No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Today's trivia tidbit

Did you know that in Heaven, you are not allowed to sit down?

The notion of Heaven as a place of eternal bliss is historically very recent. Biblically there is no support for it, and the church has always stressed that the point of being in Heaven is to worship God and sing his praises for all eternity. I guess the psychotic monster is so pitiably insecure, he has to create beings and force them to glorify him forever on pain of never-ending infinite torture if they refuse!

And of course if you listen to the compulsory childbirth brigade and their endless caterwauling about precious unborn children, and bear in mind that a huge percentage of human pregnancies terminate spontaneously, then Heaven must be bursting at the seams with zygotes and fetuses.

That settles it, I don't want to go there. To Hell with Heaven!

Veto Boy strikes again!

George Bush Junior has decided to veto a defense appropriations bill on the pretext that a key component of the bill would endanger Iraqi reconstruction. What reconstruction? As always with Junior, it's about protecting his cronies and their money.

The veto would hold up a 3.5% pay increase troops and derail efforts to improve health care for veterans. With "supporters" like Junior and his clique of corrupt criminal traitors, do the troops need enemies? Fortunately, the bill passed both houses of Congress with a veto-proof majority, so Junior's pouting and posturing is unlikely to stop it in his tracks. He'll just have to sneak in a signing statement to allow himself to cherry-pick the bill and ignore the parts he doesn't like.

Unless of course the Dems, in typically cowardly fashion, capitulate yet again and rewrite the bill, taking dictation from Mr. 24% Approval Rating. I don't understand why they aren't making political capital out of this childish tantrum, shouting from the rooftops that Junior is holding the troops hostage and screwing them out of a measly 3.5% pay increase and health care.

Oh, and I just found out that Junior won't even sign the veto - he is simply going to sit on the bill and blatantly flip a finger at Congress and the Constitution alike. Is there no end to this despicable little pipsqueak's assholery? CHIMPEACH NOW!

Talibanism in Pakistan

Pakistan seems to be melting down before our eyes, and the prospect of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of medieval religious cave-dwelling lunatics is very scary indeed.

I don't have anything useful to add to the discussion of Benazir Bhutto's murder but I do want to draw wider attention to this story about the destruction of centuries-old Buddha figures in the Swat region by the warlord mullah Fazlullah, who is growing increasingly powerful and extremist. Yes, I know the desecration of statues is small potatoes next to violence against people. But just as torture of animals is often a warning sign in children who grow up to be psychopaths and serial killers, this sort of mindless destruction and rabid fanaticism must be taken as a harbinger of how these warlords would rule Pakistan.

And of course the US can't do very much because we are bogged down in the Iraquagmire, fighting Junior's pet war which has totally destabilized the region for the foreseeable future. Yessirree Bob, Mission Accomplished! The Chinese curse is coming true; we are living in interesting times.

See how they love one another

Priests brawl at Jesus' birthplace

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) -- Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning on Thursday.

What is this, the Civil War on Christmas? Gotta love how Christianity spreads peace and goodwill...

An appalling gaffe

...Or should that be "appauling"? The suspicion of racism has long hung like a dark cloud over Ron Paul, and he did nothing to dispel it when he foolishly shot his mouth off on "Meet the Press" to the effect that Abe Lincoln should have appeased Southern slaveowners and bought them off instead of going to war against them.

Of course the fanatical true believers will try to spin this away, just like they go into spin overdrive every time Paul opens his mouth and reveals himself to be a clueless old coot. But hopefully this will be last straw for any sane, decent people who might have been interested in his candidacy. The would-be emperor is very definitely naked.

My god, I can't believe Dinesh D'Souza is that stupid

Via the Rude Pundit, a piece of D'Souzism that is just breath-takingly, mind-blowingly stupid.

The sole reason for getting rid of the Christian symbol is the premise that someone may object to it, and not everyone subscribes to the Christian worldview.

But apply this logic to another holiday and its absurdity becomes manifest. Imagine if the ACLU filed lawsuits nationwide to remove all references to Martin Luther King on Martin Luther King day. The reason is that not everyone agrees that King's legacy was a positive one, and that the main beneficiaries of King's activism have been African Americans and other minorities. Southern segregationists, in particular, feel excluded from King's "beloved community." So in the name of diversity and tolerance all monuments and symbols and references to King should be erased. Instead Martin Luther King day becomes another "happy holiday."

I can't decide whether D'inept D'loser is really that infinitely dense, or whether he is pandering to his acephalic, infinitely dense townhall.com readers, those jeezus-addled morons with threads of drool dangling from their slack, flabby jaws as they slowly and painfully mouth the words they are reading.

