In his new foray into right wing victimology documentary filmmaking, Ben Stein turns his hand to the underexplored tale of how intelligent design proponents are discriminated against in academia. An intellectually honest endeavor, no doubt, but the filmmakers seem to have felt the need to cloak their intent from those who were asked to participate:
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and others have complained in various public statements that they were duped into participating in interviews for the film. They have said the filmmakers misrepresented the kind of movie they were making.
And according to James Boyce in the Huffington Post, the band the Killers likewise had the nature of the film … obfuscated … in order to obtain their consent. This is how it was described:
The film is a satirical documentary with an estimated running time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, exploring academic freedom in public schools and government institutions with actor, comedian, economist, Ben Stein as the spokesperson.
"Academic freedom?" Why do the wingnuts always feel compelled to wrap their agendas in liberal frames? One has to suspect that deep down they know their whole game is just a big flim-flam.
Anyway, deceiving someone about the content of a work with which you want to associate theirs is bad enough, but I guess they decided they had no hope of clearing John Lennon’s "Imagine" — so they didn’t even bother trying, and claimed First Amendment protection of "free speech."
Good luck with that.
Boyce speculates that the movie makers were hoping they’d get sued and it would elevate the profile of the movie. If that was the plan, I’d say they’re probably staring down the barrel of a rather considerable monetary settlement at the moment. Not only was the song used by professional people with adequate legal counsel who should have known better, they intentionally obfuscated the subject of the picture and potentially diminished the cornerstone of the entire Lennon estate by associating it with subject matter that the song’s author, a noted atheist, would have in all likelihood reviled.
Boyce describes the use:
Count slowly to 25 seconds and imagine looking at pictures of Nazi death camps and hearing John Lennon (evidently where they use the song in the movie.)
And as for all that free publicity they were hoping for? Well, before they go to all that trouble of nailing themselves to a public cross, they should know that the first commandment in the synch license bible is, "If thou are caught stealing, thy settlement shall include a multitude of zeros and lo shalt thou shuteth thy mouth about the entire thing."
Given their somewhat notable silence in the face of all this juicy publicity, I imagine it’s something they’re already discovering.
Related posts:
- Character Versus Brand: A Lesson in Framing
- Donna Edwards (and others) could learn a thing or two from Jerry Nadler
- This Dumb’s for You: What We Will and Won’t Learn from the Obama-Gates “Teachable Moment”
- Does Obama’s 2008 Campaign Have a Lesson for Saving Healthcare Reform?
- The Normal Violence of Capitalism





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Assholes.
thanks, Jane. I absolutely detest Ben Stein. Always have.
Ya gotta assume Yoko’s going to have something to say about this.
typo alert;
left out the k in know
Both about the copyright infringement and about the utter artistic incompatibility.
Stein an Moore should have a “film off”…
I know where I’ll put MY money…
Sicko is his best yet.
Is Stein a religious whacko? Is he jewish?
how do you spell
yyyeeyyyeyeyyeyeyyeyyeeeeyeeyeyyeyyeyeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeye
But he’s an actor, a comedian, AND an economist! (And his views on economics are no doubt the funniest acting he’s ever done.)
Like that.
here’s the thing, ignorance of the masses gives them power
and knowledge of creation deminishes the knowledge of the church
we have three forms for power zealots and all are acting as though they are on the same team, there is the government power, military power and the power of religion
these three in america are acting as one, they are all acting so the other can gain influence along with themselves
and so they want to teach magic in school in the place of science
Oh Yoko
Oh Yo-oh-ko
How incredibly stoopid they all are.
Stein’s voice and politics irritate me almost as much as LIEberliar’s.
The swarm of lawyers descending on Ben Stein’s place will make the plague of locusts that the Egyptians had to deal with look like nothing.
Oh Yoko
And being Lame Ben Stein, there have been some rather awful commercials starring him and advertising this movie on some of the cable networks.
Stein claims that the theory of evolution led to the halocaust…unusual point of view eh?
Stein was in the Nixon administration and was thought at one time to be “deep throat”. (DEEPER THAN DEEP- YOUR THROAT).
The fundies have been trotting out that particular lie for years now. Stein isn’t even original in his intellectually irresponsible hyperbole.
He was a Nixon speech writer, what do you expect?
Ya’ know I can see that.
This American Life did a show on Kid Logic last year with similar examples of perfectly well reasoned analysis which led to an utterly wrong conclusion.
Beware of his economic analysis as well.
McBush made only $750k in two years- far less than his dem opponents…
In terms of gooper social darwinism (which they believe in while eschewing the other kind), McBush is bound for extinction- clobbered by stronger genes in the captial grabbing jungle.
Wait a minute . . . Isn’t Ben a lawyer?
Per wiki:
[Click through for internal links and notes.]
First Yoo, and now this. Does anyone know if his law license is up to date and if he still is an active member of a state bar?
