No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Black water, black hearts

The destruction of New Orleans is not just about the incompetence and apathy of the corrupt, criminal and treasonous Junior regime; it's also about their infinite, stomach-churning evil. Read Greg Palast on how Blackwater, the sleazy scumbag mercenary firm that screwed the pooch so badly in Fallujah, is still in New Orleans, preventing people from returning to their homes with threats of deadly force.

A heavily armed gang of thugs, subject to no laws, is openly carrying out ethnic cleansing of United States citizens!

What happened to America? How did it turn into a fascist cesspit?

Groping Outhouse Perverts

Yet another right-wing "family values" type turns out to be a (water) closet gay whose lack of honesty about his sexuality leads him to lewd and illegal acts. What a shocker!

From now on, every time we hear of a Republican taking a "wide stance" against civil rights for gay people, we must ask: doth he protest too much?

Plane carrying congressional delegation comes under Reichstag fire

Someone is filling the Green Zone in Baghdad with black propaganda against Democratic congresspeople who visit Iraq. And last night an aircraft carrying several congresspeople was fired on immediately after takeoff from Baghdad.

Is there a connection? Just asking. We know how much the Junior Junta is frothing at the mouth to wage war against Iran...

But the snow jobs will continue...

Tony Snow is leaving the White House for "financial reasons". His deputy Dana Peroxide is taking his place, ensuring that the flow of lies and spin will be uninterrupted.

Being press secretary for George Bush Junior is like being Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts - the turnover is astonishing. Obviously, Lord Cheneymort has laid a curse on the position.

Hmm, that lifeboat containing the rats deserting the shrinking ship is getting pretty crowded...

Facts? We don't need no steenkin' facts!

The letters page of today's Arizona Repulsive contains an interesting insight into the state of the "liberal media" in a society controlled by the unreality-based community.

Apparently, the Repulsive printed a Cal Thomas article a few days ago in which Thomas wrote frantically about Brits living in fear of a massive wave of Muslim and brown-skinned immigration, and desperately fleeing their country. (I missed the column, but it's most likely this one.)

Today, the Repulsive printed two letters in response. One was from a Brit expatriate in Phoenix, who took offense at Thomas's ill-informed fearmongering and countered with facts. (Except that he's wrong about the British economy outperforming the rest of Europe - Ireland comfortably beats Britain. But then a lot of Brits think Ireland is part of Britain, which may explain the statement.)

The other letter was from someone who, I would bet good money, has never been outside the United States and knows little or nothing about any other country - but praises Thomas's column to the skies as "lucid" and "one of the most insightful commentaries I have ever read" because it echoes his prejudices and panders to his ignorance.

The Repulsive highlighted both letters side by side in a little box, with the heading: "Stark contrasts in views of England." Do you see my point? Facts don't really matter, they're just a different viewpoint. One guy is from Britain and knows what he's talking about, the other is just another right-wing bloviator with no clue and therefore shouts all the louder. Both viewpoints are equally valid.

As progressives, we come across the same attitude all the time. We point out fact after fact detailing the incompetence and criminality of George Bush Junior and his lunatic extreme-right junta, and are met with: "Oh, that's just your opinion". And promptly get shouted down by the "opinion" of the lunatic right which monopolizes the media and consists of nothing but blind, incoherent mouth-frothing rage and hatred against everyone to the left of Attila the Hun. The media, of course, shows how "fair and balanced" it is by once in a blue moon printing or airing a fact-based piece but treating it as, at best, no more valid than the hate-based screeching and ranting of the extreme right.

Dammit, people, facts matter! Reality matters! You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts!

This is a measure of how profoundly public discourse in the US has been poisoned and twisted by the extreme right. If we are ever to drag this country back to sanity, we must somehow pierce the bubble of willful ignorance and denial with which the wingnuts have surrounded themselves and which they inflict on everyone else through their control of the media. We have long hard road in front of us...

Nappy-wearing ho?

One of the top headlines on Google News right now is: 'Nappy-wearing' astronaut to plead insanity. This is another example of "two countries divided by a common language." In Britain, diapers are known as nappies - which no doubt led to a lot of confusion when Don Imus let loose with his racist remarks.

Surgin' on the Verge

Junior is about to ask Congress for another $50 billion (Update: make that $200 billion) to keep waging his pet war against Iraq.

And Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are going to drop trou, bend over and let him have it.

We are all living in the Lower Ninth Ward...

Drowned in the bathtub

Today, on the second anniversary of Katrina, we learn about Queen of Mean Leona Helmsley leaving $12 million to her poodle. Meanwhile, America's Chernobyl - an entire region written off by George Bush Junior and his puppetmasters, because it is poor and black - continues to sink into terminal decay and abandonment.

Despite Karl Rove being appointed as Katrina Recovery Czar, basically nothing has been done to help ordinary people. Gee, what went wrong? I guess Grover Norquist got his wish. Heckuva job, Turdblossom!

But of course it's only the little people who get hung out to dry. Casinos and developers of luxury condos are making out like bandits thanks to federal largesse. Hey, you gotta get your priorities straight - Trent Lott's beachfront mansion ain't gonna rebuild itself.

As for those who suffered through the storm, lost everything, and endured days of killing heat trapped in attics, up to their necks in raw sewage and toxic waste while they waited for help - well, that worked out very well for them, so let's not waste our beautiful minds on them. Let's go shoe shopping and catch a musical!

Two years later, Katrina - along with the cluster-cheney in Iraq - stands as a monument to the Junior regime's incredible arrogance, incompetence, corruption, cronyism, criminality, and total disdain for those they swore an oath to protect. This is what you get when you let a gang of extreme-right, fundy- and millionaire-pandering criminal traitors seize the reins of power, and plunder and loot the treasury to allow themselves and their cronies to wallow in bloated excess while thousands are still forced to live in unimaginably squalid and toxic conditions.

Drowning in the bathtub is too good for these utterly, unspeakably corrupt and loathsome lumps of slime.

The Woo-woo factor

Here's an excellent post by MoronInCharge, which needs to be widely read. With the Ejoomacator-in-Chief and his illegitimate, know-nothing regime intensifying their attacks every day on our scientific institutions, and spreading FUD on everything from evolution to global warming, it's all the more important that we stick to science and reason as the antidote to ignorance and backwardness.

Instead, unfortunately, I often find myself rolling my eyes at liberals pushing crazy theories about 9/11 being an inside job (and showing their ignorance of basic physics), or trying to deny children vaccines for fear of autism, or joining with the extreme-right loonies in the fear that a proposed highway in Texas means that the US will cease to exist and be absorbed into a new North American Union.

As MoronInCharge says,

Conspiracies have and always will abound. Some of these conspiracies will turn out to be real; many more will eventually be revealed as fanciful constructions meant to prey upon our shared uncertainties, fears, and prejudices for personal gain; or to promulgate the conspiratorial paranoia of a select few. We need to proceed ahead on the basis of evidence and not feeling, otherwise we are no better than the unthinking emotional followers of demagogues like George W. Bush.

No intelligence allowed

The cretinists are at it again. In typically sneaky and dishonest fashion, they managed to interview PZ Myers on the pretext of making a movie that explores the "intelligent design controversy" from a neutral point of view.

Guess what... it's a pro-cretinism movie which claims that there is a massive reality-based conspiracy (or something) to keep "intelligent design" (i.e. unintelligent deceit) out of the classroom and out of peer-reviewed scientific journals. They plan to show various sock puppets complaining about evolution, with their faces blacked out and their voices disguised. They even claim that 20-30% of all science is suppressed by this conspiracy. Gee, it couldn't be anything to do with the fact that cretinism is a crock without a leg to stand on, that has never produced a single peer-reviewed paper or accredited college course!

Given their track record (e.g. the infamous Richard Dawkins pause), I guarantee they will edit and quote-mine the hell out of PZ's segment to make him look stupid and/or say the exact opposite of what he actually said when they interviewed him. How despicable.

Hmmm, it would be a shame if people were to make improper use of this page to vent their anger about the shoddy tactics of the cretinists who are producing this movie...

Rethugs: sneaky, lying and dishonest to the core.

Rethugs have long lusted after California's 55 electoral votes, but they know very well that their program of catering to the richest 1%, pandering to the fundamentalist lunatics and screwing everyone else is never going to play on the left coast. So instead they are tackling the problem in typical rethug fashion: sneakily and dishonestly, by floating a fraudulent ballot petition that will dupe people in the name of "fairness."

