Anomalous Data - Those Wacky Fundies

There's always a bigger fish

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 14:07:28 GMT

Just when you thought nobody could have a crazier view of history than David Barton...

Apparently this guy is Alex Jone's answer to Glenn Beck's David Barton. Yow. It's like Dueling banjos but with psychotic pseudo historians instead of banjos.

I've been doing a lot of reading

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:52:55 GMT

What’s the difference between the theocrats of today and the theocrats of yesterday? Only one thing, as far as I can see. The arguments about the importance of religion are exactly the same. The arguments about the dangers of “atheism” (as is the sliding definition that sometimes actually means “atheism” and sometimes is just a general catch-all that includes Deism, Unitarianism, Skepticism and Freethought) are the same. Their lust to enshrine their religious beliefs in the seat of power at the expense of all other beliefs is the same…the only difference I can see is that the theocrats of today want to make Jefferson a Christian who wanted to establish religion in the government…and the theocrats of Jefferson’s time wanted to make him an atheist who wanted to extinguish religion completely.

I also love how the quote I’m going to show you demonstrates that the FOX news “hedge technique” is not a recent invention. “I’m not saying he’s an atheist, I’m just saying that he sounds like he’s trying to destroy America. Here’s the evidence, you decide.” Lol.

Below is an extended quote from Jefferson contemporary, the Rev. William Linn and his pamphlet “Serious Considerations on the Election of a President” I got it from Christ Rodda’s book _Liars for Jesus_

She is using it because David Barton (Glen Beck’s Yoda of American History, and one of the Christian Nationalists Ms. Rodda calls “liars for Jesus”) has to chop and cut and paste in order to use Linn’s rants against atheism to promote Christianity in government…but has to twist himself into a pretzel of illogic in order to hide the fact that Linn is speaking about Jefferson…Barton refers to Jefferson as one of “two prominent men”…and counts on his ignorant audience to not recognize Jefferson’s famous “it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket” quote. I mean, that would hurt his narrative about Jefferson being intent on establishing religion, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, here is the extended quote from Rev. Linn’s “Serious Considerations”:

“There is another passage in Mr. Jefferson’s Notes [on the state of Virginia] which requires the most serious attention. In showing that civil rulers ought not to interfere with the rights of conscience, and that the legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as they are injurious to others, he says, ‘The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ The whole passage is written with a great degree of spirit, it is remarkable for that conciseness, perspicuity, and force which characterizes the style of Mr. Jefferson.

Some have ventured from the words I have quoted, to bring even the charge of atheism against him. This is a high charge, and it becomes carefully to examine the ground upon which it rests. Though the words themselves, their connection, and the design for which they are introduced may be insufficient to support it, yet there are concurrent circumstances to be taken into consideration, and which will fix at least a suspicion. These circumstances are, a general disregard of religious things, the associates at home and abroad, and the principles maintained in conversation. with [sic] these things I am not so well acquainted as many. I shall only mention what passed in conversation between Mr. Jefferson and a gentleman of distinguished talents and services, on the necessity of religion to government. The gentleman insisted that some religious faith and institutions of worship, claiming divine origin, were necessary to the order and peace of society. Mr. Jefferson said that he differed widely from him, and that ‘he wished to see a government in which no religious opinions were held, and where the security for property and social order rested entirely upon the force of law.’ Would this not be a nation of atheists? Is it not natural, after the free declaration of such a sentiment, to suspect the man himself of Atheism? Could one who is impressed with the existence of God, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, to whom we are under a law and accountable; and the inseparable connection of this truth with the social order and external happiness of mankind express himself in this manner?

Putting the most favorable construction upon the words in the Notes [on the State of Virginia, by Jefferson], they are extremely reprehensible. Does not the belief influence the practice? How then can it be a matter of indifference what a man believes? The doctrine that a man’s life may be good, let his faith be what it may, is contradictory to reason and the experience of mankind. It is true that a mere opinion of my neighbor will do me no injury. Government cannot regulate or punish it. The right of private opinion is inalienable. But let my neighbor once persuade himself that there is no God, and he will soon pick my pocket, and break not only my leg, but my neck. If there is no God, there is no law; no future account; government then is the ordinance of man only, and we cannot be subject for conscience sake. No colors can paint the horrid effects of such a principle, and the deluge of miseries with which it would overwhelm the human race.

How strongly soever [sic]Mr. Jefferson may reason against the punishments of law of erroneous opinion, even of atheism; they are not the less frightful and dangerous in their consequences…”

According to Ms. Rodda, Linn goes on to accuse Jefferson of denying the factual nature of the Bible, wanting to take the Bible out of the schools, and that even if he didn’t rid the country of religion, he would set a bad example.

Linn even attributes this quote to Jefferson…which I don’t recall appearing exactly as such, but I’ve read a lot of Jefferson, and it may have gotten buried under other things…but anyway the point is that this is what Linn claimed Jefferson said:

‘…high time for this country to get rid of religion and the clergy;”

Linn even goes on to say that it would be better to elect an immoral Christian to the Presidency than an honest “infidel”…because the things the President professed would become fashionable, and so the country would stay Christian with a hypocrite in office, but would go to hell with an Atheist in office, because it would give people a sort of permission to not follow Christian values.

Thus Linn provides evidence of the sentiment expressed by many at the time that a Christian nation will, inevitably, become a nation of hypocrites (for which they had the governments of the old world as ample evidence). AND HE SAYS It LIKE IT IS A GOOD THING...or at least preferable to electing an honest atheist. What matters is the official line…not the truth or reality.

It makes me think of an argument that Gary North (fellow Christian Reconstructionist, Christian Nationalist, and admirer of R.J. Rushdoony along with David Barton and D. James Kennedy) made about the Godly exercise of authority. It shows the thinking that makes it necessary for all law to be Biblical law in the minds of Christian Nationalists, and it explains greatly their need to prove “Christian Nationalism” in the minds of people. The results don’t matter…what matters is that the process be according to Biblical law…only then can society be just, regardless of whether or not individuals follow the law or break it, and regardless of the results and consequences, law has no authority for them unless it comes from God, and then if it does, then its morality is incontrovertible regardless of its results.

http://www.reformed.org/social/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/social/let_2_paul_hill.html

This is the same philosophical basis from which Rushdoony argued for the legality of slavery, the execution of gay people, and the disenfranchisement of non-Christians (meaning non-Calvinists, BTW). NONE of these ideas have been renounced by his followers, North, Barton, Kennedy, etc. They have simply not been mentioned, or when queried about them, they have been demurred as “not essential”. Not essential, but certainly Christian…which is how David Barton fan Bradlee Dean is able to say that Muslim countries are more moral than Christians in America, because they execute homosexuals. It’s not essential…but it is following “God’s law”. Obviously, some of Barton’s followers consider it to be desirable. Which is why I find it alarming that Glen Beck (a mormon, and therefore one of the disenfranchised in Barton’s hero’s re-imagined “Christian America”) is on the steps of the Lincoln memorial (immortalizing the “unnatural” act of abolishing slavery) pushing David Barton’s version of history on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech…(which advanced the civil rights this movement wants to roll back). Glen Beck and other useful idiots are actually promoting the groundwork of an ideology that would ultimately rob them of their freedom.

It’s insanity…but back to the past.

Jefferson was a very clear, precise and elegantly simple writer. His thoughts of Christ and Christianity are extremely difficult to mistake, and both Linn and Barton are either tremendous idiots or tremendous liars. When Jefferson described himself as a Christian, he defined it very clearly (and often explicitly)as a “follower of Christ”…specifically, those teachings he found admirable (which makes him as Christian as Ghandi or or my Jewish friends who admires Jesus’ teachings and consider them as valid as any other Rabbi’s teachings, or some Muslims I know who also believe Jesus was a wise prophet. If his approach to the study and understanding of Christianity made Jefferson a Christian, then the fact that he took the same approach and had the same response to the study of Islam would make him a muslim.)

And when Jefferson denounced “Christianity” he was also clear about what that meant…corruptions that he believed he found in the teachings of Christ…including those teachings attributed to Christ in the Bible that he believed to be ridiculous and nonsensical and assumed were corruptions and adaptations by followers and church officials who messed around with them; the trinity, the deity of Jesus, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the miracles, etc.

He was at once relentlessly critical of Christianity, and unreservedly admiring of Jesus…and ultimately believed that anything good about religion would be able to be defended on the field of reason, and that government power used to defend, promote or advance it could only serve to bring out the worst in it.

Even more, he didn’t think that Christianity had a monopoly on truth, and even thought that there were valuable truths that Christianity lacked…and furthermore that the only philosophy that had a chance at being perfect was one that held reason to be supreme over any sort of revelation. Which makes him more than a Christian with non-traditional beliefs, more than a heretic…it makes him something completely different. A Deist. And Deism has to be allowed to follow the developments of knowledge and reason. It’s can’t be rooted in a doctrine…because as soon as it does it becomes “religion”...once faith is enshrined in the power of government it becomes static and unchangeable. When it can no longer grow and seek greater truth, it becomes dead and useless and meaningless, and just another excuse for the government to exercise its power to enforce dead and rotting ideas.

Further, claims that he “promoted religion as beneficial” based on his encouragement to private individuals that they would benefit from studying religion would then have to lend validity to claims that he “promoted atheism as beneficial” when he likewise encouraged private individuals to embrace atheism if that’s where their reason and their conscience led them.

