Sick Sick Sick!

I have been rather ill this week. Things are starting to get back to normal for me, so I should be pumping out some new material for the 3 or 4 people who read my blog. Thank you all for not dropping me like a hot rock. In the mean time, enjoy this video.

Why Pay For Schools When You Can Have The DNC?

Hooray for Charlotte! The DNC has chosen Charlotte as the host city for the convention in 2012. I am very excited to have an event to protest next year. However, someone pointed something out to me that I hadn't thought of until now: how are we going to pay for it?

Here is a quick rundown of the situation in North Carolina: teachers are being laid off in droves because we can't find money to keep them employed. The state is slated to lay off another 5300 teachers from our already-strained education system that is already ranked at 23rd in the nation. So lets cram more kids into already overburdened classrooms so they can be taught by underpaid and overworked teachers.

Social services are being slashed which will add to the crime rate and homeless rate because we can't find any money. What happens when mental health services are cut to people who are already living on the fringes of society? Homelessness, crime, and a load of people entering an overburdened prison system.

Those are just two very important aspects of our state and its lack of money. So please, someone explain to me how can Charlotte afford to spend $40 million on the DNC.

Even with restrictions the party has placed on corporate fund-raising, Foxx [Charlotte Mayor] said, "we will raise the money," estimated to be $40 million. "I have no doubts about that." He also said that "a lot of security dollars are going to come into our area."

So when your kids can't go to school and half of your family is on the streets because there are no care centers for those in need of mental health, ask the DNC why they needed to bring a party of Republicans-in-drag to our city and spend money that we don't have.

A Message To The Catholic Church

So the Catholic church is starting a dialogue with non-believers across the globe. I would like to know why any non-believer should have anything to say to the Catholic hegemony? Here is what needs to be said to the Catholic church:

You are a group of old creepy men who have done nothing but block every attempt to find justice for the countless children that were raped continuously by a large number of your associates. You are a stalwart against womens rights and children's rights. You deny science at every turn, from the science of disease transmission to the science of sexuality. You foster an environment of hatred and exclusion wherever you go. You ask your associates to go against their human nature and forgo the act of sex and then look on in wonder when they end up raping children. Fix those problems and we can talk.

Islam Indoctrination School In Winston-Salem, NC

When does being well-versed in nonsense become a good education? When the word “religious” is tacked onto it, of course. Winston-Salem has a group of Muslims from a mosque that want to start a private or charter school.

Charter schools are funded by the state with tax-payers money. Funding a strictly religious school with tax money would be a blatant violation of the separation clause, and we all know that federal law trumps any state law. There are some troubling aspects of this school that the mosque wants to set up though, like the fact that there are ways to circumvent the laws of charter schools. Oh, also the whole bit about brainwashing children and indoctrinating them into a religion of hatred and violence. You know, like any other religion.

Hey Christians, this is why there should be a strict separation of church and state. When the lines of separation are blurred, room is made for any particular brand of bullshit to become a state-funded institution.

There should be no religiously-ran schools. Period. Especially from a religion that teaches that all women should be subservient to men, no matter what, and that people that don’t buy into their fantasies are branded as infidels and are subject to death. Oh yeah, Islam is a religion of toleration and love though.

Islam is a lie just like any other religion. It is a made-up story from some illiterate desert nomad who had a propensity for child sex. Sounds like a great dogma to indoctrinate children in to.

Jesus Finds Alternate Route To Your Heart

Now, Jesus can cum into your heart via your anus or vagina. Two Jesus dildo masterpieces are being sold. One of a kind, never to be reproduced again.

Note the warning by the seller: “For display purposes only”. Yeah, that looks like it would be pretty painful to use. Imagine going to the hospital because the Jesus broke off and got stuck in someone’s pussy, or the little "INRI" tag getting stuck up someones ass. Have fun explaining that one.

Jesus Sighting: Starr County, TX

Jesus and Mary are up to their old tricks again. They have been sighted on a tortilla in a Starr County, TX family’s home.

