bjkeefe

Monday, May 11, 2009

Of Course This Must Be Blogged

By now, you've probably heard about John Gechter, a 22-year-old senior at a Christian college who was suspended when it came to the attention of the school's administration that his self-designed off-campus work-study program included appearing in several porn films. GAY PORN, no less.

Fundies in their undies stories never get old, for me at least. Part of it is just small-minded schadenfreude, of course, but another part is a belief that every additional beam of sunlight shone on the implicit hypocrisy helps hasten the day when the whole religious fundamentalist edifice that's built on being pathologically uptight about sex will come crumbling down and everyone can just breathe normally for once.

Since I don't know anything about Gechter besides what I've read on the Internet (e.g.), I bear him little animus. Maybe there's the idle thought that it's good to put his name in lights now, lest he grow up to be yet another tiresome Christianist do-as-I-preach-not-as-I-do moralizer (cf. Haggard, Ted; Craig, Larry; Bakker, Jim; Gannon, Jeff; et al), but mostly? For all I know, this is just another example of a person growing out of the constraints of his upbringing -- a good and healthy thing, and the primary reason everyone who possibly can should go away to college.

His school is entitled to hold him to their own rules, since it appears they're a private institution and this is a free country, but they nonetheless deserve to be badgered by the rest of us for the twistedness of their standards, not to mention their hypocrisy. From their About page:

By charter, the doors of the College were open to qualified students "without regard to religious test or belief." The founders of Grove City College, consciously avoiding narrow sectarianism, held a vision of Christian society transcending denomination, creeds, and confessions. They were committed to the advancement of free enterprise, civil and religious liberty …

I guess they would say they "free enterprise" is not really so free after all, and they have no patience for uncivil liberties? Or maybe they're just so blinkered that they can't realize their rules of student conduct -- whereby someone who has sex that's not of the married man and woman and only for the purposes of procreation variety is considered in violation -- are, in fact, a religious test. How a man chooses to conduct himself off-campus is none of their affair; Gechter is an adult and he did nothing illegal. For that matter, he even performed under a pseudonym, which is a further reason for the school not to go bouncing off the walls at the thought of their Image Being Sullied. And what about the little fink who just happened to come across Gechter's work and tattled? Did he get his thirty pieces of silver from you?

But enough of my moralizing. You'll like Gawker's take on it better. Snark is really the best way to handle these things.

The Dumbness Will Continue Until The Internet Is Unplugged

Did you know Barack Obama is a racist for making a joke about Michael Steele?

That's why Thers calls them the Ass Toot Bloggers.

What Could Be Dumber ...

... than Jonah Goldberg complaining (prev. post) about the White House Correspondents' Dinner?

How about the RedState Trike Force, deciding that, phew, the new Star Trek movie epitomizes conservative principles?

Srsly.

See TBogg for a case study.

Even when these clowns leave the basement, they never leave the basement.

As Bad As It Gets

How far have wingnut fortunes fallen? The Pantload, among other gripes about the White House Correspondents' Dinner and all the ~~funny~~ MEAN things that were said about his heroes, whines:

Also, neither The Weekly Standard nor NR [National Review] had a reception this year, which was too bad.

Fear not, however. The Wingnut Welfare Gravy Train has not yet ground to a halt. Remember that our Doughy continues to be paid handsomely to write. Even sentences like this:

Biting humor is fine at events like this, so long as it's humorous.

Tautologies-Я-Us!

(h/t: Sadly, No!)

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Headline of the Day

Trekkies bash new film as ‘fun, watchable’

Full unyun video coverage over at Phil Plait's place.

Wanda Sykes at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Ah, well. It's fashionable to piss and moan about the White House Correspondents' Dinner. On the other hand, it does have its upsides.

Part 1:

(alt. video link)

Part 2:

(alt. video link)

(h/t: aimai)

Saturday, May 09, 2009

From now on ...

... anyone who tries to make something out of "Dijongate" gets called a MUS-TARD.

Yeah, you know who I'm talking about.