Trying to make him an Atheist or a Christian is just plain silly, and obsession to prove any such point turns people into liars. Anyone who cares about the truth should not rely on David Barton and Glen Beck to tell it to them. There’s no truth there. They should look for themselves.

And don’t just read the founders. Read their contemporary opponents. I’ve gotten great enjoyment out of Timothy Dwight, and now I imagine I will get great enjoyment out of reading William Linn, thanks to Ms. Rodda.

Dwight and Linn are proof that these same-old-same-old theocratic arguments have failed in the past…and there is every reason to believe that they will fail in the future. Turning Jefferson from an “atheist” to a “Christian” does nothing to change their inherent weakness and deficiency.

P.S. I’m finding that “Serious Considerations” is difficult to get hold of. Copies of it seem to cost around $400.00…so I am looking for an online version. I’ll let you know if I find one.

However, I did find this rebuttal to “Serious Considerations” that shows the confusion many people seemed to have between Atheism and Deism at the time. While Linn charges Jefferson with “Atheism”…the author of the tract linked to below does a direct rebuttal of Linn, but defends Jefferson from charges of “Deism”. Many Christians (like Timothy Dwight) saw them as the same thing. For many, “Unitarian”, “Deist”, “Atheist” and “Heretic”, “Skeptic” and “Freethinker” seemed to be synonymous.

Aside from the fact that the guy seems to not really know what a “Deist” is, nor be terribly familiar with Jefferson’s public and private writings, and though he is at times not strictly factual or rational, his apologetics make a tremendous counter to the apologetics of the Christian Nationalist crowd, who take similar liberties, but come to the opposite conclusion.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=817&chapter=69460&layout=html&Itemid=27

Ray's Place, and "Information you need to know"

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 20:51:33 GMT

On the way up to the North Shore, Rocky and I recently stopped for gas at a place (I think it was called "Ray's Place", but don't quote me on that).

The gas was horribly over priced, but we found ourselves on the bottom of the tank, and couldn't risk there not being another stop for a while.

I walked in to use the bathroom, and my ears were assaulted by the screaming rage coming from the radio. Some British guy ranting on and on about the "Obama Agenda".

The bathroom was filthy, so I was grateful for the sanitary wipes that moms seem to always need to carry around in their purses.

Then I went to pick up some water and soda. The radio had gone to ads about how our families were under assault, and men need to know what to do and have the right guns to protect their families...the onimous music in the background made it hard to follow the words, so I don't know what the ads were selling besides fear.

As I gathered together the things we wanted to buy, the two people staffing the store were stocking shelves and one guy (Ray, I assume) was ranting and raving about how hard it was to stay in business with the government taking all his money (I couldn't help think that maybe he'd get more business if he lowered his prices to attract business besides those who just happened to get caught in front of his store with an empty tank.)

While I waited at the counter, he held forth on how "nobody wanted to work for a living anymore"..they just wanted a hand-out from hard-working guys like him who actually do all the work in society.

The riff meandered on to "all the damned Mexicans taking our jobs and living on welfare"...He hopped on that dead horse for quite some time. So long, I was waiting in anticipation, hoping that eventually, a Mexican WOULD come along and take his job so I could pay for my darned merchandise.

Eventually, he came over and said "You're too patient and quiet, why didn't you tell me you were ready?"

Retorts such as "I didn't feel like telling you what to do. I'm a liberal, and we like to let people do things on their own." or "Because I figured you'd shoot me" or "No Comprendo Engles."flashed through my head, but I just shrugged and fished in my purse for my wallet. I didn't want to start something with this guy in the middle of nowhere when I had other places to be. We'd gotten going sort of late, and this trip was supposed to LOWER my husband's blood pressure...something that would not happen if he had to pull me out of a fist-fight with a local merchant.

Anyway, he goes on to ask me "You ever get on the Internet?"

"Occasionally". (lol)

"Well, here's some sites you should look at to find out what's REALLY going on in this country."

"You gotta get over there and see THIS GUY . Do it soon, because he's risking his life to get the truth out."

"Risking his life?"

Oh yeah. "The'll kill him for the things he's saying."

The guy is wearing a tee-shirt that compares Obama to Mugabe (I think. Fringe people - right and left- use so much short-hand it is sometimes difficult to understand exactly what they mean)...so I don't have to ask if he is serious.

I pay and leave.

I was happy to see that Rocky has to go in and use the facilities. Then he would'nt think I'm crazy when I tell him about this guy.

Since Alex Jones is going to be murdered by the Obama administration soon, I guess I better put this up for you to see soon.

www.infowars.com

UPDATE: WE went back again this year for a camping trip on Rainy Lake. We drove past Ray's Place and there was a sign out front that said "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to GOD". There was a nice, polite girl working the cash register, and she had the radio turned to some inoffensivly bland country music. The bathroom was cleaned. I don't think she was Mexican, but hopefully Ray figured out that he should stick with "being a job provider" rather than actually working. The gass was still horribly overpriced, so we didn't buy any of that, but we got some ice. That was also over-priced, but you know...it was ice. There's only so much you can inflate the price on an low-cost item like that, and we only needed a liuttle bit.

Oh, and one thing I forget to mention was still there...a wall fetischizing the local youths serving in the military. Huge pictures of them in their uniforms with maudlin images of 9/11, flowers, and horrible unimaginative and clunky quotes.

I've seen nice, respectful beautiful rememberances of local youth in the military, and I appreciate them. This was not one of those. It looked more like the creepy attic shrines that television stalker/killers build to their victims. No candles, though. Just pictures of candles. Probably the horrible oppressive fire marshal stepped on his rights and wouldn't let him have real ones.

I'm confused...no, I think you're confused...

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:03:40 GMT

Because of constant admonishment that I don't properly understand the "Tea Party Movement" from one of my conservative friends, I continue to read tea party sites and look at tea party videos, and just get more confused.

Example:

Here is one of the Tea PArty Hero guys, Sheriff Arpaio. If you read the tea party sites that support him, you will learn that he is a Tea Party Hero because he will stop at nothing to rid our country of the communist Mexican invasion conspiracy that wants to give us swine flu, take our jobs, guns, and bibles, and leave us with nothing but piles of brown babies on Welfare. (for my tone-deaf liberal friends, that is sarcasm)

http://www.thewoodlandsteaparty.com/2009/10/22/sheriff-joe-arpaio-im-not-going-to-stop-arresting-illegals/

He won't let the commie pinko liberal nazi atheist Maoist conspiracy that says he abuses his power stop him. Yeay Teabagger power! W007!

OK, so then you have another Tea Party Hero, the Reverand Steven Anderson. Shepherd of the flock at Faithful Word Babtist Church in Tempe AZ. Anderson stands up for "real" men who stand up to pee as God dictates in his holy word, the Bible, and also prays that Barak Obama (who, he mentions will be in town the next day, in case anyone missed it) will die and go to hell soon, as God says he deserves.

But that's not why Anderson has been invited to speak at Tea Parties, and is the focus of numerous Tea Party blogs...no.

Anderson is a Tea Party Hero because he "stood up to" the liberal fascist commie nazi pinko power structure, and he won't let tools of the liberal fascist commie nazi pinko athiests like Arpaio push him around*.

http://sanderson1611.blogspot.com/2009/04/cbs-news-report-on-pastor-andersons.html

Wait...huh?

Yep. Exactly.

But obviously, the reason I don't understand how one upstart movement that represents the sane majority of Americans can be it's own enemy, is because I am a commie liberal nazi fascist pink atheist who wants to take away guns and Bibles and give you the swine flu.

*I have to reiterate here what I have said numerous times on my Face Book page. that what happened to Pastor Anderson should never have happened to anyone. I have compassion for his wounds and for the indignity and violence that he suffered, and nobody should have to suffer that way. I'm glad that he can go to court and get recourse from the same government that he claims denies him freedom and justice.
I also oppose his message that in a biblical nation homosexuals would be "killed like animals", and the same compassion that says he should not have been tased and beaten requires me to oppose him when he preaches that his fellow citizens should be dragged into the street and stoned to death beacuse they violate his religious beliefs.

Play, Pie, and Crazy: Part 2

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:40:02 GMT

Rocky and I had been to see a play, part of our little tradition of subscribing to the Guthrie Theater every year. This performance had managed to sneak up on me. I had it on the wrong night in my calender, and everything had turned into a sort of train-wreck that day.

Rocky drove from the airport, directly from the play. I drove there from another location. We met, attended the play, and enountered a creepy older couple who desperatly wanted me to eat one of their throat lozenges. (see Play, Pie, and Crazy, Part 1)

Rocky and I decided to go to Perkins for pie and coffee. I normally would never eat pie, and certainly not that late at night, but decided to make an exception. We were going to meet at the Perkins on the way home.

But first, I had to stop for gas. I decided to go to a familiar gas station, first, rather than risk running out of gas on the freeway.

So I got through all the button-punching preliminaries, set the nozzle in my gas tank, and began the long wait. I did what I often do. I put one leg up on the concrete plinth that the gas pump sits on and proceeded to stretch out my hamstring muscles. I was already stretched from earlier that day, so I was able to nearly touch my nose to my knee.

Then, I switched legs, and as I did so, the car on the other side of the island rolled forward. There were a couple of skin-head-looking types glaring at me from the car. The window nearest me was rolled down slightly.

The guy in the passenger side glared at me and said "Bitch". They drove off.

Weird. Shrug.

Rocky got to the Prekins ahead of me, and was sitting at the table playing with his new laptop. It is a very special laptop from a very special source. Not everyone can get them, yet.

