No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Since you asked...

Hemant posted this list of questions some time ago, but I only came across it today. Here are my answers, short and sweet as I could make them.

• Why do you not believe in God?

I see no reason to believe that any god or gods exist. The universe appears to get on fine without them.

• Where do your morals come from?

I have a conscience, and empathy for my fellow creatures.

• What is the meaning of life?

There's no such thing as "the" meaning of life. It's up to each person to make their life meaningful.

• Is atheism a religion?

No, just like health isn't a disease.

• If you don't pray, what do you do during troubling times?

I look for help and support from friends and loved ones, and from my own inner strength.

• Should atheists be trying to convince others to stop believing in God?

That's not even possible. You can convert someone to a religion by giving them a package deal of beliefs, telling them what to think and feel in any situation, and meeting their emotional needs. For some people, it's very attractive to surrender their capacity for independent thinking and buy into a religion. But people only become atheists when they think for themselves and dare to question the beliefs they've been raised with. You can't force another person to do that. You can only support someone who is already on the road to atheism.

• Weren't some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century committed by atheists?

No. Hitler was a devout Christian. Stalin may have been an atheist but he didn't slaughter millions of peasants single-handed - he relied on an army, most of whom would have been religious and used to the Russian tradition of autocratic despots who were both religious and political leaders. Besides, Stalin had people killed because he was a megalomaniac who wanted to crush all opposition to his rule. Atheism probably had nothing to do with it.

• How could billions of people be wrong when it comes to belief in God?

Everyone used to think the Earth was flat.

• Why does the universe exist?

There is no "why". Why does a mountain or a tree exist? It just does.

• How did life originate?

That is an open question in science. We may never know, but science will eventually come up with one or more possible answers, without having to fall back on the supernatural.

• Is all religion harmful?

At best, religion is extraneous. You can be a moral person without it. In fact, a morality that is based on rationality and empathy with one's fellow creatures is always better than a morality based on dogma and superstition. To avoid being harmful, religion must abandon its irrational baggage and water itself down to the point of irrelevancy.

• What's so bad about religious moderates?

They are covering and making excuses for violent fanatics instead of standing up to them.

• Is there anything redeeming about religion?

Religion provides a sense of community for many people, and motivates some people to do good works. But there is no saving grace religion has, that an atheist couldn't have.

• What if you're wrong about God (and He does exist)?

If there is a god, I would hope that he (if male) would respect me for using my brain instead of blindly believing what other people, who don't know any better than me, ordered me to believe. And if he is the psychotic monster of the Old Testament, fuck him. He doesn't deserve any decent person's respect.

• Shouldn't all religious beliefs be respected?

No! I respect people's right to have beliefs. I don't have to respect the beliefs themselves.

• Are atheists smarter than theists?

Not necessarily. People have an amazing ability to compartmentalize their brains. Very smart people can believe very dumb stuff. But in my experience, atheists are more independent minded and more likely to question received wisdom.

• How do you deal with the historical Jesus if you don't believe in his divinity?

I'm not even convinced there was a historical Jesus. Most likely he was a conflation of several figures, real and/or legendary. Like Thomas Jefferson, I believe it's possible to read the gospels for moral teachings without having to accept the supernatural claptrap.

• Would the world be better off without any religion?

Yes, provided people think about how to relate to others, and make an effort to be decent human beings.

• What happens when we die?

Life goes on without us. If we live on, it is only in the memory of others.

Schizoid Nation

The year is 1965. Al Siebert is a promising young medical student who has just completed his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan, and been awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the prestigious Menninger Institute in Topeka, Kansas. The mission statement of the program is: "to foster a searching curiosity about clinical processes that will generate new research into the nature of these processes. The program allows Fellows a two-year 'moratorium' in which they are free to re-examine and reintegrate their theoretical, clinical and professional skills." Siebert is eager to put these principles into practice by asking, among other questions, why psychiatrists are so anxious to dominate their patients by forcing treatment on them when it is often ineffective.

Early on, he witnesses a disturbing incident where a resident brow-beats a newly admitted patient: "You must accept that you're mentally ill before we can help you." The patient refuses to do so, and the resident gets increasingly angry and overbearing. Siebert is shocked to learn that this is a routine ritual with new patients; there's been no mention of it in his training. Some residents are unhappy with this practice but are threatened with being dropped from the program if they don't go along. So much for fostering curiosity and re-examination of conventional wisdom!

Later on, Siebert interviews a patient who has been labelled "acute paranoid". He quickly realizes that the man is perfectly sane but hates his job and is unhappy in his marriage. His wife, parents and boss are all putting him under tremendous pressure to be someone he isn't. The patient reveals that he told the admitting physician, "Everyone's trying to push their thinking into my head." Bang! The poor guy is labelled schizophrenic, forced to believe that he is mentally ill, and committed to a mental hospital where he will be doped with powerful drugs but otherwise warehoused away and forgotten about.

Later, Siebert meets a young woman who seems genuinely schizophrenic. But when he simply treats her with kindness and no prejudgments, her self-esteem rises dramatically and a few weeks later she is judged well enough to be released. Siebert's colleagues regard this as a case of spontaneous remission and show an alarming lack of curiosity as to what worked and whether it could be repeated with other patients.

Siebert grows increasingly concerned that psychiatry is on the wrong track. Some of its practitioners seem to have a need to bolster their esteem by labelling everyone around them mentally ill. This compels them to force (often unwanted) treatment on their patients with scant regard for whether it actually helps. At the same time, psychiatrists seem blind to the relation between mental health and self-esteem in the patients.