The plan is to amend the amend the state's electoral system so that it awards its votes according to congressional district rather than the current winner-takes-all system. This means that Junior would have won 22 votes from California, instead of zero, in 2004. Preliminary polls show that California Democrats, when presented with the idea and told that it's about fairness, initially support the idea - until they learn its true agenda.

Now I'm no fan of the electoral college - as I've written before, it was designed to perpetuate slavery, and continues to give undue power to rural, sparsely populated, backward states while granting over 50% of the population 18% of the Senate seats, and hugely diluting their votes in the presidential election. But I notice that the rethugs are calling for a do-over in Dem territory, not in Texas!

Progressives need to fight for a national overhaul of our anti-democratic voting and representation system, but in the short term we must be constantly on our guards against underhanded attacks from the extreme right against those gains we have made. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty! California voters, tear down this wall of deceit and dishonesty!

Yet another rat gets flushed down the toilet...

This time it's Idaho Senator Larry Craig, a "family values" bloviator long suspected of being the biggest flaming queen in the state. He's been busted for lewd conduct in a mens' room at Minneapolis Airport. I guess he'll be spending more time with his right hand pretty soon...

And you can't have too many dancing bananas!

Another rat leaves the sinking ship...

I just can't help myself - I have to celebrate the news of Quaint & Obsolete's departure with a quick and dirty photoshop effort.

Na-na-nah-na, na-na-nah-na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye!

Gonzo's a goner.

War! What is it good for? Ratings and profits!

The "liberal media", led by the despicable Faux Noise, is still banging the drum for war (preferably nuclear) against the people of Iran even as we are only beginning to realize how catastrophic Junior's pet war against Iraq has been for the United States, the Middle East and the world.

It's not had to figure out why. Fearmongering and warmongering are both great for ratings. Plus, thanks to the rapid rise of the right-wing media monopoly in the last few years, the media is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the military-industrial complex - which has profited massively from the neonazi-cons' wars.

Dunno if it will make any difference, but go to this petition page and tell the media not to follow Fox News in its crazed crusade to panic the US population into an even more disastrous war against Iran.

Motherfucker Teresa

Mother Teresa, the "Saint" of the black hole of poverty and squalor that is Calcutta, was a sanctimonious and hypocritical bitch who condemned thousands of poor people to die in misery without even the most basic comforts of modern medicine, because "the suffering of the poor is very beautiful", according to the billionaire who always flew first class and checked into the world's most exclusive clinics to get treatment for her own ailments.

So it is with a certain amount of schadenfreude that I learn that Teresa was tormented almost all her life by lack of faith. Perhaps this explains her frenzied and almost deranged speechifying against womens' reproductive rights - she was putting on a show of religiosity, trying to compensate for her inner emptiness. The sad thing is that losing the certainty of a god's existence is seen as such a tragedy and death sentence of endless existential despair. It's the mentality of a child that learns there is no Santa Claus, and never outgrows the trauma.

I realized long ago that religion is a crock, there is no old man with a beard in the clouds who will come to my rescue like the Seventh Cavalry, and if I want to make anything of my life, it is up to me and myself alone. I think I turned out okay.

I wonder how much suffering and death has been caused throughout human history by holier-than-thou types whose religious fervor and fanaticism is a carefully constructed mask to cover up inner doubts and turmoil? I'm sure millions have died and millions more have lived lives of agony just so that these religiocrats and aerial posthumous pie salesmen could wrestle with their inner demons. If only they'd taken up stamp collecting instead.

Personally, I would echo the plea of one of Teresa's victims, quoted in the second link above: "Tell your Jesus to stop kissing me!" Which gives me a good excuse to post a link to this video: Keep your Jesus off my Penis.

The Dunghill of Deceit

Newspapers are always happy to give column space to religious bigwigs to opine to their hearts' contents, and normally my eyes just skip past, knowing they will have nothing particularly fresh or insightful to say. But here's a column that's different. Written by a rabbi in ultra-blood-red born-again Idaho, it forcefully denounces the George Bush Junior misadministration's lies and acts of treachery that got us bogged down in the Iraquagmire. I was most impressed with the last sentence:

May we rise up together, as Christians and Moslems and Jews and other believers and atheists and agnostics, too, and demand that we, as a nation, support our troops in the only way that really matters - by bringing them home.

