Archive for August, 2007

I really can’t stand Ted Nugent. I’m very much for supporting the Second Amendment, but this jackass doesn’t possess the cognitive abilities to realize that every time he opens his mouth he makes it worse for others who stand up for the Second Amendment. He’s a walking warning label. He should have “Momma, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Nugents” tattooed across his face. He’s a fucking disgrace of a human being.

That said, he’s get a new album coming out. Damned be what was said in the past — like a true right-wing nutjob, Teddy Boy went hyper-hypocrite and recently stated that Barack Obama should “suck on [his] machine gun” and that Hilary Clinton should “ride” it.

All in all, it’s another “HEY PAY ATTENTION TO ME! I’M STILL RELEVANT! I’VE GOT A NEW CD TO SELL!” moment for Mr. Sellout. And that’s all it is. I’m not outraged by what he said, I’m sick to death of people in the entertainment industry (see: Rush, Coulter, etc.) saying shit like this because they know it’ll get them bad press. They don’t care how much controversy it causes so long as they can lace their wallets at the end of the day with their nutjob follwers’ money. If someone gets a crazy idea to do something drastic because of what he said, all he does is shrug his shoulders, say “it ain’t no thang” and take the money to the bank.

Oh, and Ted, in case you’re reading this: You’re not relevant. It’s arguable that you ever were relevant. I don’t say that about a lot of people in the biz, but I wouldn’t give it a second thought to turn down any request you made of anyone. You’re simply less than Paris Hilton. I think she’s actually more talented, musically.

I’m sure there are more than a few people who have visited my site and expressed one reaction or another to the two links on the right side of my blog. The fact is that I’m an Atheist and I’m proud of it — some would say arrogant. I think that’s why I go for the classic definition of a cynic when it comes to my site; cynics were often described as arrogant because of their demeanor. I’d say there’s a difference between arrogance and being sure of one’s self, but it’s mixing words.

Laurie wrote a post in which she talks about the ever-professional Christiane Amanpour’s latest series of news reports for CNN called God’s Warriors.

I realize that religion will forever be one of those iffy subjects. Some people choose to build their entire lives around their faith while still others choose to build only their lives, and when one infringes on the other’s territory, the right of free will is almost always ignored. At one point protesters could be heard chanting, “We will not be silent! Our voices will be heard!” Why they chose those exact words, I don’t know, but I immediately thought to myself, Are you kidding me? The voices of non-believers are heard every second of every day; it’s called mainstream America, which enjoys the fruit of the First Amendment while frequently working to stifle the rights of those it finds offensive, not the least of which is the faithful or religious. It’s akin to the white people claiming they’re losing America to other ethnicities. Wha? Did your spaceship just land?

Yes, and our dilithium crystals need to be recharged, thank you.

What Laurie and good number of others of the faithful, who by all accounts have no issues with what I believe, miss is that atheism is a viewpoint that is routinely squelched by very loud voices from the pulpits all over the world for the past couple millennia.

Let me give you an example: To date there has been one American politician who has openly admitted to being a non-believer. Why? In 99% of America, it would be political suicide to admit as much to your constituency. Consider that a recent poll taken states that more people would vote for an openly homosexual candidate than an atheist candidate. Speaking in simplistic terms, if there is 6% of Americans who do not believe in a god of any kind, wouldn’t you say that one congressman out of some 535 members of congress isn’t exactly representative?

Speaking in more broad terms, I have no issues with other people’s faith. I just view it in an entirely different context. To give the faithful some perspective, I view it in much the same way a lot of people see Harry Potter fans or Star Trek conventions. And while I can’t understand the fervor with which some of the fans express, I know people like the stories and are, for the most part, fairly harmless in their fandom. Again, I’m just trying to give you context — I’m not trying to insult anyone’s beliefs.

What I do have a distinct problem with are the ones who do take their religion too seriously. People like, say, D. James Kennedy. You see, in Kennedy’s world Charles Darwin is the very epitome of evil. Not because he brought on plague or famine, no no no…that he dared to introduce a theory of the way life evolved on the planet. Because of this he is vilified. So Kennedy creates a program in which he equates Darwin’s Evolution of the Species as being somehow responsible for Adolf Hitler’s genocidal acts against the Jewish. What Kennedy cleverly avoids in his documentary, which is wholeheartedly supported by Ann Coulter because that lends weight to his “argument”, is that Hitler routinely used the weight of the church to inspire the Nazis. He espoused himself as a dedicated Christian and used the rhetoric of Christianity in part to justify the extermination of the Jewish people.

