Random Stuff

This clown sent a letter to the IRS daring them to do anything to him. That is the same thing Wesley Snipes did, though the nature of the challenge is rather different. Now the feds are determining which correctional center they will slot Snipes into.

Martha Stewart tried lying to the feds about some stock sales she made and she also was treated to a stay at the gray bar hotel. Now she can't enter Britain because of her conviction. That's freaking hilarious!

Obama raised $21.9 million in May. McCain? Not so much. Is he really going to accept public financing for his campaign? It could be that the problem is because McCain hasn't been able to make up his mind as to what to do about our energy crisis. In fact, the Gropenfuhrer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, just dissed McCain's rationale for coastal drilling. The rejection of public funding will not hurt Obama.

McCain may name Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (yeah, I know, who?) as his VP. But he isn't exactly going to energize the GOP base that is unhappy with the Republican top of the ticket.

Also, did McCain lie to either Hispanic leaders or Republican anti-immigration activists? Or both?

McCain can't finesse this number: 500 Californians dead in the Iraq War. Stay the course is not going to work there.

You might also be able to kiss another Republican blowhard off soon. Red Sox righthander Curt Schilling is going to have possible career ending shoulder surgery. Schilling was a major stud on the hill, but also a colossal asshole off of it. He once told Sports Illustrated that he hated it that pllayers were using steroids and then when a Congressional committee asked him about it, he ballessly demurred.

Some of you religious fucks are scary.

Republicans admit that new Orange County, CA sheriff is qualified for her job, but they are grousing about her selection anyway.

Firefox 3.0 tally to date: 14 million and counting.

You want something that will piss you off? You know that U.S. consumers are paying 3-4 times what the Japanese and the Koreans are for broadband access even though theirs is faster? That's what happens when you have a lack of competition ina given sector.

Pro Gay marriage folks in California are now pressing the courts there to head off a bigoted voter initiatve. I hope it succeeds.

Meanwhile, religious nuts refuse to do their taxpayer funded jobs when it comes to the same sex marriage issue.

Idiot of the day right here.

Also mentallly underpowered are those who got sucked into the "clean coal" hoax.

If you've ever seen the tv series Futurama, there was a joke in one of the episodes that went, "its some kind of hollow tube, devoid of human life. Gasp. The Los Angeles Subway." Well, that isn't true now with sky high gas prices. Check it out.

Two Republican sex predators (yes, their dad is connected to the party) just got out in the OC. So watch out for 'em.

I don't understand how you can use your employer's network and yet demand that they have to respect your privacy when you do. But a California court said that an employee has to give permission before your boss can see your correspondence on the job. This is absurd.

UCLA's hospital has been doing transplants on Japanese gangsters. I'm not kidding. This is fucking outrageous.

In the "It's About Time" file is this.

You may remember that Democratic congresswoman who had her home foreclosed recently. She was also in arrears of her property taxes. Now the state has taken the home away from the new buyer without compensation and given it back to her even though he had already begun renovating the place. Outrageous.

Random Thoughts

First, to dispel a rumor, Christmas is not engaging in a ballistic mistle toe buildup to answer the war on it.

Now for a plug: go to the Minor Ripper blog and scroll down to see how the U.S. military is making friends and influencing people among Iraqi motorists. It's a little reminiscent of what happened in South Korea a couple of years back when an American tank crushed a schoolgirl, setting off an absolutely vicious firestorm of controversy there. The average Korean does not want anybody's army there except its own, but recognizes that they are, for the time being, in a relationship of convenience with the U.S. to combat the North Korean Communist threat.

Time to get the wallets open and go after pantomime Republican moderate Susan Collins. Representative Tom Allen has thrown down the gauntlet for Democrats and we need to ensure that he helps cushion our majority in that chamber.

So anybody see the story of a student who was suspended for faking putting some candy up his nose? Yes, you read that correctly. Again, it proves that the administrators are the most useless individuals on any school campus. But it gets even more bizarre from there.

Now Bush thinks that he is dictator of the world. He is so divorced from reality that it doesn't even want alimony. It is just glad to get away from him. And he is more isolated right now than a Taco Bell burrito in the break room of the Center for Disease Control.

Anti-white bigot Spike Lee is now going to make a movie about the Rodney King riots. No word if Representative Maxine Waters, another bigot, and former city councilman Mark "my people won't riot" Thomas will have a part in it. Waters still calls it "an insurrection" and not an orgy of death and destruction where gangs of blacks, much like the Ku Klux Klan in an earlier time, went after Korean-American merchants in downtowm L.A. No doubt, Lee will whitewash the blatantly racist behavior by blacks and blame it all on whitey. God, he's disgusting.