The full column is here, and well worth reading.

You can't spell "compassionate conservative" without "ass"

Another thing that makes me want to weep is the incredible cruelty and viciousness of the Junior misadministration against ordinary hard-working people - the 99% who are not privileged to be in Junior's base of haves and have-mores. Maha describes how they are fighting tooth and nail to prevent millions of working people from having access to health care, and links to accounts of how they colluded with China to prevent safety inspections of imports.

I always knew the rethugs were a bunch of greed-crazed heartless bastards, but I've never before seen them this blatant about it. And yet, far too many of their victims will keep on loyally voting the straight rethug ticket because it's God's Own Party and George Bush Junior is a good Christian. Although somehow I think Jesus, if he existed, would say to Junior: "Get thee behind me Satan, thou whited sepulcher."

Religion rots the brain

Read this and weep for the destruction of minds and lives that religion wreaks. Any comment on my part seems superfluous; nothing could add to the horror and insanity of this story.

Let me just show you something that adds to my despair - a screen shot of the Google ads that appeared when I viewed the story. That's right, self-proclaimed exorcists are advertising on Google! Jesus wept.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

For a long time I've been interested in the subject of lucid dreams, where you are consciously aware that you are dreaming. I've read articles that claim it's possible to control your dreams and turn a nightmare into a pleasant dream where you fly through the sky or do whatever you want.

I don't have nightmares too often, but I have frequent recurring dreams that are frustrating - missing a plane, having to sit an important exam for a subject I've never studied, and so on. Occasionally I realize that it's a dream, but I don't seem able to change it.

Last night I dreamt that I was in England, furiously packing to catch a train, and realizing that I had much more things to pack than would fit, and I was going to miss the train. After stressing out for a while, I told myself it was only a dream and I didn't have to be there. Then the scene suddenly changed and I was in Ireland, but once again involved in some ridiculous and frustrating adventure. It made me wonder whether I was really consciously aware that I was dreaming, or whether the realization "this is a dream" was part of the dream itself and not something I had any control over.

For that matter, how do we know that we are really awake when we think we are? The idea that waking life is just a dream, a butterfly dreaming he is a man, is as old as the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi who wrote 2,400 years ago, and still pops up in modern popular culture, e.g. The Matrix. And do we really have free will, or is that just part of the dream? I remember reading somewhere about an experiment where a man was wired up to a brainwave monitor and asked to flex his finger at a time of his choosing. It was found that the signal sent from the brain to the finger to flex it preceded the time when the subject made the decision to flex the finger. So did the guy actually have free will to flex his finger, or did some other agency flex the finger and fool him into thinking it was his decision?

These are fascinating questions to speculate about, but the risk is that we succumb to inertia and stultification, believing that all is preordained, nothing we do makes any difference. It seems to me we should take a pragmatic view. Science has a pretty good record of explaining how the universe works. It could be that science is wrong, that the universe is a simulation in some giant computer - perhaps even a hobby project in some alien's basement. But then all bets are off. In view of science's track record, we might as well go on carrying out research as if the universe exists objectively.

Similar reasoning applies to the question of the existence of a god or gods, and how it should affect our ideas of morality. Devotees of Pascal's lame, refuted-to-hell-and-back wager say we should base all our actions on the belief that this life is just a minor prelude to an eternity with their sky daddy (or in the lake o' fire), and even if we don't believe it sincerely, we should fake it so as to fool this all-knowing, all-seeing entity. After all, we can't be certain that their particular flavor of voodoo, out of the tens of thousands that have existed throughout human history, isn't the one true faith!

Obviously, I take a different view. This world is all we know for sure that we have. Experience tells us that morality that is based on humanism, respecting the rights and dignity of our fellow beings, embracing diversity and open-mindedness, is the best basis for a vibrant and prosperous society. So we should stick with what works and let God, if there is one, take care of himself. After all, what difference does it make to morality whether there is a god or not? Needlessly hurting one's fellow creatures is still wrong. To say otherwise, to say an evil act becomes good if one's god commands it, is to be the ultimate moral relativist.

Is life a dream? Is it reality? I would say, just hang on, do your best to be a decent human being, and enjoy the ride!

What's the frequency, Rush?

A few weeks ago, two TV news helicopters collided in mid-air in central Phoenix while covering a police pursuit of a stolen vehicle. The crews, a total of four people, died but fortunately no-one on the ground was killed.

