Mormons, Blood Atonement and the Separation of Church and State

In this country we are fortunate enough to have a miniature laboratory experiment in what can happen when the church and the state are commingled.

The state is Utah and the church is Mormon. No one can doubt the immense religious, social and political power that the Mormon Church wields over its members. Their actions in the recent Prop Hate debacle in California was enough to prove that ten times over.

Now the church -- along with its poor benighted sock-puppets-of-god members -- is quick to disagree with that, preferring to give lip service to that whole "render unto Caesar..." thing in the New Testament, but an examination of their history and especially their "official" doctrine gives the lie to that position.

No less an authority than Mormon "apostle" (you don't get very much higher in the church hierarchy than being one of the Twelve Apostles) Bruce McConkie, in his monumental work Mormon Doctrine, says, in connection with a discussion on the Mormon doctrine of "blood atonement" (an antithetical-to-Christianity concept that there are some sins that the blood of Christ did not wash away and therefore the blood of the sinner must be shed -- which is why Utah remains the only state to administer its death penalty by firing squad), that the "...doctrine can only be practiced in its fullness in a day when the civil and ecclesiastical laws are administered in the same hands".

Got that? can only be practiced in its fullness in a day when the civil and ecclesiastical laws are administered in the same hands. No separation of church and state for those people, no sirree.

Utah's bizarrely arcane liquor laws were the laughingstock of the nation for years, but the Mormons were never big on banning booze outright. In fact, it was surprisingly the Utah legislature that cast the deciding vote to pass the 21st Amendment, thereby repealing Prohibition. The Mormons consider it a sin to drink alcohol, but that doesn't prohibit them from selling it to "gentiles" (i.e., any non-Mormon).

It's an open secret in the state of Utah that the church is actually a "shadow government", and since upwards of 90% of the legislature consists of "worthy members of the church", how difficult is it really to pass -- or defeat -- legislation solely on the dictates of the inerrant "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" at the pinnacle of the church hierarchy?

And the Mormons see absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are the true believers who belong to the "one true church" (in Mormon doctrine, all other churches/religions -- even including all Christian churches -- are "apostate" and therefore without the blessings of god), and their church is of course set up in a facsimile Old Testament patriarchy, avoiding all that messy stuff that happens when people think for themselves. You know, like democracy and freedom and liberty...

In Utah we have a microcosm -- a living laboratory if you will -- of what can happen if we don't maintain that wall of separation. The only thing that's kept Utah from becoming an out-and-out theocracy is that pesky little Establishment Clause in the US Constitution and a Supreme Court that, for the most part, has ruled in support of it.

The Faith-Based Pentagon

Note: This being the big Blog Against Theocracy weekend, I've decided to dust off and give some new face time to a few of my earlier posts on the topic. Watch for these recycled commentaries to pop up periodically over the next two and a half days.

It's a trend that's been building for a while, what with the fundo-evangelicals at the Air Force Academy and the disgusting antics of General Jerry Boykin, but now a group of general officers is being called to task by the Inspector General for appearing, in uniform and on duty, in a video filmed by something called Christian Embassy (which is affiliated with the notorious fundo organization, Campus Crusade for Christ).

Truthout.org has the whole story, along with a streaming video copy of the actual video. It's appalling to see what I consider to be a clear violation of the separation of church and state, and it's especially disturbing to have it come from the Pentagon.

I guess the next step will be "faith based" combat, where you pray that god will smite your enemies.

It kind of reminds me of a joke from the movie The Pursuit of Happyness: A guy is in the middle of the ocean without a boat, he's treading water, and another guy in a boat comes by and asks him if he needs help. "No, thanks," the water-treader says. "God will save me." A few hours later another boat comes by and the same thing, "god will save me." So finally the guy drowns and when he gets to heaven he askes god why he didn't save him.

The answer: "You freakin' moron, I sent you two boats!"

So I encourage everyone to join with me in supporting Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It's the premiere watchdog group that is instrumental in preventing this nation from becoming a fundo-Xian theocracy under the repressive iron heel of the American Taliban.

[Originally published Monday, August 06, 2007]

US Not a Christian Nation??? Oh, the Shame!

It didn't take long for the Faux News windbags to get into high dudgeon over President Obama's statement -- historical fact that it was -- that the US is not a Christian Nation.

Jeez, the way their panties got into a bunch, you'd think that Slanthead and Karl Asshole Rove and the rest of the dittohead morons over there, including Newt Gingrich, had just discovered that Osama Bin Laden was in their underwear drawer.

Media Matters has a choice story on the feeding frenzy:

Several Fox News media figures, including Fox News contributor Karl Rove, Hannity host Sean Hannity, America's Newsroom co-host Megan Kelly, and Fox News analyst Newt Gingrich, have paraphrased or replayed President Obama's remarks during an April 6 press availability with the president of Turkey, during which he made factual comments about religion in America, saying, in part: "[W]e do not consider ourselves a Christian nation," and used those comments to criticize Obama and generate outrage. For example, Gingrich asserted Obama "was fundamentally misleading about the nature of America"; Hannity stated that he was "offended" and that Obama is "out of touch with the principles that have made this country great"; Rove suggested that Obama denied the reality that "we have historically had, you know, a robust presence of faith in our public square"; and Kelly asked if Obama had "step[ped] on a political landmine" and suggested that Obama was "obviously just pandering" when he suggested "[w]e're not a Christian country."

There's a lot more. Go over and read some of the stupid crap that the whole Faux "News" crew and guests had to say. If it weren't so scary that these people actually think this way -- actually believe this way -- it would be a lot funnier.

Oh, and welcome to the first day of Blog Against Theocracy.

Blog Against Theocracy Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow starts the three-day swarm of Blog Against Theocracy, and my friend Blue Gal has an interesting comment on the question Must You Do It Easter Weekend?:

Blog Against Theocracy has always been held Easter Weekend. That is not a slam on Jesus or a silly way to put down religion or Christians. As many of you know, I am a believing Christian myself, although a great many participants to the blogswarm are not. Belief or not has nothing to do with supporting separation of church and state.
There are two good reasons to time the blogswarm during the Easter holiday. One, I admit, is the selfish motive that Easter Weekend is one of the two times a year when the media actually cover religious issues in the United States with a broad stroke.
The other reason, speaking as a believer, is that Easter is a time when what is divinely good triumphs over human will. If you look at Pilate as a purely secular leader (a stretch) and the Pharisees who demanded Pilate kill Jesus as the self-preserving conservative church of Jesus' day (not a stretch, not at all), it is possible to see the Easter story as a perfect allegory of a power-seeking Church and a pandering State's conspiracy failing utterly to destroy Truth and Reason.

And that's as succinct and clear explanation for the "reason for the season" there is. So everyone, check with me and my fellow bloggers against theocracy for the next three days. I sometimes feel that we stalwart few are all that is standing between democracy and theocracy.

Limbaugh "Brainwashed Nazi" -- Gotta-See-It Video

As Olberman puts it, the Dittoheads are revolting. Here's a gotta-see-it video from YouTube which shows "Boss" Limpick being handed his lunch by a Republican former Marine:

What's amazing is that 4-F Pimpleass Limpdick just fucking sits there for so long taking it before he finally starts to fight back, finally calling out weakly that this former Marine is "stupid"... a childish playground taunt.

I think he's on drugs again. What else can account for the Fatboy being so slow on the draw?

Oh, and a telling item towards the end of the video: Pimpleass sneers at the guy for being exactly the kind of Republican who went flocking towards "our last presidential candidate" -- he wouldn't even mention McCain by name -- and implied that this was why they lost the election. And all this time I thought that the wingnuttery antipathy towards McCain was a show, a lie, to try to paint him as being more "mainstream Republican"...

Oh well, if you go back over my posts for the last three years, you'll note that my skills as a political prognosticator are about par with those of a retarded wombat.

How Did I Miss This One?

Sometime during the last presidential campaign, the wingnuttery latched onto this story: "Barack Obama had an underage gay affair with a pedophile" -- when he was ten years old! ...

