Month: May 2008

I Could Work for the FBI!

jacob2 Comments

This admission is going to slaughter my extreme-left-wing creds, but…. I wanted to become an FBI agent at one point in my life. I didn’t pursue it for a variety of reasons: their physical training program is guaranteed to murder an underweight, asthmatic chainsmoker, it’s usually a day job, I’d need an expensive degree to make it as a behavioral profiler, long work weeks would kill free time to write, the political bullshit one has to swallow is astounding, etc. But I still have a soft spot, something in me that goes squishy with pride when I read about the FBI catching the bad guys and Doing the Right Thing.

And they do some awesome good things.

But it’s a schizophrenic bureaucracy, and whilst one Division is doing awesomely good things, another Division is acting the part of laughable fuckwits with too much power and really stupid ideas. It’s too bad that’s the Division I could actually work for:

Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”


The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force wants to investigate vegan fucking potlucks.

What tells me they’ve gone right round the bend and straight into George W. Bush land, where the terrorahrists are everywhere, spying on leftist Americans is an essential part of the War on Terrorah, and there’s ponies in Iraq?

Carroll got offered the job by virture of his hippie good looks and having gotten busted spray-painting a campus elevator, but he’s an amateur compared to me. All I’m missing from my resume is some criminal mischief. Vegan potlucks? Oh, this animal muncher does a killer vegan stirfry. I can talk the talk, walk the walk, and cook the tofu, my darlings, oh, yes. I even owned a copy of the Compassionate Cook.

That’s what I get for living with a vegan for three years. All I need to do now is engage in some unauthorized interior decorating, and I could live my dream.

By infiltrating vegan fucking potlucks. Because we all know how dangerous those veggie killers are.

Unfortunately, this isn’t even a sign of how pervasive the Bush Administration’s police state has become, because the FBI has always had a penchant for doing boneheaded shit like this. What else can you expect from an agency stamped with the personality of a paranoid psychopath who looked pretty in pink? They’ve always had a problem comprehending the fine line between constitutionally protected political dissent and groups that pose a serious threat to American civilization as we know it. Most of the Bureau knows and loves the Constitution, but there are some divisions that don’t seem to have ever read a copy. They seem to dump all the paranoid wingnuts into one section and let them amuse themselves trying to stir hippies into doing something slightly more criminal than dressing badly and chanting peace slogans at government officials.

Pathetic fixation they have, really. And that’s why this is making me laugh rather than scream. The FBI is too fucking inept at domestic political intimidation to really pose a serious threat. They always let slip what they’re doing, end up spectacularly embarrassed, and get their hands slapped by their Justice Department masters… awshit.

Oh, fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck.

The Justice Department’s still in the hands of Bush’s assclown brigade, isn’t it?

Vegans: be afraid. Be very afraid.

I Could Work for the FBI!
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The Washington Post Attempts to Make Up for Kathleen Parker

jacob

A few days after letting Kathleen Parker drool homophobic bullshit all over their editorial page, the Washington Post attempts to redeem the place with an exposé of what Academic Freedom Bills are really all about:

What’s insidious about these measures is that at first blush they appear so harmless. Isn’t everyone in favor of academic freedom? What’s so wrong about allowing all sides of an issue to be heard? Why should teachers be punished for speaking their minds? Those arguments might have standing if there were any doubt about the reality of evolution, but, as an official with the National Academy of Sciences told the Wall Street Journal, “There’s no controversy.” Consider, also, that there really is no such thing as academic freedom in elementary and secondary education. A teacher can’t deviate from the accepted curriculum to present alternative lesson plans or to offer his or her own notions. The Florida teachers association opposed the bills, though ostensibly they are meant to benefit educators. Clearly, the strategy is to devise an end run around legal decisions — going all the way to the Supreme Court — that restrict the teaching of creationism in public classrooms.

All right. For such clear-eyed reporting on the sneaky neo-Creationist efforts to smuggle their pious non-science back into science class, thee shall have a cookie. And you’re allowed to sleep on the couch. But I’m warning you, Washington Post: one more right-wing fucktard editorial, and it’s right back to the doghouse without supper for you.

The Washington Post Attempts to Make Up for Kathleen Parker

We Were Wrong About Expelled

jacob1 Comment

It’s soooo not about the evils of evolution:

Lots of people have reviewed Expelled. To some the movie has served to confirm their persecution complexes; to others the movie has demonstrated the utter dishonesty of the anti-evolution movement. But here comes Thomas Robb, national director of the KKK (and a Baptist minister), with a thoroughly unique take on the movie: it was made to encourage race mixing. No, I’m not making that up. He begins by pointing out that Ben Stein is a Jew and that he has “set a trap”:

Is the person who puts out the cheese, carrot etc a friend or are these things being set out to entice and to trap a victim. So Ben Stein has set a trap in the form of a movie to catch Christians and destroy their resistance to race-mixing.