This movie is based on a Professor at Iowa State University. He has tried to get local press coverage. The fact remains that he was not denied tenure because of his Intelligent Design beliefs, rather it was his poor work that denied him tenure. He appealed throught several independent review boards and everyone stated the same thing; he was a mediocre professor and that is why he was essentially fired. Not because of his ID beliefs. Poor Right Wing nuts can’t catch a break can they?
Pepperdine Law School
Where fascism is just another cornerstone of the curriculum
I really liked him in Ferris Bueller’s day off though.
Thanks for this, Jane. Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers and his merry band of science lovers have been batting around Stein and the makers of this thing like a cat whacks around a catnip toy.
What’s really funny is that the makers of the film are trying a countersuit gambit. No kidding. That’s going to go over really well. As one of PZ’s commenters said: “Short version of the Premise media lawsuit: ‘LEEROOOOYYYY nnnJENNNNKINSSS!’”
This is so weird, I wonder if it is some kind of Andy Kaufman style ultra-dry black humor hoaxes. Why would the filmmakers want to use a very powerful, and obviously very non-theistic song in a film advocating intelligent design?
Sometimes I can be a little slow. Did I miss something here?
John McCain’s campaign is crying foul over what it characterizes as repeated distortions from Barack Obama, saying on Friday the Illinois senator is “recklessly dishonest.”
The most recent dustup comes after Obama criticized McCain earlier Friday for comments the Arizona senator made in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
“John McCain went on television and said that there has been quote “great progress economically over the last seven and a half years,” Obama told a Pennsylvania crowd. “John McCain thinks our economy has made great progress under George W. Bush. Now, how could somebody who has been traveling across this country, somebody who came to Erie, PA, say we’ve made great progress?”
Because they’re clueless and have no sense of irony?
AAAARRGHHH…. It’s enough to make me want to stick icepicks in my ears.
I missed something. What did Obama say that was “dishonest?”
In other words, they’re right-wingers.
The McCain campaign immediately took issue with the comment, noting the Arizona senator also said he knows families are facing “tremendous economic challenges.”
“American families are hurting and Barack Obama is being recklessly dishonest,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said. “It is clear that Barack Obama is intentionally twisting John McCain’s words completely out of context. Obama is guilty of deliberately distorting John McCain’s comments for pure political gain, which is exactly what Senator Obama was complaining about just yesterday.”
Looks like the producers of Expelled have their own problems with freedeom of thought and discussion:
The pharyngula blogger was not allowed to see a screening of the movie.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyn…..pelled.php
OT:
Seems like Gen. Myers is naming names in a new book by Phillipe Sands. Specifically names, Cheney, Yoo, Feith, Addington, Rumsfeld and Bybee. Who knows if he is trying to save his legacy or not….Inquiring minds want to know the truth about torture.
If he was a professor of biology at a decent school like Iowa State, simply holding beliefs as patently ridiculous as ID would be sufficient to deny him tenure. He should go to Bryan College in Tennessee or Pat Robertson’s Regent U, where they share the fantasy.
As far as evolution being used as a justification for the Holocaust, that canard has been tossed around a lot. There is no question that Hitler et Cie bought into the eugenics argument in a big way. On the other hand, breeding better people has little or nothing to do with the theory of evolution.
The problem probably compounds because in the first act of the 20th C war of nationalism the Germans were true believers in evolution, especially in the Social Darwinism interpretation. Some folks apparently can’t remember the difference between 1914 and 1940…
BC
1,816 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
You go woman…eeeee-DOGGIES, how you cut so deep and don’t even leave a mark??!!! You get another Norske Citizenship Award fer this post, Sister Jane…and John Lennon is smilin’ on ya right now!!!
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE BASTARDS WILL NOT GO QUIETLY!!!
Obama quoted McCain directly. Is there some “context” that makes what he quoted less clueless?
ooo, dat’s good
An intellectually honest endeavor, no doubt
Tough to start off an intellectually honest effort with a lie, I think. It’s also tough to think of any reason to believe proponents of such a crackpot theory could be intellectually honest.
I have to agree with Ben Stein. How can we accomplish our march back to the Middle Ages unless we embrace the pseudo-sciences?
How are they going to swiftboat Meyers? You know they will try.
“right wing victimology”
________
No shit. Ya gotta laugh at this putative Vast Majority of Believers who are SO thwarted at every turn by the tiny secular humanist conspiracy.
I think what John Lennon represented is more with this
Two words: rats and lice. Of course bypassing anything learned during the age of enlightenment won’t hurt either. It’ll be tough, but I think that No Child Left Behind is helping immensely.
This whole Ben Stein movie thing seems like an attempt by a neocon money Repug to give a tip of the hat to the religious whacko Repugs that they generally try to keep out of their social circle. He senses the divide that is widening between the two groups and has decided on his own to try to give them some respect. At the cost of scientific logic, of course. Maybe he will try to get his other Wall Street neocon friends to do the same. The religious repugs have been straying off the reservation lately.
