Saturday, October 31, 2009

Life and Death of a Pumpkin

NOTE: Not for the faint-hearted. You'll never look at a carved pumpkin the same after seeing this:


Friday, October 30, 2009

Celebating Hallowe'en

No less an authority on all things pagan than the Baptist Church of Bumfuck USA has started a program to -- I am not kidding here -- burn books!

No, really, I'm NOT kidding. Chief among the offending books are as follows:

Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, ESV, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect [sic]. These are perversions of God's Word the King James Bible.
We will also be burning Satan's music such as country, rap, rock, pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel, contemporary Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.
We will also be burning Satan's popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort, Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll, John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart [sic], Mark Driskol [sic], Franklin Graham, Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, James White, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa, The Pope, Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, Will Graham, and many more.
We are not burning Bibles written in other languages that are based on the TR. We are not burning the Tyndale, Geneva or other translations that are based on the TR...
[Emphasis added]
Oh, and BTW, they WILL be serving fried chicken...

Okay, I think it's gotta be a fuckin' joke. But remember Poe's Law...

Really, as I've said so many times before, you can't make this shit up...

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?

In answer to that age-old question, here's a video shot by a fellow trucker in my battalion:



I wasn't in the Reefer Kings, but they were a part of my battalion in Vietnam. This is as true a picture as you're likely to get (aside from, of course, A Bad Attitude) about the US Army Transportation Corps in Vietnam.

Larry David Pissing on Jesus???

OMFG, this is really too much.

The wingnuttery hates Hollywood. It also hates most Jews (Jomentum Lieberman excepted, of course).

So when this week's episode of Larry David's terrific HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm aired, the Taliban wing of the Rethug Party -- I guess I shouldn't call it a "wing", since now it's pretty much the whole torso and then some -- got into high lather over a scene in the show in which Larry, having taken a medication that causes him to urinate like a horse, accidentally splashes a drop on a kitschy painting of Jesus in a bathroom. Naturally the fundo-quasi-catholic loonies who live at the house see it as Jesus weeping, and then the fun ensues.

But to hear the wingnuttery scream about it, you'd think that Larry David, that atheistic commie-pinko purveyor of morally bankrupt Hollywood trash, had literally thrown the picture down and intentionally pissed all over it.

Like I always say, Jesus protect me from your followers.

Obama v. Bush -- Dead Soldier Edition

Late Wednesday night President Barack Obama made a visit to Dover Air Base to honor the war dead returning from Afghanistan.

I don't need to remind anyone that this is more than George W. Bush did in the entire seven years of his administration when the coffins came in on a regular basis.

No, Baby Doc and his Unca Dick were too busy to honor the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen that they sent to be slaughtered in two stupid senseless unwinnable wars.

Too busy. Just sooo fucking busy...

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Obama-Nixon Parallels

Thanks to Bobwurst, a commenter over at Think Progress, for pointing out some striking parallels between Barack Obama and, of all people, Richard Nixon:

· Nixon got elected because the population was sick of the current president
· Obama got elected because the population was sick of the current president
· Nixon got saddled with a crappy war
· Obama got saddled with a crappy war
· Nixon talked to our sworn enemies, the commies
· Obama talks to our sworn enemies, the islamofacists
· Obama has a hot wife
· Nixon had a hot…ah well the comparison was bound to fall down at some point.
It's obvious that Bobwurst put a lot of thought into this...

And of course I am reminded of that list of equally striking parallels between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy:
· Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
· John F Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
· Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
· John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
· Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
· Both Presidents were shot in the head.
· Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
· Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
· Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
· Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
· A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
· A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in ... Marilyn Monroe.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Public Option Annie

Speaking of brilliant, I don't know exactly how this guerrilla-theatre troupe infiltrated the AHIP conference, but here's the stunning result:



As I say, brilliant. We need more of this kind of thing.

How to Choose Your Religion Scientifically

Here from Holy Taco by way of Bay of Fundie is a brilliant flowchart that takes the guesswork out of picking the right religion for you:



Friday, October 23, 2009

Let the Bloodletting Begin

Things aren't looking so great over on the Rethug aisle these days. Sarah Palin (R-Moron) and Michelle Bachmann (R-Batshit Crazy) are both supporting a non-Republican candidate in New York's special election to fill the vacant 23rd Congressional District seat.

I don't know what their boy, Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, has going for him, but both wackjob Rethugs are putting their considerable weight behind him and not his opponent, Real Republican Dede Scozzafava.

