Category: Religion

There Are Historical Precidents

No Comments

This hearkens back to the Borgia Papacy.

We now have allegations that Vatican official took bribes to move “facilitate” cannonization:

There is nothing like a good old Vatican scandal to bring Rome to its knees.

Never mind that the city government is already in complete shambles on the eve of the Vatican’s Holy Jubilee, which could double the many millions of visitors to the Eternal City over the next year. No, instead of finalizing preparations for what should be a feather in the pope’s mitre, the Vatican is bracing itself for the release on Thursday of two books that seek to expose the sinister side of everything from saint-making to the very sanctity of the Holy See.

………

The most damning of the two is Merchants in the Temple—to be released as Via Crucis in Italian on Thursday and in English a week later—by Gianluigi Nuzzi, the journalist who was the recipient of the butler’s stolen files, which Nuzzi published in his best-selling 2012 book, His Holiness. In his new book, he focuses on Francis and finance, all the while weaving an intricate story between the popular pontiff’s promises and what Nuzzi tries to prove are his failings. Along the way, he also reveals through stolen documents, hidden taped conversations, and meeting minutes just who he believes Francis really is.

“The Pope, so sweet and affable in public appearances, but steadfast and firm before his closest collaborators,” Nuzzi writes. “Francis of the big smiles and kind words shows himself to be absolute in his goals and intolerant of the Curia’s ‘human ambition to power.’”

………

But among the biggest scams the Vatican elite apparently make money from is the high price of sinister saint-making, which runs those trying to push their saintly cause even to be considered around €50,000 to cover the costs of the expert theologians, physicians, and bishops who examine the cause. The process of saint-making also involves postulators, or those in charge of pushing the causes forward.

When the special commission in charge of cleaning up the Vatican’s finances found out that there were essentially no records at all of where donations for the causes of saints went, they froze the accounts of almost everyone involved in the holy work of choosing saints, including a postulator, who had more than €1 million spread out among three Vatican bank accounts. No wrongdoing was determined, and the postulator was left to enjoy his tax-free haven, but apparently no accounting has yet been produced.

………

Any profits from donations meant to lift up would-be saints are supposed to go to the Fund for the Causes of the Poor, but that fund remained stagnant despite several banner years in saint-making revenue, writes Nuzzi, who recalls that Pope John Paul II alone beatified 1,338 blesseds in 147 rites and 482 saints in 51 celebrations. “This raised the Commission’s suspicions,” he writes. “No documents. No justification and bookkeeping for an activity involving tens of millions of euros. Yet these are huge sums of money for which Vatican regulations demand proper bookkeeping.”

It’s clear that the current Pontiff is trying to unravel this ball of yarn, but he is fighting 1000 years of how business has been done, though my guess is that the whole sainthood thing is largely an artifact of John Paul II, who made more saints during his reign than every other Pope combined.

I think that it is going to be very difficult for Francis to deal with this. 

The Vatican is bigger than any pope.

I Care Not Much for a Man’s Religion Whose Dog and Cat Are Not the Better for It

No Comments

Abraham Lincoln said that, and a recent research implies that generosity and religiously are antithetical:

An argument often advanced for the encouragement of religion is that, to paraphrase St Matthew’s report of Jesus’s words, it leads people to love their neighbours as themselves. That would be a powerful point were it true. But is it? This was the question Jean Decety, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, asked in a study just published in Current Biology.

Dr Decety is not the first to wonder, in a scientific way, about the connection between religion and altruism. He is, though, one of the first to do it without recourse to that standard but peculiar laboratory animal beloved of psychologists, the undergraduate student. Instead, he collaborated with researchers in Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa and Turkey, as well as with fellow Americans, to look at children aged between five and 12 and their families.

Altogether, Dr Decety and his colleagues recruited 1,170 families for their project, and focused on one child per family. Five hundred and ten of their volunteer families described themselves as Muslim, 280 as Christian, 29 as Jewish, 18 as Buddhist and 5 as Hindu. A further 323 said they were non-religious, 3 were agnostic and 2 ticked the box marked “other”.

