Bye-bye Bachmann

And Minnesota smiles in relief (we’re very reserved, so no loud cheers). Michele Bachmann will not be running for office again. You should watch her “I am not a crook!” video.

She tries to claim that the decision is solely because she has a principled belief in term limits. It’s not because she only squeaked by in the last election, oh no: she could beat any candidate, she claims. It’s not because her slackness with campaign funds has her under an ethics investigation. Then she rambles on with far right wing talking points — we have to stop oppressing the banks with crippling regulation, we have to hunt down the Muslim jihadists, yay Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, etc. She closes by promising to be willing to jump in and serve the country (please, right wing think tanks, hire me!) and deploring the fact that she’s sure the liberal media will distort her motivations.

And of course the final bit is glurge for god.

You should know that Bachmann is the biggest liar in congress. Use that fact in assessing her statements.

Also, keep in mind that her chances of winning any political office are now dead. Her secret to success was to run in the wackiest, most conservative, most ridiculously gerrymandered district in the state — she’s not electable any place else, and she’s just announced that she’s abandoning her electorate. Goodbye and good riddance!

Oh, how interesting. Bachmann claims she’s leaving the race because she believes in term limits, but it’s not true: she’s said the opposite before. Even when she’s leaving, she can’t help but throw out one more big lie.

Calling all clowns

The Creation Science Hall of Fame needs help. They’re trying to fabricate a parody of peer review by recruiting fellow kooks to settle some “controversies” in the creationist community.

Dear Creationists,

The Creation Science Hall of Fame is sponsoring a Peer Review Panel and is now asking for volunteers.

For a number of years there has been much dispute over the 3 main Flood Theories:
Hydro Plate, Canopy and Plate Tectonics….etc.

The Creation Science Hall of Fame is now forming a Peer Review Panel to evaluate all three theories and decide which one is the most feasible….or perhaps a mixture of all three being the most accurate…don’t know yet, so please volunteer.

We need about 7 to 9 professional people who are well credentialed to participate in a non-bias Peer Review Panel.

Dr. Hurlbut will be the Secretary of this project as well as representing the Creation Science Hall of Fame. His email address is: <email removed>
I asking Pam Elder, our Hebrew Scholar for the CSHF, to be on this panel.

Please get back to Dr. Hurlbut and copy Nick Lally at creationfacts@aol.com and please forward this email to potential volunteers.

In Christ serving the Creationist Community,
Nick Lally Chairman, Board of Directors, Creation Science Hall of Fame

Cc: Directors, Creation Science Hall of Fame

So, they’re going to get a bunch of bozos to sit around and argue ungrammatically over email which bit of nonsense is the “most accurate” — I would love to get my hands on those exchanges. Watching fools batter each other with Bible quotes has got to be hilarious.

Around FtB

I’m still trying to get caught up…on sleep, on fluids, on FtB.

  • Miri deplores dictionary racism. You know, any time you run to a dictionary to get a definition of a topic in an argument, you might as well admit…you’ve lost.

  • Lilandra has annoyed Ken Ham greatly. I approve.

  • Ashley talks about accessiblity and mental health.

  • Zinnia is asking for help in explaining trans issues to cis people. At last, something we cis people are experts at: not understanding.

  • Taslima lists some recently discovered species. I rather like Chondrocladia lyra.

  • Dana doesn’t sound too happy with a particular open letter.

  • Ophelia finds a Saudi writer who encourages men to sexually harass women in the workplace…to send them fleeing home, where their chastity will be safe.

  • Stephanie highlights the hypocrisy of facebook.

An obsession with permanence and secrecy

The next few months may prove to be very interesting — and damning — for the Catholic Church. The courts are poised to crack open a huge trove of church files, files that document the worst behavior of some of its priests, from child rape to murder. This facet of Catholic culture which insists on preserving every record, which was historically useful in preserving records of the past, is about to bite them in the butt, hard.

Why did the church hold on to decades-old evidence of its priests’ sins?

The explanation lies in centuries of Catholic Church history and is a tale involving secret betrothals, scandal, even a murder or two. Since the time of the Enlightenment, the Catholic Church has maintained two sets of records: one for the mundane and a second "secret archive" for matters of a sensitive nature. The cache — known as sub secreto files, Canon 489 files, confidential files or C-files — was to be kept under lock and key, only for the eyes of the bishop and his trusted few.

After the files became known to prosecutors and plaintiff’s lawyers, the American justice system has pried open the doors to an archive long kept sealed. Thousands of additional pages are set to become public in coming months, as more than a dozen Catholic orders — Salesians, Claretians, Vincentians and others — prepare to bare their own secrets pursuant to agreements with victims. L.A. County Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias could set the date for their release at a hearing Tuesday.

We may be about to get something as electrifying to the US as the Cloyne report was to Ireland. Poor Bill Donohue is going to be wearing out his fax machine.

Rise again!

I’m tired, my sense of time is all screwed up, and some evil virus is making my mucosa do disgusting things, so I needed this to feel alive again. This is Nathan Rogers, son of the Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers (who died far too young) setting the stage on fire with one of his father’s songs.

And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Rise again, rise again—though your heart it be broken
Or life about to end.
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend,
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Always good to make one feel optimistic again. Although I’m not feeling any great loss right now, just a case of the sniffles, so it’s a little bit of an overkill.

(via Peter Sagal.)

New Anita Sarkeesian!

“removed from youtube”? What the ever-lovin’ fuck? I finished watching it, at least, and it is very grim: it points out the new tropes beyond rescuing the damsel. Many games now have you witnessing the grisly death of women to drive revenge stories, or have the woman suffering such extreme abuse that they ask the player to kill them to put them out of their misery.

So it is very violent — but it’s not Sarkeesian’s violence, she’s merely describing the repetitively vicious approach taken by many video games.

Let’s do crimes!

Late last night, as we were driving back from the airport, we ran into a curious meteorological phenomenon: we entered a dense cloud of thick, chunky material that clunked into our car like a hailstorm and reduced visibility quite a bit. Only I guess it wasn’t meteorological, strictly speaking — it was the May insect hatch. Say, do you think you can read our license plate now?

20130528-083235.jpg

I’m thinking that with our identity obscured this would be a perfect time to go on a crime spree.

I’ll put a closeup below the fold.

[Read more…]

What do the Boy Scouts, Catholicism, and Nazis have in common?

They were all seething, orgiastic hot-beds of prancing nancy-boys, according to Scott Lively. Alternatively, all three are lied about by Scott Lively.

It’s breakfast time here, so you might want to skip reading that whole essay: it’s stomach-churning homophobia and dishonesty. You won’t be able to read it without realizing that Lively really does hate gay people.

(via Joe. My. God.)