Sayeth the Lord: "Because day after day after day, all you do is mutsche me."

If God himself was behind the Denver Bronco's recent run, then He sent Tim Tebow a little message about humility yesterday.

Merry War On Christmas, everyone.

Oh fer cryin' out loud....

You know, some days I'm glad I'm not a full time blogger. I think having to deal with Teh Crayzee seven days a week would drive me insane.

Today, Faux Noise misses no excuse to get its panties in a twist about the Secret Kenyan Muslim Manchurian Candidate in the White House:

President Obama did not include any reference to God during his weekly address titled, “On Thanksgiving, Grateful for the Men and Women Who Defend Our Country.”

His remarks were void of any religious references although Thanksgiving is a holiday traditionally steeped in giving thanks and praise to God.

The president said his family was “reflecting on how truly lucky we truly are.”

For many Americans, though, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on how blessed and thankful they are.

The president said the “most American of blessings” is the “chance to determine our own destiny.”

He called the very first Thanksgiving a “celebration of community”

“We’re also grateful for the Americans who are taking time out of their holiday to serve in soup kitchens and shelters, making sure their neighbors have a hot meal and a place to stay,” he said. “This sense of mutual responsibility – the idea that I am my brother’s keeper; that I am my sister’s keeper – has always been a part of what makes our country special.”

The president said that belief is “one of the reasons the Thanksgiving tradition has endured.”

But nowhere in the 11-paragraph address does he mention the Almighty.

Because after all, unless you invoke the Baby Jesus 5,498,632 times a day, God only knows what might happen. Hell, you might start to think....and thinking means asking questions. And we mustn't have that. It would be unseemly.

Only America would have a holiday the point of which is gluttony...

...followed by an orgy of consumerism. Is there anything more American than that?

Because Mr. Brilliant has no family and I have none living close by, Thanksgiving is a quiet affair here at Casa la Brilliant. When Mr. B's father was alive, I once did a big Thanksgiving dinner for the three of us, with fresh fruit, handmade ravioli with vodka sauce (neither of them handmade by me), turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and something for dessert that I don't remember. Then we started just going out to eat on Thanksgiving.

I grew up with the doctrine that eating out on Thanksgiving is depressing, so my mother made a turkey every year, or else we went to the home of one of her friends. But in recent years, I've discovered the pleasure of letting someone you don't know do the cooking. The last few years we've gone to the Thanksgiving Brunch at the Short Hills Hilton. This is pricey, but they do a lovely buffet spread (which Mr. B. likes for its variety) with unlimited champagne or mimosas. If you're a big eater, you can start at the omelet station for eggs, bacon, and sausage and then move on to trips for appetizers and hot food. If you're more like me and always find today to be a minefield, you case the joint first looking for what's OK to eat and then take a little of the things that looks good and also look like they won't have you in the cardiac ward of St. Barnabas on the way home. They do some lovely salads, and have great smoked whitefish, and then I tend to lean towards things like ale-braised shortribs and orichiette with broccoli rabe and sausage and maple-glazed carrots. After 56 Thanksgivings and the advent of Trader Joe's sliced turkey and frozen mashed potato discs making it possible for even non-cooks like Mr. B. to prepare a turkey dinner any night of the week, the whole "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner seems kind of ho-hum.

For me, the worst part of Thanksgiving is the pitying looks that colleagues give you when you say that it's just going to be dinner for two on Thanksgiving. It makes me understand in a far lesser degree what my colleague who recently underwent treatmet for breast cancer described as "That Look". If I had family close by, I'd be there for Thanksgiving. But I don't, and Mr. B. doesn't, and sucking down unlimited champagne and eating pears poached in port wine with goat cheese is a pretty damn pleasant alternative. It's my one concession to consumerism over the Thanksgiving weekend, since I have zero intention of going anywhere near a store this weekend, unless it's to Trader Joe's to buy that big tray of sliced turkey breast and stuffing just so we can say we have turkey leftovers to eat while we watch the increasingly bad New York football teams play.

This year in Blogtopia (™ Skippy), we are highly amused at Pat Robertson's bafflement about whether mac and cheese is "a black thing":



I realize that Thanksgiving is supposed to be about the Potatoes Mashed and Sweet, but for my money, if you're going to eat a high-fat, high-glycemic index food on Thanksgiving, which is all about comfort food, why NOT macaroni and cheese?

I realize that to admit a fondness for macaroni and cheese at my advanced age is akin to confessing to still liking Smarties (which I do) when you are above the age of ten, but we all have guilty pleasures, and that one is mine. And I'm not alone.