Heads-up to Bloglines Users

I don't know if you've tried checking your feeds lately, but Bloglines was down for most of today, Saturday 9 May 2009. It just came back up. I'd recommend going in and exporting your feeds as an OPML file (link near the bottom of the left pane). This file can be used to import your feeds into another feed reader, should you decide you have to make a switch.

And I say "just in case" because of a post by Rogers Cadenhead, which presents reasons to be worried about the continued existence of Bloglines. I don't know Rogers, and this is just one source, so take it for it's worth, but it seems credible and has some supporting links. It certainly is true that Bloglines was down for the better part of today, and it obviously won't hurt to export your subscriptions list.

Another Great Eagleton (and Fish) Takedown

After PZ hits a home run, next up to bat is Matt Taibbi. Back to back?

The beginning:

I’m always on the lookout for religion’s latest counter-arguments, the new rhetorical approaches that God People are constantly fine-tuning for use in pimping the righteousness of faith (and for demonstrating the moral dissoluteness of agnostics like myself). There isn’t an inherently irresolvable metaphysical challenge that comes close to wasting as much of the world’s time and energy as this particular one. It’s the intellectual equivalent of the eternal R&D quest for a baldness cure: you just never stop being surprised at how many different ways men can find to fail at growing hair.

This latest salvo is fired by author/professor Stanley Fish, a prominent religion-peddler of the pointy-headed, turtlenecked genus, who made his case in his blog at the New York Times. Fish was mostly riffing on a recent book written by the windily pompous University of Manchester professor Terry Eagleton, a pudgily superior type, physically resembling a giant runny nose, who seems to have been raised by indulgent aunts who gave him sweets every time he corrected the grammar of other children. The esteemed professor’s new book is called Reason, Faith and Revolution, and it’s sort of an answer to the popular atheist literature of people like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens. If you ever want to give yourself a really good, throbbing headache, go online and check out Eagleton’s lectures at Yale, upon which the book was based, in which one may listen to this soft-soaping old toady do his verbose best to stick his tongue as far as he can up the anus of the next generation of the American upper class.

That's how I'd write, if only I could write a thousand times better than I can.

The rest.

(h/t: John Cole | x-posted)

Keeping the SC in the SCLM

Josh Marshall:

Can it really be true that the list of Americans who will appear on the Sunday shows this weekend is David Petraeus, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich and John McCain?

I guess it really is a center-right nation.

The Truth is Out There. I Mean, Way Out There.

One of the segments on this week's On The Media follows up on story I noted last week: apparently, there is a tendency among conservatives to believe Stephen Colbert is serious. Or, more precisely in some cases, that while he's recognized as kidding around, he is believed to be delivering a hidden, pro-conservative message underneath the jokes.

Here is co-host Bob Garfield's interview with Heather LeMarre, who is one of the authors of the study that's caused such hilarity and who has probably never been called Hedy (thirty seconds of NPR blah blah at the start):

(alt. audio link)

My own take is that LeMarre is being a little disingenuous in this interview, perhaps out of an overdeveloped desire not to belittle conservative cluelessness, perhaps out of an urge not to be seen as doing politically motivated research. But, whatever. Despite her spin on the results, I think the message is clear. (See? I can read hidden text, too.)

The whole hour is quite good, as is almost always the case for OTM. Other segments cover John Kerry's Senate hearing on the newspaper industry, discuss the new larger Kindle that some believe may be a life ring for newspapers and magazines, consider Fair Use in documentary films, look at the 4chan pranksters, report on cell phone tracking, and peek at the PR problems of the wealthy. Visit OTM's site to listen to the stream or download the whole show.

(pic. source)

Friday, May 08, 2009

Your Moment of Geekgasm

Live long and prosper to you, too, Mr. President.

(h/t: uncle ebeneezer)

Juxtaposition

What we see:

(enlarge image)

What they see:

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(pic. sources: top | bot)

WTF is the KTOOA Act?

Remember when Republicans used to be able to come up beautifully Orwellian acronyms for their dumb-ass legislation?

KTOOA! KTOOA! Sounds like someone spitting.