Clearly, this was a case of our bloodthirsty, sensationalist media finally reaping what they sowed. But Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas doesn't see it that way - he is mulling murder charges against - get this - the driver the cops were chasing, and if the letters to the editor in the Arizona Repulsive are any guide, most people want the driver's blood. WTF?

Fast forward a few weeks, and we find a Chandler policeman absent-mindedly leaving a police dog in a cruiser for several hours with the windows rolled up, and the dog not surprisingly dies. This time, the result is an outpouring of hate mail and death threats against the cop, and demands that he be charged with murder. Once again, WTF?

What is wrong with people? Why can't they think? Why have they no sense of proportion, no discrimination in who they lash out at - anyone will do?

It seems to me that many people in Phoenix - and most of the country - are on a permanent hatred high. They're in a chronic state of free-floating rage, just waiting for an excuse to vent it. I sometimes feel like I've wandered into a movie called "Invasion of the Brain Snatchers." All normal human empathy has been surgically removed, and the lower brain centers that trigger violence and rage are being constantly stimulated.

Where could the stimulation be coming from? The source isn't hard to find - switch on your radio or TV and you will be bombarded with it. For decades, hatred has been presented as entertainment - indeed, it's becoming the dominant form of entertainment. People love being told whom to hate, and they will hate on cue; they will positively seethe with rage against whomever is designated the current Emmanuel Goldstein hate figure whom it serves the financial interests of the power elite to have as a scapegoat.

Big business wants to clear-cut the national forests? Point the hatred machine at environmentalists, and they are eliminated as a threat to profits. Or just want to distract slobus vulgaris americanus from the fact that his job is in China, his life savings are in some executive's numbered Cayman Island bank account and his children's future is down the toilet? Just get him seething with hatred over Terri Schiavo or the bogus "War on Christmas". Hatred is very useful for our megacorporate overlords; it stops the serfs from thinking, and realizing how much they've been screwed.

Sometimes I wonder if the vast right-wing media is sending out a subliminable signal that turns people into raging zombies who march in lockstep to their own destruction. Alas, there's nothing subliminal about it - it's right out in the open. Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity et al have been saturating the airwaves with hatred for decades. Can anyone be surprised if it builds up like toxic waste in the brains of their listeners?

Red Rover

You know what Karl Rove is? He's a communist. In fact he's the ultimate Soviet apparatchik.

We always knew that Rove had politicized the federal government to an unprecedented degree, pursuing his dream of a "permanent Republican majority" - i.e. a one-party state and the end of US democracy, achieved by dirty tricks, corruption, fraudulent elections and destruction of all dissent both within and outside the party. But we're still only scratching the surface of the appalling, almost irreparable damage he's done to our system of government.

In the movie Bush's Brain, Glenn Smith (who was a campaign manager for Ann Richards, one of Rove's many victims) remarks: "Everyone pays for the people they hurt. Karl Rove will, too." But there's no evidence Rove will have a deathbed epiphany like his Svengali Lee Atwater, and apologize for the lives he destroyed. Right now, Rove is still blaming all the world's ills on the Democrats, even though he is obviously hoping that his resignation will make the Dems go easy with the subpoenas and investigation of the trail of wreckage he leaves in his wake.

Rove can't help himself. He eats, breaths and dreams not just politics, but the nastiest, most vicious form of politics imaginable outside the old Soviet Union. It's in his blood, it's how he gets his jollies, it's a twisted form of sexual release for him. Unfortunately, Rove is going to be around, injecting poison into our political process, for many years to come, unless the Dems finally grow a pair between the lot of them and put him on trial for his crimes.

Currently, Rove is doing the rounds of right-wing talk shows and coyly playing the rethug presidential candidates against each other, hoping they will enter a bidding war for his services. But there's no question that if Junior wants some dirty tricks done anytime during the remainder of his failed and illegitimate presidency, he will pick up the phone and have a heart to heart with Turdblossom.