You can pretend you aren't making comfort food by coming up with recipes like Rustic Fried Sage and Chicken Apple Sausage Mac n Cheese with Autumn Chutney, and Wild Mushroom and Grana Padano Macaroni and Cheese, but we know the truth.

I mean seriously. Grana Padano mac 'n' cheese? "Autumn chutney"?

I've made passable mac 'n' cheese using cheddar, but it can be difficult to get the sauce consistency just right. Cheddar mac can be a bit grainy. Ken Johnson of Amarillo Grilling says his secret is French butter, though I suspect that the four kinds of cheese he uses for his amazing rendition of this dish has something to do with it, because his macaroni and cheese leaves no pools of separated grease on your plate, but is just forkfuls of rich, creamy, cheesy, crunchy heaven.

Here are some other recipes that look worth trying if you're inclined towards an early death because there won't be any Social Security by the time you hit age 66:

Are you going to argue with Paula Deen's Creamy Macaroni and Cheese? I'm not.

Likewise for Smack Yo' Mama Macaroni and Cheese.

Soul Food Macaroni and Chees uses the entire cheese counter at Fairway, but it does have Velveeta in it, so i'll forgive that something called Soul Food Macaroni and Cheese is on a web site called Epicurious.

If you like a little heat with your mac, try this recipe from Lynne's Country Kitchen (even if "Lynne's Country Kitchen" sounds like it should be featured in the next Blues Brothers movie: Blues Brothers 2012: Whatever DID Happen To Jonny Lang Anyway?).

Admit it. You now want macaroni and cheese today.

Have a great day, everyone. And go the fuck to sleep tonight. The tchotchkes will still be in the stores tomorrow.

Someone in the media needs to ask Rick Perry about this

If Barack Obama had to answer for the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and explain his association with him, then Rick Perry has to answer for this guy:



(h/t this, via DCap)

Making having a period a crime

There are times when I wish Abraham Lincoln had just said "Don't let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha."

Mississippi is about to vote on an amendment to its state constitution to bestow personhood on fertilized eggs:

A national effort to put abortion bans into state constitutions is looking for its first victory next month in Mississippi, where voters are being asked to approve an amendment declaring that life begins when a human egg is fertilized.

Supporters hope the so-called personhood initiative will succeed in a Bible Belt state that already has some of the nation's toughest abortion regulations and only a single clinic where the procedures are performed.

The initiative is endorsed by both candidates in a governor's race that's being decided the same day. While Mississippi is the only state with such an amendment on the ballot this fall, efforts are under way to put the question to voters in at least four other states in 2012.

[snip]

"We feel like the docs and the patients are getting caught in the middle of a war between the anti-abortion folks and the pro-choice folks," said Dr. Wayne Slocum of Tupelo, head of the Mississippi section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a group that opposes the initiative.

It's one thing to declare that human life begins at implantation of a fertilized egg, since that's when a pregnancy actually begins. That too has its problems, because of the possibility of making miscarriage a criminal, or even capital, offense (something the state of Georgia has already considered).

The American College of Obstetricans and Gynecologists has stated unequivocally that pregnancy does not occur intil a fertilized egg is implanted, and that up to 1/3 to 1/2 of fertilized eggs never implant. These then dissolve and become part of the so-called "products of menstruation."

Of course science and medicine have absolutely no place in the misogynist dogma of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade. What's imiportant is that the evil sluts who won't keep their legs closed must be punished by bearing a child -- and those who harbor that 1/3 to 1/2 of eggs that never implant must be investigated, and perhaps criminally charged, if they have a period.

There's only one way to deal with this, and that is for women of reproductive age to start sending their used sanitary products to the Mississippi statehouse, along with letters asking if legislators of that state plan to examine every woman's menstrual fluid in a futile search for dissolved fertilized eggs....or if they just plan to jail every woman who ever has her period on the grounds that she might have "murdered" a fertilized egg.

Why not thank Irving Berlin? Or was he too Jewish?

Sorry for no posting for a few days, but I was out of town visiting family, and couldn't connect to the intartoobz for a few days despite having two laptops with me. Besides, I've kind of been in a funk for a few days about the death of Steve Jobs. Not quite sure why, other than the obvious narcissistic ones about the Apple stock in my IRA and the fact that Jobs was only four months older than I am, and how it kind of feels like the end of an era -- sort of the way it did when George Harrison died. But I'm back now, and while I'm too tired to muster up too much righteous outrage, this tidbit made my head explode:

Bryan Fischer of the conservative Christian group the American Family Association floated an interesting theory about why there hasn't been a "Muslim attack" since Sept. 11 during his speech before the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.