Reads like total bullshit– Myers didn’t want to know what was being done within his own command…
Cowardice begins at the very top.
When someone figures out that Clusterfuck himself was responsible for Abu Ghraib and then threw a bunch of young soldiers to the wolves blamin the whole thing on them- there oughta be hell ta pay…
But hell don’t get paid anymore.
For anyone who hasn’t read it yet, check out PZ Myers’ hilarious recounting of the occasion a month or so ago when he, Dawkins and a few others sought to attend a sneak preview of Expelled at the Mall of America theater. They had applied to be put on the list of invitees over the internet and were accepted. When they got to the theater Myers was pulled aside and denied admission but they didn’t recognize Dawkins and let him in. This fiasco got quite a bit of MSM coverage.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyn…..pelled.php
I can see it now: Well he signed off on it.
Don’t forget leeches.
Big pharma will have to retool production facilities.
Ben Stein’s movie is to the world of science as Fox’s Half Hour News Hour was to comedy. I haven’t seen either, but I feel secure in leaping to that assumption.
Thought I remembered this guy. From Wikipedia:
Speechwriter for Nixon – there’s a job requiring intellectual honesty, eh?
Oh, it gets even better . . . Anyone want to guess what Ben taught at Pepperdine Law School?
From his official bio: “At Pepperdine, he has taught about libel law and about securities law and ethical issues . . .”
Ethics? Ethics? Ethics?
I do not think he knows what the word means.
Agreed. The author makes an important observation: “”[Myers] really had taken his eye off the ball … he didn’t ask too many questions, or inquire too deeply, and kept his distance from the decision-making process.”
That’s actually a really good idea, as is maggot therapy. Now, out and out bleeding people…well in the middle ages, you gotta get them bad humours out somewise. Me, I think I’m heavy on the bile, lately. That debate the other night didn’t help a bit.
OT
David Boren and Sam Nunn (!) have endorsed Obama.
Amazing.
In Stein’s defense, it was Pepperdine.
The Sheik is rockin’!
This is soooo Ben Stein! Satirical documentary! Just what the hell is that? When did Ben Stein become a satarist? I must be falling behind the times.
I wonder if they intentionally superimposed “Imagine” over footage of the Nazis as if to say, “This is what atheism gets you.”
I had no idea that Stein was a real lawyer. I just thought he played one on TV. :)
These days, the irony is so thick it’s hard to see through.
yep! He’s doing just fine.
Ding.
That was frickin’ hilarious. They kept out PZ, but didn’t recognize Dawkins — and then lied about it. Repeatedly. Even after their lies kept getting debunked.
Ben Stein’s entire career is a satire of himself, for which you gotta give him a bit of credit. Buehler? Buehler?
There are just so many ways to lie with this setup.
Then they’re as misinformed as folks here have alleged. Hitler was rraised Catholic, and often claimed to be Christian, or at least iinspired by Christian ideas.
The incompetent and unprofessional journalist who moderated the ABC debate seem to be quite proud of the little pile they dropped on the floor of public discourse the other night. Gibson is giddy. He considers it a great succes -big ratings an big buzz.
So, seriously, how do I get a popular revolt brewing.
I want a public indictment of the way the corporate media are producing the debates, and movement to scrap the system starting right now, before the November general electon.
I want an analysis and critique of the debates by independent experts in journalism and relevant fields. I want an indictment and bill of particulars and I want these fraudulent journalists publicly confronted and I want a widely publicized request for a public response from them. I want a public movement to strip the corporate media of the right to produce those debates. I want a new system for producing the debates.
And I want to start right now.
How do I get that started? I’m all like Mickey Rooney in that old move -“Gee whiz, kids, we can do our own debates, right here out in the barn!”
Even if the corporate media debate sponsorships cannot be blown up before the general electon, such an effort would raise public awareness and provide information to the public. At the very least it would generate a healthy skepticism about the information the corporate media is providing.
I’ve contacted ABC and their local affiliates to complain, and am going to contact my representative to complain this weekend.
I could not sign the Move-on petition. It seemed like a weak, wimpy and inadequate response. It seemed like impotent whining and I could not sign it.
So, what do I do?
Actually, leeches have important medical uses today. And maggots, used to debride non-healing wounds.
Just lookin at the new poll on Iraq….
Do you think the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued U.S. military casualties; OR, do you think the United States should withdraw its military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further U.S. military casualties, even if that means civil order is not restored there?” Options rotated
.
Keep Forces Withdraw
Forces Unsure
% % %
4/10-13/08
41 56 3
12/6-9/07
43 53 4
9/27-30/07
43 54 3
7/18-21/07
39 59 3
4/12-15/07
42 56 2
2/22-25/07
42 56 2
1/16-19/07
46 52 3
56% of the public wants forces withdrawn- but more people trust McBush to handle Iraq than either of the dems….