If we had anything resembling a functional media in this country, they would constantly be asking, and demanding answers from Rove, Junior, and all the rethug candidates, to the following questions: will Rove retain his White House security clearance? Will he continue to serve Junior in any capacity, whether official or otherwise? Do you (rethug candidate) endorse Rove's tactics? Will you be retaining him, or anyone else who would perform the same function as he did in getting Junior elected? If you win the election, will you keep Rove or someone fulfilling the same role as a high-ranking member of White House staff, formulating policy and character-assassinating your competitors, commiting treason during wartime by betraying a covert agent, and spending our tax money for the sole purpose of advancing your partisan goals?

The idea of Rove as a "boy genius" is vastly overblown. Lots of people could think up the dirty tricks and sleaze attacks he came up with, but the difference is that they wouldn't dream of putting them into practice. Rove is just a street thug in a pinstripe suit, with no moral compass, no scruples, and no empathy for his fellow humans. He's a psychopath and a criminal, just like his brainless boss.

I won't count Rove out until I see him buried at the crossroads at midnight with a stake through his foul black heart. Alas, Snoop Doggy Turd hasn't left the stage yet, not by a long shot...

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The Gospel according to Junior: Maha presents a link to 50 religious-themed Bushisms.

There's plenty of eating and drinking in this list if you want to analyze Junior's rather infantile and ignorant religiosity, but my eye was caught by #10: "We believe in an Almighty, we believe in the freedom for people to worship that Almighty. They don't." --Martinsburg, West Virginia, Jul. 4, 2007

I've always wondered how Junior can keep trumpeting about "freedom" with a straight face, mindlessly blathering on and on about how he is following a divine mandate to impose freedom on the Middle East by dint of overwhelming firepower and brutality, even while he shreds the Constitution, defecates on our civil rights and destroys all the freedoms we hold dear.

Orlando Patterson may have the answer. He's a Harvard sociology professor who has made a career out of researching the concept of freedom in human history. His key finding is that the modern concept of freedom was originated by slaves. For them, very simply, freedom meant being released from their condition of slavery. But there is another definition of freedom which goes back to feudal times.

In this definition, freedom for the monarch or the local lord means absolute and unaccountable power - being able to do whatever he likes to his subjects. And for the peons, "freedom" means that they must surrender all their rights to the lord, in hopes that he will protect them from the other nobles who are in all likelihood just as despotic as he is. Don't think for yourself, don't take matters into your own hands - just be a good little serf and trust in Big Daddy to take care of you.

I think this perfectly captures what Junior, and the extreme religious right generally, have in mind when they talk about freedom. This is another case where the reality-based community and the extremists are talking past each other. Does any common ground exist? It's looking more and more dubious as raging theocrats get increasingly vocal about their desire for full-on Christian dominionism with no place for people of any other faith, let alone atheists or agnostics.

As far as I am concerned, there can be no compromise on this issue. I reject the extreme fringe right's definition - or rather, perversion - of the concept of freedom. The "freedom" they offer us is nothing but slavery. We must defeat them so that genuine freedom can prevail!

I wonder if they realize that "Richistan" is an anagram for "Christian"...

One million dollars sure isn't what it used to be, at least not in Richistan, the competitive, cash-flush world inhabited by the super-rich: A world where even a billion dollars doesn't guarantee you a spot on the Forbes 400 and Jaguars are considered pedestrian; where parents worry about how to back-date their trust-funded offspring with a semblance of work ethic, and multi-millionaires go into debt purchasing alligator-skin toilet seats for their private yachts.

That's the opening paragraph for "The Tawdry Rich", a review of the book "Richistan" in Forbes, the company that services said Tawdry Rich and tells them how to get even richer at everyone else's expense.

Anyway, this is George Bush Junior's legacy; the idle rich pay no tax and live "clueless, shamelessly arrogant" lives of "tackiness and extravagance", while bridges collapse and people die.

I feel more and more that the United States as we know it is in its twilight years, having gone from barbarism straight to decadence without an intervening period of civilization. The last time this sort of blatant opulence was seen, the French Revolution followed. Is Karl Rove's head the first to roll?

Monday news headlines

I'm too busy to be in anything other than "me too" blogging mode today, so without further ado, here are your news headlines:

Turdblossom gets flushed - finally. One step ahead of doing the perp walk out of the White House in handcuffs.

What Lord Cheneymort said in 1994 (video). "How many dead Americans was Saddam worth? Not many."

[Update: I love this headline at "No Blood for Hubris": Fall of Turd Reich As Karl Rove Cuts & Runs]

Numskulls

PZ discusses how the media and the religious lunatic fringe has bollocksed up the story of recent hominin skull finds, and quotes John Hawks: "Human Evolution A Bush, Not A Ladder."

