While I’m announcing a few carnivals, I’ll remind all of you readers in West Central Minnesota that there will be a Drinking Liberally tonight at 6:00, in Old #1 on Atlantic Avenue in Morris.
Otherwise, for those of you trapped in the virtual world…
The only eulogy Kenny Boy needs is Al Swearengen’s (warning: not for the lily-livered or the sanctimonious.)
Reading some of my favorite blogs today, I can’t help but feel the looming hand of fate preparing to destroy us all.
Despite the horrible possibilities, though, I can’t help but hope that everyone keeps it up. Well, except for Diablo Cody—no one really needs to OD on fried fats in grease, do they?
Since it is the Fourth of July, it seems only right to post something from the Revolution. Our reading for the day is the Age of Reason, by that fierce freethinking firebrand, Thomas Paine.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?
Of course, Paine died abandoned and spurned by the Republic he had inspired for these views…if deists could have a martyr, here he is.
The picture says it all, doesn’t it?
Well, maybe not everything. There’s lots that could be said, but personally, I find it hard to get much beyond shocked silence.
Can we please take our country back from the christianists soon?
Here’s something else to prompt your disgust.
Wingnuttia, O Wingnuttia. There are so many lunacies uttered in that fabled land that one cannot possibly keep up with them all, so it’s useful when one of them distills it all down and gives us a condensed list of the properties of a True Conservative. We have such a useful list, written by Rob Hood in the Conservative Voice. He is a very silly man, but that online rag has him up there on the front page with Robert Novak and…and…well, a lot of ranting nobodies. This is a distinguished host in Wingnuttia, though!
As a matter of fact if you like Ann Coulter and want to make some liberals’ blood pressure to rise, all you have to do is tell them nine key things that conservatives and Christians believe and they will lose their mind:
Ready? We’re going to lose our minds!
I can vote for a Christian politician, no problem. I have even liked Obama’s sense of vision (although it seems he’s been a bit of a flop in execution.) His latest speech, though…
And if we’re going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.
If a liberal Democratic politician wants to buy into the foolish idea that Christians can’t accept evolution, that it’s a good thing that more Americans believe in this insane nonsense about angels than in science, then he has lost my vote. I won’t even get into the rest of his paean to the silly goblins of faith.
Oh, please, can we someday have a freethinking politician of presidential caliber again? It’s been a long time since Lincoln.
Found on Buridan’s Ass:
“Someday the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”—H.L. Mencken
I suppose this is a kind of threat—an archaic and quaint threat, but I’m sure some people take it seriously—but the Catholic church has made a strong statement against embryonic stem cell research.
The Vatican stepped up its fight against embryonic stem cell research on Wednesday, saying that scientists involved in such work would be excommunicated.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican department dealing with family affairs, said in a magazine interview that “destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion… it’s the same thing”.
“Excommunication applies to all women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos,” the cardinal told Catholic publication Famiglia Cristiana.
To which I can only weakly reply, “no, no, don’t drive scientists away from your religion, Catholics!” Bwahahahaha!
Anyway, do read the article. I thought that, while short, it was very informative about the political debate on stem cells in Italy, and actually summarized the situation fairly accurately and pithily.
Embryonic stem-cell research techniques involve destroying human embryos to extract their stem cells. Stem cells are ‘blank’ cells which have the ability to grow into any tissue of the body. Scientists think they could eventually be used to treat a host of ailments including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
The stem cells of very early embryos are preferred because they can become any kind of cell whereas adult stem cells are less flexible. Despite popular support, embryonic stem cell research is opposed by pro-life groups and many conservative lawmakers because the human embryo must be destroyed before its stem cells can be removed.
I’ve gotten so used to the way American journalists so readily fall for the false claim of the anti-choicers that adult stem cells are better than embryonic stem cells in all ways that I was surprised to see that more accurate short description in there.
Time’s former “Blog of the Year,” the execrable PowerLine blog with which I share a state, has done it again: said something so stupid and so palpably false that I’m feeling a bit embarrassed about ragging on Oklahoma in my previous post—I should feel ashamed by association at being a Minnesotan. Check out Deltoid: down is up in the world of the Hindrocket.
