Patriotic pratfall

Oh, how sad. The numbers for Operation American Spring fell a wee bit short of expectations…by about 5 orders of magnitude. But don’t you worry, the Moonie Times has an excuse.

“It’s a very dismal turnout,” said Jackie Milton, 61, a Jacksboro, Texas, resident and the head of Texans for Operation American Spring, to The Washington Times. He said hopes were high when he arrived in Alexandria, Va., a day or so ago and found motels and hotels were sold out for 30 miles around.

But weather’s dampened turnout a bit, he said.

“We were getting over two inches of rain in hour in parts of Virginia this morning,” Mr. Milton said. “Now it’s a nice sunny day. But this is a very poor turnout. It ain’t no millions. And it ain’t looking like there’s going to be millions. Hundreds is more like it.”

Tom Paine has a few words for these wankers.

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

If the idea that 9,999,900 patriots were dissuaded by the rain (it didn’t scare off the atheists when we had our rally in the rain) doesn’t sound very plausible to you, don’t worry — they have another excuse.

He also said the some of the planned Operation American Spring members who were planning to head to Washington, D.C., instead traveled to Nevada, to give support to cattle rancher Cliven Bundy in his fight against the federal government over grazing fees.

“A lot that were supposed to come here went there instead,” Mr. Milton said.

Imagine. 10 million people are now hanging out at the Bundy ranch in Nevada.

Another explanation, familiar to us teachers: 9,999,900 grandmothers died yesterday. It was a massacre among the elderly!

Some of the worst people in America

Gun fondlers are contemptible. Smug sexist men are despicable. But the intersection of gun fanatics and misogynists is the worst.

Ever since the Sandy Hook massacre, a small but vocal faction of the gun rights movement has been targeting women who speak up on the issue—whether to propose tighter regulations, educate about the dangers to children, or simply to sell guns with innovative security features. The vicious and often sexually degrading attacks have evolved far beyond online trolling, culminating in severe bullying, harassment, invasion of privacy, and physical aggression. Though vitriol flows from both sides in the gun debate, these menacing tactics have begun to alarm even some entrenched pro-gun conservatives.

The article in Mother Jones is a depressing litany of all that is awful about our second amendment lunatics. Just one example: Jennifer Longdon is an advocate for responsible gun ownership — she wants more background checks, registration, and gun safety. She’s also a victim of gun violence herself, paralyzed in an attack. This is how the gun fondlers react to such people:

After a fundraiser one night during the program [a gun buy-back program], Longdon returned home around 10 p.m., parked her ramp-equipped van and began unloading herself. As she wheeled up to her house, a man stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed in black and had a rifle, "like something out of a commando movie," Longdon told me. He took aim at her and pulled the trigger. Longdon was hit with a stream of water. "Don’t you wish you had a gun now, bitch?" he scoffed before taking off.

"It was like a mock execution," Longdon says, recalling the intense surge of adrenaline and how the incident triggered her PTSD from the 2004 attack that nearly killed her and her fiancé. She called the police, but they were unable to track down the perpetrator. By the following Saturday, Longdon was back at her post helping run the buyback.

Jebus. Those people are sick and fucked-up.

Since when is overthrowing the government constitutional?

Today is the day that Operation American Spring, Restoring the Constitution of The United States of America commences. This is a proposal by teabaggin’ wingnuts to march on Washington DC, depose Obama, all the Democrats, and those establishment Republicans who don’t follow Tea Party extremism with adequate zeal, and also repeal all taxes and declare America a Christian nation.

They are utterly bonkers.

They aren’t managing expectations very well, either. Here’s their proposal:

Phase 1 – Field millions, as many as ten million, patriots who will assemble in a peaceful, non-violent, physically unarmed (Spiritually/Constitutionally armed), display of unswerving loyalty to the US Constitution and against the incumbent government leadership in Washington D.C., with the mission to replace with law abiding leadership. Go full-bore, no looking back, steadfast in the mission.