I don’t get it.
Republicans who misbehave are rarely expelled…
Air Force woosie
Stein et al will come to rue the day they fucked with a Lennon copyright. No one is more vigilant in protecting their copyrights and licensing than are these peeps.
Former Clinton Cabinet member, Robert Reich too!
May be weak but they now have over 200,000 signatures and will run an ad on the ABC web page.
Have to start somewhere.
Pepperdine is a wonderful school with top notch talent. Why, doesn’t Ken Starr teach there?
I get it. Panicky people don’t have time to stop watching American Idol and learn things.
Timing!
Well, when you start out to make an earnest political commentary, but the reviews start making fun of how stupid and utterly outrageous it is, then what can you do? You could call it satire, right?
Bob in HI
Peterr…fyi…there was a protest disrupting John Yoo’s class the day you posted your FDL article. Also I tried to access the Dean Edley/student forum to no avail. There are some LTE in the Daily Cal you might be interested.
I did stumble over some appalling support for Yoo in academia. Why can’t these people realize Yoo was acting as enabling lawyer not ivory tower publishing maniac?
Yoo was just following orders..
We can go back to the words of the galling elitist Margaret Carlson who “knew that Bush favored the powerful over the weak every time”….
But you know he served Dove Bars to the press so they went easy on him.
Marie Antionette aint got nothing on these plutocrats.
-G
I don’t think Myers got where he was by speaking his mind. It floors me that of all the generals who were around at the start of the war, not one resigned in protest. Some basically eschewed promotion, but that’s as far as it went. I realize that sort of thing isn’t done in the military, yet it still floors me somehow.
O/T – From the Bu’ush Department of Recursive Rhetorical Flatulence:
“…so long as I’m the President, my measure of success is victory and success.”
ABC News should be sued for fraud. They don’t do news. They do infotainment. That’s why Gibson is giddy. He doesn’t care that it was a pile. All he cares about is that it was a pile watched by a lot of people.
Dove bars are pretty damned good- especially the ones with almonds….guess we can understand.
Yes, but he didn’t need to enjoy it so much.
Can’t blame a guy for unusual hobbies eh?
The real question is why DOES Ken Starr teach at Pepperdine?
hmm, wonder how he got that job?
Yoo
“OK let ME shock the shit out of the guy’s dick this time—-YOWSA”
Ding.
I’m befuddled. I was noting how smug Gibson was during the previous debate and someone who knew him personally defended him and said what a nice guy he was. Really.
Now I revert back to my originally held position that Charlie Gibson’s a jerk.
They cool your mouth down after a down home McCainbeque at his little cabin with the guest house.
-G
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..guantanamo
The Guardian has quite an expose in today’s paper. Didn’t see much in WaPo or NYT. It’s front and center in the London papers. Why is General Myers exposing all he knows now? It’s amazing what happens as one gets older and you start to think about the atrocities you were party to and now, soon, you will meet your maker. Come clean! I was “hoodwinked”.
It’s amazing what you don’t know when you choose not to know and your excuse is ignorance. Myers choose to take his eye off the ball and not ask question. I’ve been through this movie before.
Myers will arrive at the pearly gates crying he was hoodwinked by others.
They saw what happened to Shinseki when he did speak his mind. FWIW, for all their “commendations and medals” the Flag Officers are still humans with all the negatives associated with that.
And peace time Flag Officers tend to be get along/go along types. AKA politicians.
O/T- Unelectability Update.
Actually, IIRC one did, although not publicly. He was a three-star Marine who headed one of the Joint Staff sections. Greg somebody, IIRC, DJC for Operations. Sorry I don’t off the top recall his surname.
No harm, no foul!
Unfortunately, in the case of Abu and Yoo, I can’t help myself.
200,000? Wow, that is good. I will reconsider.
But, why don’t they have a plan to strike back and DO something. A well publized effert to discredit not only ABC, but the whole corporate media debate production system is needed. Public disgrace of whole system of fraudulent journalism with wide public supprot with
a threat to take away big ad revenue and and destry their bogus method to generate credibility
would really hurt them.
If they had that, and went public big, who knows how many signatures they might get.
I meant to include this quote from your comment at #85:
I stand corrected. Well, sit corrected, actually. Can’t type well when I’m standing.
Is that true? Seems to me that some bailed- but I can’t remember for sure…some might as well have resigned- like the guy who contradicted Rummy on teevee and got drummed out of the service….
Lots of ex generals tried to make a statement during the 04 election- but they were never as loud or direct as the swiftboaters.
I don’t remember Hitler being an athiest. He was brought up Catholic and spent his young adult life as a Catholic until he joined an evangelical born-again type religion. He was inspired by Martin Luther and when he spoke to crowds he read from Martin Luther’s “The Jews and their Lies” (1543) in which Luther strongly urges the people to rid the earth of Jews.