Siebert talks about his ideas with his wife. She expresses horror and cannot accept his ideas. A few days later, Siebert gets a call from a colleague, telling him that his wife is starting psychotherapy and he needs to come in for an interview. Siebert and his wife come in to the clinic. Mrs. Siebert is asked to go back and wait in the waiting room. Siebert is very suspicious, but tells the psychiatrist about his ideas and how they upset his wife. Siebert's wife is called back to the office, and the psychiatrist tells her, "You were right, Mrs. Siebert, he is mentally ill."

What??? Siebert comes up with an interesting idea that challenges conventional psychiatric thinking and is supported by case studies - and his colleagues declare him mentally ill and want to lock him up! The program director tells Siebert, "Your ideas make me feel uncomfortable. You should be in a mental hospital."

Fortunately for him, Siebert knows how the system works. If he is admitted involuntarily to a mental hospital, it will be much harder to leave - and if he leaves without permission, the police can come after him and drag him back. Siebert checks in voluntarily and is put in a ward full of chronic, heavily medicated patients. He is forced to take Thorazine, even though no doctor has examined him or written a prescription for it. The drug makes him weak and lethargic until he learns to hide it under his tongue, then flush it down the toilet when the aides aren't watching.

Siebert eventually escapes from the hospital and uses his knowledge of the system to negotiate a "discharged against medical advice" release so he can get back his personal effects and won't have to spend all his life looking over his shoulder. Today he is a successful author and teacher who is helping others to overcome the stigma of being labelled schizophrenic. He regards his horrifying experience as an invaluable inside look at the psychiatric profession, more valuable than any prestigious fellowship.

I learned this shocking story in a book entitled Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous To Your Mental Health, by William Glasser. This book's contention is that mental illness is vastly over-diagnosed. There are of course conditions such as Parkinson's that are caused by physical damage or pathology in the brain, but the vast majority of people labelled mentally ill are simply unhappy or frustrated, either because they are trying to control other people or other people are trying to control them. The good news is that such people can often help themselves, or be helped by loved ones, sometimes even if they have severe symptoms such as fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis for which no physical basis has been found. The bad news is that the medical system has no real interest in helping people; it just wants to prescribe a drug which will chemically lobotomize them, and then move on to the next patient.

In many ways the situation is worse today than in 1965. The use of electroconvulsive shock treatment has actually risen, fewer people get counseling, and more people are doped and zombified with successive generations of increasingly powerful "wonder drugs" such as Prozac, Zoloft and what not. The profession of psychiatry has more or less become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry, which heavily underwrites psychiatric conferences, research and education, and steers development in the direction of more pill-popping.

The drugs that are pushed on the patient have often been hurriedly and inadequately tested, work no better than placebos, but can be addictive and have severe side effects such as tardive dyskinesia. Many of them are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, meaning they work on the brain in the same way as cocaine and methamphetamine. Basically nothing is known about their long term effects, particularly in the still developing brains of children. And yet Ritalin - kiddie crack - is routinely doled out to children just to get them to behave. It's for the convenience of teachers - there is no evidence that diseases du jour such as ADD and ADHD have any real medical basis, let alone that 20% of US children suffer from the mythical "chemical imbalances" that supposedly give rise to them but have never been objectively demonstrated to exist.

This appalling situation continues with no prospect of change because it is hugely profitable for the drug companies, and the HMO's love being able to fob people off with pills instead of costly and time-consuming counseling, though the chemical approach is probably more expensive for them in the long run. And in the current political climate, it's tempting to speculate that our lords and masters would like nothing better than a zonked-out, compliant and apathetic populace. Certainly, neonazi-cons like Charles Krauthammer make no secret of their desire to see "Bush Derangement Syndrome" written into the DSM-IV, a chilling echo of the abuse of psychiatry under the Stalinist-era USSR. (Anthony Black, another contributor to Glasser's book, points out the obvious hypocrisy in the US government waging a "war on drugs" while permitting the indiscriminate use of mind-altering and damaging drugs on a large percentage of its population by big pharma.)

In any case it's very scary to realize how easy it is for someone to get you locked away and subjected to a regimen of powerful and harmful drugs, even if you are totally sane, even for that matter if you are a professional and a respected community member. All dissent must be eliminated, all independent thought erased for the greater good of the therapeutic state - or at least its rulers! "Ask your doctor about Happy Sambo Pills - the miracle cure for drapetomania!"

Seriously though, Michel Foucault argued that the concepts of sanity and insanity were social constructs that reflect only the power of the "sane" over the "insane", and R.D. Laing argued that withdrawing into a fantasy world could be a rational response to living in an insane society. And then there's this gem of wisdom from Dan Quayle: "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

If you have any concerns about your mental health or that of a loved one, I urge you to seek out alternatives to mainstream treatment. Don't "ask your doctor" about some heavily hyped drug you saw advertised on TV; ask about other, non-chemical options such as counseling and group therapy. Read the book I cited above, or other books by psychiatric skeptics such as Peter Breggin, and take responsibility for your own mental health while helping loved ones to take responsibility for theirs. (But stay away from the scientologists, they're if anything even more harmful than the psychiatrists!)

Stay well!