I have no idea whether this piece of crap tale is "true" or not, nor does it matter. While it never seemed to grow the legs to make it into the mainstream (despite the claim that the National Enquirer "discovered" it), it appears to have been bouncing around inside the rightwing echo chamber for a while. Which is probably why I didn't know about it.

Only in Rethugland can sex between an adult and a ten-year-old child be considered consensual sex, let alone an "affair" (see The Armchair Subversive).

In the rest of the civilized world it's called what it is: "Child Molesting" (are you listening, Rush Limpick?) and we do not blame the victim.

Speaking of Sexual Abuse of Children...

... there's a case working its way onto the SCOTUS docket concerning an warrantless -- and unwarranted -- strip search of a 13-year-old female honor student who was fingered (no, not that way -- get your minds out of the gutter!) by a "friend" who was on the spot for holding drugs.

The drug? Prescription-strength ibuprofen!

So what do the school authorities do when faced with this heinous crime? They march the 13-year-old down to the school nurse where she is forced to strip to her skivvies and then wiggle her bra and panties to make sure she doesn't have the offending substance hidden. And then ... okay, I don't know what happened after that, but a body-cavity search would be the next item in the atrocity menu...

This is yet another case of prosecutorial zeal (the prosecutor in this case being the school principal) run amok. While I'm glad, in a way, that it's going to the Supremes, the Fourth Amendment is on shaky ground when it comes to many of those fuckers -- need I remind everyone of "Stripsearch Sammy" Alito, who apparently has a "thing" for the strip searching of prepubescent females?

Anyway, here's hoping that Savana Redding, the 13-year-old subject of this humiliation, will prevail, and SCOTUS will uphold the Ninth Circuit ruling that this search violated her Fourth Amendment rights.

You go, girl!

Legalizing Drugs

Leonard Pitts Jr., a columnist that I always read, calls to task our national policy on drugs in his newest column, Let's begin the discussion about legalizing drugs:

Maybe we should legalize drugs.
I come neither eagerly nor easily to that maybe. Rather, I come by way of spiraling drug violence in Mexico that recently forced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to acknowledge the role America's insatiable appetite for narcotics plays in the carnage. I come by way of watching Olympian Michael Phelps do the usual public-relations song and dance after being outed smoking weed, and knowing the whole thing was a ritualized farce.
. . .
The War on Drugs came into being under President Nixon, whose chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, once quoted the president as saying, "You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to." Small wonder blacks account for 13 percent of the nation's regular drug users, but more than 70 percent of all those jailed for drug use.
. . .
In 1914, when the first federal drug law was enacted, the government estimated 1.3 percent of us were addicted to illegal drugs. In 1970, when the War on Drugs began, the government estimated 1.3 percent of us were addicted to illegal drugs. Thirty-nine million arrests later ... the government says 1.3 percent of us are addicted to illegal drugs. [Emphasis added]

There are a couple of very telling statistics in there:

(1) Over 70% of individuals jailed for drug use are black. And that's in large part due to the fact that the draconian penalties for crack cocaine (primarily used by blacks) have been in stark opposition to the slap-on-the-wrist penalties for rock cocaine (primarily used by upper middle class lawyers, congressmen, etc., of the white race).

(2) In nearly 30 years of arresting and locking away drug users, the addiction rate is the same as it was in 1970, when all this crap started -- and the same as it was in 1914, when drugs were first made illegal. What's that old line about insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Well, this is it.

So yes, I agree with Pitts. When it comes to so-called "illegal drugs", legalize them, control them and tax them. It would have a positive dual effect on the economy: Increased revenue from the taxation, and decreased outlay for all of those prisons needed to lock up non-violent drug offenders.

This is Huuuge!

With the unanimous Iowa Supreme Court decision followed closely by the Vermont legislature's override of the governor's veto, two states have now made same-sex marriage legal.

And while you can argue that little Vermont up there in its quiet corner is nothing but a bunch of left wing commies (I mean they have democratic socialist Bernie Sanders as their senator, for crissakes) intent on ripping the social fabric, etc., no one can say that Iowa is not heartland America. Can you even get more Middle America than Iowa?

And now that Iowa is standing up for civil rights and making same-sex marriage legal, how long can it be until 48 other states will follow along? I really can't see Utah doing it -- and okay, realistically the Rethug South won't go along either.

Which is why we eventually will have a national law. Once we have had enough experience with the fact of same-sex marriage and the sky has not fallen in, earthquakes have not swallowed up the entire state of Iowa, and the man-on-dog sex predicted by Rick Santorum, everyone with even a toehold in the Reality Based Community will see that gay marriage threatens no one and nothing except a bunch of knuckledragging mouthbreathers and their Neanderthal ideas about society.

- - -

Update: The Washington DC Council has just voted to recognize same-sex marriages conducted by other states. Can this be the start of the toppling of the dominoes?

Pornography and the New Witch Trials

Two years ago I commented on the shocking case of Connecticut teacher Julie Amero who was charged with corrupting her students by allowing them to view pornography on a school computer. Initially convicted of several counts of abusing minors and facing 40 years in the slammer, she and her lawyers managed to get the conviction set aside and finally, in November of last year, she pleaded guilty to a charge of ... disorderly conduct. I suspect that she did that just so she could finally bring an end to the whole thing and get on with her life.

Now there's an even more egregious case of prosecutorial misconduct involving another professional educator, this time in Loudon County, Virginia:

It was an incident that began innocently enough, but nearly ruined the life and three-decade career of a veteran high school teacher and administrator.
Rumors had been flying at Freedom High School in South Riding, Virginia that students were distributing nude pictures of each other on their cell phones. It's a phenomenon, known as "sexting," that's become increasingly worrisome to educators across the country, and Ting-Yi Oei, a 60-year-old assistant principal at the school, was tasked with checking it out.
The investigation was inconclusive, but led to a stunning aftermath: Oei himself was charged with possession of child pornography and related crimes -- charges that threatened to brand him a sex offender and land him in prison for up to seven years. Transferred from his school and isolated from colleagues, Oei spent $150,000 and a year of his life defending himself in a Kafkaesque legal nightmare triggered by a determined county prosecutor and nurtured by a growing hysteria over technology-enabled child porn at America's schools.
"The heaviest burden is the [label] of 'child pornographer'," Oei says. "It just hangs so heavy around me. How you ever recover from that I don't know. "

Even the police investigating the case stated that the image in question -- one single image -- the torso of an apparently underage girl (it was later established that she was 17) wearing only underpants and covering her breasts with her arms did not rise to -- or fall to -- the level of "child pornography".

But that didn't stop local prosecutor James Plowman (one of those tough-on-crime guys) from filing child pornography charges against Oei and pretty much ruining the guy's life not only for the term of this Kafka-esque persecution for also for all time.

Once you have been assigned a label -- especially such an inflammatory one as "child pornographer", it stays with you forever, even though the whole case has now been thrown out by one of those sane "activist judges" that the wingnuttery loves to castigate. Oei has been spread over such blogs as Bad Bad Teacher and Faces of Child Porn, marking him forever as a danger to children.

Okay, people, it's time for everyone to step back and take a deep breath. Child pornography, I think everyone agrees (even the pornographers themselves, deep down), is a contemptible exploitation of the weakest members of society, but there has to be some tempering amount of reason surrounding the prosecution of it.

There's more than a difference in degree, even in substance, between a cell-phone photo of a semi-nude 17 year old and actual child pornography featuring unspeakable acts forced onto, say, nine year olds.

But don't look for this new hysteria to abate anytime soon. Not when you've got stalwart guardians of public morals like prosecutor Plowman on the job.

Given his moralistic zeal, I would have guessed that he was a graduate of the notorious Regent University School of Law, but I would have been wrong -- he actually went to Georgetown.

He is a Republican, however (surprise-surprise), which in conservative and old-time-religion-bent semi-rural Virginia automatically makes him part of the Religious Right. But only as a provisional member -- it appears that he is a Catholic, and you know that the Fundo-Xians are willing to tolerate the slaves of the Great Whore of Babylon as long as they agree with them, but don't really welcome them with open arms. So poor old Plowman is going to be left behind with the rest of us rabble when the Rupture Rapture happens. Too bad.

