You are not forgiven, you vain and stupid man.
A history of religion class would have helped this poor fool, but that might require some education in this country. But it’s pretty clear someone should have shown him this long fucking history of failed rapture predictions. He may have been less tempted to think of himself at the center of a cosmic drama, announcing he cracked the code of the Bible and whatall. Man I wish I had made some bets on his “predictions.”
References to climate change censored from environmental report.
And the other 20% had abstinence-only education.
Yeesh, these people are disgusting … this is a report from someone who attended a racist “ideas” conference, and if you want to know the sci-fi wet dreams of the supremacists, read on … Money quote:
Dickson, the elderly former lawyer to the Georgia Ku Klux Klan, espoused the most creative ethnostate scenario. First, he said, the government would need to adopt a plan to move every white person in Cuba to the state of Florida, where they would form a new city called “Havana Nueva.” Once this was accomplished, the government could begin to move all the black people in America down to Cuba. He made a point of assuring the audience that this forced resettlement would be executed “in a civilized way.”
Blech
I have no idea this guy was “Christian” in the sense of being a deep believer in something resembling contemporary Christianity and a regular churchgoer, or if he’s just “Christian” in a basic tribal sense like many people. Regardless, from what I’ve seen he’s motivated by basic ethnic/racial tribalism combined with a belief in a Great Conflict and not by the belief that Jesus told him to do it.
Still I do love the right winger “if he did something I don’t approve of he isn’t really Christian” reasoning.
Rick Santorum’s abortion was okay - but if you do it, it’s murder! So says Rick Santorum.
Claims he will spend $400,000 of his own money looking for bin Laden’s body on the ocean floor to DNA test it.
At least that’s money that won’t go to Tea Party candidates.
Also won’t go to feed the poor or anything useful to the human race.
Hilarious excerpts from Wikipedia’s “Paul Revere” talk page. Is our children learning?
Hell - who’s in, who’s out? Bitter fights breaking out among Evangelicals and others:
Those traditions often disagree, even internally, on what awaits souls after death. The Catholic Church, which has a formal process for identifying souls in heaven through canonization, pointedly refrains from saying that anyone is without a doubt in hell. Protestants reject the concept of purgatory, in which sins can be atoned for after death, but disagree on other questions. The lack of consensus is enabled partly by ambiguities in the Bible.
Ya think??
A good essay on a topic loathed by the wingnutterati for some mysterious reason. The writer has attempted to be fair, and yet what still emerges is a portrait of a subculture of Americans whose idea of patriotism includes killing other Americans:
Many people have been justifiably outraged at the traditional media’s insistence that “both sides” use violent rhetoric. But since 1980 the numbers of deaths by right-wing terrorist numbers over 200, versus 4 by the left. In the interest of keeping this list indisputable I left off hate crime victims who were slain for their sexual orientation or race and ethnicity. If I had included them the numbers would have swelled. These are purely politically motivated or ideological based killings. The media loves to bring up the lefts militancy in the 1960’s and 1970’s. But during these decades the right was equally violent in the form of racial violence. But since the 1980’s the right has unquestionably been more violent than the left.
…I left off a number of hate crimes. Although in many (if not most) cases the perpetrators were motivated by right-wing ideology towards racial of religious minorities, or those with a different sexual orientation, drawing a direct POLITICAL motivation would be more tenuous.
Secondly, I left off a number of incidents were the right-wing militias didn’t initiate a terrorist act, but were engaged in a fire fight with law enforcement. Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Republic of Texas incidents fall into this category. Although violent, this list is intended to be a listing of TERRORIST ACTS, where the individuals and groups involved conceived and perpetrated the violence, rather than reacted to them. This also excludes incidents like the police bombing in Philadelphia of MOVE.
Attention reasonable Republicans: time to either take back your party or become Blue Dog Democrats. PS, climate change is real too.
According to a complaint, John Freshwater used an electrostatic device to burn crosses onto students’ arms. One of the students said that the pain was so severe that it prevented him from sleeping at night.
Jesus loves you, but you’re fired, asshole!
And on second thought he might not love you.