Occupation today, occupation tomorrow, occupation forever

George Bush Junior is acting in typical sneaky and underhanded fashion to tie the hands of his successor (if there is one). He has signed a "declaration of principles" with neonazicon puppet Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to guarantee that US troops will be occupying Iraq for decades, using the country as an aircraft carrier to launch attacks on Iran as punishment for "mischief", and of course giving Bush's corporate cronies preferential treatment and ready access to Iraq's vast oil reserves.

This is outrageous! Junior cannot be allowed to get away with this, and any Democratic candidate who will not stand up and oppose this naked power grab by a lame-ass lame duck does not deserve anyone's vote.

Sign this petition to tell Congress that letting Junior's pet war grind on endlessly is unacceptable. If this isn't grounds for impeachment, what the hell is?

Rudy busted!

Politico has a huge story on 9/11 Boy billing the city of New York hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover his expenses in carrying on an extramarital affair while mayor. Jeez, he makes even the slimy Bernie Kerik look like a piker.

Cue the Vast Right Wing Noise Machine: "Bu-bu-bu-bu-but... Clinton got a blowjob! That's different! Why? Because he's a Democrat, that's why!"

You've been a naughty boy, Rudy... call your priest.

"Butcher those who call Islam a violent religion"

Oh for Allah's sake... is there anything that Muslims won't go apeshit and start killing people and blowing up shit over?

A 54-year-old British teacher in Sudan let the children in her class pick a name for a teddy bear, and they chose the name Mohammed. The local mullahs went ballistic, claimed that the woman was insulting the Prophet (piss be upon him) and sentenced her to for which she could get 40 lashes and six months in jail. The entire school has been shut down.

How incredibly stupid! Mohammed is the most common name in the Muslim world. Half the children in the class were probably called Mohammed.

Oh well, at least they haven't beheaded her yet. And I suppose this isn't as bad as the case in "staunch ally" Saudi Arabia, where girls who were fleeing a burning school were beaten and forced back inside by religious police because they weren't wearing their burkas. Or the more recent case of a girl being punished with 200 lashes for the crime of getting gang-raped.

Sudan is a terminal basket case that wouldn't last a month without copious foreign aid and a steady stream of volunteers and relief workers from around the globe. That stream will dry up pretty damn quick if volunteers face barbaric treatment for doing their jobs, and the mullahs will be wondering what happened. Oh well, maybe they can make up the shortfall with slavery, or perhaps they'll be too busy slaughtering black tribes to notice.

Hey Muslims, if you want your religion to be respected, stop acting like goddam deranged lunatics. Is that too hard to understand?

Mitt-for-brains

Mitt Romney, when asked if he would consider appointing a Muslim to his cabinet if elected president, answered: "based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

WTF? Hasn't Romney ever heard of Article 6 of the United States Constitution: "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." And since when are cabinet positions, or other high public offices, to be divvied up in a religious spoils system? (Sadly, Romney is by no means alone in his "to the victor go the spoils" mentality, as witness George Bush Junior and his cronyism towards Southern Baptists.)

A huge amount of ink has been spilled in the press over whether or not Mitt Romney's bizarre religious beliefs should be open to scrutiny and a factor in assessing his fitness for the presidency. I say, why the hell not? But why stop at Romney? At least three of the rethug candidates proudly deny the overwhelmingly well established theory of evolution. Do they believe in the Rapture and Armageddon? Do they think they have a duty to keep the End Times happening on schedule?

As far as I am concerned, any kind of religious belief is a negative in a presidential candidate, if it's strong enough to distort the person's perspective and judgment. It means he or she will be making decisions based on irrational dogma instead of reason and the best available knowledge. Alas, given that atheists are the most hated minority in the US, it'll be a long time before we recognize that a rational world view is the best qualification for the most powerful office in the world.

There's a whole Lott of rats deserting the sinking ship

The odiferous Trent Lott has announced his intention to retire from the Senate. Typically, the corporatist media is fawning over his alleged bipartisanship and playing down his lauding of senile segregationist Strom Thurmond, the womanizing old coot who fathered an illegitimate child with a slave on his parents' plantation but devoted his life to segregation and, unlike Robert Byrd, never renounced his racist past.

And of course the "liberal media" is utterly silent about the fact that Lott was the architect of the rethugs' current strategy of obstructionism in the Senate, sabotaging and filibustering even the most routine and uncontroversial matters in an orgy of insane, reckless partisanship, and keeping US troops bogged down indefinitely in the Iraquagmire - even though Lott has boasted to them about how well this despicable tactic is working in preventing progress. Nor will you hear one word about Lott's venal motives for resigning, or the dirty tricks rethugs are trying to pull to hold on to the seat by flouting state law.

I guess Lott just wants to take it easy in his luxury beachfront mansion, which was destroyed by Katrina but rebuilt by our tax dollars. And of course Junior will join him on the porch. Can we arrange for a sudden tsunami to take them both out? And to wash away the foul stench of corruption and hypocrisy that contaminates everything these filthy, loathsome criminals touch.

Ain't that the truth

I just thought it was funny. Maybe I have a silly sense of humor.

Anyway, scandal is roiling Oral U. Where's 900-foot Jesus when you need him? Will he call ol' Oral home to provide a distraction?

Thanksgiving under siege

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus...

Two score and four years ago...