A Starr County family is wondering if a mircale[sic] took place in their kitchen on Tuesday afternoon.

Melinda Solis told Action 4 News that she was warming up flour tortillas for her teenage sons after school around 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Solis said she was spreading out the cooked tortillas when her mother noticed something unusual.

One of the tortillas had a large brown spot that resembled the Virgin Mary holding the Baby Jesus.

It’s a sign! Jesus and Mary want you to eat more tortillas!

Why Does God Hate Dogs?

Many people throughout history have heard the “voice of God” tell them to do various things from reclaiming their homeland (Joan of Arc) to murdering their children (numerous cases). God always seems to talk to the mentally ill, or at least they seem to be the only ones following his orders. Well, God has seen fit to start a war against dogs and has claimed his first victim.

A Spartanburg County woman told animal control officers God advised her to hang and then burn her nephew's pit bull because it was "a devil dog" and because it had chewed her bible.

Spartanburg County animal control officers said Miriam Fowler Smith, 65, of Pacolet Mills, confessed to wrapping an extension cord around the dog's neck, hanging it from a tree, and then setting it on fire.

Here is a tip for everyone out there who doesn’t have a dog or doesn’t know anything about the dog they may have: they chew things. It isn’t out of any malicious intent; they aren’t the tools of Satan; they are not demons that have come to do the bidding of hell. They are animals and they chew on stuff.

God did not tell this woman to kill a dog. There are no gods, so the idea that this woman heard the voice of god is rubbish. She is obviously insane (my professional medical opinion, and no I am not a doctor). However, it is disconcerting that when people latch on to something like religion and the idea of a god, they become capable of horrible things in the name of said religion or god.

Would she have killed the dog is she wasn’t a Christian? There is no way to know. However, when a group of people fetishize something like the Bible to the point of taking another life if it becomes damaged, then religion was not a helping factor.

I would challenge any of the religionists out there to explain how they believe god talks to them but dismiss cases of mothers killing their children because their god told them to. There is more evidence for a malevolent deity in the Bible than one who whispers sweet nothings into people’s ears and tells them to love one another (except for the gays and brown people, of course).

Were the Reagan Years the Good Old Days?

Sarah Palin, stupidity's cheerleader, said recently that the problems in this country were due to America's being out of step with Ronald Reagan's values. I won't go on about Palin here, largely because she's far too easy a target and Will does a fine job without my help. But I've heard so many people talk about Reagan as if he were a modern savior and the last, best hope for the future. I came to adulthood in Reagan's America and I think it's time to set some things straight.

If the United States is out of touch with Ronald Reagan's values, perhaps it's because his values were out of touch with reality. 

Reagan was a great president if you were white, Christian, heterosexual, male and rich. Everyone else was unimportant and only worthy of derision as being lazy, sinful and dishonest. I remember him droning on about a "welfare queen" while failing to mention the billions of dollars in needless subsidies to corporations. It's worth mentioning that his people couldn't produce this welfare queen when asked for proof of Reagan's story.

While on the subject of Reagan's stories, he once regaled a group of Medal of Honor recipients with the heroic tale of a pilot who stayed aboard his plane so the poor man stuck in the ball turret of their failing B-17 wouldn't have to die alone. When he was informed that the event never actually occurred but was from the movie "On a Wing and a Prayer," he simply dismissed it saying, "Well, it made a great story, didn't it?" He was in the presence of real heroes but he found a movie more memorable. But what can we expect from a man who once referred to military uniforms as costumes?

When HIV reached the shores of this country, rather than mobilize the Center for Disease Control to combat it while it might have been contained or research its prevention and cure, Reagan cut the budget for the CDC and ignored the problem. After all, it only effected Haitians, gay men and intravenous drug users. HIV was like a gift to Reagan because it only seemed to be a threat to people he saw as undesirable. When it hit white, middle class, Christian America, then he saw it as a problem.