"By God's blessing, we have not been hit by a Muslim attack since 9/11," Fischer said. "I suggest that in part, we have Major League Baseball to thank. You remember that the week after 9/11 Major League Baseball converted the seventh inning stretch from the singing of 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame' to the singing of 'God Bless America.'"

"Now 'God Bless America' is not just a song, it is a prayer. When we sing that we are inviting God to bless America, to stand beside her and to guide her through the night with a light from above," Fischer said.

"So for one brief, shining moment every night, Major League Baseball has converted our stadiums into cathedrals in which tens of thousands of ordinary Americans lift their hearts and voices as one and ask God to watch over and protect the United States," Fischer said.

"Ladies and gentleman, I think that those prayers have been heard and they have been answered," Fischer said.

For some strange reason, Talking Points Memo chose to accompany this insane raving of a lunatic with a photograph of Mr. Met, of all mascots. I'm not sure if this is some kind of Jew Jew Jew code, given that the Mets are owned by the Wilpon family who are embroiled in the Bernie Madoff mess. But please forgive me for echoing that scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen says to Tony Roberts that even the waitress asking "'d'you eat?" was really saying "Jew eat?" as some kind of anti-Semitic slur; I'm sure I'm looking for hidden meanings where there are none.

But while I've gotten used to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade insisting that their Great White Alpha Male Punitive Father Figure In The Sky thinks they are so important that He has nothing better to do than listen to these ignoramusus mutsche him all day long, when you start bringing the game of baseball into your insane ravings, and at the risk of going all Annie Savoy on you, that's cause to take these people to the woodshed.

Fred Wilpon didn't write God Bless America, and neither did the Yawkey family, nor the Steinbrenners, nor (Goddess forbid) the Bush family. None of those infuriating baseball players (I'm talking to YOU, Mr. Reyes) who think God hit their home run for them wrote the song. It was written by a guy whose history is similar to that of my own grandparents and to so many Jews who came to this country from Russia and Poland in the early years of the 20th century to escape the pogroms in their home countries.

Irving Berlin wrote God Bless America in 1918 after being drafted into the Army specifically to write patriotic songs and songs of Army life that were performed in all-soldier revues such as "Yip Yip Yaphank". Like most Tin Pan Alley songwriters, he had cranked out an astonishing amount of material before the war, and "God Bless America" was just another throwaway tune that he'd written and put away until Kate Smith's manager asked him twenty years later if he had a song put away somewhere that she could sing. There's tons of material on Irving Berlin at Wikipedia and elsewhere, so I needn't do a full biography here.

Irving Berlin, like the mother from whom he'd originally heard the phrase "God bless America", loved his country for the opportunities it had given him and his family -- opportunities for which the people Bryan Fischer would like to see running government would deprive future generations of immigrants, as well as those who see their status in the middle class fleeing from them more every day. Irving Berlin was a man whose family fled religious persecution to come here to the very same country in which people like Bryan Fischer and the Republican candidates seeking his favor would deprive people like him, and other non-Christians, of their own ability to worship as they please -- or not to worship at all.

But why let things like the history of the song that religious bigots like Bryan Jeffers want to co-opt get in the way of feeding their own religious chauvinism? It's so much easier, and more comforting, for them to forget that their favorite song was written by a Jew whose family came here after watching their village burned to the ground and instead to believe that like the King James Bible, which they seem to think was written by God in English, that it somehow belongs to them and then alone.

No one can say they weren't warned

I still think that the Money Guys who ran the Republican Party are going to rally behind Mitt Romney. Rick Perry, who has demonstrated again and again that he's for sale for the right price, is someone with whom the Money Guys thought they could do business, but the only deity the Money Guys worship is Mammon, and Rick Perry can't necessarily be relied on, since he refuses to tone down the religious batshittery even to run for president.

I realize who his audience was here, but this is 100% consistent with his Apostolic Reformation beliefs.

One can only wonder what those Americans who are not Christian face under a possible Perry presidency after seeing this (emphasis mine):

Perry said Americans need more Christian values in general. “It is important that [Christian leaders] stand in the pulpit every day and defend those values, those Christian values,” Perry said. “America is going to be guided by some set of values. The question is going go to be: Whose values?”

The Texas governor said he believes America will be guided by “the Christian values that this country was based upon.”

And if you don't subscribe to Perry's notion of Christian values? Who knows? He's already perfectly comfortable with executing those who have done no wrong.

So whose button will this guy be wearing, Bachmann's or Perry's?

Meet your average Republican:

A 24-year-old Oregon man — who told police that he was a “Christian warrior” — has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly firebombing a mosque last November.