As per my quick Facebook post, there is quite a focus in the movie “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” on the bind-torture-kill brand of sociopathy. That got me reading Wikipedia about the BTK serial killer Dennis Rader who basically coined the term. There are several gonzo scientific aspects of this case that jump out at me:
1. The torture of animals as a young lad is indicative of sociopathy - that part is well-known I hope - but the name of the complex it’s a part of is called the Macdonald triad. I guess chronic bedwetting past age 5 is also a sign.
2. He had been a Lutheran for 30 years, president of his church, and Cub Scout leader. He was a Deacon when they arrested him. Positions of piety and authority are such excellent cover for evil, aren’t they?
3. He goofed when he asked the police in a letter if floppy disks could be traced, and then he believed them when they said no. So he sent them a floppy disk and they traced it to him.
4. The police didn’t have probable cause to arrest him until they got a warrant to get access to his daughter’s pap smear. DNA testing revealed she was related to the semen sample they had from the killer. This is when they popped Rader.
A horrifying scientific detective story.
In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a Bible-quoting BTK serial killer glibly explains, “It’s mostly about the sex. The murder is a logical consequence of the rape - there can be no witnesses.” Shudder…
Hitchens gets crazy on Theism.
a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term “blind faith.”
Actually that’s the old meaning.
STATESVILLE, NC (WBTV) - A man who was with about a dozen people who were looking for a legendary “ghost train” in Iredell County was hit by a locomotive and killed early Friday morning.
There’s a lesson in here somewhere…
A couple/few months ago, I called Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office and said she should be more like Al Franken. By that I meant, among other things, do more visible pushback against the right, and freaking tear it up a little. The nice man I spoke to there assured me it was all about the fact that Sen. Franken was in fact a celebrity before joining the Senate, and that Sen. Klobuchar was working on other important, but less sexy, stuff. That was all good with me; I just wanted to apply a little pressure in that direction, because I think it’s valuable. Well she finally delivered, and went on a fatal rampage against some GOP idiot in the Kagan hearings who was on about how we were “more free” in 1980 or some shit. Thank you, Senator Klobuchar, for sticking it to that weasel.
UVA: We’re intending to comply with your ass-hatty subpeona but let’s just look at some other options too.
I like this comment from TPM’s coverage of the story (1st link):
I think tenure is important, but I think this case illustrates the power of a robust peer review process. Mann has a very strong publication record in excellent journals including Science, Nature, and Proceeding of the National Academy of Science. It is his track record of publication and funding (again, peer reviewed) that led him to his post at UPenn. The reason climate change deniers are pissed is because they can’t seem to publish their nonsense (non-science?).
Good scientists should welcome, not fear, scrutiny of their taxpayer-funded work. It’s in everybody’s interest that the nation understands climate change. One potential up side is that maybe a little more light will shine on good science.
Word.
TPM has the goods on the case of the VA AG hassling a climate change scientist.
Best part is the open letter to the VA AG from a fellow climate change skeptic:
Climate-change skeptic Thomas Fuller co-wrote a book on Climate-Gate, published earlier this year, which was harshly critical of Mann and other climate scientists. But in an open letter to Cuccinelli, Fuller urged him to call off the dogs, writing: “No matter what has prompted your investigation, there is no doubt that it will be interpreted as a witch hunt.” He continued: “[B]eing wrong is not a crime, and intimidating scientists not a path that this country, including I presume Virginians, should ever pursue. You may consult with colleagues in Salem to determine how long it takes to live this type of thing down.”
Ouch!
There is no movie that will ever be made about this incident in which the VA AG will be portrayed as the good guy.
As linked to in this grab-bag post at the great orange satan Daily Kos, this is a strongly worded plea from an athiest for everyone to just get off his back. Money quote:
You know what would be really great? If all the fantastic (and they are fantastic) liberal/left Christians would spend five minutes a day writing angry letters to the Christian right wing about how unchristian they are instead of complaining to atheists about how much bad press you all are getting from the overt bad actions of your co-religionists.
Ouch! This Catholic Church implosion has started to singe even athiests standing too close to it.