Fixing the Economy

Down in Florida, the Tampa Bay newspaper asked its readers for their ideas to fix the economy, and they got back a slew of responses, but the best one is this:

Patriotic retirement:
There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force … pay them $1 million apiece severance with stipulations:
They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings — unemployment fixed.
They buy new American cars. Forty million cars ordered — auto industry fixed.
They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage — housing crisis fixed.

--David Otterson, Largo

Brilliant! My only problem with it is that I apparently retired too early to get the bribe incentive. Damn, it's always my luck...

Gingrich is a Catholic Now?

Directly from our WTF? file is the news that our old buddy Newtie G. converted to Catholicism on Sunday.

Yeah, I thought it was a joke at first myself, something out of The Onion ("the news" in general is now so bizarre that it threatens to drive The Onion out of business), but no, there it is.

This three-times-married and two-times-matrimonial-loser, former corrupt Speaker of the House, full-time Georgia cracker and self-described "historian" apparently had to make that fatal leap into the arms of the Great Whore of Babylon because his current squeeze, third wife Callista, stopped putting out unless he submitted to the will of the Pope. I'm just saying...

And almost simultaneous to his conversion, Newtie started railing against Notre Dame for having the fucking nerve to invite the President of the United States to deliver its commencement address.

Plus it turns out that Newt is a Twit. Okay, we knew that already, but he has, of all things, a Twitter presence, wherein you will find this deathless piece of prose:

It is sad to see notre dame [sic] invite president obama [sic] to give the commencement address Since [sic] his policies are so anti catholic [sic] values.

Okay, come on. I realize that the rules of English have been relaxed somewhat with the advent of texting and such crap, but this fucker is supposed to be smart. I mean he supposedly has a PhD for crissakes. Anyone who commits that many errors in a single sentence is desperately in need of some remedial education.

And it kind of makes me wonder what ghost writers he used for those books he supposedly wrote himself. And his doctoral dissertation? If he can't write a single declarative sentence without fucking it up this bad, then he had to have a ghost writer for that as well.

But back on topic. How is Newtie, if he really plans to run for president, going to justify this leap of bad faith to the Fundo-Xians who make up the core of the Rethug base? After all, no lesser a personage than über-evangelist John Hagee has been making the claim for years that the Catholic Church is, in fact and in prophecy, the Great Whore of Babylon.

I just don't see it happening that the Fundos will ever, when the chips are down, elevate the Newtster to the exalted status of Rethug standard bearer and banner boy.

So what the fuck is really going on here? Can it really be so simple, can it really be that presumptive presidential candidate Gingrich is willing to throw away his only chance to become president because the old lady has cut him off from sex until he was willing to take on the mantle of Catholicism?

Actually, given his past history with women and his insatiable inability to keep it in his pants, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Tonight's the Night

You may recall that a week ago I called on everyone to just say no by turning out the lights on Saturday March 28.

That's today.

Earth Hour has already started in many parts of the globe. For those of you in the USA, depending on where you live, you still have anywhere from an hour-and-a-half to four-(or five- ... I get confused with all those farflung outlying possessions; you know, like Alaska and Hawaii...)-and-a-half hours to make it happen. At exactly 8:30 in each timezone turn off your lights.

Of course it has been snowing all afternoon (yes, I said snowing!!!) here, so I may have to remind She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed how much she likes winter camping in order to make it happen on schedule...

What Kind of Liberal Are You?

These things are always kind of fun. Drop by Guide to Liberal Breeds, take a short quiz, and it will tell you what kind of liberal you are.

My score: I am a "Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite ... a proud member of what's known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme."

Be prepared, though, for a disgusting image to be pressed into your brain. If you are a visual person (like me), it may haunt your dreams.

The image? Okay, here goes. One of the questions is "If you could pile any three people into a naked pyramid, who would you choose?" One of the choices is "Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh" ...

Now that's just fucking sick...

Yeah, This is Smart...

Lawmakers in at least eight US states are considering legislation to force the weak, the poor and the disaffected, who are also the economically, socially and legally disenfranchised (i.e. those on welfare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc) to take mandatory drug tests in exchange for receiving that massive amount of largesse from the state.

Okay then. Let's look at this with the jaundiced eye of reality. Let's say one of these poor saps flunks the test because he has marijuana in his system. He's immediately cut off whatever poor excuse for a living stipend that he has coming in, which means that in order for him to get some money to make up for that loss, he'll most likely turn to crime of some sort (if it's a male, it's usually burglary and if it's a female it's usually prostitution, but sometimes they go to something more hostile and with more potential for mayhem, like armed robbery) to make up for it. Immediately you have created a real criminal where only a "paper" criminal existed before.

And to go a step further, let's say that his neighbor is smart enough to know that marijuana stays in your system and is drug-testable for something like four weeks. So, knowing that he's going to be drug-tested in order to keep his unemployment benefits, he turns to something that metabolizes and disappears out of the system in 24 hours or less. Something like crack cocaine or heroin. He gets to keep his benefits as long as he's more than one day away from the test (and who isn't smart enough to pull that one off?).

Now it comes down to this: Who do you want living next door to you? That pot smoker who is always laid back and groovy, or the guy on the other side who's cranked up on crack cocaine and thinks that your dog is working for the CIA and your cat is taking secret spy-camera x-ray photos of his testicles?

This is what the so-called War on Drugs has gotten us after 40 years: A bad investment in time, money and resources. If you ask me, we should just do what Paul Harvey (yes, that Paul Harvey) suggested about Vietnam, also 40 years ago: Declare a victory and get out.

I don't know how many billions of dollars, all told, are squandered on this phony "war", but it's a hell of a lot when you count up all of the time and equipment and salaries and man-hours squandered in the areas of Coast Guard interdiction, on-land law enforcement, the overworked court system and the overcrowded prison population. We'd have a much small budget crisis if we diverted all that cash into something where we actually had a chance of making the money work for us. Like universal health care or expanded Head Start programs.

It's about time that we realized that after 40 years of stalemate, the so-called War on Drugs is over. We lost. It's time to take a new direction, and penalizing the poor, the weak and the disaffected even more is a losing proposition from the get-go. Legalize drugs, tax the hell out of them, and recognize finally that no one -- I repeat NO ONE -- has EVER died from a marijuana overdose.

Because there ain't no such thing...

And While We're On the Subject of Gay Marriage...

... here's a heartfelt apology from Portia DeRossi, who is taking the responsibility for all of those people who were harmed -- really harmed! -- by her marriage to Ellen:

Vermont "Gets It" -- Catholic Bishop, Not So Much

Up in its little corner of the US Northeast, tiny Vermont "gets it".

The Catholic bishop of Burlington doesn't.

I'm talking about the legislation that is about to become law in Vermont which would allow so-called "same sex marriages".

Here's what the good bishop had to say about the whole thing in his testimony before the Vermont legislature prior to their vote:

The union of husband and wife is a distinct vocation and using the law to alter or to redefine marriage is an injustice to those who have embraced this state in life and negates its long history of benefit to society and the justified acknowledgment that it has received from the very beginning of history.

A fucking injustice! Got that? All of you gay people out there who want to get married: What the fuck are you thinking? Don't you fucking know that if you do, it will be an injustice to me and everyone else who is married to someone of the opposite sex? What is wrong with you people?

Okay, back to reality. I'm willing to bet that no one asked the good bishop for some details on exactly how this "injustice" would affect people like me. The whole "defense of marriage" thing is a fraud from the Religious Right, aided and abetted by their allies in the Catholic church (whose members, of course, from a Fundo-Xian point of view, are slaves of the Great Whore of Babylon -- but the fundos are not above using the Catholics when it serves their purposes, such as opposition to gay marriage and abortion).

Like I've said before, a REAL defense of marriage would include all of the Biblical requirements, including shit like no divorce ever, the woman (and the woman only, naturally) has to be a virgin, etc etc etc.