Wow, Mark Mathis et al were really clever buggers. They so had us fooled! Good thing we have Thomas Robb, the original Sharp Tack, to reveal the true aim of Expelled! [/sarcasm]

You’ve gotta go read the whole post over at Dispatches. It’s hysterical.

Not only were we wrong about Expelled being about icky Darwinism and stuff, we’ve been wrong about ID all this time, too. Wow. Here we thought it was a tarted-up version of creationism, and Expelled was out there to topple Big Science and stuff, but it’s really something else entirely:

Now it seems that it may be politics. According to the attorney representing the producers of Expelled in the Yoko Ono suit seeking to remove John Lennon’s song “Imagine” from the film:

[Anthony T. Falzone] said an adverse ruling by [U.S. District Judge Sidney] Stein would mean “you have muzzled the speech of my clients” because they would have to replace the song with other images, losing the chance to make the issue important enough that it could even influence the U.S. presidential campaign.

“If you issue that injunction, you trample on these free speech rights and you put a muzzle on them and you do it in a way that stops them from speaking on this political issue leading
up to the election,” Falzone said.


It’s science! No, wait, it’s religion! No, wait, it’s about academic freedom! No, wait, it’s a political issue! No, wait, it’s… what’ll it be next? Here’s a thought: let’s morph it into mime!

I think my favorite part of Falzone’s snivelling was the idea that losing 25 seconds of a pilfered song would mean the difference between Expelled dying a quiet death and Expelled becoming the vehicle propelling ID front and center in the presidential campaign. Who’da thunk John Lennon had such power?

In the meantime, the injunction goes on, and PZ’s out of luck:

Apparently, a New York judge has upheld the injunction against the movie, so there will be no new showings, and DVD rights are in limbo.

The movie is dead anyway, so it doesn’t seem to be a significant decision. It’s not as if theater distributors are lined up clamoring for more copies of this stinker. Although, to be honest, I would like the rights cleared up, because the only way I’m ever going to see it is if I can rent the DVD from my local store.


Does anyone else get the sense that this movie’s only got life left in it because there’s still a few drops of entertainment at its expense left to be squeezed?

We Were Wrong About Expelled

Carnival Business #3

jacob

Postdated for the world to see.

My darlings, the time has come. The Carnival of the Elitist Bastards is going live on Saturday, May 31st. Spread the word. It’s time to do this thing.

Get your submissions in! Email ’em to [email protected] by the end of day Friday, May 30th. We’re good. We’re ready. The unprepared such as myself have almost two weeks. It can, shall and will be done – May 31st.

Also, as promised, we Elitist Bastards have a happy home.

There’s no furniture. No curtains, no rugs, no dishes, no plants, and no pictures on the walls. That’s why we’re throwing a housewarming party.

That’s right. Dana’s not going to do all the decorating herself, oh, fuck no. Dana’s got 64,000 things to do, and doesn’t want to be the Elitist Bastard overlord imposing her decorating sense upon the masses of Elitist Bastardry, and moreover knows that those of you who’ve been participating so far have an abundance of good taste. So get to it. Email me at [email protected] for your very own keys, then go have your way with the header, footer, sidebar, etc. Just make sure that if someone came in and decorated before, you check with them before you modify that particular bit o’ real estate. There’s a post set up for communicating ideas, etc.

Right now, the Header’s in serious need of improvement – if it’s still just plain Times New Roman with a white background, you know what to do. Those of you with badges, get ’em posted somewhere in the sidebar. Post an entry, add some links, play with HTML, do whatever you like.

Right? Right.

Enjoy.

Carnival Business #3

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

From the department of No Fucking Surprises, Dan Froomkin reports:

Top White House officials waved off early warnings from the FBI that interrogation tactics being used on detainees might be illegal, according to a new report from the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The report states that FBI personnel started notifying headquarters as early as 2002 that other government employees were using abusive tactics — including sexual humiliation, prolonged hand-to-foot shackling and exposure to extreme temperatures — on detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Justice officials conveyed some of these concerns in
at least one White House meeting in 2003, but the White House apparently ignored them. A year later, the revelation of similar abuses at Abu Ghraib became a source of everlasting shame for American citizens, a serious blow to the United States’s moral authority, and a potent rallying cry for the nation’s enemies.

