Fail Quote of the Day: Introducing facile Politik Ditto

Danny Glover and Mel Gibson

From one of the newest additions to my Necropolis (left sidebar), Mr. Grey Ghost at Politik Ditto, who takes along the usual “if you don’t immediately pass judgment on something someone else said, you’re a hypocrite!” type of thinking:

One would've thought by now that actor Danny Glover, a longtime, outspoken liberal activist who has openly supported Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, campaigned for John Edwards '08 presidential run and once called George W. Bush a "racist," would've spoken up by now on his former "Lethal Weapon" series co-star Mel Gibson's racist rant against his ex-girlfriend, but so far all we've gotten are crickets. Funny that.

Yes. A guy who starred in a movie along with a celebrity friend hasn’t bothered to comment on the fact that said other guy went into a near-psychotic rant about his ex-girlfriend. Obviously, this can only mean that Glover is in on the whole affair, perhaps colluding with Gibson to have Grigorieva kidnapped, raped and murdered and her body dumped in a swamp. Can’t be that maybe Glover hasn’t yet had the opportunity to respond, or that he figures it’s not his place or business to pass comment, or that maybe he just doesn’t give a damn for whatever reason (or lack thereof) – no, it’s gotta be something sinister and suspicious. He is a liberal activist, after all, and them’s always wicked.

Wait, so Vox Day was once a ruthless and cold-hearted bastard?

Well, smirked

It may seem a bit petty of me, but this little passage in Vox’s latest post amused me enough to merit a mention:

Now, I do believe even complete bastards can change from ruthless and cold-hearted cad to faithful family man because that's precisely what happened to me. However, this only came about through the transformative power of Jesus Christ; a woman can enable such a transformation, but I don't see how she could possibly bring it about on her own.

Because when I think of Vox Day, I don’t think of a pretentious, heartless, misogynistic bastard at all; no, I think of a man who is sage, compassionate, righteous and understanding. Don’t we all?

Must truly be a testament to the awesome transformative powers of Lord Jeezus, then, that Vox eschewed all that mean-spirited callousness in favor of becoming a better person, right?

Ground rules for a Christianity-vs.-atheism debate

If only real debates had these sorts of rules. Imagine the facepalming we’d avoid. The brain damage we’d prevent.

The ending comes across as a tad bit gratuitous, but I suppose it’s all in theme.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Wherein my mind has officially been blown

Y’know, the last I heard, the graphic repertoire of elephants (along with any other “animal painters”) was limited to splashing some paint on a canvas or creating shapeless blobs with brushes and sponges (canvases that are then somehow sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece). So, you can easily imagine the face I was making as I sat through this damn-near unbelievable video. Trust me when I say it’s easy to imagine – you’ll be making it, too.

Last I heard, that’s … not supposed to be possible. And yet, I can’t detect a single instance of possible trickery – it’s the real deal.

Just another example showing how we must quickly begin showing proper deference to our animal overlords before they outperform us and, subsequently, eliminate us.

(via @ebertchicago)

Daily Blend: Sunday, July 04, 2010 – Happy fireworks, beer and flag-waving day, USians!

Afshan Azad

I realize there’s been a marked dearth in my blogging output these days, which you can assuredly pin on reading, songwriting and perhaps general laziness. On the other hand, I’ve now resolved myself to begin perusing the Catholic League website, the WorldNutDaily and a silly little anti-liberal blog, Politik Ditto, so you can expect an upswing in the number of posts here for the foreseeable future. If the combined stupidity of those locales don’t give me permanent brain damage first.

(Oh, and happy memorial date of when you decided you’d had enough of tyranny and wanted to try out that “democratic republic” thing, you Yanks.)