It's kind of too bad that I live in a liberal bastion here on the Left Coast, where both of my senators and my congressman are all strong Democrats who are on record as supporting civil rights. Otherwise I could have some fun at one of their "town meetings" asking them to support a real Defense of Marriage Act and then watch them squirm.

From Our "Nut Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree" Files

These are my grandchildren. Need I say more?

Update: A good friend of mine said that this video was "amusing and disturbing"... I asked her what part of the nut not falling far from the tree didn't she understand, since that describes me to a "T".

The Post-Rapture Emails

Ya gotta hand it to those Fundo-Xian folks. They're nothing if not thoughtful -- downright thoughty, as my old Granny used to say. They even have a website where the faithful can have a post-Rapture email sent to their friends and family who are "left behind".

Here's the URL: http://raptureletters.com/letter.html -- I didn't make it a clickable link because I don't want to drive up their Google stats. In it you will see the following:

This message has been sent to you by a friend or a relative who has recently disappeared along with millions and millions of people around the world. The reason they chose to send you this letter is because they cared about you and would like you to know the truth about where they went.
This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been taken up to heaven.
Etc etc etc blah blah blah

They promise to send out this letter on the first Friday following the Rapture, and every Friday thereafter until...well, I guess until Hell freezes over. Or whatever. And, of course, "free will donations" to the cause are gladly accepted (checks, cash, major credit card or PayPal).

I'm pretty sure I won't be needing to add the email addresses of my friends and family to that list. I'm also pretty sure I won't be getting any post-Rapture emails myself.

But look on the bright side. The vast majority of those self-designated Rapture-ites have oodles of money that they suddenly won't be needing, some plush luxury cars they won't be driving, and some fancy cribs that they won't be living in. For those of us who are "left behind" there ought to be a huge post-Rapture dividend.

Except that the Xian Bible does say that only 144,000 souls are going to get into heaven, so maybe that dividend won't be so big after all.

BTW, the whole concept of The Rapture is a fairly recent one, as these things go, the first usage of the word having been invented for the world's enlightenment no earlier than 1738.

The word "rapture" itself occurs nowhere in the Xian Bible, in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Not in the "regular" King James Version, and not in any of the modern translations. Nowhere. And that in itself is pretty odd, since it seems to be an English transliteration of the Latin raptus, "borne up, taken away" (hence raptor).

But I digress. It must be the former English teacher in me.

Anyway, the fact that "The Rapture" is mentioned nowhere in the Xian Bible is a handy comeback for that IBIL* of yours who tells you that the phrase "separation of church and state" occurs nowhere in the US Constitution.

Besides all this, I much prefer the Blondie version of "Rapture"...

[*IBIL = Idiot Brother-in-Law]

Earth Hour: Because It Has to Start Somewhere

...so why not with you and me?

I'm talking about Earth Hour, taking place next Saturday, a week from today, March 28 2009, at 8:30 in the evening. See the video:

Please join me and the millions of other people across this country and around the world who will be participating.

Like I say, it has to start somewhere... Let it be with us.

[Thanks and a hat tip to my friends Becky and Gary at EvolveFish.com for getting me involved -- please, drop by their store and show your support for fellow progesssives by buying something; they have a ton of neat stuff and their prices are great.]

It's Official: Hell Has Frozen Over

That's how my good friend BAC over at Yikes! calls it, and she's gotta be right.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican HMFIC of the Roman Catholic Bioethics Council, aka the Pontifical Academy for Life, overruled the Brazilian Big Guy Church Dude who excommunicated a couple of Brazilian doctors for ... get this ... performing an abortion.

In this unfortunate case, the girl getting the abortion was nine years old(!) and had been impregnated with twins by -- who else -- her stepfather. The poor little girl weighed only 80 pounds herself, and for her to be forced to carry this abomination of a pregnancy to term would have resulted in the untimely death of both the girl and the twins inside her.

That didn't matter, of course, to the local Brazilian archbishop, one José Cardoso Sobrinho by name, who excommunicated pretty much everyone in sight, including not only the doctors involved but also the girl's mother for authorizing the abortion. But, interestingly enough, not the girl herself. And I wonder about that...

Anyway, back to reality. This marks, I believe, the very first incidence in which the official Catholic hierarchy has even attempted to come to terms with what the rest of us out in the Reality Based Community have known forever: Abortion very often comes down to a choice between the already-born and the not-yet-born. As much as the Religious Right wants to pontificate, to strut and fret their hour upon the stage, to puff their collective feathers over it, the bottom line is that abortion is a decision to be made between a woman and her doctor. And no one else.

So this whole thing gives me some hope that, in spite of that tall-hat former Hitler Youth Pope Guy going around saying shit like condoms cause AIDS and reinstating that Holocaust-denying bishop, the Catholic Church may -- just may -- end up on the side of reason after all.

Okay, you're right. I won't be holding my breath...

The Dismal Science

Economics has been know for eons (i.e., since 1839) as "the dismal science" -- I mean really, who the fuck wants to digest all of those ugly mathematical statistical formulas and shit? Okay, I'm there...but for this: We ignore it at our peril.

I, along with a lot of my fellow citizens, tended to doze through Econ 101 in college. Who can really grasp the intricacies of all that wages plus demand minus supply times the square root of what-the-fuck-ever crap?

And that, pretty much, is what the fuckers in charge of our economy are counting on. The average American is as economically-literate as the average Bushman. That is how the Rethugs can still, to this day, get away with invoking Saint Ronald to the great unwashed, and that invocation -- amazingly to those in the Reality-Based Community -- covers a multitude of sins.

Don't believe me? Check out Why the GOP Nurtures Lies and Myths about Ronald Reagan over at the always-valuable Existentialist Cowboy and get yourself a little education on the subject.

Shocker of the Week: Some Gitmo Prisoners Are Innocent

Yeah, you coulda knocked me over with a fender (in the words of the late and much lamented Jane Ace) when I learned that a former high-level official with the NKVD Bush Administration came out and admitted -- shock, shock! -- that so many of the "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay detention were, in fact, "non-enemy non-combatants".

In other words, fucking innocent of the "crimes" for which they were being detained.

I dunno, but sometimes it feels like those of us over here in Left Blogistan have been, on so many fucking occasions, the only ones in the whole fucking country to see this kind of shit. I mean what the fuck is up with that? I have in my life had neither the desire nor the impetus to become a political pundit -- and for that matter, I probably lack the requisite skillset, which is to be wrong 98% of the time -- but even I predicted this early on in the game.

Why has it taken so long for the rest of the US to catch up?

The New White Face of Crime

Here's The Daily Show's Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore on last night's show:

Whazzzzup???

Here's TJ and JC in another of the Blog Against Theocracy video spots:

What Happens to the Jews?

Ted Maher asks Tod Hagee in this video:

Hagee doesn't reply. Of course, the two aren't talking face to face, but it's still a valid question: After the big guy in the sky comes back at the End of Days and the fundos get their way, what happens to the Jews? (Hint: They all die and go to hell.)

Please join the Blog Against Theocracy April 10-12, 2009.

"A Gay and Secular Fascism..."

That was the Newtster himself, Newt Gingrich, in this excerpt:

Please join the Blog Against Theocracy coming up next month, April 10-12.

And thanks to my blog buddy Blue Gal for the video. Watch for more in the coming days.

New Online Poll

Normally I don't think a whole lot of online polling. It's too easy to skew the results with repeat voters, you're not getting a scientifically valid representative sample, etc etc etc.

Okay, that said, I'm willing to pass along this URL to the MSNBC poll which purports to be a President Barack Obama scorecard/grade report.

As I say, ordinarily I don't put a whole lot of stock in these things, but when it appears that the Rethugs are doing exactly the kind of thing I abhor about these polls -- stacking the deck, so to speak, with multiple votes -- then it's time to do something about it.

Short of hunting them all down, smearing their genitals with lard and setting them free in a forest full of bears, the best thing we can do is to stack the deck the other way. So everyone, feel free to drop by the poll and, in the timeless words of somebody, vote early and vote often...

Oklahoma Takes Baby Step Towards (Gasp!) Gay Rights

Longtime readers of this blog know that I spent some of my formative youthful years in rural Oklahoma, so I tend to watch the goings-on in my sort-of-home-state.

