January Links

We got a bit of snow here in Chattanooga, so just about everything shut down this weekend. Which gave me a chance to finally get caught up on some blog reading for the month. My trip to Florida (and the relatively limited internet access that I had there) had put me way behind. So, here's a quick rundown of interesting links I found while buzzing from one side of the internet to the other. It's been a while since I've done this, so bear with me -- there're going to be some old links...

• The iPad is out, but I think I'm still more excited about the GooglePhone.

• I really want one of these (does that make me a dork?)!

• Are you a New York State voter? Watch out for this guy.

• Howard Zinn: How I want to be remembered.

• Some Jon Stewart... On the Massachusetts Senate race -- it's old, so you might want to scroll through the beginning and get to where Jon channels Lewis Black and comes close to expressing how frustrating it is to watch the Democrats (and especially the Blue Dogs!) these days... The First 364 Days 23 Hours... Supreme Corp... Oh, South Carolina... changing the game in banking.

• I've been learning a lot about nutrition lately. Between last year's adventure when G-Dog and I decided to give up processed food, to this year's experiments cooking for someone who is supposed to avoiding sodium, potassium and vitamin k, mostly what I've learned is that I'm easily confused. But Marion Nestle often comes to my rescue, and this time, it's with instructions for navigating the USDA's nutrition info.

• If you're like me and will always miss being a student, you're going to love these free lectures!

• Cool features like this one are what make me love google's rss reader (and many other google apps)!

• Overheard in New York still cracks me up.

• A fascinating collection of photos! Also, check out Tom's Hawaii slideshow!

• From Joe. My. God.: "Remember folks, the Christianist right is not about hatred and bigotry. It's about the gentle redemptive love of Jesus, forced upon you at the barrel of a gun in prison as they beat the gay out of you."

• And finally, the Devil wrote a letter to Pat Robertson.

Dear Pat,

Saturday Stuff You Might Have Missed

Here's a real hodgepodge from the past week!

• And you thought Episode I was bad? Check out an early draft of the original Star Wars.

• These two girls totally outdo Robert Loggia and Tom Hanks, but then again, they're not supposedly improvising.

• Things disappear! Like the Aral Sea and the Amazon Rainforest -- and beyond that, farms sink!

• Food from around the world: in hospitals and in schools (and speaking of school lunches, there's this too)!

• How much do we love to defend marriage?? Oh, so much that the fun overflowed from one video into another! Also, we like to mock Pat Robertson with beautiful music videos.

• In medical and curing blindness news, this is really awesome.

• Do you like to have pictures with your data? Something to make it seem less dry and less science-y? Then you're going to like these sites.

• Did you have a video made of your wedding? If so, it's going to seem so incredibly lame after you watch this one.

• Watch out, all you greedy, overbearing religious cult-like groups! Scientology has Scientologists have been banned, and those awful Mormons have been taken down another notch. Ha.

• Attention Ferris Fans! Cameron's home is for sale!

• And finally, some quotes for the week (we'll start with the icky and work our way to the more reasonable):

Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate.

-- G. Gordon Liddy, troglodyte, doing an awfully good job of making the other neanderthals of his ilk look almost human by comparison. (Update: and there's always the problem of bears.)

Honestly folks. If we paid as much attention to the sexual activities of Catholic priests as we do to homosexuals wanting to marry, we probably could have saved a lot of children from years of guilt, shame, anger and pain.

-- Helen Philpot

Robertson Steps Down

Unfortunately, his propaganda-spewing empire will remain, only now with his (hopefully less deranged) spawn in charge.

Pat Robertson On Yoga

Heh. Guess what? He thinks it's evil.

I don't know why I think that's funny, but I do. ;-D

Dobson Hearts Huckabee

It will be of little surprise to my regular readers that I consider Mike Huckabee's endorsement from James Dobson, a deranged and hateful man who encourages parents to beat their own children, to be just as humiliating as Rudy Giulaini's thumbs up from the unhinged Pat Robertson. The good news, though, is that the religious right is splitting themselves into irrelevancy.

ps: Mr. Dobson, how about you lay off my family for a while and focus on the Oral Roberts tribe? And if that doesn't keep you busy, cast your gaze over to Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn and their respective kin. And then, if you ever manage to get that whole religious right(eous) glass house in order, then you can resume all your whining and sputtering about all us regular folks...

UPDATE: will he? or won't he?

Pat and Rudy

So, Pat Robertson, an anti-abortion homophobe who thinks Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists harbor the spirit of the antichrist and claims he can leg press 2,000 pounds, thinks Rudy Giuliani, a thrice-married, philandering, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, sorta Roman Catholic whose priest was suspended amid molestation allegations, is our best choice for president.

What a world. It gets stranger by the moment.

I'm kinda surprised that Rudy would be proud of the endorsement, much less willing to be seen in public with such a crazy crackpot, but perhaps desperate times do call for desperate measures.

(I wonder if this means Pat Robertson really does believe that the Morman Church is a cult?)

