Aspies For Freedom

I agree with you... John McCain doesn't: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires...ain-faith/

I'm voting for CJ!

Actually, we do have a candidate with that kind of vision (Dennis Kucinich) but he's treated as a joke. We apparently prefer the corporatist "Greed Is Good" mentality, even though that philosophy is destroying democracy and sucking the life out of the middle classes.

Millions of "believers" agree with separation of church and state. You are again confusing "believers" with "fundies" who advocate defacto or overt theocracy.

Fourth, I think, but at least she's not his cousin. That was his second wife, I believe. Rudi was a lousy mayor on 9/10 and he was back to being a lousy mayor by 9/15. He claimed he "spent more time at ground zero than the rescue workers" -- then records showed he spent a total of 30 hours there -- almost all of it with TV cameras and PR staff in attendance. Many of the rescue workers put in 30 hours in two days.

That was McCain's reputation at one time. "Integrity." But now he's flip-flopped on almost every issue you can name. It's been a long season of McCain making a statement one day, then sending his "spokespeople" out to say the opposite the next day. His stance on the war -- backing a failed president's illegal war -- is a desperate hail-Mary political ploy. The other GOP candidates -- the top tier -- have backed away from the war, so McClain has latched onto it, hoping AGAINS it will turn around so he can get the political windfall of saying, "SEE? i TOLD YOU IT WAS A GOOD WAR!"

I don't think he did.

When the Bush administration sought to sell an illegal war based on lies -- and there's no longer any debate that that's what they did -- they knew the lies would sound best coming from Colin Powell. Powell stood before the UN and knowingly lied his *** off. He has since said it was the lowest point of his life. But at least he still has a life, unlike the 150,000 people who have died in Iraq as a consequence of his lies.

http://images.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007.../story.jpg
As Tom Tomorrow points out, Greenspan would be funny if there weren't so many millions of victims of his anti-human policies.

If by "integrity" you mean Colin Powell and Alan Greenspan, I think I found your ideal candidate:

http://www.robthurman.com/weblog/archives/Bizarro1.jpg

It is important that government be run on the basis of reason, without the compulsory irrationality that religion requires.

Religions need to be protected from undue governmental persecution and control, and governments need to be protected from irrational, dogmatic nonsense.

Great website: http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=aboutau

And The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.

From Time Magazine:

Tuesday, Oct. 02, 2007
Christianity's Image Problem
By David Van Biema

It used to be, says David Kinnaman, that Christianity was both big and beloved in the U.S. — even among its non-adherents. Back in 1996, a poll taken by Kinnaman's organization, the Barna Group, found that 83% of Americans identified themselves as Christians, and that fewer than 20% of non-Christians held an unfavorable view of Christianity. But, as Kinnaman puts it in his new book (co-authored with Gabe Lyons) UnChristian, "That was then."

Barna polls conducted between 2004 and this year, sampling 440 non-Christians (and a similar number of Christians) aged 16 to 29, found that 38% had a "bad impression" of present-day Christianity. "It's not a pretty picture" the authors write. Barna's clientele is made up primarily of evangelical groups.

Kinnaman says non-Christians' biggest complaints about the faith are not immediately theological: Jesus and the Bible get relatively good marks. Rather, he sees resentment as focused on perceived Christian attitudes. Nine out of ten outsiders found Christians too "anti-homosexual," and nearly as many perceived it as "hypocritical" and "judgmental." Seventy-five percent found it "too involved in politics."

Not only has the decline in non-Christians' regard for Christianity been severe, but Barna results also show a rapid increase in the number of people describing themselves as non-Christian. One reason may be that the study used a stricter definition of "Christian" that applied to only 73% of Americans. Still, Kinnaman claims that however defined, the number of non-Christians is growing with each succeeding generation: His study found that 23% of Americans over 61 were non-Christians; 27% among people ages 42-60; and 40% among 16-29 year olds. Younger Christians, he concludes, are therefore likely to live in an environment where two out of every five of their peers is not a Christian.

Churchgoers of the same age share several of the non-Christians' complaints about Christianity. For instance, 80% of the Christians polled picked "anti-homosexual" as a negative adjective describing Christianity today. And the view of 85% of non-Christians aged 16-29 that present day Christianity is "hypocritical — saying one thing doing another," was, in fact, shared by 52% of Christians of the same age. Fifty percent found their own faith "too involved in politics." Forty-four percent found it "confusing."

Christians have always been aware of image problems with non-believers. Says Kinnaman: "The question is whether to care." But given the increasing non-Christian population and the fact that many of the concerns raised by non-believers are shared by young Christians, he says, there really is no option but to address the crisis.

Clarence Thomas is the least qualified Supreme Court placement in living memory. He had only two "qualifications." 1) he was black, and it was politically necessary for Bush Sr. to replace Marshall with another black justice, and 2) he was a hard-core conservative. There were no qualified black conservatives (for self-evident reasons) so they appointed an unqualified stooge. As was the case his entire life, Thomas got ahead on the basis of race, then used his position to prevent other blacks from getting ahead.

Star Parker is a political prostitute who makes her money by trashing black people for white racist audiences and selling crappy books to racists like you.

These are your sources for your wisdom on racial matters? Please. You are the proof against your own argument. An anti-black black person will always find a place of reverence with anti-black white racists.

