Thursday, September 09, 2010

The Conservapedia Delusion of Andrew Schafly

As Stephen Colbert remarked during a speech at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner at which a visibly uncomfortable 'President' Junior Bush was on the dais, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

To counter that perceived 'bias' at Wikipedia, Eagle Forum nutcase Phyllis Schafly's kid, Andrew, mounted a dimwitted Christopublican-Free Market-Literal Bible site in 2006 to spread the neoconservative message with bile-laced faith-based delusion, the same delusion that's damn near destroyed the country, and may succeed in tearing it apart yet. But, hilariously enough, even the Bible as it's written is not conservative enough for raggedy Andy – he actually launched a 'Conservative Bible Project' to rewrite those portions he considers too 'liberal.' (One would guess that would be any passage expressing kindness for the homeless and poor, berating the rich and telling them to give their possessions away, or asking the reader to forgive one's enemies and renounce the judging of others.)

Here, Bob Carroll of the Skeptic's Dictionary drags the little Liar-For-Jesus and his buncombe-packed 'encyclopedia' over the glowing hot coals of rationality:

The Conservapedia Delusion

By Bob Carroll
The Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter (Skepdic)
Vol. 9 No. 9
September 3, 2010

The group of Christian conservatives (led by Andrew Schafly) who run Conservapedia call their confabulations and rewriting of history, biology, and everything else under the sun, an alternative to "liberal" Wikipedia. Worse, they call their own set of fairy tales "the trustworthy encyclopedia." They swear to it on a stack of Bibles so it must be true. Their delusions are matched only by the paranormal evangelicals at Skeptical Investigations.

The Conservapedia folks have an entry for "Skepdic," where they chide me for not listing global warming and evolution as "junk science." To these puerile jabberwocks, vorpal swords in hand, theology is the queen of the sciences. Under the "contents" heading for their Skepdic entry, they note: "The website also contains articles attacking Biblical history such as Noah's Ark." The story of Noah is literal history to these choir boys.

I'm referred to as a "militant" atheist, whatever that is. If you click on "atheist" you find these neo-con confabulators writing: "Unlike Christianity, which is supported by a large body of sound evidence, atheism has no proof and evidence supporting its ideology." A man could crack a few ribs with falling-down laughter at the claims these clowns make. By proof and evidence I suppose they mean faith. They get very nasty--nasty as only an idiotologist can get. The nicest thing they say about atheism is that it is an ideology. It isn't an ideology, by any definition, but correct usage of terms is as irrelevant as getting the facts straight to these theocrats. The rest of their diatribe against atheism qualifies them for the Phil Plait certifiable-dick-of-the-year-award.

Dumbest Website Ever

It would be impossible to identify the dumbest website ever, but in addition to Conservapedia I would put Saberpoint in the top ten. Saberpoint's motto is "riding roughshod over the asinine and idiotic" while "supporting the conservative cause and the tea party movement."

© 2010 Bob Carroll.
While I'm not necessarily an atheist – deeply cynical agnostic is more like it -- and tend to agree with J.B.S. Haldane's quote: "Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.… I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, in any philosophy," I admire Bob Carroll and his Skeptic's Dictionary for attempting to bring some needed rational and scientific enlightenment to a country that's drowning in revisionist history, goofball religious gullibility, and pure idiotic tripe.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Saturday, September 04, 2010

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Monday, August 09, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Drunk or Stupid Edition

It's time to play the popular home game 'Drunk or Stupid?' wherein contestants watch TV and decide from the public statements and general demeanor of various politicians and pundits if they are such persistent imbibers it has softened their corrupt little minds to the point of retardation, or if they are just naturally dumb as a result of ignorance and flea-bitten ideology. Of course these terms are not mutually exclusive; some of these miscreants are both drunk and stupid, but here we are gauging which mode predominates in their media appearances and what passes for journalistic efforts.

Names were picked at random from a tricorn hat while I was nursing a hangover and appear in no particular order; the obvious idiots – Beck, Limbaugh, et al – were ignored:

Joe Lieberman
Drunk. On MSNBC recently, he kept calling Gen. David Petraeus 'Darren' Petreaus and mispronounced, or Freudian slipped, Rolling Stone as 'Ruling Stain.' Of course, if you're as crooked and backstabbing as Joe, you have to go heavy on the MD-20/20 just to stand shaving every morning.