There are no homosexuals in Iran!

I know! Let's send Pat Robertson to live there! Then he'd be out of harm's way! After all, if there are no homosexuals, then the country will be safe from things like earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and meteors!

Seriously, though, I hope James Dobson was watching, because now he knows what kind of government and national culture are necessary to "eliminate" homosexuality. And then he can ask himself if that's what he really wants (and can he be proud of the work he's done so far?).

1. Pat Robertson

Pat won something! And he's in fine company -- he beat everyone from Oprah Winfrey and George Lucas to Thomas Friedman and Jim Guckert, and even Johnny Damon ("going from the Red Sox to the Yankees is like fucking the guy that murdered your husband") in this list from The Beast (via OneGoodMove).

Exhibit A: Vehemently opposed to voluntary abortion in America, but okay with forced abortion in China, where his cable investments depend on the good graces of the government.

Truly, he's one of the most twisted and evil SOBs ever. There must be a special place in hell reserved for people like Pat, who is pissing all over Christianity in his rush to the bank.

In 2005, Robertson called on God to vacate seats in the Supreme Court (the almighty obliged, killing Rehnquist), advocated assassinating Hugo Chavez, said "judicial activists" were a more serious threat to America than terrorists, called criticism of the war treason, said John Roberts should be thankful for Hurricane Katrina, which he implied was "connected" to Roe v. Wade, attributed Ariel Sharon's stroke to divine retribution for the Gaza pullout, said "the Antichrist is probably a Jew alive in Israel today," and implied that God would wipe the residents of Dover, PA off the map for rejecting Creationism. Not to mention raising huge sums of cash from his zombie army, much of which is diverted from his charity operations to his business interests, including African diamond mines. Has long advocated that America simply ignore the Supreme Court. Robertson's God is an insecure, misogynistic, homicidal fanatic -- just like Pat.

Stop talking, Pat...

Here are a few headlines spotted on Ironic Times today that made me laugh:

Judge in Abramoff case returns $150,000 to Abramoff
D.C. churches brace for barrage of born-agains
Bill O'Reilly decries War on Easter
Pat Robertson struck repeatedly by lightning

There was also this reminder:

The corrupt politician of today is the born-again Christian of tomorrow.

And, we're already a day into Delurking Week (via mrscrumley), so say something already! ;-D

Another Top 10 List

Well they've finally gone and done it... thanks to the actions of Chan Chandler (1) the right-wing have now perverted Christianity to the point where Democrats are no longer welcome in church. Jesus wept. Elsewhere, Tom DeLay (2) is lecturing people on humility and responsibility (really), the evidence that George W. Bush (3) lied America into war is staring everyone in the face, and Don Sherwood (4) might have choked his mistress. Meanwhile, Pat Robertson (6) has taken the last train to Loonyville, Laura Bush (7) tells a story about a horse's penis, and Kenneth Tomlinson (9) is seeing liberal bias everywhere.

Yep, it's the Top 10 Conservative Idiots, Jesus Wept Edition.

WWJD?

Yes, Pat Robertson is insane.

Pat Robertson's contradictory theology: God won't stop a tsunami -- but might respond to Gay Days with an earthquake

But we already knew that, didn't we?

Robertson's claims of the power of his prayers. For example, Robertson claims to have used the power of prayer to steer hurricanes away from his companies' Virginia Beach, Virginia headquarters. He took credit for steering the course in 1985 of Hurricane Gloria, which caused millions of dollars of destruction in many states along the east coast. He made a similar claim about another destructive storm, Hurricane Felix, in 1995.

Why should Pat Robertson be any different? There are plenty of these attention-seekers, supposedly men of God, who are perfectly willing to whore out Jesus for all sorts of sleazy purposes -- and the religious right eagerly gobbles it all up.

Yet the living Jesus always finds a way of getting past the money-changers, doesn't he? Every generation produces a Jesus to suit its own purposes. How fitting that in the Age of Information our broadcasters have marketed a Jesus so narrowly defined that he resembles little more than a lobbyist loitering outside Tom DeLay's office hoping for a few minutes of the great man's time.

Who will defend Jesus from these money-changers? Clearly, it won't be his favorite pimp, Bill Frist. Are there enough people who are even willing to try?

It is now clear there are some who will fight this religious war by any means necessary. So we will fight, but not the way they do. We must never lie or misrepresent the facts or the truth. We must not demonize or vilify those who are our opponents. We must claim that those who disagree with our judgments are still real people of faith. We must not fight the way they do, but fight we must. A great deal is at stake in this battle for the heart and soul of faith in America and for the nation's future itself. We will not allow faith to be put into the service of one political agenda.

This is a call for the rest of the churches to wake up. This is a call for people of faith everywhere to stand up and let their faith be heard. This is not a call to be just concerned, or just a little worried, or even just alarmed. This is a call for clear speech and courageous action. This is a call to take back our faith, and in the words of the prophet Micah, "to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God."