Cody Crawford faces 10 to 30 years if convicted of firebombing the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center, which is about 200 feet from his house. Although his DNA has been connected to the crime scene, Crawford has maintained that he’s “100 percent innocent.”



In an unrelated incident, Crawford had ranted to police about Muslims, according to court documents.



“You look like Obama,” he said to a McMinnville officer in December. “You are a Muslim like him. Jihad goes both ways. Christians can jihad too.”



The documents reveal that Crawford also told authorities that “only Christians could understand him, that he was a Christian warrior that they were persecuting.”



“You will never know the truth about the mosque,” he allegedly said.



The firebombing came just two days after Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who had occasionally attended the mosque, was arrested in connection with a plot to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony Portland.



Mohamud’s plot was reportedly uncovered with help from the Muslim community.

I wasn't kidding about the heretics' pyre

I've been posting about the dangers of the Christian Reconstruction/Chritian Dominionism movement for years. But now that two of the three top candidates for the GOP nomination for the presidency are adherents to this movement, it's time to start shouting what this movement is from the rooftops. Unfortunately the larger urban papers are too "genteel" to allow its columnists to cover this 13th century lunacy, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazetta isn't:

The first time I ever heard of the Christian Reconstruction movement, now known as Dominionism, I thought it was a gag.



Who in their right mind wanted to live in a world where the Old Testament civil and ceremonial laws would become the template for local and national politics? It was a profoundly dark theology even by the standards of the dour Calvinism I considered reasonable at the time.



According to the tenets of Christian Reconstruction, it was up to Christians to bring the whole world into submission to Jesus Christ. Once that was accomplished (with God's help, of course), the Old Testament laws that guided ancient Israel would be dusted off and applied to civil societies across the globe, including America.



The motivating idea behind Christian Reconstruction was that Christ would never consider returning to an Earth consumed by spiritual decadence. The world needed to be "cleansed" to attract a procrastinating Jesus who was already 2,000 years overdue. It was up to Christians to take over and make him feel welcome.



In a world made more acceptable to Jesus, homosexuality could not exist and all non-Christian religions would be outlawed. Women would be restricted to managing the home and raising children, leaving millions of jobs to be filled by once-unemployed men.



Disobedient children would be subject to execution if they didn't repent, taxes would be light and slavery would be allowed as long as safeguards were included so that it didn't become an abusive or racist institution again. A stint in slavery would be limited to seven years.



All legal disputes would be settled by consulting the Ten Commandments or the Pentateuch. The irony is that many of the people who advocated this nonsense are some of the most vociferous critics of Shariah law in America today.



[snip]



I didn't take Christian Reconstruction as a political philosophy seriously until I met an actual Theonomist (follower of God's Law) in the real world.



"Oscar" was in his early 20s, as was I, when we met. He was a Jewish convert to Christianity, so he was always on the defensive. As a young believer, he fell in with a mob of Theonomists in San Diego before moving to Pennsylvania for college. The primacy of the Old Testament in Christian Reconstructionist thought appealed to his sense of cultural identification.



Since I knew he was from a family of Holocaust survivors, I asked him what he thought of the mandate that all non-Christians would have to convert or die. Oscar said that if his relatives refused to become Christians or submit to forced exile, then they would suffer the civil penalty for practicing idolatry. He would carry out the execution himself if called upon to do so by the Christian state.

Do you honestly believe that a Republican Congress, populated by men and women who cannot control their own impulses and so need a punitive religious structure to keep them on the straight (in all senses of the word) and narrow and cannot imagine not needing one, would stop an authoritarian president and the followers who regard him or her as a quasi-Messiah, from implementing such mass killings and exile of heathen by executive order if they believe they were told to do by God?



If you don't already know about Christian Reconstruction, it's time to change that.



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Meet Rick Perry

Note to Rick Perry: If you're going to run for president, it's probably not a good idea to get caught in poses that confirm what people whose votes you're going to need may already think about you:





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Meet Your Average Republican Voter

Here's how Republicans manage to pull stuff out of their asses and have people believe it: Because they target people like these:

They spent months warning the world of the apocalypse, some giving away earthly belongings or draining their savings accounts. And so they waited, vigilantly, on Saturday for the appointed hour to arrive.

When 6 p.m. came and went at various spots around the globe, including the East Coast of the United States, and no extraordinary cataclysm occurred, Keith Bauer — who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture — took it in stride.

"I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God," he said in the bright morning sun outside the gated Oakland headquarters of Family Radio International, whose founder, Harold Camping, has been broadcasting the apocalyptic prediction for years. "I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth."

But he added, "It's God who leads you, not Harold Camping."

Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver, began the voyage west last week, figuring that if he "worked last week, I wouldn't have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen." After seeing the nonprofit ministry's base of operations, Bauer planned to take a day trip to the Pacific Ocean, and then start the cross-country drive back home Sunday with his wife, young son and another family relative.

[snip]

In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick, of Staten Island, said he was surprised when 6 p.m. came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world.

"I can't tell you what I feel right now," he said, surrounded by tourists. "I don't understand it. I don't know. I don't understand what happened.

"Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here," he said.

It tempting to feel sorry for gullible dupes like these, except that these gullible dupes are the same people who made Rick Scott the governor of Florida, and Scott Walker the governor of Wisconsin. These gullible people are the same people who read Andrew Breitbart and listen to Sarah Palin. These are the same people who gay-bash and want their particular brand of Christianity to become the mandatory state religion. These are the same people who scram "Keep the government out of my Medicare" and elect people like Paul Ryan. They are stupid, frightened ignorant people who are beyond learning, who are beyond allowing anything like empirical reality to interfere with their already-established worldview. So today we get to point at them and laugh.

Some advice for the Zombie Apocalypse

Sahr Ngaujah as Fela Anikulapo Kuti in last year's musical, Fela!, educates us about zombies:

Businesses I Wish I'd Started

Why can't I have an enterprising mind like this?

Your Pets Will Not Be Flagged For Removal By Jesus During the Rapture

---

Date: 2008-06-19, 3:59PM CDT

[snip]

FLAGGERS: Over half the United States population has legitimate concerns about what will happen to their pets after the rapture occurs. Please respect their faith and allow this service to remain posted, just as the waste removal and grooming posts remain posted. Again, over half of the US population feels that this is a concern to them. If there is a specific problem with the ad, please email me. Thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"No one knows when that day or hour will come. Even the angels in heaven and the Son don't know. Only the Father knows."
(Matthew 24:36)

"For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord."
(1 Thessalonians 4:15�17)


Have you ever thought about what will happen to your pets after Jesus comes back to claim the souls of the saved during the Rapture and deliver them to heaven to enjoy ever lasting life? The bible clearly teaches that only those that have accepted Jesus as their savior will enter heaven (John 14:6, Romans 3:23), and we all know that pets do not have the cognitive ability to do this, so what will happen to your beloved pets? Surely without you there, they would be stuck inside your empty house, starving to death with no one to feed them, let them out to potty, or clean their litter box. This is probably not what you envision for your pets after you are gone. This is where I come in.

I am here to offer you pet care service for after the rapture. As an atheist, I will surely still be here on this earth post rapture and would love to look after your pets for a small fee and make sure they are still well taken care of after you and your family have been raptured. You will be able to look down on them from heaven and see them being well cared for by me and living happy, healthy lives. Do not let my atheism scare you! I am a moral and loving pet owner and would never do harm to any animal.

For a small deposit of only $50, you can be assured that your pets will be well cared for from the time that you are raptured until the end of their natural life. They will get adequate amounts of food, water, and shelter as well as plenty of exercise and socialization as I would imagine there will be a lot of pets that will be abandoned by Jesus the pet hater that will need to be cared for.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
If interested, please email me for my PayPal address (you can also send me a check if you prefer) so you can assure that your pets will be taken care of after Jesus comes to take your soul to heaven. $50 is only a small price to pay to know that while you are enjoying everlasting bliss, your pets will be cared for until their end days. Thanks and have a great day!

Please do not flag this ad. It is very serious.

Remember, folks, according to Harold Camping, there are only 11 shopping days until the Rapture. Book your pet care now!

Why do they have such a need for hell?

Just in time for Easter to be over, Ross Douchebag over at the New York Times makes himself an almost-too-easy punching bag in an essay in which he laments the decline of belief in Hell.

In part, hell’s weakening grip on the religious imagination is a consequence of growing pluralism. Bell’s book begins with a provocative question: Are Christians required to believe that Gandhi is in hell for being Hindu? The mahatma is a distinctive case, but swap in “my Hindu/Jewish/Buddhist neighbor” for Gandhi, and you can see why many religious Americans find the idea of eternal punishment for wrong belief increasingly unpalatable.

But the more important factor in hell’s eclipse, perhaps, is a peculiar paradox of modernity. As our lives have grown longer and more comfortable, our sense of outrage at human suffering — its scope, and its apparent randomness — has grown sharper as well. The argument that a good deity couldn’t have made a world so rife with cruelty is a staple of atheist polemic, and every natural disaster inspires a round of soul-searching over how to reconcile with God’s omnipotence with human anguish.