………

The upshot was that the children of non-believers were significantly more generous than those of believers. They gave away an average of 4.1 stickers. Children from a religious background gave away 3.3. And a further analysis of the two largest religious groups (Jews, Buddhists and Hindus were excluded because of their small numbers in the sample), showed no statistical difference between them. Muslim children gave away 3.2 stickers on average, while Christian children gave away 3.3. Moreover, a regression analysis on these groups of children showed that their generosity was inversely correlated with their households’ religiosity. This effect remained regardless of a family’s wealth and status (rich children were more generous than poor ones), a child’s age (older children were more generous than younger ones) or the nationality of the participant. These findings are, however, in marked contrast to parents’ assessments of their own children’s sensitivity to injustice. When asked, religious parents reported their children to be more sensitive than non-believing parents did. 

 It appears that no one’s dog cat is better for their owner’s religion.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico? Part MCMLVII

No Comments

There is now a case wending its way through Texas courts.

Some home schoolers are saying that actually requiring they make an effort to educate their children is a violation of their rights:

Laura McIntyre began educating her nine children more than a decade ago inside a vacant office at an El Paso motorcycle dealership she ran with her husband and other relatives.

Now the family is embroiled in a legal battle the Texas Supreme Court hears Monday that could have broad implications on the nation’s booming home-school ranks. The McIntyres are accused of failing to teach their children educational basics because they were waiting to be transported to heaven with the second coming of Jesus Christ.

At issue: Where do religious liberty and parental rights to educate one’s children stop and obligations to ensure home-schooled students ever actually learn something begin?

“Parents should be allowed to decide how to educate their children, not whether to educate their children,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Coalition for Responsible Home Education.

Like other Texas home-school parents, Laura and Michael McIntyre weren’t required to register with state or local education officials. They also didn’t have to teach state-approved curriculums or give standardized tests.

But problems began when the dealership’s co-owner and Michael’s twin brother, Tracy, reported never seeing the children reading, working on math, using computers or doing much of anything educational except singing and playing instruments. He said he heard one of them say learning was unnecessary since “they were going to be raptured.”

It appears that Texas lives by the motto, “If you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, you should start breeding them for stupidity.”

This Yid a Better Catholic than Russ Douthat, Who Knew?

No Comments

From the, “Even this Jew Knows This,” department, we have a group of Catholic theologians objecting to Ross Douthat’s writings on the Church and the Pope, not because there is anything inherently heretical about his writings, but because he os so ignorant of the basic principles of the Church that it is embarrassing:

If you haven’t read Mr. Douthat’s piece, it’s worth a look—just keep a nitroglycerin pill handy, because it is a shocker, depicting the pope as a figure of “ostentatious humility” (naughty pope, rubbing his simplicity in our overfed faces) who is attempting to change that which Mr. Douthat says “the pope is supposed to have no power to change,” namely “Catholic doctrine.”

Now, if you find yourself wondering, since when is the pope (or a synod, for that matter) unable to call for a change in church doctrine, well, that’s a good question. The pope and the synod can in fact change doctrine, but not dogma.

Put simply, dogma is the stuff you have to accept if you’re going to call yourself Catholic. It’s the Creed we recite every Sunday—things like the incarnation, the Trinity and the communion of the saints that we hold as undeniable tenets of our faith—plus any pronouncements that popes have invoked infallibly, which has happened almost never. The Assumption of Mary was such a pronouncement; so is the Immaculate Conception.

Doctrine, as the term is most commonly used (including here by Mr. Douthat), refers to the church’s moral teachings, which develop over time as new questions and also new insights arise. Doctrinal teachings—of which the church’s stance regarding divorce is one—do not change often or easily. They can even be mistaken for dogma by the amount of resistance made at the suggestion of any alteration. But they are certainly capable of development. In fact that was one whole point of the synod—to reflect on the various questions of family today, in light of our tradition and the lived experience of Catholics, and consider what if any comments, including potentially changes in practice, should be offered.

I’ve known of this difference for years, even though there really is not an equivalent in Judaism, formalized doctrine implies a central authority that is lacking in Judaism, but it appears that Mr. Douthat does not.

This is a stupid that rivals Maureen Dowd at her most Maureen Dowd.

Go figure.

H/T Charlie Pierce

Because Grave Robbing is the Christian Thing to Do

No Comments

It looks like everyone favorite arts and crafts themed band of Talibaptist bigots have expanded their activities into dealing in stolen archaeological artifacts:

This is how it’s done. Oligarchs pillage and loot so they can push their own version of history on everyone.

