DSC08169

DSC08169, originally uploaded by atosix.

This is where I waited for my parents to finish eating dinner when I was 8 years old. Beautiful shot.

Eat It, Just Eat It

You could not invent a real-world story more illustrative of the point that the worst thing about religion is the right to non-criticism that it appears to think it deserves - than the Life Size Anatomically-Correct Chocoloate Statue of Jesus that is being put in a street level gallery for one week - and the huff it's putting some Catholics into.

Bill Donahue of the Catholic League lets loose:

“As I’ve said many times before, Lent is the season for non-believers to sow seeds of doubt about Jesus. What’s scheduled to go on at the Roger Smith Hotel, however, is of a different genre: this is hate speech. And choosing Holy Week—the display opens on Palm Sunday and ends on Holy Saturday—makes it a direct in-your-face assault on Christians.

“All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan.

And:

The Roger Smith Hotel will rue the day it sought to declare war on Christian sensibilities.

The religious pedestal, wherever it appears, must come down.

Bill says the artist and gallery are "lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off." What's the point here? Sure, and I'm lucky that I don't get shot in the subway. Is the Catholic League suggesting that they kinda like that "Right to Riot" that "muslim extremists" enjoy? Are you jealous in some way?

"He's not wearing any clothes at all," said Debbie Charan, 40, of Queens. "Why would they want to do something like that?"

Update: PZ Meyers, not surprisingly, has little patience for the outrage either. He note Bill's quote:

Catholic League head Bill Donohue called it "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever".

...and remarks, himself:

Come on, Bill, get over it. Shouldn't Abu Ghraib have been "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever"?

Why do our politicians continue to say these things? John McCain:

But I do support the idea that succeeding in Iraq is preferable to surrender. Senator Obama can explain why he prefers the latter.

Thanks, John, you fucking baby.

Pelosi Stands Tall

Nancy Pelosi has been the target of so much smear since becoming the first female Speaker of the House that I confess to sometimes forgetting that she has a very strong poise as a politician and a leader. The picture above is from the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner, and BAGNewsNotes has more photos, plus commentary.

ThinkProgress quotes her (video also available) from the other day, referring to the Preznit:

Calm down with the threats. There is a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role; we want you to respect ours. This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the President’s conduct of the war. Let’s see how we can work together. This war is diminishing the strength of our military, not honoring our commitment to our veterans, and not holding the Iraqi government accountable.

The universe continues to generate events rich with absurdity. The URL says it all.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/28/video-rove-raps-at-correspondents-dinner/

Newstory Posted by Journalists About Facts

There's a fascinating, dare-I-say "investigative" piece up on ABC News ("exclusive!") about how the Attorneys-Fired story picked up steam. It discusses the prep-session that occurred before the initial testimony before Sen. Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Apparently

The official, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, ignored White House Counsel Harriet Miers and senior lawyers in the Justice Department when he told the committee last month of specific reasons why the administration fired seven U.S. attorneys — and appeared to acknowledge for the first time that politics was behind one dismissal.

It describes this bizarre and unfamiliar tale of a politiician Not Taking Shit from administration officials trying to obfuscate.

My hat's off to Schumer and to Jan Crawford Greenburg, author of the piece.

Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.) held up a picture of fucking icicles in the Senate the other day when Gore stopped by - somehow to say that global warming is a hoax: “How come you guys never seem to notice it when it gets cold? . . . Where is global warming when you really need it?”

SadlyNo! says that "When aliens from the future study why humanity destroyed itself, I think this will a key historical e-document."

Can someone tell me why there's a stegosaurus in an ancient Cambodian temple?

I first read about it in a creationist site, so I was skeptical to say the least, but this page is just some woman's travel page, and it seems to be there, too.

WTF?

(photo from here)

Many of my friends my be interested to know that Britta Philips was the voice of Jem in the cartoon show of the same name...

Wheeeeee!

Digby, on Bush: "He's the Dad Who Is Always Mad."

"Bush Pleads for Patience"

The headline all over the news today is "Bush Pleads for Patience." It sounded familiar.

Here's a page of search results from the Google News "archive"...