The still-unsolved murder of US President John F. Kennedy has long been a festering sore in the nation's psyche. Now, 44 years later, news emerges that there was another assassination plot in Chicago, just three weeks before that fateful day in Dallas. (HT The Information Paradox) It seemed to involve a right-wing radical and Cuban agents, strange bedfellows, or were there coincidentally two separate plots? Anyway, the investigation was bungled, an African-American Secret Service agent and whistleblower was railroaded and sent to jail for six years to silence him and keep him away from the Warren Commission, and the whole incident was buried in the memory hole.

Kennedy's death was also the death of proud, unapologetic liberalism. I don't necessarily believe all the conspiracy theories that swirl around his murder, but there's no doubt that he was dangerous to the military-industrial complex and his days were numbered. We are still seeing the fallout as the ruling, war-mongering elite tightens its death-choke on this country.

Yes, but were they Catholic jellyfish or Protestant jellyfish?

BELFAST (AFP) - Northern Ireland's only salmon farm was completely wiped out by a freak jellyfish attack, the owners said Wednesday.

WT-Priest-F?

I can't believe I'm only hearing about this now. Well, on second thoughts, I can believe it. The "liberal media" will always carry water and cover up for extreme-right politicians, and build a wall of silence around their "WTF" activities and associations.

It's bad enough that Rudy Giuliani promoted his personal chauffeur to Police Commissioner of New York, and nearly foisted him on all of us as head of Heimat Security, despite mob ties and a record of personal corruption and sleaziness that would make a sewer rat blush. But can you believe Giuliani is sheltering and handsomely paying a pedophile priest?

Giuliani employs his childhood friend Monsignor Alan Placa as a consultant at Giuliani Partners despite a 2003 Suffolk County, N.Y., grand jury report that accuses Placa of sexually abusing children, as well as helping cover up the sexual abuse of children by other priests. Placa, who was part of a three-person team that handled allegations of abuse by clergy for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, is referred to as Priest F in the grand jury report. The report summarizes the testimony of multiple alleged victims of Priest F, and then notes, "Ironically, Priest F would later become instrumental in the development of Diocesan policy in response to allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests."

The grand jury report stated that "Priest F was cautious, but relentless in his pursuit of victims." Placa, a boyhood friend of Giuliani's, has been on the payroll of his crony-corporatist outfit, Giuliani Partners, since 2002, though he apparently does not do any actual work.

Jeez! Is this story ever going to be aired in the "liberal media"? And if so, will Placa get moved to a different rethug presidential campaign? Or perhaps to the Carlyle Group?

Rats! I just got tagged!

That'll teach me to read strange blogs. Here's the tag:

Describe my earliest memory where the memory is clear, and where "clear" means I can depict at least three details.

Give an estimate of my age at the time.

Tag five other bloggers with this meme.

I was about three years old. My mother sat me down at the foot of the stairs and tied a bow in my hair. Then she and my older sister (who was four) laughed at the sight of me. I've been traumatized ever since. Thanks for digging up painful old memories, Poodles!

Now I'm going to follow Poodles' example and say: "If you haven't been tagged and you read this post then TAG YOU'RE IT!"

Supporting the troops - Bush style

This is unbelievable!

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses - up to $30,000 in some cases. Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

And those foul, sickening rethugs, led by the Chimp who would be Chief, continue to howl and screech for more unaccountable hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to keep waging war against Iraq, start up against Iran, and bloat their Cayman Island numbered bank accounts with the money they've stolen from our schools, our hospitals, and even our wounded troops. There is no end to their sleaze, venality and incredibly loathsome hypocrisy.

I don't know what Junior's signing bonus was when his daddy got him into a champagne unit of the Texas National Guard, but considering that he blew off over a year of his six-year commitment, when you figure in the accumulated interest since then, it must be a whopping sum. I think Junior should be removed from office, sent over to Iraq, and forced to serve there on a grunt's wages until he has paid off his debt. And no health care for him if an IED blows his legs off - if he can send amputees back to Iraq, he has to take what he dishes out. Don't you agree?

Fund my war or I'll kill this puppy

Trust those immature, sleazy bullies in the White House to take the lowest road every time. When Junior gets the money he asks for to continue waging his pet war against Iraq, but with moderate and reasonable strings attached instead of the blank check he demanded, he throws a tantrum and announces that there will by massive layoffs of up to 200,000 contractors and employees at the Pentagon - with the axe carefully timed to fall just before Christmas. Once again the hapless Dems are being portrayed as the Grinch who stole Christmas and who hates Baby Jesus, notwithstanding the fact that it is actually the rethugs who are filibustering the funds.

The threats ranged from furloughing tens of thousands of civilian workers to closing child care centers and counseling services at Army bases. "I can't imagine that they would not want to fund these troops before they go home for Christmas," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. (Link)

Oh my god, won't someone think of the children! How dare the Dems close down child care facilities! That's Junior's job! Besides, we need those kids to grow up, enlist in the military, and get their heads blown off for the amusement of the Psychopath-in-Chief!

Once again, Junior and his corrupt criminal gang of despicable traitors are hiding behind the troops and holding them hostage in the meat-grinder. For that matter, we are all hostages, subject to the whims of unstable and violent thugs.

These disgusting creeps are so infinitely beneath contempt, there are no words to describe their utter vileness and loathsomeness.

Chuck Norris's brain: Missing in Action

Oh gawd... Chuck hearts Huck. The two of them deserve each other; they are both dominionist whack-jobs who are totally ignorant of the US Constitution and the principle of church-state separation on which this country is founded.

I suppose next we'll have Jack Bauer endorsing Tom Tancredo...