In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case on religious freedom and government mandates. A senior law enforcement source with extensive knowledge of antiquities smuggling confirmed that these ancient artifacts had been purchased and were being imported by the deeply-religious owners of the crafting giant, the Green family of Oklahoma City. For the last four years, law enforcement sources tell The Daily Beast, the Greens have been under federal investigation for the illicit importation of cultural heritage from Iraq.

These tablets, like the other 40,000 or so ancient artifacts owned by the Green family, were destined for the Museum of the Bible, the giant new museum funded by the Greens, slated to open in Washington, D.C., in 2017. Both the seizure of the cuneiform tablets and the subsequent federal investigation were confirmed to us by Cary Summers, the president of the Museum of the Bible.

For their part, Hobby Lobby is claiming it’s just screwed-up paperwork. Nothing more than that. Just a customs mix-up that has taken well over 4 years to resolve. Not really.

Here’s hoping that there will be a criminal prosecution, and a very pious Muslim cellmate, in their future.

Funniest Lad Mad Cover in Pakistan of the Day

No Comments

Pakistani actress Veena Malik just appeared nude on the cover of FHM India sporting ink on her left arm saying “ISI”.

This is a reference to the Pakistani intelligence service which has been accused of supporting terrorists in South Asia, and they are not amused:

In this month’s issue of FHM India, an international men’s magazine, Pakistani actress Veena Malik made worldwide headlines with a risqué nude photo shoot. While much of the attention has been on what Malik wasn’t wearing, one of the most powerful elements of her photo shoot was what she was sporting: a big, bold tattoo on her left arm, stating very simply, “ISI,” for Pakistani’s secretive Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

The cover headline: “Pakistani W.M.D. Veena Malik Shows You How to Throw a Grenade!”

Indeed, the cover has been explosive; PakAlertPress.com, for instance splashed a headline on its blog: “India and Pakistan Are Going Nuclear Over Provocative Political Tattoo.” And the photo has elicited a furious reaction in Pakistan’s media and in its living rooms.

In one fell swoop, the enormous tattoo on a bare woman’s body managed to demystify, emasculate and parody the ISI — something most people have been afraid to do in public since the inception of the agency a year after the birth of the nation in 1947. Founded with a mission of coordinating intelligence in the country after Pakistan’s loss to India in the 1947 war in Kashmir, the agency has become a feared, though privately mocked, enterprise, its hands allegedly in every back-room Pakistani deal; rigging elections, training militants for battle in India and Afghanistan, and monitoring its own citizens. The tattoo’s location on Malik’s body takes on special meaning in light of retired Adm. Mike Mullen’s statement in September that the militant Haqqani Network, considered by most Western analysts and experts to be based in the tribal areas of Pakistan, is a “veritable arm” of the ISI.

………

Kabeer Sharma, editor of FHM India, says the ISI tattoo was meant to be a sardonic reflection of India’s own conspiracy theories about the intelligence agency. “In India, you say, ‘The milk has gone bad. The ISI did it,’ They blame all of their problems on ISI,” says Sharma.

Sharma, the son of an Indian satirist and New Delhi bookstore owner, says that a dilemma on the subcontinent is that folks don’t laugh enough over the absurdities of politics. “The problem,” he says, “is that we all blame our problems on this imaginary force. Who is this ISI?” Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side, everything is blamed on RAW. “We collectively have no sense of humor. We have no sense of irony,” he says.

………

But this isn’t just a conspiracy hatched in India (though the magazine was produced there), feeding the siege mentality behind so much of the rhetoric in Pakistan. In a country where the “ghairat brigade,” or honor squad, of talking heads takes regularly to the airwaves to defend Pakistan’s honor against enemies — perceived and imagined — the photo shoot was a victory for a new movement that is emerging in Pakistan: the beghairat brigade, or the squad “without honor,” or more aptly the “shameless brigade.”

To many, the beghairat brigade offers a counter to the conspiracy theories that so permeate debates in Pakistan. Josh White, a scholar on Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says, “I think the significance of the small but interesting beghairat movement is that it is trying to forge a way of being genuinely nationalistic without accepting the narrative that all of Pakistan’s problems are the result of someone else’s meddling.”

I am sure that there are some deeper sociological points here, but this tempest in a teapot also amusing as hell.

Gawdammit, Florida!

1 Comment

I am a firm believer in the principle that there should never be any sort of religious requirement for holding any position of public trust.

