Sharron Angle: Worst. Person. Ever.

Sharron Angle, who is running against Sen. Harry Reid in Nevada, has come out strong. The problem is she came out strong a crazy!

Check out this little conversation on the Bill Manders Show:

Manders: I, too, am pro life but I'm also pro choice, do you understand what I mean when I say that.

Angle: I'm pro responsible choice. There is choice to abstain choice to do contraception. There are all kind of good choices.

Manders: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

Angle: Not in my book.

Manders: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

Angle: You know, I'm a Christian and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

Someone explain this to me. So, even if a 10 year old girl is raped and becomes pregnant, not only would it be illegal for her to have an abortion under Sharron Angle's laws, but it would also be seen as part of God's plan? Disgusting.

This woman is a train wreck. I don't see how someone could say this shit with a straight face. I love how she started her final answer out with "I'm a Christian." Well, that would be reason enough for me not to vote for her.

If you live in NV and vote for Sharron Angle, then you are a bad person. Plain and simple.

Welcome Jim

I want to welcome Jim to the blog. I have known Jim for over a year. We met through the Charlotte Atheists and agnostics. Jim has a respectable and intelligent position and is someone that I personally have a lot of respect for.

Welcome to the blog, Jim.

Arrogance and insignficance

Theists always talk about atheists as being arrogant and full of themselves. They tell us that we think we have all the answers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Science isn't about having answers; it's about asking questions. And once you put anything supernatural into the equation, all questioning stops and the world stagnates.

Now try this on for arrogance:

The total volume of the universe is 1.1 x 10^31 cubic light years.*

Because we have been broadcasting radio signals for about 100 years, the entire range of human influence on the universe is 4.2 x 10^6 cubic light years.

That means we have had an influence on 0.000000000000000000000038% of the universe.

Yet theists somehow manage to think that the universe was created for the benefit of mankind.

How arrogant is that?
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*If you think in terms of miles, that's 2.15 x 10^69 cubic miles.

Is it just vandalism?

The North Carolina Secular Association recently launched a billboard campaign that was designed to announce to the nation that everyone deserves a voice in the democratic process. It quoted the text of the Pledge of Allegiance as it was written in 1892. The billboard read, "One nation indivisible" (a quote as it appeared in the original text).

Like their anti-communist, paranoid predecessors, some people decided to change the text by inserting the words "under God" after the word "nation."

At the very least, this is a criminal act of vandalism, demonstrating that, despite all claims to the contrary, being religious doesn't make you a moral, law abiding citizen. In this case, it has turned someone into a petty thug on a par with a member of a hoodlum street gang.

But there is something more sinister at work. There is an element of fascism here that says, "Ours is the only voice we will allow to be heard!"

With the thousands of religious billboards, signs, churches and images on display locally, it is very tempting to respond in kind. But we are bigger than that. We have to be.

To the vandals, I would say only that you have marvelously demonstrated the true face of religion. With its bloody history of violence, hatred and oppression, you have far better represented the true tolerance of religion than a thousand of our billboards could.

I would also tell everyone to read a bit farther down in the pledge. All we are asking is what is promised in its last line.

Liberty and justice for all.

Godless Billboard Vandalized In Charlotte, NC

In what can only be called an act of hatred and cowardice, the "One Nation Indivisible" billboard on Billy Graham Parkway has been vandalized. Who would have guessed that Christians could have enough hatred, or time, in them to do this? I mean, we are talking about the group of people responsible for the Crusades.




I can't wrap my head around this. What is so horrible about the billboard; the unity part or the patriotism part? I suppose that we could expect no less from a group of dullards that need to have the word "god" written on everything they see. I was also surprised to see a lack of creativity. That was the best the vandals could come up with? What a sad state of affairs the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System must be in.

I think that this makes the point of the billboard. Just the very act of letting the public know you exist is enough to draw their scorn and their mentally damaged vandals. The message is needed, so I am going to reiterate it here:

ATHEISTS LIVE IN NORTH CAROLINA
WE WILL NOT BE BULLIED

The billboard will be fixed and so will our resolve. We will continue to promote our positive messages that we are one country and you can be good without that figment of the imagination that some call god. I think this really proves our point: obviously Christianity doesn't make you a good person. How many church billboards get defaced in the name of atheism?


This shit happens all of the time. Christians constantly rail against all things immoral, but when someone does something like this, there is a wink and a nod. Obviously we atheists were asking for it, what with wanting to be treated like everyone else. I am so glad that atheists aren't discriminated against, otherwise we would see billboards like this:

Stay classy Charlotte.