Which leads me to this story: It seems that Oklahoma, like every other state, tends to open government meetings with a prayer. Yeah, big surprise there. Okay, putting aside the whole church-state issue, recently the Oklahoma House of Representatives session was opened with a prayer by United Church of Christ minister Rev. Scott H. Jones, of the Oklahoma-city based Cathedral of Hope.

The prayer itself -- which you can read here -- was one of those typically namby-pamby jobs calling on the big guy in the sky to bless the poor, help the homeless, cure the sick, blah blah blah, pretty much a by-the-numbers mainstream Xian prayer for a secular occasion. You've heard it all before.

So the ink wasn't dry, so to speak, on the prayer before several members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives started falling all over each other in a rush to keep the prayer from becoming part of the official record of the Oklahoma legislature.

Why? Well, it couldn't have been the content of the prayer itself (aside from the fact that it was one of those prayers that evoked that wimpy forgive-your-enemies Jesus, not the the Jesus of the flaming cross smiting the unbelievers...you know what I mean), so what was it?

Maybe -- and I'm just speculating here -- just maybe it was because the prayer was given by (gasp!) a gay minister!!! Who was asked to give this invocation by (another gasp!) the only openly-gay member of the Oklahoma legislature, Rep. Al McAffrey (D-Oklahoma City).

Naturally the theocrats were all over this like flies on shit, to the point of Rep. John Wright (R-Broken Arrow) calling for a vote on the prayer's inclusion in the official record. However, I am happy -- and proud -- to note that the final vote was this: 64 representatives voting to include the prayer, 20 opposing it, and 17 abstaining.

Sidebar: Of special note in all this was our old buddy, noted fundo-xian/gay basherRep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) who, naturally, voted in favor of exclusion.

Yeah, like keeping it out of the "official" written record is going to undo all the "damage" that this single prayer has done to the great state of Oklahoma.

Sorry, folks, the cat is already out of the bag, the damage has been done, and the fact that 64 Oklahoma state representatives can stick their necks out and vote for the inclusion of this prayer makes me feel good about one of the reddest states in the redstate continiuum. And about my home state.

Sunday Funny

Here's a video of notorious octomom Nadya Suleman giving birth:

Sometimes ya just gotta laugh...

Stewart 99, Cramer 0

I didn't know how else to score it. When full-time television financial guru and professional moron Jim Cramer came on The Daily Show last night to "set the record straight", Jon Stewart owned him.

Check out the full video over at The Daily Show and then ask yourself this simple question: Why does it take a comedy show host to be ask the kinds of questions that professional journalists used to ask, before they were completely co-opted by their slavemasters in the CPM*?

* * * * * *

[* CPM = Capitalist Pig Media]

SCOTUS Shocker

Regular readers know that I'm kind of a Supreme Court groupie, and that I am not a big fan of Justice Clarence Thomas.

So the shocker is this: Thomas stood up to his fellow wingnuts on the court in Wyeth v. Levine, a case dealing with the ability of victims to sue drug manufacturers, siding with the court's liberal wing and even writing the majority decision himself!

And it's not the first time that Thomas has carved his own way, distancing himself from his erstwhile mentor, Antonin "Tony Quack-Quack" Scalia. Here's hoping that we haven't seen the last of this heretofore almost hidden "liberal" streak in Clarence Thomas.

In fact, nothing would please me more than to see him come out from under that cloak of pseudo-conservatism and do what so many other SCOTUS justices have done, surprise their appointers and supporters and turn liberal when the country really needs it.

Okay, I'm not holding my breath for that to happen. But you never know.

Class Warfare

I know, it's not a pretty term, and it's been thrown around with some abandon, especially during the last presidential campaign. "Class War" is, in case you didn't know, is a code word phrase used by the wingnuttery rightwing to denote Communism. Or its little brother, Socialism. Obama is still being excoriated for his so-called "socialist" views and ideals (a Google search for "obama socialist policies" gets you 1, 430,000 hits!).

But Class War is exactly what the US Chamber of Commerce is engaged in when it comes to the Employee Free Choice Act. Somehow I managed to get on their national mailing list (best guess, probably because I'm on record as the owner of a "small business" in the state of Washington), but I'm glad that I did. It gives me a lot of insight into what they are up to.

In the last couple of days I've received emails from a couple of big-time honchos at The Chamber:

Things are really heating up in Congress.
First, U.S. Chamber President Tom Donohue appeared on This Week with George Stephanopolous to voice the Chamber's positive vision for getting the economy moving again.
Tom's positive economic outlook was brightened even further when his fellow This Week guest, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), announced with regard to Big Labor's dangerous "Card Check" bill, "I'm not sure that we have the votes [needed]."
That bill might be introduced as early as today - and Big Labor is desperate.
They're so desperate that they even unleashed their protesters to picket outside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters.
Big Labor's back is up against the wall - and now they're trying to intimidate the U.S. Chamber into dropping our support for their dangerous bill?
So fitting - since its "Card Check" would rob American workers of the secret ballot and allow Union organizers to force them into Union membership using coercion and intimidation.
Don't let Big Labor intimidate Americans into passing the "Card Check" bill - click here to TAKE ACTION. [-- Bill Miller, VP for Political Affairs]
...
Bill was right. The misnamed-Employee Free Choice Act (aka. Card Check) was introduced in the House and Senate yesterday.
As Randel Johnson, U.S. Chamber Vice President said in our press release, "We are pleased this legislation has finally been introduced so we can put a stake through its heart."
We need your help right now to stop Card Check. Click here to join the Chamber and support the fight. This is our #1 priority. [-- Gretchen Deo, Executive Director]

Okay, fair enough. Let's fight back and make the passage of this legislation, so important to "Big Labor" but even more so to "small labor", our #1 priority.

Contact your people in Congress and tell them that you support the Employee Free Choice Act. Don't let these anti-labor anti-worker pigs get away with putting "a stake through its heart".

Life Without Water

No, I don't have some big revelation or theory that we as a species can exist without water. I'm just whining that I have to exist pretty much without it for the next week.

We have a broken water line coming from the main into our house, and the plumber can't fix it without first getting the lay of the land, where the electrical, gas and cable are underground. We live in one of those tract-house neighborhoods where all those unsightly utilities are safely tucked away under the sod. Which means if one of them fucks up, you have to call the "experts" in from god-knows-where to plot out the location of each of them before you start digging.

That's a good thing, I guess, since I wouldn't want someone accidentally clipping my gas line -- or even worse, my television/internet cable...

And naturally it takes time to get the expert out here, and for some reason all of the plumbers in town are heavily busy.

So we go almost totally without water for a week. We can, however, take showers and flush the toilet once a day, if I go out and turn on the water at the meter, and then turn it off right away. Some water is still getting to the house through the broken line -- but who knows how long that will last?

You know that old saying, you don't miss the water till the well runs dry. So true.

Rusty Limpdick another "Hanoi Jane"?

God, I love it when the rightwing starts to devour itself -- for example see my previous post about the McCain daughter attacking mAnn Coulter.

Now over at the Huffington Post, Frank Schaeffer, a former wingnut evangelical Rethug and now fulltime member of the Reality-Based-Community, tells it like it is when it comes to the current state of affairs in the Party:

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!
With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal...
When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."
For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Go ahead and read the whole thing. It's a very telling examination of the new Rethug Party. Of course Schaeffer will be excoriated as a "traitor" himself -- it's really all they have now to fall back on.

McCain Attacks Coulter!

Okay, it's not the senator. That would be asking too much. But it's almost as good. It's Grampaw's 24-year-old daughter Meghan who has come out on the attack:

Everything about her [Coulter] is extreme: her voice, her interview tactics, and especially the public statements she makes about liberals ... Maybe her popularity stems from the fact that watching her is sometimes like watching a train wreck.. . . Does she really believe all Jewish people should be 'perfected' and become Christians? And what was she thinking when she said Hillary Clinton was more conservative than my father during the last election?

Wow, you go, girlfriend!