Still, when I heard about candidate for US Senate who admits to having sacrificed a goat and drinking its blood, I shake my head, and say, “Only in Florida”.

A lawyer who is standing for the US Senate in Florida has admitted killing a goat and drinking its blood as part of a sacrifice “to the god of the wilderness”.

Augustus Sol Invictus, who changed his name to the Latin phrase which means “majestic unconquered sun”, has accused critics of running a smear campaign against him.

The 32-year-old is a member of the Libertarian Party in Florida and said he carried out the sacrifice as part of a pagan ritual.

He said: “I did sacrifice a goat. I know that’s probably a quibble in the mind of most Americans.

“I sacrificed an animal to the god of the wilderness … yes, I drank the goat’s blood.”

Mr Invictus was responding after the chairman of the Libertarian Party of Florida, Adrian Wyllie, resigned, calling on party leaders to denounce his candidacy.

Florida, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I’m waiting for them to elect Marilyn Manson governor.

The USAF Supports Witch Burning

No Comments

I’m beginning to think that sees itself as a branch of Oral Roberts University.

In the latest episode of stupidity in the service, or at least the latest episode that doesn’t involve the over priced and under performing F-35, the Air Force has fired a dental technician for being a witch.

In an even bigger f%$# up, the person that they fired was a Hindu, the 3rd largest religion on the face of the earth:

Deborah Schoenfeld says she was harassed at a Fort Meade, Md., dental clinic for her Hindu faith and then fired when she complained about it.

 The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is representing a former Air Force contractor who says she was fired from a dental clinic at Fort Meade, Maryland, after complaining that her co-workers discriminated against her because she was Hindu. She claims they then accused her of being a witch.

 Group founder and president Mikey Weinstein wrote in a letter to officials: “We have spoken with witnesses at the clinic under your command who have universally confirmed that, not only did this horrid harassment take place, but ever since the execution of her punishment for failing the religious test imposed by the leadership of Epes Dental Clinic, a particular offending party has effusively celebrated her replacement by a Catholic woman by saying publicly that ‘It’s good to see we got an angel, since last time we had the devil.’”

 ………

 Reached by Air Force Times, Deborah Schoenfeld said that her co-workers at the Epes Dental Clinic harassed her over her Hindu faith, claiming she was satanic for wanting to practice yoga and meditating.

 Speaking on condition of anonymity, two of her former co-workers confirmed Schoenfeld’s account to Air Force Times and said that other employees at the dental clinic are devoutly Christian and deeply suspicious of Hinduism. One of them confirmed that she was referred to as a “Hindu witch.”

 One co-worker, who Schoenfeld said prayed for her to find Jesus, told her that meditation summons demons, adding that “all the soldiers who are doing meditation and yoga to help their PTSD, they are getting infected also,” Schoenfeld said.

When her requests for help through the chain of command went nowhere, she filed a formal complaint on Sept. 2, Schoenfeld said. That day, she was fired for allegedly using profanity against a co-worker, although she was not allowed to know who had accused her of doing so, she said.

This is something that is counter to the discipline and good order of the military, and yet it continues.

The  USAF in particular has problems with this, which is unsurprising, since their academy is a neighbor of the Talibaptist organization “Focus on the Family” in Colorado Springs.

My Bad, Frank was Gaslighted

No Comments

On Wednesday, I suggested that Pope Francis’s audience with anti-gay bigot Kim Davis was a natural byproduct of the historical imperatives of the Catholic Church, specifically with regard to their position on gay marriage.

It turns out that Charlie Pierce had this sussed out by Thursday, and ascribed this to this to the natural byproduct of over a millennia of no holds barred political machinations:

………Before we continue, let us stipulate a few things. First of all, let us stipulate that there are more than a few members of the Church’s permanent bureaucracy, both within the Clan Of The Red Beanie and without, who are not happy that this gentleman got elected Pope, and who are not happy with what he’s done and said since he was. Second, let us stipulate that many members of this group are loyal to both former pope Josef Ratzinger and, through him, to the memory (and to what they perceive as the legacy) of John Paul II who, for good and ill, had a much different idea of how to wield a papacy than Papa Francesco does. Third, let us stipulate that this opposition to the current pope has been active and vocal, to say nothing of paranoid. Finally, let us stipulate that, for over 2000 years, the Vatican has been a hotbed of intrigue, betrayal, and sanctified ratf%$#ing on a very high scale. (It also has been a hotbed of, well, hot beds, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.) So, if you’re one of these people, and you’re looking to ratf%$# the pope’s visit to the United States, and to his agenda in general, you’d be looking to put him in a box. So, how would you do that?