And this amazing piece of citizen journalism, “Anatomy of a thrilling GOP disaster“, is just political writing at its most fun to read. Money quote (last lines of piece):
This was a complete GOP disaster. It was a thrill to be part of it.
In true Gonzo style.
This quote from media analyst blog Atrios’ Eschaton is a good one:
…we live in the accountability-free era, where nobody could have predicted except those who did and were right for the wrong reasons. Those who didn’t were wrong for the right reasons and are therefore still Very Serious People in good standing.
It is intended as a sarcastic comment about how the cheerleaders of the Iraq War and the financial crisis still have jobs in many cases, and in many other cases they have actually failed upward - while those who predicted the crisis somehow still remain outsiders.
That’s how politics in science works too. For instance, Fred Hoyle’s ideas are being appropriated under different guises, while his name is still mud. He was right for the wrong reasons, but once his stuff is rebranded, it can safely be used by establishment figures who were wrong for the right reasons. And so it goes.
Around these parts, we are used to disagreeing with that mechanist reductionist dog Richard Dawkins. Liked him a little better as bulldog-athiest-with-a-camera-crew, but it’s still easy to dislike him on style. But whereas I’m sure the Pope won’t be arrested, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say right on dude.
“Pro Family Values”, anti-gay California state senator Roy Ashburn (R), got popped with a DUI last week leaving a gay nightclub. Finally he came out today, saying, “I’m gay.” Congratulations for stating the obvious, dude. Now about that voting record?
He explained his past voting record saying that’s what his conservative constituents wanted.
How did he explain his voting record to his boyfriends, that’s what I want to know… According to wikipedia,
Ashburn has voted against every gay rights measure in the State Senate since taking office,[4]
with the caveat that
That’s probably how he rationalized it. Meanwhile,
His religion is listed as Roman Catholic in the biography for him printed by CSU-Bakersfield.
News video report at this link.
This is of particular interest to us at Gonzo Science as reports of BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) phenomena have multiple scientific explanations.
Zeitoun was previously the scene of some famous BVM reports (over a Coptic Church as in the current flap). They were correlated to distant seismic phenomena by Michael Persinger, which seemed to support his Tectonic Strain Theory (TST)of the paranormal (wierd lightshows and psychological effects from geophysical-electromagnetic causes). The TST was later retrofitted by Paul Devereaux into the Earth Lights theory.
This current BVM report makes a pretty good case for a simple mass hysteria explanation, however - certainly not unheard of in these cases and we have a first-hand witness of BVM mass hysteria in our Black Casebook. At any rate, it looks like the so-called “doves” that appear to luminously accompany the Virgin in these reports may simply be disregarded as white pigeons flying around. And the one piece of footage here of the glow that is reportedly the Virgin is not even in the air - it’s easily seen as a light source sitting on top of the church.
If this is the same thing that happened the first time around, Persinger may have been correlating it with seismic data for nothing, and the criticisms of him overreaching may have some merit.
The Gonzo Science CD has a pro-TST track about this, number 3 at this link, and yes that’s “Sweet Jane.”
Effing religious whackjobs and their violent fantasies. They wouldn’t have stood for this crap for one second if the left had been publically trolling for Bush assassins back when there was an actual fascist in the White House. I agree with this dude in the Maddow interview - support Obama. He needs it, because the crazies want blood.
Raped an 8-year-old, going away for good. Hint for parents: pedophiles often seek positions of unquestionable morality and authority; don’t marry off your 8-year-olds to one even if threatened with eternal torment in hell.
UPDATE: In a related story, the members of the Texas Pedophile Cult are starting to get put away.
In truth, there’s lots of ways the shroud could have been done.
Andrew Vachss, the One-Man-War-on-Child-Exploitation, annotates the AP article about the arrest of religious whackjob sex predator Phillip Garrido.
The upshot? Our laws are not strong enough to stop menaces like Garrido. Paraphrasing Vachss, predators can not be rehabilitated because that means returning to a state that doesn’t exist. They are not crazy but evil since evil is behavior and behavior is volitional. GPS ankle bracelets that track every movement, like Garrido wore, will not stop them, especially since their wives are 100% complicit.
A link to Vachss’ essays and articles here.
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