The first thing you see on the Expelled website is:
Ben Stein
Expelled
& then below:
No Intelligence Allowed
Hysterically funny & self revealing.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan the toll for coalition soldiers nears 800 and the son of the top general from The Netherlands was killed this week…
Spring is here it appears the Taliban is getting the band back together and is rallying some of the old leaders from the anti-Russian resistance and reports that they may even be in negotiations with the Northern Alliance who were instrumental in the early US engagements in Afghanistan.
-G
The clock is ticking on McBush…
Most people don’t really know yet what his agenda is…he needs to keep the focus off that issue until after the gooper convention at which point he’ll try to make a giant change of course toward sanity–
But the damned war is goin south on him an the economy is suckin big wind.
It’s now clear that Clusterfuck’s economic miracle was a brief uptick between recessions…
The time to bear down on McBush is NOW.
He’s got reporters with him every single fuckin day…why don’t they ask him any fuckin questions?
That’s a great ###### question…
Obama needs to show us that he can take a piece out of McBush…
The Afghanis kicked the crap out of the Russians, who had land-based proximity. They may well kick the crap out of us. These are tough people not one whit impressed by us and our $400 billion military bluster.
Their mothers taught them to never talk with their mouths full.
Let’s cheer for more
reckless dishonestyhardhitting facts about McCain from Obama.I’m quite sure my post is correct. I have followed some dissident military websites for years, such as Soldiers for the Truth among others.
Voila!! With the help of Google I just recovered the name. Gregory Newbold. The link is to a Time piece about him 2 years ago. First thing that came up. I searched “gregory newbold” and “Marine”. He’s been quite active recently in various groups of ex flag officers against the war, but at the time he resigned, which was around the time of the original invasion, he said nothing publicly.
I think you can hold afghanistan as long as you pay enough people off- but it’s a LOT of people- and they aren’t as cheap as one might think- then you’ve gotta be careful about fuckin with the opium.
The women of Afghanistan consider the Northern Alliance even worse than the Taliban. My question is why would one group of warlord resisters be any different from another? Each want power and control and will do anthing to get it and keep it.
here’s a point everyone seems to miss and it’s a doozy;
reagan funded terrorism against the russians and is probably the reason bin laden exists in the first place
this “terrorism” to keep us out of afghanistan and the attack on september eleventh is a direct result of ronald reagan, the biggest tax increaser in american peacetime history
gotta love the man
I’m quite sure my post is correct.
Guess I need to quote, too. That’s what the link in my comment #103 is about. There’s a link from there to this NYT article about various generals who weren’t pleased with Rumsfeld for various reasons. One of them was Newbold.
Yeah. Read Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars.”
No mysteries here.
aaawwww … poor babies … turns out that every once in and a while, lying and cheating don’t get what you want … so unfair …
It’s becoming unfashionable to support the war in Iraq..wonder if McBush has noticed.
OT: Robert Reich has endorsed Obama.
Try this on goopers:
“Oh – you still support the war in Iraq? Oh dear! And you aren’t embarassed to say so? Oh my!”
I think that the battle between Obama and Hillary is all over unless Obama steps on his dick with both feet in public….The rhetoric can stop.
Stein’s religion is making money
Fixed it for ya!
;~P
How’s the weather and the water today?
Headlines on MSNBC
“Wall Street rallies
on solid earnings
Wall Street bounded higher Friday as results from companies like Citigroup Inc. and Google Inc. helped ease investor anxiety about the health of corporate profits. Full story
Citigroup posts big loss, to cut 9,000
Pump prices rise to new record
Somethin kinda funny bout that!
the context of the wurlitzer? In which whatever mcsame sez is straight talk and means whatever it needs to mean in the moment? Any other context than that?
and add;
“how many of your family have you lost in Iraq?…oh, nobody?…oh my, and you still aren’t embarrassed to say you support the war?…oh dear”
What, is she at the beach now???
I am sure it has a lot to do with which way the wind blows. In the early days of the Afghan war the US was seen as ascendant….Now the US has done screwed the pooch so the regional actors are like Iran and Turkey are starting to throw some weight around.
Early in the Afghan conflict Iran’s Mohammed Khatami worked with the US……
I even read where Musharraff is looking towards Russia to save his bacon.
Bush is handing off the a steaming turd at every turn.
-G
well, bubonic plague infested flea carrying rats would be a good first step …
:) Nola
Nothing will change a gooper’s mind faster than a course correction by the Lemming in front of him.
So the point is some of the Afghani’s that worked and allied themselves with the US are stepping away from the steaming turd that Bush has plum done.
-G
am gonna wait to read the entire article – as I am unfamiliar with military culture – but
under UCMJ, failure to report a war crime is a crime – unfortunately, Sec/Def was next up Myers chain of command – did he report it ? to whom ? why didn’t he come out publicly ?
Right now Chief Lemming Kristol is leading a new charge.