WBT Radio: Full Of Ignorance

I have recently found myself in the public eye, promoting the billboards that have recently gone up across North Carolina for the Fourth of July holiday. It has been interesting and fun talking to the media and the people of North Carolina about what we are doing. As with anything, there are people that love it, people that are indifferent, and people that hate it. I think watching Glenn Beck for so long has made me impervious to the rantings of the ultra-religious and people on the political right.

On Thursday, June 24, I was invited on the Tara Servatius radio show to discuss the billboard that we put up. I had never listened to her show. Hell, I thought she was relegated to the mid-pages of Creative Loafing. I had a few people warn me that she was the local Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Ann Coulter clone and she would be there only to argue. That made me very excited (in a good way), which probably says something about the masochistic nature of my personality.

The interview was what I expected it to be. She asked a lot of questions, changed the subject about 16 times in 10 minutes, then hung up on me in the end before I could thank her for being on her show. None of that bothered me. It actually made me pretty happy that the right-wing media hosts are such a group of clones that you can pretty much predict how any interview they do is going to turn out. What concerned me was the accusation that atheists that are afraid of coming out of the closet are somehow cowards and that since there are laws to protect people who hold certain beliefs (or hold no beliefs), that atheists aren't being discriminated against.

Let me break this down for people. On the first point about closeted atheists being cowards, what is cowardly about people being afraid of losing their families? If someone comes from a religious family or have a religious romantic partner or religious friends, what is so cowardly about fearing the loss of those relationships? The reason that people are afraid to say they are atheists is because the term has been so toxic over time that people automatically associate atheism with the horrors of the world, as if nothing bad has ever been done in the name of religion. When you tell a stranger you are an atheist (which happens in the south because everyone wants to know what church you go to), you either get the “I-will-cry-for-your-soul” look or a rude comment. When you tell friends and family that you are an atheist, you can almost guarantee an argument and the loss of a few relationships.

This is before you get to the work force! There are people that have jobs full of religious people that are allowed to say anything they want about religion. When they are challenged, the work environment becomes very uncomfortable, very fast. The person who challenges the religious could find a new job, but why should they have to? If religious conversation is allowed at work (which it shouldn't be), then an atheist has just as much valuable opinion as the religious people. When the religious make the work environment uncomfortable for the people that don't subscribe to their particular brand of fantasy, then harassment is occurring. Make no mistake, people are fired for their beliefs. When someone comes out as an atheist, then they are put under more scrutiny by those in management that are religious.

This brings me to my second point. Just because there are laws against discrimination doesn't mean it doesn't happen. We have laws against murder, rape, theft and speeding, but it happens every day. The point that Tara Servatius was trying to make about laws protecting beliefs had nothing to do with it actually happening. If someone is harassed at work until they are either forced to quit or are fired, the damage is done. That person no longer has a job. The years of litigation that will ensue aren't going to put food on the table while the case is being settled.

I thought it was interesting when I brought up the case of Cecil Bothwell in Asheville, NC. When I made a point about a case being made against him because he was an atheist and the North Carolina State Constitution says you have to believe in God (thats Yahweh, not just any god), then you can't serve in office. Now, the US Constitution overrides the State Constitution when it comes to issues like this. The fact that the case against Cecil was dropped has nothing to do with the real issue. The case should have never been taken against him because the State Constitution should have never said anything about religion at all! The fact that this language is still in the state constitution is appalling and discriminatory. Imagine if there was language in the State Constitution that said you have to be “White, Male” to serve in public office in North Carolina. It doesn't matter that the US Constitution overrides that State Constitution. What matters is that the language is discriminatory to everyone who is not a white male. You would think that Tara Servatius would be able to understand the danger in that, since she is a woman in a male-dominated field.

Overall, I thought the questions that she asked were extremely juvenile, short-sighted, and bigoted. She said a few times that she didn't care, but she is the one that invited me on the show. If she didn't care, why did it seem to bother her so much? As for the rest of the North Carolina citizens, do a Google News search for our billboard and see how many people care.

