blacksundae

Man… to think I used to enjoy “Win Ben Stein’s Money.” Now Mr. Stein says things like this:

When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.

And this:

Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

The upshot of this cartoonishly anti-intellectual bullshit is that it makes it even harder for Intelligent Design proponents to pretend that their snake oil is genuine science, seeing as how the Discovery Institute has hitched itself to Stein’s Expelled bandwagon. Link!

The Raw Story:

Rep. Broun has introduced H.R. 5821, also known as the Military Honor and Decency Act, which would close what he calls a loophole that allows the continued distribution of pornography to soldiers, to their moral detriment, with the help of taxpayer funds.

“As a Marine, I am deeply concerned for the welfare of our troops and their mission,” Broun said on April 17. “Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad. Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit. The ‘Military Honor and Decency Act’ will right a bureaucratic–and moral–wrong.”

Let me get this straight: you can die for your country, but you can’t squeeze out a few rounds for your own benefit? Dick. Link! [via Don't Taze Me Bro]

The great pious Catholic Pope stands before this man, and what does he say? Does he mention that Jesus asked that we do to others as we would have them do to us? Does he remind him that they call their religious figurehead the “Prince of Peace”, and that he asked us to turn the other cheek when we were struck, or that he asked that we protect the poor and weak? Does he point out that the central event in their shared faith was the torture and execution of their prophet and god, and that the New Testament isn’t about emulating the heroic Romans?

No, of course not. An obscenely wealthy old man heading an organization that protects child abusers and advocates horrendous and ignorant social practices that harm the poor all around the world would look utterly hypocritical even trying to rebuke a war-monger and apologist for torture. So instead he stands there and tells him that they share common principles founded in fear of a nebulous god. Those are ‘principles’ I reject — they seem to be nothing but labile excuses for doing as you will to anyone who falls under your thumb.

There’s an evil tableau for you: the callous torturer stands up with blood on his hands and a lie in his teeth, while the priest draped in gilt reassures him of his righteousness. How often has that scene played out in history, I wonder?

Read on.

Wired:

The two remaining Democratic presidential candidates recently agreed to participate in the Compassion Forum, scheduled for April 13 at Messiah College in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Billed as a conversation on faith and values, the event will be broadcast by the Church Communication Network. It also comes five days before a proposed science debate that was canceled after the candidates refused to participate.

Emphasis mine. Why would they want to talk about, you know, issues that actually affect the future of life on this planet, when they could be yammering away about the same ancient lies that have been killing people for millennia.

Fuck. And this is the comparatively rational party. It’s enough to make you want to take the Lord’s name in vain. Read on.

UPDATE: Just came across this. Seemed appropriate.

I’m starting work on a script that involves the chimps that NASA shot into space in the early 1960’s (don’t ask) and I just started doing research. One Google search took me to this:

The first ‘chimponaut’, three-year-old Ham, rocketed into space on January 31, 1961. According to NASA’s archives, “Ham’s survival, despite a host of harrowing mischances…, raised the confidence of the astronauts and the capsule engineers alike.”

Three months later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space. NASA’s next mission was getting a capsule into orbit, and on November 29, 1961, five-year-old Enos was launched into space. Due to a malfunction inside the capsule, Enos was given an electric shock for every correct maneuver he made, a reward-punishment system that contradicted over a year of training.

Rather than alter his behavior, Enos endured the shocks and performed the flight tasks he knew were right. The flight took Enos on a two-orbit ride and landed him alive. This qualified the system for manned flight, and the following year John Glenn orbited the earth three times.

Holy cow! That’s one tough chimp. But then…

America took its astronaut heroes to heart with an enthusiasm that surprised the nation. In March 1962 four million people in New York City showered confetti on John Glenn and fellow astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom.

The Air Force chimpanzees were not so lucky. After showing the “right stuff,” the chimpanzees were reassigned to “hazardous mission environments.” In one such “environment,” the development of the seat belt, the chimpanzees were subjected to perilous levels of force while in restraints in deceleration sleds. By the 1970s the Air Force stopped using the chimpanzees and began leasing them out for biomedical research purposes.

Makes you feel ashamed to be human, doesn’t it? Read on.

Well-known pro-science blogger PZ Myers of Pharyngula tried to attend a screening of Intelligent Design Creationist documentary, Expelled. He didn’t make it in. His buddy did, though:

They singled me out and evicted me, but they didn’t notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn’t recognize him. My guest was …

Richard Dawkins.

He’s in the theater right now, watching their movie.

Tell me, are you laughing as hard as I am?

Read on.

Here’s Cracked’s list of Hollywood’s 6 Favorite Offensive Stereotypes.

Greenwald:

So, to recap: Dogs have to be kept on leashes where gays have sex otherwise the gays will molest the dogs. Barack Obama suffers from serious psychological maladies as a result of being black and having a white mother. While Obama’s mental illness deserves our collective sympathy, he can’t be President because he hates America.

A lot of black people think that HIV was created by whites to infect blacks, so Barack Obama very well might think so, too, and should be asked if he believes that. Islamic radicals pose a grave threat to the U.S. and to all of Our Cherished Freedoms and we must wage War on them forever, but they are right about how depraved, sickly, and excessively liberalized our culture is (and anyone who criticizes America, as Michelle Obama did, is guilty of hating it).

And these are the high-minded, deeply Serious observations one finds in just one 24 hour period in the most respectable right-wing outlet in America. This is to say nothing of what one finds peddled by the lower levels of the right-wing noise machine: Rush Limbaugh, Instapundit, Bill O’Reilly, Drudge, right-wing blogs and the like. But this really is exactly the political faction that has exerted dominant political power in this country for the last 15 years, and has exclusively shaped America’s behavior for the last eight years. And, as a result, we have exactly the country one would expect would be produced when people who have these beliefs are empowered.

These are not mischaracterizations by Greenwald. Read it.

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

Read on. [via Digg]

As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.

Read on. [via Hit & Runn]