-G
nice weather, more water coming from upstream though … we gotta negotiate with minnesota to stop melting their snow into the mississippi I guess ;-)
Ben always liked the story bout Adam naming the animals– and how he told God that NONE of the animals were any fun to hang out with- forcing God to make a woman….
I always liked that story too.
Can’t say why they believe this film would influence anyone with thought processes, however thoughtless people frequently make comedy of things they can’t understand. Brainwashing is probably key to crazyland.
wow, I thought he was originally for Hillary? going to read…
Water as in the Lake huh?
Do you know what it means to miss new orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know Im not wrong… this feelings gettin stronger
The longer, I stay away
Miss them moss covered vines…the tall sugar pines
Where mockin birds used to sing
And Id like to see that lazy mississippi…hurryin into spring
The moonlight on the bayou…….a creole tune…. that fills the air
I dream… about magnolias in bloom……and Im wishin I was ther
“…so long as I’m the President, my measure of success is victory and success.”
yeah — I liked that. Although he might also have mentioned victory or success … I think they have a lot to do with success and victory too …
fucking idiot …
I prefer the term “magic”, pseudo-science gives the “theory” more credibility then it deserves
OT, I don’t thinks sooooo
1,816 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen rwcole and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
You have touched on somethin’ that has bothered me a whole bunch since 2004. With the exception of Shinseki, who was forced into retirement, most of those who spoke out were retired and/or were positioning for political appointment or election (see General Wesley Clark). It is clear that Rumsfeld and Cheney executed a pretty thorough purge and, short of demandin’ oaths of allegiance to the Chimpenfeuhrer, maneuvered those who remained into a position of complicity that locked ‘em in forever.
Now, what remains is a completely corrupted and largely incompetent General staff who will have some serious exposure if war crimes investigations are initiated. Further, if Obama is elected he will hafta move immediately to sack the entire command structure and replace ‘em top to bottom while we have troops in the field or risk a coup de main from inside the military and the now corrupted intelligence apparatus.
This is one of the reasons I believe that the corporate fascists don’t want McCrazy to win in November…they want a weakened Democrat to take political responsibility for the collapse of the economy and the war and then the fuckers will come back in 2010-12 with a new “1,000 year Reich”.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, ONE ELECTION AIN’T GUNNA GET RID OF THE BASTARDS!!
Bush on Iraq–
He thinks he’s the umpire…
“Is it a success or a failure?”
Bush: “It ain’t NOTHIN till I SAY what it is”
I always miss NO. Spent many good times there during college years – when Bourbon Street was filled with great music instead of drunks and beads.
75 outside, no skeeters, I gotta lose this blog!
Are the flood controls working OK?
I’m not sure he was in the Hillary camp the way Paul Krugman is. But, he was Secretary of Labor under W.J. Clinton, so it’s certainly newsworthy.
They live in their own world (unreal) just as they reside in their own gated communities..unwilling to lie down even though they have perished.
Yea, I haven’t drank in 15 years and it just doesn’t have the allure it once did. Buncha maroons!
actually i just live a couple of blocks from the mississippi which is closing in on flood stage and a few of our levees appear to be leaking… the ones along the notorious 17th street canal for one
There are always skeeters in Ga. !
If Obama’s elected, African Americans can legitimately say:
“Yeah- now that the country’s fucked up beyond any possibility of repair- you give the job to a black guy”
It’s not gonna be a great time to be president.
so far, but their sort’ve anxious about a few places … between here and Baton Rouge
“Academic freedom?” Why do the wingnuts always feel compelled to wrap their agendas in liberal frames? One has to suspect that deep down they know their whole game is just a big flim-flam.
not at all and they’re not “compelled”. Its a tactic, a very successful one that serves 2 purposes:
1)
Wouldn’t be a great time to be the first female President, either. Except that women are more used to cleaning up messes.
I don’t trust that fuckin Mississippi River…
I’m not ever movin far from interstate five.
Reich was also in the same Rhodes class as Bill, IIRC.
The biggest problem is we’re wrecking Lake Ponchatrain’s marine life right now. From today’s Picayune:
The opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway has washed more than fresh water into Lake Pontchartrain.
Bikers and walkers along the East Jefferson lakefront were warned Thursday to watch for snakes, alligators and other critters displaced from the spillway.
The opening has poured Mississippi River water into the brackish lake at a rate of about 60,000 to 70,000 cubic feet per second. The brown river water has already passed Laketown in Kenner and was nearing the Bonnabel boat launch in Metairie on Thursday, the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation said.
“Salinities are near zero at Laketown and half of what they were last week at Bonnabel,” said Carlton Dufrechou, the foundation’s executive director.
The fresh water is likely to continue pushing east along the south shore then curl north, the foundation said.
Yeah, but you’ll be under water in 20 years anyway…
;~P
Gotta get Boosch back down ta N’arlins ta fix the place..
