How odd: Leslie Nielsen has died, and everyone is talking about the silly comedies he made late in life. Doesn’t anyone remember Forbidden Planet? What’s the matter with you people?
Once again, some hick town has a few redneck ignoramuses thinking civic law is defined by a few Old Testament commandments. It isn’t.
Should a Southern Illinois town put the Ten Commandments in its town square?
Yes. It’s good to remind people of God’s laws governing our behavior.
72%
No. It violates separation of church and state, and is offensive to non-Christians.
23%
Who knows?
5%
God’s laws say I can’t mow my lawn on Sunday, can’t have a statue of Buddha in my house (we do, actually), and can’t appreciate an attractive starlet on TV. Why should a town praise a bunch of bad laws they won’t ever enforce?
We’re about to leave lovely Vancouver to return to Kent, Washington, so must leave you with something awful to chew on for a while. This is is a beautiful example of why creationists can be so stupid: spelling and grammar errors throughout, misrepresentations of the actual science, and non-stop idiocy. For instance, it is not true that squid, octopus, and cuttlefish have all been found in the Cambrian; the coleoids diverged from a common ancestor in the late Cambrian or early Ordovician. This does not mean that modern coleoids were present in the Cambrian. We’ve got a pretty good idea of what the cephalopod ancestor would have looked like.
It’s Saturday morning. That can’t possibly damage your brain any more than my late night of wild partying with Vancouver skeptics could have possibly done, it’s merely put us on an equal footing now.
The town of Lockland, Ohio is another of those places that worships a graven idol, an ugly stone block with the ridiculous 10 commandments on it . They never read it, though, or they’d notice that Commandment #2 says they shouldn’t worship graven idols…and actually, if they read them at all, they’d know that the only two that even come close to real laws in our nation are the ones that say don’t kill and don’t steal. The rest? Dross and superstition.
The town is being sued to have the nonsense removed, and of course the newspaper has to run a poll. Do you think that if we run this up to a good strong majority for removal that the city will send out a crew to dynamite the monstrosity?
Should Lockland be forced to remove the 10 Commandments from its town hall?
Yes 25.48%
No 74.52%
Let us stir up a little tempest in Tennessee. An internet poll asks, SHOULD A DISPLAY OF THE 10 COMMANDMENTS BE ALLOWED IN OUR COUNTY COURTHOUSE?. The currently leading answer, with 82% of the vote, is “Absolutely. The laws of our land are based on the 10 Commandments and anybody who doesn’t want to look at them (or read them) certainly doesn’t have to do so.”
This poll also has something sneaky. There are 5 possible answers, but they’ve just worded the same thing differently to split our votes. The intelligent options are “Such a display is inappropriate in any public building,” “No way. There needs to be a distinct separation between church and state,” and “No! Our government is prohibited by law from endorsing religion and this is clearly an endorsement.” To make this a bit more challenging, let’s elevate the percentages on all three to crush the two that basically say “Favor Christians in the law”.
The Carnival of the Godless is full of new commandments I’m supposed to follow, but that seem to be getting broken at a frenetic pace. We don’t need any more; I have a suggestion for the Christians. Pick one of the good ones in the original 10. Not an easy one, like “Thou shalt loaf about on Sunday,” but one that might actually make a difference in the world. I suggest “Don’t kill.”
You’d think they would have gotten the message by now that they’re doing something wrong.
Can I just say that a remake of this movie with Samuel L. Jackson as the voice in the burning bush would be awesome?
My son, Major Conlann A. Myers, has been published in Army Communicator, with a short history and current status of the 51st Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E) (his unit) on page 35, if you’re interested. I know I am. This is the best we get, though – vague statements about the broad general area of deployment, next to nothing about timing.
The 51st ESB-E is postured to deploy to the United States Central Command area of operations (AoR) in 2024 as the first full ESB-E, taking over a mission that has previously been filled from ESBs and providing new capabilities to the area of responsibility. The mission will provide the Army the opportunity to improve the tactical network supporting U.S. forces in the AoR with the newest equipment and prove out the ability of the ESB-E concept to fully replace existing ESBs.
We know it’s soon and it’s the Middle East, and we’ll be worrying the whole time.
Would believe they’re afraid that people are filling their lettuce with vaccines? Publish one little paper suggesting that plant tissue could be a source of pharmaceutical mRNA, and some right-wing dingbat immediately assumes that there’s a nefarious plan afoot to inoculate good god-fearing anti-vaxxers with stuff that might make them resistant to disease. We’d never do that! Besides, it would be pointless to use lettuce as a vector, since we all know they only eat red meat. Or, it was red until they cooked it to the texture of shoe leather. (Ooh, sudden thought…maybe we could smuggle mystery chemicals into their food via ketchup.)
Getting into more serious territory, Louisiana, the worst state in the union by nearly all metrics, now wants to criminalize the American Library Association. They must really hate the ALA, because this is what the law proposes.
A. No public official or employee shall appropriate, allocate, reimburse, or otherwise or in any way expend public funds to or with the American Library Association or its successor.
B. No public employee shall request or receive reimbursement or remuneration in any form for continuing education or for attending a conference if the continuing education or conference was sponsored or conducted, in whole or in part, by the American Library Association or its successor.
C. Whoever violates this Section shall be fined not more than one thousand dollars or be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than two years, or both.
It’s not clear what has pissed off the Republican sponsors so much that they would sentence librarians to hard labor for joining the organization. It’s probably because the ALA opposes book banning and endorses literacy.
The big surprise this week is Arizona. The Republicans have a one seat majority in the Arizona house and senate, and they used it to pass a near-total ban on abortion. They got the assistance of the looney-tunes Arizona Supreme Court.
Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the state’s 1864 law banning all abortions, except to save the life of the mother, is now, enforceably, the law of the land. It is now a felony for a doctor—or anyone else—to assist a woman getting an abortion, punishable by two to five years in prison.
Arizona is a microcosm of what America would look like if the Republicans grab just a few more seats. There’s more that they have accomplished!
For example, the GOP-led legislature recently passed House Bill 2843 that would allow property owners to shoot and kill undocumented immigrants who simply walk across their property. This followed a border property owner’s arrest after he allegedly shot and killed an undocumented migrant walking on his land. Gov. Hobbs vetoed the bill this week.
Also this week, some MAGA legislative extremists were rolling on the Senate floor and speaking in tongues as they prayed for their bills to pass.
Of course, there’s also the usual Biblical shenanigans.
With a one-seat Republican majority in both the House and Senate, the legislature recently passed a bill that will allow teachers in public and charter K-12 schools to post and read the Ten Commandments in class.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Anthony Kern—a candidate for the U.S. Congress, currently under investigation as one of Donald Trump’s “fake electors” that falsely asserted Trump won the state in 2020—now moves to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk, where a veto is expected.
Imagine if the federal government were under the thumb of the holy rollers and racists and know-nothings — they’re close to a perfectly legal take-over.
I hope you’re all planning to vote in November.