And not content just to campaign for the upstart Hoffman, our Sarah goes out of her way to rip her former Rethug cronies:

Political parties must stand for something. When Republicans were in the wilderness in the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan knew that the doctrine of ‘blurring the lines’ between parties was not an appropriate way to win elections," she added, launching into an attack of the Republican Party.
"Unfortunately, the Republican Party today has decided to choose a candidate that more than blurs the lines, and there is no real difference between the Democrat and the Republican in this race. This is why Doug Hoffman is running on the Conservative Party's ticket," she wrote. "Republicans and conservatives around the country are sending an important message to the Republican establishment in their outstanding grassroots support for Doug Hoffman: no more politics as usual."
When Palin was followed immediately by Michelle "Me Too" Bachmann, it proved to be too much for me to stand without outright laughing.

And so it begins. The self-immolation of the Republican Party. Let the bloodletting begin.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Secret Service Under Strain from Wingnuttery

In a story in the Boston Post the other day, "The unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service".

This is troubling to me on a number of points, but mostly because of the geometrically-increased number of death threats against the president. And they are, sadly, not going to go away. Not with the wingnuttery out there shouting out their hate-filled spew on the 24-7 Faux "News" cycle, not with the MSM/SCLM/CPM* gladly giving them coverage for non-stories that they have in fact generated themselves. Like the whole teabagger phenomenon, which was a wholly-owned subsidiary of ClusterFox News, ginned up among the great uneducated, the thinking-impaired, and then breathlessly covered by Faux News itself as if it were a spontaneous outburst by "the people".

Back when I was an aspiring hack journalism student and editor of my college newspaper, we had a staff member who pulled a Faux News type of stunt. He called a local store three times to rant and rave about something (the topic of which I don't now recall - hey it was 36+ years ago), disguising his voice every time, and then he finally called back and said he was a reporter from the college paper and what's all this he's hearing about the blahblahblah controversy. And then wrote it up as a "news" story.

Naturally I didn't publish it in the paper. And I also fired his ass from the newspaper staff, which was I believe the first time in the history of the college newspaper that a reporter had been fired.

I don't know what happened to that little jerk, but it would not surprise me to learn that he was a producer at Faux News. I suspect that this is the kind of journalistic integrity that is not taught so much these days, but that's a little too grim for me to contemplate...

Anyway, back to the Secret Service. With all the extra work they have to do investigating each and every death threat, plus all they have to do on the financial side of things, it's no wonder that they are showing strain. They are overworked and strung out on phony death threats beyond belief.

So if something does happen to the president, those asshole loudmouths on the right will proudly proclaim another victory in their "government doesn't work" campaign.

Just once I'd like to see them live for a while without that awful government that they hate so much getting in their way. I wish we could dump a bunch of them on a deserted island somewhere, like the tv series Survivor, but without all of the rules that hobble its participants, and watch them through remote cameras a la Big Brother, as they try to live without any government at all. It would be enormously entertaining, in a car-wreck-on-the-freeway kind of way, to see them eventually turn on each other and start maiming and killing each other. I would actually pay good money to see that reality series.

But I just don't want to see the inevitable random coupling that would occur prior to that. I mean come on, Rush Limbaugh and mAnn Coulter grappling naked on a tropical beach?

Eeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

[*Main Stream Media/So Called Liberal Media/Capitalist Pig Media]

Sunday, October 18, 2009

It's Déjà Vu All Over Again

In case the action in Honduras has kind of fallen off your radar (I know, there's a lot on our plates at the moment), here's a quick-study "Cliff-Notes" kind of thing to get you up to speed.

Over at Alternet.org they've got a short graphic novel that gives you the background of what's happening in Honduras:



The United States still has a lot to answer for in our mistreatment of Central America over the years, not the least of which was the Nicaragua policies of the Reagan Maladministration, which if you'll recall, referred to the Contras, a terrorist organization, as the "moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers".

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Okay, Today's Pop Quiz

What does this group of senators have in common?

Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), Wicker (R-MS)

Trick question. They are all Republicans, all white males, mostly southern, okay. But there's more to this story.

These are the only members of the senate to vote FOR rape. In the aftermath of the notorious Halliburton employee rape case, the senate then took up the cause with the Franken Government Contract anti-rape bill. Seems to me that this would be a straightforward slam dunk, with all 100 senators supporting it.