That the White House ignored the FBI’s red flags is not really surprising, considering that as of Spring 2002, top Bush aides including Vice President Cheney were reportedly micromanaging the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement. In other words, those aides — depending in large part on secret and since-withdrawn memos from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel for cover — intentionally and specifically approved some of the tactics that alarmed the FBI.


I wish I lived in an age where this would be a shocking revelation rather than Yet Another Way The Bush Administration Proves Its Total Disregard For Law and Decency. But alas, the fact these assclowns would not only ignore FBI warnings about illegalities, but gleefully micromanage torture tactics, surprises me not at all.

This is a nice thought, though:

But knowing that the nation’s top law-enforcement officials put senior White House aides on notice that the interrogation tactics they had approved were potentially illegal adds a key element to the portrait of complicity in what could someday be prosecuted as violations of U.S. torture statutes or even war crimes.


To quote one of my favorite comic book characters: “Heh heh heh… bueno.”

I hope they reserve space in whatever sad, cold prison they’re going to for Pastor John Hagee, who should be locked up with the rest of the obnoxious loons for being an absolute ass:

Last week, John Hagee, a televangelist sought out by John McCain for political support, expressed regret to Catholics for his attacks on the Roman Catholic Church (he’s called the church, among other things, “the great whore” and “a false cult system”). This week, it looks like it’s time for yet another apology.

John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a “hunter,” sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God’s will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.


Seriously. He really did make the argument.


And the fact that McCain hasn’t kicked this outrageous fucker to the curb doesn’t speak well about his moral authority at all. It’s one thing for people to hold odious, ridiculous views: our country allows that. But to make this idiot and the dumbshits who swallow his poison into a respected political player, that’s just disgusting.

Things like this make me so very glad to be an atheist. I don’t have to worry that this loon might be correct about God’s purposes. Any God who would send some vicious little shit to kill 6 million of His chosen people to give the survivors a hint to move is not, in my not-so-humble opinion, a figure worthy of worship. Any lunatic who finds such a god worthy of praise and worship needs his head examined. And any politician who wants such a lunatic’s endorsement needs to be kicked right off the nation’s political stage.

Moving on. You recall how there’s been this huge hoo-ha over Barak Obama’s “appeasement” issues? He mentions a willingness to sit down and hammer out solutions with states like Iran and Syria, and the entire right wing goes into a frothing fit. You can just imagine what they’d do to someone who not only talked about talking, but is actually going to sit down and talk with one of those nasty “state sponsors of terror,” right? They’d have a hairy cow with fangs. They’d be raging. They’d be denouncing the talkers as cowardly little appeasers, wouldn’t they?

Well…

After eight years of stalemate and periodic tension, Israel and Syria announced Wednesday that they have launched “serious and continuous” indirect peace talks aimed at ending one of the region’s longest-running disputes.

In identical statements issued from Damascus and Jerusalem, the rival neighbors said that they are taking part in indirect negotiations with Turkish diplomats serving as mediators.

“The two sides stated their intention to conduct these talks in good faith and with an open mind,” according to the statement. “They decided to pursue the dialogue between them in a serious and continuous way, in order to achieve the goal of comprehensive peace.”

If it’s Israel doing the appeasing…

A U.S. official in Washington praised the talks. “I think Turkey played a good and useful role in this regard,” senior State Department official David Welch said of the talks, according to the Reuters news agency. “Israel and Turkey have apprised us in the past of these discussions and kept us
informed.”

…that’s like totally different. Of course. QED.

How long before we’re rid of these two-faced pieces of shit, again?

Happy Hour Discurso

Self-Righteous Exclusionary Bullshit

jacob1 Comment

Progressive Conservative deserves a more coherent response than I’m capable of just now. I’ll leave it up to you lot to go read his comment and respond accordingly: my thoughts will follow after Aunty Flow has stopped creating her usual havoc. I’m just pleased to have a dissenting view round the place, albeit one that contains elements that thoroughly piss me off. I’m sure the feeling’s mutual. The point is that he’s brought some ideas to the table that bear debating.

In my sorry state, however, all I can do at the moment is riff on a theme he brought to mind: self-righteous exclusionary bullshit.

This is by no means a purely Christian trait. It’s a human one. I read quite a lot of history, and many common themes run through it. Self-righteous exclusionary bullshit is a major one. Call it tribalism, nationalism, or religion, it all comes down to one group of fuckers thinking they’re better than all the other fuckers to such an extent that they get obnoxiously overprotective of their petrified views. Nobody else could possibly be as perfect as they are, so nobody else’s point of view means jack shit. And if that’s all it was, it would just be annoying, but the self-righteous exclusionary fuckers then go on to paint everyone else’s views as evil.