(click through for full size screenshot)

I'm enjoying EW's "Things That Make Me Die Inside" series on their Popwatch blog...

I used to call this a "shootmeinthehead" tag, tho I kept forgetting to make it a series.

Actually, I Don't

Some horribly inappropriate language in a PSA. Some blonde model/actress woman I don't yet recognize says:

Need a volunteer? Actually, I don't. But a lot of people in your community do.

I'll have to find out who that was.

Garrison Keillor's a Bigot. Now You Know.

I've never read any Garrison Keilor, but after this tripe, I must say I'm not interested. I've heard much acclaim about that Lake Wobegon Days stuff, but as they say, Garrison, goodbye, because We Don't Neeeeed You.

Garrison takes his folksy reminiscences and ends up frothing bigotry in this article, called (excruciatingly) "Stating the obvious." You can read it yourself (click through the 8 second ad to get a Day Pass), or enjoy some selections:

Back in the day, that was the standard arrangement. Everyone had a yard, a garage, a female mom, a male dad, and a refrigerator with leftover boiled potatoes in plastic dishes with snap-on lids. This was before caller ID, before credit cards, before pizza, for crying out loud.

[...]

Nature is about continuation of the species -- in other words, children. Nature does not care about the emotional well-being of older people.

[...]

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.

I think his overall point is that "mixed-gender" parents do a better job of letting children be the center of attention, but gay parents (and those who keep their last names or get divorced) somehow are stealing the attention from their children.

Right. "Everyone had a yard." Everyone, huh?

Movies

Have I just seen too many movies, but isn't this what happens when you torture someone too much? They start confessing to everything under the sun?

Roomy

From "SeeSaw," off Th' Faith Healers' 1993 album "Imaginary Friend":

My head is so roomy
that things pass right through me
It's warm
It's spacious
It's stupid
It's gracious

(photo by Rick Meyer)

An undoctored screenshot from a BBC story a couple years ago, on how neanderthals probably listened to music.

Um....Steven?

Beef Salve

New York Times:

And in a potential salve to the television images of anti-American protests even in Montevideo, Mr. Bush and Dr. V�zquez had a lunch of barbecue beef and took a boat ride together.

Ahh. Much better.

How Religion Acquires Its Pedestal

On my father's recommendation, I've started reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris. So far I'm quite impressed with his critique of faith in general, and with the cultural details of America today, although I must confess to some discomfort with his dismissals of Islam. He would not be surprised, and would most likely accuse me of being a victim of relativism. More on that later, perhaps, but for now a very strong paragraph from the opening chapter.

We have been slow to recognize the degree to which religious faith perpetuates man's inhumanity to man. This is not surprising, since many of us still believe that faith is an essential component of human life. Two myths now keep faith beyond the fray of rational criticism, and they seem to foster religious extremism and religious moderation equally: (1) most of us believe that there are good things that people get from religious faith (e.g., strong communities, ethical behavior, spiritual experience) that cannot be had elsewhere; (2) many of us also believe that the terrible things that are sometimes done in the name of religion are the products not of faith per se but of our baser nature -- forces like greed, hatred, and fear -- for which religious beliefs are themselves the best (or even the only) remedy. Taken together, these myths seem to have granted us perfect immunity to outbreaks of reasonableness in our public discourse.

The snarkiness of the phrase "outbreaks of reasonabless" aside, I do believe that Harris has done a strong job here of unearthing a couple of the reasons why "faith" is granted an undebatable position in our world - which is currently my biggest beef with religion.

And by the way, the fucker who every couple of days keeps writing bible verses and drawing crosses in chalk on the sidewalk on my way to the subway can stop vandalizing the civic and secular concrete I've been buying with 10 years of my NYC taxes.

William Gibson: Gotta Be Interstitial

William Gibson comments on an article on Second Life called "William Gibson's Vision Realized":

But as Gully Jimson says, in The Horse's Mouth, 'It wasn't the vision I had.'

Neither is Second Life.

Chia and her buds build their treehouses in corporate ghost sites. That's the difference. Interstitial. Gotta be interstitial.

Call me when you get it worked out. I'll be on eBay.

Tom DeLay.com - Home - Rambo

Tom Delay finds a story about an Afghan man named Rambo quite inspiring and patriotic.