If the Rethugs have been wondering, by the way, why they are turning off young people in record numbers, maybe they should listen to one of their own.

Yeah, It's That God Damn Liberal Media Again!

John Yoo, author of the We Love to Torture People memos to the Bushco Maladministration, is now whining that it's all that goddam media's fault.

Taken out of context, he says. Specifically this line "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully"... [emphasis added]

Okay, Little Johnny, why don't you tell us exactly what context that could be in so it wouldn't say what it so clearly says?

No. Instead Little Johnny is too busy singing "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" to a dwindling crowd of even his own supporters. How much longer until this fucker does the frog march before a congressional committee and is called to answer for his fascist advice to the fascist-in-chief, Baby Doc Bush?

The Chucktatorship

I'm certainly amazed at this. Thanks to Buzzflash, I've now learned that has-been "actor" and full-time-ugly man Chuck Norris is the president-elect of the Republic of Texas, and he says that we're not living in a democracy. No, it's a "Chucktatorship".

Jesus, I could have sworn when I read this that it was a spoof out of The Onion or the National Lampoon or something similar, but it's not.

So I guess we'd best prepare for an armed insurrection. Probably this Friday.

In which case, can I presume that alternate-side-of-the-street parking will be suspended?...

If This Isn't Conduct Unbecoming an Officer...

...then I don't know what could be. A lieutenant in the US Army, in Iraq, has allegedly joined a lawsuit filed in the state of California over Barack Obama's putative US citizenship.

Talk about the story that refuses to die. It's been clear since Day One on this mess that it's a non-issue, and Obama would have no reason to conceal it, had he actually been born out of the country, since his mother was, inarguably, an American citizen at the time of his birth, which automatically made him an American citizen. Just as John McCain being born in Panama to American parents made him a US citizen. Period. End of story. These fuckers on the wingnut fringe who keep bringing it up know this, but they are counting on the idiocy of the dittohead great unwashed to buy into it.

Which brings us back to this dickwad lieutenant, Scott R. Easterling, who calls the president -- and his commander in chief -- an "imposter" and a "usurper". Publicly and ferociously, it appears.

So, unless things have changed a whole lot since I was in the service, this is a textbook case of conduct unbecoming an officer, and Easterling ought to be up on court-martial charges so fast it would make your head swim. (See, for example, Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, for starters.)

Especially when you look farther into his story and discover that up until 2005 he was a KBR (i.e., Halliburton) "contractor" in Iraq, who left his undoubtedly lucrative contracting work to join the Army. Hmmm, that in itself kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?

See that Easterling link to the Military.com story and scroll down tothe comments section. Some of them will curl your toes and straighten your hair:

· OMG hahaha. I KNEW this was gonna happen. So yep the new world order has happend [sic]. They let a black man in the building and all three branches are behind it.
· Well his grandmother said he was born in Kenya. I agree that this "poser on chief/muslim radical" is a fraud. Dad a muslim, madrasa schooled, converted to christianity because of political expediency, and said "The most beautiful thing I've ever heard is the muslim call to prayer at sunset" Osama's a muslim manchurian candidate.
· Wow, you people really disgust me. All of your rhetoric truly makes me question your morality. Some of you say that this LT needs to be reprimanded in this way or that, but what you people forget to see through your blinders is that this LT is still fighting the fight, no matter what. He still is part of the reason you have the right to say the things you do. He still believes the American way of life is still precious and should stay that way no matter what.And whether he chooses his God given freedom to voice that God given right is up to him.

And there's more. Lots more. This is a story that will be worth following, just to make sure that this asshole gets what's coming to him. Despite all of his defenders who are taking great stretches to support him (see that last comment for example) in his indefensible behavior.

Still No Justice for LaVena Johnson

A year and half ago, back in August 2007 I posted a blog entry entitled Who Was Lavena Lynn Johnson and Why Should You Care?.

LaVena Johnson, in case you don't recall, died in Iraq in 2005 and her death was ruled a "suicide". By military investigators. Who were on the scene and presumably were in a position to know better. Despite the fact that the right-handed Johnson apparently managed to shoot herself in the left side of her head, a straight-on head wound, using her left hand both to balance her M16 and pull the trigger. Despite the fact that the autopsy photos showed that she had been beaten and her body mutilated perimortem. Despite the fact that lye had been poured into/onto her vaginal area...

This death, incredibly, is still listed in official records as a "suicide".

This official story, like most of them, is of course arrant bullshit. She was murdered, and someone has gotten away with it, and someone else -- probably a whole bunch of someones else -- is guilty of covering it up.

But this a story that needs to be repeated, a story that demands justice, a story that insists on an independent congressional investigation into the incident and the subsequent coverups.

Please join me in contacting your congressional representatives and senators to demand justice for LaVena Johnson, as well as all of the other unknown victims of rape and murder in our armed forces.

And it's not too late to sign the petition over at Color of Change -- those signatures will be sent to Rep Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and it can't hurt to have a veritable avalanche of names going out to him, but I think it's always better -- and gets more personal attention -- to send your own personalized request to your representative and senators as well.

BTW, back in July '07 I noted that there weren't any news stories on LaVena Johnson in any of the media formerly known as the MSM. Sadly, that is still the case. Only AlterNet has a new story on this tragedy, but hopefully, with the help of all of us out here who still care, this story will not die until there is justice for LaVena.

See also the LaVena Johnson website for the latest news on the fight for justice.

Jon Stewart Takes on CNBC

After CNBC "reporter" Dick Rick Santelli had that famous Howard-Beale-like meltdown at the Chicago Merc, it was inevitable that he'd be the butt of humor. And sure enough, here's the Daily Show look at Santelli, CNBC and whole financial crisis in a nutshell:

It's kind of sad -- and troubling -- that a "professional financial news" network missed the financial meltdown by so much. And that we have to get our "real news" from a comedy program.

Yassuh, Toby Be Good...

In a disgusting yet telling display, newly-anointed GOP "leader" Michael Steele was forced on bended knee to kowtow to the real leader of the Rethug party, Rush Limbaugh, after he made some "unconsidered" remarks about the Fatboy Dopehead.

Jeez, given all of the racial problems that the Rethugs have had over the last forty years or so (ever since Tricky Dick's "Southern Strategy" starting circa 1970) -- and especially given Limbaugh's own problems with black people -- you'd think that this would be the last thing they'd want the American public to see.

But no, there it was, for all America to see: Poor Michael Steele, looking like he just stepped out of a scene from Roots, having to figuratively -- and almost literally -- lick his master's boots.

And now I hear that there are rumblings that the Fatboy himself may be considering a run for the Offal Office in 2012.

Really? In that case, bring it on! I can't imagine a candidate on the right who would be better for the Democrats, unless it was Sarah Palin.

So imagine this: A Palin-Limbaugh ticket in 2012.

Of course that's not gonna happen. It would have to be Limbaugh-Palin -- ole Rusty just couldn't stand the thought of having a woman on top...

Rush Limbaugh Gay? (Not that there's Anything Wrong With That...)

Ah, the wonders -- the miracle -- of Stumble. Do a Google search for "Jeff Christie" and see what you get.

It seems that our ole good buddy -- and of course one of my favorite whipping boys -- professional blowhard (I use the term advisedly--read on) fat-boy drug-addict draft-dodging chicken-hawk multi-millionaire and multi-married Rush Limbaugh was once fired from Pittsburgh radio station KQL, where he worked under the pseudonym of Jeff Christie, after soliciting ... gay sex!

It's also been widely reported that he had a brief but heated "affair" in college (before poor Rusty dropped out) with a guy named Elliot Sanders, who says that Limbaugh is so gay that he didn't -- couldn't -- consummate any of his four marriages; it's also fairly common knowledge that when Limbaugh worked in Sacramento radio, his friend and "mentor" was flamboyantly gay Norm Woodruff (who later died of AIDS).

There's a lot more circumstantial evidence out there. Naturally Rusty is claiming that it's all lies, made up by "liberals" who hate him and want him to fail. You know, like it was all lies when he was first accused of being a drug addict. Like it was all lies when it became public that an ingrown hair on his ass kept him out of Vietnam. Like it was all lies when ... well, you can fill in the blanks. His whole public persona is built up from a series of lies, untruths, half-truths and prevarications.