Every human group and enterprise suffers from variations of the disease. I’m fully aware of that. The very definition of human could be “a jackass who thinks they’re right and everyone else is wrong.” It’s just a matter of degree. Some of us jackasses pause a moment to ask, “Am I right?” before gleefully proclaiming everyone else wrong. Some of us enjoy being proved wrong, or at least handle it gracefully and adjust accordingly. The jackasses I’m talking about not only refuse to admit the possibility they could be wrong, they won’t accept proof when they are and instead of adjusting themselves, they try to adjust everyone else by force of dogma or arms rather than evidence and persuasion.

The self-righteous exclusionary fuckers can’t budge aside to accomodate differing views. Most of the folks I hang about with these days may hold views diametrically opposed to mine, but we put more emphasis on the points of agreement, allow the apostasy, and would never, ever, dismiss or exclude each other on the basis of a few disagreements. Not so the self-righteous exclusionary fuckers.

For example:

Having been drawn to Senator Obama’s remarkable “love thy neighbor” style of campaigning, his express aim to transcend partisan divide, and specifically, his appreciation for faith (“secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square”), I did not expect to be clobbered by co-religionists.

On the blogs, I have been declared “self-excommunicated,” and recently at a Mass before a dinner speech to Catholic business leaders, a very angry college chaplain excoriated my Obama-heresy from the pulpit at length and then denied my receipt of communion.


You heard that right. Doug Kmiec, devout Catholic, was told he couldn’t cannibalize Jesus because he backed the wrong candidate.

Granted, the chaplin’s reaction was extreme, and I doubt many Catholic priests would deny some poor bastard communion just because he’s voting for Barak Obama, but it’s a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about. There’s no room for dissent in that particular chaplin’s flock. He’s a self-righteous exclusionary fucker practicing self-righteous exclusionary bullshit.

So was the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses. Modern fundamentalist Islam has raised the art of self-righteous exclusionary bullshit to a pinnacle not achieved since the Middle Ages. Our very own fundies can only aspire to that kind of bullshit. Nothing would make them happier than a theocracy – or so they think. (Just wait until the wrong denomination gets their hands on the reins, you silly shits. You’ll be begging for the good ol’ days of separation of church and state.)

I gave up Christianity because of this crap. Other religions, including other branches of the Christian (dysfunctional) family tree, seemed to have some pretty nifty ideas, but God forbid you bring them up. Church X had it right and Churches Y, Z and T had it completely wrong, and as for those other so-called religions, they’re all tools of Satan. It got so bad among the youth group that the youth pastor devoted an entire night to slamming M.C. Hammer – that’s Christian Minister M.C. Hammer – for having a dude in a red devil costume in one of his videos.

My Christmas cards in the following years were in direct protest of this trend. They had a cutsey little painting of people of multiple colors and faiths gathered round, and a quote that said, “God created so many different kinds of people – why would He allow only one way to worship Him?”

Good question, Rocko.

America’s self-righteous exclusionary bullshit gets up my nose just as badly. America goes through these petulant phases where the rest of the world has absolutely nothing to contribute and America is the only way. American fashion, American democracy, American entertainment, American ad nauseum – and ignore the fact that other democracies do a better job taking care of their people, other countries produce entertaining entertainment, other countries are leading the way in fashion. You remember that whole flap over Japan and trade back in the nineties? America was so perfect she couldn’t possibly be losing market share because America’s no longer top dog in manufacturing. Oh, hell, no. Those evil Japs were up to all kinds of shennanigans. Total conspiracy to keep America down. Or some such crap. The problem with self-righteous exclusionary bullshit is that it can’t admit reality. It sure as fuck doesn’t allow for course corrections.

Thankfully, we didn’t have a self-righteous exclusionary fucker in office at the time, or we might have seen some extremely stupid antics. Like a second invasion of Japan.

The self-righteous exclusionary fuckers in power right now have taken the bullshit to a whole new extreme. America used to admit that, although she was perfect in every way and couldn’t possibly be made better by other countries’ input, treaties like the Geneva Conventions weren’t beneath her. She could abide by them without undue difficulty. Then the fuckwits took over, and decided that since America was perfect in every way, nothing she did could possibly be wrong, so what the Geneva Conventions quaintly called “torture” was just “enhanced interrogation” and absolutely fine as long as it’s America or her proxies doing it. The self-righteous exclusionary principle went into overdrive, excluding every opposing view.

You see how that weakens a country, right? Weakens a country, a faith, a person.