Just as I'm digging the appearance of a couple of new Geico caveman ads ("Apparently not. I'm looking at it right now") comes this dreadful news of a planned ABC sitcom about the damn characters.

Please don't. Please.

Update: Defamer has more on how this came to pass.

Matthews: So Fucking Special

Chris Matthews sometimes seems like he makes sense, and then he whips out these tedious little quips, which I suppose he thinks are so good and clever:

But the Republican Party is -- Democrats have got to understand this about Republicans. Republicans like leaders. They don't like chaos. Democrats love a little bit of chaos. Republicans want very strong rule, and compared to the other guys running against him, Rudy is the guy with street cred because he was there on the front lines on 9-11, and he's been -- by the way, the crime rate's growing in the big cities now.

"Republicans like leaders?" Why oh Why do people have to keep saying this kind of thing?

NYTimes:

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney, said: “It was an offensive remark. Governor Romney believes all people should be treated with dignity and respect.”

Mr. Romney preceded Ms. Coulter at the event and mentioned that she was speaking later — he jokingly referred to her as a “moderate.” But he was not in the room when she spoke, Mr. Madden said.

Why Coulter Cannot Be Ignored

I wrote the other day about a truly delusional article written by Ann Coulter on why global warming is really about how Liberals want to kill many many poor people, and I mentioned in my title how I really wish I could just ignore her.

The other day Coulter actually called John Edwards a "faggot" (??) in a speech as a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and Glenn Greenwald wrote Friday about how this is not an aberration, and she is not a fringe member of the current face of "conservatism" these days, but the heart and core of it. This is why I don't want to ignore her but to work to discredit her. Those with power in "conservative" circles should be forced to state their opinion on her - either you're a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson or you're not.

She is the face of what the hard-core Republican Party has become, particularly during the Bush presidency. That is why she holds the position she holds in that movement. That's why Mitt Romney was giddy with glee when her name passed his lips. He knows that her endorsement is valuable precisely because she holds great sway within the party, and she holds great sway because the hard-core party faithful consider her a hero for expressing the thoughts which they themselves believe but which other, less courageous Republican figures are afraid to express.

This is not about a single comment or isolated remark. The more Ann Coulter says these things, the more popular she becomes in this movement. What this is about is that she reflects exactly what sort of political movement this is. She reflects its true impulses and core beliefs. If that were not the case, why would she continue to receive top billing at their most prestigious events, and why would she continue to be lavished with rock star-adoration by the party faithful?

Daisy Moan

A. O. Scott calls Black Snake Moan "Chaining Miss Daisy to the Radiator in Her Underwear."

I Really Tried to Ignore Her

Ann Coulter's a raving fucking lunatic. This is not courage. This is not conviction. This is delusion.

Let Them Eat Tofu

Even right-wingers who know that "global warming" is a crock do not seem to grasp what the tree-huggers are demanding. Liberals want mass starvation and human devastation.

[...]

There are more reputable scientists defending astrology than defending "global warming," but liberals simply announce that the debate has been resolved in their favor and demand that we shut down all production.

[...]

"Global warming" is the left's pagan rage against mankind. If we can't produce industrial waste, then we can't produce. Some of us -- not the ones with mansions in Malibu and Nashville is my guess -- are going to have to die. To say we need to reduce our energy consumption is like saying we need to reduce our oxygen consumption.


[...]

If we accept for purposes of argument their claim that the only way the human race can survive is with clean energy that doesn't emit carbon dioxide, environmentalists waited until they had safely destroyed the nuclear power industry to tell us that. This proves they never intended for us to survive.

"Global warming" is the liberal's stalking horse for their ultimate fantasy: The whole U.S. will look like Amagansett, with no one living in it except their even-tempered maids (for "diversity"), themselves and their coterie (all, presumably, living in solar-heated mansions, except the maids who will do without electricity altogether). The entire fuel-guzzling, tacky, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching middle class with their over-large families will simply have to die.

Hmm. I guess Ann's not going to help us out on energy conservation. It bothers her sense of freedom.

A good opportunity to pull out this old classic, on how wonderful and "part of life" carbon is: