I present to you an open letter in three parts, a sort of triune epistle issued in the hope that it will save one, just one of you from the trap of self-imposed ignorance that is religion, particularly the fundamentalist type. Following find my notes on “Intelligent Design”, prayer in school, and the mix of religion with politics.
Okay, so a 21-year-old white college student is missing from Vermont.
How many black women — or for that matter, non-college-student white women — vanished during the same time period, and where’s all the media hype regarding them?
And why is it that virtually no one knows about the pervert who’s raping girls on the Fort Apache reservation?
Denny Hastert is now saying that he’ll fire anyone involved in the page scandal cover-up.
Is he still eligible for benefits if he fires himself?
Caught a nicely revealing interview with Jim Gilchrist on MSNBC this morning. There are times when the AM offerings on that network can be surprisingly tonic; generally, they serve to piss me off, but occasionally they invigorate me in other ways entirely.
This morning’s talking-head segment with Jim Gilchrist really did it for me.
The anchor — I think it was Contessa Brewer — almost seemed to be siding with Gilchrist at first as the man kept spouting about the way the stage had been rushed at Columbia University recently when he was pontificating about the Evils of Immigration. Gilchrist called the students “twenty-first century fascists” and alleged they were taking away his “first amendment rights”.
First of all, let me clarify something to all you right-wing assholes, okay? Fascism is what the Republicans, under George W. “Il Duce” Bush, are attempting to foist upon the nation. Fascism is a combination of strong — heavily dominating — government with corporate/financial/big-business-centric policymaking. Benito Mussolini was the archetypal fascist, and his government is a good example of the nature of the beast.
Students mounting (literally) a protest, while arguably in poor taste, are absolutely not fascists.
We can’t exactly say that the North Korean nuke test was a shock. They said they would do it; they’ve done it. And now nukes are in the hands of yet another power-mad, dangerously narcissistic dictatorship. (And no, the other one isn’t Pakistan. Or Israel. Or India.)
Tony Snow was on Sunday, claiming that the NKor test, thankfully conducted underground at least, was “a provocative act in defiance of the will of the international community” (apologies to those whose irony meters just exploded), and Il Duce himself had this to say.
Once again, North Korea has defied the will of the international community and the international community will respond.
Huh. This is a pretty big shift in rhetoric from the “damn the UN” attitude that’s been oozing from DC for the last half-decade, innit? Is it possible Bush has learned a little humility, realized that working with international allies is better, possibly even decided to be less bellicose?
Not really.
Two shows. That’s all you really need to know. Starting at 7 PM on Sci-Fi Channel…
Doctor Who — the BBC refit of the classic series. The first season was utterly spank. This season’s been good so far too. The show retains its exuberance and strangeness, but has received a massive upgrade in FX quality; fortunately the writing seems to be fairly high-standard as well.
Battlestar Galactica, seasion premiere. The “2.5″ split left cliffhangers galore. Now we get to see what happens to two undermanned battlestars when they have to figure out how to deal with a Cylon-occupied planetful of humans who’ve had a year to grow soft and lazy. Like Doctor Who, this is a total refit of an older series, and while the sets and settings include some highly questionable details — such as terrestrial foodstuffs and 12-hour clocks — the caliber of the writing is superb.
As for rentals this week, I’m afraid you’re on your own. I spent the earlier part of this week re-watching BSG 2.5 to make sure I was up to speed for tonight’s opener. I won’t be as committed next week, and should be able to take on a sweetly-made American classic based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel from the early 1960s.
Actually, this one is true. Herr Ratzi is considering abolishing the idea of limbo, which is a significant theological tenet of Catholic teaching. (It is, among other things, the place that unbaptized souls are said to go, and was the “paradise” that Jesus allegedly was referring to when he supposedly told a fellow victim of the Romans that he’d meet that person there.)
[T]here are those who argue that it is not simply a “hypothesis” that can just be swept aside; that the notion that unbaptised children do not go to heaven has been a fundamental part of Church teaching for hundreds of years.
So if limbo, which is so important to Catholics, is a lie … well, where exactly does this slippery slope end? Transubstantiation? Saints? Virgin birth? Resurrection?
Golly, is it possible the whole thing is based on a silly, pointless fantasy?
Frank Lasee is a blithering idiot.
MADISON, Wis. - In the wake of school shootings in Wisconsin, Colorado and Pennsylvania during the last two weeks, a state legislator says he plans to introduce legislation that would allow teachers, principals, administrators and other school personnel to carry concealed weapons.
Hey, retard, listen up. Armed teachers wouldn’t have saved anyone or helped anything in the school shootings. Stop masturbating to rescue fantasies and pay attention to real tactical situations — the ones where the cops don’t yell “freeze”, the ones where you don’t get to pull a big revolver after a firefight and say, “Are you feelin’ lucky, punk?”, the ones where real bullets dig real holes in the bodies of real bystanders. You know — the real world. The one we actually live in.
He offers the tired drivel that Israeli teachers are armed — which is a lie; there are guards at the schools, but teachers are not allowed firearms on campus — and overlooks, as his type always seems to, the fact that Israel is an insanely dangerous place to live, at least in part because every asshole there is packing heat.
What is it with all these pistol-stroking dimwits? Why the hell do they want to see firearms in the hands of every person in the fuckin’ country? (Except, presumably, blacks, Mexicans and women. Oh wait; I think I just answered my own question, didn’t I?)
Whenever you hear about a teenaged girl allegedly being forced into an abortion, your antennae have just got to go up. We’re talking about a controversial medical procedure that most people probably don’t undertake electively to begin with — that is, I suspect most women having abortions don’t actually want to be having an abortion — so there’s always an element of whaaaaaaat? when you learn of an apparent attempt at a forced procedure.
Katelyn Kampf, The teen in question here, is actually 19, which makes it even stranger. She was allegedly kidnapped in Maine, the aim being to transport her to New York where the procedure would be performed. How the alleged kidnappers planned to force a legal adult to undergo an abortion out of state is a question for the trial, I suppose.
But the oddest thing about it?
The alleged kidnappers and would-be abortion proponents were the girl’s own parents.
All Foley all the time is getting dull. Here’s a fun one — a Georgia mom who’s trying to get Harry Potter books banned from school libraries. (Didn’t we just have a Banned Book Week calling attention to the evils of … banning books?)
Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction series is an “evil” attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.
She’s wrong in every significant way. Harry Potter books are obviously not evil — they laud the value of sacrifice for others, the merits of friendship and the nature of human loyalties; and they certainly aren’t an attempt to spread Wiccanism anywhere. Any Wiccan will tell you that the religion has as much to do with Harry Potter as Christianity has to do with Star Wars.
Any conventionally-intelligent, rational person with his (or her) head not firmly inserted in his ass will tell you the same thing, Wiccan or not.
And finally, Wicca itself isn’t evil. Silly, perhaps; but evil? Hardly.
The governments of Britain and Ireland are reporting now that the IRA is no longer a threat.
The report indicates that a number of key parts of the IRA’s structure have been dismantled or substantially reduced. It said the IRA does not want to go back to violence and no longer has the capacity to mount a sustained campaign.
The IRA was a terrorist organization — and in order to bring them in line, the British did not perform rendition of prisoners; did not transport anyone to secret prisons; did not turn themselves into a dictatorship.
Anyone who defends the actions of Il Duce and Cheney should probably shut up and pay attention here.