One flew over the turkey's nest

Flashing back to his cocaine-addled days as misgovernor of Texas, when he was that state's leading serial killer, George Bush Junior strangles the Thanksgiving Turkey that he is supposed to be pardoning.

Ewww! Gross! Just stick to choking the chicken, okay?

"If I leaked... here's how I did it"

Scott McClellan, the Junior administration's former dwarf butler, is apparently writing a tell-all book:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself.

I question the "unknowingly" bit. Maybe Pat Fitzgerald should have a cosy chat with McClellan? It may still not be too late to hold these corrupt criminal traitors accountable for betraying Valerie Plame, and for the massive damage they've done to US security.

Welcome to the Ministry of Truth!

Mike the Mad Biologist has a post about what a cruel, vindictive bastard Mitt Romney is. He also links to an astonishing story: Romney is buying the right-wing media conglomerate Clear Channel.

This is very disturbing. Already, Fox News is the privatized propaganda ministry for the George Bush Junior regime, and Bloomberg News is all Giuliani, all the time. Maybe McCain will buy Sinclair?

This morning in the car I was listening to the Rachel Maddow Show, and the topic was the increasingly incestuous relationship between the political elite and the media elite. There is a revolving door between the White House and the media, with assholes like Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich turning up on the air five minutes after leaving political office and being fawned over as "news analysts" and great Delphic oracles of political wisdom, when all they are doing is continuing their partisan sleaze operations by other means. The unspeakably godawful MC Rove incident is an example of just how completely the media has been absorbed, assimilated and co-opted by the extreme corporatist neonazi-con right. (Rove and Gingrich: we put the "anal" in "news analysts"!)

I've written before about media consolidation which has accelerated under Junior to the point where 95% of media outlets in the US are owned by five corporations, all of which are intimately connected with the military-industrial complex and thus have a glaring conflict of interest in reporting on the war against Iraq. But if the next president of the United States actually owns a huge chunk of the industry, we will finally have abandoned any pretense that there is anything resembling an independent media in this country, let alone a "liberal" one. (Although you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for the lunatic right-wing droolers to stop chanting their moronic talking points.)

In your face, Cheney!

Even in ultra-reactionary Utah, people are openly calling for the impeachment of Dickless Cheney. They are joining the 54% of the US public - including 17% of Republicans - who are clamoring for justice and accountability for the most corrupt, criminal and incompetent vice president in US history.

And yet, to listen to the talking-ass pundits, you would think - if you heard anything at all about impeachment - that it is the exclusive cause of "far-left extremists." Oh come on! There is no far left in the US, at least not more than a handful of individuals with no political power or significance. But the movement to oust Cheney is broad-based and growing more powerful every day. How long can the "liberal media" keep up its wall of silence around this vitally important story?

Still haven't found what I'm looking for...

Every so often I post a sample of the funny/peculiar search queries that turn up in my server logs. Here's the current crop:

• dictatorship for dummies
• white house snipers
• baby holding weapon
• evil babies
• woman holding green baby
• aliens holding shields
• bush on a baby
• bush turkey humor
• google motherfucker
• guy push shopping cart
• no gang aloud
• oh my gawd
• thug baby
• turkey pooping
• turkey population in maryland
• anything about religion
• baby incoming
• baby sluts
• bodice rippers and free and stories
• bubble struggle 2 redoubled
• disgusting baby
• george bush being retarted
• happy turkeys
• invisible bike hitler cat
• jesus - neat just a nice guy
• make a bush voodoo doll canadian
• naked klingon women
• osama naked
• rachel ray enemies
• stop lying to me
• we should kill
• where can i buy a semi-automatic pistol untraceable
• why cant islam be nice to other countries

Jeez... there's an awful lot of strange people out there. I hope some of them don't find what they're searching for!

Hastert la vista, baby

Jabba the Hastert has given his farewell speech in the House, and with infinite rethuglican gall and hypocrisy, he shed crocodile tears about "the breakdown of civility in our political discourse," after years of sleaze, corruption and dirty tricks. "I tried my best, but I wish I had been more successful." At what? Driving the last dregs of honesty and decency out of the process?

Let's recall that this is the guy who accused George Soros of being a drug smuggler. Who was a do-nothing speaker, content to be a figurehead for the infinitely corrupt and criminal Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff and Randy Cunnilingus to hide behind. Who called for the federal government to bulldoze the black areas of New Orleans after Katrina. Who abused his power to route a highway over land he owned, pocketing himself a profit of $2 million. Who, most sickeningly of all, shielded and promoted a pedophile congressman for three years.

Good riddance to the fat, loathsome, pasty-white old bastard. Only problem is, the thugs have an infinite supply to replace him with.

Mmmmm! Chocolate beer!

Well, I like chocolate and I like beer, but not usually together. However, it seems there was once a close link between the two: Chocolate began as beer-like brew 3,100 years ago.

Dems: not worth a dime

I used to think Ralph Nader was being petulant and self-serving when he claimed that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two political parties in the US. Now I'm not so sure.

The Dems have taken ownership of George Bush Junior's catastrophic war against Iraq by lavishing him with even more hundreds of billions of dollars than he demands, with no questions asked and no accountability. They've signed off on torture by dutifully confirming Mukasey after no more than token squeaks of concern and no due diligence. And now, led by Dianne Lieberstein - who has glaring conflicts of interest - they are stampeding to grant retroactive immunity to the regime's corporate cronies in the telecomms industry, even as news trickles out that some kind of black "total information awareness" project has been operating on a massive scale since well before 9/11.

