Worse Than Home-Schoolers

The Hauser family of Minnesota wants to let their son refuse chemotherapy. Their 13 year old son.

With chemotherapy, Daniel Hauser has a 90 percent chance of surviving his Hodgkin's lymphoma, according to his cancer doctor. And without it?

"It is almost certain that he will die," said Dr. Bruce Bostrom, a pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota.

So what's their reasoning?

Colleen and Anthony Hauser are supporting what they say is their son's decision to instead treat the disease with nutritional supplements and other alternative treatments favored by the Nemenhah Band. The Missouri-based religious group believes in natural healing methods advocated by some American Indians.

So this is their religious beliefs? Not exactly.

The Hausers, who are Roman Catholic, have eight children. Colleen Hauser told the New Ulm Journal newspaper that the family's Catholicism and adherence to the Nemenhah Band are not in conflict, and said she has treated illness with natural remedies her entire life.

So why exactly are they so eager to endanger their son's life?

"My son is not in any medical danger at this point," Colleen Hauser testified.

She then went on to say, "You know, unless you count the Hodgkin's Lymphoma."

Colleen Hauser testified her son became sick and depressed after the first treatment, and said the family only would consent to traditional treatments in the case of a life-threatening illness.

So what are you waiting for? Ebola?

All right, so let's hear about this group, the Nemanahs. This is some sort of Native American group, with centuries of accumulated wisdom and knowledge of natural healing techniques, right?

Nemenhah was founded in the 1990s by Philip Cloudpiler Landis, who said Thursday that he was one-fourth American Indian.

Ouch! This doesn't feel like a scam to you?

Nemenhah adherents are asked to pay $250 to be members.

Oh, come on!

Who is this Landis fellow?

Landis said he founded the faith after facing his diagnosis of a cancer similar to Daniel Hauser. He said he treated it with diet choices, visits to a sweat lodge and other natural remedies.

And?

Wait for it. . . . .

Landis also once served four months in prison in Idaho for fraud related to advocating natural remedies.

OH! there it is! Shoulda seen that coming!

"The issue is Danny's right to decide how he wants to live his life," Landis said. "What if they make him take chemotherapy and he dies from that?

Good point, except NO ONE DIES FROM CHEMO!

If only this group could get a little crazier. . . . .

Colleen Hauser testified that Daniel was a medicine man and elder in the Nemenhah Band.

Seriously, Colleen, a pseudo-religious group that makes a dying 13-year old boy a medicine man and an elder, that might not be the folks you want to be getting a lot of guidance from. I'm just saying. You know what the word "elder" means, don't you? Because apparently, they don't.

The mother said her son made the decision himself to refuse chemotherapy: "I think he understands he has the right to choose healthier forms of dealing with this cancer."

Right, like dying!

This is Minnesota, right? At least now I understand who's voting for Michelle Bachmann.


UPDATE:

Judge rules family can't refuse chemo for boy

MINNEAPOLIS – A Minnesota judge ruled Friday that a 13-year-old cancer patient must be evaluated by a doctor to determine if the boy would benefit from restarting chemotherapy over his parents' objections.

In a 58-page ruling, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser has been "medically neglected" by his parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, and was in need of child protection services.

Finally, some one with some sense has stepped in!

Homeschoolers

Is there anyone who home-schools their kids who isn't a paranoid survivalist, a religious fanatic, a white supremacist, or some combination of the above? Who else would want to keep their kids from seeing or interacting with the outside world? Want to see an example of their paranoid, hate-and-fear-based reasoning? Look no further than this article by the ironically named Charlie Butts and Jody Brown:

Calif. school day would honor homosexual pioneer

The California State Senate is poised to vote on a bill making an official "homosexual day" in every public school

Ok, so right away, you know that's not true. There is not going to be "homosexual day" in any school. So to what does this refer?

It would be called "Harvey Milk Day" in honor of the openly homosexual San Francisco Board of Supervisors member who was shot and killed in 1978

Ok, so see, you were lying. Sentence One of your article was a lie. And if I've learned anything from Judge Judy, and I have, it's that if you start out by lying to me, I'm not going to be inclined to believe anything else you say.

Randy Thomasson of SaveCalifornia.com says the legislation designates just another day to indoctrinate children in the tenets of homosexuality.

Right, just like when they started observing Martin Luther King day, and everyone turned black!

Oh, any gay readers, could you maybe fill me in on what your "tenets" are? Cause I seem to be missing them. To me, you just seem like everybody else, but in better shape.

"That's why we've called California parents to get their kids out of the government schools and into the sanctuary of homeschooling or a good church-schooling instead," he shares.