Obviously I don't need to point out to you, the reader, that the reason for "getting rid of the Christian symbol" when it is promoted by the government at taxpayer expense is that it is an unconstitutional establishment of religion. And in view of his record of racism, D'Souza's crocodile tears over Martin Luther King Day are especially sleazy and hypocritical.

I'm still in awe of the lunatic extreme right's ability to manufacture a "war on Christmas" out of nothing but the fever swamps of their lurid imaginations, and get the useful idiots all riled up and marching in lockstep against a threat that just doesn't exist. Have you ever heard of a single incident of someone going ballistic because someone said "Merry Christmas" to them? The only people flipping out are the theocratic loonies and hatemongers like D'Souza, Bill O'Felafel etc. when they hear "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings". They know damn well that these non-denominational greetings include Christmas, but they want exclusivity, not inclusivity. They want to force other people to acknowledge their holiday, and only their holiday. And the unfortunate shopping store workers who are in the crossfire of the loonie attacks are being forced to utter a Christian shibboleth to everyone who comes into the store, Christian, Jewish, atheist or whatever.

Is it possible to imagine a more brazenly dishonest, lying and hypocritical, not to mention arrogant and dominionist, campaign than this "war on Christmas" BS that Faux News spews out in an annual ritual? And could anything be further from the message of the "Prince of Peace" than this shrill, screeching hysteria?

Random thoughts for today

Today is Boxing Day in Britain and its former colonies, and St. Stephen's Day in Catholic countries. And of course in Northern Ireland no-one can agree on what to call it, and arguments used to get quite heated in the past. I think the name "Boxing Day" comes from some tradition of the English monarch handing out charity on the day after Christmas.

On Christmas Day of course there is also the tradition of the queen of England addressing her subjects. Back in the day when I was active on the usenet group soc.culture.celtic, some English wanker would always try to start a holy war by posting the entire transcript of Lizzie's vapid vaporings to the newsgroup. It never worked, though. We regulars would just dissect the speech and interject rude comments, MST3K style.

Here in the US, December 26 is just another day. It seems cold to have to go into work the day after Christmas. My wife certainly wasn't happy about it. It doesn't make much difference to me, being gainfully unemployed. Or rather, self-employed without the bother of having any customers yet. I was laid off a few months ago, and decided the time was right to go into business for myself rather than continuing to go through the job-hunting cattle call. In the software industry, the older and more experienced you get, the harder it is to get hired, and the more likely you are to be stuck in a rut as a code monkey.

Anyway, I've developed a prototype of a software product, and a friend with contacts in Silicon Valley has already shown it to some engineers and managers at a large company, who have expressed interest (in a non-committal way, of course). Oh well, I'll keep my fingers crossed. Which makes it hard to type, though.

Some other deep thoughts:

• Can God, universal butt-kicker, kick his own butt?
• Who the hell is this Amy Winehouse person? Yesterday nobody had heard of her, today you can't open a newspaper or spend thirty seconds surfing the web without coming across her ridiculous Tammy-Faye-Bakker face and hair. It used to be that musicians had to spend a few years showing the public that they had some actual talent, before they could move between the initial phase of total obscurity and the final stage of being famous for public meltdowns, self-destructive tantrums and embarrassing brushes with the law rather than for their music. Now it seems the intermediate stage can be skipped over completely. Sort of like the US going from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilization.
• In France they eat frog's legs. What do they do with the rest of the frog? If you went over to France, would you see a lot of frogs going around in little wheelchairs?

Anyway, hope you survived Christmas without too many casualties, despite the warmongering of those Jeezus-hatin' librulls. Peace to you and yours, and best wishes for the New Year!

Liars figure

I love it! Mitt Romney's campaign has been forced to retract a claim made by Captain Magic Underpants that he saw his father marching with Martin Luther King. "He was speaking figuratively, not literally," said a spokesman.

I think this should be the all-purpose rethug mantra.

Mission Accomplished: "He was speaking figuratively, not literally."

Bush claims to have served in the National Guard: "He was speaking figuratively, not literally."

No Child Left Behind: "He was speaking figuratively, not literally."

Support the Troops: "He was speaking figuratively, not literally."

Most of all, considering that Junior stole two elections, any reference to "President Bush" is definitely figurative, not literal.

Slimy despicable assholes

That's the mildest term I can come up with to describe the rethugs and their campaign of filibustering, obstructionism and sabotage in Congress and in the White House. In just the last few days, we've seen:

• "States' rights" and action to reduce pollution and global warming: BLOCKED.
• A bill to outlaw torture: BLOCKED.
• Health insurance for millions of children: BLOCKED.
• Routine spending bills, including funds for urgently needed infrastructure improvements: BLOCKED.

