Imbecile…

From the March 25, 2009 hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. Gather round one and all… Watch Rep. John Shimkus turn into an imbecile right before your eyes ladies and gentlemen!

That just makes me sad… The bible as the infallible word of god? Has he ever really read the fucking thing? I wonder his thoughts on revelation… but I digress; he misses the verse right before he starts quoting, which gives the reasoning for god’s decision… (closest translation I could find was NIV…)

Genesis 8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though [a] every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

He’s using Noah’s animal sacrifice to the lord to get the lord to not kill every living thing again, and god agrees. His selective quotation from the passage (cutting out “The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart”) makes me think he doesn’t actually believe the story, and therefore just likes the phrases involved with this pointless fable. Also, the statement “every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood” is one of my main problems with religions, and he reads that without removing it… Why is it, do you suppose, that that is quoted in the context of arguing against global warming… I’ll let you all figure that one out for yourselves… Back to my point about religion though, the blanket comment “you are evil in your heart” comment which comes from religions and cults is an easy way to (once convinced) get a large group of people to follow those few who claim to know how to get back into the “good” territory.

Anyway, just to pass along something that really made me laugh hard. These are quotes read from text taken directly from online christian fundamentalist forums. Enjoy…

Some of this is Poe’s Law in action I think…

“He knows what the right decision is…”

A mother who was an atheist is nothing to be afraid of. A father who was a muslim is nothing to be afraid of. This woman is afraid of anything without a cross apparently, and even those with crosses aren’t off her radar if they don’t hold those crosses at just the same angle as she does…

It’s a shame that McCain has decided that, instead of fighting the scare tactics used against him in 2000, he’s going to fully embrace them for all the electoral votes they’re worth…

Here’s the consequence of this meme of McCarthy-esque scare tactics…

I don’t have words so fill in your own… or use Katrina’s…

….I think I know what the right decision is…

Sean Hannity… . . . Antisemitic?

She will only give interviews to Fox Newz for the last 3 weeks of the campaign?! If Joe Biden said he would only give interviews to Mr. Olbermann and Ms. Maddow for the last 3 weeks of the campaign, what do you think Hannity or any other windbag on that station would say?

I’m pretty certain that neither Democratic candidate will be going for an interview on Fox News, but their campaign certainly wouldn’t announce a Fox News interview black out… Besides, this isn’t a MSNBC blackout… it’s EVERY OTHER NEWS STATION THAT ISN’T FOX BLACKOUT… sorry, my caps-lock got stuck down there…

Obama responds to controversy stirred up by McCain campaign…

–link–

I agree wholeheartedly… Enough is enough…

Happy Earth Day!

Wisconsin Senator Gaylord (uproarious laughter) Nelson first proposed a national day to celebrate the earth in September of 1969. The Vietnam War was wrecking Southeast Asia’s jungles, the Cuyahoga river caught fire in Cleveland, and South Carolina’s Savannah River nuclear power plant was melting down. The negative aftereffects of mass consumerism and industrialization that emerged during the end of World War II were spreading across North America like a terrible monstrous weed.

All of those events–and the other events that contributed to America’s first environmental movement–were important factors in increasing American’s awareness of the fragility of our natural environment and the long term consequences of its neglect. All of that stuff is incredibly important, but to me there is one event that stands out beyond all the rest.

The picture above was taken on the 7th of December, 1972. Colloquially called the “blue marble” picture, it is the first picture ever taken of our planet. Although this occurred after the first ”official” Earth Day, I think it was the single most important promoter of environmentalism we saw in the twentieth century.

It has since become the most widely distributed picture in human history. It reminds us that what we have is incredibly special and vibrant, but also susceptible to our carelessness. It’s difficult to frame our perspective in the universe when we have our feet firmly planted on the earth’s soil, but we exist in an incredibly precarious state. If we imperil the planet’s habitability, we have nowhere to turn. We are surrounded by a bleak inhospitable vaccum that would freeze our lungs and immediately suck the life out of us if we stepped into it for only a moment. Thinking of conservation and sustainability with that perspective tends to reorganize one’s priorities.

Imagine what it must have been like to look upon this picture for the first time back in 1972. Take some time today to view the high-res version here.

There’s only one of these. Take care of it, and have a great day.

Nixon W. Bush

Who is the worst President in the history of the United States?

OK, obviously. Let me revise the question: Who is the worst President in the history of the United States (active Presidents excluded)?

There are a few names you might be tossing around in your head. Hoover. Buchanan. Harding. But, chances are that there is one especially demonic, psychotic, megalomaniacal gargoyle that immediately leaped forward and started doing somersaults as soon as you finished reading the question.

NIXON

For years, I feel like our generation has lived in Nixon’s shadow. He was always the nadir of American politics. No one ever had anything nice to say about the former President, and he was the constant subject of ridicule for comedians and cartoonists. His physical appearance was ghastly-the demented eyes, the sagging jowls, the profuse sweating, the constant fidgeting, as if he were trying to slip out of his suit without unbuttoning anything. He spoke in a horrible guttural growl that made him sound like a gorgon with laryngitis.

NES RBI Baseball reenactment…

Perhaps the most infamous moment in all of baseball… This is the entire bottom of the 10th inning from game 6 of the Red Sox/Mets 1986 World series… I can’t even begin to guess how long this took the person who did it…

What’s so Civil about War Anyway?

I’ve recently been watching Ken Burn’s epic documentary on the Civil War. As I’m nearing the end, I consider the following two impressions to be the biggest lessons that I have learned so far:

1. The Union’s leaders were not the visionary geniuses we sometimes consider them to have been. Lincoln was a great president, but at the time he was mired in a constant state of doubt and insecurity. The public received his Gettysburg Address with confusion and disinterest, and he was convinced that it had been a failed speech. The Emancipation Proclamation nearly backfired on him as well, when thousands of northern civilians rioted in response. He was unpopular towards the end of his first term, and he did not expect to return for a second. Union generals such as Ambrose Burnside and George McClellan made innumerable tactical blunders and provided despairingly poor leadership. Their cowardice and inept battle plans often resulted in thousands of deaths with no gain and no explanation save misjudgment. The Union’s eventual victory is quite astounding, and in some ways seems almost accidental. The people who lived through the conflict certainly did not anticipate or even expect the eventual outcome.

2. Aside from the whole “we-believe-black-people-are-property” component of their ethos, it’s pretty difficult not to fall in love with the Confederate cause. There is something incredibly romantic and compelling about the way in which secessionists spoke about their culture and their land. In a way, they sound almost like a band of Robin Hoods defending their Sherwood Forest against President Nottingham Lincoln. Colorful characters like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest seem almost as if they had sprung from the pages of an ancient Homeric epic poem. The common rebel soldier possessed a roguish wisecracking demeanor that made him considerably more likeable than his stoic but bland Union counterpart. Confederates also had an extensive spy network, which included Southern Belles who would ferry arms under their hoop skirts. There was even one woman, a debutante living in D.C., who regularly extracted secrets from the Union’s secretary of war via seductive methods!