Yeti, having worked in a mental hospitaal, we're all to familiar with -- and amused by -- the phenomenon by which the craziest character in the hospital fancies himself a doctor. You seem to have set up such a fantasy here and you've devided the entire board into those who seek guidance and a cure from you and those who are evil, drug-ridden, psychotic hooligans.

That's crazy.

You can help me? That's so kind. but before you hang out a shingle and begin practicing, you need to assemble the shattered fragments of your own mind.

We have only your word for the former, and it contradicts all evidence. As for the latter, that's really just another delusion on your part. Do you want my doctors' names? What are you even talking about?

To coin a phrase, psychotic, heal thyself.

Obviously, I never said that, but you're not one to let reality intrude.

Asperger's is not necessarily a medical challenge, Yetti. You don't understand this because you worship at the alter of pathology, and you focus on asperger's as a sickness. You mistake your own sickness for the sickness of all Aspies. Such is not the case.

The goal of this site is to free Aspies from the kind of toxicity you live and breathe. You're the ultimate curebie, and you believe you alone are the cure. You want to tell everyone else how sick and inferior they are so that you can be their savior. It keeps you from looking at what a mess your own life is. You're a crusader. You seek to pathologize everyone to a level below yourself.

To me, this is exploitation. If there are some that want it, that's their choice. So is seeking diagnosis or not, so is deciding how they want to live their lives. If you were a healthier person, you would grant them that.

But, no , it's "you are all sick and I will save you." Such a nasty way of preying on people who may feel insecure.

You talk constantly about people coming here for "help" -- and always, of course, with the implication that you are their answer. (All who reject you are hooligans and losers -- bad mothers, bad spouses, bad, bad, bad.) but in fact there are many reasons to come to this board and the over-arching one is to remove the stigma from Aspergers. You, of course, already dismissed the entire idea of a "movement." You love the stigma, you perpetuate the stigma, and you want to be  the great savior who can "cure" them.

People make choices, Yeti. They don't have to be your choices.

The point of this website is freedom. That's something you don't like. It threatens you.

Damn -- brilliant, EZ. Exactly. Yeti is like the people who think being gay is a sickness and the only answer is to turn everybody straight. Similarly, Asperger's is not a sickness and becoming NT is neither possible or preferable. That belief creates what you call "a group of self-actualised, intelligent, creative, caring and generally amazing people that actually like who they are."

If you were to go back and look at Yeti's posts from her fist invasion, you'll see what contempt she has for AS. Her great boasting is about how she overcame and rose above this "disorder" for which she has such disdain. Just look at her assaults on Sarah, Rossco, Woman from Mars, etc. to see how she attacks them for being AS. Just as gay people know self-hating gays, Yeti is now our resident self-hating Aspie.

I think your description of a free and proud community of people who love themselves as they are is beautiful. It's a community Yeti can't imagine.

And what gets you in trouble -- character disorders aside -- is your inability to read. I didn't say you said "homosexuality is an illness." (Have someone re-read my post for you.) And as for attributing false statements to others, I've seen you do that to Srah, Rossco, me and -- most outrageously -- Tigger. You can't pretend you oppose a practice when you're the only one practicing it.

Apparently you don't understand the concept of NT. Nor do you grasp that nerodiversity includes NT's anyway. Nor do you understand that NT's are not the enemy. Nor do you know anything about my doctors or my disorders. I've never seen a person get so much logorrhea out of so little knowledge.

God, you never tire of lying. I have ADHD. I have an excellent psychiatrist and a psychologist. Occasional but not "serious" depression, no personality disorders (shadow syndrome histrionic, but not enough to qualify for any sort of treatment.) I've done a depression class, one on anxiety. I tried to take a DBT class but, again, didn't qualify. Ah -- wait: mild dyslexia.

Of course it doesn't matter how many times I say any of these things, you'll be lying about them in the next thread.

I love it when you're incoherent.

Well, Yeti, since you've been busted several dozen times in just a couple of days telling lie after lie after lie, I think you'll have to do more than just imagine in order to shift the serial-liar thing away from yourself.

Well, if that's the level of pulling-things-out-of our-asses you want to play, I think you kidnap infants and bite their fingers and toes off. And that is WAY too bad.

It would make some people very happy if I hated myself, but -- well, I'm not given to the grandiosity and delusions that characterize your manic flights, so I'll just say I'm a pretty good guy.

Trust me, Yeti. No one here envies your personal greatness. And even though your struggling narcissism makes you imagine yourself Queen of Aspies, I know some pretty wonderful Aspie people. And frankly, you're an embarrassment to them. Sorry if that's harsh. But I guess it's up to me to be the honest one in this exchange.

And yet you do it constantly. Not well, not imaginatively, not accurately, not cleverly, but constantly. Do you even read your posts, Yeti? I mean, I can understand why you might not, but really -- it might help you bridge the massive gulf between who you are and who you pretend to be.

You're attacking his reading comprehension and you can't even write the attack at a seventh grade level.   Zakkie is one of the brightest young people at AFF and an excellent writer, and you -- who can rarely write a coherent sentence -- want to attack his reading comprehension?

And then you will check his character?

Yeti, for someone with no discernible sense of humor, you sure make me laugh.

Judging from your last several responses, I assume they said "He has revealed you for a liar and a lunatic. Try responding like a four year old and try to arouse his pity."

It's your fantasy, hon. You live with it. And I think you sincerely believe you are. That's what's fun about a manic phase. No wonder you won't take your meds.

Don't try to make sense of it. Just sit back and laugh like the rest of us.