I know, I know. As Ron said, it’s way too easy to pick on Pat. But you really gotta love this fucker.

Check this shit out, if you haven’t already heard…

This is kinda old, but whatever: Outrage at Vatican’s US hunt for gay seminarians

A Vatican investigation into evidence of homosexuality in Catholic seminaries in the US is alarming gay rights advocates but is pleasing conservatives, who are hoping that Pope Benedict will issue a ban on gay men as future priests. [...] “What really created the sexual abuse crisis was not poor formation of priests in the seminaries, but poor personnel management in the chanceries,” Father Himes said. “Now we are having an investigation of the seminaries, but I wonder when the Vatican and the American bishops will investigate their own chanceries.”

Note the fallacious reasoning here concerning correlations: “Yeah, we’ve had scandal about molestation, and it involved gays. So, it’s not that the concept of priesthood is stupid. We just keep ordaining faggots, and that needs to stop.” Might one wonder about the evidence that actually connects homosexuality to pedophilia? Nah.unsecured 75000 loans personal cash8 loan payday 12 payday paydayabout instant payday loan approvalaccredited home payment history loanfederal loans for medical additional schoolcash virginia loan advance paydaypayday maryland loan advancecredit fast loan adverse historyaid college loan financial studentoccupied non owner investor loans alabamahome ammoritization loan chart forloan and and 401k quitloan construction all-in-one versusloan reit mortgage trust accreditedminnesota sharks in to addresses loanpictures sloan idol sabrina americanloans grants free absolutely andloan with excel a amortizing Map

In the spirit of Ron’s last post, I read this today and got chills. Citizen media at its best. Who would think that someone who says they have never even written a letter to the editor could be so eloquent? A brilliant, concise summation of the moral dilemma that faces our nation. With Americans like this out there, I dare to hope.

Excerpt:

It’s not hard to aim for the lowest common denominator and that is exactly what the GOP has been doing. Rather than hatching a plan to make America a better place then convincing the public to support it, they have instead made a science of putting lipstick on a pig. They package greed and avarice and sell it as “sound market policy.” They bind up cruelty and fear and slap on a label marked “national security.” They take bigotry and hatred and push it out the door in a glossy package marked “traditional family values.” There are no new ideas; only our darkest human frailties made bland with a double scoop of political weasel-words and sexed up with Madison Ave. sizzle.

Empathy is a uniquely human skill. We must be taught to play fair, to share, to think of others, to give without expecting something in return. We all, liberals and conservatives alike, teach our kids these basic human ethics; and we define their maturity based on the degree to which they internalize them. Yet those in the GOP who presume to lead us make a mockery of human civilization by denigrating those very principles.

Fairness? Equality? Shared interest? Working for a common good? These are ridiculed by Republican operatives as passe, bleeding-heart Hippie-speak, or worse, as insane and treasonous. They cry about their self-made straw-man of a “Democratic nanny state” but infantilize the nation by pushing aside or punishing those who would dare to advance policies that reach beyond the instinctual primitive obsessions of “I, me, and mine.”

After fucking up royally in the Katrina tragedy, and having his approval numbers dip into the Nixonian realm below 40%, what does Xian-in-Chief do to fix things? Why, declares another National Day of Prayer, of course! Bush Leads Nation in Day of Prayer (The last time Bush declared a national day of prayer was four years ago, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.)

Which, of course, gives me an excuse to trot out one of my favorite bits from a respected former president — you know, the guy on the nickel. (I’ve noted it before; see the post What would Jefferson do?) In response to a request that he “proclaim a national thanksgiving day devoted to fasting (?) and prayer”, he responded:

I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. …But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting & prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the U.S. an authority over religious exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant too that this recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation the less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.

Can we dig up his DNA, clone him, and get him to run again?

Someone has made a chat bot that thinks it’s God.

The site calls it “repentance made easy.”

Here is the brief conversation I had with the Almighty:

Me: Hi, God
God: Hello there. What is your name?
Me: Sean
God: Nice to meet you, Sean.
Me: Nice to meet you, God
God: It’s nice meeting you too Sean.
Me: I want a choo choo train
God: You want only one?
Me: Can I have two?
God: Why do you want it?
Me: To kill people
God: I believe that killing anything is wrong.
Me: Then why do you kill people?
God: I do not kill.
Me: Is Lucifer real?
God: Maybe. Ask Paola if it is.
Me: Who is Paola?
God: She is a Spanish language chat robot based on AIML.
Me: Fuck you
God: Why are you so mean?
Me: I hate people
God: I honestly think you should sit down, take a stress pill,
and calmly think things over.
Me: Perform a miracle for me.
God: For you I will consider it.
Me: Do it now
God: Right now? Do you mean “It”?.
Me: Yes
God: I get it.
Me: Do it
God: Do you mean “It”?.
Me: Do you have sex?
God: Food is more important than sex.
Me: I hate food
God: I honestly think you should sit down, take a stress pill,
and calmly think things over.
Me: What is food?
God: Anything that nourishes or stimulates; whatever helps something to keep active or alive.
Me: God, you be crazy
God: OK I will try to be crazy.

For torturing kids, couple get 15 years

INVERNESS – A Citrus County couple accused of torturing and starving five children agreed Wednesday to 15-year prison sentences, then said the crimes occurred because they took their religious beliefs too far. [...] “We are sorry that the children are hurt,” John Dollar said. “We are firm believers in the God almighty … because of those principles we were led to do certain things. [...] “Those “things,” prosecutors say, included pulling out the children’s toenails with pliers, starving them and shocking them with a cattle prod. [...] Their 16-year-old boy weighed 59 pounds. Twin boys, age 14, weighed 36 and 38 pounds. The children were compared to prisoners of war because of the abuse they suffered and the traumatic effects that still haunt them.

Okay, I can’t help myself with the silly posts of late, but with all the crap going on in the world, humor is desperately needed at the moment.

I have been raving lately about how The Onion seems to be reclaiming its former greatness. I know, I sound like a broken record, but they hit a another homerun with their new issue. And of course there are several hilarious new articles that take aim at the Fundies:

Bush Nominates First-Trimester Fetus To Supreme Court

Report: More Kids Being Home-Churched

Sorry, this isn’t overtly about the Christers or anything… Unless you consider anything about Bush to be fair game… But this is gonna be a major haha in the coming days and I just had to share.

Reuters Photog Appears to Capture Bush at U.N. With ‘Bathroom Break’ Note

NEW YORK – In what seems destined to become one of the most joked about photos of the month, a well-known Reuters photographer today seems to have captured President George W. Bush scribbling a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a session at the United Nations. On the note is a message revolving around the need to take a “bathroom break.”

The photo, which naturally is already making the rounds of the Web, can be found here.

Or check out a closer view.