Now, maybe I could get behind the TKADiaGaLNMLCDtEDCHOfEP Act, which while a little hard to pronounce, at least has the virtue of being honest upon expansion.

How's it go again? "If you outlaw guns, only ...?"

I'm kind of meh on the whole gun control thing these days, but if I were still a staunch advocate of gun control, I'd be waving these numbers in your face:

Hawaii, with its strong gun laws and low rate of gun ownership, has the lowest gun death rate in the nation, the Washington D.C.-based gun control group Violence Policy Center said Wednesday.

The islands had a per capita gun death rate of 2.58 per 100,000 people in 2006, according to the center's analysis, based on the most recently available national data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. The national average was 10.3, it said.

Only 9.7 percent of Hawaii households own guns, compared with 45.6 percent in Louisiana, which topped the nation in per capita gun deaths at 19.5, the center said.

[...]

Louisiana was followed by Alabama (57.2 percent household gun ownership, 16.9 deaths), Alaska (60.6 percent, 16.3), Mississippi (54.3, 16.3) and Nevada (31.5 percent, 16.2).

Each of the five states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national rate of 10.3 per 100,000, and each state has weak gun laws and higher gun ownership rates.

In contrast, Hawaii and other states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death.

Massachusetts followed Hawaii with household gun ownership of 12.8 percent and a gun death rate of 3.2, ahead of Rhode Island (13.3 percent, 4.4), Connecticut (16.2 percent, 4.9) and New York (18.1 percent, 5.2).

Something to think about.

Stand by for a ream of contradicting statistics from Adam L in 5..., 4..., 3...

(h/t: Attaturk)

Oh, Snap

Jamison Foser zings the rePubOLITICO but good:

(enlarge image)

(h/t: Steve Benen)

New Hampshire: Same-Sex Marriage Bill Passes State House

On Wednesday, the New Hampshire state House passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in that state. The vote was 178-167. (sources: AP, CNN)

Last week, we noted that the state Senate had passed a similar bill, 13-11. The two branches have resolved the differences between their versions, and the bill has been sent to Gov. John Lynch.

As we also noted in that earlier post, it is unclear what Gov. Lynch will do:

He is on record as opposing the use of the M-word while favoring civil unions. He has not said whether he will veto the bill. He may let it pass without signing it. If he does veto it, the narrowness of the winning margins in both houses of the legislature suggests they won't be able to override a veto.

And once again, if you'd like to urge Gov. Lynch to do the right thing, please visit his contact page, where you can send him an email and/or pick up his phone and fax numbers.

(h/t: Steve Benen)

Is This A Sign?

Trick question. It's two signs!

Make of them what you will. I've still got some reserves of hope. But Al Kamen says don't get too excited. Yet.

(enlarge image)

More on the Horror of Yesterday

Following up from my earlier post on how President Obama delightfully handled the National Day of Prayer, check this:

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United [for Separation of Church and State], issued the following statement about the Obama decision:

“I am pleased that President Obama has made this decision. The president is required by federal law to declare a National Day of Prayer, but there is no requirement that a special event be held at the White House in observance of this event.

“During the Bush years, the Dobsons and other Religious Right leaders were given special access to the White House. That seems to have come to an end, and I’m glad.

“Congress should never have mandated a National Day of Prayer. Americans don’t need the government telling them when to pray and what to pray for. But if the federal government is going to set aside a prayer day, it should recognize the broad diversity of faiths, not just fundamentalist Christians.”

(h/t: Steve Benen)

VLC Media Player Update

VideoLAN has released version 0.9.9 of their VLC media player. If you have VLC installed, you may be notified up the availability of the update the next time you launch it, depending on how you have your preferences set. You can also get the update by doing Help → Check for Updates or by visiting their site.

The new release includes bugfixes, decoder updates for Windows, and improved support for Real Media files.

I got the update by accepting the notification. The installer program downloaded; when it finished I double-clicked it. The installer first uninstalled the existing version of VLC and then launched the installation of the new version. That failed, possibly because I had my browser open. I closed my browser, double-clicked again, and the installation worked fine.