• Hannity kicked off the radio-waves in Utah, possibly for being “uncivil”. Thus raising the question why aren’t all the others (Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, etc.) thrown out the window as well.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• After a comic explaining just how and why the antivaccination movement is wrong and dangerous, comes a new comic explaining just how and why homeopathy is wrong and dangerous.
  (via Bad Astronomy)

• Excellent op-ed from Jeb Bush and Robert Putnam in the Washington Post debunking several anti-immigration claims about how all those Brown people crossing over from Mexico are supposedly spelling ruin for the American way of life, or something. Also interesting is this examplary conservatard comment from Jsuf (7/3/10 5:11:04 PM): “We can't afford them. I don't want to pay for their health care and I don't want to subsidize english classes for them. I don't want these illegals benefiting from our AMAZING entitlement system. Enough is enough. Jeb, I am very disappointed in you. What are you doing working with those Harvard Liberals?? Do you have a soft spot for illegals because of your Latino wife?” So, that’s heartlessness, bigotry, ignorance, pretentiousness and dumbassery, all in one. Oh, dear typical conservatards.

• Dr. Stephen Barret, operator of the brilliant anti-pseudomedicine resource Quackwatch, is sued by probable quack group Doctor’s Data for US$10 million after pointing out possible fraud. Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into another Simon Singh affair and that the lawsuit is dismissed quickly.

• Padma Patil in Harry Potter gets bad press. Or how actress Afshan Azad [pictured] was reportedly beaten and threatened with death by her Muslim father and brother for dating a Hindu man. Somewhat ironic, isn’t it, how there’s absolutely nothing remotely “honorable” about a culture that inspires one to shame, assault and even murder their friends and loved ones for dating someone they don’t approve of.
  (via Friendly Atheist)

• Does the US Constitution really contain a missing yet valid 13^th Amendment, missing since the Civil War and never lawfully repealed, that makes any lawyers currently serving as politicians criminals?
  (via @todayspolitics)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Daily Blend: Saturday, July 03, 2010

Beck State University emblem May God help the science and history textbooks

Quick Q: Does anyone know if it’s possible (and if so, then how) to make antivirus programs less resource-hungry – ie. to stop them from hogging my damn PC and reducing it to a crawling croak? It’s rather annoying when even Windows folders take about 30 seconds to open.

• There actually was a blasphemy law in Pennsylvania. In 2010. Thankfully, it just got struck down. Remember, kids: Blasphemy laws are blasphemy to free speech.
  (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

• Playing real-life Jurassic Park … with modern endangered monkeys.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Introducing … (Glenn) Beck University [pictured]. May the children be pitied.

• Wonder Woman has a new look, the Americana-soaked costume revamped into a more modern, less revealing attire. Faux News’s whining in 3 … 2 … now. Is there anything they won’t politicize?

• Chuck Norris sez: Obama snubbing the Boy Scouts is just like Pontius Pilate having Jesus crucified. Or something.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Did Glenn Beck eat an eight-food c*ck because “they’re yummy”? Find out (or not) on today’s Unnecessary Censorship!
  (via @todayspolitics)

• The America that John Boehner (House Minority Leader, R-Ohio) grew up in is apparently not the one he remembers.
  (via @todayspolitcs)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Fail Quote of the Day: Gov. Brewer invents more horror tales

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R)

Since she is unable to dig up any credible arguments in support of the horrible immigration law that her state has now become renown for, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has been forced to rely on sheer demagogy and all sorts of made-up bullshit to try and persuade her constituency that those illegal immigrants really are all job-thiefs and criminals and drug mules and murderers and whatever, despite there being absolutely no reports or evidence in support of these claims (and in some cases, plenty of evidence to the exact contrary, even). Well, determined as she is to keep everyone shaking in their pants at the idea of Brown people crossing the border^[1], Brewer has now come up with a new steaming load:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) continues to try to defend her anti-immigrant policies, and isn’t above using shameless demagoguery to scare people into agreeing with her.

In an interview on Fox News last week, for example, she claimed: “We cannot afford all this illegal immigration and everything that comes with it, everything from the crime and to the drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings …”

There’s no better way, it seems, to make the case for strict anti-immigration laws than to claim that undocumented immigrants are pouring into the country to decapitate innocent Americans. But just because she says it on television doesn’t make it true.

Brewer didn’t just slip up; she seems to seriously believe immigrants who’ve entered the U.S. illegally are engaged in “beheadings.” Offered a chance to walk it back on a local public affairs show this week, Brewer insisted that there have been “bodies in the desert … that have been beheaded.” When told that media research could find no such incidents, the governor didn’t care.

This is nothing but a (rather lame and transparent) attempt at fear-mongering and calling up any grotesque imagery she can use to link illegal immigrants to OMG BAD GUYZ. Even when pointed out that such cases have never even been reported, she just ignored it, which is just prime confirmation of the fact that she’s an irrational idiot peddling a seriously politicized agenda, facts and reality be damned. Which, in itself, only further calls into question her state’s draconian anti-immigration law.

(via @todayspolitics)

^[1] I have to wonder: Are any illegal immigrants still entering the States through Arizona? Seems like a bad tactical plan at this point.

So Hitchens’ cancer is really just God being merciful

Christopher Hitchens

As you may be aware, Christopher Hitchens recently announced that he’s been forced to cancel his public appearances for the sake of undergoing chemotherapy for an apparent case of esophageal (throat) cancer. While our best wishes for a speedy recovery fly out to him, there are others who have a rather different take on the whole thing. Hemant Mehta has just pointed to one such example, where George Berkin at NJ.com actually seems to believe that cancer is really just God’s way of being great and merciful towards Hitchens. The reasoning behind this is, as you can expect, a little very distorted [original emphasis]:

It seems against common sense to say this, but might I suggest that this turn of events shows that God is kind even to those who spend their lives fighting against him.

[…]

But to our question: how can cancer be an example of God’s grace to this suddenly stricken intellectual, who has made a career of arguing the case for atheism? A cancer which God didn’t “give,” but certainly permitted.

The short answer is this: if God really wanted to “get” Hitchens, God would just ignore the man, and let him go his blissful way, unchallenged, to a peaceful death.

At which point Hitchens would stand, face-to-face and unreconciled, with that very God.

There’s your typical Christian “saved vs. unsaved” brand of thinking right there. To believers like Berkin, it’s better to suffer through a lengthy battle with cancer and die with with having had the chance to “reconcile” yourself with God (ie. to have a deathbed conversion) than to just die quickly and painlessly without having turned into a believer first.

Personally, I don’t see Berkin as a bad person, and I don’t even think this post of his is, itself, reprehensible, even if, on the surface, it (and he) seems to be lauding the fact that someone is facing a painful and debilitating bout of cancer and chemotherapy with a possibly mortal outcome. I believe his heart is in the right place; he simply believes that this will save Hitchens’ soul, thus indicating that he does believe that cancer is actually a good thing to happen to him, however horrible such thinking may strike us as. And don’t get me wrong; by any rational and logical measure, it is. But seeing as it shows Berkin wishing (his idea of) the best to Hitchens rather than just reveling in his suffering and potential demise as so many other anti-atheists do, I honestly just can’t get worked up over it.

I will say, though, that perhaps Berkin ought to consider the possibility that if God truly were great and merciful (and at all influential over the course of people’s lives), that he would perhaps have chosen, say, not to smite Hitchens with cancer (and a particularly bad type, from what I hear). Only in Christian thinking can cancer, or any disease, really, actually be seen as a sign of mercy.

Daily Blend: Friday, July 02, 2010

When 2.1 billion years old you reach, look as good, you will not

Seeing my computer lag just in moving my friggin’ mouse reminds me quite vividly of why I chose to forgo an antivirus program for so long in the first place. Bloody resource hogs.

• 2.1-billion-year-old fossil [pictured] may be the first multicellular specimen ever to exist on Earth. No, not you, Mr. King. Or you, McCain.
  (via The Daily Grail)

• 11 of the craziest things about the universe. Explains how a Sun made out of bananas would be just as hot and how you’re breathing T-Rex fumes.
  (via The Huffington Post)

• “In the beginning, man created God.” New Zealanders just got a little more godless.
  (via Friendly Atheist)

• Glenn Beck: “Call me crazy […] but maybe it’s time to start firing teachers” who refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. You make it too easy, Beck.