To you assholes out there who are buying Hewlett-Packard computers, why? They are shit. And here is another reason you should bypass them.

Now it's time for our math corner, but put those calculators away, it isn't that type of math. Here is the problem: Pakistan is our ally in the war on terror. They have been in conflict with neighboring India for decades and the issue has often threatened to go nuclear. So what does the Bush Administration do? Of course! Send more nuclear technology to India! Boy, he just knows how to strike the right diplomatic chords, doesn't he? Not to mention that security in India is about as firm as Bob Dole's cock.

Hillary Clinton is definitely running for president. How do you know? Because she is getting involved in bullshit video game content issues in order to play up to the religious gapejaws out there. So let's see: we got a war we're about to lose at great cost to the economy and military preparedness not to mention those who were killed and wounded there, problems with funding the schools and government corruption and Hillary is preoccupied with video games for fuck's sake! She might want to see this article, too, which suggests that her taking part in this could leave people cold.

Look, there shouldn't be any ratings at all for tv, movies, music or video games. You can read the fucking reviews and determine whether you should go see or buy the item in question. We don't need a bunch of out of touch old ladies from motherfucking Iowa telling us what we should be able to consume. It is none of their business.

This is all part of the GOP war on adults, be it getting Howard Stern off the air, attempting to limit the availability of porno or now video games. Just shut the fuck up and mind your own business you twats! We shouldn't have to live in a world where seven year olds are the artistic arbiters.

Really, I would like to see the Democrats target Waters, the Saddam of South Central, for defeat because she is, let's face it, just a blackfaced Strom Thurmond with a tits and a pussy. But I doubt that Howard Dean would have the stones for it.

Now back to more conventional bigotry: while the usual GOP hatemongers are decrying Mary Cheney deciding to have a baby, The Advocate is worried about what the kid will face gorwing up since its grandpa is a big enabler for anti-gay mountebanks.

While reading this article, keep in mind that Taylor's dad and devil with a priestly collar on Pat Robertson are each other's BFF. Again, religion about power and wealth, not spirituality.

Now for a bit of fun, see how a British general is getting his clock cleaned in the media for trying to go from Bush/Blair poodle to crusader.

And how much you wanna bet that the anti-semites in the religious right are going off on a decision by conservative Jews to recognize gay rabbis? And I had to post a link to a Time Magazine article on the subject just for the headline, which is a howler.

Blogger Mark Byron had this observation about the move by the Jewish organization: "I've got the New Yawk Jewish mom sound bite-"I'd have hoped he'd have married a nice Jewish girl, but at least he's marrying a Jew." You might also want to check out Steve Gimbel's reaction as well at Philospher's Playground.

For a more thoughtful view on the conflicts within Judaism about the issue, see Pillage Idiot.

Meanwhile, on the roads of Washington state....

And somebody call Dr. Phil and have him try to get major league baseball owners from shopping like drunken sailors on shore leave. They just gave nobody Mariners pitcher Gil Meche a five year, $55 million deal and he has a career ERA of 4.65! Julio Lugo, a pretty good but hardly superstar shortstop, is now taking in something like $9 million. All the owners are Republicans and are thus genetically incapable of sticking to a budget. Now do you understand why we have the swollen budget deficits we do? Mamma mia!

It is Time for Religion to be OVER!

Your carbolic commentator has always broken down religion thus:

Religion: codified superstition.
Church: the marketing outlet for said superstition.
Pastor/Priest: The local chief public relations flack for that superstition.
Bishop: the district manager for the superstition's marketing outlets.
The Bible, Dianetics, the Koran, the Torah, etc: the line of bullshit that all camp followers are expected to internalize no matter how nonsensical it is. Indeed, they often read like a kind of ecclesiastical People magazine, luridly informing the gapejawed who begat whom, how many, who smote whom, who "knew (i.e.m fucked)" whom, and who, at the end of the day, emerges as the World's Sexiest Man of Eternity (Jesus, Mohammed, L. Ron Hubbard, Buddha, Yahweh, Your Name Here).

This diatribe was inspired by the contretemps of one incoming Congress critter named Keith Ellison, who was said to have desired to be sworn in while putting his lefthand on the Koran. This drew an immediate rebuke from wingnuts hither and yon, especially the pompous twat Dennis Prager, who burbles his bullshit on sieg heil on your dial KRLA in Los Angeles.