Self-righteous exclusionary bullshit serves no one in the end. All of these self-righteous exclusionary fuckers playing holier-than-thou lose an opportunity to adapt, grow stronger, savor a world that’s full of variety and incident and damned interesting stuff. And they make it harder for folks like myself, who try to avoid being completely self-righteous exclusionary fuckers, to include them. You see, the problem with a self-righteous exclusionary fucker is that if you give a millimeter, they take ten thousand miles and run you out of the country in the bargain.

That complicates matters.

What I’d like to see is a world of self-righteous i
nclusionary bullshit. Huma
ns are always going to be self-righteous and full of bullshit, but the world’s a banquet, and I’m damned tired of the fuckers who insist that only certain items at the buffet can be enjoyed.

Self-Righteous Exclusionary Bullshit

Isn't That Up to the Iranians?

jacob2 Comments

If I didn’t care about the future of my country, I’d vote for McCain just for the entertainment value. He’s a bottomless well of inanity.

Case in point: his recent statements on Iran.

Time Magazine’s Joe Klein, who has been taken to the woodshed more than once by Glenn Greenwald, indulged in some journalism that should earn him a cookie. He’s indulged in some political snark that should earn him a trip to Disneyland. Go read the column for the snark: we’re dealing only in the business here:

On Friday, I promised to check into whether Obama had ever said that he would negotiate–specifically, by name–with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, according to the crack Time Magazine research department and the Obama campaign, he never has. He did say that he would negotiate with the Iranian leadership–but, on matters of foreign policy and Iran’s nuclear program, the guy in charge is the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. As of today, John McCain was still accusing Obama of wanting to negotiate with Ahmadinejad. Why doesn’t the McCain campaign and other assorted Republicans ever accuse Obama of wanting to negotiate with Khamenei? Well, because Khamenei isn’t quite the flagrant anti-Semite Ahmadinejad is…and, as we keep hearing, Obama has a Jewish
problem.

Ye gods, Joe, what’s wrong with you? Fact-checking? Accurate reporting? Has Faux News taught you nothing? This looks suspiciously like reporting, something many bloggers were convinced you’d given up on.

I checked his facts, my darlings, and he is absolutely correct: Ahmadinejad isn’t the totalitarian leader of Iran that he’s portrayed to be by the so-wrong Right. (As to Obama never mentioning Ahmadinejad by name, I don’t have a crack research department, so I’ll have to take that one on trust, along with never having seen Obama quoted as saying he’d negotiate with Ahmadinejad. Don’t burn me, Joe.)

John McCain, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have access to Wikipedia, and in another startling episode of actual journalism, Joe Klein – the same Joe Klein who was soundly beaten for dumbassitude by Glenn Greenwald just a week ago – caught him out:

If you’re unable to watch this amazing performance by George Bush’s trained monkey and wanna-be successor, you can still enjoy the fuckwittery courtesy of Carpetbagger’s most excellent summary:

So, Klein, to his credit, asked McCain about this at a press conference, inquiring as to why McCain keeps accusing Obama of reaching out to Ahmadinejad when that hasn’t actually happened. When Klein noted that it’s Khamenei who is “in charge of Iranian foreign policy and also in charge of the nuclear program,” McCain said he respectfully disagreed.

After noting Ahmadinejad having spoken to the United Nations, McCain concluded, “I mean, the fact is he’s the acknowledged leader of that country and you may disagree, but that’s a uh, that’s your right to do so, but I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know.”

Savor this for a moment. Verily, this is the Republicon understanding of reality. Allow me to enumerate it for you:

1. Objective facts, such as who the chief executive of a country is, can be disagreed with.
2. You have a right to disagree over said facts.
3. The average American determines what reality is.
4. By average American, of course, Republicons mean the average dumbfuck who’s stupid enough to parrot what the Republicons want reality to be. Average Americans who know what the actual facts are need not apply.

And this batshit insane bullshit is spouted by McCain with an air of overwhelming arrogance. You can tell he’s impatient with Joe Klein and his “facts.” The resemblance between McCain and Bush in that video is eerie, if you’re not immediately overwhelmed by the resemblance between McCain and an evil-fucker version of Wallace.

I reiterate: if so much wasn’t at stake, I’d totally vote for the assclown. At least I’d never run out of material. It’s too the American President, unlike the Iranian version, actually has executive power: if it didn’t, McCain’s disastrous views of foreign policy, health care, the economy, and reality in general wouldn’t have any impact on the well-being of the country if he were elected.

Alas, since that’s manifestly not the case, I’m going to have to vote for the guy who knows what the fuck he’s doing, and give entertainment value a pass.