These debates ensure that earthly infernos get all the press. Hell means the Holocaust, the suffering in Haiti, and all the ordinary “hellmouths” (in the novelist Norman Rush’s resonant phrase) that can open up beneath our feet. And if it’s hard for the modern mind to understand why a good God would allow such misery on a temporal scale, imagining one who allows eternal suffering seems not only offensive but absurd.

Doing away with hell, then, is a natural way for pastors and theologians to make their God seem more humane. The problem is that this move also threatens to make human life less fully human.

Atheists have license to scoff at damnation, but to believe in God and not in hell is ultimately to disbelieve in the reality of human choices. If there’s no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no’s have any real meaning either. They’re like home runs or strikeouts in a children’s game where nobody’s keeping score.

I understand the need to feel that there's a reward for the tribulations we experience in life. Without the promise of goodies at the end of it all, it would have been difficult to do things like convert slaves to Christianity, but it's Douchebag's insistence that there be a Hell to go with Heaven that is so emblematic of the conservative mind.

I'm not necessarily an atheist, but I sure as hell don't believe in some Great White Alpha Male in the sky who micromanages people's lives, knocked up a girl and then told his son "I'm going to let them kill you so that 51-year-old John Ensign can screw around with his best friend's wife and then ask his parents for money to keep said best friend quiet," and who told Abraham to sacrifice his son to him and then just as the latter was about to do it, said "Kidding! Just wanted to see if you'd do it! Hahahahaha!" But I have about as strong a moral code as anyone I know. I would cite the Incident of the Bell Pepper at the Grand Union as evidence. I once found a bell pepper wedged in my shopping cart when I took it out to the parking lot. I found myself with three choices:

1) Put the pepper in my bag and go home;
2) Leave the pepper in the shopping cart;
3) Take the pepper back into the store and put it back;
4) Take the pepper back into the store and pay for it.

Almost everyone would agree that Option 1 would be the wrong thing to do, except those who believe that as long as I believed that Jesus died for my sins and that I was saved and forgiven, I could have taken the pepper, gone home, and had a clear conscience. It's arguable that option 2 might be a moral choice, because I wouldn't be taking something I didn't pay for. But the pepper would be out in the hot sun and wouldn't be saleable, which from the viewpoint of the store (if it were, say, a mom 'n' pop shop instead of a supermarket) is the same. To me, Options 3 and 4 were the only moral choices, so I took the pepper back into the store and paid for it.

It wasn't God who made me do it. It wasn't some Jewish guy getting nailed to a tree that allowed me to do it. It's simply being able to tell what is right and what is wrong.

Douchebag's insistence that "If there’s no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no’s have any real meaning either" may be the most profoundly twisted thing I've ever read. Are we simply infants who respond only to carrot or stick? Maybe Ross Douthat needs to have the threat of punishment hanging over his head to keep HIM on the straight and narrow (and given some of his columns, it wouldn't surprise me, as you can see from this Tbogg compendium of Doutiana), but some of us are capable of making moral choices on our own.

And that's what infuriates culture war conservatives, isn't it? This idea that someone might actually be able to navigate a path through life that involves honesty, hard work, fidelity, and truth, for its own sake rather than because of some punitive parent figure we conjure up who also offers unconditional forgiveness? What are we, five-year-olds?

It certainly explains their insistence on implementing laws to keep the rest of us on the straight and narrow -- because they can't do it without the threat of punishment, and the simply cannot understand how some of us can -- and do, every day.

While he's at it, let him pray for God to rain dollar bills on his state

I'm sorry, but since wingnuts get to pound their chests and say that they don't want their tax dollars paying for abortions (and have the government do their bidding), I think I should get to say that I don't want my tax dollars paying to rebuild the homes of citizens who elect governors who talk about secession and then beg for federal help to fight wildfires in their state.

Now Texas Governor Rick Perry is hedging his bets. In case the feds say no, he's going to a higher authority:

WHEREAS, the state of Texas is in the midst of an exceptional drought, with some parts of the state receiving no significant rainfall for almost three months, matching rainfall deficit records dating back to the 1930s; and

WHEREAS, a combination of higher than normal temperatures, low precipitation and low relative humidity has caused an extreme fire danger over most of the State, sparking more than 8,000 wildfires which have cost several lives, engulfed more than 1.8 million acres of land and destroyed almost 400 homes, causing me to issue an ongoing disaster declaration since December of last year; and

WHEREAS, these dire conditions have caused agricultural crops to fail, lake and reservoir levels to fall and cattle and livestock to struggle under intense stress, imposing a tremendous financial and emotional toll on our land and our people; and

WHEREAS, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer; it seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto signed my name and have officially caused the Seal of State to be affixed at my Office in the City of Austin, Texas, this the 21st day of April, 2011.