• When the going gets tough: California Gov. Schwarzenegger orders the salary of most state workers cut to minimum wage (US$7.25/hour). And to think, minimum wage in Québec is CA$9.50/hour, (US$8.96/hour). Now I almost feel guilty.
  (via @BreakingNews)

• Tibetans feature the fastest human evolution ever seen, at least when it comes to their genetic ability to thrive in elevated environments with less oxygen.
  (via @todayspolitics)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Friday Canine: C’mon, I wanna play!

[via jugalbandi | click for full size [550×591]]

Fail Quote of the Day: On the educational value of the Bible

From the terminally ludicrous Liberty Council, once again showing how the rely far more on demagogy and appeal to tradition than any form of a credible argument:

Today Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit to overturn a recent ban on distributing Bibles on the public school campuses of Collier County, Florida. For years, the school board allowed World Changers to distribute free Bibles to interested students during off-school hours on Religious Freedom Day, but now the school officials claim that Bibles do not provide any educational benefit to the students and the distribution should stop. Many of our founding fathers were taught to read using the Bible. If it had no educational value, then many of them would have been illiterate.

Right, guys. If the founding fathers had never read the Bible, then they never would’ve learned to read. I mean, it’s not like they had anything like schools, is it? Or parents? And, of course, the only reading material available back in those days was, of course, the story of Gawd and Jeezus. And, after all, when you think of the Bible, aren’t “high literacy rates” and “sound educational merit” the first things that pop in your mind?

Now, for the record, I don’t know anything about the case they mention, such as who the World Changers (other than that they’re part of the Southern Baptist Convention) are and whether their activities, purportedly being the free distribution of Bibles on campus grounds, were indeed illegal. As far as I know (and do correct me if I err), it is indeed legal to pass out religious literature if you’re functioning as a private entity instead of a federally or publicly funded one. Maybe the World Changers are governmentally endorsed in some way, which would then indeed make their distribution of religious texts illegal; as I said, I just don’t know. I’ll wait for Ed Brayton’s take, as he’s sure to hear about this sooner or later and I glean most of my legal knowledge off of him, anyway. But the fact that Liberty uses that sort of a ridiculous argument – as if not reading the Bible led to illiteracy – is just further confirmation of how they truly are, indeed, terminally ludicrous, in addition to being legally illiterate (the kind that no Bible can help with – in fact, they tend to hinder one’s understanding of legality, if the religion-based actions of many Christians are anything to judge by).

(via @hemantmehta)

Daily Blend: Thursday, July 01, 2010

So I installed an antivirus at last (don’t ask me why I didn’t have one until now) and killed the roughly 2,500 Trojans that had nested in my PC. All this thanks to PZ Myers and that dratted link! May your tentacles shrivel and fall off, O Squidly One.

• Republicans are against providing aid and welfare to homeless veterans with children. What, you expected any different? They care about obstructionism, not people’s well-being. More evidence to my theory that the GOP is nothing more than a cancer to the United States.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Shoenborn, decried Vatican officials’ blocking of clerical child sex abuse investigations. So, naturally, Pope Ratzi spoke out and condemned … Cardinal Shoenborn. Not the, y’know, officials who impede investigations into priestly child molestation and all that.
  (via The Agitator)

• Once again proving how it’s the size of one’s inbred, Malaria-stricken balls, not grossly undersized member, that make a King [pictured].
  (via The Daily Grail)

• Christopher Hitchens : “I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me. I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice.” Best wishes to one of the atheism’s strongest writers and an indomitable debater.
  (via Friendly Atheist)

• The 100 greatest movie insults. Some of them suck moldy donkey balls.
  (via @vulture)

• Faux News actually asks whether libraries are a “waste of tax money” and if they should be eliminated. And you thought they kept their anti-intellectualism covert. Includes the sort of in-depth investigative journalism you’d expect from Fox where they stayed at a library and observed its clientele for a full … hour. Then left and used their observations as conclusions about the establishment’s total clientele.
  (via @todayspolitics)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.