As he explained this to me, I thought about pointing out to him how unfair it was that he got to keep his special laptop that not many other people could get, which he got from a very special source...when I had to throw away a lozenge with similar credentials just minutes before.

But I was distracted by the conversation going on behind my back.

There was a young man explaining to another young man how current political powers were massing to bring about Armageddon.

"There are agents of the Beast who are right now working to make everyone in the world equal so that they can bring our country down to the level of other countries and bring about Armagheddon. Do you have any idea who that might be?"

I assume the other young man wrote some names down on a napkin or something, because I really didn't hear a reply, but the other young man seemed delighted with some sort of answer.

I couldn't help but overhear the conversation as the guy went through the _Left Behind_ series, and every single hair-brained conspiracy theory that I have ever even hear rumor of. It was masterful.

Rocky and I had a tremendous conversation about his trip, and some of the stuff he did and the people he talked to, and we talked about the play a little, and I told him about what had happened while he was gone...

Punctuated by dark intimations of the Jewish Monitary Conspiracy that was the Federal Reserve, and the heroics of certain politicians who were determined to preserve as much of the rightous church as possible for the final battle, and the implications of the gay agenda, and the importance os good spiritual hygiene and preperation for spiritual warfare in the conflict to come. They sounded really jazzed at the idea of rives of blood, death, and destruction. The identity of the horsement were discussed. The identity of the Beast was dicussed.

They covered everything.

Rocky and I would occasionally pause in our conversation just to gather our thoughts whenever a particularly noxious bit of craziness wafted over us.

What a weird night.

Team Lib's EXCELLENT ADVENTURE!!!!!

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:15:08 GMT

Duuuuuuudes! Like, everyone has been down on libs for so long. Like, harshing our mellow to the max, and all because we're like, lame and stuff.

But don't dispair mon frare...we're back baby!

'cause we totally went back in time and took over the Bible. We're like rocken spiritual time-pirates.

You thought Bill and Ted had a great adventure? Nu-uh! Team lib totally went back in time and snuck the lovey-forgivy-sharey crap into the Bible!

Uh-huh! BAM!! Yeah, take that, in yer face Mr. Judgy-Mcvitriol Christian guys!

But uh-oh...Andrew Schlaffly's gonna take it back with an army of homeschool kids! Bogus!

http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

Get back in the funkey time-travel phone booth dudes! We have to save the wimpy social gospel or we won't get to have a modern government or health care reform!

You win! You get to drink from the firehose of crazy!

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:55:26 GMT

James Linzey: "Stomp Them Out!" from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.

But that's not the best of it. You gotta read the article below. Amazing. The man has a head full of NutterButters.

James Linzey: Firehose of crazy.

Pat Buchanan doesn't like Hitler? Since when?

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:25:59 GMT

Pat Buchanan offered some old creationist chestnuts up again for the consumption of the gullible masses. (link found at Pharyngula)

1) He claims that Karl Marx loved Darwin. Here’s a good treatment of that claim.
(link found at Pharyngula)

2) He claims that Adolph Hitler loved Darwin.

This is an interesting claim, since the only references to “evolution” in Hitler’s writings are clearly in opposition to Darwin, and instead embrace Paley (distinct species created at the beginning of creation, and only able to modify a small amount, but no speciation) Lamarck (inherited acquired traits, along with purposeful striving for higher forms) and Linnaeus (the assumption that more complex forms have a higher moral value, and are judged “worthy to exist”). If Hitler loved Darwin so much, how come his every use of the term “evolution” rejected Darwin’s mechanism, and instead embraced the mechanisms of Darwin’s defeated predecessors? How come he mocked ideas based on Malthus and Darwin as the ideas of a “dear little ape-god” who would be punished by God for such unnatural ideas?

3) He also claims that Darwin stole his ideas from Wallace. Here is what Wallace has to say about that. (link found at Pharyngula)

4) There’s a whole bunch of other claims mopped up at Pharyngula if you want to go through the whole tedious litany of creationist dishonesty.

But what I find funny is Buchanan’s attempts to paint his political opponents as Nazis. Seems to me that Buchanan had some things to say about Nazi David Duke in the ‘90’s...lesseee, what was that?

Oh yeah:

1991: "David Duke is busy stealing from me. I have a mind to go down there and sue that dude for intellectual property theft."

- Manchester, NH Union Leader, December 15, 1991

"Take a hard look at Duke's portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against white folks." (syndicated column, 2/25/89)

I guess that Pat Buchanan, the guy who opposed hunting down Nazi war criminals, the guy who is notoriously anti-Israel, who edges ever-closer to Holocaust denial every year, whose nativist screeds are practically a translation of Mein Kampf into middle American English, and the guy who has repeatedly made admiring statements about Hitler and who pals around with American Neo-Nazis, talks on their radio shows, and shares most of their issues has a problem with Darwin. Not surprising, since Hitler hated Darwin too.

Re-reading Origin

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:43:37 GMT

From Chapter one of Origin of the Species :

When a race of plants is once pretty well established, the seed-raisers do not pick out the best plants, but merely go over their seed-beds, and pull up the 'rogues,' as they call the plants that deviate from the proper standard. With animals this kind of selection is, in fact, also followed; for hardly any one is so careless as to allow his worst animals to breed.

Naturally, creationists merely quote the last sentence and claim that with this sentence, Darwin was advocating human eugenics. In fact, Darwin spends the first chapter discussing the demonstrable effect of artificial selection over time in the creation of new breeds to lay the foundation for how changes over time could accumulate into new species, and discussing the difficulties that the previous explanations have in providing a mechanism that can accommodate all observations…on the way to eventually showing how his theory DOES accommodate these observations.

To mistake this sentence in context for anything other than part of a description of how artificial selection is implemented in domestic animal husbandry would require either extreme stupidity or extreme dishonesty. In creationist apologists, it is difficult to tell the difference.

Incidentally, the pre-Darwin explanations are the ones currently offered by creationists, with the terminology changed, but with no new information nor alternative mechanisms proposed. Current evolutionary theory has offered predictions borne out by new discoveries, and has suggested areas for further study that have spawned whole new and fruitful discoveries that have enriched our lives in ways too numerous to list. The theories that Darwin's replaced withered and died because they could not produce new knowledge. Creationists who want to resurrect those old ideas have failed to demonstrate any ability of these ideas to provide any advancement of knowledge or understanding.

In the absence of such an ability to produce new information, it is ridiculous for creationists to claim that it is bias and prejudice that keeps their ideas from being accepted in academia.

Cretonists

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:09:26 GMT

A while back, there was a bit of a "kefuffle" on You Tube when an Evolutionist named Thunderfoot did a 30-part series aimed at explaining, scientifically, the errors in common creationist claims.

One of the creationists that he chose was a young guy named VenomFangX, a very popular Christian apologist and fan of the Discovery Institute.

In these videos, Thunderfoot used clips of VenomFangX's work, for the purposes of commentary and criticism. VenomFangX filed a false DMCA claim against Thunderfoot, and the videos were removed by YouTube. Basically, it looked a lot like VenomFangX couldn't argue Thunderfoots points, so he decided to have Thunderfoot silenced instead.

Thunderfoot lawyered up, and when he found out he had a case, he went to VenomFangX and explained that filing a false DMCA claim against someone was serious business and would likely run into a lot of money and trouble for VenomFangX. Who, it turns out, is a young kid who probably doesn't need to spend the rest of his life burdoned from mistakes he made while romping around on the internet.

VenomFangX made an abject apology, and withdrew the claims, and Thunderfoot let him off the hook. It was all very civilized and admirable. I expect that VenomFangX will profit from the experience.

Now, I guess the Discovery Institute filed a DMCA claim against a guy named DonExodus2 for commenting on one of Casy Luskin's interviews. Fox interviewed Luskin, and in true fashion of most of the modern news media, they just invited the creationist on unchalleneged by any opposing side, and just let him talk and talk without having to deal with a single critical comment. Even when they have someone on to represent evolution, it is rarely an evolutionary biologist. It is usually somone who is friendly to evolution, but not knowledgeable, so they give away a lot of points that would have been taken by a scientist.

So anyway, this guy decided that he would provide the critical commentary for the interview, and post it on YouTube. This is a common thing on You Tube, all sorts of people provide critical commentary on video content of others.

DonExodus2 now reports that Discovery Institute has filed a DMCA claim against the video, and that his YouTube account was in danger of being closed. His position is that FOX News owns the rights to the material, not the Discovery Institute, so the claim is fraudulant. Also, that his commentary is protected under several exception clauses in the DMCA including being commetary, criticism, educational, and non-profit.

I think he made a couple of mistakes.

1) He made it clear that any damages he seeks are purely for revenge against the DI for filing the claim, not for damages caused by them making a false claim against him.

2) He publicly calls their actions criminal even though he is not a lawyer, and the case has not yet been brought or decided.

3) He announced his intentions before he even retained council. The Discovery Institute has historically gotten a large slice of its funding from Howard Ahmanson, who is kind of the "sugar daddy" of the religious right (if your church was ever taken over by fundies, and you were kicked out, you can probably thank Howard Ahmanson; he has funded several organizations to do stuff like that). Anyway, deep pockets. Very deep pockets. They are probably already pre-lawyered, and prepared to obstruct this case until DonExodus2 runs out of money. The case will likely never make it to a decision, because even pro-bono lawyers have their limits.

4) He made his best argument before even bringing the case. So now, all the Discovery Institute has to do is to convince FOX News to file the DMCA claim instead. Anyone wanna take bets that they can convince FOX News to do that? Suddenly, he has to make a case against TWO adversaries with deeper pockets than him.