Where's Burt Lancaster when you need him?

Does Perry ever think to ask his Great White Alpha Male in the Sky why, since Texas is such a God-fearin', gun-totin' state, wildfires and hurricanes even happen there?

Dispatch from the American Theocracy

The relentless march of the Christian Taliban continues:

Out in South Dakota, you can't legally kill abortion providers yet, but if you want an abortion, you have to listen to proseletyzing and conversion attempts before you can get one:

In our new era of relentless, abusive laws aimed at curtailing women’s reproductive rights, it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd, but South Dakota managed to do just that on Tuesday, when Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed into law a bill requiring a three-day waiting period -- the longest waiting period in the nation -- for any woman seeking abortion.

But even that is not what makes this law stand out. That honor goes to the requirement that women seeking abortion must go to a crisis pregnancy center, to submit to a lecture on the supposed evils of abortion; a lecture that will almost surely include misinformation on the dangers of abortion. In passing this law, South Dakota hit a triple, attacking reproductive rights, privacy rights and religious freedom with one law aimed at the single abortion clinic left in the entire state of South Dakota.   

That the anti-choice movement is mostly a Christianist movement bent on imposing its religious beliefs on the public at large is one of the most under-discussed aspects of the abortion debate. This law should highlight the theocratic underpinnings of the anti-choice movement. Most and probably all crisis pregnancy centers are religious organizations that object to abortion because it conflicts with their religious dogma about female sexuality, women’s roles, and their belief about when the soul enters the body. Requiring women to sit through a lecture on Christian ethics about sexuality before getting an abortion should be a clear-cut case of a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, even if the crisis pregnancy centers are careful to avoid saying the word “Jesus” too much.

And in Texas, they want to ban discrimination against people who believe that a giant man in the sky created the earth and everything in it in six days and then on the seventh day sat on the couch with the remote getting corn chip crumbs all over the carpet (just kidding about the second part):

Unlike many other states, Texas does not ban workplace discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, or marital status. But don't be alarmed; the Lone Star State is working on that whole civil liberties thing. Last week, Republican State Rep. Bill Zedler introduced HB 2454, a bill that would establish new workplace protections for proponents of intelligent design. Here's the key part:

An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

America: continuing it's relentless march into the 15th century.

I'm so glad to see that the Republicans are focused like a laser beam on job creation.

So focused that in addition to empowering the IRS (which they used to hate, what happened?) to conduct audits of the uteri of American women, they now want to go to the mat to re-affirm "In God We Trust" as our national motto:

The US House of Representatives will have a chance to vote on a resolution to affirm the phrase "In God We Trust" as the nation’s official motto after it was approved by the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA), the founder and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, sponsored the legislation. It would encourage the public display of the motto in all public buildings, public schools and government institutions.

He said he introduced the bill in January because he was troubled by a pattern of omitting God from the nation's heritage.

"There is a small minority who believes America does not have the right to trust in God, who believes the United States should not affirm trust in God, and who actively seek to remove any recognition of that trust," Forbes said.

And once they do that, jobs will magically appear, right? Because all the Great White Alpha Male in the Sky wants is to have this silly motto re-affirmed, and he will create jobs.

But wait. I thought rich people created jobs. Now I'm confused....

They'd make keeping kosher a crime too, except that they like their bagels too much

I wonder what other religions' practices they're going to make a crime in Tennessee:

A proposed Tennessee law would make following the Islamic code known as Shariah law a felony, punishable by 15 years in jail.

State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and state Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, introduced the same bill in the Senate and House last week. It calls Shariah law a danger to homeland security and gives the attorney general authority to investigate complaints and decide who's practicing it.

It exempts peaceful practice of Islam but labels any adherence to Shariah law — which includes religious practices such as feet washing and prayers — as treasonous. It claims Shariah adherents want to replace the Constitution with their religious law.

A dozen other states are considering anti-Shariah bills, and there's a federal lawsuit in Oklahoma over one.

So what did I miss?

Wow. I go to work and am offline for blogging for 24 hours, and the governor of Wisconson makes an even bigger ass out of himself on a prank call. Not even the twisted minds behind Crank Yankers could have done something this beautiful:

For the most part, Walker sounds like the dweeby kid from chem class who's just been invited out to the after-game malt shop get-together by the football quarterback. But when he talks about getting the Democrats back under false pretenses of negotiation just to get them into the state so Republicans can vote, all bets are off.