Isn't That Up to the Iranians?

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob1 Comment

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

The Party of Ridiculous Statements strikes again:

There’s been talk for years that many Bush supporters believe he was literally chosen by God to be president. We don’t hear as much about this lately — God wanted a U.S. president who would screw up everything he touches? — but the notion of divine intervention on behalf of Republicans has been a relatively common sentiment in far-right circles for quite a while.

That said, direct comparisons between Republican candidates and Jesus are still rather unusual. (via mcjoan)

Georgia Republican Party chairwoman Sue Everhart said Saturday that the party’s presumed presidential nominee has a lot in common with Jesus Christ.

“John McCain is kind of like Jesus Christ on the cross,” Everhart said as she began the second day of the state GOP convention. “He never denounced God, either.”

Everhart was praising McCain for never denouncing the United States while he was being tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

“I’m not trying to compare John McCain to Jesus Christ, I’m looking at the pain that was there,” she said.


Right, of course. She’s not “trying to compare” McCain to Jesus, she’s just says he’s “kind of like Jesus.” The distinction is obvious. And sacrilegious.


Let’s have an English lesson, shall we? If you say something’s “kind of like” something else, you’re comparing the two. For instance, if I said, “Oranges are kind of like apples – they’re both fruit,” I’ve just compared apples and oranges, now, haven’t I? These people not only need a course in Reality 101, apparently they need remedial English lessons as well.

Speaking of the terminally reality challenged, Faux News thinks it can give lessons in journalism:

This might be one of the greatest Fox News items of all time.

Last night, Karl Rove appeared on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor” to discuss President Bush’s interview with NBC and accusations that the network distorted Bush’s comments. Rove and guest host Laura Ingraham quickly attacked NBC’s ethics:

INGRAHAM: Yes, well, Karl, this follows on, you know, on
primary nights, big nights, when you’re with Brit and everybody here. Over at NBC, they have a couple of their, you know, commentator types Matthews and the like, sitting next to Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams. I mean, there is no
line between news and commentary. It’s all blurred.

Rove added that the “journalistic standards of MSNBC, which are really no standards at all,” are now “creep[ing] into NBC.”


Now, on the substance, we’ve already talked about how foolish the charges against NBC are. The report did not distort Bush’s comments, and this manufactured outrage is pretty weak tea.

But more importantly, it’s genuinely comical to hear Fox News personalities accuse anyone of blurring the line “between news and commentary.” That is, after all, the reason Fox News exists.

I mean, really. Consider the context on this one — Laura Ingraham (prominent Republican media personality) was talking to Karl Rove (prominent Republican consultant-turned-media-personality-turned-McCain-advisor) about another network maintaining weak journalistic standards on objectivity and neutrality. Not only were they wrong about the NBC report, but neither Ingraham nor Rove are journalists, neither are objective, neither are neutral, and neither have professional standards.


That’s it. I’m now convinced that neocons and their slavering followers don’t inhabit the reality we all know and sometimes love. Their brains look into some alternate dimension, where Faux News is journalism, comparing someone to Jesus isn’t comparing them to Jesus, and what’s really rich, they’re going to win in November:

“This is going to be a better year for Republicans than people think,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said on Monday. “We hope to pick up seats — that’s the goal.”

If “better year for Republicans than people think” means “We won’t lose everything,” then yes, it might turn out well. But considering how they’ve fared so far this election year, all I can say is, “Good fucking luck.”

Happy Hour Discurso

Robert T. Bakker Just Got Right Up My Nose

jacob23 Comments

That’s right. That Robert T. Bakker. The dinosaur guy. The one who gave me all sorts of delicious ideas when I was using dinosaurs as the springboard to building a better dragon.

He got so far up my nose tonight he made my brain recoil.

Brian Switek at Laelaps interviewed Dr. Bakker several weeks ago. I didn’t read the interview. I was saving it for later, like an expensive bottle of wine: I was busy with the IDiot schlock at the time, Expelled was getting ready to come out, this blog was just a wee thing that needed constant feeding, and, well, I wanted to read it when I could actually savor it.

And then I dropped by Pharyngula today, and discovered that Robert T. Bakker’s been hating on atheists.

Even Dr. Bob.

Dr. Bob said this about us:

We dino-scientists have a great responsibility: our subject matter attracts kids better than any other, except rocket-science. What’s the greatest enemy of science education in the U.S.?

Militant Creationism?

No way. It’s the loud, strident, elitist anti-creationists. The likes of Richard Dawkins and his colleagues.