What makes me really sick is that the "liberal media" is studiously ignoring this stunning display of petty, peevish tantrums and obstructionism, and is mindlessly echoing rethug talking points, whining about do-nothing Democrats who can't get anything done. It's like mugging the mailman and then complaining that the mail didn't get delivered on time. It's always "Democrats fail" to do this or that (most notably, make progress on ending Junior's ghastly war) or "the Senate blocks" some key legislation - never a word on who is really doing the blocking.

The rethugs are able to get away with their filthy, sleazy tricks because neither the media nor the Democrats will hold them accountable. Everyone's acting as if the Constitution has been quietly rewritten to say that a majority isn't a majority any more - nothing can become law without the blessing of the minority party of lunatic theocrats and warmongers.

Democracy has totally broken down in the US. We are all being held hostage by the most extreme, corrupt and venal claque of criminal traitors ever to crawl out of the fetid swamps of ignorance, greed and backwardness.

Chuck Norris beats Jack Bauer

Tom Tancredo, the rethug presidential candidate whose lunacy takes the form of foaming at the mouth against Hispanics (and wanting to nuke Mecca), has apparently decided to drop out of the race. The universal reaction was: "Tom Who?" Tancredo, after all, has less name recognition than the man he proposes to nominate as Heimat Security Director - the fictional character Jack Bauer.

Meanwhile, one of the other lunatics - the Jeezus-based variety - is still climbing high in the polls, due to the supernatural support of the deity known as Chuck Norris. 'Cos Jesus is too much of a wimp for Today's Modern Christian - you need a god who will not only rise from the grave but kick ass and take names. (But to give JHC his due, he supports the death penalty. I'm sure he's in favor of a 30% sales tax too. The poorer you are, the more you have to render unto Caesar.)

This isn't a presidential campaign - it's a contest to see who is the most stark raving insane, so that he can be the official 'thug nominee for Chaplain-in-Chief.

What the Huck?!!

When he was misgovernor of Texas, George Bush Junior was the Executioner-in-Chief. Mike Huckabee, by contrast, was the Pardoner-in-Chief - as long as the pardonees were good gawd-fearin' Christians and rethug party donors.

Huckabee is also the most explicitly theocratic and dominionist of the candidates of either party, and the scary thing is that he seems to have the support of Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life" and the most influential megachurch pastor in the US. Huckabee may call his sudden rise in the polls a miracle, but in reality he has huge evangelical support that is under the media's radar. The fact that he is a caveman does not by any means make him as unelectable in the general election as some people wishfully think.

Pimping for Jesus

Pat Condell's latest! Like many people over in old Europe, he takes a keen interest in the current presidential race, knowing that the winner will be the "Leader of The Free World" (TM), leading it into theocratic mental slavery.

Strings attached

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has urged public school officials in South Carolina to discontinue a church-run program that subjects disadvantaged students to ritual foot-washing as part of a shoe giveaway.

In letters sent Dec. 10 to officials in Aiken and Edgefield Counties, Americans United objects to the "Laces4Love" ministry run by the First Baptist Church of North Augusta. The program provides new shoes to needy children but asks them to participate in the Christian rite of foot-washing. [Link]

Sheesh! What is it with Christians? I don't think I need to add any comments on the impropriety of conducting religious rituals in public schools. But even if the rituals were held in a church, why can't they just give out the damn shoes to needy children, without preconditions?

It seems to me that Christian charity is never pure and unalloyed - there must always be an ulterior motive, the transmission of the virulent Jesus meme to the recipient. It's overbearing, it's demeaning, it's patronizing - and it's a far cry from true charity, which gives with no thought of payback.

The Christocrats

Len Munsil - the reptilian christocrat who ran for governor in Arizona last year and got soundly spanked in the polls - has an editorial in today's Repulsive, whining about the attention paid to rethug candidates' religious beliefs. As always with Munsil, this is total hypocrisy.

Romney, Huckabee & co. are the ones who demanded that a spotlight be shone on their religion in the first place. John McCain says that being a Christian is a necessary qualification for US president. Huckabee touts himself as a "Christian leader" who is running in order to "take this nation back for Christ." Meanwhile, Romney gives an anti-Kennedy speech in which he explicitly demands to be judged on his pietistic credentials, in an act of profound moral cowardice and blatant pandering which is in stark contrast to Kennedy's principled stand for the separation of state and church which the US Constitution demands.

