Copland III

Elizabeth Dole looking scarily like a less attractive version of Joan Rivers

Oh dear, curse me. I have neglected this place lately. Oh well. Here we go with this week’s star cactus. This time it’s a politician – Elizabeth Dole, the woman responsible for attacking her political opponent, Kay Hagan, for simply consorting with atheists.

This tactic pangs of desperation – Hagan is winning and still gathering momentum, whilst Dole looks like she may well be on her way out of the Senate.

So now she’s resorted to cheap attacks. She claims that Hagan won’t stand up for North Carolina’s values. If that’s so, then why the fuck do all the opinion polls put her ahead? Does she think North Carolinans were born yesterday?

Of course, her campaign team’s put out the ‘Godless Americans PAC wants to abolish the Christmas holiday’ bullshit. Just because she meets with a group that actually wants secularisation of the winter holiday, not its abolition, she won’t necessarily implement their proposed policies.

They also, while mentioning the fact that Godless Americans PAC wants to remove “Under god” from the Pledge of Alleigance, conveniently omit the facts that (a) it wasn’t there in the first place, and (b) if disestablishmentarianism is to be practiced, it shouldn’t even be there.

The woman is deplorable for sinking to such low levels, and I sincerely hope Dole loses the election and that Hagan wins with a landslide majority.

Mike Huckabee, looking like a fat Ian Hislop. (Image: David Ball/Wikipedia)

This week’s twerp is Mike Huckabee, who was dangerously close to becoming the Republicans’ nomination for President of the USA. The man’s as insane as Sarah Palin. Some of the things on his ridiculous tea-tray of policies and standpoints include:

• opposition to gay marriage
• the belief that homosexuality is unnatural and sinful
• the belief that creationism should be taught as an alternative to evolution, describing evolution as a ‘dogma’
• the belief that his sky fairy promised Israel to Jewish people
• the fact that he stands by (but no longer believes, I hasten to add) his 1992 statement that HIV patients should be quarantined: he now rejects this point of view, but he made this statement when we knew that HIV couldn’t spread via casual contact
• the belief that homosexuality causes disease
• the fact that he credited his god for his presidential campaign (it failed)
• the fact that he wants to ‘take the nation back for Christ’
• opposition to gay adoption
• the fact that if elected he wouldn’t change the US armed forces’ ridiculous ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy
• the belief that carrying concealed weapons should be allowed
• the fact that he is against universal health care
• the fact that he supports displaying the Ten Commandments in schools
• the fact that he believes embryos with no nervous system are sentient beings
• the fact that by day, he’s a Southern Baptist minister

In short, he’s barmy. The scary thing is that we may have someone who is effectively Huckleberry, but in hockey mom casing, a heart attack away from the presidency in mere months.

Image link

Yesterday, YouTube pulled all of the Eucharist desecration videos hosted there. Af course, this drought hasn’t lasted long. However, the fact that YouTube bowed to pressure from the zealots to censor free speech is simply unacceptable.

For your convenience, some of the best desecration videos and a sample of the zealots’ comments has been placed below the fold. However, back to YT’s idiocy for a moment. The community guidelines don’t mention anything about desecration. There’s only a generic:

• We encourage free speech and defend everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view. But we don’t permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).

This is very ambiguous. In a way, a lot af evangelical videos could be seen as ‘hate speech’ as it demeans other religions (and atheism). So How can YouTube consider feeding a fucking cracker to a duck to be a hate crime? It’s MAD.

Read the rest of this entry »

Consequently, this church seems to think that oppression is good for the health

Via oddee.com

Andrew Schlafly

This week’s paraded idiot is Andrew Schlafly, creator of Conservapedia, the racist, homopobic, bigoted, smug turd-pile which has less accuracy than a weegie board. (OK, slight exaggeration.)

This doesn’t change the fact that Schlafly and his band of far-right home-schooled mutants have spread non-science, resorted to bullying tactics to get data to quote mine and twist, and also tried to censor uncomfortable home truths. His weapon of choice is defamation (discounting the lawsuit, because that’s cheating).

There reaally aren’t words to describe how infuriating this man’s very existence is. The fecal pool he has created is sometime so comically incorrect that Conservapedia seems like a parody.

A Roman Catholic school in Manchester has banned its pupils from receiving a vaccination against HPV, a sexually transmitted virus which causes cervical cancer. They have cited concerns about possible side effects.

I say bullshit. The jab has been tested, and is PERFECTLY SAFE. This is turning into a mini rerun of the MMR fiasco. It’s pathetic. The promiscuity argument is ridiculous – whether you like it or not, people are going to have sex.

Examining a ‘have your say’ forum from last year, some people seem absolutely clueless about the jab.

So all you sheep would be willing to allow your precious children have an injection with a substance you know nothing about?

Have any of you even thought about researching the pharmaceutical giant behind this apparent vaccine? It’s history and its founders?

If not, why not?

Surely it’s in your best interest to do this as responsible adults – and parents.

PLEASE Mothers, BEWARE….this vaccine is being tested on your young girls at your great expense and possibly the greater expense on your/our girls who have no say in the matter. Ten years down the line or twenty…..will they thank you for this? Think about it.