Sarah Palin
Stupid, in the unique way only ex-beauty pageant contestants can manage. (Google Carrie Prejean and Miss Beverly Hills.) Hubby Todd is likely the drunk in the family, along with all the little Palin photo-ops, and who can blame them?

John Boehner
Drunk, with bells on. Catch the GOP Bonehead late enough in the afternoon and he's liable to gush all sorts of hilarious head-slapping crapola while he stares bewildered and baggy-eyed at the camera, like a dripping-wet old Lothario who's trying to think up a reasonable excuse on the spot for why he was caught skinny-dipping with the neighbor's wife at dawn. No doubt he pours them down as he rests in his coff – uh -- tanning bed every morning. There are suspicions he was born with the face he has now and had to be hidden in the attic until his body caught up to his weathered mug, but that's just the loosest of rumors, no doubt spread by one of his many detractors.

Mitch McConnell
Drunk, on waning power. Yet another failure of modern plastic surgery, at least that form practiced in the hills of Kentucky. McConnell found the recipe for making lemons out of lemonade, and then, obviously, ate them all in one sitting. His wrinkles are embarrassed to be seen with his archaic ideas these days. Rand Paul, Mitch, Rand Paul…

Chris Matthews
Drunk, with an attractive excess of saliva and a penchant for spitting when he's excited – and he's usually excited about something. (Guests who sit across the table from him on his show are rumored to be armed with ample supplies of Kleenex and zinc cough drops.) He also has the drunk's penchant for mispronouncing a word and then insisting his mistake is the correct pronunciation. ('Chee-knee' for Cheney, for instance.) After embarrassingly blubbering over the greatness of Junior Bush in the early part of the twenty-first century ("Americans just love this guy!"), and verbally ass-grabbing various young women on his show, as well as showing a streak of mean for Hillary Clinton that is inexplicable, he's now steered to the left in order to boost his ratings, aping the success of Keith Olbermann, but his past follows him like the iron shackles that should be encircling the legs of the now literally heartless Dick Chee-knee.

David Gregory
Stupid. He's an affable, ambitious yuppie who walks around with a permanently moistened index finger stuck in the air, or somewhere. 'Dave' thinks he's posing a tough question when he asks John McCain to give his 'real' opinion of Sarah Palin. He's perfect for NBC's Sunday morning nod to subtle parody, 'Meet the Press,' but I detect a certain jealously of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert since they are allowed to present actual news segments more often than Gregory, and they don't have to smooch pampered Washington posteriors to keep their jobs.

Candy Crowley
Stupid, but just barely, as it's rumored she can put a double shot of 100-proof Georgia moonshine between her ample breasts and drink it without spilling a drop while doing a nude hula dance. Unfortunately, she has failed to display this prodigious talent in front of CNN's cameras, preferring to bore her audience to tears with her tedious 'Republican-pretending-to-be-liberal' act. Candy is the Judy "What will we – I mean the Republicans -- do to win New Hampshire?" Woodruff of her generation.

George 'Eff' Will
Drunk as a lord. Take him out to the ball game but make sure you have enough sturdy lifters to carry him home. Even stupidity couldn't possibly explain some of his well-worded but gaseous and error-laden opinion pieces. The Doric columns of the Capitol building could be crumbling to dust before his eyes and 'Mr. Will' (as his friends call him) would write a column the next day praising the lasting architecture of Washington. A devoted acolyte of Ronald Reagan, George Eff never let 'The Gipper's' sunny geriatric optimism infect him; he did, however, apparently contract Conservative Alzheimer's from his late friend, a disease that has spread like a plague throughout the Republican Party. The symptoms are an inability to admit mistakes, a total disregard for historical fact, a whooshing sound in the ears from air continually filling a vacuum, and the necrophiliac's tendency to romantically embrace ideological corpses.

Sharron Angle
Drunk, on 'Situational Lemonade' and the Lawd. It's tempting to dismiss her as merely dumb, but that discounts the self-righteous zeal with which she has pursued her particular form of delusional right-wing fringe insanity. For that kind of breath-taking goofiness, you need more than just stupidity, you need God working with you in one of his many ethereal jokes. Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses; in that regard, Sharron is a bust-out junkie without a hope of redemption.