The rethugs, in a nutshell, are the ones who declare that religiosity trumps competence and experience, and demand brownie points for their holier-than-thou posturing. But when this tactic backfires and the would-be theocrats are exposed as the hypocrites and whited sepulchers they are, when the spotlight they crave shines a little more light than they can handle, then the same candidates turn around and whine that they are being persecuted. Boo friggin' hoo!

The rethugs long ago made a deal with the devil: pander to the lunatic extreme religious right in return for votes. By constantly narrowing their base and lurching ever rightwards, they have painted themselves into the corner they now find themselves in. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

Bush's poodle's poodle

Could anything be worse than being George Bush Junior's poodle? If so, trust Tony Blair to find it. In this year's typically vomit-inducing White House Christmas video, Blair plays second fiddle to Barney the dog. I would say Blair's neutering is complete at this stage and he has no further depths of humiliation to plumb.

Blair must have misheard Harry Truman's advice and thought he said, "If you want a friend in Washington, be a (lap) dog."

McCain-Lieberman '08?

Sheesh - why doesn't the wrinkly old bastard come out as a rethug and get it over with. Two geriatric warmongers is precisely what the country needs! (I mean Israel, not the US.) Thank Christ the old fart didn't become vice president in 2000.

Krauthammer doesn't quite nail it

What a shock! I though for a minute I was actually going to agree with a column by chief neonazi-con cheerleader Charles Krauthammer:

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN/YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" - and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business. [...] The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office.

But the Hammer of the Krauts immediately reverts to form:

A certain kind of liberal argues that having a religious underpinning for any public policy is disqualifying because it is an imposition of religion on others.

Thus, if your opposition to embryonic stem cell research comes from a religious belief in the ensoulment of life at conception, you're somehow violating the separation of church and state by making other people bend to your religion.

This is absurd. Abolitionism, civil rights, temperance, opposition to the death penalty - a host of policies, even political movements, have been rooted for many people in religious teaching or interpretation. It's ridiculous to say that therefore abolitionism, civil rights, etc., constitute an imposition of religion on others.

Imposing religion means the mandating of religious practice. It does not mean the mandating of social policy that some people may have come to support for religious reasons.

What an incredibly bogus argument! It's a no-brainer that slavery is wrong, segregation and discrimination are wrong etc. - religion has nothing to do with it. Religion has historically been useless in determining broadly agreed moral norms. For every abolitionist who quoted the bible against slavery, there were ten slavery supporters who quoted the same bible to support the opposite position. (And it's true that while the bible places some restrictions on slavery - Jews may not enslave other Jews for more than seven years, you may not covet your neighbor's male or female slave, usually bowdlerized in translation as "manservant" and "maidservant" - the entire bible contains not a single word in condemnation of slavery as an institution.) For every Martin Luther King who used biblical language to call for justice, there were ten Bull Connors who, inspired by the same bible, perpetuated injustice. Slavery and Jim Crow only came to an end when there was broad agreement on secular grounds that they were wrong.

To claim that "imposing religion means the mandating of religious practice" is woefully narrow and pedantic. What about supporting someone's private religion from the public treasury? Or - more germane here - what about imposing a social policy that is only based on someone's religious beliefs? There are no secular arguments against gay marriage or stem cell research, for example. People who oppose using embryos (which are destined for the trash can anyway) to cure disease, or who want to control what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms, are quite open in saying that they want to ban anything that is repugnant to their religious beliefs. If that isn't imposition of religion, what is?

Krauthammer concludes: "It's two centuries since the passage of the First Amendment and our presidential candidates still cannot distinguish establishment from free exercise." Neither can Krauthammer, apparently.

Not guilty by reason of stupidity

Last year, with much hype and hoopla, the feds arrested six pathetic losers in Miami who allegedly had spawned a quixotic plot to topple the Sears tower in Chicago. It quickly emerged that the entire case was built on entrapment, with FBI agents posing as Al-Qaeda members, supplying the gang with video cameras, money and cellphones, and even suggesting targets.

Well, the case finally came to trial, and has ended in a mistrial and a total fiasco for the government. Another huge self-inflicted foot wound for the George Bush Junior misadminstration in its ongoing war against brown people. Think they'll learn? No, they've already vowed to try the men again next year, double jeopardy be damned. Because it's easier to put on a three-ring circus and create bogus terrorism plots out of thin air than, you know, actually fight terrorism - even if Junior wanted to, which I doubt.

Once again, the Chimperor is naked, but our "liberal media" won't call him on it. The whole "War on Terror" rigamarole is bullshit - it's nothing but a war on our Constitutional rights, a campaign to cow us into meekly accepting a totalitarian Christofascist state. We have far more to fear from Junior and his neonazi-con puppetmasters than a bunch of medieval fanatics sitting in a cave on the other side of the world.