I don't know, maybe DonExodus2 is one of those novel fools willing to wreck his whole life for a hobby YouTube Channel. Personally, I think Thunderfoot's approach was classier, and I think it more thoroughly showed the weak and pathetic nature of the act of defending your position by trying to silence the opposition.

I have to laugh a little as Premise Media sucessfully defended their pro-Intelligent Design movie "Expelled" by arguing that the clip of John Lennon's "Imagine" that they used without permission was used for "criticism"...even though it was merely part of the sound track, and never mentioned, discussed, or critiqued. It was clearly just part of the sound-track.

Naturally, they viewed this as a false claim made merely to censor the film. At least Yoko Ono actually owned the rights to the thing she was filing the claim about. Premise Media won it's claim. Basically, playing the song against footage of Stalin amounts to "criticism" and exempts their use under DMCA exceptions. That's a pretty low bar. You can "critique" a song you don't like by playing it while showing a picture of someone you don't like.

How come everyone isn't a music critic? We could empty the welfare rolls. There is obviously a low bar for defense when it comes to DMCA exceptions, at least when it is creationists vs. the widows of pop icons from the '60's. We'll see about when it comes to evolutionists vs. creationist moneybags.

(Hat Tip: Pharyngula)

Oliver North might want to re-think that loyalty thing.

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:14:30 GMT

Poor sad Ollie! He just gets thrown a bone at the end of the article. How sad! After taking the fall for the "guns for drugs" thing, he barely gets honorable mention for appearing in a carnival of the crazy. Newt never took a political bullet for a Republican president ever....and Huckabee, all he did was stop being fat. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/06/newt-gingrich-americans-a_n_212235.html

Arrogance and self-importance hit with the "Bedazzler"

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:53:06 GMT

You gotta go over to 4simpsons real quick and scan down the front page looking for Neil's "multiverse" post, or google it if it has already rolled off. I don't want to trigger his paranoia with too many links but this is amazing!

Neil actually thinks that the multi-verse theories were proposed to counter Intelligent Design Theory.

Um. The Multiverse Theory pre-dates the Intelligent Design political movement.

The Multiverse theory is described by mathematics. The Intelligent Design political movement cannot be described according to any coherent organizational model.

But theoretical Physicists are just scrambling to scratch up something to answer Intelligent Design with.

Uh huh. Whatever helps you sleep at night, Neil baby.

But I'd like to point out that the only way that the Multi-verse theories could have been created to respond to Intelligent Design is if the scientists developed them after 1992 (When ID was created) and then went back in time a significant amount, and then introduced a progressive series of theoretical models beginning with when the term was coined in the late 1800.

Of course, the only way that time travel would be even remotely possible is if one of the multiple universe theories were true... (since going back in time and changing events would create another alternate universe, and an alternate time-line).

And furthermore, why are we to believe that scientists are desperately flailing around to discount the arguments of ID proponents when ID proponents seem to have to be always making statements like this?:

[Update] about not provoking his paranoia: Too late. Neil is already Jonseing on how persecuted he is that people disagree with him and find his lunacy entertaining. He only listed three people this time. Usually he goes on much longer about how important an Godly he must be because people disagree with him.

Pro-lifers dancing on graves.

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:31:20 GMT

Hallowed are the Ori!

[update] from the Daily Kos: The George Tiller I knew . Hmmm...facilitating adoptions, giving free medical care to needy patients, saving lives with decisive action...obviously, he needed to die.

Abstinence clown.

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:24:52 GMT

Did this guy REALLY get funding from Bush's tax-dollar-funded abstinence-only money at the same time that our school district got solid, scientific, fact-based, comprehensive sex education cut, and we had to raise taxes on our house to make sure our kids got accurate information?

Bush is gone, and I'm STILL finding out new stuff that pisses me off.

> > >

Funny, and accurate in many cases.

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:32:35 GMT

As always, if you don't fit the description, I'm not talking about you.

Combined with the last entry, this one is somewhat chilling...

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:26:47 GMT

> > >

And they say they value life...

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:36:21 GMT

If you don't believe in God, then your life has no value, and they will shoot you in the face. But presumably they will wait until the end times when God declares open hunting season on you.

Nice. Remember...they're the moral ones.

More misleading, stupid fundamentalist crap about Hitler.

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:00:00 GMT

This guy doesn't like it when I link directly to his site. He feels persecuted and cries about how he has a "stalker" when I do. Right at the moment, I don't care.

He makes all sorts of claims about liberals and Hitler from time-to-time, even though he's completely unfamiliar with the stuff Hitler wrote.

http://4simpsons.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/but-hitler-would-never-never-lie-about-his-faith/

Know how I know he's never read Hitler even though he talks about how liberals and scientists are Hitler all the time?

He describes examples given by liberals of Hitler's pro-Christian message as "cherry picked". The fact is, that everything Hitler wrote is so loaded with religious piety and posturing that you could "cherry pick" pro-Christian quotes with a scoop shovel. Everything the man did and said, he justified with Christian writings, history, the Bible, and a little anti-intellectualism, hatred of real science, and embracing of pseudo-science thrown in.

Then, Neil gives a quote that seems to be critical of Christianity, with a big, old, ellipse right in the middle, and the only attribution he gives is "Adolph Hitler". Nothing in the attribution to let you know where to look to find out what fell through the ellipses.

But that's OK, I've read enough of Hitler’s disgusting tripe to speculate on what sort of thing he might have been saying in that quote.

Hitler DID hate a certain kind of Christianity...know what kind? the namby-pamby social gospel kind. The wishy-washy liberal kind. The kind that was anti-authoritarian and talked about a lovey-dovey forgiving Jesus. He really, really, hated that kind of Christianity.

Know what kind of Christianity Hitler liked? The authoritarian kind that brought social order. The kind that promoted morals and self-sufficiency, and said that birth control was a sin, because mass struggle and death was the answer to improving humanity, not limiting population to ensure ample resources best cultivation of individuals (Which is what the liberals wanted. Darwin is on record, for instance, in saying that the best way to improve humanity for maximum good is to cultivate the individual with a good and nurturing environment). Hitler also thought that homosexuality could be "cured", and that condoms were a bad answer to the spread of disease because they harmed public morality. His Christianity lead him to reject Darwin and embrace the Paleyist belief that species could be improved within themselves, but that speciation could not occur, because all species were created unique at the beginning of the world (microevolution). His level of offense at the idea that man could have come from animals caused him to burn Darwin's works and was palpable. It probably didn't help that Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of managing heredity in humans as "a great consuming evil" probably explains why Hitler burned Darwin's books and embraced Martin Luther's suggestions that the Jews be rounded up, made to labor, their synagogs and businesses burned, their clergy killed or expelled, and ultimately, if they did not cease to be Jews, they would have to be killed. "On the Jews and their Lies", by Martin Luther. Read it if you don't believe me.

Also, Hitler preferred to think of Jesus as a warrior and a punisher. >

Guess which kind of Christianity Neil likes? Well, he mocks "Gandhi Christ" and the social gospel at every opportunity...

But anyway, put Neil's "non-cherry-picked" Hitler quote into a search engine, and what do you come up with? Five sites. Strangely, they are all right-wing weirdo sites...and none of them are the sites that have published Hitler's writings...huh.

I'm glad I actually read what Hitler wrote. I hated doing it, but now I see that the Professor who advised us to read stuff like that was right. It immunizes you against stupid manipulation by the Neil's of this world.

Also, Neil implies that Hitler lied about his faith to further his agenda...interesting...and WHAT AGENDA WAS THAT? Anti-multiculturalism, anti-immigrant, anti-public health (no social solution to the spread of syphilis, for example, just calls for an increase in “public virtue”), anti-pluralism, anti-liberal, anti-Darwin, anti-intellectual, Pro-expansionist, Pro- national exceptionalism, pro-militarism, "pro-family" (the traditional, nuclear family), "pro-marriage", and pro-use of the "real" (non-liberal) church as a regulatory power in society, pro-government promotion of religion...and on and on and on...

As you read Hitler's writings and speeches, you can see his influences. Darwin is not among them. Machiavelli is, Octavius is, Martin Luther really, really, really is. Paley, Lamark, and of course, he was very well versed in the political literature of his time. The guy was very well-read, and he chose his message very carefully. Why did he go with Paley and Lamark rather than Darwin? Because Paley and Lamark said what he needed them to say, and Darwin didn't. Why did he go with Luther instead of the modernist social-gospel teachers? Because Luther said what Hitler needed him to say.

So what if it is possible that Hitler lied about his faith to further his agenda? None of his actions are at all inconsistant with the faith that he professed. He is very careful and maticulous in his explinations of how and why he comes to the conclusions that he does from traditional "Sound Doctrine". The fact that he never balked or had qualms about where his faith-based doctrine lead him is the only thing that seperates him from the people who espouse that same doctrine today.

And if he lied about believing it, he did so for a reason. And it worked. It motivated enough of an entire population to cause tremendous fear and compliance and complacence in the rest of the population...with disasterous results. And it worked for a reason. A very very important reason. People should ask themselves what that reason is, and take a good, hard, look at the answer.

News flash: Neil doesn't get it.

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:34:16 GMT

HWMNBN (Google Neil Simpson and "eternity matters" you will come to him, it upsets him when I do a link) currently has a "round up" where he spends a sentence crowing about how bad it is going to look for the Democrats to reveal the extent of torture done in our names under the Bush administration.