Nope, not these guys. And I note that there are a couple of names in there who have made the news recently for sexual-misconduct issues, particularly Vitter and Ensign. How they can have the nerve to vote against something like this is beyond me.

Anyway, all of you people who live in the states "served" by these assholes, here's your job for the next couple of years: Send these fuckers home and replace them with Democrats!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Using the Bible in Capital Crimes Convictions

Down in Texas a man is facing execution for murder because the jurors passed around a copy of the Xian Bible during sentencing deliberations, with the appropriate "death penalty" passages highlighted.

Okay, even putting aside the obvious Church-State issues, is this really the way we want our jurors to behave, putting a man's life on the line for something written in a 2000+ year old book of grim fairy tales?

Anyway, this got me to thinking about the verses in the Xian Bible that support, even demand ("he shall surely be put to death"), the death penalty. I recalled that there were a lot of them, but after checking out this Wikipedia entry, I was surprised not only at the number but also at some of the "crimes":

1. Religious Crimes:
  • Sacrificing to gods other than God alone [Exodus 22:20; Leviticus 27:29]
  • Passing children through the fire (human sacrifice) [Leviticus 20:1-5]
  • worshipping Baal Peor [Numbers 25:1-9]
  • False prophecy [Deuteronomy 13:1-10; Deuteronomy 17:2-7; 18:20-22]
  • Necromancy, masters over ghosts and those who gain information from the dead, gastromancy and enchantment [Leviticus 20:27]
  • Witchcraft [Exodus 22:18].
  • Blasphemy [Leviticus 24:10-16]
  • Sabbath breaking [Exodus 31:14; Exodus 35:2; Numbers 15:32-36]
2. Sexual Practices:
  • Rape by a man of a betrothed woman in the countryside [Deuteronomy 22:25-27]
  • Being either participant in urban sexual activity, in which a betrothed woman consensually loses her virginity to a man [Deuteronomy 22:23-24]
  • Loss of virginity by a woman prior to marriage, to someone other than her husband [Deuteronomy 22:13-21]
  • Adultery with a married woman [Leviticus 20:10]. Sexual activity between a married man and an unmarried woman was not forbidden.
  • Marrying your wife's mother [Leviticus 20:14]
  • Certain forms of incest, namely if it involves the father's wife or a daughter-in-law [Leviticus 20:11-12]. Other forms of incest receive lesser punishment; sexual activity with a sister/stepsister is given excommunication for a punishment [Leviticus 20:17]; if it involves a brother's wife or an uncle's wife it is just cursed [Leviticus 20:20-21]; and sexual activity with an aunt that is a blood relation is merely criticised [Leviticus 20:19].
  • Prostitution by the daughter of a priest [Leviticus 21:9]
  • Certain "activities" with a male [Leviticus 20:13; Leviticus 18:22]; the gender of the target of the command is commonly understood to be male, but not explicitly stated.
  • Bestiality [Exodus 22:19]
3. Miscellaneous:
  • Murder [Genesis 9:6; Exodus 21:12-14; Leviticus 24:17-23; Numbers 35:9-34]
  • Striking a parent [Exodus 21:15]
  • Cursing a parent [Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9]
  • Being a "degenerate son" [Deuteronomy 21:18-21]
  • Kidnapping [Exodus 21:16; Deuteronomy 24:7]
  • Negligent homicide, specifically by ox-goring [Exodus 21:28-32]
  • Contempt of court [Deuteronomy 17:8-13]
  • False witness to a capital crime [Deuteronomy 19:15-21]
What is particularly striking in this all-encompassing list is that there is nothing in there from the New Testament, which it seems, ought to have precedence over the Old Testament -- as Joshua bar Joseph himself implied -- but after all, that wimpy New Testament Jesus has become something of an embarrassment to the purveyors of the faith, which is why they are now embarked on a quest to silence him and all that Prince of Peace love-thy-neighbor turn-the-other-cheek crap of his.

This is just a little taste of the kind of criminal law that will rule this nation if the Religious Right Dominionists get their way and we become the theocracy they want. These people are domestic terrorists of the first order, and they are infinitely more dangerous than a few disgruntled radical Islamists hankering for those seventy virgins.

So please, consider joining an organization such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State and help us hold back the rising tide of radical Christianist fascism.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Is Your Bible Too "Liberal"? Change It!