We are now seeing more and more signs that conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who set up these meetings, set up the pope:

Ever since it became public that Pope Francis met in Washington with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples, the questions have been swirling: Why did he meet with her, and was it meant as a political statement?

 As it turns out, the Vatican said on Friday, the pope did not mean to endorse Ms. Davis’s views. It also said he gave her no more than a typical brief greeting, despite what her lawyer described.

 Instead, the Vatican said that Francis gave only one “real audience”: to someone later identified as one of his former students, Yayo Grassi, a gay man in Washington who says he brought his partner of 19 years to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington for a reunion. They even shot video.

 The disclosure, after the Vatican’s unusual attempt to correct the impressions left by Francis’ meeting with Ms. Davis, added to days of speculation about whether Francis intended to send a message on the place of gays in the church, or conscientious objection, and whether his advisers had fully briefed him on Ms. Davis, or had their own agenda.

 The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

 “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

 ………

 The Vatican spokesman emphasized that the meeting with Ms. Davis was arranged by the office of the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, not by anyone in Rome — including the pope.

 “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a statement released Friday morning.

 ………

 Earlier on Friday, the Vatican said that Archbishop Viganò had arranged the pope’s meetings in Washington, including the one with Ms. Davis.

 The news of the meeting with Ms. Davis was disclosed late Tuesday night by Ms. Davis’s lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, at the same time it was reported on the website of Inside the Vatican, a conservative publication edited by an American who has covered the Vatican for years.

 ………

 Mr. Staver, for his part, said he had been briefly introduced to Archbishop Viganò in April, when he spoke at a large rally in Washington against same-sex marriage, before the Supreme Court ruled on the issue.

So, we know that Viganò was present at an anti-gay marriage rally, and the Times has some background on Viganò:

………

 The archbishop, who was exiled to the United States in 2011 after losing a high-altitude Vatican power struggle that became public in an infamous leaks scandal, now finds himself at the center of another papal controversy. This time, the Vatican is suggesting that Archbishop Viganò is responsible for giving papal face time to Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk whose refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples has made her a heroine to social conservatives.

 ………

 Mr. Staver said a conservative deacon, Keith Fournier, introduced him to Archbishop Viganò back in April before speaking at a National Organization for Marriage rally on the Washington Mall in opposition to same-sex marriage. As Mr. Staver descended from the stage, Archbishop Viganò made a point to “thank me for my message,” the lawyer said.

 Archbishop Viganò, a cultural conservative born into a wealthy family in Varese, received the title of archbishop from John Paul II in 1992. He later joined the church’s diplomatic corps, which is one of the traditional sources of power in the Vatican, and in 2009 was installed by Pope Benedict XVI as secretary of the governorate of Vatican City State, a position not unlike the mayor of Vatican City.

(emphasis mine)

Even if Francis wanted to endorse Kim Davis’s repulsive views and actions, it is highly unlikely that he would have done so in private.

The evidence points to a Roger Stone style fat-f%$#ing orchestrated by Staver and Viganò.

It Appears that a Bear does Indeed Sh%$ in the Woods

No Comments

Because the Pope was just outed doing something amazingly Catholic, and I do not mean that as a complement:

Pope Francis met privately in Washington last week with Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who defied a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, adding a new element to an American tour that saw Francis attract huge crowds and articulate left-leaning positions on poverty, immigration, the environment and inequality.

Vatican officials initially would not confirm that the meeting occurred, finally doing so on Wednesday afternoon, while refusing to discuss any details.

Ms. Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Ky., has been at the center of a nationwide controversy over whether government employees and private businesses have a legal right to refuse to serve same-sex couples. She spent five days in jail for disobeying a federal court order to issue the licenses.

On Tuesday night, her lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, said that Ms. Davis and her husband, Joe, were sneaked into the Vatican Embassy by car on Thursday afternoon. Francis gave her rosaries and told her to “stay strong,” the lawyer said. The couple met for about 15 minutes with the pope, who was accompanied by security guards, aides and photographers.