Ah, there it is! Yes, let's home-school the kids. Sure, they'll come out thinking that the world is seven thousand years old, and the sun revolves around the world, but by God, our sons are going to like titties, and our daughters are not!

But wait, you say, home-schooled children are actually very well educated? What prestigious group of academics is making this assessment?

Home schoolers get 'A' from marketing exec

Marketing exec? What marketing exec?

Josephine Nicholas is the CEO of Published Daily, a firm started by her brother and run with the help of two other siblings. All four were home-schooled.

Oh, isn't that just adorable? Josie and her siblings are running their own little business that no one's ever heard of and is probably headquartered in their parents' garage! How sweet! Well, surely she's qualified to make judgements about education!

The lovely, and not at all insane-looking Josephine Nicholas





Josephine says, according to research, home schoolers typically score higher and are more ambitious than their peers.

Um, Josephine, if you're going to cite "research," it's customary to include a footnote, or endnote, or something which refers to said research, like who conducted the study, their methods, etc. No, no, it's OK! I understand. See, that's the sort of thing they teach you in real school. You had no way of knowing.

"Once they're graduating -- and many of them are actually graduating younger than their peers -- and as they graduate they're moving into society in general," she notes.

Yeah, mom getting tired of "teaching" you is not actually the same thing as "graduating." Anyone can graduate early if your fake school has no actual requirements. I could home-school Professor Junior and let him "graduate" once he learns to spell his name. But that wouldn't really count for anything.

as they graduate they're moving into society in general," she notes. "Whether it's going and getting a job and really being productive in the work force, or actually many of them are creating their own jobs and creating jobs for others by starting their own businesses."

Wow, moving into society in general! What an accomplishment! And getting jobs, and being productive in those jobs! My God! That level of acheivement is hardly ever seen from grads of actual school! Although, in their defense, graduates of real school would probably know how worhtless this type of anecdotal evidence is. So that's something.

Randall M. Kessler

I know, I'd never heard of him either. But a couple days ago, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, in a bid to speed up their plunge from respectability, gave Mr. Kessler a slot as guest columnist. This is the headline for the treatise up with which he came:

Other states’ gay divorce can affect us

OOOOHHHH, I'm scared already!
How would we be affected?

What happens if a gay couple marries, adopts a child and then divorces, all in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage, but then they move to Georgia? If the custodial parent seeks to enforce a child support award against the other parent, what does the court do?

If it enforces it, then hasn’t the court, and thus the state, recognized same-sex marriage, by enforcing the terms of the same-sex divorce? If it does not enforce the order, aren’t we then harming the most innocent victims, the children who need the support?

You're right, family law attorney Randall M. Kessler, it makes way more sense to deny a large segment of the population their basic equal rights than for, say, Georgia to join Vermont, Massachusetts, and IOWA in the 21st Century. Let's continue a program of discrimination, lest things get too confusing! (oh, and nice touch with the "think of the children" theme!)





















What else you got?

If one party was awarded a house that happens to be in Georgia would that divorce order be enforced in Georgia? If so, wouldn’t Georgia then be recognizing, at least by implication, same-sex marriage?

If not, aren’t we sending a message to Vermont or whichever state granted the divorce that we would not enforce their orders? And could this mean that Vermont might retaliate and not enforce orders of our state?

Oh, my God! Vermont might retaliate! Are you fucking serious? Is this something you really imagine happening? A moron judge from Georgia decides not to uphold Constitutional law for fear that it might, like, give aid and comfort to the gay people, so Vermont declares shenanigans?

Doe it concern you at all that the only images I can find to illustrate your ideas come from animated cartoons?

Are you sure you should be practicing law?

Miss California, Again

Good God, am I sick of this woman!

I saw her making her little speech about her grandfather at the Battle of the Bulge, and how he fought for her right to say stupid stuff at a bimbo contest, and she gets all choked up, and I thought I was gonna puke!

Then she says, and I'm going to paraphrase here, because i don't want to have to watch it again to get the exact quotation, but she says something like, I exercised my freedom of speech and I was punished for it!" And I'm thinking, how were you punished? You weren't stripped of your crown, even when it came to light that you had violated pageant rules, nothing bad happened to you, what do you mean punished?
Then I realized, Oh, she thinks that her anti-gay-marriage speech is what cost her the Miss USA title. She thinks that the title is rightly hers, but it was taken away due to her political beliefs. She thinks that the contest is not just based on who's the prettiest and who boinked the most judges. She really believes that she is the victim of a witch hunt by the miss USA audience, whom she says is "95% gay, or whatever."

Let's get everything we have to discuss about Miss CA out of the way here, so we never have to mention her again. First of all, how many of these pictures are going to keep popping up?