See, some Democrats knew about the torture, so Neil thinks that it is a stupid political move that will backfire on the Democrats.

What he doesn't get is; we don't care. Revealing the extent of the torture is not about making the Republicans look bad. Revealing and investigating the extent of the torture, who was tortured, why, and trying to find out who is innocent and guilty is about taking back control of the government and figuring out what was done wrong, fixing it, and doing it right here on out. Making sure we get the right people, get the right information, and get it the right ways.

Period, end of story.

Will some Democrats end up looking bad? You bet your boots. Will they try to cover their asses? Sure. Will there be elements of party politics and trying to shift blame back and forth to salvage some moral highground? I would not be surprised. Those who will suffer from the truth SHOULD suffer from the truth.

Do I think Obama doesn't know this and accept it? Not for a moment. He's no dummy. He'd probably rather not take the hit...but not doing the work is going to lead to much worse stuff than doing the work...

...and it's omlette/eggs time.

The fact that Neil doesn't understand that makes him slip even lower in my estimation.

Lower down in the "roundup" there's something else. Neil quotes a UK journalist commenting on the Bush administration's reports (they were ordered by the Bush administration, and the investigations were carried out by Bush appointees) about domestic terrorism. Neil blames the Obama administration for Bush's intelligence reports that imply that there are right-wing extremists that might want to do America harm...and says that Obama hates America and Americans.

So, apparently, Obama hates America and Americans so much that he went back in time and forced the Bush administration to prepare a report about right-wing extremists.

Yes, truly shocking that someone might think that the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building was a bad thing. You would have to be truly un-American to not cheer on Timothy McVeigh, and to want to prevent actions like that in the future. Apparently, Neil is on the side of those who would blow up government buildings with children in them.

Neil just makes me hold him in more and more contempt all the time.

Bishop Muthee not a witchunter after all?

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 03:59:16 GMT

Remember when Sarah Palin was prayed over by Bishop Muthee in her former church, and the church website had a story up bragging about how Bishop Muthee had caused a riot and whipped up an angry, murderous mob that ran an accused witch named Momma Jane out of town? Remember the video where she stood on the stage of that church and praised his "boldness" in prayer?

Well, some Christians thought it was great, and some Christians thought it was weird but unimportant, and some Christians were with me in being appauled that a vice-presidential candidate for a major party had blood-stained hands laid on her head...by a contributer to one of the worst criminal trends against vulnerable women and children across Africa, and even spreading into other coutnries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZVVbGEOoCM

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/scandal-of-the-children-killed-for-witchcraft-1003968.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1507723/Pastor-is-arrested-after-inquiry-into-claims-of-cruelty-to-child-witches.html

Well, it turns out that Bishop Muthee did not run "Momma Jane" out of town in a violent mob action. And it turns out that she is not actually a "witch", but a local pastor:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/sarahpalin/3204292/False-claims-exposed-of-Kenyan-pastor-who-protected-Sarah-Palin-from-witches.html

So Muthee is apparently not a witch-hunter, but a liar. It will be interesting to see if any more information comes forward. Still, I find it quite appauling that Sarah Palin's former church promoted his claimed activities. After all, lying or not, the church seemed to think that the things he claimed to have done were good, when in fact they were quite evil.

UPDATE: Religious conservatives have gone on record recently as being against the UN. convention on the Rights of the child:

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm

They imagine that the convention, when supported and signed onto by a government, interferes with the practice of religion of the parents in regards to their children. In the case of these children, I profoundly hope that they are right. Killings,torture, abandonment, etc. should not be excused on religions grounds. I would like to think that my country is a leader in the world for things that are good and right. The fact that we stand with Somalia as the only country in the world who does not recognize the importance of a child's right to a safe and healthy environment is really regrettable, and the idea that people won't let the US lead on this subject because their paranoid imaginings are that the cause of this is that the rest of the world wants to stop them spanking their children is very sad.

Get over yourselves, people. Children are hurting, and it would be good if we could step in and help some of these countries move forward rather than just sitting on our hands as some of our churches send them money and support to make it worse...and we come within a tremendously uncomfortable margin of electing a woman to high office who publicly praises and glorifies someone who benefits fromt he victimization of innocent women and children.

Finally, if you want to do something to help feed, cloth, educate and protect the innocent victims of the witch-hunters, you can donate to Stepping Stones. http://www.steppingstonesnigeria.org/

You keep using that word...

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:10:56 GMT

"Chrisitanity is the foundation of our morals"

Foundation.

Yet it seems like a foundation that fails as often and as spectacularly as any other.

Everytime I hear about how religion makes people better, and how humanity would be so much worse without religion, and how all the world's ills are due to a lack of religion, or not enough religion, or whatever, I think of stories like this.

I get tired of hearing pompous and sanctimonious harping on how religion is a magic wand that makes us better people. Obviously, it isn't. If it helps some people, then it helps some people, but forcing children to pray in school, or taking taxpayer's money and giving it to churches, and having Godly symbols in our public places will clearly not help us improve society one bit. There are good and bad religious people, there are good and bad non-religious people. They happen at roughly the same rate and rank.

So can we ditch the foundation argument already? If it helps you, great. I'm all for it. Have at it. But can I stop hearing about how I'm eroding the foundation of our society's morals by not believeing any number of magic fairy stories?

Tell you what...

If you ever find me using a position of power and influence granted me as a privilaged member of a secular organization to murder a disabled person for insurance money...I'll be willing to re-open the discussion. Until then, I'm not buying it.

(Hat Tip: Pharyngula)

Bachmann fan goes on a socialist rant.

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:10:23 GMT

Unbelieveable. Give this guy a Minnesota accent, and a John Deer baseball cap instead of a cowboy hat, and I would swear to you that I rode the school bus with him and a half-dozen of his brothers and cousins when I was a kid.

They were the reason the back half of the bus was slick with chew-spit.

> >

Classic.

Where's Neil been all this time?

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:57:56 GMT

I just saw Neil Simpson's (Google search for "Eternity Matters" and his name - it bother's him when I link to him) latest "Round up" where he talks about this great new thing called online schooling. He's really pumped and hopes it goes somewhere!??!

Uh, Neil, it's been around for more than a decade...for someone who is supposed to be all up on all the latest in education issues, you sure let that one whiff past you. :-)

His kids will now be doing it, with a combination of homeschooling. No surprise. I figured they were already doing it.

There's also the one further down where he implies that women who have abortions bring domestic violence upon themselves by being uppity and mouthy. Sigh. I think he's almost finished losin' it.

Before this post got lost in a change of servers...Alan wrote:

LOL. And here I was just getting used to that new-fangled papyrus.

Alan

It's not THEOCRACY...it's just...um...the power of the government being used to enforce church law...

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:15:50 GMT

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-04-12/story/fbc_blogger_feels_privacy_was_violated

A mega-church pastor is unhappy because an anonymous blogger was critical of decisions he made and actions he took in his capacity as pastor.

So the pastor asked a Law-enforcement officer affiliated with the church to do an investigation.

The law-enforcement officer got a judge to issue a subpoena to Google, who was compelled to reveal the name of the blogger...despite the fact that there was zero evidence of any crime connected with the blogger.

then, the law-enforcement officer provided the mega-church pastor with the name of the blogger, and the pastor used that information to discipline the church member.

Don’t you just love it when your tax dollars go to stifle dissent and support a particular religious view, and enforce it's rules against private citizens acting on their conscience?

"Deliver me onto temptation"

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:11:02 GMT

Over at Pharyngula, I saw a link to this story.

It made me laugh. A religious nut is all upset that a statue of a pirate wench shows too generous a portion of cleavage.

So he cursed the statue.

OK.

And then he goes on to pledge to visit the statue every day and pray for its removal. Hmmm...

He will go and gaze upon the unwholsome thing every day, subjecting himself to the horror of it's huge exposed bosoms...and pray. Pray for it to be removed.

Uh huh.

OK Mr. nutcase, I understand falling in love with fictional characters. Been there. Done that. However, I think that you would be happier if you fell in love with a fake person who could move, and talk, and express themselves. Or maybe not. What do I know? I just think it's weird, and frankly, that alone should give you pause.

I think they have the most fire-arms, too...will they shoot themselves in the feet?

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:16:31 GMT

Apparently Michele Bachmann's constituants are getting exactly what they voted for. Michele Bachmann is one of those rootin'-tootin' conservatives who vows not to molly-coddle those irresponsible leeches who can't pay their bills. Smaller government, and let the unfortunate swing! Yee-haw!!

That's just what the voters of the sixth district wanted. Nevermind that the sixth district has the highest number of forclosures, and the higest rate of forclosures of any district in the state.

LOL! The voters of the sixth district have seen the irresponsible leeches, and they are them!

No worries, though, Michele Bachmann has consistantly voted against their interests. So I'm sure they are happy.

She'll probably get a third term.

More Darwin v Creationists.

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:22:27 GMT

OK, so let’s look at just one example of why it is that Hitler had Darwin’s works banned, rejected Darwin, and why it is that Hitler’s philosophy was NOT based on Darwin’s works…and how it is a lie for the creators of Expelled to say so.