This, however, is perhaps one of the best retorts I’ve seen in months.

has anyone any idea what the long term effect of this cervical cancer vaccine on the young girls?
Debbie, Perth

Er…yes. The long term effect is that women will be protected against HPV…

Sometimes the supposed concept of separation of church and state (or disestablishmentarianism, if you’re in the mood for a long word) is so blatantly violated it’s a wonder these people don’t get prosecuted. But then – hey! - it’s the USA. Anything could happen.

In this case, the thirteen-year-old son of the frontman of a band called Scum of the Earth was told by his art teacher to go out into a corridor, and pray to Jesus for forgiveness: for wearing a fracking T-shirt with a monster, a cross, and the words “SCUM OF THE EARTH” written on it.

The boy’s father, Riggs, says:

“This is ridiculous. [The school in question] is a public school, and there’s supposed to be a separation between church and state. The shirt my son was wearing was for my band, Scum of the Earth. It didn’t contain any foul language, it’s simply a drawing of a monster on a cross… and nothing more. You would think that someone who’s an art teacher would have some understanding of the concept of freedom of speech, and artistic freedom of expression, however this lady is clearly a religions nutcase. It’s just another example of how these people have infiltrated public schools, government and politics in an effort to force their own agenda upon anyone who doesn’t necessarily believe exactly what they do — regardless of what the First Amendment of the United States Constitution says.

True, the teacher was welcome to express his/her distaste, but not to demand he bend on his knees and pray to some phony sky-deity for forgiveness for wearing a fucking T-shirt. In my opinion, the teacher should be fired immediately.

Oh dear, I have been awful in not blogging for so long. I’m afraid other commitments have kept me busy. Oh well. To catch up, let’s see who this week’s Prize Twat is. This week, it’s a little topical and partly down to convenience.

Richard Dawkins has been kind enough to make some of his hate mail public, and PZ Myers reposted some of it under the title Richard Dawkins gets mail, too. This particular letter was from a Mr (well, one assumes) Peter Colley of Bellevue, Washington, who wrote…

DAWKINS!

You are a filthy, mother-fucking, pigshit cunt of an arsehole British pig and bastard to cheat, deceive and hoodwink readers with your rotten free inquiry article (which shit I enclose so you can read your own drivel!) No one but an arrogant, putrid, verminous burke [Ed: berk!?] would resort to such a cheap, pigsty trick (unless, of course, he is Michael Shermer, who is as much of a stinking cunt and skunk as you are). Wallow well in your elitist pigsty, elitist British oaf and vermin!!! I spit on shit like you, especially if they are British elitist turds!!!

Most sincerely yours,

Peter Colley

PETER COLLEY

P.S. Fuck you, stinking son of a British whore!!!

Sometimes these letters are so awful, they’re funny. And, quite conveniently, if I continue with my plan to offer a physical prize to whoever wins the Twat of the Year award, he has kindly offered his address. Wonderful.

It always pisses me off seriously when a creationist refers to creation ’science’. It’s not science. It’s belief in a fluffy old book that’s about as coherent as David Blaine on crack. No peer-reviewed research, no evidence, nothing. It’s religion, not science.

So why the fuck should it be taught in science lessons? This madness is already happening in the USA, but now someone wants it to happen in the UK: and this person is director of education at the Royal Society, and a professor of science education at the Insititute of Education, University of London.

I feel that creationism is best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view.

But it’s not science’s job to teach world views. Science’s job is to teach science, which can be tested and repeated over and over again. And it’s still embarrassing that 10% of the British population actually believe the Earth is less than ten thousand years old. We really need to ensure that science is taught properly - all too often, I’ve seen evolution incorrectly described, so science classes must teach evolution as a tried and tested theory which has stood the test of time, and that creationism has nothing whatsoever to do with science.

Donohue: "I like to kill babies". OK, I made that bit up. Yes.

This week’s Enemy of the People is William A Donohue, the leader of the ultra-right-wing Catholic League. He and his band of mutant IDiots will generally come down like a hail of death threats on anyone who so much as dares to criticise any Catholic, or any Catholic beliefs, in public. Such as the ridiculous Webster Cook case: Donohue and his cronies tried to get him put in prison for kidnapping for taking a fracking cracker from a church. People aligned with his points of view (viz. demented fuckwits, as PZ Myers put them) also sent this young man death threats over a goddamned cracker.

This, of course, sparked the whole Crackergate debarcle. PZ Myers wrote a blog post about it, decrying the fact that it was, in his own words, a ‘frackin’ cracker’. Of course, that enraged the Catholic League, who immediately started a write-in campaign to have him removed from his job. Some sent him death threats: four in a day, which he described as a new personal record. All because he was rude to a bit of fucking bread.

Donohue, and his cronies, are really like their own sub-species of angry, grumpy tomatoes. Perhaps they should be given their own taxa. Or, perhaps, we can just hope Donohue ruptures an artery in one of his ridiculously loud rants about life, the universe, and everything non-catholic.