A million years of human evolution, and we get Bush, not a leader.

Hot damn if those cretinists - oops, creationists - aren't on to something after all!

Earth's axis of evil

Will Santa Claus be the next Saddam Hussein? Will George Bush Junior soon announce a military mission to invade and overthrow him, and liberate the oppressed elves - and their oil and gas?

Okay, maybe this is a fanciful scenario, but there's no question that the vast reserves of petroleum and natural gas believed to lie under the Arctic Ocean are sparking a colonial land rush not seen in decades. Days after Russia planted a flag by submarine on the sea bed underneath the North Pole, Canada has announced plans for major militarization of the Arctic, and even Denmark - by dint of its claim to Greenland - is getting in on the act. Can the United States of Halliblackwatertelbold be far behind?

The reason this has suddenly become a hot issue is that global warming, by melting large parts of the Arctic ice cap, has made the region more accessible. The inevitable result, if exploration and drilling go ahead, will be further degradation of the once-pristine environment due to spills and the unavoidable waste and detritus of industrial activity. Then of course the greenhouse gases released by burning this oil will continue the vicious cycle and add to the positive feedback loops which make global warming such an explosively growing crisis. And that's the best case scenario, if we can avoid five-way military conflict between the US, Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway over the whole region.

Wouldn't it be better to take the billions that are going to be spent destroying the Arctic and instead develop clean, renewable energy sources, and leave the damn oil in the ground?

Our Potter who art in Hogwarts, Hallowed by thy name...

I don't know which is worse - the fundie morons who froth at the mouth about how evil and satanic the Harry Potter series is because its mythology conflicts with their mythology, or the ones who want to assimilate it, Borg-like, into their narrow and limited world view.

"The Gospel According to Harry Potter"... "Looking for God in Harry Potter"... sheesh! Why can't you just look for your god in your holey buybull, and leave the damn Harry Potter books alone for people who want to enjoy them on their own terms.

It always kills me how ignorant and arrogant many Christians are. They think they invented morality and spirituality 2,000 years ago, and everything else is derived from their particular myth. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with the works of Joseph Campbell should find this claim laughable. The archetypal myth of the god who becomes flesh, dies and rises again is many thousands of years old. Christianity and Harry Potter are merely two different instances of this archetype, along with just about everything from ancient Greek myths to The Matrix.

Throughout human history, religions have evolved, and borrowed (or ripped off wholesale) elements from each other, even while condemning each other as the vilest heresy worthy of instant death and everlasting torture. Every faith is the One True Faith (TM) - like the Highlander, there can be only one. The result of this mindset has been centuries of endless warfare, bloodshed and oppression.

As I've written before, the extent to which a religion spreads or dies out has nothing to do with what it teaches - it simply reflects how hard the religion's adherents fight to impose their beliefs on others. Unfortunately, most people are appallingly ignorant of their own religion, let alone anyone else's. Otherwise, maybe more of them would see how ridiculous and tragic all this infighting is.

Many right-wing Christians fly off the handle (pardon the pun) at the broomstick-riding and similar plot elements of Harry Potter, as if they're scared to death that the minute you let the little tykes get their hands on the books, you'll be dodging low-flying Nimbus 2000's and Expelliarmus charms in your own kitchen. But it seems to me that the real lessons children learn from the series is not how to make Polyjuice potion, but the importance of friendship, loyalty, and above all taking a stand against unfairness and injustice. Hmmm... maybe the fundies are right to be scared!

What are they, on drugs?

WASHINGTON - Dying people do not have the right to obtain unapproved drugs that are potentially lifesaving, even if their doctors say the treatment offers the best hope for survival, a U.S. appeals court in Washington ruled Tuesday. [Link]

This story really pisses me off. People are dying, and their only faint hope is some experimental drug. The drug may kill them, but they'll die for sure otherwise. Their doctors recommend trying the drug, they know the risks, they make an informed decision - and the activist judges step in and tell them they have no right to save their own lives.

Once again we see that conservative morality is a contradiction in terms. It's not about alleviating suffering, it's not about having the slightest empathy for one's fellow creatures - it's all about mindless rigid adherence to obsolete doctrines and dogmas. There is no underlying principle involved, just authoritarianism and knee-jerk hostility to any idea that might challenge entrenched thinking.

