1?

2?

It seems like overnight Huckabee has replaced Guilliani on FOX’s political bumpersticker.

3?!

Blue Texas: I was shocked by the un-Intelligent Design action in Texas. Maybe as in Kansas, this will be the spark that turns the political system around.

Blue Texas: I was shocked by the un-Intelligent Design action in Texas.

Nothing here shocks me anymore. I’m actually more surprised that there wasn’t a flat-earther in that position to begin with.

Where is, uh, Highway 69?

Howdy Blue Texan!

Does Rude-y mean that our I-35 bridge collapse this summer was due to teh gay bridge members?

It seems like overnight Huckabee has replaced Guilliani on FOX’s political bumpersticker.

Could you explain?

Anyone getting a sense of the MSM media coverage of Giuliani tryst fund/SOC*? A quick and dirty search of Lexis-Nexis showed NYC papers and AP only. I ask because if Huckabee is replacing Guiliani, there must be some really good reason for it–meaning bad for Giuliani

*Sox on the city

BTW, preview just does not work, it is the same text as typed.

Poll finds more Americans believe in devil than Darwin

link

Oops, Highway 69 is distressingly close to Highway 35.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_69

WE GOTTA GET OUTRAGED ABOUT THIS!!! MAKE THEM REMOVE THAT ROAD NAME/NUMBER “69″!!!

(sniP

I keep hearing from people that criticizing religion is over-generalizing, that we shouldn’t judge it by the minority of fundamentalist loons who get all the attention in the media, or by those few, rare exploiters who represent religious beliefs poorly. I am sick of it. Ask people directly whether they believe literally in a damnable stupid doctrine like hell, and they don’t waffle, they don’t pose like pedants and maunder on about metaphysics and socioeconomic influences and tradition, the majority simply say “yes”. This is the reality. The majority of Americans do not think, they just accept this nonsense at face value, and we have to deal with stupidity on a national scale.

(snip)

Pharyngula

I ask because if Huckabee is replacing Guiliani, there must be some really good reason for it–meaning bad for Giuliani.

I think it’s really this simple: which candidate of the field most resembles George W. Bush? Huckabee.

Agghhh!!!!!

There was even a Highway 666!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_491

Yea. A purity siege. That’ll do it.

When I use Preview, I get the draft comment directly above the comment box, slightly greyed out. It is under the Leave Your Response line

I kept hearing Highway to Hell as I watched the video….

Agghhh!!!!!

There was even a Highway 666!!!

I once checked into a motel in nowhere Tenn…The clerk wanted my phone # which begins with 666..he freaked out. These people really live in a different reality.

Sounds like Highway 35 could use a bit of work by the Freeway Blogger.

http://www.freewayblogger.com/

Ah!! Rain gone..sun out..bike time..

Gotta love it. These peeps’ religion makes them terrified of everything!.

I-35. I can speak with authority since it is only three blocks away. I am disappointed since I expected coverage of the “Trans Texas Corridor”. I think Pat Robertson is trying to copy the Hippies Burning Man, with Fundies on Fire.

(Juan Cole and the Napoleon, most excellent!)

WE GOTTA GET OUTRAGED ABOUT THIS!!! MAKE THEM REMOVE THAT ROAD NAME/NUMBER “69″!!!

Or really, really raise the toll…

(Juan Cole and the Napoleon, most excellent!)

A tough act to follow for sure.

Left a link for you re: Alexandria library burning @ the bottom of Prof. Cole’s thread.

I get that argument from my wingnut relatives — they don’t believe in evolution because they’ve heard somewhere it’s just a “theory.” Yeah and gravity’s a theory too I remind them but I wouldn’t bet the farm against it.

And then the angels start dancing on the head of some pin…

4.7 billion year random walk begun by microbes. Elegant.

Could somebody bring us up to speed on the Rudy/I-35 thing. No link, and I must’ve missed the story. Thanks!

— they don’t believe in evolution because they’ve heard somewhere it’s just a “theory.”

Popularized, of course, by atheist scientists.

Could somebody bring us up to speed on the Rudy/I-35 thing. No link, and I must’ve missed the story. Thanks!

Video explains I-35. Rudy was endorsed by Robertson.

Oh, yeah, and Huckabee says that because “science changes every 20 years” and “God” doesn’t, he’ll stick with “God” where things are at odds.

Great Presidential attribute.

Heaven is also a theory, as are tides, gravity. Grrr

Holy crap the blog done exploded. Oh, and Republicans are insane. One’s news, the other isn’t…

And these dimwits are outraged when told that other nations have higher student performance than the US (particularly the states in thrall of the Christianist Jihadists) Home schooling is a necessary addition to public schooling in the science curriculum.

Hee, hee, hee….Kristol is beginning to not heart Ghouliani anymore…boo, hoo….

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/….._1202.html

Remember the celebrated fundie Vickie Frost case? This pathetic NC woman sued to have the taxpayers pay for her kids to go to a Christian madrassa so they woiuldn’t have to be exposed to those terrible secular ideas.

She lost, of course, but not before causing millions to be wasted on her asinine case.

I have driven on I-35.

God had nothing to do with it.

hehe.. to my recollection the 666 thing is actually biblically debateable.. the actual beast’s number may have been 616, and 666 was just a mistranslation. Gosh.. what would the wingnuts do if the whole basis of their numerical wingnuttia was based on a 16th century transcription error?

I think religion is a transcript error. *g

In response to marshen @ 3

It seems like overnight Huckabee has replaced Guilliani on FOX’s political bumpersticker.

Could you explain?

Anyone getting a sense of the MSM media coverage of Giuliani tryst fund/SOC*? A quick and dirty search of Lexis-Nexis showed NYC papers and AP only. I ask because if Huckabee is replacing Guiliani, there must be some really good reason for it–meaning bad for Giuliani

*Sox on the city

BTW, preview just does not work, it is the same text as typed.

Try this link, it should be all the explanation you need.

watching the video. Purity Sieges?????? who the *(&*&Q@@ are these people?

Good grief. These poor people…they are delusional. The one woman is supposed to be a “prophetic intercessor”…they are on a “purity siege”…

They are so caught up in a cult…really horrifying.

The problem with these cultists is that if you were to say to them, for example, that there were no “highways” when the bible was written, they just say that it doesn’t matter, because God knew that later, when the prophesies were to come to fruition, there would be. It is hopeless, because they can twist any meaning about anything, and call it truth. Robertson and his ilk are some of the most dangerous men in the world.

If you haven’t read Matt Taibi on Huckabee in Rolling Stone it’s certainly worth a peek:

Huckabee the Nut Job

I hope that “name the linky” thing worked…

who the *(&*&Q@@ are these people?

Unfortunately, a pretty sizable chunk of America, which gives Huckabee hope.

who the *(&*&Q@@ are these people?

Half of the people in my office. You haven’t lived until you’ve worked with them… Makes for slow, steady drinking…

You can’t win an argument with people who hate and fear rationality. I once had a “Christian” student in my Critical Thinking class at UNLV who dropped because I merely brought up Gould’s “Drunkard’s Walk” “theory”/analogy of evolution as an example of a parsimonious scientific argument.

Those folk worship a very strange god.

A friend I grew up with got into drugs and mayhem back in the 60’s…she inherited $1 million when her dad suddenly died, and she was “rescued” by a worldwide Christian cult leader. He and his minions, still to this day, go around performing exorcisms in places like Tonga, which is where they took her. She believed he was this Holy Spirit directed prophet, and somehow gave him all of her inheritance. In about 1995, a court in the U.S., ruled in her favor when she sued him to get it back. I can’t recall the guys name offhand, but it was the same kind of rhetoric these people are spewing on the video. She showed up at my apartment in NY in the early 90’s, and decided to exorcise my apartment, because I had decorations in my house that had faces, which she determined was idolatry….Fortunately, she came to her senses and ended up suing the jerk, but the power of this kind of mind control is virtually criminal.

‘k.. I live next to this really peppy duo of fundies. I disagree with ‘em on just about everything (but they haven’t given up on me yet, I’m afraid), bt despite their wingnuttyness they seem to be basically intelligent people. They can certainly debate catchechism intelligently… at least he can, since I’m not precisely sure she’s really allowed to have opinions of her own. In any case, they would never go for this I-35 cr*p I think.

They like the I-35 thing, because it gives them something concrete (highway) to focus their confusion on rather than all the intangibles they are constantly being bombarded with. It is brainwashing, followed by submission, followed by redirection of their thinking, followed by acting on the redirection of their thinking. It is a cult. It is sad, and it is quite prevalent…so-called pastors are preying on these people all over the country, all the time.

‘course there is flip side to al of this wingnuttia. My dad was actually complaining about Christianist fundies yesterday. He couldn’t believe that they were ’so brainwashed” that they couldn’t see that only Rudy can protect this great nation from those other, furrin’ fundies.. or the danger to America is their lack of enthusiasm for the announted-one might lead us into the most monstrous of all scenarios: a Hillary presidency.

I live about 10 miles from I-35, but I’m an RC. So I don’t think I’m supposed to go siege me some purity.

Huckabee’s dangerous because he comes across as “normal” and reasonable on the surface, until you realize that he says he talks to God, to say nothing of some of his other dizzy ideas/beliefs.

doesn’t shrub claim he talks to whatever god he claims to believe in?

Huckabee’s dangerous because he comes across as “normal” and reasonable on the surface, until you realize that he says he talks to God, to say nothing of some of his other dizzy ideas/beliefs.

There is also the matter of his financial corruption. I wish I could remember where I read this the other day, but it was pretty damning. Every bit as much sense of entitlement as Guiliani.

re: the video
It’s mass hysteria, mass delusions, maybe some kind of fungus in the sacramental whine.

…turning us into Girly Men -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..#038;eurl=

Wow.

doesn’t shrub claim he talks to whatever god he claims to believe in?

Yeah. He also says that God talks back to him and tells him what to do. [shudder] I gotta tell you, if God told him to invade Iraq, as he claims, I’m going to have to have a LONG talk with God after I shuffle off this mortal coil… Oh yeah, and about the size of avocado pits too. Another bad idea…

Blue Texan, I’ve got it up at my place as well after seeing it on InThePinkTX – soooooo glad you posted so a bigger audience can see the batshit.

This is the important quote:

“All this book-keeping stuff aside, this flap right now is all about having an extra-marital affair fairly recently,” Barnes said. “In Rudy Giuliani’s case, I think that’s what comes through to people and not all the questions about an American Express card and all that stuff. It’s about that affair.”

Pay no attention to the disappearing tax payer money, move along. Nothing to see here. And don’t you dare look at what the Bush administration is spending either.

Kristol is such a wanker.

Oh, boy…

Religious furor over ‘The Golden Compass’

Earlier this fall, many Catholics began to receive e-mail messages warning of the “agenda” behind a “new Children’s movie out in December called ‘The Golden Compass.’ ” The film, these e-mails claimed, was intended to serve as bait for the novel on which it is based, the first in a fantasy trilogy collectively titled “His Dark Materials.” Kids intrigued by the film, the e-mails went on, would be tempted to read the trilogy and might thereby fall into the ideological clutches of its author, Philip Pullman, who seeks nothing less than “to bash Christianity and promote atheism.”

The messages had the breathless, marginally literate quality of rumors about spider eggs in bubble gum. Perhaps that’s why the controversy promptly earned itself a page at http://www.snopes.com, that venerable Internet clearing house for urban legends. Snopes lists this particular rumor as “true,” presumably because the e-mails use a few genuine, if cherry-picked, quotations from Pullman’s writings and press interviews. But that doesn’t keep the whole thing from being fundamentally ridiculous.

Most preposterous, of course, is the idea that anyone would make a $180-million movie with the purpose of tricking children into reading a seditious book. What self-respecting kid ever needed that much encouragement to ferret out whatever the adults are trying to hide?

Also — whoops! — no one’s been hiding “His Dark Materials.” To date, 15 million copies of Pullman’s books have been sold worldwide. “The Golden Compass” won not only the 1995 Carnegie Medal, a prize awarded by British children’s librarians, but also the “Carnegie of Carnegies,” as the public’s favorite book in the prize’s 70-year history. The final novel in the trilogy, “The Amber Spyglass,” won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 2001, the first children’s book ever to do so. It’s safe to say that copies of the trilogy reside in every decent children’s library in the nation. If there is indeed a “deceitful stealth campaign” afoot to lure children to Pullman’s books — as William Donohue, spokesman for the Catholic League, insists — it’s remarkably short on stealth.

What’s really astonishing, and telling, is how long it’s taken America’s religious fear-mongers to notice Pullman. He’s never hidden his skepticism about God or his rejection of organized religion. A quick Internet search turns up a 2004 essay he wrote deploring “theocracies” for a newspaper in his native Britain, and his own Web site states that he thinks it “perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it.” “His Dark Materials” features a sympathetic character, an ex-nun, who describes Christianity as “a very powerful and convincing mistake,” while “The Amber Spyglass” concludes with the two child heroes participating in the dissolution of “the Authority,” a senile, pretender God who has falsely passed himself off as the creator of the universe …

http://www.latimes.com/feature…..ome-center

:)

If there was a god she would tell all these people that religions is nonsense.

What irks me is how much we are paying for the churches and religious program of these wingnuts. If they weren’t on the public “dole” and had to work for a living, maybe they would get a reality check. My kid’s high school plays a fundie school in Basketball, and not only were their bible slogans all over the gym walls, but the cheerleaders performed various “prayer” gestures at key points in the game. The fundies won, alas, but they had to cheat to do it. They used their own refs, one of whom was the father of the coach.

This group seems to have bought the idea that in religion and other things the ends justify the means.

BobbyG, I think they said the same about the Harry Potter books

What interests me is the way that these folks can make their God smaller upon a second’s notice. When desirable, their God is all-powerful. Omnipotent, Omniscient. Created everything, and can cause, even now, huge changes by way of miracle.

This God is incapable of making such a mistake such as the creation of a gay person, He’s too big for that – but too small to *love* the gay person created. It’s obviously the humans’ fault. Their God is very stretchy, and a bit of an ass-hole that way.

And when this omnipotent, omniscient God wants to put a new soul upon the earth, He becomes *so* small that His entire Grand Plan can be thwarted by a scared 15 year old girl having an abortion. Again, Stretchy-God gets made very small. And at that point, humans must rush in – and save His Plan by picketing, “sieging” or blowing up ‘abortion clinics’. Because it’s the human Christian’s duty to help out their God, whose Plan they know, apparently. But He obviously needs their help, right? So is He omnipotent or not? I’d like an answer.

Science? Same thing. Life begins at conception – it’s been proven, ya know. As for the rest of science, it’s the province of the damned.

Christians get to have it both ways, or perhaps – *all* ways. I think they should be held to one standard or another. Is your God all-power and all-knowing, or is He a bit incompetent, and needs your help? If God wants a soul put on earth, can He or can He not transfer that soul from an aborted body, in a nanosecond, to another body somewhere else – or maybe bring that soul back, contained in a different body, at His leisure?

I happen to believe in a strong God, and reincarnation – makes sense to me. I also believe that I should be able to, when encountering someone who tries to simultaneously tell me that God is omnipotent and omniscient, AND that abortion is wrong, that I should be able to look that person in the eye and call him or her a fraud.

You wanna know who has standing to oppose abortions? Atheists. If I believed that there was no God, and that when you die you die, and that’s the end of the story, *I’d* be picketing ‘abortion clinics’.

So show me an anti-abortion atheist, and I’ll have sympathy for that person’s views.

I’ll apologize in advance to those I’ve offended here.

Yeah, sinister secular humanist plots at every turn. Poor Victimized Christians, endlessly beset.

Just reinforces my contention that they screwed up when they continued toallow white folks born below the masion dixion line to vote after the War of Rebelion! Texas, what a mental wasteland!By the way…I HATE the new look, I mean H-A-T-E it. UGLY! But I’ll keep comin back.
P.S. spellcheck dosen’t work

Heaven is NOT a theory. It’s a fantasy.

jayt,

exactly. I think the real issue here is a failure of education…. A small, petty god for small, petty minds, who gets big and omnipotent only when there’s libruls in need of smiting.

Glad someone left the back gate open so I could sneak in to the new joint.
Going to take a while for me to find a new corner to lean in I see.

The new look is OK, but the functionality is reduced. If it ain’t broke, don’t “fix” it.

to clarify, I consider myself to be an observant mainline protestant Christian. What these people advocate simply isn’t Christianity. It just isn’t.

Its probably the same folks who wanted Barney removed from school and public libraries. After all Barney is “of the devil” because he encourages kids to use their imagination… and we all know thats “of the devil.”

That’s a scary video. “I believe we’re moving angels and demons.” Excuse me?

It’s interesting that these fundy churches encourage their members to believe they have control over so much. They’re getting screwed at work and their mortgage was a scam, but pray over here, there’s some gay people.

Weird.

Jayt, you didn’t offend me, but I really would rather not be lumped in with nutjobs who happen to call themselves Christians. Me, I’m an Episcopalian which certainly makes me a Christian but my core beliefs have very little in common with the fundies’. Most of them would probably say I belong to a cult because I’m a high church Anglican, or as some of us call ourselves, a “soft shell Catholic.”

Oh, and “HI” to bustedknuckles. We’re all still stubbing our toes finding our way around too!

Pre-adolescent anthropomorphic wishful thinking fallacy silliness, all of this evangelizing Taliban-wannabee bullshit.

FYI, Prof. Cole is back downstairs answering questions…

Jayt, you didn’t offend me, but I really would rather not be lumped in with nutjobs who happen to call themselves Christians.

I certainly meant to make such a distinction – got to typing a little too fast, I guess.

P.S. I miss the Edit function.

P

re-adolescent anthropomorphic wishful thinking fallacy silliness, all of this evangelizing Taliban-wannabee bullshit.

Is it okay with you if I steal that??? It’s great! I’m surrounded by Talibangelicals down here…

Old Highway 666. Before they changed the name we stole a sign driving from Monticello, Utah to Cortez, Colorado. Great country down there…

CNN:

Huckabee takes lead in Iowa in latest poll

The Ghouliani upshot, in part, I would think.

P.S. I miss the Edit function.

Oh, don’t we all! And preview… [sniffle, sigh]

Absomundo, go right ahead.

Ecahn: Meant that in part tongue-in-cheek against the idea of a “knowable” afterlife.

I just watched the video. That stuff REALLY creeps me out. I use avoidance as a coping technique & having not avoided, I can not cope.

WaPo:

Romney Plans Speech on His Mormon Faith

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) has decided to give a speech directly addressing his Mormon faith, much as then-candidate John F. Kennedy did about his Catholic faith before the 1960 election…

Holy Boxers or Holy Briefs, that’s what I wanna hear about.

what’s being presented here, by these lunatics, is a form of pre-Aquinas/perhaps pre-Aristotlelian Christianity (which is impossible ’cause Aristotle pre-dated Christianity).. Christianity somehow stripped of its foundation in western rationality. As such, it has much more in common with pagan traditions where secret rituals and drugs were used to achieve moments of ecstatic/emotional/deeply personal revelation/instant gratification of a mythic/supernatural reality. Just watch the expression on the woman’s face, in the video. It’s kind of like Christianity+magic, for the LSD/crack generation. This system of belief has more in common with wicca than it does with Christianity, in any classical definition of that term. As an Episcopalian, I find the whole thing to be deeply revolting.

Jane is upstairs and I hope so this link works this time.

Rats.

Hear hear jayt.

Holy Boxers or Holy Briefs, that’s what I wanna hear about.

707! The idea that the MittBot 2.0 wears Holy Mormon Underwear is indescribably creepy to me…

When it comes to the concept of heaven, I’d be very careful about how you talk about it, whether you believe in it or not.

My favorite religious event in the past year* is the infallible Pope’s about face on limbo. For those who are not R.C. & not familiar, limbo is where R.C.s believe you go if you were not baptized to remove Original Sin, but have committed no other sins. IIRC, limbo is just like heaven except that you never get to see the face of God. Unlike purgatory, where you can eventually graduate into heaven, you’re stuck in limbo forever.

The Pope has now decided that unbapitzed nonsinners go directly to heaven, not passing Go nor collecting $200. Africa’s the reason. Seems like prosteltizing efforts hit a snag there on account of not having enough priests to baptize infants and their parents being put off by the notion that innocent little babies don’t go to heaven if they die. So realpolitk to the rescue. After a very long time (since St. Augustine?) of limbo being the mainstream R.C. doctrine, poof, no more.

*Hypocrisy is not unique to religion or democracy, it’s just heavily concentrated there.

There’s reasons even as a kid i looked at those shows with total skepticism. It just didn’t ring true, and now it’s more horrifying as an adult. I can’t believe that some people are so insecure in their own sense of self to let themselves be taken in by these predators. *shudders* It makes me glad of my family’s mixture of anglican and a my dad’s quiet methodist ways.

The dissonance of all of it all is scary, and makes me angry all at once.

speaking about boxers.. that’s what these people are. Boxers. Like the utterly irrational Chinese “Righteous and Harmonious Society Movement” in the 19th century. Let’s hope that when they finally do try to stage their coup, they’ll have the same confidence in their faith that led the boxers to commit suicide by throwing themselves into the path of police cannon-fire.

Ever since Huckabee came out of the CNN debate with a bump and seems to be edging up in Iowa polls, Huckabee was a guest on every hourly Fox cable show for days after the debate. As the Rudy/Judy mini-scandal about how her security was paid for while she was still his mistress was brewing, Fox seemed to turn toward Huckabee and away from Rudy.

Fox just reported Mitt Romney will give his “Mormon” speech thursday at the Bush library. Aparrently his advisors feel this is the time.

Limbo has never been an official part of RCC doctrine. It was a way to harmonize “You have to be Baptized to go to HEaven” with “God will not send the innocent to Hell”. Various and sundry people have held hte belief and it is a form of “lay doctrine”, in that it is generally accepted as “fact” by many Catholics, but it has never been given an offical role in Church teachings. What Benedict did was jettison a belief that doesn’t actually appear in Church doctrine, but that many treated as such; all he did was clear the RCC cookie cache. I see it as weeding out the “divergent ideas” before the Purge of Paleo-Nazi Pope can begin in ernest

Savannah:

I was just desperately hoping people in GA. they were a little more advanced in their thinking, than here in NC. You might as well talk to a 6″ thick brick wall here. It’s all about the hereafter, the rapture, and all the nonsense that goes with it. They are captive zombies for TV preachers whom hustle them out of money monthly for their hate-filled tapes.

Yes, they will go like sheep to slaughter election day and vote us in another republican. They think this is a justified god-driven holy war, and they are glad Bush is in charge because he is a born-Again Christian.

These people do not follow public policies, it’s whatever a nother ignorant church member tells them. It does not matter here, they will vote in the GOP if they have to eat dirt for the next eight years.

Wish I could cheer you, but it’s gloomy down here in Mayberry RFD.

boy, and i thought i invented the “i heart huckabee” joke!