We need to impeach Junior, Cheneymort and their entire corrupt criminal gang of traitors, but we can't stop there. We must rid ourselves of all those pinstriped whores and corporatist prostitutes who have sold us out. We need more and better dems - real dems who understand that this country is supposed to be about government of the people, by the people and for the people!

Who would Martin Luther King waterboard?

Vjack has an interesting post on the history of waterboarding by the US military and how religious figures have justified it on the grounds that the victims were brown and non-christian.

In an article, "The 'Water Cure' from a Missionary Point of View," Reverend Homer Stunz justified the technique. It was not torture, he said, since the victim could stop it any time by revealing what his interrogators wanted to know.

Jeez, I'm amazed that torture whores like Alan Dershowitz haven't used that excuse! But the lunatic religious right has been pretty inventive all the same. Would you believe torture as an act of civil disobedience?

These people are sick. Utterly, incurably sick. And thanks in no small part to craven quislings like Dianne Lieberstein and "Chuck your principles overboard" Schumer, they are going to continue inflicting their sickness on all of us for the foreseeable future.

Fox suckers

This video summarizes the hypocrisy of Fox Noise in constantly bombarding the viewer with T&A while bemoaning the decline of "family values" and ranting on about evil liberals and degenerate Hollywood. No footage involving scantily clad young women, however unnewsworthy, goes unaired, and no story, however serious, escapes being "sexed up" with bump-and-grind images. (If you don't see the embedded video, click here.)

Of course the biggest boob of all is Bill O'Felafel.

If you needed any more reasons to oppose Giuliani...

He's just been endorsed by Pat Robertson, or as I call him, Pat bin Robert.

Crappy-headed ho

I was annoyed to see a google ad for extreme-right hatemonger Glenn Beck on my blog. Although on second thoughts the ad is apposite. It shows Beck with the slogan "Cut the crap". So I did a little cutting as instructed, and here he is: Beck the craphead.

Alas, too true

Sometimes there's more truth in the fake news than the real stuff.

Democrats Hand Over Own Balls To President At White House Ceremony

Prof. Gordon explained the Democrats' logic. "They don't want to change the status quo because they want to get elected in 2008 so they can change the status quo."

He smiled. "That's what they said in 2006, too."

In other news:

10 October 2008: All polls show that the November election will be a Democratic landslide for President and Congress. During the regular, private briefing to fox news personnel, the White House Press Secretary announces that a "suspected dirty bomb" has been found in Bethesda in the possession of several Iranians. Under the Kyl-Lieberman Senate resolution passed in 2007 with the full support and backing of Senator Clinton, President DickNBush declares a state of emergency and announces that an air, land and sea-based effort is underway to destroy all nuclear capabilities in Iran. The US election in November is postponed until such time as the Iranian threat to the homeland is eliminated, and the Bill of Rights and Constitution are declared "suspended" during the emergency. Appeals by the ACLU to the Supreme Court to stop this action are rejected by Justice Scalia, who is assigned responsibility for this subject. Scalia then departs on his annual "Macho-Man" hunting trip with Cheney to kill small, defenseless animals. House Speaker Pelosi, in a hastily called news conference, states that the Congress will not tolerate such actions; she says that Congress will take "all appropriate" steps to correct this abuse of power; however, to allow members of Congress time to shop for presents and enjoy the holidays with their families, she declares an immediate recess until after the first of the year.

In an unwitting self-parody of Democratic pussyism and craven capitulation, Chuck Schumer meekly mewls his excuse for surrendering to 24% Boy yet again:

Should we reject Judge Mukasey, President Bush has said he would install an acting, caretaker attorney general who could serve for the rest of his term without the advice and consent of the Senate. To accept such an unaccountable attorney general, I believe, would be to surrender the department to the extreme ideology of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington. All the work we did to pressure Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign would be undone in a moment.

Pardon me for a minute... Aaaaaargh!

So, George Bush Junior makes it plain he is going to blackmail the Senate... and Schumer meekly goes along, and accepts an attorney general who has already made it plain as daylight that he will be unaccountable and just another rubber stamp for Junior. He won't even condemn torture, for chrissakes. "Oh, it may be personally repugnant to me, but if Lord Cheneymort orders it, then it's legal and I'm sure I'll grow to love it." Sheesh!

Sometimes you have to lose a battle to win a war. But the cowardly quisling Dems won't even turn up for the battle. They would run a mile in the opposite direction rather than make the slightest gesture of resistance to the most corrupt, criminal and unpopular regime in US history.

Are Dems really so stupid as to believe that their best strategy is to keep their heads down, not rock the boat, and hide under the blankets until the 2008 election? The Junior regime has arrogated so much power to itself - power to torture, to spy on everyone with no due process whatsoever, to make political opponents unpersons - there is no way they are going to hand this power over to anyone else, even another rethug, and certainly not Hillary.

What will the Dems do on November 5, 2008, after the election has once again been stolen in a naked display of fraud and criminality, if not cancelled outright? Will they make some token noises, and then sheepishly march into the Halliburton-built concentration camps?

Sadly, we must face facts. The Dems will "Betrayus" every chance they get. It is up to We the People to restore democracy!

Pope Ron Paul II

Oh for chrissakes... It's very scary that so many people are ignorantly jumping on board the Ron Paul bandwagon. Look, people, Ron Paul is no libertarian! He happens to be right about Iraq, but for the wrong reasons - for him, it's all about the principle of "states' rights", not the monstrous evil and immorality of the war. And he's wrong about every other issue. He is just another old-white-guy religious rightard.