Dr. Bob, don’t take this the wrong way, because I love and respect you for your palentology and all of those awesome books on dinosaurs without which I couldn’t have built a better dragon, but… fuck you, okay?

Fuck you and your Pentecostal bullshit.

Not only have you jumped on the “atheists are anathema” bandwagon, but you’ve got to throw your lot in with anti-elitism, too? You, a learned man? You want to use “elitist” as an epithet?

You disappoint me, sir.

First off, I’m sick to death of the “atheists are the enemy” schtick. Creationists are the enemy. We atheists are allies, no matter how much you may dislike our views and our expression of said views, and, yes, our “elitism.” After all, no atheist is going to come in and shut your museum down because it doesn’t pander to our dogma. No atheist would kick your science out of schools, put you out of a job, and ridicule you because your knowledge of science doesn’t match a fairy story told by belligerant goatherders three thousand years ago.

You know who’s your enemy, Bob? Militant creationists.

Those fuckers were attacking science long before we loud, strident, anti-creationist atheists jumped into the fray. And you’d better be gods-damned glad we’re drawing their fire, because you know who’d be taking the bullets if we weren’t?

That’s right. You.

It’s bad enough we have to take rancid bullshit from the IDiot set, but then people like you, religious scientists, turn around and fire away. We take shit from every religious bastard in the universe. Forgive us for getting tetchy. Excuse us for biting at the hands raised against us rather than slinking off with our tails between our legs.

What’s wrong, Bob? Because I’m sure at some level, you know it’s absolute bullshit to think that if the atheists went away, the creationists would withdraw from the field, too. Do we gleeful unbelievers threaten your faith? Is that what led to this:

Dawkins performs clip-art scholarship with the History of Science and Religion, a field that over the last several decades has matured into a rigorous discipline with fine PhD programs, endowed professorships, well-funded conferences, edited volumes luxuriously printed by Oxford, Harvard, and The Johns Hopkins Press. With footnotes.

PZ already took you apart on this one, so I won’t do it. I’m just saying that your whole response to the critics from your original wrong-headed comment came across as the rantings of a terrified theist. And it’s pathetic.

You spend nearly the entire response frothing about “The Brights.” Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been pretty deeply immersed in atheist circles for a while now, and I had no idea what the fuck Brights were until John Pieret put them down in a comment on this blog. Apparently, enough pathetic souls are hanging on to the silly notion to keep you in material, but I have news for you: the vast majority of atheists aren’t “Brights.” So spending nearly a full article ranting about how Darwin wouldn’t have been a Bright is just a joke.

And it’s not like anybody gives two tugs on a dead dog’s dick what Darwin was, aside from the IDiots who have a huge stake in him being an atheist. He could have been a rabid fundie, for all we care. It’s his science that’s important, not his religious beliefs. What, we’re supposed to be ashamed to be atheists because Darwin wasn’t? That kind of shit may be important to Christians, who seem to have a pathological need for arguments from authority, but we atheists don’t care, aside from the chortle it gives us when religious buggers’ arguments from authority go horribly awry (Einstein, anybody?).

Then there’s all of the whining about how we just haven’t read the science wuuuvs religion, and look, it’s got footnotes! literature. You go on and on about Dawkins not having enough footnotes in The God Delusion. You veritably sneer at the fact. You go on and on with the Harvard, the PhDs, the “luxuriously printed volumes….” Who’s being an elitist snob now, Dr. Bob?

I could spend a long time writing up a series of treatises for you, richly footnoted, even, explaining just how and why it is that threatened Christians look like such raving ‘fraidy-cats when confronted with an atheist who’s not silent about their views. I could, and if necessary will, demonstrate that creationists didn’t need strident, loud atheists to try to destroy science. But you already know all of that. You just don’t want to admit it. And I’m not going to take precious time away from my writing right now to whip up a scholarly treatise for a man who should know better.

Although if you come here and bitch to me, I’ll do it. Don’t make me pull out the Super-Deluxe Paddle with Footnotes and march you out to the woodshed, my boy.

Because, you see, in the end, this is just an annoyance and a disappointment. I expected better of you. I expect better of all Christians who have a brain that they employ for tasks other than apologetics. But I’ve learned that my expectations often won’t be met – something about atheists seems to turn you into raving lunatics – and so I can forgive you.

I’ll continue reading your books and articles and even interviews, although now I’ll be wincing in anticipation, wondering when you’re going to get sidetracked by that “atheists are the enemy” bullshit, and that’s just sad, because you’re a brilliant man and your paleontology is first-class. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you were largely responsible for one of the most incredible shifts in understanding ever. I know. I was there. I
got raised on the din
osaurs-are-cold-blooded gospel, and then along came a heretic, and what do you know? They weren’t so cold after all.