Take this little quote from Chapter Nine of the “Voyage of the Beagle”:

I was surprised to find, on counting the eggs of a large white Doris (this sea-slug was three and a half inches long), how extraordinarily numerous they were. From two to five eggs (each three-thousandths of an inch in diameter) were contained in spherical little case. These were arranged two deep in transverse rows forming a ribbon. The ribbon adhered by its edge to the rock in an oval spire. One which I found, measured nearly twenty inches in length and half in breadth. By counting how many balls were contained in a tenth of an inch in the row, and how many rows in an equal length of the ribbon, on the most moderate computation there were six hundred thousand eggs. Yet this Doris was certainly not very common; although I was often searching under the stones, I saw only seven individuals. No fallacy is more common with naturalists, than that the numbers of an individual species depend on its powers of propagation. (emphasis mine)

So, we see here that Darwin rejected any thought that the powers of propagation of a species or population was the determining factor of its power to survive and thrive.

In fact, Darwin’s assessment of the Fuegians of Tierra Del Fuego was just that. They were, in his view, the victims of an under-productive, and harsh land, and thus their ability to fulfill their human potential was limited by deprivation. Was that a bigoted judgment? Sure. Darwin’s views and impressions of Feugian culture and life lack his characteristic charitable instincts. One of the instances of Darwin being wrong (in his uncharitably harsh characterization of the Fuegians)…but it is telling of the fact that, right or wrong, Darwin’s assessments were in direct opposition to the ideology Hitler found essential to his policies. He did not attribute their state to an inherited inferiority…but instead to the unproductive and harsh nature of the environment, which he viewed as resistant to any sort of cultivation or civilization.

Tellingly, a robust power of propagation and the idea that deprivation was beneficial to humanity were fundamental to Hitler’s plan for Aryan domination. Darwin’s work stood in opposition to these foundational concepts, which were completely indispensible to Hitler’s propaganda, his plan, his public policy, and his actions as the leader of Nazi Germany. Take this excerpt from Mein Kampf, Volume 1 Chapter 4:

(1) It was possible to adopt the French example and artificially restrict the number of births, thus avoiding an excess of population.

Under certain circumstances, in periods of distress or under bad climatic condition, or if the soil yields too poor a return, Nature herself tends to check the increase of population in some countries and among some races, but by a method which is quite as ruthless as it is wise. It does not impede the procreative faculty as such; but it does impede the further existence of the offspring by submitting it to such tests and privations that everything which is less strong or less healthy is forced to retreat into the bosom of tile unknown. Whatever survives these hardships of existence has been tested and tried a thousandfold, hardened and renders fit to continue the process of procreation; so that the same thorough selection will begin all over again. By thus dealing brutally with the individual and recalling him the very moment he shows that he is not fitted for the trials of life, Nature preserves the strength of the race and the species and raises it to the highest degree of efficiency.

The decrease in numbers therefore implies an increase of strength, as far as the individual is concerned, and this finally means the invigoration of the species.

But the case is different when man himself starts the process of numerical restriction. Man is not carved from Nature’s wood. He is made of ‘human’ material. He knows more than the ruthless Queen of Wisdom. He does not impede the preservation of the individual but prevents procreation itself. To the individual, who always sees only himself and not the race, this line of action seems more humane and just than the opposite way. But, unfortunately, the consequences are also the opposite.

By leaving the process of procreation unchecked and by submitting the individual to the hardest preparatory tests in life, Nature selects the best from an abundance of single elements and stamps them as fit to live and carry on the conservation of the species. But man restricts the procreative faculty and strives obstinately to keep alive at any cost whatever has once been born. This correction of the Divine Will seems to him to be wise and humane, and he rejoices at having trumped Nature’s card in one game at least and thus proved that she is not entirely reliable. The dear little ape of an all-mighty father is delighted to see and hear that he has succeeded in effecting a numerical restriction; but he would be very displeased if told that this, his system, brings about a degeneration in personal quality.

For as soon as the procreative faculty is thwarted and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which allows only healthy and strong individuals to survive is replaced by a sheer craze to ‘save’ feeble and even diseased creatures at any cost. And thus the seeds are sown for a human progeny which will become more and more miserable from one generation to another, as long as Nature’s will is scorned.

But if that policy be carried out the final results must be that such a nation will eventually terminate its own existence on this earth; for though man may defy the eternal laws of procreation during a certain period, vengeance will follow sooner or later. A stronger race will oust that which has grown weak; for the vital urge, in its ultimate form, will burst asunder all the absurd chains of this so-called humane consideration for the individual and will replace it with the humanity of Nature, which wipes out what is weak in order to give place to the strong.

Any policy which aims at securing the existence of a nation by restricting the birth-rate robs that nation of its future.

Don’t miss the snide little swipe at the “Darwinists” that was embedded in the reference to the “Dear little ape of an all-mighty father”. Darwin’s views that depriving circumstances result in people who do not reach their full human potential were rejected by Hitler. Hitler opposed the saving of “inferior” people, and viewed the desire to save unfortunates as a human weakness that would eventually be harshly corrected by a God-ordained law of nature...which put a moral value on "fitness" and made a moral deficiency of "unfitness"; and further, made misfortune a judgement of God with which man had no right to interfere.

Conversely, this is how Darwin spoke of such things; after addressing the question of whether or not natural selection was applicable to human improvement, and if it were better to allow the “unfit” to die out to improve the species:

The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; ... (Origin of Species)

The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. It should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts.

Taking his works as a whole, it becomes clear 1) that he was resistant to deciding that particular traits constituted “weakness” or “strength”…he records numerous instances where traits possessed by “weaker” members of a herd or society in fact become advantages that benefit the whole group in times of hardship or transition. 2) He felt that any “weaknesses” (if they could be called such)of a number of individuals was only one factor in determining the strength and survivability of a population, and that it was, in fact, one of the least important factors in what he called “civilized” societies. 3) He viewed moral, ethical and spiritual values as being of much higher value for the improvement of humanity, and specifically expressed his belief numerous times that they held far more power for good than any attempts to manipulate heredity. In otherwords, Darwin's view was that it was in the nature of man to interfere with misfortune and to sustain members of society who needed it, and that such behavior was in accordance with both morality and the long-term health of humanity...though there might be short term inconveniences.

This is in direct opposition to the claims of creationists.

It’s really, really, important, when reading creationist comments on Darwin, that they quote-mine and chop up the things that he wrote to make it appear that he originated the idea of eugenics. This is easily disproven, as the ideas behind eugenics existed, and were recorded and explored by people before the birth of Charles Darwin.

Where Darwin discusses these ideas, there are several things to bear in mind. Sometimes, he is describing the arguments of others, sometimes, he is describing the relationships that eugenicists are trying to make to tie it in to his observations, and discussing the extent to which they are correct before he reveals their errors. He spends a great deal of time trying to untangle the muddled mess that ideological opportunists make in their attempt to entangle his observations and theories with their agenda.

Creationists like to take advantage of this by putting in ellipses , or just outright cut the point at which Darwin turns his comments to the errors of the Eugenicists.

The good news is, you don’t have to even read all of Darwin to expose the Creationist lies. It is usually sufficient to do a Google search for a sentence in the quote, select one of the many of the free online publications of Darwin’s works, do a “Find” search for the sentence, and then simply read the preceding and subsequent five or six paragraphs. The deception will become clear.

You would think that the creationists could work up a simple blush of embarrassment…but they can’t even do that. They are bold liars, who disrespect the intelligence of their audience so completely that they don’t expect to be fact-checked even at the most basic level.

Hate crimes are not a priority in South Africa.

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:57:43 GMT

I got this from Alan's blog.

"Corrective Rape"

Think about that. The morality that condemns homosexuality as deviance somehow manages to come up with rape as a solution.

I can think of only one thing to say to that.

"Those who can get you to believe absurdities can get to to commit atrocities."

A little break from Darwin

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:00:03 GMT

Over at Talking Points Memo, I got a glimpse of this mash-up of Bachmann moments entitled "the Bachmann effect". This is referring to the look that people get on their faces while listening to the wacky.

Priceless.

The Regular Early Morning Yell of Horror...

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:12:21 GMT

...

was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was. It wasnt that the cave was cold...it wasn't that it was damp and smelly...it was that the cave was in the middle of Minnesota, and half the state's representation in the U.S. Senate was being held hostage by a slimey Republican senator with a mouthful of overworked dentistry, and probably would be for the next ten million years.

Identity politics is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Aurtur Dent could testify, having been stuck in it and forced to witness it played out as a single individual caused the political disenfranchisment of a whole state full of people in order to benefit his party on a national level.

(Apologies to Mr. Douglas Adams)

Unbelievable!

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:17:45 GMT

A member of our local media seems to have dislodged their nose from Michele Bachmann's posterior and said something not completely flattering about her. They called her "the empress of exaggeration".

Stand by for conservative whining and crying about how this is signs of the "liberal" media's sexism or something.

How is it that the Minnesota MSM has been sooooo silent on this disgrace of a "representative"?

Personally, I like the things the national media says about her. She has been called, for instance, the "demiglase of wingnuttia".

Now, THAT'S reportage. :-)

Holy Crap, my brain hurts.

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:16:57 GMT

OK, so I just heard about this Margie Christoffersen chick.

I guess she operated a gay-friendly business in LA. Then, she made a public donation to promote Prop 8. This public donation was discovered by a group that was against Prop 8, so now the gays are boycotting the business and Margie is being ruined, and its all the meanie gay people's fault.

Whaaaa?

"I'll take your money, but you are an abomination and a threat to society and I must take the money you give me and work to destroy you...what, you're not going to give me anymore of your money? Why are you being so MEAN to me?"

again I say...whaaa?

Good news, by the way

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:45:52 GMT

From Orcinus.

