistance to scientific thinking) the atheist sees the world on its own terms, without the rose-tinted glasses of the promise of an afterlife”

We just need to get on with it.