As for his presidential agenda:

Mr. Benton clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. "He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education," Mr. Benton said, "but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner."

Well, that's a relief! Maybe he'll give a ten-minute warning before his frenzied acolytes fly hijacked planes into the Department of Education. Good grief - how can anyone regard this loon as a serious presidential candidate?

Ouch! My head just exploded.

From today's White House brief pressing:

Q: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?

MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.

[Link]

The fact that Dana Peroxide wasn't immediately struck by lightning is proof that there is no god.

Barbecueing atheists for Jeezus

Marymc is a woman in Ireland who recently started blogging about her journey from her strict Catholic upbringing to her present day atheism. So far it seems like a very thoughtful and well written blog, honest but not at all confrontational and certainly not the work of a "fundamentalist atheist." So why would anyone feel obliged to comment as follows:

Christianity is the only 'faith', Faith, that is The Religion, synonomous to God, the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost. . God says that He hates 'religion', isms, false beleifs. The devil is a liar!!! So is the Pope. They are all beleif systems to get the ignorant or stupid to spend eternity on the biggest BBQ Pit in the universe. Texas don't have one that big. Are you interested in spending eternity in hell? Did you ever listen, closely, when you heard the Good News of Jesus' death. Did you notice that it was said that He love us so much that He give His life on the Old Rugged Cross at Calvary, paid for your sins, your debt for being a son of Satan. A foolish person interested in having "fun", and never no the pleasure of Joy. With His blood, he set you free from eternal damnation, which He blasted the Jews with in John 8:44 [ I am not anti-semitic. Jesus said it and He was a Jew.] Now He waits, will wait until your last breath asking Him into your heart as Lord, your redeemer of your Spirit from your father, "the devil', unless you are a Born-Again-Christian. There is no other Christian. Only these Children, Sons of God, Citizens, Property of God will enter the Pearly Gates. And St Peter will check your Passport. Simon [retarded] Peter is not one to perturb. Be prepared. He also won't, definetly will not, let your friends drop ice cubes to you while you rest on the BBQ Pit, if you don't make it in the Pearly Gates..

And that's only a sample. The guy goes on and on about how Jesus loves us all so much that he will barbecue us on a spit for all eternity. What really kills me is that he freely admits he is bipolar and is overdue his meds, but we're still supposed to trust his deranged rants over our own common sense. And he signs himself "Destrou Liberticide", which I guess is supposed to mean something about destroying and killing freedom. Well, the mental slavery of born-again fundyism certainly does that.

Granted, not all Christians are manic-depressive, but I just can't understand this mania born-agains have to force everyone else to believe the same superstitious delusions they do. It's an alien mindset to me. How is it anyone else's business what a stranger believes in the privacy of his or her own mind? As Thomas Jefferson said, "But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Why can't the jeezbots keep their noses out of other people's private beliefs? And what could possibly make them think that this constant assault of hellfire and brimstone, and threats of being tortured forever in infinite agony in the Lake of Fire, will be well received by the victim, and accepted as proof of God's infinite love?

It seems to me (even if we ignore the fine exemplar quoted above) that born-again fundyism is a religion for people with serious, unresolved parent issues that are too infantile to be called Oedipal. Most children eventually learn that their parents are not all-powerful godlike figures with total control over the universe. Fundies seem to be stuck at that stage, unwilling to grow past it, and fearful that if anyone else refuses to share their delusion, it will break the spell and force them to confront reality. It's almost possible to feel pity for them, trapped as they are in a well with a goat and a slinky. But the pity quickly evaporates when they demonstrate the love of Jeezus by stalking and harassing their victims (for example, when the goat-slinker hacks into someone's blog and starts deleting stuff).

Anyway, I'm glad that I haven't had too many ugly customers at this blog, but I detest the bullying and dirty tricks that sometimes go on in the name of Jesus. If these people had an ounce of genuine morality, they couldn't live with themselves.

Law and Order is only for the little people

Hoo boy... one of Fred Thompson's closest friends and campaign advisors has a record as a drug dealer.

Arizona Conservative Idiot of the Week

I'm not going to name him because he is not (as far as I know) a public figure, but I'm getting sick and tired of seeing his hate-filled extreme-right screeds published regularly on the letters to the editor page of the Arizona Repulsive. Today's rant is a real doozy.

After attacking career diplomats who are unhappy at being posted to a "potential death sentence" in the Baghdad Xanadu, Mr. Extreme Right offers his advice: "You have the option to quit; do so. Then hang your head in shame knowing that you are cowards. I'm sure there is room for you in the Hillary/Barack/Pelosi/Murtha camp."

What an asshole!

First of all, career diplomats are not military personnel who can be drafted and sent anywhere willy nilly, on pain of courtmartial if they refuse. Secondly, Jack Murtha has had a longer military career and more awards than most of the other "camp" put together. Let's take a look at the "heroes' camp":

George Bush Junior: got his daddy to pull strings and let him hide out the Vietnam war in a champagne unit of the Texas National Guard, vaulting over an 18-month waiting list despite failing the entrance exam. Then went AWOL just ahead of a drug test.

Dick Cheney: said he had "other priorities" than serving in Vietnam. Got five deferments.

Rush Limbaugh: got out of serving in Vietnam by having an ingrown hair on his ample posterior, no doubt due to having his head up there all the time.