Phase 2 – One million or more of the assembled 10 million must be prepared to stay in D.C. as long as it takes to see Obama, Biden, Reid, McConnell, Boehner, Pelosi, and Attorney General Holder removed from office.

Consistent with the US Constitution, as required, the U.S. Congress will take appropriate action, execute appropriate legislation, deal with vacancies, or U.S. States will appoint replacements for positions vacated consistent with established constitutional requirements.

Phase 3 – Those with the principles of a West, Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, should comprise a tribunal and assume positions of authority to convene investigations, recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees to the new U.S. Attorney General appointed by the new President.

So, supposedly, ten million “patriots” are supposed to arrive in DC today. One million are expected to camp in the Capitol for an indefinite period of time. The Moonie Times is expecting more.

The group expects between 10 million and 30 million similarly thinking Americans to meet them in the capital on Friday for a rally that’s being billed as a sort of “Arab Spring” for Americans.

The logic behind these huge numbers is a little weird. They don’t actually have verified numbers, instead, it goes like this. Only 3% of the American population participated in the Revolutionary War. They were True Patriots™. We are True Patriots™ too, so 3% of the American population will actively join in our cause. 3% of 310 million is about 10 million, more or less, so we should expect about 10 million people to join us in our assault on the Washington establishment.

I don’t know where the 30 million comes from. Unbridled optimism, perhaps, or maybe just poor math skills.

I may have to turn on the television news today, to catch sight of the tens of millions of lunatics swarming the Mall. I wonder whether, if the numbers don’t come anywhere near their expectations, we’ll see the same kinds of rationalizations made that end-of-the-world cults make when their doomsday dates pass without a cataclysm?

I don’t think the kooks are helping.

oas

Another entry in the Republican insensitivity sweepstakes

Last week, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter were mocking efforts to publicize the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram. (Jon Stewart did an excellent job puncturing those blowhards). Apparently, we’re all supposed to shut up and be silent about any deplorable action in the world, because it’s pointless to communicate, say a couple of right wing bozos who’s entire business model is about complaining over left wing perfidy.

Here’s another one. Ben Shapiro thinks publicizing villainy is a bad idea because it doesn’t magically eradicate it.

Also ironically, on his twitter page he advertises his book, BULLIES: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America. How dare we encourage talking about world problems, that’s the same as silencing everyone on the right!

It’s heresy all the way down

Uh-oh. Pat Robertson has been sniping at the Young Earth Creationists again, and Ken Ham is pissed off.

Well the secularists love Pat Robertson today! A number of them are posting a section from CBN’s "700 Club" program today (Tuesday) on YouTube and on various websites. They love it that Pat Robertson has once again used his "700 Club" program to engage in name-calling as he attacks those of us who take Genesis as literal history (as it is meant to be taken—as Jesus takes it).

Actually, no, none of us secularists love Pat Robertson. That he rejects one absurd tenet of far right Christianity does not mean he’s on our side — he’s still a mad theocrat.

But OK, let’s go through Ham’s rebuttal of Robertson’s denial of young earth creationism.

If you watch the CBN "700 Club" program from 37:50 to 40:56 on Tuesday (see link below), you will hear Pat Robertson:

1. … claim that: “The truth is, you have to be deaf, dumb and blind to think that this earth that we live in only has six thousand years of existence."

So, Robertson has called all of you who believe God’s Word as written in Genesis as “deaf, dumb and blind.”

Let’s get one thing out of the way: deaf, dumb, or blind people are quite smart enough to see through the bogosity of creationism. What he should have said is that you have to be in active denial of the evidence to be a creationist…a creationist of any kind, young earth, old earth, or intelligent design.

2. … express his utter ignorance of science as he equates radio carbon dating with millions of years! He just has no idea! Carbon dating has nothing to do with millions of years—he’s using the wrong dating method to even discuss millions of years. Yes, it’s his ignorance that abounds.