After gutting budgets for scientific research, he asked, "Why should we fund their intellectual curiosity?" This makes me wonder how far we'd have advanced in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease if adequate funding had been available to researchers in the 1980's.

His economic policies set he stage for today's financial crisis. Rather than rein in the corporate greed that was threatening to corrupt and destroy our financial institutions, Reagan celebrated wealth and excess. He believed that by allowing the rich to get richer with no oversight, the wealth would "trickle down" and benefit everyone. I don't know how others feel but I don't like it when someone pisses on me and tries to tell me it's rain to make my flowers grow.

Probably the most heinous bit of the Reagan legacy was his climbing into bed with fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell and the like. Now the leader of this secular nation had given a single religious group political clout from which this nation might never recover. Domestic and foreign policy were being determined by people who saw those unlike them as sinners and who perceived Armageddon as a desirable goal. For the eight years of Reagan's reign and the four years of his trained lapdog, George H.W. Bush, the world was held hostage by these buffoons who read the Book of Revelation like an instruction manual. Many feared that "the day after" could be the next day.

When I go on about the Reagan legacy, invariably someone will point out that he won the Cold War. Yes, this is true. It's because he was willing to do the one thing that Mikhail Gorbachev refused to do: mortgage the future of this nation for generations to come. The first time the word "trillion" was used in association with the national debt, it was in Reagan's fiscally conservative America.

That's how I remember the Reagan era and maybe this country is out of step with his values. Looking back thirty years and how he damaged this country and its standing on the world stage, I can't see this as a bad thing.

Jesus Sighting: Fort Mill, SC

Yeah, we have a ton of inbred yokels in the Carolinas. What of it?

Jesus Christ, Astronaut

A beautiful moonlit night over India is shattered by the screams of a random group of people. They saw it. It was right there in front of everyone. Mary and the baby Jesus were on the moon! How in the hell did they get up there? They must be astronauts!

Reports of sightings of the image of Mother Mary and infant Jesus on the moon on Thursday and Friday in Mumbai, Goa and Bihar has fuelled fears about an impending apocalypse.

While priests asked people not to take the issue seriously, the news set off stories about the end of the world. Many saw the images as a message to prepare for doomsday.

Well, I am glad no one overreacted and jumped to some crazy conclusions. I guess appearing on the moon is a step up from a tortilla chip and a slice of bread. To appear on the moon MUST mean the end is nigh. It does make me wonder though: why did Jesus appear in his infantile form? Why was Mary there?

Of course, this could all just have been hysteria and pareidolia.

Hawaii Makes Great Decisions

Hawaii: a land of beautiful weather, beautiful landscape, beautiful people, and as of last month, no prayer during state senate meetings. In a move that would seem unfathomable by any other state in the Union, the senate of Hawaii decided to end the daily prayer that was usually given every day before the session began which more than likely referenced Jesus. Of course!

The ACLU wrote a letter to the senate telling them that they were circumventing the separation of church and state. Instead of asking for prayers that didn't reference any deities, the senate decided to do away with the practice all together. To that, we salute you Hawaii!

Franklin Graham: Anti-Christ Alive In The US, Not Enough Jesus In Tuscon

Speech is an important aspect of our existence as human beings. Many have learned the hard way that sometimes it isn't what you say but what you don't say that makes the greatest impact. Sometimes, it is what isn't said that becomes a perceived slight against a person or group of people. During the Tuscon, AZ memorial service, one such perceived slight was felt by Franklin Graham on behalf of all Christians throughout the known Christian universe.

Because the President didn't come out and say “Jesus, God Jesus JESUS!”, Franklin Graham is letting the world know that the anti-Christ is alive and well in the US.

Graham also expressed his dismay at the way the recent memorial service for victims of the Tucson shooting was handled, contrasting the event with other memorial services that he attended. While memorial services for the Oklahoma City bombing and a prayer service after 9/11 called upon the name of God, the Tucson memorial featured an Indian man who was calling upon "father sky and mother earth."