Notwithstanding the affection recently shown by progressive elements inside and outside of the Catholic Church, the Pope is, at the end of the day, Catholic, which means that he will continue to be antediluvian on issues like birth control and gay rights.

I am disappointed, but not surprised.

Oops!

No Comments

Someone is getting fired

On the Chicago TV station WGN, they did a story on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, and their likely soon to be fired graphics guy called up the badge that the Nazis forced Jews to wear in concentration camps:

The news director of a Chicago TV station apologized after a staff member mistakenly chose a symbol of Nazi Germany to illustrate a story about Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

“Regrettably, we failed to recognize that the artwork we chose to accompany the story contained an offensive symbol,” the director, Jennifer Lyons, said in an apology on Wednesday. “This was an unfortunate mistake. Ignorance is not an excuse.”

The apology came the morning after Tom Negovan, an anchor with WGN-TV Chicago, read a 20-second description of the holiday. Over his shoulder, viewers could see a graphic of a Star of David badge emblazoned with the German word “Jude,” or Jew, on striped material of the kind used in Nazi prisoner uniforms.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

Does a Bear Sh%$ in the Woods?

No Comments

The other half of the couplet is the question, “Is the Pope Catholic?”
It appears that the right wing believes that the Pope is not Catholic, because clearly Jesus embraced those money lenders in the temple:

A while ago, Rush Limbaugh declared that Pope Francis is a Marxist, which is pretty much inconsistent with being a practicing Catholic. Now Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) has announced that the Pope, in concluding that climate change is a threat to the planet, is advocating socialist views. As a result, he will boycott the Pope’s address to Congress on Thursday. According to Catholic doctrine, the Pope is the head of the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and an infallible authority on Catholic doctrine. But none of that, if one can use another familiar phrase, cuts any ice with Rep. Gosar.

If Pope Francis wants to devote his life to fighting climate change, Gosar said, he should do so on his personal time — not as pope. “To promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous,” he intoned. This seems to be the standard line among political conservatives who are suffering from cognitive dissonance now that there is a Pope whose Catholicism is in doubt because he has distanced himself from the Republican Party line. James Inhofe, Chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, has declared: “The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours.” Rick Santorum adds: “I think we [Catholics] are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re good at, which is theology and morality.” And Jeb Bush thinks that religion “ought to be about making us better as people, less about things [that] end up getting into the political realm.”

The irony here is pretty obvious. People like Gosar, Inhofe, Santorum and Bush have been playing the God card for years. They have been happy to use Christian religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, as a recruiting device and a campaigning platform for a variety of conservative political issues. Now they want the Pope to mind his own business and stick to morality and religion. One of the many things they are missing, however, is that climate change is a moral issue.

The term for this is “Cafeteria Catholics,” and when the Catholic Church was busy doing things like denying communion to John Kerry because the only things that mattered were abortion and gay marriage, it was the conservatives who used it imply a lack of integrity.

I’ve got my weekly dose of schadenfreude over this.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

No Comments

Don’t Make Larry Wilmore Angry, You Wouldn’t Like It When He’s Angry

In Texas, it appears that if you are Muslim, and you bring a project to show your engineering teacher, they will cuff you and haul you off to jail:

Ahmed Mohamed’s homemade alarm clock got him suspended from his suburban Dallas high school and detained and handcuffed by police officers on Monday after school officials accused him of making a fake bomb. By Wednesday, it had brought him an invitation to the White House, support from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg, and a moment of head-spinning attention as questions arose whether he had been targeted because of his name and his religion.

As a result, a 14-year-old freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., who is partial to tinkering, technology and NASA T-shirts and wants to go to M.I.T., found himself in a social media whirlwind that reflected the nation’s charged debates on Islam, immigration and ethnicity.

“Cool clock, Ahmed,” President Obama said on Twitter. “Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.” Mr. Obama’s staff invited Ahmed to the White House for Astronomy Night on Oct. 19, an event bringing together scientists, engineers, astronauts, teachers and students to spend a night stargazing from the South Lawn.

The president’s spokesman said the episode was a case study in unreasoned prejudice in an era when the country is fighting Islamic terrorism at home and in the Middle East.

“This episode is a good illustration of how pernicious stereotypes can prevent even good-hearted people who have dedicated their lives to educating young people from doing the good work that they set out to do,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.

These are not good-hearted people, and Irving is not a good-hearted place.