See, Dr. Bob? See what heretics can do? We apostates and unbelievers, we shake things up, we change things, we can drive things in a whole other, entirely wonderful direction.

And I think you’ll be surprised when the loud, proud atheists force Christianity to a new level. Between the fundies who want to keep the faith static, and the atheists who don’t actually threaten to do away with it entirely but sure as fuck demonstrate that a happy, complete life can be lived God-free, you Christians are going to have to achieve a whole new level of faith. But you’re not going to get there knocking over straw men like Brights and snivelling about how Darwin wouldn’t have been one, oh, no.

You are a brilliant man. I know you are. That interview you did with Brian, aside from the silly comment about atheists being the real enemy, that was stellar stuff. That was a tour-de-force. So turn some of that savage intellect away from the whining and crying and engage us, for fuck’s sake. We’re not going to talk you out of God, and you’re not going to talk us in, so how do we reach both the faithful and the faithless? How do we defend this wonderful science of ours from the shitheads who want to do away with it no matter how many Christians say science and religion are bosom buddies? (And you do realize that’s useless, right, because in the militant creationists’ eyes, you’re no more a Christian than I am.)

The floor is open, Dr. Bob. Let’s get a dialogue going. Let’s stop sniping at each other and turn the fire on the fuckers who want to take science down.

Atheists are standing by to take your call.

Robert T. Bakker Just Got Right Up My Nose

What, When You Get Right Down to It, Is a Soul?

jacob3 Comments

‘Tis the witching hour. And I’m going to think out loud here, as input would be most welcome.

One of the things I’m always cognizant of when I’m world-building is influences. I was, alas, raised in a culture that’s heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas, and while I appreciate some of same, I don’t want knee-jerk assumptions creeping into my fiction. I read far too much stuff wherein the author just plucked the low-hanging fruit and didn’t think outside of the culture they’re immersed in. You’ll see some poorly-incorporated elements from “exotic” cultures thrown in any-old-how, just for the sake of appearing different. But when you pick at the surface, you realize it’s all gilt.

The more I scratch at my writing, the more gilt I find. It would be nice if I could just scrape it off and rebuild from the bottom-up, but we’re talking core concepts. I won’t be telling the stories I want to tell if I remove all the gilt. So the problem becomes, how do I turn it solid gold?

Take souls, for example.

The major concept in my series, the foundation upon which the rest of the edifice is built, is the Ahc’ton K’san Torveneh: Souls Who Travel. For years, I just took it for granted that these folks were unique souls who get reborn over and over in service to their people.

But that’s mere gilt. That’s assuming a soul. Even with the little bit of gloss a physicist friend added – the concept of the soul as an other-dimensional entity with a propensity for attaching itself to biological forms in this dimension – it’s still just gilt. I never really questioned it before now, but having embraced my atheism and hanging about with science buffs and proud atheists, I’m certainly questioning it now.

And the question is fascinating. What, in fact, do Atheseans mean when they refer to a “soul”?

I can tell you straight up they don’t mean anything religious. The soul isn’t something as solid as a body, and you can’t extract a soul from a body and study it (that I know of – who knows what these buggers will get up to as I explore this question?). But it has a physical reality. It has nothing to do with religion, any more than electricity does. Because it’s so hard to grasp, directly perceive, it’s easy to put it down to something spiritual, but it’s a really real thing with an objective existence.

The Ahc’ton are special because their souls are reborn with identity intact. That’s the whole point of being Ahc’ton: to remember who you were, carry all of the accumulated knowledge of lifetimes with you and put it to good use in new lives among alien species. No other souls travel this way. The soul as a distinct identity ceases to exist once a person dies. If we’re talking an other-dimensional entity, it basically loses the “I” it became when it was attached to the physical body. There’s no eternal life, no consciousness beyond death – except for the Ahc’ton.

So that’s the challenge of the week. I have to go beyond my assumptions, peel off the gilt, and really get into the meat of this thing. If the soul is not something religious or spiritual, what is it? Why does it have this propensity for attaching to a brain? How did the Ahc’ton’s souls end up being discrete entitities with an identity they’ve carried for millennia, when everybody else’s soul goes back to being an undifferentiated something?

It would be so much easier if I could just take the religious view and be done with it, but it’s so much more fun to struggle with the concept of something material, objective, and so far beyond our current science that it just looks like a miracle.

There ye go. Speculate at will, my wise and wonderful darlings.

What, When You Get Right Down to It, Is a Soul?