The guy who shot up a UU church in Knoxville is off to prison. His manifesto brags of his “hate crime” (his words). His reading material gathered from years of right-wing eliminationist BS stands as a testament to what we can expect from the CPAC luminaries over the ensuing years: more and more hate-talk inspired "lone nuts" trying to kill liberals.

And the UU congregation supplies us with the inevitable outcome: Peaceful, determined, disciplined, intelligent resistance followed by a generous application of the orderly rule of law.

My favorite part of this story is where the shooter gets to spend the rest of his life in prison knowing that the "chickenshit liberals" that he set out to slaughter met him and his almighty gun unarmed, peaceful, in worshipful humanist faith that he sees as blasphemous. They disarmed him, subdued him, and in the strength of their pacifistic convictions that he hates so much, handed him over to a fair trial.

Where Jim Adkisson's “true faith” saw only hopelessness, their “false faith” brought courage, effective action and grace. Where he sought strength in individualism and superior fire-power, but found only despair; they found strength in community and common action.

He owes his life to everything that he hates so much. He owes his incarceration for mistaking his weakness for strength, and for mistaking his victim’s strength for weakness.

The only thing that saddens me is that the people who spent years providing the poison to his soul will probably never have a heart-beat's worth of remorse for what they did to him, or the two lives they took with their words…and they will continue to work with their words in the minds of more dangerous fools, and be richly rewarded with both money and power for doing so.

I guess poetic justice only goes so far…

Oh Brother!

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:00:13 GMT

The following was recently forwarded to me by one of my conservative friends. Apparently, Godly people spend a lot of time fantasizing about physically beating "professors" who are "members of the ACLU".

What is weird, is that many of my professors at the U of M were ex-millitary...most of them seemed moderate if not outright conservative, and not one ever gave any indications of atheism....all treated religion respectfully if it was mentioned. Furthermore, while it is likely that some of them WERE atheists...none of them would have felt free to waste 15 minutes of class-time that could be used to cram more knowledge into our heads...after all, most of them seemed to go over in lecture as it was, and fifteen minute sitting around baiting God would have been more intolerable to the professor than to the students...who would probably appreciate the break.

I attended three different colleges, including the much-hated-in-conservative circles University of Minnesota.

I really cant think of a single solitary professor who deserves this level of lible, and this amount of hatred, that someone would fantasize about them getting pummeled by a Marine, much less in the name of God, or to have "God's people" praising such behavior. Although I must admit that a significant number of people I know who call themseles "God's people" WOULD not only praise such behavior, but would like to make it a cultural practice.

And by the way, I would think that our servicemen and women would be severely insulted that someone was disparaging their long history of service and discipline by implying that they would physically clobber a fellow citizen and a teacher. But since it was sent to me by a service person, I guess that would not include all of them.

All-around offensive and disgusting.

I'm really disappointed in my friend, because I really like him and think he is a wonderful guy, but I have no idea why he would want to defame Marines, University Professors and Christians like this.

God's Busy---

If you don't know GOD, don't make stupid remarks!!!!!!!

A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan . One of the courses had a professor who was an avowed atheist and a member of the ACLU.

One day the professor shocked the class when he came in he looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, 'God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform.. I'll give you exactly 15 minutes.' The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop.

Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, 'Here I am God. I'm still waiting' It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him, knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold.

The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked, stunned, and sat there looking on in silence. The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, 'What the heck is the matter with you? Why did you do that?' The Marine calmly replied, 'God was too busy today protecting American soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot. So, He sent me.'

THIS IS GOOD. KEEP IT GOING

And all God's people said -- AMEN

20 minutes of your life you'll never get back.

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:45:25 GMT

Ann Coulter on Larry King last night.

1) The economic crisis only began last fall? Then what have the economists been predicting for the last several years? How come the situation we are in is the exact situation that was predicted to be the result of Bush’s policies and common business practices all along? Seriously? Does she really expect that people have forgotten all of the news stories and commentary that the right dismissed as “liberal whining”?

2) “I’m very popular” (hair toss): gag. I have never personally met anyone who says “I like Ann Coulter.” Even the conservatives that share her politics back out the door when her name is mentioned “uh…well…you have to remember that she’s an entertainer, not a real political voice”. Uh huh. They love her, and I suspect that most of them secretly agree with her…they just want to keep it a secret.

3) “I like real men…ie conservatives…I don’t want them checking with the UN before making a move” She should date good old Vox Dei then. He doesn’t believe that date rape is real rape, so not only would he have no qualms about making a move without consulting the UN, but he might just feel free to drop a Mickey in her drink before making a move.

4) "Conservative women have more orgasms" Leave it to a conservative to simultaneously make sex into a sort of sports competition, AND claim to take it more seriously.

5) Like I’m going to be chastised by a woman who claims to take sex more seriously and treat it more sparingly, but would never get invited onto television except that she is positively twitchy with physical signals of sexual availability.*

6) Question: Who was the last politician who was wildly successful with a campaign that

(among other things) called for a focus on traditional family values, and in particular detailed in equal parts calls for increased public morality and a move away from “Bourgeois prudery” **; specifically highlighting the benefit of the increased pleasure of socially approved traditional marriage? (Hint: He took Europe by storm!)***

7) “I think we need a little NASDAQ ticker that tells what words we can use and with whom…” Uh…most of us do, Ann. It is called “socialization”. It is a collection of situational rules that people (and I am referring to people here, so I know this is strange for you) learn as they grow and interact with people (there’s that word again) in different situations and talk with them about different subjects, and learn through experience what is appropriate. Yes, it is hard. Yes, there are some people who are incapable of learning those rules. However, the inability to learn them and apply them is not a virtue. I realize that you think it is, and that it makes you smarter, but the rest of us just find it sad.

8) “”…class up the category, like calling the GI Bill a form of welfare…” The only people I have heard of referring to the GI Bill as “welfare” have been conservatives.

9) About her comment that 80% of the prison population came from single moms…well, the statistics that I have heard is much higher than that for prisoners that were raised in Christian homes, and claim to be Christian. I imagine that at least that many went to public schools…so maybe it is Christianity or public schools that cause criminality? Or I imagine that more than 80% of the prison population wore blue jeans growing up…could that have something to do with it? Yawn.

*Not that there’s anything wrong with that…some men are turned on by the trampy-vampy Unattainable Ice Queen/Slut Just For You tease act, and some think it is sort of transparent and uninteresting. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. I just think that taking a common and pedestrian fetish and turning it into a national model for ideal relationships is a strange and bad idea.

** In other words, his argument went that if women were just a little less inhibited with their husbands, their husbands wouldn’t go to prostitutes, and we wouldn’t need to have public health initiatives, which are a liberal Marxist abomination. Seriously, if you have not read Mein Kampf, you should; the parallels would stagger you. Of course, he also recognized that this would necessitate training the young women to want to please their husbands in every way, and also pushing the idea of marriage and “moral purity” from a young age. You might also be surprised at how much he agrees with Ann on the subjects of multiculturalism, the liberal press, war protestors, the importance of world opinion, family values, abortion, and the short-comings of liberal democratic leadership. It seems a little telling that Ann herself heard “Mein Kampf” when Barbara Walters was reading her book.

***For the language impaired: I am NOT saying that people who believe that sex within a serious, monogamous relationship is more fulfilling are like Hitler: I’m saying that those who try to turn that belief into the exclusive political brand of a single party and then go on to use it as a form of mob-based social engineering and a tool for political eliminationism and manipulation are like Hitler. ‘Cause that’s what he did, and it worked for him really well. You’d think people would be smarter than that the second time around, is all.

LOL! "The Demiglase of Wingnuttia"

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:22:13 GMT

Oh God, the laughing. It hurts.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Does Michele Bachmann want to expand Federal Govenment power?

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:15:20 GMT

...by putting rich people on the Endagered Species list?

(Hat Tip: DumpBachmann)

LOL! We're running out of rich people in this country? That's not the statistics. The statistics say that the Republican status quo has shrunk the middle class and left the working poor farther behind. In otherwords, redistribution of wealth is just fine if it directs the weath upward.

I keep wondering why it is such a crime to have the top 1% pay 60% of the taxes, or whatever statistic the right is throwing around nowdays when they are accumulating 90% of the created wealth. Seems as though they are still winning. Personally, I think that these commonly repeated facts are not terribly accurate... the CIA factbook about the US says this:

Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.

In other words, if you are in the top 20%, you are benefitting from the economy, and should probably be somewhat motivated to pay for it's maintenance and repair. To not do so would be a very bad investment.

Another thing I don't get is that the right seems to think Obama invented the concept of the progressive tax.

Actually, I believe it was that little splinter group from the Whig party that originally pushed it. A bunch of wild-eyed liberal upstarts called the Republican party began the discussion about such things.

They say Obama is arrogant, but they're the ones trying to give him credit for hundreds of years of good ideas and sound policy.

Also, I would like to point out that it is the Republican areas that tend to have the lowest income brackets, and yet get way more federal money. Bachmann is so full of crap here about money being sucked away from Republican areas and sent to Democratic areas.

Here's the deal Red States, we don't mind that we pay in way more federal dollars than we get back, and the money goes to you instead. It is a small price to pay for not having to share the country with the great whirlpools of suck that you would turn your states into if we didn't.

In return, could you please invite the numbskulls that keep voting for Michele Bachmann to come and sleep on your couch so that we won't have to live with them anymore? That'd be great. Thanks.

[Update: More on the Republican hypocracy of complaining about Federal Taxes while they take more than they contribute:

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1397.html

another thing I've noticed is that there is a lot of talk in Red States about creating wealth, but it seems that it is the Blue States that actually DO it.]