But even more worrying than the immorality of this decision is the muddled thinking and appalling ignorance it reveals about the very nature of rights under the US Constitution.

"We conclude there is no fundamental right ... of access to experimental drugs for the terminally ill," said Judge Thomas Griffith, an appointee of President Bush.

Griffith's opinion was joined by conservative and liberal members of the appeals court.

The two dissenters were Judge Judith Rogers, a President Clinton appointee, and Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a President Reagan appointee.

"In the end, it is startling," Rogers wrote, that the Constitution has been read to include unnamed "fundamental rights" to marry, to control a child's education, to have sex in private and to have an abortion, "but the right to save one's life is left out."

Hold on a minute. The Constitution is not a laundry list of rights! The whole point of the Constitution (as the Tenth Amendment makes clear) is to enumerate and limit the powers of the government, not to list and restrict the rights of citizens. Nor does the Constitution recognize a hierarchy of rights, with some rights being more fundamental than others. All rights are fundamental!

If (hypothetically) I want to smoke a joint, why shouldn't I? I would be exercising my right to pursue happiness. The onus is on the government to say why my right to smoke a joint should be restricted. It's not up to me to search the Constitution for the right to take any act I want to take, before I can take it! That is no basis for a democratic country - it's the hallmark of a totalitarian hive society where everything is either prohibited or compulsory.

Conservatism trumpets itself as the movement that has a monopoly on the concept of freedom, the one that gets big government off the backs of the people. This ruling shows how hollow and mendacious that boast is. Conservatism is really all about relieving the wealthy and well-connected of their obligation to be accountable - by paying taxes, by refraining from polluting and destroying the environment and so on. At the same time, conservatism means Big Brother in the bedroom, intrusion in the doctor's office, and vindictive, rigid paternalism any time one of the "little people" wants to make a decision in his or her own private affairs.

How do the conservatards keep getting away with this crap? And why do so many liberals play right along with them?

Bomb bomb bomb, Bomb bomb Japan...

Today is the 62nd anniversary of one of the most massive war crimes in history, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. The astonishing thing is that so many conservatives and neonazi-cons still defend this mass slaughter of civilians on incredibly specious grounds. The fact is that the US knew very well that Japan was on the brink of surrendering, and the claim that the bombs "saved lives" is a lie that must have had George Orwell scratching his head in speechless amazement.

And even if one could justify the killing of 70,000 non-combatants at Hiroshima, how can anyone excuse the destruction of Nagasaki three days later, before the Japanese even had time to assess the damage of the first attack? What the apologists won't tell you is that the two attacks were a cold-blooded experiment to see which type of bomb would do more damage - the uranium "Little Boy" used on Hiroshima, or the plutonium "Fat Man" which destroyed Nagasaki.

Finally, racism played a huge part of the selection of Japan as a target, along with a desire to send a message to the Soviet Union and the world at large in the post-war era: "Don't fuck with us, 'cause we're the meanest motherfuckers on earth." This attitude that it's okay to nuke brown people is still very much evident in the attitude of the Junior misadministration and its psychopathic sycophants to the use of "bunker busters" and its drooling eagerness to nuke Iran.

Truly, we have learned nothing from history...

Weapons of mass destruction go missing - again

The picture at this article says it all. George Bush Junior is far and away the dumbest thing on two legs.

Washington - The US Defence Department cannot account for 190,000 military rifles and pistols supplied to newly organized Iraq Army units, police and other security forces, according to a US government report. [...] There were fears that the weapons could have reached hostile militias and insurgents fighting the US-led military coalition in Iraq, the newspaper said.

Hey Junior, did you try looking under the Oval Office sofa cushions?

Three things you didn't know about Jesus Christ

1. His personal power animal is the Arctic Lemming.
2. His 'Numerology' number is 7. "If it wasn't bulls**t, it would mean that you are spiritual, eccentric, and a bit of a loner. Introspective and analytical, you think deeply and prefer seclusion."
3. According to the US Census Bureau, 0.157% of US residents have the first name 'Jesus' and 0.002% have the surname 'Christ'. The US has around 300 million residents, so we guesstimate there are 9 'Jesus Christ's.

More results here. HT to PZ for the link.