Jon Stewart’s still got it. Full-tilt political weirdness starts at 4:50 into the clip.
“See, all Sarah Palin gets out of this is the full power of the most popular cable news network in the country functioning as her de facto rapid-response media arm, and they’re paying her for the privilege of doing it…”
I recently defriended “Louise” from my Facebook account. (The whys and wherefores aren’t that important.) I did it quietly, without fuss, and moved on with life.
Now she wants to be friends again:
“I am not sure why you defriended me…But you know as well as I do, everyone deserves a second chance.” [emphasis mine]
That last sentence struck me when I first read it, and I’m still rather struck by it.
As a matter of fact, Louise, I don’t know as well as you do that everyone deserves a second chance.
I put the question to readers:
Do people who offend you (or offend others) deserve a second chance?
Pharyngula mentions in his latest post that Pat Robertson, wingnut and Christian wackadoodle extraordinaire, has made a public statement that the horrific earthquake in Haiti was the result of a “deal made with the Devil” made by Haitians to shake off French rule.
Riiiiight.
Except that there isn’t anything in the media directly attributed to Pope Pat about it. Nothing. The only thing I’ve found is a post in twitoaster claiming that he made the statement.
If anyone’s seen something concretely attributed to that witless godbag, please let us all know in the comments.
Oh, and contact the Red Cross (a good organization that doesn’t waste a lot of money on “overhead costs”) and make a donation to the Haitian earthquake relief fund they’ve set up. Now.
UPDATE: the Robertson comment has been confirmed (see Jeremy’s link in the comments). How can that man possibly get any lower? And why is he blaming the victims on the one hand, and calling for aid to them with the other?
There is an ongoing trial in California to decide the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, which limits marriage to one man, one woman.
However this trial turn out, it will doubtless be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will decide whether one-man-one-woman marriage laws now in force in some states will be upheld or declared unconstitutional.
President Barack Obama has stated that he feels gay marriage is not right. (Like a good politician, however, he felt just the opposite–”unequivocal”–in 1996 when he ran for office in the Illinois state senate.)
I have just one question for Mr. Obama:
If your parents had lived in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, or several other states in the late ’50s or early ’60s, how would they have gotten married?
The right is opposing gay marriage in the 21st century, just as they vehemently opposed “miscegenation” in the 20th century. Witness some of the wackadoodle actions in the past that required judicial intervention to overcome. (The Supreme Court decided in 1967 to overturn state bans on interracial marriages.)
eBay has the most interesting auction running right now:
There are more than 10 of them (all alike, I would suspect), and the seller dinosaurology has a feedback rate at a whopping 66% (repeated computer crashes, shippers’ mistakes, and other whinings). There is local pick-up only (no shipping–sorry, creepy wackadoodles outside California), and every one of them is guaranteed to be authentic.
Really.
(The same seller apparently has tried to buy Left Behind books, claims he never got them, and then claims that eBay wipes out the transactions. We’re all out to get him, aren’t we?)
I love to wear perfume oil blends made by the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab folks from California. They’re potent and go a lot further and are better for your skin than commercial colognes. You can buy either a 5ml bottle of something you like, or small sample vials (called “imps”) for a nominal fee if you want to try
something you’re not sure about.
My current favorite is BPAL’s Count Dracula, which is the scent in my Scent of the Day link (in the right-hand column of this blog) today. My body tends to ramp up notes that are sweet or musky, and while Count Dracula is not particularly sweet, the smell of leather and bitter clove are very noticeable on me.
My other favorites are Antony (sweet grass and leather), Smut (five musks and “woozy notes of dark booze”), and Samhain (autumn smells of spice and fall woods).
Anyone else out there a BPAL fan? What’s your favorite scent?
Everything must be proved to be considered true. That proof is subject to frequent review.
Existence exists, and is the metaphysical primary.
If something exists, it is producible and reproducible. It can be sensed, and will occur again under the same circumstances.
A well-tuned bullshit detector is essential.
Skeptics do not start with conclusions and then make the facts fit them. They start with facts which lead to a logical (non-contradictory) conclusion.
Hospitals, not churches, should be built. We’ve got enough churches, thank you.
Deeds must be done, instead of prayers intoned. (Good wishes are all good, but it takes a strong back and a shovel to get the snow off of the driveway.)
Involvement in life is moral; escape into death is not. (“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”)
Diseases must be conquered, poverty vanquished, and war done away with.
Religion is immoral. It prevents rationally moral behavior, discourages critical thinking and skepticism, invokes violence among its fundamentalist faithful, discriminates against women, races, and gays, treats children as chattel and victims, and encourages unhealthy sexual expression through legislation, violence, and guilt.
Organized religion comes down to money and power. Always.
Christmas is a wonderful, secular holiday. It is a time in which the spirit of generosity and goodwill can be given full throttle. We know that Christmas was a Roman holiday (Saturnalia) that was cynically co-opted by the early Christians, much the same way that Muhammed cynically co-opted the concept of ‘Allah’ from the pre-Islam Arab pagan moon god.
Skepticism is healthy and moral. (“All thinking men are atheists“–Ernest Hemingway)
Riddle me this:
How is giving the illusion of airline safety in the U.S. (by going to full-body scans, racial and nationalist profiling, and general fascist-leaning wonkiness) going to prevent a religious wackadoodle with a boner bomb from boarding a flight in Amsterdam and blowing up a plane over Detroit?
Update: Intelligence sources had flagged the Christmas Day bomber prior to his arrival in Detroit and intended to question him. I know, a day late and a dollar short, but it shows U.S. intelligence was on the job.
Today I was reminded of my all-time favorite TV cartoon:
Wackadoodles (my new favorite synonym for wingnuts) have been able to take down YouTube videos that don’t meet their political or religious (read: power) agendas without a fare-thee-well or by-your-leave from anyone who might legitimately have a claim on said videos.
They are censoring material that you have a right to see.
We must fix this.
Go here and sign the petition to urge YouTube (read: Google) to institute a reasonable policy for reviewing complaints and cease-and-desist claims.
Do it now. (We’re at 4,000+ now.)
This is an addition to this blog’s very first post:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you are not content and happy with your life before you start a relationship, you will not be content and happy after you start one.
Intelligence is sexy.
A successful relationship contains an endless cycle of wrongs committed, apologies offered, and forgiveness granted, all leavened by laughter, fun, tears, and orgasms. (This last one was borrowed from Dan Savage but modified to reflect a more accurate–IMO–statement.)
The latest religious wackadoodle has annnounced the “true date” of the Christian Rapture.
I’m particularly amused by this bit of mathematical “reasoning”:
The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.” Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.
“Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.”
Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.
Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.
Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.
Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.
Uh….right.
So 