The problem that I see with Tara Servatius is that, like most of the right-wing blabber machine, she is uneducated, bigoted, and hateful. She pretends she doesn't care about things that obviously bother the hell out of her. I, as well as the rest of the PR contacts in the North Carolina Secular Association, spent a lot of time preparing and educating ourselves to be able to speak with some degree of intelligence about the issues that the billboard campaign is attempting to raise. I would expect that the people asking the questions would have taken the same amount of care as educating themselves. Most of the press has done this, but when it comes to the WBT noise machine, they simply can't wrap their minds around learning something that is outside of their belief structure, whether its Tara Servatius and her ignorant comments about “victimization” or Keith Larson trying to somehow tie atheism to Socialism, WBT has made themselves clear: they are the station of bigots and liars.

So I would like to say what I was going to say before Tara Servatius hung up on me: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I hope we can do it again one day when you can interview someone without prejudging the subject before you talk to someone, which makes you sound extremely rude and ignorant.

Jesus Is Coming... In 2050

A recent study has shown that nearly 41% of Americans think that Jesus is going to return by 2050. Does anyone else see a problem with this? I think the numbers are a little off, but when you have a large group of people, especially the ones in power, that believe this crap, then we are setting ourselves up for failure.

These people that think that Jesus is going to return soon are going to be the death of us all. Why clean up the oil spill, or try to stop polluting so much, or stop wars? Jesus is going to come back and save us anyway and magic away the filth.

I am telling you, the people that believe this stuff are voting and taking office. We need some atheist candidates to take office and put a stop to this nonsense.

Godless Billboard Above Billy Graham Parkway

The Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics are pleased to announce their sponsorship of the new "One Nation Indivisible" billboard that now stands tall above Billy Graham Parkway and Boyer St.

The billboard will be up for four weeks and is part of a larger state-wide campaign that has billboards in Asheville, Greensboro, Wilmington, Raleigh, and Winston-Salem.

"This is a positive message of unity and inclusion for all Americans," said Joseph McDaniel Stewart, vice president of FreeThoughtAction. "It is designed to bring atheists and theists together as patriots in a shared society."

Stewart added: "When the words 'under God' were inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance between 'one nation' and 'indivisible,' they made a lie out of both those ideals because you can’t have an indivisible nation if you draw a line between the godly and godless. We all belong here."

It is about time we have a billboard in Charlotte that isn't peddling some bronze-age superstition. Find out more by visiting the North Carolina Secular Association.

Sorry For The Delay

I will return to posting regularly soon. I hope to have something new up tomorrow. I have been working on a project that is going to come to fruition on Monday afternoon. I will fill you in more after the press release is finished. Until tomorrow friends, enjoy a glass of scotch.

Agreeing With The Church Makes Me Vomit

Nothing makes my stomach turn more than having to agree with a church, especially when they are discriminating against gay people.

Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN has banned a coach and a team from the church softball league because the coach is a lesbian. This is stupid, ridiculous, and bigoted. However, I have to stand by the church's decision because it is their right to do so. Unless this church is receiving public funding, it is their right to discriminate against whomever they choose.

I do think they should loose their tax-exempt status. If they want to be in the business of discriminating against gay people because it is part of their religion, then they should pay taxes like the rest of us.

Don't get me wrong, I think the church is despicable. It is amazing to me that churches can do stuff like this and be surprised when their numbers dwindle (something I love to see). Especially speaking as someone who is bi-sexual, I don't want anyone to be discriminated against for any reason.

I think the proper response here is scorn and sanction, picketing this church every day until the doors close. Let's bring the free market to the church.

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Check out the original story and try to keep a level head when you read the comments.

Bloody Jesus

It seems that the crying, bloody Jesus has made an appearance in Yerba Buena, Argentina. I think we need to get some actual skeptics on a plane to Argentina to find the tube that is feeding the fake (or real, ewwwwwwwwww) blood through the cast of Jesus.

It couldn't be a hoax. I mean, has anyone ever perpetrated a hoax like this before?

Burning Jesus

It's too good of a story. How could I not comment on it? Jesus has burned to the ground.

You know, in the Old Testament, it does say something about "Thou shalt not worship any graven images." Maybe the Christian God is pissed off ;)

The Flooded Masses

Whenever there is a disaster of some sort, I picture different religious leaders circling above like vultures, just waiting to come down and tell the families of the dead that it is part of God's plan. The recent flood in Lodi, Arkansas was no exception to the rule of disgusting religious display.

"You want people to escape for a moment and focus on God, but they're going to return to the reality of what they're here for," Graig Cowart, pastor of the Pilgrim Rest Landmark Missionary Baptist Church, said ahead of his Sunday morning service.

If you believe in God, then what is focusing on him going to do for you? He obviously wanted to murder all of these people with water. What is the difference in God killing 18 people in a flood and a mother holding her children's heads under water in a bathtub? If you believe that there is a God and the best excuse you can come up with for these actions is “It's all part of his plan”, then you need to reflect on your beliefs in a being that has murder as part of his plan. Maybe murderers can now use the “God” excuse when they get caught, saying was all part of God's plan. I mean, if that is what you believe in God, wouldn't you see the murderer as just a tool of God's wrath, or plan, or tantrum?

Cowart, whose church has helped shield survivors from 95-degree heat and reporters, said his service would be short and informal with a reading from the Book of Romans. He said its message about how everything comes together for God's good may help in the coming days.

Why is it that when people speak of God's good, it is usually followed by some disastrous loss-of-life? It seems like God is the ultimate abusive partner, killing your entire family to show you that he is the one true whatever.

There is another option here. These people were just unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time and a natural disaster occurred. It's sad and it's random. There is no malevolent deity in the sky murdering people on a mass scale; just malevolent people killing in the name of a non-existent god.

Growing Up a Sexpot Christian

Lately I've been fondly reminiscing about my time served as a Christian. Not really. Actually, I've had sour memories dredged up from interacting with insensitive dickheads with their heads up their asses, who remind me of people from my past who were insensitive dickheads with their heads up their asses.

When I was a Christian, I dove head-first into it---I was a "spirit filled" Christian, a Jesus Creepy. A lot of people who didn't know me then are usually shocked to hear that, but hey, I was young, and more importantly, outnumbered. In that environment, you're very insulated from the scary real world: I went to a Christian school which was also my church, and we went to church 2 times a week. Thus I was in the same building, around the same people, who all believed the same things, pretty much every single day.

I believed with my whole heart that the crazy things I was told were true: that god was real, that Jesus died for our sins, that they were really the same person and he/they were going to come back and all this crazy fucked up shit would happen, and if I wasn't aligned with his/their plan and what he/they wanted me to do with my life, then...shit would be bad. I did everything I could to be a "godly young woman." I "studied" the bible and meditated on it. Physically, I quickly figured out that there was a standard: be exceptionally hot, in manner and in dress, but don't actually act on any of the flirty sexual insinuations.

I always had a problem with that apparently. I thought I did covert sexiness pretty well, but no. I also couldn't help it that supposedly this same god that my mom petitioned to protect my chastity also gave me a pretty smoking body, at the very inappropriate age of 12.  I didn't understand why if I looked like the ladies in the pictures, I couldn't wear the outfits. My exasperated mother would just wring her hands.The thing is, I've always been a very sexual person, even as a child (people never like to hear that). I just am; and not just very sexual, I'm freaky too. I know, it's not going to be provocative or interesting at all when I'm a wrinkly old woman. Which is why I work that shit while I've got it.

So I certainly had a lot of complex issues going on, but I also genuinely loved god and wanted to be a good woman. But when you're a Christian, being pretty is an awful big part of being a good woman. I could write pages and pages about this, and in fact I may in the future. Still, I've always cared about my brain too, and though that was the most ignored muscle in my body throughout my entire religious experience, I did want to be smart, or at least Christian smart, i.e. knowledgeable about the bible and god's mysterious ways and such.

But I always felt that my true colors, my natural instincts, who I really am, was constantly stifled in that setting. Not just stifled, suffocated: I think people picked up on my inherently sexual and deviant nature, and were freaked out by it. I think that's why I was always just outside the circle of being accepted.
 
I tried to do the only thing I could think to remedy the situation: find a godly, hot Christian dude that I loved, and get married, and then it would be ok for me to be the voracious sexpot that I already felt I was.

But the Christian dudes weren't having it. I could never understand what I was doing wrong. I devoted myself to Jesus, I took care of my appearance and tried to be pleasing, and one after another the dudes I was interested in would pair off with some other girl.

Looking back, it's a great thing I wasn't successful---in fact it's funny to say that I wasn't successful in describing not marrying a moron. I came out on top here, but it took me a long time to see that. For years I thought that there was something about me that men intensely disliked, and I couldn't figure it out to save my life.

I came to the slow realization that it was because I had a brain, and opinions, and a strong sense of sex,  and apparently that was really scary to contemporary conservative Christian men. Fuck that, fuck them, and fuck the idea that I have to deny the feelings that I have and keep myself chaste.

It's nice now to not be judged for the basic pieces of personality that make me who I am. That's why it irritates me so much when people insist that I should just try to be a Christian, and I'd love it. Been there, done that---didn't work, god ignored me, and most of the people were assholes. And, they insisted on beating out of me every shred of individuality that I had. My teenage years are filled with memories of adults giving me grim disapproving faces and sharply correcting me, not for being rude or causing trouble, but for asking serious questions, giving my opinion, or expressing creativity. It's indescribable how good it feels to not to be in such an oppressive environment anymore.

Get Rid Of The Ugly Sign

An old church in Charlotte, NC is facing the wrecking ball. Now, we have a pretty good record of tearing down any historical building we can get our hands on here in Charlotte, but this building is falling apart. It needs to come down.

Naturally, people are worried about the old sign on top of the building that says "Jesus Saves". I guess having a church on every corner isn't enough for some people. The sign is gaudy and a waste of time and effort, however, there are some people who want to try to save the sign, restore it, and put it somewhere else.

I have come up with a few suggestions on places that this sign would look great at:
The city dump
Off of the coast of NC to make a coral
Melted down and used in the production of lab equipment
Turned into a sign at a local barber that says "Jesus Shaves"


Picture by DeviantArt

The Mormon Church Is Fined, But It Ain't Enough

The Mormon Church will be fined by California over some undocumented donations that were given to help pass Proposition 8 in California, which was a ban on same-sex marriage. The donations totaled $37,000.00, drawing a fine of $5,538.00. This pales in comparison to the estimated $180,000.00 that the church spent getting Proposition 8 passed and the estimated $20 million that the church took in from good Mormon families to support their practice of bigotry. Compare that to the estimated $5 billion in annual revenue and total assets estimated to be between $25 to $30 billion and you get the picture of just how stupid this fine is.

The Church shouldn't be fined for the unreported donations; they should lose their tax-exempt status. Any church who participated in the fight for Proposition 8 should lose their tax exempt status. One of the deals that the church made in order to not pay taxes was that they could not be politically active. This is not to say that the people of the church can't have an opinion, but the church itself cannot put church money and support behind a bill, candidate, or a proposition. To do so violates the non-profit status of the church and should force them to pay taxes from the day that they decided to start backing legislation that discriminates against a group of people.

Imagine the Baptist Convention putting $180,000.00 behind legislation to outlaw interracial marriage. How about a mosque putting $180,000.00 behind legislation to not allow any non-Muslim within 1 mile of a Mosque. It's all the same. It's all discrimination. If a church uses its tax-free money to get into politics, then it shouldn't be tax-free anymore.

Someone tell me how the Christians are being persecuted again?

How Christians Justify Their Bigotry

“God Hates Fags.” That is a common sign that you will see when you look up any article about Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. Fred Phelps and his group of minions are roundly criticized and condemned by “true Christians” across the country on a regular basis. However, these same “true Christians” seem to have no problem espousing the same hatred, just in different, nicer terms. They talk about the sanctity of marriage and the damage that it will do to the fabric of our country. Oh, and the children. Think of the children! Is any of this really any different than what Fred Phelps is saying? No, it isn't, and here is why it is the same exact thing: the justification that each of these groups (true Christians and Westboro Baptist Church) is the same. Both of these groups point to the Bible, specifically to Leviticus.

Leviticus is pretty clear on the subject of homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 says that being gay is an abomination. Abomination! This is where most of the justification for being disgusted by homosexuality comes from these two verses. However, Leviticus is a book of rules. So if you are going to go back to the Old Testament and start pulling out rules like those against gays, then you have to fallow them all. If you believe that God wrote the damned book, then you have to follow everything that is written in it. No allegories, no miscommunication, no mistranslations, and no wiggle room. So lets take a look at what else good ol' Leviticus has to say about how we should live.

Starting in Leviticus 6, we begin to get the list of stuff we can't do. Don't deceive your neighbor, don't steal, don't lie, and don't take lost property. I can live with that. Now on to Leviticus 7. Eating fat or blood is forbidden and will result in excommunication (Lev. 7: 22-27). So if you have ever eaten sausage or German food, you are cut off from the people.