“There was no call for God to put His loving arms around those who were hurting,” he observed. "Why did they leave him out? They scoff at the name of Jesus Christ."

He said the scoffing and persecution against believers of Christ is only going to get worse.

"The spirit of anti-Christ is everywhere," stated Graham, who noted that television networks have pushed out reporters who cover Christian-related topics. "We're being secularized so quickly. Anything that has to do with Christian faith is slowly being taking out of society."

According to Graham, we as a people should mention God or Jesus in every sentence during a being accused of persecuting Christians. It is funny how persecution of Christians went from feeding them to lions (actual persecution) to not mentioning them in every public forum possible (whining).

Would Franklin Graham have found this sentence satisfactory?

“Why would God allow something terrible like this to happen and expect us to sing his praises afterward?”

People like Franklin Graham will not be happy until there is a theocracy in the US. It is exactly this kind of extremism and, to be honest, pathetic cry-baby behavior that will ruin this country if any citizen lets it. To fight against extremism means to fight against the idiocy of people like Franklin Graham.

P.S. The racist undertones of his comments did not go unnoticed.

Exorcize Those Gay Demons!

In a surprise to most sane people, it was revealed that homosexuality is caused by demon possession, not genetics as scientists had studied and told us. The purveyor of this dubious, paradigm-changing knowledge is former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt. He found the cause of homosexuality while “ministering” to a young lesbian sailor while she was going through a particularly tough time.

Klingenschmitt: As a chaplain I prayed with a young lesbian sailor who came to me and said, “Chaplain, I don’t like the way I’m feeling. Can you help me with this?” We prayed with her and she renounced her sin, she invited Jesus Christ to be the first man in her life that she trusted. We had a wedding ceremony. She wept as Jesus moved into her heart and got the devil out of her…

Pakman: So you’re saying that you believe a gay exorcism is a legitimate and worthwhile thing to do in these cases?

Klingenschmitt: Well, it’s the only spiritual solution to a spiritual disease. I looked into her eyes and said “You foul demon of lesbian homosexuality, come out of this woman in Jesus’ name” she began to weep and she loved Jesus. She began reading her Bible, became the best evangelist in our church. She got baptized and started dating boys.

I am not sure this story is true at all. I find it hard to believe such fantastic tales from a group of people who lie every day (but they are doing it for Jesus, so it’s ok). If this story is true then it is an absolute disaster. How sick is this guy? It’s not bad enough that he makes this young sailor feel horrible and wrong for how she feels, but then he makes her go through a wedding ceremony so that she can get married to Jesus? If she was crying, it was probably because her life was collapsing around her.

Maybe she wasn’t gay. There are too many variables to her situation that are not revealed here and I suspect the good chaplain never tried to find out. I am still not convinced that this ever happened, but stuff like this does happen every day in churches across the nation. Kids who are confused about their sexuality or are actually gay are pushed further into the back of the closet by the crazy and condemning actions of the clergy.

The largest obstacle to people coming to terms with their sexuality has been, is, and will continue to be the abusive nature of the church; that is until the public stops believing in fairy-tales and rejects the actions of imbeciles like Klingenschmitt.

Fletcher, NC Church Has It's Own Fight Club

How do you settle a dispute over leadership? Well, if you are part of the Greater New Zion Baptist Church in Fletcher, NC, you throw down.

About 30 police officers from five agencies were called to break up fights Sunday at Greater New Zion Baptist Church in Fletcher, about 94 miles west of Charlotte.

Henderson County Sheriff's Capt. Jerry Rice says the brawl is under investigation and no one appears to have been seriously hurt.

Rice says there were about 75 people at the church when police arrived, but not all of them were scuffling.

A 75-person brawl? How awesome is that? While other churches “get in the spirit” and flail around like epileptics, this church gets in the spirit of whooping someones ass. Ain't it the Christian way? If you don't get your way, you just start beating the shit out of someone. Remember, Jesus did say “If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek. But, if someone offends you, take them outside and beat them with thy rod and thy staff.”