(Operator error above)
“Academic freedom?” Why do the wingnuts always feel compelled to wrap their agendas in liberal frames? One has to suspect that deep down they know their whole game is just a big flim-flam.
not at all and they’re not “compelled”. Its a tactic, a very successful one that serves 2 purposes:
1) it cloaks their true purpose, which is usually the opposite of the intuitive understanding of the “liberal frame”
2) it sullies the “liberal frame” so it hasn’t the value that it should.
Maybe
But ah won’t be covered by bugs n snakes an every kind of creepy critter known ta man in the meantime.
From AP two hours ago.
Reich says the Illinois senator’s plans for reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding, and his approach to the nation’s housing crisis and financial market failures “are sounder than hers.”
Reich is a longtime friend of the Clintons.
Common Misspellings: leech therpy
^_^
Pentagon paid $1.7M to firms of polygamy bosses
The U.S. government paid more than $1.7 million in defense contracts over the last decade to companies owned by leaders of Warren Jeffs’ polygamous sect. The contracts, for airplane parts for the Air Force, continued even while Jeffs was on the FBI’s “Most-Wanted List.” The Pentagon stands by the deals. full story
Pentagon says that the airplane parts weren’t much good but “These guys give GREAT parties”
The flood control needed around NOLA just strikes me as so big that these sorts of changes will happen eventually no matter what. Do enough dredging, levee and channel building, and coastal reclamation, and things will be changed.
Unfortunately, the best that can be expected is that the changes are minimized. And on the subject of coastal reclamation, it would be nice if those barrier islands were built back up.
From google cache of Time magazine archive:
Obama’s plans for “reforming” Social Security sound a lot like Bush’s. I’m not surprised now that Reich has endorsed him.
Sam Nunn & Dave Boren have also endorsed Obama
apologies if prev posted
Ben Stein loves dogs.
That’s the only redeeming factor about him, as far as I know.
we’re trying to do that …if we could get some of the revenues off all the oil and natural gas they get out of us and run thru us, that’s what it would go to
Reich’s recent bookm Supercapitalism, is a very worthwhile read.
Bueller …. Bueller ….
Dogs are good…
Mine has decided that she won’t move today.
jane, i think they did things like this because they knew press would be a problem…..
there’s already been things going on, and the people involved chose to let it go rather than give them more ink.
here’s an article about the opening of the ’documentary’….dr. dawkins got in, dr. myers was barred from entry
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03…..ref=slogin
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http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
dr. myers posted stuff about it on this blog, but i don’t know how to ’mark’ a page on a certain date, so this is the main page. was around march 21, 22 if it’s something you really want to read.
right now though, there are a few posts about ’expelled’, about the music rip-off
and a contest-
”
”NCSE is sponsoring a contest!
Category: Creationism
You can join in, and many of you here are old pros at this exercise:
In promoting the creationist propaganda film Expelled, Ben Stein managed to stick his foot in his mouth over and over again, issuing what seemed to be a ceaseless stream of ignorant, offensive, and just plain daffy claims. Here’s your chance to set Ben straight. Send your favorite claim to setbenstraight@ncseweb.org along with a refutation. We’ll post the best for all the world to see. And five lucky entrants will receive a year’s subscription to Reports of the NCSE along with their choice of a book from NCSE’s shelf – including such useful books as Mark Isaak’s The Counter-Creationism Handbook, Eugenie C. Scott’s Evolution vs. Creationism, and the AAAS’s The Evolution Dialogues: Science, Christianity, and the Quest for Understanding. But you only have ten days, and a wealth of silliness to examine, so act now!
Read the more detailed rules. Note that you don’t actually have to see the movie to enter; Stein has opened his mouth at enough venues that there a multitude of opportunities available in the public domain.
========
and for those of you with strong stomachs and eye bleach there is an interesting photo of george w, made up of many little photos, won’t say here what the little photos are, but is a similar thing to the coulter darkblack photo.
like i said, spew alert.
Nah, they split after the freeze but come back with a vengance. These daytime hitters are nasty, Tigers I think they call em.
huh?
It’s gonna be shit no matter the color or gender of the new prez. Lot-o-shit to clean up or try to find a shovel big enough to clean up.
This mosquito has become a significant pest in many communities because it closely associates with humans (rather than living in wetlands), and typically flies and feeds in the daytime rather than at night or at dusk and dawn. It is a container and puddle breeder, needing only a few ounces of water to breed. It has a short flight range (less than 200 m), so breeding sites are likely to be close to where this mosquito is found[9].
damn skeeters!
When I lived in Texas- summer entertainment consisted of drinkin beer out by the bug zapper and applauding when we got a particularly juicy one.
When I moved back to civilization, I was shocked to remember that people didn’t HAVE bug zappers- didn’t even know what I was talkin bout when I mentioned em.