Interested in knowing what animals you can't eat? Camels. Not sure I would eat a camel, but I can't say I have had the chance. A coney. This is an animal I had to look up. I don't think they exist in the States, so we should be safe with that one. A rabbit. Come on! Have you ever eaten rabbit? It's awesome! Pigs. The staple meat of the South. If you have ever eaten bacon, pork chops, pork rinds, livermush, ribs, or BBQ, then you, my friend, are unclean. Not only are you not allowed to eat these animals, but you can't even touch their carcasses. It's an abomination.

Seafood is OK, as long as it has both scales and fins. Have you ever eaten shrimp, scallops, oysters, clams, muscles, lobster, or crab? Say no and I will call you a liar. You are an abomination on two counts. The people in the bible have obviously never had Crawfish Etouffee. You can't eat owls, herons, ospreys, or bats. I don't think I would argue that one too much. No four-legged or flying insects, except for grasshoppers, katydids, crickets, or locusts. Obviously, those must be tasty. Nothing that creeps on the ground. That includes, rats, lizards, and weasels. I hope all of this has made you hungry.

You know what else is unclean? Women. When women have their period, they are unclean. When women give birth, they are unclean. Women are actually unclean longer if they give birth to a girl verses giving birth to a boy.

Then we get into common sense things, like don't rub all over someone who has an oozing, puss-filled sore, rash, infection, or any other malady. Anything covered in mildew is bad and should be burned. So, the next time you get some mildew in your shower, burn the house down. The Bible is unclear on what we should do if we find mildew on plastic though. I wonder how they didn't see that coming?

Emissions from the body are also unclean. This includes spit, urine, feces, semen, blood, vomit, and I guess water from boils. Again, women are gross. Men can't sleep in the same bed or sit in the same seat as a woman who is having her period. Because, you know, icky.

Now comes the fun stuff: Sex. You can't have incest relations (something I don't think I will ever have to worry about). But that is to say close incest relations, such as mother, father, brother, sister, half-sister, half-brother, aunts, uncles, grandparents, grandchildren, or children. Cousins are OK! If your dad gets married to another woman, you can't have sex with her either. No sex with a woman and her daughter. It doesn't seem to take a stand on any other threesomes, foursomes, or orgies. So that's good news. No gay sex. No bestiality.

You know what else you can't do? Cut your hair or beard, plant two different kinds of seeds in your garden, or wear clothes from two different kinds of material.

Take a wild guess at what the punishment is for committing any of these “sins”. You guessed it. Death. Atonement for the lesser sins just involves killing animals and rubbing blood everywhere. Sounds wonderful.

So, the next time you condemn homosexuality “cause the Bible tells me so”, remember, you aren't living up to the Bible yourself. Now, you can say what most Christians say. “Oh, we have the New Testament. The Old Testament is just so... old.” However, if you are going to use the laws of Leviticus to condemn homosexuality, then you have got to apply them all, to everyone, everywhere, all of the time. Or, you could join us in the 21st century and mind your own damned business.

Jesus Causes Highway Pileup

So this naked guy on I-95 in Norwalk, Connecticut started a chain of events that ended in a five-car pileup. I know, terrible. I am the bad guy for posting this. But come on, how do you know this isn't the real Jesus. Maybe Jesus was a naked hippy who has come back to screw up our traffic.

Nothin' Fails Like Prayer!

Supposedly there is going to be a massive prayer campaign held this weekend for the ambiguous "plight of children." I have a lot of questions here: What children? Children in what country? All children or just the ones that are in need? What constitutes need? I don't understand exactly what they are going to be praying for.

One thing I have noticed is that how easy it is to pray instead of actually doing something. Pious Christians everywhere are willing to sit around and think to themselves for a whole weekend, but going out and actually doing something to help children that are being molested, or children who are starving, or children who are homeless, well that just sounds like a lot of work.

So when you think prayer can heal the world, or anything for that matter, ask yourself this: when is the last time prayer made someones arm grow back? When is the last time prayer brought the dead back to life?

Obama: Progressive Joke -- Rant

When certain situations occur, I usually try to reserve judgment until there is enough information to form an opinion. I think the oil leak has reached that point.

First off, we should have never been drilling in the ocean. We get so little oil from the area that it hardley makes a difference in the world production. Also, it's not like the oils is sucked up out of the Gulf and poured right into your local gas station. It actually hits the world market and ends up going to somewhere other than the US. It is hard enough to contain spills on land. When you add water and more than a mile in between the rig and the tap into the equation, you are asking for something bad to happen. Well guess what, something disastrous happened.