Tom Delay: claimed he couldn't get into the service because there were "too many minority youths."

Trent Lott, John Boner, Jon Kyl, Larry Craig, virtually any prominent rethug you can name: chickenhawks, every last one.

Apart from John McCain, none of the current Republican presidential candidates has served. Mitt Romney got a deferment to annoy the French by knocking on their doors and preaching Mormonism. Today his five privileged sons are "patriotically" tooling around the US in a luxury coach instead of serving in Iraq.

And yet these bullying buffoons continue to pound the drum for endless war, sacrificing other people's kids on the altar of Halliburton's and Blackwater's bottom lines. It's very clear who the real cowards are.

Who would Jesus waterboard?

Apparently the most important qualification for Attorney General in George Bush Junior's America is an eagerness to turn a blind eye to torture. Jeezus...

Bush: No attorney general if not Mukasey

The War on Christmas Presents

This is disgusting, but sadly, no more than par for the course in George Bush Junior's corrupt, criminal misadministration. Nancy Nord, Junior's appointee to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, argues that because of her agency's limited resources, faith-based enforcement - i.e, big business claims that its products don't need to be tested because they're safe, and the feds believe them - is the only way to carry out the agency's mandate. At the same time, she is fighting tooth and nail against congressional efforts to give her more resources! Why? Because she is a huge beneficiary of junkets and other largesse from the companies she is supposed to be overseeing!

So, thanks to Bush toadies like Nord, you can look forward to more contaminated and dangerous toys when you go shopping for your kids this Christmas. Think Bill O'Felafel will make a fuss about this? Of course not, he's too busy blustering about the phony "War on Christmas" because some unfortunate Walmart greeter is trying to be polite by saying "Happy Holidays."

Everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition

Those cowardly craven quisling Dems in Congress have surrendered again. Say hello to the next Attorney General, Michael "I don't know whether waterboarding is torture" Mukasey.

Jesus H. Christ! What's wrong with these spineless lumps of jelly? Can't they even take a stand against friggin' torture?

Doin' the Vatican rag

Heilige Scheisse! Once again the Vatican gets its holy knickers in a knot and talks out of the wrong orifice. This time it's declaring the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age anathema; apparently, it's a "concerted attack on Catholicism" by atheists and "apocalyptic Christians". WTF? Someone urgently needs to get a life!

Professor Cardini, who holds the chair of medieval history at Florence University and formerly taught at the Lateran University in Rome, a Vatican body, said that its aim was to "secularise and de-Christianise" Europe. [...]

Professor Cardini, who also attacked Ken Follett's novel World Without End as anti-Catholic, said part of the explanation may be a resentful awareness that Catholicism was the "authentic fulcrum" of Christianity without which there was no defence against secularism and Islam.

Oh for the love of... Although part of me likes it when the religiots get into a pissing match with each other. Read the whole thing in all its frenzied anti-Protestant ripeness, then read the equally jingoistic anti-Catholic comments from the London Times readers. And these are the people who are going to save us from radical Islam (or secularism, which apparently is just as bad, or even the same thing)?

Yes, Catholicism belongs in the dustbin of history, but Elizabeth was not much of an improvement. For one thing, she started the policy of (what is today called) ethnic cleansing in Ireland, massacring the indigenous Irish and giving their lands over on a vast scale to Protestant "planters", a policy that sowed the seeds for centuries of violence and oppression.

If radical Islam is a threat to Europe, then re-fighting the endless religious wars of centuries past is not the way to contain it. The values Europe urgently needs to rediscover and embrace are precisely the ones the Vatican under Pope Ratzi the Nazi has been increasingly and stridently railing against: secularism, humanism, liberalism, free speech, free enquiry, and keeping priests and bishops out of government and out of everyone's bedroom.

A pox on Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam alike!

LaTourette syndrome

The liberal media strikes again.

God hates Phred Felps...

Well, he must, otherwise he wouldn't have let a Maryland jury hit his extreme-right hate cult with a $10.9 million award for causing emotional distress by picketing the funeral of a soldier marine who died in Iraq.

Though I'm not generally a fan of jackpot justice, I am delighted to see these neanderthal troglodytes being hit where it hurts. Call it schadenfreude, call it double standards, I don't care. Churches in the US have an astonishingly privileged position, despite the constitutional ban on establishment of a religion. They pay no taxes, they get all sorts of breaks and exemptions from zoning laws, and the government constantly fawns over religious leaders and assumes that their buying into some ancient superstition gives them special insight and expertise into not just moral issues, but biology, medicine, planetology, cosmology, you name it.

Religion - especially of George Bush Junior's ole-time variety - has been given unprecedented power, influence and access to our tax dollars in the last few years. And it has not been shy about abusing this power, and turning its pulpit into a bully pulpit. "Don't fool with the church because the church has buried many a critic, and all the critics that we have not buried, we're making funeral arrangements for them!" In short, organized religion has become a new Mafia.

The verdict against Westboro Baptist Church is hopefully the first salvo in a long overdue fight back by sane, decent people. This is NOT a free speech issue. Freedom of speech means the government can't restrict your speech; it does not mean "speech without consequences." Felps and his inbred hillbilly mutant clan are facing the consequences of their free speech. I hope the backlash continues, and every two-bit holy huckster who preaches hatred and violence in the name of Gentle Jeezus Meek & Mild gets his flabby ass sued into oblivion.