David Broder
Not merely drunk, but embalmed. The Rufus T. Firefly 'Dean' of the Washington Press Gang hasn't had an opinion that makes any sense in years, but he forges on, wallowing hog-like in alcohol-induced dementia while his snide colleagues cheer him on. The Old Fudd not only sees pink elephants, he celebrates them in print and tries to inveigle his readers into stumbling with him down Wet Brain Lane. Apparently the Washington Post has been afraid to tell him he's been dead for a generation, at least as far as any political or cultural relevance is concerned.

Rand Paul
A board-certified drunk, but nearly as stupid. Only a dedicated souse could have this many half-baked opinions and his single-minded dedication to terrible ideas of the past that have proved unworkable. Besides, he hangs out at a plush Kentucky country club and apparently doesn't play much golf. There is only one other thing white people who frequent country clubs do, and it's usually shaken not stirred with a hint of vermouth and consumed by the pitcher. Remember, Rand, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.

Wolf Blitzer
So drunk you could get snockered sucking on his beard. The Blitzkrieg's premier contribution to modern journalism – that is to say, advertising the Empire -- is knowing from US intelligence sources, prior to the Iraq invasion, that Saddam Hussein had no WMD (he admitted it on a small public radio station in D.C.), yet withholding that little nugget from his CNN audience and obediently flogging WMD fear on behalf his pals in the Bush-Cheney War Room. His other offenses against reason and veracity are too numerous to mention, but suffice it to say that he's now probably in the Susan Powter range of daily consumption, necessary to rinse the bitter taste of corporate swill out of one's mouth, and the image of the elephant feces-spattered circus clown from one's mind.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Friday, August 06, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Who's Watching the Watchers? Edition

Or, in the Maxine Waters case, investigating the investigators.

Rep. Maxine Waters' (D-CA) three ethics charges, so far as I've read, involved talking to Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in 2008, asking him to try and make sure a bank that helps poor people and women, OneUnited, got its fair share of the bailout money. True, her husband was previously on the bank's board, and he retained stock at the time, but she didn't threaten or in any way coerce Paulson improperly – she just asked. If this is the hoary ethics violations the Big Media is getting so hot-and-bothered about, then they'd better start charging nearly every member of Congress with a similar lapse of ethics, because a whole passel of Republicans and Dems did the same thing. Waters herself has stated: "The record will clearly show that in advocating on behalf of minority banks, neither my office nor I benefited in any way, engaged in improper action or influenced anyone."

It's worth noting that progressive Democrat Waters sits on the House Financial Services Committee that drafted get-tough legislation on banks and pushed for strong consumer protection from these miscreants. At least we know the Big Banksters would definitely not be sorry to see her go.

It's interesting that of eight investigations or charges made by the House 'independent' ethics committee, all of them are against members of the Democratic Black Caucus. As Eugene Robinson said the other night, the notion that only black Democrats would be involved in unethical conduct is statistically astronomical.

It's also interesting that one of the senior members of this 'independent' House ethics committee is co-chair Porter J. Goss, former rabid in-the-tank Bushite Congressman and, in Congress and as head of the CIA, a man who had considerable ethics problems himself.

Some of Porter Goss' 'greatest hits':

-- As head of the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA employee Goss said he could find no wrongdoing in leaking covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the media that warranted a Congressional investigation. He 'joked' if you could find him a "blue dress with some DNA" he'd open an investigation into who in the Bush Administration leaked her name; short of that, he apparently didn't care.

-- On illegal torture: "March 18, 2005, Reuters reported that Porter Goss 'defended his spy agency's current interrogation practices but could not say all methods used as recently as last December conformed to U.S. law.'" And then did nothing to ensure future conduct conformed to U.S. law.

-- When Bush-appointee Goss took over the CIA in September 2004, bringing with him his partisan Bush team from Congress, veteran CIA employees with a combined 300 years of intelligence experience resigned or were forced out after his installation. The weakened CIA under Goss then went into "free fall" according to senior House Intelligence Committee Democrat Jane Harman. In other words, Goss was willing to sacrifice the CIA's mission of non-partisan collection and processing of intelligence to protect America to serve his Republican political agenda.

-- On May 5, 2006, Goss resigned under a cloud as Director of the CIA after his handpicked man Kyle "Dusty" Foggo's Hookergate scandal came to light. Through Foggo, Goss was also connected to disgraced Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham who admitted to and apologized for taking bribes from defense contractors.

"'Something happened,' neo-conservative magazine editor William Kristol said on Fox News this afternoon. 'It's going to be a bad few days. We're going to discover something ... It will be something not good for the Bush Administration.' Fox News actually got a phone call from a 'top White House official' during Kristol's damning comments, and Kristol was cut off so Bush mouthpiece Chris Wallace could say the Goss resignation is just a harmless part of the 'White House shakeup.'"
-- Sploid, by way of MediaCynic.com, commenting the day Goss resigned.

Also let's keep in mind that Goss' honesty was vouchsafed by no less than Bush confabulator and White House flack Dan Bartlett: "This man has impeccable integrity." If Bartlett says it, we can pretty much conclude the exact opposite is true – it's like having one's veracity on the Iraq invasion endorsed by Dick Cheney.

Gee, I wonder if Maxine Waters had refused to investigate evidence of treason in the White House, turned a blind eye to illegal torture, degraded the CIA's intelligence-gathering capabilities due to political partisanship, and was connected to a major bribery scandal which caused a Congressman to quit in disgrace along with senior CIA officials she'd hired, if she would be eligible to sit on any future House ethics committees?

As Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Democratic DC delegate to Congress, told Ed Schultz on Tuesday, these are allegations, not convictions, and Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel and anyone else charged with ethics violations have the right to defend themselves in a public hearing rather than resign and appear guilty.

In the meantime, the questions remain: Who would appoint a flagrant Bush hack like Goss to a supposedly independent ethics panel and, most importantly, who's watching the watchers here?

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Potent Political Potables Edition

The Sharron Angle
Combine equal parts chunky peanut butter, gunpowder and sacramental wine in an unclear empty vessel. Using an old blender in a narrow, dimly-lit room, mix until the consistency of baby poop. Serve in cracked teacups. Refrain from sharing the recipe with the media.

The Michele Bachmann
Mix together grapeshot-flavored Kool-Aid, sexual abstinence, Biblical nonsense, Nutty Buddy candy bars and wormwood alcohol with a thousand teabags and let ferment in a fevered brain. Serve to anyone who'll pay attention until you're hired by the Family Research Council after you lose your Congressional seat.

The Glenn Beck
Combine chopped nuts, saccharine, VapoRub, Victory gin, Goldschlager, white lightning, horse pucky and turpentine in a large vat lined with hundred-dollar bills. Drink until you drown.

The John Boehner
Mix equal parts Tang and cheap vodka.
Serve warm in a crockpot, after heating under a sun lamp.

The Andrew Breitbart
Mix equal parts caustic lye, near beer, used tea bags, hair of Rove, pus from a dog bite, aged McCarthyite bile and edited videotape in an Internet website. Whine until someone drinks it, but don't attend the funeral after they do. When it eventually kills you, refuse to admit you're dead.

The Jan Brewer
Prepare a standard pitcher of Margaritas and then add a cup of raw sewage and a cup of flop-sweat political desperation. Stir until the stench drives you away. Serve hot to morons with J. D. Hayworth crackers, Joe Arpaio pink prisoners and Tom Tancredo dip and hope for the best next election.

The Jeb Bush
Combine Southern Comfort, Rebel Yell, light tequila, orange juice, your father's tears, family money and bought-off media contacts in a no-paper-trail electronic voting machine. Strain lightly through an old Klan robe and stir well while pretending to be affable and moderate until you've seized the GOP nomination for president. Just smile confidently when your drunken friends in the media write you're nothing like you're dumber older brother, really.

The Sean Hannity
Stir together equal parts Brylcreem, moonshine, sleaze and Preparation H, and force through a fox's alimentary canal. Drink through a fire hose until belly is distended, then retire proudly on all of that money you stole that was supposed to go to the families of the military.