So you may ask why I am calling Obama a joke in this whole debacle. It all comes down to one reason: he is as much of a corporate shill as the last president, and the guy before that, and the guy before that, etc.

As soon as this leaking started pumping out thousand of gallons of oil into the Gulf, the president should have been slamming heads together around BP and getting every engineer and physicist in the world together to stop the leak. Instead, he sat back with a frown and let BP handle their mess. Great idea!

I love the stories of Obama getting angry and yelling at the CEO of BP. Yet, as soon as he is done, he lets this bastard go back to doing the same thing he was doing before. Then, he says he is going to stop any new drilling in the Gulf while almost simultaneously telling the oil companies “Sure, do whatever you want.” Yelling at someone and then allowing the same practices to continue is not genuine, it is as fake as Heidi Montag's nose.

Now today we hear that Obama has yelled at BP and the republicans, scolding them for being bad kids. In the same speech, he talks about expecting accidents when drilling for oil and essentially says we are going to continue drilling for oil. How about this, grow a pair of balls and actually do something other than acting like you are pissed off.

Don't get me wrong, pissed off is good. As a matter of fact, I think he needs to be pissed off more often. But when you get all pissy and then do nothing, you just look like a Doberman that has had his lower jaw removed. I'll go ahead and say it here and now: I think Obama is too much of a coward to actually penalize BP. He I too much of a coward to force the republicans to vote for legislation against the oil industry or to stand with the oil industry whilst they sink into the gulf along with all of the wildlife the oil leak is killing.

We saw the same thing during health care and financial “reform”. Obama comes out with strong words and marshmallow action. I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong, but if history is any indicator, we can expect a TARP-style response: privatized gains and socialized losses. We are already going to loose the fishing industry and the coastal states along with it, so lets see how much we end up having to pay BP, TransOcean, and Halliburton to clean up their mess.

Sad News From My Small Town

The Gaston County Commission has decided to cut the operating hours of the library system back to three days a week in order to absorb the cost of increases in operating fees. The library system took a big hit in 2001 for the same reason. So, since things are so bad, they must be cutting back everywhere, right?

Not really. The Gastonia Police Department has received funding to add eight new officers to the force under the stimulus bill. So we are cutting services that the poor use and increasing jobs for the people who are going to go out a victimize the poor. Interesting concept.

If you cut these services, kids will find something else to do after school, and I can almost guarantee that the public won't like it. So when the last thread that a lot of kids were holding on to gets cut back to a schedule that is too erratic to keep up with, they will occupy their time getting in trouble. Then you need more cops to keep the new criminals under control.

I don't understand why they don't take the money that would have added eight cops and put it towards public services. Don't take away what little services that our county does offer. But what do I know, I'm just a socialist.

Pious Chaplain Also Unobservant

The Chaplain Corps is a group of individuals in the military that I could do without. I think that they are a waste of resources and don’t serve a useful purpose. They are also commissioned as officers for no reason that I can think of. But hey, if the religious soldiers need someone to comfort them, whatever.

What I can’t stomach is these pious chaplains making stupid statements about their certainty about the religiosity of the military.

Hagwood said he doesn’t think he has met an atheist in a combat zone, and the vast majority of people he met seemed to grow in faith rather than lose faith.

A preacher never met an atheist in combat. Ever. I can’t imagine an atheist needed to utilize the services of a chaplain. The fact that this commissioned harlot has never met an atheist in combat is no surprise to me. The atheists are probably out making sure they are ready for their next mission while the others are wasting valuable time talking to the mediator for sky daddy.

There are many parts of the article about this chaplain that made me want to vomit, but saying he has never met an atheist in combat is stupid, idiotic, and otherwise moronic. Anytime someone makes a statement like that, they need to be called out.

Illinois Cross Update

Just an update on this story. Rob Sherman, the atheist who is threatening to sue, met with the "Friends of the Cross" to explain his case. He got the same answer as before of "we will take it under consideration" which means "fuck off." I love this gem:

The words "of peace" on the end of the formal name were also added during the construction phases - set against a social and historical backdrop of the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis, he added. The cross was meant to be a symbol of peace for all people, and peace is a secular concept.

So he says that the cross is undeniably a Christian symbol, but it is also the symbol of universal peace. Is this any different in putting "in God we trust" on our money? Just because you say something doesn't make it so. I can prove that this cross wasn't meant as a symbol of peace. Imagine a crescent moon and star monument that had the words "of peace" tacked on to the end of the name. Now give that monument public money.