You had to know this one was coming. A bunch of wingnuts are now engaged in rewriting their holy bible to give it a more conservative -- a more freemarket -- slant.

As with so many things lately, I thought it was a joke, a parody. But when it comes to the wingnuttery in this country, they are doing so much batshit crazy stuff that it's really hard to come up with something that would clearly be parody. Remember Poe's Law?

You can check this out over at the so-called Conservapedia (I won't provide the link since I don't want to drive up their stats). While they don't specifically say it, I'm sure that they're going to make some major changes to the "red letter" stuff in the New Testament, especially all that wimpy-wussy nancy-boy proto-hippie Jesus crap:

  • Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. [Matthew 5:9]
  • Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Matthew 5:39]
  • I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite-fully use you, and persecute you; [Matthew 5:44]
  • If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone at her. [John 8:7]
  • Do not judge, lest you too be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. [Matthew 7:1 & 2.]
  • Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy [Matthew 5:7]
  • But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. [Matthew 6:15]
  • Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. [Luke 12.15.]
  • Truly, I say unto you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 19:23]
  • You cannot serve both God and Money. [Matthew 6:24.]
  • Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. [Matthew 22:21]
  • Love your neighbor as yourself. [Matthew 22:39]
  • So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you. [Matthew 7:12.]
  • If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. [Matthew 19:21]
  • But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. [Luke 14:13&14.]
Like I say, you had to know it was coming. For a long time these precepts have been a major discomfort to those in the Prosperity Theology camp, seeing as how the teachings of Joshua bar Joseph, aka Jesus, are pretty much all antithetical to the Bizarro-World Christian theology promoted by the Religious Right.

They've gotten away with it this long because I would hazard a guess that upwards of 90% of all professed believers in Christianity have never actually read their holy book.

That aside, it was something that had to happen. Too many people have been pointing out over the years that they are wrong, and all you have to do is look at their bible to prove it. So the obvious answer? If what you are doing and saying contradicts your "holy text", change the text!

It would not surprise me if they came up with an answer to that awkward question, "Who Would Jesus Bomb?"

Iran. Followed by all Muslim infidels. Followed by anyone else they want.

After all, war is good business, and their Jesus will, I am sure, be firmly on the side of Big Business in their new holy writ.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

I'm Okay

I'm just taking a few days off. Be back next week.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Hey, I'm the Victim Here!

This is from our "Are You Fucking Kidding Me?" file. I mean really, my fucking jaw dropped when I read this shit.

Turns out that I, along with the whole Farnsworth clan, are victims of the slavery system. Yes, that's right. Because my great-great-great-etc. grandfather, Rufus Leeking Farnsworth, owned slaves (jeez, after all, we came out of the "shallow south", i.e., Tennessee and Arkansas), then according to Glenn The Beckster's guru, one W. Cleon Skousen, it was the slave owners who suffered the most from slavery, and NOT the slaves!

Well, in words of Jane Ace, you coulda knocked me over with a fender!

Oh, and BTW, I do need to add that, in addition to his membership in the John Birch Society and other extremist rightwing organizations, that Skousen was also a Mormon. The same church that our Beckster, evidently coming down from a hangover of monumental proportions, joined and now crows about with the stereotypical zeal of the convert.

Over at Media Matters, you can read an in-depth analysis of the weirdness that is Skousen -- and of course, by extension, Glenn Beck himself.

I used to think that the Beckster, along with his moronic cohorts like Limpdick and Slanthead and mAnn Coulter, couldn't possibly believe the crap that they were spewing out on the peoples' airwaves. That the gurus recognized that they were nothing more than entertainers who gave their audience what they wanted...

But that was before I learned that Beck was a Mormon convert. And anyone that can even entertain the remote possibility that Joseph Smith was a "prophet, seer and revelator", chosen by god himself, is someone that will believe pretty much anything: Up is down, black is white, left is right, day is night ... the list is endless, but if the current "prophet, seer and revelator" of the church dictates it, then the true believer (in other words, the theologically retarded challenged) will have to parrot the new party line, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

I am not making this shit up. It's true. I have had the occasion to know personally a number of Mormons over the years, and when The One True Church finally, if belatedly, recognized in the mid-1970s that they were being racist and changed the rules on African-American membership in The One True Church, many of them were privately disgruntled (racist as they were and pretty much still remain) but publicly extolled the virtues of the "prophet, seer and revelator" by having a new "revelation from god" that absolutely contradicted every other "revelation" about the "Negro Problem" that any previous "prophet, seer and revelator" at the head of the church had dictated. Which included the whole "curse of Cain" crap from a theology that went out of favor -- and credibility -- about the time of the First Crusade.