Ha ha! Yes, he got that wrong! He cited the wrong radiometric method for dating Mesozoic rocks. Radiocarbon dating is only good for about 50,000 years…oh, wait, Ken. It’s not good for millions of years, but it does date objects that are eight times older than the purported age of the Earth given by you Bible-wallopers.

You’re so concerned about citing the right technique, so I take it you should be fine with potassium-argon or uranium-lead or rubidium-strontium dating? Those do give us dates in the millions and billions of years.

You’re even goofier than Pat Robertson if you simply reject all those other methods. He made an error of range, but you make the error of outright rejecting all of physics.

3. … give an explanation of the first three days of creation that is, well, beyond ignorant! Frankly it is ridiculous.

Robertson said a Biblical day could be millions or billions of years long. The day-age excuse for Bible chronology is pretty silly, but even more so is demanding that the creation week actually involved 6 literal 24 hour days 6000 years ago.

4. … state that: “There was a point of time after the earth was created, after these things were done, after the universe was formed, after the asteroid hit the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, and after all that there was a point of time that, there was a particular human being that God touched. And that was the human that started the race that we are now part of. I think prior to that who knows what was here."

So, he appears to be saying there were other human beings before Adam, but only one that “God touched" who started the human race! He doesn’t know his Scripture! For instance, in I Corinthians 15:45 we are told Adam was the “first man.” There were no other men before him.

Your Scripture is incoherent mess that is not an accurate description of world history, so who cares? You are objecting to an interpretation of the book of Genesis that is different from yours — but you’re both interpreting and twisting and making a hash of the book. There are also an awful lot of Christians who interpret it like Robertson.

5. … state that “To deny the clear record that’s there before us makes us look silly.”

Sadly, it’s Pat Robertson who makes Christianity look silly, which is why the atheists love him today. What a travesty! This man uses his position on a major Christian TV program to help the atheists mock God’s Word!

Oh, stop that. We atheists don’t love Pat Robertson. I think you all make Christianity look silly.

And again, you have no evidence that this is “God’s word” — given that everyone seems to have a different understanding of “God’s word,” I’d have to say God seems to be a piss-poor communicator.

6. … claim: “There’s no way that all you have here took place in 6,000 years. It just couldn’t have been done. It couldn’t possibly have been done.”

Really Pat Robertson? You mean there is no way God, the infinite Creator, could not have created the universe in six days just six thousand years ago? God could have created everything in six seconds if He wanted too! And it’s not a matter of what you think anyway–it’s a matter of what God has clearly told us in His infallible WORD!

Pat Robertson illustrates one of the biggest problems we have today in the church—people like Robertson compromise the Word of God with the pagan ideas of fallible men! That’s why a big part of the AiG ministry is to call the church and culture back to the authority of the Word. Pat Robertson is not upholding the Word of God with his ridiculous statements — he is undermining the authority of the Word. And any attack on the WORD is an attack on the person of Jesus Christ, who IS THE WORD!

You’ve invented this magical all-purpose explanation called God — who can do anything you want. That is not an explanation. Just shouting louder and louder that your explanation is the only correct one is not at all convincing.

Nice to know, though, that every single Christian on the planet is a heretic, except for Ken Ham.

Idaho, too?

Good news from Idaho.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale has ruled Idaho’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.

In her 57-page decision, Dale stated, "Idaho’s Marriage Laws withhold from them a profound and personal choice, one that most can take for granted. By doing so, Idaho’s Marriage Laws deny same-sex couples the economic, practical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of marriage, relegating each couple to a stigmatized, second-class status. Plaintiffs suffer these injuries not because they are unqualified to marry, start a family, or grow old together, but because of who they are and whom they love."

Especially delicious: Bryan Fischer is an Idaho wackaloon, and his radio meltdown will be spectacular, I’m sure. He’s already taking it personally on Twitter.

The next step in our descent

We’ve already got the right wingers outright denying science. They couldn’t get any worse, could they? Have we hit bottom yet? No. They could be accepting the evidence for all the wrong reasons. Expect this to be the new normal for the far right in a few years.