The Fuel on the Hill

I keep hearing that the Democrats have been in control of Congress since they won the midterm elections in 2006. Funny, I haven't seen any sign of it yet. Glance at any day's headlines and it's clear that Republicans are at least as much in control as they ever were. They set the agenda, call all the shots, and get exactly what they want. Every stark raving insane piece of legislation they introduce gets treated with the respect worthy of an imperial edict, while any bill they don't like just disappears without a trace.

How did this happen? Well, the 'thugs are being as berserkly partisan as ever, filibustering, obstructing and sabotaging to their black hearts' content. But the real scandal is the abject, craven cowardice and timidity of the Dems who let them get away with this crap, over and over again.

The brutish and immature 'thugs are like dogs in the manger, stamping their feet, throwing tantrums and declaring that if they can't have absolute and total power, they won't let anyone else get anything done. And the Dems cave every friggin' time. Currently, they're filibustering an energy bill, because it would raise taxes on Junior's cronies in the oil industry and force Detroit to raise fuel efficiency standards, currently at their lowest point in decades and the lowest in the developed world.

Detroit could easily afford to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles at minimal extra cost using decades-old technology. But the auto companies find it cheaper to buy up Congress and have their tame gasbags bloviate endlessly about "massive tax increases on ordinary Americans" whenever the most tentative suggestion is made to slow down the gravy train of multi-billion-dollar subsidies to the pollution cartel and make these obscenely wealthy companies pay their fare share (let alone pay for the damage they do, such as Exxon Valdez).

And so we will keep on emitting greenhouse gases at ever-increasing rates, paying more for gas and getting worse mileage, and continuing to by held hostage by such charming regimes as Saudi Arabia - because of the drooling greed and willful blindness of the polluters' cartel and their bought-and-paid-for politicians in both parties. And of course the rank cowardice of the Democrats, who had a chance to make a difference and find a better way, and who fumbled the ball every time.

Bill O'Reilly must be so proud...

Via PZ comes this story of three Jews attacked by Christian thugs on the New York subway for saying "Happy Hanukkah".

One member of the group allegedly yelled, "Oh, Hanukkah. That's the day that the Jews killed Jesus," she said.

When Adler tried to intercede, a male member of the group punched him, she said.

The one part of the story that somewhat restores my faith in humanity:

Another passenger, Hassan Askari -- a Muslim student from Bangladesh -- came to Adler's aid, and the group began physically and verbally assaulting him, Hellerstein said.

"A Muslim-American saved us when our own people were on the train and didn't do anything," Adler said.

But then the police arrive, and what's the first thing they do? Arrest and handcuff the Muslim good Samaritan! Fortunately he was released after the victims explained to the police, presumably very slowly with lots of small words, that he was their rescuer, not a terrorist.

I wonder how Bill O'Felafel will spin this. Another crushing defeat for the good guys in the war on Christmas? Liberal elites terrorizing peaceful subway passengers with their cries of "Happy Hanukkah", forcing them to respond? And of course the presence of a Muslim proves that this was a terrorist incident, and we should nuke Iran.

In the immortal words of Shane McGowan: "Happy Christmas, your arse."

Being, Nothingness and brainlessness

Susan Estrogen has written what is probably her most vapid, clueless and annoying column ever.

"I'd rather get presents for Christmas," my friend's daughter told her, as she was on the verge of actually getting her first Chanukah present of the season.

Can you blame her?

Growing up, I remember Christmas as one of the loneliest times of the year. [...]

More so than on any Jewish holiday, even the High Holy Days, Christmas was the day when I always felt most intensely different, most distinctly Jewish.

Which is probably why, as a mother, I don't give my children Christmas presents.

So... Estrich wants her children to feel lonely, isolated, outsiders, because that's what her religion is all about. An orthodox rabbi agrees: "If you want your grandchildren to be Jewish, don't give Christmas gifts to your children." Gotta spread that meme!

Estrich recoils from the horror of mixed marriages and parents who try to educate their children about more than one religious belief: "I'm not sure how you can simultaneously believe that Jesus was the messiah and that he wasn't, or that Allah is and isn't God." Of course Allah is God, you idiot! It's just the Arabic word for God.

But what really made me roll my eyes was Estrich's assertion that the only thing worse than trying to understand other religions was "believing in nothing."

When I ask some of the kids I know what they "are" and they say "nothing," I'm always a little horrified. More than a little. They get Christmas presents, but they don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. They just do the secular part. They get the presents, but not the gift.