Meanwhile, over in Indiana, another union-buster state, an assistant attorney general has been fired after a Twitter-fight with another Tweeter in which he advocated the use of live ammunition to mow down protesters in Wisconsin. That other Tweeter just happened to be a writer for what is now becoming even more indispensable reading, Mother Jones:

On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn't end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition."

From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were "political enemies" and "thugs" who were "physically threatening legally elected officials." In response to such behavior, he said, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force." He later called me a "typical leftist," adding, "liberals hate police."

Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.

As one of 144 attorneys in that office, Jeff Cox has represented the people of his state for 10 years. And for much of that time, it turns out, he's vented similar feelings on Twitter and on his blog, Pro Cynic. In his nonpolitical tweets and blog posts, Cox displays a keen litigator's mind, writing sharply and often wittily on military history and professional basketball. But he evinces contempt for political opponents—from labeling President Obama an "incompetent and treasonous" enemy of the nation to comparing "enviro-Nazis" to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi "brownshirts" on multiple occasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as "a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up" by local police. A "sensible policy for handling Afghanistan," he offered, could be summed up as: "KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!"

Early Sunday, Mother Jones sent an email to Cox's work address at the Indiana attorney general's office, asking if the Twitter and blog comments were his, and if he could provide context for some of them. He responded shortly after from a personal email address: "For 'context?' Or to silence me? All my comments on twitter & my blog are my own and no one else's. And I can defend them all.

"[Y]ou will probably try to demonize me," he wrote, "but that comes with the territory."

To be sure, in the current political climate, partisan rhetoric has run hot online—and the Constitution guarantees everyone's right to such rhetoric. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general's office, Bryan Corbin, told Mother Jones that Cox's statements were "inflammatory," and he promised "an immediate review" of the matter. "We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone," Corbin added.

As Blue Girl points out, you have to wonder what those who have had dealings with Cox over the last decade are thinking, particularly in cases regarding things like women's rights, collective bargaining, working conditions, or even free speech that doesn't agree with his.

You want Teabaggers in positions of authorty? Jeffrey Cox is what you get.

And the ever-burgeoning "EEEWWWW!!! Lady Parts!!!" caucus is On The Job -- in Georgia, where Bobby Franklin wants you to be put to death if he determines you had anything whatsoever to do with causing your miscarriage; in South Dakota, where women seeking abortions will be forced to be lectured by the Christofascist Zombie Brigade before obtaining one; and in Nebraska, where the legislature is playing "Mine's Bigger" with South Dakota in terms of Killing for Life, with even crazier "justified homicide" legislation. In Nebraska, you won't even have to know the woman seeking the abortion in order to barge in and kill the doctor. ANY third party, like, say, Scott Roeder, will be allowed to do so.

This is Teabag America, folks. And it's only the beginning.

And where ARE the jobs, anyway?

UPDATE: Legalized murder is spreading to Iowa now, too.

Go ahead, Republicans...keep showing your misogyny.

There's actually something refreshing about how emboldened right-wing Republican Christofascist zombies have become in their quest to turn American women into nothing but breeding machines. For decades, the fetophiles have succeeded in framing themselves as "pro-life" and "pro-women", feigning concern for the emotional problems they claim all women have after abortion (as if anyone is somehow entitled to make decisions based on what is right for them at the time); convincing far too many people that THEY are the righteous ones, even as they slash programs that might help women they would force to bear children against their will take care of the actual babies that result from forced childbearing. They used to even go so far as to say that those of us with the radical view that women are actual human beings are protectors of child molesters because legal abortion allows those who prey on young girls to hide the result of their crimes, as if forcing twelve-year-olds to walk around with pregnant bellies is somehow a badge of shame for the impregnator, rather than the impregnatee.

But as Congressional Republicans abandon all thought of job creation and resume their long-standing jihad against American women, particularly their sexuality, out in the hinterlands Teh Crazy is in full flower, and shows just what these people are:

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

Yes, folks, the so-called "pro-life" movement finally admits that its reverence for human life is highly selective. Yesterday I linked to an article about a small survey which showed that men who are domestic abusers of women will often sabotage their partner's birth control in an attempt to have them become pregnant and therefore dependent (or otherwise linked to them in a permanent way). And now in South Dakota, Republican legislators would give these domestic abusers the right to go into a clinic with guns blazing in the name of killing the doctor who would dare usurp their right to keep their wives, partners, or daughters from exercising their own free will.

We hear over and over again that using the term "American Taliban" is unfairly inflammatory. Markos Moulitsas took a great deal of crap from even Bill Maher about the title of his recent book with that title. But when you have a movement in our very own country that would justify homicide against those who believe they have a right to help women make their own decisions, what else can you call these people?