Okay, so why am I, a person long-known for championing gay rights, coming down on criticizing this poor sexually-confused pathetically-closeted fat-assed windbag for being gay?

After all, as the Seinfeld TV show had it, "not that there's anything wrong with that"...

Unless you are Rush Limbaugh and you have built an entire -- and disgustingly lucrative -- career working the wingnut side of the aisle, denigrating and demonizing gay people, abominizing gay marriage, and sucking up (damn, there I go again) to the bible-thumping holy rollers of the world (including, dare I say it, Ted Haggard? Hmmm ... but I digress). Then it becomes the height, the very pinnacle, the textbook definition, of rank hypocrisy. Imagine what is going to happen when (or IF -- we're still dealing with the CPM* here) this story goes mainstream and his poor duped dittohead knuckledragging mouthbreathing white-guy-victim listeners find out the truth about him. If you'll recall, it almost came out back in 2006, when he was arrested for possession of Viagra after a "boys only" trip to the Dominican Republic (the western hemisphere spot notorious as a magnet for child-sex tourism).

It's kind of sad ... in a bent, twisted worm-caught-on-a-hot-sidewalk kind of way.

Okay, not really, but if he hadn't been such an arrogant fucking obnoxious lying liberal-hating asshole all these years -- and continues to be one -- then I might actually feel a little sorry for the guy.

Yeah, probably not. After all, he'd still be Rush Limbaugh.

* * * *

* CPM = Capitalist Pig Media

R U Freaking Kidding Me???? Bill-O Action Alert

I usually take the weekend off from posting, but this one really got my goat. Bill Orally, himself, is scheduled to give a speech on March 19th at the It Happened to Alexa Foundation.

The purpose of this foundation, in case you don't know:

...is to help support rape survivors through the trauma of the criminal trial, in the hopes that more survivors will go through with the prosecution in order to put these perpetrators behind bars.
Established in 2003, the foundation assists rape victims' families with travel expenses during the litigation process and is the only organization of its kind in the United States.

Sounds like a terrific idea, doesn't it? So why in the hell are they allowing Bill Orally to give a talk there? Especially given his total lack of sensitivity to women and women's issues, especially when he is on record as saying on his radio show in 2006, when speaking about another rape victim, 18-year-old Jennifer Moore, who was raped and murdered in New York:

Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she's out of her mind, drunk.

This is exactly the kind of classic "blame the victim" mentality that women -- and enlightened men -- have been fighting against for years, and for them to turn around and invite this thug, this chauvinist pig, to speak before a fundraiser for the families of rape victims is so appalling that it's almost beyond belief.

Please join me in telling the foundation that having Bill-O as their "guest" speaker sends exactly the wrong message to the very people that they are trying to help.

Contact Information:

It Happened to Alexa Foundation
125 South First Street
Lewiston, New York 14092
Phone: (716) 754-9105; 877-77-ALEXA (25392)
Fax: (716) 754-4676
Email: info@ithappenedtoalexa.org

Barack the Antichrist?

Okay, I'll admit this one has been going around for quite a while now, but last night's Daily Show did a Jason Jones segment with two preachers, an old black dude who said Barack was Hitler, and for balance an old white dude who said he was the Antichrist.

After doing the math, I think I agree with the old white dude.

Do the math yourself and see if you don't agree:

1. Barack Hussei Nobama: six letters each = 666!
2. He was elected for a 4 year term in 2008: 8 minus 4 is 2, and 2 times the 3 names he carries = 6; if he runs for two more terms, that will make a total of three terms, and those three terms strung together with his names? = 666!
3. There are five people in the Nobama family: the parents, the children and the mother-in-law, right? But wait, you didn't count the dog. That makes 6! Three terms in the white house = 666!
4. Nobama was born on 8-4-1961. 8+4+19+61=92, and 92 divided by how many names he has = 30.666666666666666666666666666667! There are no fewer than 9 sets of triple sixes in that number, which you can clearly see if you remove the first 3 characters and the last 3 characters: 666 666 666 666 666 666 666 666 666! And those characters you removed? They add up to 49; 49 divided by 666 = 0.0735735735735735735735735735735; add those up and they come to 150, and that divided by 666 = 0.2252252252252252252252252252252. And any ASCII programmer can tell you that it is a very simple matter to arrange a nearly-infinite number of those very digits visually (on a computer screen or a printout!) to show an illustration of the face of ... Barack Hussei Nobama!

Jeez, I just don't know how it could be any clearer.

* * * *

Update: Here's the link to the video of that Daily Show segment.

Bobby Who?

If it weren't for the fact that this fucker somehow got himself elected governor of one of the most regressive states in the union and -- most importantly -- he is not himself one of those WASPy caricatures of the typical Rethug party member, you would be asking yourself, as I might be, who the fuck is Bobby Jindal?

But here we are, with Bobby Jindal giving the Rethug commentary to Obama's address last night, and the only thing that the guy has going for him is, apparently, that he has a skin tone similar to that of our president.

Out of the many blatant Rethug lies, falsehoods and truth-stretching, so reminiscent of senility-ridden Ronny Raygun, was his complaint about the budget containing money for "volcano-watching".

Obviously Little Bobby has been out of the loop for the last twenty-nine years. I happen to live in "active volcano country" out here on the NW corner (see Mt. St. Helens -- I was less than fifty miles from it when in blew in 1980), and I just want to ask Little Bobby if he'd be so up in arms over budgetary money being spent for hurricane watch on the Gulf Coast.

Yeah, I didn't think so. God help us if this is the best that the Rethugs can do for their "shining stars in ascent" in the GOP.

Actually, now that I think of it, having Bobby Jindal (like having Governor Wolf Killer) in the ascendancy of the GOP can only be a good thing for the Dems, and for the rest of the country. Who on the left would not like to see a Palin-Jindal ticket in 2012? Alas, their pathos is our victory.

The Non-Story That Won't Die

Jesus, I thought this whole Obama birth certificate flap would be over and done with by now. How many times is the wingnuttery going to beat this dead horse?

Not enough yet, apparently. Now no lesser an august personage than Alabama's Senator Richard Shelby (a Rethug, of course, do I have to say it?) scooping up some local headlines by trying to resurrect the belief that Obama is not a US citizen and therefore not entitled to be president.

Never mind that this has been settled long before, that Obama posted a copy of his birth certificate on his campaign website, that even if some long-term and tremendously complicated conspiracy was at work to try to make it appear that he was born in the US when he wasn't, it's still a moot point since his mother was, undeniably, an American citizen, and therefore US law deems that he is also an American citizen, regardless of where he was born.

Note that there aren't any major news organizations on that list. Well, obviously, that's because all the major news guys are northing more than a bunch of atheistic commie-symp crypto-socialists bent on the destruction of this country at the hands of our non-citizen non-christian sucking-up-to-islamo-fascists president.

Seven Aphorisms Out - Ten Commandments Next?

In a surprisingly unanimous verdict, the Supreme Court agreed with a small Utah community that the quirky quasi-religious group Summum cannot place one their granite "Seven Aphorisms" markers next to a similar display of the Ten Commandments.

Which is fine with me, in the big-picture view of things. We need to get all religious symbols off of OUR property, and that's the long-term goal. To allow Summum to put up their own monument next to the Ten Commandments would just mean one more thing to remove from the lawn when we finally wake up and realize that we do not need the government sponsoring a religion -- any religion -- in this country.

The Mojave Cross

In a case that is sure to set precedent for the lawsuit brewing over that huge ugly cross at the National Cemetery in San Diego, the Supremes have agreed to hear a case stemming from the erection of a smaller cross in the Mojave Desert east of LA.

Because it's on public land, it's an issue, and this will give us our first look at where a Roberts Court is going to come down when it comes to church-state issues.

And frankly, I'm not at all optimistic, given the current makeup of the court. Recall that it was Sandra Day O'Connor just four years ago who cast the deciding fifth vote in the 5-4 Kentucky Ten Commandments decision (McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky).