Personally I'm horrified, as are many people, by the obsession society has with labelling children as Catholic, Protestant, Jewish etc. according to the religion of their parents. Children who have not been brainwashed have in fact received an infinitely valuable gift: the ability to think for themselves without fear of punishment. How tawdry by comparison is the "gift" Estrich and her ilk offer:

The gift is knowing who you are. That is what I have tried, sometimes awkwardly and inartfully, to give to my children. It is what my parents, for all their failings, gave to me. The gift is faith in something larger. And it's not something you can find under a Christmas tree if all you're really looking for is a present.

I don't think I've ever seen a more inadvertently eloquent description of what religion is really all about: tribalism, sectarianism and divisiveness, and the compulsion to force your children into your own narrow mold and propagate your unexamined beliefs in the guise of "teaching them who they are." How small and petty!

I've looked this gift horse's ass in the mouth, and it's an ugly sight indeed.

I pledge resistance to the theocrats

Ever wonder why some people (not just atheists) are concerned about the Pledge of Allegiance? Surely it's less harmful than, say, blatant theocratic pandering by, to pick a random example, Mitt Romney? After all, children who don't want to say it can just sit down and keep quiet, or leave the classroom.

If you think so, you must read this short story by Alonzo Fyfe. It powerfully reinforces the feeling I've had for a long time, that the current upsurge of faithiness forces atheists (and believers who want to uphold the Constitution) to sit at the back of the bus, the common despised enemy of Mormons and born-agains. Those of us opposed to the USA's relentless stampede into mindless theocracy need to start getting uppity!

(Side comment: why do we need a Pledge of Allegiance anyway? I'm not aware of any other developed country that has such a de facto mandatory patriotic-religious ritual - only totalitarian regimes with glorious-leader cults feel the need to brainwash children every day in this fashion. And how surreal is it that millions of children in the US start each day by chanting robotically in unison about how free they are?)

Nancy Knew

Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Reagan, what's the difference?

Key Congress members, including Pelosi, knew about waterboarding as far back as 2002, and raised no objections at the time.

A bipartisan group of four members of Congress was briefed by the CIA on its torture methods. Two of them, presumably the rethugs, pressed the CIA to "push harder." Pelosi and the other Dem no doubt adapted their usual cowering fetal position of abject craven capitulation and did not stand up against the CIA's brutality.

Time and time again the Democrats "betrayus". They don't want to rock the boat, they don't want transparency or accountability. As far as I am concerned, impeachment is not only on the table, it should be the only thing on the table - and it shouldn't stop at Junior, Cheney and Rice. Pelosi is part of the problem, not part of the solution!

Thought for today

The Muslims are going berserk over a teddy bear, and the Christians are going berserk over a polar bear. Who's to say which of them are crazier?

Romney: "Fish requires bicycle"

I'm glad I didn't bother watching Mitt Romney's much-ballyhooed "Kennedy speech", because, as I predicted (see "Mitt Romney, you're no Jack Kennedy"), it was nothing of the sort. By all accounts it was standard Republican mawkish religiosity and lowest-common-denominator pablum.

"Freedom requires religion"??? Oh for crying out loud. You might as well say fish requires bicycle, or that Cheney the Dick's hunting partner requires a hole in the head. And it shows an appalling misunderstanding of the Constitution Romney would swear an oath to protect. Freedom requires not only freedom of religion, but what is the same thing, freedom from religion.

As the US hurtles ever faster into the abyss of mindless theocracy, we need to remember the words of Barry Goldwater: "Religion has no place in public policy." We need candidates who, instead of pandering to the religious lunatics and vying with each other to be the most gung-ho "Christian leader", will pledge to honor the Constitution and serve all the people - even atheists, who are citizens too, whatever Poppy might think.

You too can be offended! Don't miss out!

With the religious right frothing at the mouth over The Golden Compass (despite the fact that it has apparently been considerably watered down and dumbed down from the book), the LA Times helpfully gives a list of movies that various religions have chosen to take offense at over the years. Check and see if your religion is there, and what you should get angry about! Join the fun!

It's hard to what professional aggrieved victim Bill Donohue is offended about in the film, unless it's the fact that the villainess is called Coulter, thus casting aspersions on a certain shrill shrieking harridan. Personally, I'm offended by the Goldie Hawn/Chevy Chase piece of fluff called Foul Play. It features a group called the Tax-the-Churches League, and they are the bad guys! No fair! I demand an end to Hollywood's persecution of atheists!

Oh god, not again...

OMAHA, Nebraska: A 19-year-old man opened fire with a rifle inside a shopping centre crowded with Christmas shoppers in Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday, killing eight people and then himself, police said.

Sad, very very sad. And it's inexcusable that a known juvenile delinquent who was taking anti-depression medication was able to get a gun and kill so many people.