Christian Post blogger Michael Bresciani writes this week that changes in the climate are indeed taking place, but not due to human activities such as fossil fuel emissions. Instead, he says extreme weather is the result of “homosexuality, abortion [and] general sexual preoccupation,” which according to Bresciani is bringing about the End Times and the coming of the Antichrist.

I hope it’s a few years. But you never know — with the midterm elections coming up, the Republicans may embrace it as a winning strategy.

Fresh new enemies — their tears give me strength

I’ve long pissed off the sexist anti-feminist gang, and now that I’ve pointed out their ideas are simply racist, I’ve had the HBD twits hollerin’ at me, and now I discover that the intersection of misogyny and racism is simply the worst. Heartiste has weighed in.

He’s referring to my criticism of that absurd sexual market value chart, which is all made up. A couple of the more obnoxious HBD ravers turn out to be happy supporters of the SMV concept, too.

And that brought in even more low-lifes. Take a look at this guy, making his grand statements about rape.

And then, the pièce de résistance…

I am so happy to have these wretched people as enemies.

The right wing’s new/old strategy for dealing with an uncomfortable reality

Declare that they are smarter than scientists. Simple!

George Will and Charles Krauthammer are right wing hacks who have an air of cultivated superciliousness that passes for intelligence in the smugly self-serving atmosphere of the Sunday morning talk shows…but they have no other talent or ability to justify their existence. The two got together on Fox News to pontificate on the usual conspiracy theories about how scientists are all lying. Here’s Will:

Now, there is, as Charles says, the policy question is how much wealth do we want to spend directly or in lost production in order to have no discernible measurable effect on the climate? People say, well, what about this report? There is a sociology of science. Scientists are not saints in white laboratory smocks. They have got interests like everybody else. If you want a tenure-track position in academia, don’t question the reigning orthodoxy on climate change. If you want money from the biggest source of direct research in this country, the federal government, don’t question its orthodoxy. If you want to get along with your peers, conform to peer pressure. This is what’s happening.

Krauthammer doubles down by claiming that all of science is subjective and simply made up by the eggheads.

99 percent of physicists convinced that space and time were fixed until Einstein working in a patent office wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not. I’m not impressed by numbers. I’m not impressed by consensus. When I was a psychiatrist, I participated in consensus conferences on how to define depression and mania. These are things that people negotiate in the way you would negotiate a bill, because the science is unstable, because in the case of climate, the models are changeable, and because climate is so complicated.

And then he declares that the conclusions of science are equivalent to superstition.

And you always see that no matter what happens, whether it’s a flood or it’s a drought, whether it’s one — it’s warming or cooling, it’s always a result of what is ultimately what we’re talking about here, human sin with the pollution of carbon. It’s the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament. It’s in the rain dance of the Native Americans. If you sin, the skies will not cooperate. This is quite superstitious, and I’m waiting for science which doesn’t declare itself definitive but is otherwise convincing.

Do either of these guys have any knowledge of how science actually works? No. That doesn’t stop pundits from declaring it all invalid when it produces answers different from their ideological presuppositions, though. Isn’t it nice that the news media has become a haven for propagandists? It pays them a cushy salary and bolsters their prestige so they can go on air every week and engage in that exercise in projection in which they declare scientists to be scum-sucking shills who’ll say anything for money.

And now watch Marco Rubio. Oh, he’s pandering to the Tea Bagger vote.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asserted recently that there was nothing that humans could do to stop climate change because it was not caused by humans, and that any new laws would only destroy our economy.

In an interview that aired on Sunday, ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked the Florida Republican if he agreed with scientists who said that two of the cities in his state were being threatened by climate change.

I don’t agree with the notion that some are putting out there — including scientists — that somehow, there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate, Rubio insisted. Our climate is always changing. And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research, and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that’s directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activity.

Don’t try to tell me these frauds aren’t science deniers.