Their mayor, Beth Van Duyne, has successfully run on a platform of religious bigotry for years now, and I do not expect anything resembling an apology from her.

Of course, now it’s blown up into a major sh%$ storm with POTUS got into the game on Twitter:

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.

— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015

I really hope that Irving will spend the next few years as the butt of “dumb hick” jokes on the late night shows.

I always knew that Irving was a center of evil, it was the Dallas Cowboys home field until 2008,* but this takes to a whole new (low) level.

If we cannot give all of Texas back to Mexico, can we give Irving back?

Please?

*They now play in Arlington, TX, the largest city in the US without a mass transit system.

Ashley Madison Hack Data Goes Live………

No Comments
I think that a fair amount of thought went into the how it was released, which is why is why they released the data on BitTorrent:

Gigabytes worth of data taken during last month’s hack of the Ashley Madison dating website for cheaters has been published online—an act that could be highly embarrassing for the men and women who have used the service over the years.

A 10-gigabyte file containing e-mails, member profiles, credit-card transactions and other sensitive Ashley Madison information became available as a BitTorrent download in the past few hours. Ars downloaded the massive file and it appeared to contain a trove of details taken from a clandestine dating site, but so far there is nothing definitively linking it to Ashley Madison. User data included e-mail addresses, profile descriptions, addresses provided by users, weight, and height. A separate file containing credit card transaction data didn’t include full payment card numbers or billing addresses.

The way that BitTorrent works is that someone puts a file up, and as people download it, they each get a little bit of the file, and then share it amongst themselves, which means two things:

  • There is not a central server to get hammered.
  • Once the whole file is loaded into this distributed network, it takes a long time for it becomes unavailable, because multiple copies of the various bits float around the impromptu network.

In fact, the protocol was developed to help with software firms that saw their servers hammered when they made popular new releases.

After the release, of course, it was applied to songs, movies, bootleg software, etc.

See the picture below for a graphic of how this all works.

It has already outed one prominent Christofascist asshole, who I will not name, because he is on my list of They Who Must Not be Named, so I will experience my Schadenfreude privately.

Meet the Clampetts

No Comments

Cue the Banjos

Down in Oklahoma, some bigot declared that their gun shop was a “Muslim Free Zone”, the 1964 Civil Rights Act be damned.

This brought in the usual suspects who dedicated themselves to “protecting” the establishment.

One of these products of generations of first cousins marrying dropped his gun and shot himself:

The Muskogee County sheriff said a member of the group guarding an Oktaha gun shop accidentally shot himself Tuesday.

Sheriff Charles Pearson said the man dropped his gun and a bullet hit him in the arm. The sheriff did not identify the man or offer any other details about what happened.

 The group of armed citizens and veterans is standing guard outside the Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gear store after the owners said they received death threats from all over the world for putting up a sign saying Muslims weren’t welcome.

“I saw several of those gentlemen out there yesterday,” Pearson said. “The way they were holding their weapons, with the fingers on the triggers, you can tell a couple of these gentlemen have no idea about weapons safety. It’s like the Clampetts have come to town,” Sheriff Pearson told muskogeenow.com.

According to the Supreme Court, there is a fundamental right to own firearms.

We also have a fundamental right to eat Ghost Peppers, which have a heat rating of over eight hundred thousand Scovilles.

Just because you have a right to do this does not make it right, though.

This gentleman should not own a gun, because he is too stupid to own a gun.

Can We Please Given Texas Back to Mexico?

No Comments
Some cracker judge in the Lone Star State just sentenced a man to marry his girlfriend and write down bible verses:

A Texas man was sentenced to marry his 19-year-old girlfriend, write down Bible verses and attend counseling by a judge as punishment for punching another man in the jaw, according to local television station KLTV.

The court case stemmed from a February altercation between Josten Bundy, 20, and the ex-partner of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Jaynes. He told the TV station he hit the man twice.

During his sentencing, Judge Randall Rogers told Bundy he would have to marry his girlfriend within 30 days as a condition of his probation. Bundy said that Rogers gave him the option to sit behind bars for 15 days.

Bundy asked if he could call his employers to tell them he was going to jail, but the judge declined. Bundy and Jaynes said they feared Bundy would lose his job, so they applied for their marriage license and scheduled a date with the justice of the peace.

In a state where the body politic was not congenitally insane, this judge would be suspended pending a judicial review, a state bar review, and a 24-hour psychological evaluation.