I'm sure the gun fetishists are already penning smug editorials to the effect that periodic and deadly shooting sprees are the price we must pay so that they can keep strutting around, Walter Mitty style, and playing with their penis substitutes.

Chuckles the Chimp: his reign of error, in a nutshell

"You can mark down that I chuckled," Chimpy smirks as his lies about Iran fall to pieces around him.

Jeezus H. Christ on a unicycle - what more will it take to impeach this psychopathic little asswipe?

The 200-mile-high club

Emission accomplished! Over 200 years before the birth of James Tiberius Kirk, US and Russian astronauts have researched the best way to have sex in space, according to a recent report.

[Pierre Kohler, a French scientific writer] cites a confidential Nasa report on a space shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best 10, he says. "Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so sensitive that even Nasa was only given a censored version."

Sheesh... even in outer space you can't get away from Merkin Christian prudery. (Hat tip to Severian.)

Mitt Romney, you're no Jack Kennedy

In 1960, John F. Kennedy gave a speech that was a defining moment not only in his political career, but in showing what kind of man he was. It was widely feared that, as the first Catholic president, he would take his orders from the pope. Kennedy eloquently refuted the suspicions and prejudices that were being so assiduously stoked by Nixon:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

It's astonishing, and depressing, to reflect on how far we have fallen back to mindless theocracy since then. This week, Mitt Romney is scheduled to give a major speech on his Mormon beliefs, which the "liberal media" is hyping as another "Kennedy speech." It is nothing of the kind. Kennedy sought to assure the Houston Baptists that his performance as president would be independent of his private religious beliefs; Romney wants to persuade the born-agains that he is one of them. The rethug presidential candidates are unanimous that belief in Christianity is a requirement for the office of president. The only disagreement is whether Mormonism qualifies as a sect of Christianity.

From the Reuters article linked to above:

From baptism of the dead to a ban on coffee, Mormonism's doctrines are alien to many Americans and that is unlikely to change when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gives a long-awaited speech on his faith this week, religious scholars say.

Thursday's address by the former Massachusetts governor, who would be the first Mormon president of the United States, could fuel more questions than answers about a faith many powerful evangelical Christian voters dismiss as a cult.

Duh! Of course it's a cult - so is fundyism! I mean, come on, is the idea of the rapture, a 6000-year-old Earth, all the species of animals on Earth being squeezed into Noah's little ark, and the Grand Canyon being formed in a matter of days any less laughable than posthumous baptism and magic underpants?

Like I said, it's really depressing that Southern Baptism - a church founded to perpetuate slavery - has become the de facto established national religion, and that anyone who wants to run for public office must take a religious test (in violation of the US Constitution) showing himself at least as crazy as Bailey Smith ("God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew") or as cynical and morally corrupt as Pat Robertson.

This is the foul, rotten fruit of Nixon's Southern Strategy. The rethugs are forced to lurch ever rightwards, chasing the votes of the lowest dregs of ignorance, bigotry, backwardness and superstition. Their movement is spiritually bankrupt, intellectually bankrupt, politically bankrupt, and most of all morally bankrupt - and with any luck it'll be financially bankrupt one day soon.

Will we ever again see a president of the stature of JFK? Not from the ranks of the rethugs, that's for sure.

Judge for yourself

Same story, two vastly different perspectives. Who's right?

• Just Another Salem
• Athiest [sic] troublemakers not O.K. in OK

(I suppose it's possible that the second site is a parody. It's really hard to tell sometimes, extreme-right Christians are so apeshit crazy.)

(Okay, at this stage I'm pretty sure the second site is a piss-take. But be sure to read the first one. See the background story here.)

Moron Christmas

Oh for the love of... This bogus "war on Christmas" crap gets infinitely stupider every year.

The latest casus belli for the mouth-foaming fundies who see "Merry Christmas" as a battle-cry and a way to express hatred and triumphalism (none o' that peace and goodwill crap for Bill O'Felafel and his frenzied acolytes, nosirree Bob): "At PetSmart, Christmas doesn't exist." Oh my gawd! Cats and dogs are being persecuted and denied their right to pray to the god of their choice! Won't someone think of the pets! What, pray tell, are the outrages being perpetrated against animals of faith by the liberal atheist Satanists at PetSmart?

A search on PetSmart's home page found 252 references to "holiday." It also found 43 references to "Christmas." But, alas, this is very misleading. When you click on "Christmas" you are directed to a page containing the same gifts you get when you search for holiday. Of all the items that pop up when you search for Christmas, not a single one mentions Christmas or is identified as being a Christmas gift. [Emphasis in original]

The horror, the horror! Poodles are being forced to wear fake reindeer antlers that don't say "Jesus" on them!