Coming in v1.0.0: a new logo update(!). Say good-bye to the cone and hello to the bulldozer. Details on the VideoLAN home page.

You're a Good Man, Mr. President

The lede pretty much says it all:

For the past eight years, the White House recognized the National Day of Prayer with a service in the East Room, but this year, President Obama decided against holding a public ceremony.

Obama will sign a proclamation recognizing the day, and that's about it. No formal service, no prayer breakfast. Hurrah!

The rest of the article quotes White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, talking about Obama's view that prayer is a more private thing, blah blah, and then there are the expected hysterical reactions from "both" sides: the fundies have their undies in a twist because Obama is not acknowledging what a Christian nation we supposedly are; the über-atheists, because Obama will be signing the proclamation instead of, I dunno, dressing up as Richard Dawkins and setting a picture of the Pope on fire or something.

To the latter group, I say, chill. This is a big step for us. During the last Administration, this was a prominent public event every year.*

To the former, well, anything that pisses off your Shirley Dobson is just fine with me. May she have an acute case of constipation all day long. More than what she has every other day, I mean.

(h/t: Betty Cracker, via John Cole)

__________

[Added] I see that I'm a bit late to the dance on this one -- yesterday was the National Day of Prayer. Sorry that I was too busy consorting with Satan to keep up with my blog feeds.

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* [Added 2] Originally, I had said that the annual NDOP event at the White House was also part of the Bush I and Reagan Administrations. Not true, according to Steve Benen, Think Progress, and even Fox News. Both of these presidents held NDOP events at the White House, but not every year.

Bedwetter Watch: The Gitmo Edition

I was just reading this on Balloon Juice ...

*** Update ***

Maddow is making fun of the music in the fearmongering commercial the Republicans released today, and it made me laugh, because I actually was writing a post this morning in which I was asking if the GOP knew any music besides Ride of the Valkyries and Carmina Burana and then just said to hell with it.

... when an email came in from Twin with a link to … you guessed it.

(alt. video link)

Another Torture Memo?

Special thanks to David Corn for bringing up the Foreign Policy blog post, written in late April by Philip Zelikow, in which Zelikow discusses his (classified) dissenting memo against the Bush Administration's moves towards instituting a torture policy. I urge everyone to read it.

I also urge everyone to read David's Mother Jones post on the possible Cheney-directed cover-up of the memo, which he wrote with Nick Baumann.

At the time he wrote the memo, Zelikow was counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, if you can't place his name. He also served as executive director of the 9/11 Commission.

Here are David Corn and Jim Pinkerton discussing this issue during their diavlog on Bloggingheads.tv, which was posted yesterday. This segment is about twelve minutes long.

(alt. video link)

It's worth restating a couple of points: If Zelikow's claims are accurate, his memo was buried by the Bush White House, and what's more, they tried to destroy every copy of it. The latter is all by itself a crime.

According to the David's post and the Boston Globe, a Senate subcommittee chaired by Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) is scheduled to begin the first set of public hearings on the Bush Administration's torture policies beginning next Wednesday, 13 May. Zelikow is expected to be a witness, as is former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, whom we've mentioned before.

Sen. Whitehouse (and don't think that won't get confusing as time goes on), of course, has formally requested the Zelikow memo. It's worth passing along Spencer Ackerman's observation that the current request by Whitehouse marks the fifth time a member of Congress has asked for this memo. Let's hope this time is the charm.

__________

Finally, if you'd like some more background, you might begin with a couple of short posts on TPMMuckraker from Zachary Roth, dated 21 April and 4 May.

And here, also via Spackerman, are videos of Zelikow appearing on Rachel Maddow's show on 21 April 2009:

Part 1:

Part 2:

He does look a little like John Dean, doesn't he?

Thursday, May 07, 2009

We Now Change Our Assessment of Depends Stock to "Strong Buy"

Wonkette's Sara K. Smith notes that the state legislature in Hawaii has just passed a resolution, by a vote of 22-3, that will "proclaim Sept. 24, 2009, as Islam Day."

Greater Wingnuttia, you'll be amazed to hear, ignores this:

The resolution does not call for any spending or organized celebration of Islam Day.