She's blaming the new ones on the wind, which apparently blew her shirt off, and blaming the photographer for taking the pictures. . . for which she was. . . posing, or something. . .






Look at the photo on the right. How is she going to say that the photographer shot that "in between poses" (which she is claiming) That's not a pose? For God's sake, at least be honest! Maybe the one on the left, where she looks to be fixing her hair, maybe you could claim that that one was taken without your knowledge, but the one on the right? Oh, Puh-leez! That's a pose if ever I've seen one.

Prejean said the latest round of photos showing her bare chest were outtakes from a photo shoot taken two years ago for a California surfing magazine.

“I actually was standing on a cliff and it very, very windy, and it was the photographer and I, and he had to have gotten some sort of shot of me where I was exposed,” she said. “However they should not have been published.”

Yeah, how could the photographer have gotten a shot of you where you were exposed, standing there all shirtless and all. Boy, that's a mystery! Oh, and those photos were for a magazine, so, yeah, they should never have been published!

The she said this:

"Honestly, I felt as though Satan was -- and I don't want to say that this person represented Satan, but -- I felt as though Satan was trying to tempt me in asking me this question. And then God was in my head and in my heart saying, 'Carrie, do not compromise this. You need to stand up for me.

Riiiiight, God Almighty needs bikini girl to stand up for Him. The Lord of Heaven and Earth needs help from an aspiring lingerie model. Ok, then! No delusions of grandeur there!

One last thing.

Why is this:

Considered shocking and distasteful,






But This is perfectly acceptable?

Anti-intellectualism

I believe we've touched on this theme before (here) so bear with me if this feels repetitive.

I know by now, it shouldn't be shocking, or even surprising to read something like this column by some pea-brain named Micheal Barone:

On Guns and Climate, the Elites Are Out of Touch

by Michael Barone



but I'm still stunned by the level of willful ignorance and the lack of simple logic that goes into a statement like this:

Similarly, last month, pollster Scott Rasmussen found that only 34 percent believes that global warming is caused by human activity, while 48 percent said it is caused by long-term planetary trends. That's almost exactly the opposite of what he found 12 months before -- 47 to 34 percent the other way around. However, 48 percent of the group Rasmussen calls the "Political Class" -- in other words, the elite -- continues to believe global warming is man-made.

I'm seriously flabbergasted that someone would actually posit that public opinion polling is in some way relevant to science.

I imagine that if Mr. Barone's car breaks down, he stops 100 people at random and asks them what they think is wrong with it. Then if his mechanic's diagnosis is different, well, the mechanic must be wrong!


In Mr. Barone's world, this counts as scientific research!



















What else ya got, Barone?

As for global warming, many Americans may have noticed that temperatures actually haven't been rising over the past decade, as global warming alarmists predicted. The elites are able to hire armed security guards and jet off on private jets, so they are less likely to notice these things.

Seriously, I can't believe I actually have to tell you this, but casual observation is NOT on a par with scientific research.

Here's another point. Let's say global warming has topped off. Let's say that it's not going to get any warmer. Even if that were true, it's already too hot! The polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, if the temperature doesn't go any higher, that just means that these phenomena will not speed up. It doesn't mean that the will stop or reverse themselves.

If you place an ice cube out on the kitchen counter, it will start to melt. Assuming your kitchen is kept at a normal temperature, it will melt pretty slowly. If the temperature is raised, the melting will speed up, but even if the temperature never increases, the ice will continue to melt. No matter how many people you survey who might believe otherwise, the facts don't change.

There's something very wrong with our society if people believe that scientific facts are subject to opinion polling. Sure, everyone has an opinion, and on some subjects, like say, the best flavor of ice cream, or the best hitter in baseball, one opinion's as good as the next. No, scratch that! When it comes to the best hitter in baseball, yes, that's a matter of opinion, and there can never be any one definitively right answer, but the opinion of, say, Willie Mays, or Hank Aaron, or Joe Torre should carry a lot more weight than that of the average baseball fan, and a hell of a lot more than the opinion of someone who doesn't follow baseball. Would anyone disagree with that? Would anyone argue "I know as much about hitting as Willie Mays!" No! No one with any sense would make that claim.









So why should the average person's opinion carry that kind of weight when it comes to science? I'll bet the average Joe on the street knows a hell of a lot more about baseball than he does about climatology, but he would never claim to know as much as Mays, or Aaron, or Torre, etc. But on the much more arcane subject of global climate trends, oh sure! My high-school science class that I slept through and copied off of the smart girl to pass gives me the same level of expertise as a PhD who has spent his adult life studying the subject. Where does this level of bone-headed arrogance come from? It's stunning! But I guess by now I shouldn't be surprised.