I give up. Extreme-right Christians are a black hole of infinitely dense stupidity, arrogance, aggressiveness and utter cluelessness.

Adding insult to the injury which this parade of ignorance and backwardness has inflicted on my brain, the late unlamented Jerry Falwell's goons have drawn up a list of naughty and nice retailers. Let me guess, the naughty ones are those that use Chinese slave labor to produce Christian geegaws? No, of course not, silly! The naughty ones are those that try to be polite to customers of all religions by recognizing that religions other than Christianity exist, and the "nice" ones have given in to the extreme lunatic right's bullying and blackmail. "Liberty Counsel's Steve Crampton said stores have the right to advertise any way they want, but Christians have the right to shop at stores that recognize their holiday."

Hey dumbass, here's an idea. Acknowledge your own damn holiday, don't force other people to do it! Go to church and stay there, and don't come out until Groundhog Day. Stop forcing your barbaric bronze-age superstition down everyone else's throat. And for Christ's sake, stop projecting your anger and rage onto other people and pretending that the "War on Christmas" even exists. It doesn't, and it hasn't since 1659, when those good Christians the Puritans banned the celebration of Christmas in Massachusetts. The only people waging war are brainless imbeciles like you, who are frenziedly trying to destroy the last vestiges of common sense in the US.

You want a war? Keep pushing, and I'll give you a goddam war...

War on Christmas, my ass

Read this account of how the US religious-industrial complex is selling crucifixes made by Chinese sweatshop labor.

Oh screw it, let's nuke 'em anyway

The George Bush Junior misadministration suffered two major setbacks today. Firstly, it has emerged that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, thus depriving Cheney the Dick of an excuse to shoot them in the face. Legions of right-wing chickenhawks who lusted for war against Iran and nuclear Armageddon are weeping with frustration and gnashing their teeth as we speak.

Secondly, Venezuelan voters narrowly rejected Hugo Chavez's plan to end term limits for the presidency. Rats! There goes another excuse to invade an oil-rich country, kill its people, and convert its rulers to Christianity - or is it the other way round? Who cares? We just wants to kill us some brown folks!

Oh well, maybe our unelected Dictator-for-life will pick a fight with his soul-mate Vlad The Impaler Putin. Them Rooskies got plenty of oil...

The Allah Delusion

Some time ago I wrote about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her courageous personal story in escaping a brutally misogynist religion and society. I was concerned that she seemed to end up being used as a pawn by US conservatives. Now I am very disappointed to read the following:

Her alignment with the American right doesn't seem like an easy fit. She is a militant defender of atheism, feminism and gay rights - all forces they have demonised for decades. She is an illegal immigrant, their ultimate hate figure. But, as our interview goes on, I realise she has depressingly begun to adopt some of their ideas. She wants to abolish the minimum wage. She no longer calls for the closing of all faith schools, but simply Muslim ones, because "they are the only ones that do not respect the division between secular and divine law".

She has even begun to touch on the American hard right's preposterous predictions that Muslims are "outbreeding" the continent's traditional populations and will impose sharia law "within decades". When I challenge her on this, she says that "experts" say it is true.

Not just a pawn, but a willing pawn. How sad for a woman of such intellectual courage.

As I've said many times before, Christianity is in principle no better, no less violent, no less anti-intellectual, no less demeaning to women than Islam. When Christianity held absolute power in Europe, there's a good reason the period was known as the Dark Ages. It was only with the splintering of Christianity, and the rise of reason and humanism that this permitted, that the church was gradually stripped of its power and the worst of its excesses reined in. And it was only after it lost total power that it became more moderate. There are some very powerful and influential people in the US working to reverse this state of affairs, not just within their own shores but throughout the West, and don't think for an instant they wouldn't overthrow our entire system of democracy, the rule of law, and especially science if the opportunity arose.

There's no doubt that the rise of fanatical Islam is something we need to worry about, but we are being offered a false choice: either keep caving in to Muslims in the West, constantly censoring ourselves for fear of offending them, and granting them special privileges to opt out of our legal and educational systems, and create enclaves of Sharia in our own countries; or "return to our roots" and meet fanaticism with fanaticism, as the current Pope is constantly and shrilly demanding we do.

The only real choice we have if to leave both Christianity and Islam behind, and firmly defend the principles of liberalism, humanism and secularism that has made the West strong and prosperous. We should stop indulging the tantrums of various religious groups and tell them to grow up! And most of all we should stop apologizing for our Western values, and realize that they are very powerful and attractive to people living under religious oppression all over the world. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali says, "The message of liberals is so much better, so much stronger."