The only trouble, as we all now know, is that there is no supposedly holy book used during the swearing in ceremony for new lawmakers in Washington D.C., lending this the aura of another one in a long line GOP works of fiction.

Moreover, USA Today reader mlock0431 noted, Prager's preoccupation with having everybody be sworn in Bible-handed may not exactly be blessed by their fairy tale Lord:

Matthew 5:33-37

33: Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

34: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

35: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

36: Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

37: But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

Prager reportedly has a divinity degree, so he knew about this passage. So he was more than willing to climb the soapbox and spout off heretical ideas. Respecting tradition, I'm sure that Prager has now called the Vatican and asked for an Inquisition on himself and is thinking about what outfit looks best while being burned at the stake.

Okay, maybe not. Christian Republicans aren't interested in the truth, only power.

Christians are also interested in completely perverting history, as this incident in Kenya shows.

The biggest hobgoblin of hosanna hut bureaucrats is sex. Making men and women feel afraid and ashamed of their sexuality is a 2,000 year old tradition and the GOP has touted abstinence lectures mainly by adopting the Republican go to tactic, fear. Tales of horrible STDs and pregnancy has only served to undermine the credibility among the young vis a vis the subject. Indeed, a recent study showed that teens and young adults are more sexually active then ever but their pregnancy rate is declining thanks to the frequent employment of birth control. This highlights the fact that the abstinence approach is unproductive and should be substituted with discussing the subject openly and honestly in instructing them how to manage their sex drives.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't advocate teenagers having sex. In fact, given their relatively poor impulse control and lack of emotional development it really isn't a good idea for that to happen until adulthood. But since I lost my virginity as a teenager (to an older woman) I feel hypocritical saying that. My parents had given me the full lecture about sex just before I entered junior high and also provided materials written by medical professionals about it so that I knew what I was getting into. That this doesn't happen everywhere, though, is both a tragedy and indicative of how counterproductive religion can be.

And that is before you even get to the sexual proclivities of the hosanna hut managers, who have proven to be much more salacious and perverted than leftwing liberals such as myself. Clearly, receiving large doses of biblical cant has no effect on stemming one's sex drive. Pat Robertson screwed his wife before they got married and knocked her up, as did GOP hero Ronald Reagan during much more ostensibly conservative times. So when any of these rightwing assholes gets on a rant about sex it is no wonder that a lot of eye rolling ensues. Especially if it is coming out of the mouth of a serial matrimonialist such as Clinton impeachment boy Henry Hyde or gay men such as David Dreier.

This is reinforced by television, where, because the FCC feels it must cater to religious nuts there is little honest portrayal of sex, which only confuses teens and adults further.

Consequently, this dissemination of obvious bullshit has turned off teens to religion, a positive good.

But this spreading phenomenon elicited a rebuke from the producers of South Park, who created an incredibly leaden episode that people can make a religion out of anything, even science, and went as far as to propound that the most absurd extension of that is warfare over competing visions of the field.

That humans are competitive, avaricious and often delusional is not a exactly news. But in making one of the characters, Kyle, the preachy conscience of the often rollicking and razor sharp series, it is starting to fall into the same kind of sanctimonious trap that has informed the usual religious spokesmen. In that way, South Park has jumped the shark and is actually getting boring. But every artist eventually runs out of good ideas and their take on the religion vs. science issue may have been a loud warning bell of that. So in a screwy way, religion has claimed another victim there.

The program portrays Jesus as little more than a talented schmuck. At the end of the day, though, what religion is predicated on is control. Back in the olden days, rulers needed a line of bullshit to keep the masses in line as the answer to the question, "who made you king?" "God." Well God and a collection of mercenaries anyway.

Look, Christianity wouldn't even be around if the Emperor Constantine hadn't hallucinated and been talked into being a dupe for those salesmen who flog the Christ brand name. That was during a time when the king determined what the faith of the land was going to be and when Connie became a Christian so did everybody else, dissenters being locked up, tortured and killed. In that way, Christianity is like Prez Turbo. It won't listen to reason and instead chooses to live in a fantasy world while its first impulse is to dispatch naysayers to some gulag.

When Henry the VIII decided to disembark from the Catholic Church's love train (no divorce allowed and buttfucking little boys), the church demanded that Spain and France go to war for Henry's bald challenge to its authority. Not that I want to make a hero of the syphilitic eight ball, but you get the point that religion is all about what most mass organizations are about: money and power (and 12 year old nookie, I guess).