Indeed, the Spartans, and many others practiced it. Indeed so did the OT Jews…who prevented diseased people (for whatever reason…they were “unclean”) from mating with the healthy. And of course, only Jews could marry Jews..although this was tempered with later allowance for conversion…especially when it came to assimilating conquered peoples (read up about the acts committed by against the Amorites and Canaanites if one really thinks that the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing and genocide derives from “evolution”).
Indeed, Creationists now “accept” microevolution…which, if anything, would be the conceptual basis for eugenics. In fact, much of their “Science” is based on citing very ancient eugenic scientists that were just as much Lamarkian, as they were Darwinian. Most of those “facts” have been long disproved and discarded- some are over 100 years old and were used to make a case for Lamarkian “inheritance of acquired charcteristics” more than 100 years ago.
Creationists also assert absurdities like “evolution caused slavery” (as if those Southern Plantation owners were not “god-fearin’ Christians). The problem is that any idea that becomes strongly accepted within a culture will itself be transformed to support other ideas that may have little or nothing to do with the original formulation. Darwinian theory has nothing to do with “encouraging genocide” any more than the Sermon on the Mount does. But some Christians will use Jesus’ supposed pronouncements about returning with a fiery sword to support nuclear annihilation of non-believers.
These same folks also argue that Marxism is based on Darwin, even though, here too, Marxist doctrine long preceded Darwin’s publication. And during Stalin’s regime the Soviets actively suppressed Darwinian concepts…”disappearing” those that enunciated them to the gulags.
The Creationists like Ben Stein are actually much like the Soviet apparatchiks than they may think. Folks like him, and the Bush Administration, see Science as a malleable tool that can be trained for an agenda…rather than an endeavor to find out how the natural world actually works. Like Bush and Cheney, Stein believes that it’s permissible to “create reality” in furtherance of a goal. But scientists realize that facts frequently falsify our hypotheses. Not all realities are thus “equal”…not all “narratives” have co-equal value in describing the natural world. Ironically the only difference between the current Intelligent Design vogue for Creationists and post-modernism is that the former intend to attain “equal time” and then “destroy materialism” (and this isn’t the “materialism of wealth” which they fully endorse…but materialism as it relates to natural events having natural causation).
This is laid out in their “Wedge Document”- the agenda which leaked onto the Internet about five years ago. The goal was to bring back supernatural explanations to which leaders or parties succeed in political contests; which nations rise and fall; which peoples suffer calamities, and which will receive financial security and resource bounty. They would transform not only biological science, but all Science, as well as the telling of history, political science, economics, law, marriage, family, the military, education, etc. to be God-Based. Prophesy and the existance of “evil” would explain events…unhealthy? It’s because you are unfaithful and evil. Struck by a tsunami…it’s because you worshipped the wrong God. Disease is passed by a curse…sometimes down through history.
Blah…blah…blah.
Oh my God, that is hilarious!
Just for a moment, I read that as “Wedge Donut”. I must be hungry …
Anyway, there are enough rationalizations and craziness buttressing the Creationist view of the universe that it won’t take very long before you’ve come full circle.
mMmmm donuts
*homer drool*
If the image of the death camps came as Lennon sang “Imagine there’s no countries…and no religion, too”…you may be right! Problem is the SS wore insignia that said “God and Country”, the Lutheran Church had melded themselves Naziism into a “National Religion” during the 1930’s. Luther’s anti-Semitic writings on the sub-human Jews were revived as mandatory readings by theologians and the topic of many sermons. In Nazi German there was both elevated nationalism and hieghtened religion. Secularism was suppressed…especially since the secularists were increasingly discussing the commonalities of humans and eliminating the Spiritual content of history and myth.
@105 I write about this. For years it was common knowlege that Hitler hear voices from god, spoke to god and aligned himself with Christian groups. He read from “Jews and Their Lies” to the people. He followed it devotedly. Somewhere along the way the Cahristian Religions decided they didn’t like the unpopular association so began calling Hitler an anthiest, which he never was.
Another history rewrite rather than face the truth and what was the source of so much of his policies. I’m not willing to forget.
Think I’ll go down to the Ben Stein opening with a signs saying “Kicked Out of Teaching Med School – Wanted To Teach How To expel demons into Pigs”
“Jesus and Satan Saw It From The Mountaintop-The Earth is Flat!”
“Virgin Birth Is Scientifically PROVED-
Monitor Lizards!”
“Scientists-Keep Your Hands Off My Blastula!”
“Doesn’t Bin Laden Teach Evolution?”
Ben Stein was JUST on my television and guess what I did? I switched it as soon as that man’s face came into view. I no longer can watch the whackos.
The first clue that something wasn’t kosher was the involvement of Ben Stein, someone who today unconciously identifies with those responsible for the Holocaust. Oh the irony.
What was that awful TV show…”Win Ben Stein’s Money?” I will laugh my ass off when he gets a judgment that taps him for all of it.
But will it be the Pearly Gates he arrives at?