Solet me get this straight...

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:05:24 GMT

It is a threat to Christianity to pass a law that makes it a crime to hunt and kill gay people ...

THAT'S censorship.

But it ISN'T censorship to demand that a pastor's public prayer be stricken from the record of the Oklahoma Legislator ... because he is gay.

Christians are horribly persecuted, and the gays are a threat to our civil society.

Got it.

Orwell would be so proud.

(Hat Tip: Erudite Redneck)

The conservative eliminationist agenda marches on....

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:29:55 GMT

A teacher is probably going to be fired under SUSPICION of being an atheist.

(Hat Tip: Pharyngula)

Oy...

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:32:05 GMT

Sure, it seems pretty bad. We got a Governor of Illinois whose corruption and fecklessness defy gravity, and he's a Democrat.

Obama can't seem to find a Democrat that has a clean tax history.

And there are items in the stimulus package that not even FDR would consider to be legitamate stimulus items...

...yeah...little bit of ice-water to bring down the swelling on the hope-change bubble...

But it could be worse.

These people could still be running the joint.

(Hat Tip: Erudite Redneck)

Box Turtle.

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:31:52 GMT

It seems that Ted Haggard has more skeletons coming out of the closet. color me soooo not surprised.

PZ Myers points out that Haggard is complaining that people don't understand that his homosexuality is special. People don't understand that it doesn't fit into little stero-typical boxes.

A commenter at Pharngula points out the similarity between Haggard and the anti-choicers who have abortions, protesting that THEIR reasons for having one are good reasons...they're not like all of those loose women who have them.

It's like there's a disconnect between what they think of other people, and what they think about themselves. The public charactature that they paint of homosexuality, and abortion doesn't fit what they see when they look in the mirror. They can't reconcile it; there is dissonance. Haggard is a Christian and a homosexual, but that is impossible in their little world. Haggard tried to deny it for years and years, live a lie, decieve himself, his family, and the hundreds of thousands of Christians that he lead...and yet, he can't seem to control his behavior...and he even though he engages in the unwanted behaviors with people who he should be able to control (parishoners, prostitutes), even they eventually cannot be controlled.

How, oh how does one solve the dissonance? Well, apparently Haggard's gambit is to pull arms and legs and vulnerable neck into a little fort of words and insist that he is not a "real" homosexual*.

In a reasoned commentary worthy of Poe's Law, a "real" Christian comes to a slightly different conclusion.

Just think if all of that creative energy was actually bent to solving problems, rather than creating them?

*although, I have heard some arguments that denying closet cases who self-identify as heterosexual should be treated as heterosexual...as that is their identity from a socio-political stand-point. This is a complexity I havn't really needed to think about deeply, so if anyone would like to comment on the issue of identity, I would love to hear it.

My commentary here is only focused on the aspect that Haggard claims to have a uniquely complex and non-steriotypical (and, presumably, special) identity, while denying the rest of humanity the reality of human sexuality as being complex and not fitting neatly into little boxes.

Separate but equal; They have it half right, anyway.

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:40:00 GMT

He who must not be named has an entry up linking to a story about a Christian ™ woman who is now “ex-gay” and wants to deny her former partner visitation rights to their child.

Naturally, he makes a snide question “But oxymoronic “same sex marriage” won’t have any impact on us, will it?”

The question implies that marriage equality will introduce a new condition to marriage. That of former marriage partners using the children to get back at and punish the other parent by withholding the child from them. Which would indeed be a terrible consequence.

Imagine! What a terrible world it would be if heterosexual divorcees started using their children against their former partners!

Of course, what HWMNBN fails to point out is that it is the newly-minted “heterosexual” parent who is using the child as a pawn.

Another question not asked by our intrepid nameless one’s commentary is, why is visiting the still-gay parent suddenly causing nightmares and behavior disruption? Is this something that never happens to children of heterosexual couples who divorce? Does the irrevocable dissolution of a family never cause anxiety and distress in the six-year-old children of heterosexual divorcees? Or is it that the methods and skills for helping them through it are not expected to work if the parents are homosexual?

The WND article caused me to ask some questions as well. The article makes a big deal about how the couple was never married. It appears that they had a civil union. Apparently, the WND believes that a civil union is not enough to legitimate a parent-child relationship.

So what ever happened to the idea that we don’t need marriage equality because gay people have civil unions, and civil unions are just as good? I must have a different definition of “separate but equal” than your average fundy.

One thing they DON'T say is whether or not the non-custodial, visitation-seeking parent is up-to-date on her child-support payments...

And remember....these are the same people who also consider the rights of heterosexual women to be "separate but equal". You know, just a little less equal than men:

(Hat Tip: Pharyngula)

Comparing apples to...dragons.

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:16:07 GMT

So say that you are a conservative, and you desperately want to believe that Obama is evil and unprincipled?

Well, you can come up with a story about how he is spending four times more than Bush did on his inauguration.

And how exactly do you do that? Well, first you pull a number out of your butt without telling how you arrived at it.

Then, you report a number for Bush, but leave out the totals for the most expensive parts.

Then, you say it over and over and over again until people accept it as a fact.

(Hat Tip: He Who Must Not Be Named linked to this)

The Mother of the Groom Wore Orange.

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:11:04 GMT

Remember, Innocent until proven guilty.

And make sure to note, the reason this bust happened after the election was because they didn't want to interfere with the secret service.

Tell me again that "God" is never mentioned in school.

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:20:26 GMT

Here's a quote from this article in Pulse about "You Can Run But You Cannot Hide":

K ids love rock and roll. Everyone>

from advertising executives to

Christian ministers have found

if you want to speak to teenagers, rock

and roll is the perfect weapon—a

sucker punch that catches kids by surprise

and delivers the desired message.

If rock and roll ditches its sometimes

running mates, sex and drugs,

and in their place a positive message is

added, then you have a powerful tool

for entering the mind of teenagers.

But what if that message was mixed

with paranoid scenarios of police running

rampant through the streets as

crop dusters buzz overhead, spewing

sickness upon the masses, under the

watchful eye of a government that

monitors every movement of its citizens.

An Orwellian nightmare that

sounds similar to a conspiracy-theory

special airing on some obscure cable

network, it is this type of radical thinking

that can terrify the mind of a susceptible

teenager.

Now imagine that mind belonged

to your high school son or daughter,

and the message, spiced with religious

flavors, was fed to them by a group

brought into your local district for a

school-sponsored presentation.

Born in 1997 out of the basement

of leader and drummer Bradlee Dean,

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide

tours area high schools in tandem with

the band Junkyard Prophet in the

hopes of enlightening disgruntled

teens to sensible decision-making. In

the process it has raised questions concerning

their intentions and whether

or not they cross the allowable line

separating church and state.

Stop the ACLU: Living in an alterverse

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:14:03 GMT

Go and read this and have a good laugh.

Stop the ACLU is claiming that the Democrats are trying to steal the election between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

Despite the fact that the process has been allowed to function properly and transparently.

My favorite is where they quote an article that claims that 133 ballots might have been fed through the machines twice on election night. Do any Minnesota voters think that is possible, considering that the ballots are collected inside the machines, the machines are heavily monitored at the polling site, and the polling site staff does not have access to the inside of the machines?

Nice try Stop the ACLU.

I found the Stop the ACLU post by following a link from He Who Must Not Be Named...who is typically credulous and clueless on this issue, and most likely still doesn't care to be enlightened.

Oh No! Pastor Anderson is in trouble now!

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:48:44 GMT

He dissed the business of the family of Blackwater's head Holy Warrior!

Doesn't he know that Amway is run by Christian warriors out to win the world for free-market Jesus? And one of the DeVoss kids founded Blackwater. Someone is flirting with being branded a faith-traitor!

Not only is he dissing a fellow Dominionist...he's messing with Blackwater.

Poor Pastor Anderson...nobody tell on him. Because other than the fact that he is nutty and homophobic, I'm kind of fond of him.

Especially for Jason.

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:25:43 GMT

I know that Jason plays bass guitar, and I thought that he might want to branch out to you know, some mad church guitar skilz.

So what more perfect way to reward him for correctly identifying Pastor Anderson's Faithful Word Church in a recent post, than to give him a guitar lesson from Pastor Anderson.

I would like to point out that Pastor Anderson stresses that they DO NOT use the guitar in church services. So no dissing his salvation based on any assumptions like that he lets anything contemporary or liberal creep into his services...

...we like to be fair here, after all.

Oh and Jason...YOU'RE WELCOME! :-)

Checking in with the crazy preacher dude.

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:10:43 GMT

Some of you know that I am fascinated with crazy people. Most particularly, the creative ways that they interact with consensual reality. I find it admirable, in a way. I really enjoy the creativity and energy of their fantastic sky-castles...even as some of their ideas repell me.

It has been described as a sickness. I won't argue. Mostly because it takes away from the time I can spend marveling at the creations of the human mind.

My favorite crazy pastor apparently took his church on a soul-saving marathon in Miami, AZ. Here's a video where they talk about how many Catholics they converted to Chrstianity, and they show all of the Jehova's Witness material that they censored by preventing it from falling into the hands of vulnerable people who might be decieved due to their receptivity to crazy religious ideas. :-)

I really love this guy. Who needs TV? Not even Joss Wedan could make this up.

Priorities

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:40:44 GMT

It's really amazing, the impact that the devout can have when they remember their priorities, and put God first above all other considerations.

(Hat Tip: Pharyngula)