Sadly, that’s hardly an isolated incident. It seems that the more fervent the beliefs of a particular people, the more capable they are of committing atrocities against other people who happen to believe differently. More importantly, they hold forth their holy books as justification for these acts. They’re also not confined to the pages of ancient history.

Our current government is blocking the incredibly promising field of embryonic stem cell research, a field in which the possibility exists of bringing an end to a litany of medical maladies such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, purely out of theological concerns. In essence, a collection of cells not large enough to even make up a single nerve ending is more important than people who are suffering and dying from curable diseases.

There’s also the policy held firm by not only the current administration but also the entirety of the Catholic Church that the proper instruction about and the use of condoms is categorically denied in lieu of abstinence-only education. In the country of Africa, which is the undeniable king of AIDS patients, our governmental aid agencies are actively promoting this position out of theological concern in the face of overwhelming evidence that abstinence-only education not only doesn’t work but works in favor of spreading the epidemic.

So I have no issues with people who believe in this god or that; you and I can have a spirited discussion over the contradiction party that makes up most holy books and the people who “follow” them. What I do have a problem with is the very real threat that religion poses on society as a whole when it interferes with official public policies that affect the lives the real people. To be frank, atheists have been silenced about this for far too long now and by every indication we simply shouldn’t be silent anymore.

Dana Milbank covered a new angle on an almost-forgotten story. People who are familiar with the Abu Ghraib scandal are more than likely familiar with Lynndie England or Charles Garner. Chances are they aren’t as aware of the lone officer who has had charges brought against him in the scandal — Lt. Col. Steven Jordan. I think there’s a reason the government isn’t calling any notice to this trial.

“To the best of my knowledge, [Jordan] had nothing to do with interrogations,” testified Staff Sgt. James Beachner — and he was a prosecution witness.

Pvt. Chip Frederick testified, also (ostensibly) for the prosecution, that Jordan “had nothing to do with those detainees being abused.”

“I never saw Lieutenant Colonel Jordan sign off on anything,” testified yet another prosecution witness, Sgt. Michael Eckroth, who described Jordan as a good leader who was “trying to get something done to improve our less-than-austere conditions.”

With a prosecution like this, who needs a defense?

This may explain why military prosecutors opposed the decision by top brass to bring Jordan to a court-martial in the first place.

Unable or unwilling to find a higher-ranking officer to prosecute, the generals who ordered the charges against Jordan would have had a big PR problem if they hadn’t brought any officer before a court-martial for the Abu Ghraib abuse. A higher-ranking officer from the prison in Iraq, Col. Thomas Pappas, ended up with a reprimand and a fine, though he admitted approving the use of dogs in interrogations.

But the 51-year-old Jordan, portly and bespectacled, wasn’t an ideal choice: He isn’t in the infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib, and he had nothing to do with interrogations there; the most serious surviving charge against him is that he spoke about the investigation after being ordered not to — and even that unraveled in court yesterday.

I really want to know whose cornflakes Jordan pissed in to get in this situation. From the sounds of it, they have about as much of a case with Jordan as they would with Fozzie Bear ordering the torture.

You know, Reagan really wasn’t such a bad guy. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack, but he knew how to call them as he saw them.

A moment I’ve been dreading. George brought his ne’re-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I’ll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they’ll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.

UPDATE: Well, it appears that this quote is completely fictional. Oh well, made me laugh anyway. My apologies for the mistake.

I think George W. Bush wasn’t totally lying in 2000 when he labeled himself as a ‘uniter’. It would appear that he is intent on uniting the rest of the world against the United States. So while it’s undeniably true that he has been the unquestioned champion of American division, he is still holding his promise in different ways. His latest idea is to take the unprecedented move — something else he’s quite adept at doing — of classifying a foreign military as a terrorist organization.

The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran’s nuclear program, officials said.

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said — a highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a typical non-state terrorist organization.

To make a comparison, this would be like Iran designating the Army Rangers as a terrorist organization. To extend the hypothetical, some other foreign countries would agree with that statement by Iran. But in a larger context, The Preznit has effectively declared war on the Iranian military and, by proxy, Iran. All because their reactionaries elected a fucking fruitcup to head their nation just like we did.