Since then O'Connor made her precipitous -- and in my opinion nearly-fatal-for-civil-liberties -- departure from the court, to be replaced by our old buddy, "Stripsearch Sammy" Scalito. And I think it's pretty clear how he'll stand on church-state issues.

This will bear watching. Arguments will be heard in October of this year, so here's hoping that we have some changes on the court before then. While I'm not wishing for anything bad to happen to any of the Fatal Five (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Kennedy) so that Obama can appoint a liberal to the court in their place...

Oh, bullshit, of course I'm wishing for that. It's a long time to October, and anything can happen.

Attack on the Second Amendment

For years, whenever the whole "Democrats want to confiscate all of our guns" topic came up, I would ask the (usually) right-wing Limbaugh-listening Hannity-channeling blowhards making the claim if they could picture a situation in which the Democrats could confiscate every firearm in the country.

The answer was always no, and that's how I was able to shift the conversation back to things that were truly important.

Now I'm not so sure. After enduring eight years of Constitution-shredding rights-revoking road-warrior decimation by the Rethugs, now there's an attack from the left. It's something called the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009, and it has some troubling provisions: It defines all gun dealings as interstate commerce, which automatically makes them subject to federal restrictions and it requires that all persons who even possess a "qualifying" firearm be licensed by the feds as a "gun dealer". There's more. Take a look at the article.

As usual, the intent behind this bill is a noble one: Reduce gun violence. Fair enough, I guess, but, as the NRA has argued all these years (and Jesus, do I ever hate being in line with those fascists on this), guns don't kill people, people kill people. And those who don't think that this registration can be the first step to confiscation...well, all you need to do is take a look at Great Britain and Australia to see that this is exactly what took place there.

Making it illegal to possess a firearm without all this rigamarole will not stop "gun violence". Even if they were somehow successful in rounding up every single handgun and semi-automatic rifle in the country (a physical impossibility), the criminals and crazies would just switch to sawed-off double-barrel shotguns -- easy to conceal, easy to reload, and deadly effective within their working range. And also, because of the spread pattern, more likely to injure or kill "innocent bystanders", i.e. those who are not the intended victim of the attack.

But of course not everyone will give up their guns willingly, and I believe that millions of people will just ignore the law, not get the license, and take their chances rather than give in.

Haven't our previous forays into banning things (alcohol and drugs are the two signal examples) been lesson enough for us? When you ban something, all it does is drive the trade underground and make it more profitable for the "bad guys".

It's ironic: All this time the NRA was squawking that when "they" take away our rights under the Second Amendment, then they will be able to take away all of our other rights. They were wrong about that -- the got it backwards. Who knew that "they" would successfully take away all of our other rights first?

Please, we have enough problems in this country already to deal with. We don't need the "smoke and mirrors" magic tricks in this bill to divert our attention from those problems.

But then I think you all ought to know that my friends tend to call me a "gun-totin' meat-eatin' redneck liberal" so I may be a little biased here. But believe me, it really does pain me to be on the same side of the table with the NRA.

Scaring the Shit Out of You and Me

I'm talking about the documentary film Jesus Camp. It's definitely a must-see movie, even though it will be upsetting to those of you with half a brain who dwell over here in the Reality-Based Community.

It's absolutely frightening to see the brainwashing that goes on, convincing children that they will become "Soldiers for Christ", at a pentecostal summer camp located in, believe it or not, Devil's Lake, Minnesota.

Also, believe it or not, this camp is called the "Kids on Fire School of Ministry". Brainwashing? Yep, in full measure. Anywhere else, in any other context, and this would be called what it really is, child abuse.

Of special note is a conversation that takes place between 12-year-old wannabe preacher Levi and now-disgraced religious-right-homophobe/secret-sodomite Ted Haggard. It makes you wonder what was really going on in old Ted's head (heads?) during the course of that interaction...

Anyway, these children represent the next generation of Soldiers for Christ, and we ignore them at our peril. Remember the admonition from Voltaire that now graces the left column of this blog: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

In just a few years, these little zombies will be taking up their weapons in their "war" against us infidels. While they may claim that their weapons are "Jesus" and "The Truth", blah blah blah, how long will it be before one of the little soldiers takes the whole weapon thing a little too literally?

You Go, Greta!

And I mean that literally. Faux News's famous Face-Made-For-Radio Greta Van Sufferin Susteren is going all frothy at the mouth over the wasteful travel spending of Barack Obama:

If you read the prior two blog entries, you know that I am stunned that the President and VP have such a tin ear — that in this time of great economic terror they flew to Denver to sign a bill that former Presidents signed outside the Oval Office in the Rose Garden. And, making it all the more stunning, they did not “jet pool” — they flew separately at great cost to taxpayers for a trip that simply did not have to be….so what is the White House explanation for the $$$$$$$$ EXTRAVAGANZA? (yes, YOUR $$$)

I'm not providing a link to that quote (I don't want to add to her Google rating), but it's on Greta's blog, which you can look up for yourself.

The most important part of that is her suggestion that Obama and Biden "jet pool". Greta, you poor moronic mouthpiece of the Far Right, the reason that the President and Vice President never travel on the same plane is obvious to the most dull-witted third grader: If the plane crashes, we lose both of them!

So, girlfriend, where was that concern during the last eight years, when your two fantasy beloveds, Baby Doc and Darth Cheney, never flew on the same plane? No where, that's where.

And while we're on the topic of tone-deaf wastrels squandering public dollars in unnecessary travel, where's your concern for your newest BFF, Governor Wolf Killer, and the many thousands of dollars in public money she scarfed up so her daughters could go with her to various "official" (i.e., not official) events?

If you weren't so enthralled in your pathetic schoolgirl crush on Sarah Palin, you might be asking those kinds of questions yourself.

To get back to the title of this post: You go, Greta! And, yes I do mean that literally. Get the fuck outta here. Maybe you and your new BFF can snuggle up in an igloo on the North Slope after you've poached some tasty caribou and baby polar bear for dinner.

New NBC Program: "Catch a Cheney"

No, it's not the truth, although I'd love it if it were.

Over at Consortium News, media critic Jeff Cohen suggests that NBC could raise its flagging ratings by doing to big-name politicos like Cheney what they have capitalized with on with their "Catch a Predator" type shows:

Here’s my idea: A series of NBC News primetime specials featuring spectacular ambushes of big-time criminals lured into what they expect to be pleasurable surroundings.
But, with hidden cameras whirring, the startled villain is dramatically confronted with the evidence of his massive crimes as millions of viewers look on in scorn and righteous amusement.
If it sounds familiar, it’s because NBC News has scored huge ratings with its “To Catch a Predator” sleaze-fest – in which potential sex offenders by the bushel were lured via the Internet to what they thought would be sex with kids and instead got caught by NBC cameras and cops in hiding.
But my proposal doesn’t involve sex abusers. I’m talking about men who’ve launched illegal war, mass murder, torture, dictatorship. And they’re household names.

Like Cheney, Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, and -- the biggest fish of all -- Baby Doc Bush. Hell, not only would I watch this show, I'd pay good money to see it.

Xe? WTF?

The infamous Blackwater Security firm is changing its name, apparently in a move to distance itself from all the bad press (goddam liberal media) it's gotten from slaughtering unarmed Iraqis and generally acting like a swarm of lawless desert bikers from Road Warrior.

So I can see why a little plastic surgery might be needed, but "Xe"? What the fuck is that, and who even knows how to pronounce it? Or, if you heard it pronounced, how to spell it? That question will always come up, and the answer obviously will be something along the lines of "we used to be Blackwater".

If you want to refurbish your image, especially one that is as tarnished as Blackwater's, you ought to consider going another way. Something like "We Love Puppies (and Will Provide Security)" would be a better name.

Just a suggestion. Of course since the Prince family, the fascist founding fathers of Blackwater, are deeply fundo-religious, they could have gone with "Jesus Security" or something like that. Corporate motto: If Jesus had chosen us for his security, he'd still be here"...