So back to my ancestor the slaveholder. I'll bet that Grampa Farnsworth is resting easy in his grave these days. Despite the fact that he actually enlisted and fought for the confederacy, lost a leg in the process, and ended up in the so-called "Indian Nation" (aka Oklahoma) where he found a bride among the Cherokees and spawned a progeny that includes me, the most liberal of the Farnsworth dynasty, he should be happy that we are all, to this very day, among the uncounted white victims of slavery...

Obama as Hitler. Again.

Jesus, will somebody give this a rest? In Sunday's edition of our local newspaper, some moron wrote a screed on that favorite wingnut topic, Obama is like Hitler Because...

Here's the full text of the letter (without the dope's name -- I don't want him to get any more publicity than is necessary -- but it does rhyme with "dunce"...):

A recent Olympian article by Leonard Pitts, columnist for the Miami Herald, strongly objected to comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler.
Hitler was a skilled schemer, politician, organizer. Obama definitely exercises the same skill levels.
Hitler acquired his following through his ability to arouse street crowds with his speeches. Obama, with his teleprompter, accomplishes the same.
Hitler and Obama began their political careers with small groups; Hitler with the German Workers Party, later becoming fuhrer (leader) of the Nazi Party. Obama, with the infamous political group ACORN, as a community organizer and now a U.S. president.
Hitler organized his private army of hoodlums known as storm troopers and later the SS or Schutzstaffel. Obama has expressed his demand for a civilian youth corps equal to our military. Kindergartners next? Why?
Hitler involved himself strongly in labor unions, business, industry, agriculture. Why? Obama destroys our infrastructure, demanding government intrusion into our financial world, industrial capacity, labor unions, energy, health care, education, communications. Why? Obama is making fools of us all.
For every "why" the answer: Conquest, power, control, mind manipulation — socialism. Hitler demanded a strong socialistic central government. Obama, demanding the same, is still in the process of implementing his socialistic master plan for America. Where will it end?
History will judge.
Hitler in hating Jewish people became a racist monster, spreading death as no man before.
All true Americans, blessed by our Constitution, freedom and liberty, absolutely must keep this nation a free republic, for our children and future generations.
God, I am so fucking sick of this shit, and this one was the last straw. So here is my response to this dickhead, submitted to the paper that same day. On Monday I got called with the usual questions (i.e., "did you write it yourself?" "Is it a form letter?" etc.), so it ought to be in print within a week.
Fox News followers and lockstep Limbaugh listeners (aka "dittoheads") can apparently parrot the "Barack Obama is like Adolf Hitler because…" crap endlessly, with reckless abandon, as we saw in Sunday's letters. And sadly, the reasonable-sounding sophistry of this specious "proof" can have a certain superficial appeal.
While you can use those same arguments in a comparison between pretty much any politician and Adolf Hitler, I am particularly amused by applying them to a much different icon of the US Presidency, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, too, "acquired his following through his ability to arouse … crowds with his speeches"; "involved himself strongly in labor unions, business, industry, agriculture"; "was a skilled schemer, politician, organizer"; and "began his political career with small groups" (e.g., the Screen Actor's Guild and the GE board of directors, at whose bidding he once railed unsuccessfully against the freedom-killing "socialist slavery" of Medicare).
Those who blindly follow the rightwing's marching orders, without exercising a single iota of critical thinking, are the sheep that the true wannabe dictators of this nation can happily call on to bleat on command whatever absurd talking-points they want them to spout.
Thus we have a litany of "Obama is not an American; Obama is a socialist; Obama is a fascist; Obama is a communist" etc. etc. Who knows what'll be next, but I don't think they can do much better than their "Obama is a fascist-communist-socialist-racist-atheist-Muslim-Kenyan-radical" rant.
About the only thing left is "Obama is a War-of-the-Worlds Martian".
Watch for it.
While I was pretty much free to choose most any politician as representing those talking points, I was more than happy to apply them to Saint Ronald, in a blatant attempt to piss off the letter writer and the literally dozens of Rethugs that we have in the liberal bastion of sanity (mostly) that is the state capital.