... and immediately wets the collective bed.

Atlas Shrieks begins:

"ISLAM DAY" PASSES IN HAWAII

I can't tell you what those folks are thinking, but why September 24th? Why not September 11th?

She goes on to wonder why there is no "Christian Day," apparently forgetting about, uh, Christmas, for example?

Stop The ACLU decorates their post with the Danish cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban and begins:

Hawaii Goes Dhimmi, Creates Islam Day

This couldn't have anything to do with the rumors that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim, could it?

And it's not just wingnut bloggers. From Fox News's report:

"I recall radical Islamists around the world cheering the horrors of 9/11. That is the day all civilized people of all religions should remember," said Republican Sen. Fred Hemmings to the applause of more than 100 people gathered in the Senate to oppose a separate issue -- same-sex civil unions.

[...]

... Republican Sen. Sam Slom argued that the United States has become too sympathetic toward Islamic extremists.

"I don't think there's any country in the history of the world that has been more tolerant than the United States of America, and because of that tolerance, we've looked the other way a lot of times, and many thousands of our citizens have been killed by terrorists," said Slom, a Republican.

One of the RedState Trike Force asks:

Does anyone else think this is scary?

... and:

Why in the world would we bow to them (oh yeah our pres already did that) and cater to their whims?

... and has a sentence of sanity before losing it again:

Now I realize that not every Muslim is a terrorist. But the infiltration is slow and quiet just like they’ve done in other countries.

Greg Hengler at Clownhall apparently has nothing to say -- he just copies and pastes part of the Fox News article -- but maybe he thinks the old "worth a thousand words" idea applies:

(enlarge image)

Woooo! Scary!

Another Day, Another Republican Sex Scandal

This one is fairly unusual, I'll admit, in that it involves a man and a woman, both consenting adults, and no wetsuits appear to have been employed.

But how fabulous is it that Wonkette's source is WOOD-TV?

High Broderism Comedy

Attaturk's recurrent topic is especially ~~painful~~ hilarious today.

It's a Listening Tour, All Right, But Apparently Only One Voice Counts

Once again, Rush Limbaugh bellows and elected Republicans crumble. This time it's Eric Cantor (R-Virginia), the House Minority Whip, fercrissakes:

All together now: If the GOP can't stand up to Rush Limbaugh, how will they ever be able to stand up to the terrorists???

Nico Pitney at the HuffPo has the whole story and the video, if the embedded version above doesn't work.

(h/t: watertiger)

[Added] Oh, and speaking of listening tours, it would be irresponsible not to pass along this bit from another story on the HuffPo, describing Stormy Daniels, who is "spending her own money on a 'listening tour' to hear what people have to say as she considers a possible run." Against David "Diapers" Vitter, for the US Senate, that is.

"For those of you who don't know who I am," she told the lunch crowd at The Roux House, "I'd suggest that you don't Google that until you get home from work."

That. (NSFW)

Creepy Mental Image of the Day

Trump said the racy shots of Carrie Prejean were heading his way so that he can review them …

__________

This from a quick post on RadarOnline, via watertiger, describing the owner of the beauty pageant, The Donald Trump, who will be deciding whether to strip Miss California of her … … … … crown, yeah, that's it, because she had the temerity to pose for said "racy shots" at some point before entering the beauty pageant.

Look, I have no sympathy for this self-appointed spokeswoman for "opposite marriage" as far as blowback from the great unwashed of the leftosphere goes. She'll doubtless parlay her looks, her churchiness, and her anti-civil rights attitudes into big dollars on the right-wing media circuit. But the idea of a contest which is all about putting young women up on stage to prance around in bikinis, for our ogling pleasure, after paying for them to have boob jobs I hardly need add, and then looking to punish them for posing for pictures -- "Semi-nude!" The horror! -- is just beyond belief. At this point, I think I'd even allow Larry Craig to accuse them of hypocrisy.

But hey, don't take it from me. Make your own judgment. Here is one of the "racy shots" and a photo taken during the pageant, in a side-by-side comparison, for science.

(enlarge image)