It has also helped idiots escaped responsibility through the "Satan possessed me" for their drug addiction, criminal lifestyle, corruption and lying. These are all intentional acts and there is no little man whispering in our ears to do these things. They are due to the evil that resides in man and not to the cajoling of a red skinned demon prodding you with a pitchfork.

A lot of the religious conflicts in the English church essentially revolved around what kind of entertainment you wanted or didn't want (you call them masses and ceremonies). with your hectoring These conflicts lead to the English Civil War and the ascension of Oliver Cromwell, who Britons had enough of after a little over a decade. Yet, the punters then filled the pews anyway since, well let's face it, there weren't a whole lot of entertainment options available for your average peasant and it was a good place to pick up chicks. In fact, I'm sure that the hottest thing one could do during that time was to celebrate your like of a man or woman by sneaking into the church after closing time to sing your praises of the cosmic big daddy while entangled with each other on the altar, a pew or a storage room. So sinful, but soooooooo delicious.

That may explain why Jimmy Swaggart is able to maintain a semblance of a career much as how the public tends to forgive egregious transgressions by Hollywood stars and pop singers. Mind you, at this point, Swaggart has gone from being on the Playboy level of semi-respectable televangelists to the kind of crowd that reads the biblical equivalent of Swank, but he is still able to divest dumbasses of their hard earned cash. If he screws up again you will see him handling snakes.

The same goes for Paul Crouch, the top (no pun intended) hemorrhoid at Trinity Broadcasting, American's Wal-Mart of electronic rolling of the holy, and a close friend of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. His acolytes not only forgave him building the most gaudy and decadent tribute to white trash predilections ever, foisting Jeff Fenholt, a former member of the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar who spun his few minutes auditioning for Black Sabbath into a non-existent full blown tour with them (Tony Iommi, Sabbath's lead guitarist, declined to sue due to it not being financially worth it; the Fenholts lived in the down at the mouth Riverside County burg of Upland) on them and basically being con artists, but also ignored a claim by a former aide that the kind of girlish Crouch was plowing his back 4o. That sucked because the Bible calls for stoning homosexuals and seeing Crouch, who bears a slight resemblance to Ted Turner, get that treatment would have been ironically cool.

Here is what gets me, though: Crouch preaches so-called "prosperity gospel" and yet there is the biblical passage that intoned, "and again, I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." So next time you see video footage on Faux Nooz of bigtime Dick and crew exiting a local hosanna hut, know that there go the damned. But yet, so many seemed to want to follow them into hell.

This is all wish fulfillment on a level befitting a Star Trek chess game, as there is no heaven or hell but the mere becoming of worm food. So the idea on the part of the gapejaws that the rich who played dirty to become so will get their just desserts in the end is horseshit. Moreover, you take the Christianity brand name off of this and the Newt Gingriches out there are calling that class warfare which doesn't play well among voters. Yes, the Republicans hate Jesus.

Really, all of Jesus' supposed enthusiasts are doing nothing more than engaging in "buffet Christianity," loading up on the ideas that are to their taste and leaving the less appealing ones either for others or to rot.

The reason for this is that Christianity is predicated on fear of death. We all want to be immortal, but alas, it is not so. To salve this, Christian cult leaders came up with the concept of everlasting life alongside big daddy's righthand in paradise, an idea as easily laughable as someone getting to have at 70 virgins if they blow themselves up in an Israeli shopping mall but one that people go for as a coping mechanism. So they shape their religion to comport with their world view. On one hand, that is ultimately democratic, each man being his own pope. On the other, it tends to rob religion of what it sets out to do, set hard ethical and customary boundaries. In other words, all Christians are moral relativists and that undermines its rationale for being.

All of this, when taken together, undermines the need for religion. Those of you out there who would ask, "if there is no fear of God then wouldn't society tumble into anarchy?" Uh, no. Both Korea and Japan have about 10% of the crime rate that America does and yet they are non-religious countries (in Korea, it is about one-third Christians, but that plays almost no role in why there is little crime). Less than 1% of Japanese are Christians and showing outward displays of religiosity is considered socially gauche. It all has to do with child rearing and cultural norms. You parents have to do the job and not use the threat of some third party punishing your offspring for you. Relying on religion makes you look weak and ineffectual and the fairy tale nature of it undermines your credibility.

So be big boys and girls. Start getting real with your outlook and stop hoping that some mythical entity will make things turn out okay for you.

Holy Shit! Russians Go to Church to Recruit British and American Spies

Once again, these citadels of the superstitious bite civilization in the ass.

And it isn't like MI6, Britain's version of the CIA, probably isn't compromised now like it has repeatedly been over the last 100 years.