The Sarah Palin
Mix equal parts cold duck, Russian vodka, old Navy grog, Christian Bros. brandy, Slim Fast, baby formula, iced tea, mashed lipstick, grizzly bear fat, a diced dictionary, steaming bullshit and chopped currency in a Facebook-approved container. Half bake and serve cold to the media and your adoring fans while striking a pose.

The Rand Paul
Tilt your head back at a steep right angle, pour gallons of Kentucky sour mash bourbon and searing hot tea on your face, swallowing what you can of it, while furiously masturbating to a photo of Ayn Rand holding hands with Bull O'Connor. Do this until you are defeated in November.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Mr. and Mrs. Republican Reveal the GOP Economic Plan

Left click on image to enlarge.

The Tattlesnake – Palin's Muddle Tongue Edition

So Sen. Crash Pilot's erstwhile 2008 VP candidate and half-baked Alaska Governor has decided to invent her own words like 'refudiate' – just like that Limey fella Shakespeare, by golly!

Well, since Mama Grizzly Palin wasn't doing too swell with the dialect most Americans speak, perhaps she had no choice but to become the 'Mutter Curage' of the English language.

Back here at the Tattlesnake hovel, I've decided to conjure up a few words the newly self-anointed wordsmith can add to what Stephanie Miller aptly described as her 'Fictionary.' You're welcome, Sarah.

Historectumy: 1. Pulling inaccurate historical 'facts' from your rear end to make your erroneous opinion seem less idiotic. (See also: 'Fox News' and 'Beck University.')

Stuperior: 1. Superiority in your utter stupidity. 2. The backassward side of something so stupendously dumb that when viewed at multiple angles, every side is backassward. (See also: 'Willful Ignorance,' 'Religious Insanity' and 'Unwarranted Arrogance.')

Taxicology: 1. The uniquely Republican economic psychosis, a colossal failure since its inception, that you can cut taxes and maintain the same level of revenue that you had before you cut taxes by way of the magic fairy dust of the 'free market,' which no one has ever actually witnessed in action. 2. Ignoring the rotten condition of the schools, roads, bridges, parks and other public projects that serve the common good in order to avoid making the wealthy unhappy by having to pay taxes. (See also: 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain' and 'This is Your Brain on Milton Friedman.')

Teabaggy: 1. The feeling of exhaustion from living in a perpetual state of ignorant outrage and bilious hatred. (See also: 'Damp Dittoheads' and 'Michael the Savage Weiner')

Teabuggery: 1. Having your organization sodomized by Republican money, operatives and influence. (See also: 'Dick Armey, Lobbyist' and 'FreedomWorks.')

Wasillingus: 1. Using one's mouth to spread the pernicious political virus of far-right Christopublicanism. 2. A perky rural Alaskan's foot-in-mouth syndrome. (See also: 'Diseases of the Crack Pipe' and 'Polar Meth Lab Sickness.')

That was fun; I may add some more in the future.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Friday, July 16, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Dick Cheney Doesn't Have a Pulse Edition

Rachel Maddow reported July 14th that five-heart-attacks-since-he-was-37 Dick Cheney is hanging on by a thread following complete heart failure, kept alive only by a machine called a LVAD resting externally on his belly that keeps his blood moving. Ironically, because an external machine is circulating his blood rather than his damaged heart, Cheney apparently has no pulse, not that I would have sworn he had one before. Although I wouldn't wish death on any human being (leave that to the kill-crazy wingnuts; I'd rather see him in jail), and Deadeye Dick marginally qualifies in that category, this would seem to be close to the end of the line for the Torture Boy – the doctors can do no more except a full heart transplant and he's physically in such bad shape he likely couldn't survive the operation. (Although the sci-fi plot possibilities of Cheney receiving the heart of, say, a peaceful Buddhist monk and publicly renouncing his past self is nearly irresistible. "I've done wrong and now I must pay the price! President Obama, put me in prison for war crimes – waterboard me, I insist! And I'm donating all of my millions in wealth to Green Peace! Liz, stop crying like that!")

If he goes, are we going to be subjected to the full-pomp, days-long state funeral, or will every news outlet but Fox let him pass with just a brief mention and obit? I also wonder if, in his final moments in this realm, a fearful-of-judgment Cheney will pull a Lee Atwater and ask forgiveness for his past crimes and deceptions?

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.