This is About to Go All Pear Shaped

No Comments

Because their indiscriminate bombing of civilians has failed to secure “hearts and minds”, the Saudi led coalition is sending in ground troops:

An Arab coalition source confirmed to Defense News that 2,800 troops landed in Yemen on Aug. 2 and are targeting the country’s largest military base.

The coalition source stated that the forces — comprised mostly of Saudi special operations, intelligence and logistics personnel — are placed to secure Aden and take over Al-Anad military base north of Aden.

“The units are also supported by personnel and equipment from the United Arab Emirates and trained Yemeni fighters,” the source said.

Images of LeClerc main battle tanks, which are operated by the UAE land forces and Presidential Guard strike force, BMP armored vehicles, and M-ATVs being offloaded at a port in the southern city of Aden appeared on social media Sunday.

In what I am sure is a completely unrelated development, a suicide bomber struck a mosque inside Saudi Arabia near the Yemenese border:

A suicide bomber struck Thursday at a Saudi mosque used by security forces near the border with war-
battered Yemen, officials said, killing more than a dozen people.

The Islamic State asserted responsibility for the attack, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks online activities of militant groups. The blast follows a spate of suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia claimed by the Islamic State.

It also comes as Saudi Arabia and its allies have escalated their four-month-old war against rebel forces in Yemen.

The official Saudi Press Agency said that at least 10 security personnel and three workers were killed in the mosque blast, which occurred in the southern Asir region.

The House of Saud, concerned about nothing beyond their eternal war against the Shia, are actively aiding ISIS and al Qaeda by bombing their most determined opponents and completely unsurprisingly, ISIS uses this fact to further their campaign against the Saudis.

This has fail written all over it.

Well, I Don’t Give to NPR Anyway

No Comments

My brother made an interesting observation about the NPR obituary for Theodore Bikel: There was no mention whatsoever of the fact that Bikel was Jewish:

There is a word missing from NPR’s obituary for Theodore Bikel (Theodore Bikel, Who Starred In Broadway’s ‘Fiddler On The Roof,’ Dies).

That Jew. Or for the squeamish, Jewish.

 The piece was delivered (and one assumes written) by Lynn Neary, described as having” develop[ed] NPR’s first religion beat. [And] As religion correspondent….covered the country’s diverse religious landscape”.

 ………

 The closest NPR came to hinting that Bikel might have a Jewish connection was that his family fled Vienna to the Palenstine Mandate. All NPR chose to say was that Bikel’s family fled.

 I am curious why it was so hard for NPR to say the word Jew, or even Jewish?

It is interesting.

I will note that I have been leery of NPR’s religion beat reporters since the ties between NPR religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty and the religious right hit the blogosphere over a decade ago.

Please note, I don’t think that there is some sort of secret agenda in what NPR is doing here:  I think that public broadcasting is being driven by their abject terror of what the Congressional Republicans might do to them.

It’s been that way since Gingrich was speaker.

One final note:  Nice catch by my bro.  I missed the omission completely.

Aka Stephen Saroff      o o  The Bear who Swims      
                        (_)_____o      
                     ~~~~(______)~~~~~~~~~~
                         oo    oo

I Expect to See a Massive Increase in Tourism to Turkey

No Comments
In response to a previous opinion by another Turkish theologian, Ahmet Mahmut Unlu, a Turkish televangelist has specifically stated that oral sex is a permitted sex act under Islam:

Last week, Turkish theologian Ali Rıza Demircan made headlines when he described “advanced oral sex” as forbidden in Islam during a television interview, as viewers watched the presenter erupt into laughter.

However, in a response to the controversial claim, a popular Muslim televangelist in Turkey offered an opposing view, saying Islam permits oral sex.

“Do not invent a lie on behalf of Allah,” said Ahmet Mahmut Unlu, popularly known as “Cubbeli Ahmet Hoca” (Robed Ahmet Hoca) among his followers, during his latest televised sermon, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

Unlu said the Quran does not have verses that stipulate such ban on oral sex.

………

“No Islamic jurisprudence calls it a haram act, but some find it inappropriate. So, how can [Demircan] say that it is haram? What is your source?” Unlu said.

I guess that “Advanced Oral Sex” is a 300 level course.

Certainly, I can see how a debate about this issue might get out of  ……… hand.