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Friday, April 12, 2013

No, Janet Mefferd, we're not going to gas you
Posted by Jill | 7:48 PM
When I was in North Carolina in December working with my sister on going through the mountains of crap in my mother's house, we found a film reel. Last week my sister finally was able to take it to a place that digitizes old film, and what came back was a small but precious treasure trove of video clips from the 1930's when my mother was a small child. One of them depicts a family dinner. It's clearly my grandparents, my grandmother's brother, her parents, and other relatives -- probably siblings. My mother is a small child, dancing around the table. She's so adorable in this clip it tears my guts out by the roots.

What you need to know about this film is that these relatives, with the exception of my grandmother and three brothers, were homesick. They wanted to go home, and home they went, back to Poland -- just in time for Hitler. I don't know how many siblings my grandmother had, for some reason I think there were about four or five of them who went back. But the remaining siblings and her parents died in the camps.

It's one thing to read Anne Frank's diary. It's still something else to watch the horrific footage from the old TV series The World at War or any of the other footage from the camps that you can find on YouTube. But to look at footage of a joyous family reunion, to know what is going to happen to half these people, and to know that they are your relatives, drives home what happened to these people.

I'm not saying the Jews have a patent on suffering because of the Third Reich. The history of our species is littered with genocidal maniacs. Hitler may have been a very efficient killer, but he wasn't the only one -- and Jews weren't even the only people he annihilated. But there's something chillingly and technocratically barbaric about lining people up, having them strip naked, tell them they're going for delousing, and then gassing them.

The Christofascist Zombie Brigade today has a bad case of Holocaust envy. They want so badly to be martyrs for their cause. These people see their own murders around every corner, from the black president who wants to amass an angry black army to kill them to secular humanists who want to kill them to pro-choice activists who want to kill them. They may not be flying airplanes into buildings -- yet -- but they sure have visions of martyrdom dancing in their heads. This leads them to come up with stupidity like this:

A conservative radio show host with a penchant for making controversial statements predicted that anti-gay activists will one day be treated similar to how the Jews were treated during the Holocaust.

Janet Mefferd, a Christian syndicated radio show host, made the comparison in a Facebook post Wednesday morning. Mefferd posted a link to a Fox News piece referencing Gross Pointe South High School's cancellation of a planned speech by Rick Santorum. It remains unclear why exactly the speech was canceled, though some speculate it was because of the politician's stance against gay marriage. (The appearance has since been rescheduled.)

On Facebook, Mefferd wrote that she could see America moving "toward a day when every Christian who supports real marriage might be made to wear a yellow patch on the sleeve, a "badge of shame" to identify us as 'anti-gay haters.' Kind of like the Jews in Nazi Germany."

While the post had several supportive comments, it also drew criticism, prompting a response from Mefferd several hours later:

How much tolerance is there for Christians who are constantly being marginalized for standing for biblical marriage when they're constantly being called "extremists" and "haters" ... when even an Army officer is sending emails that call the AFA and the FRC "domestic hate groups" ... when the SPLC's hate map led a homosexual activist to shoot a man at the FRC, leading to his being chharged with domestic terrorism ... ? We're not the haters. We're the HATED.

"We're deleting all the nasty comments that gay activists are making," Mefferd added.


Because people pointing out your bigotry is EXACTLY LIKE being lined up and killed.

Somehow I think my great-grandparents would disagree.

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Why is this even an issue?
Posted by Jill | 5:18 AM


Why is it even necessary to even have this "discussion"?

Listening to the Supreme Court's angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin dance yesterday was a textbook lesson in American idiocy. The bottom line is that when anyone tries to make an argument against gay marriage, they just sound foolish. There is no argument about this that holds any water when held up to the cold light of day, as Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, both of whom probably have a passing knowledge of that time in a woman's life when a procreation is no longer a factor, demonstrated as they tried valiantly yesterday to force "defender of opposite marriage" Charles Cooper to come up with one reason why gay marriage is a problem.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Outside of the -­ outside of the marriage context, can you think of any other rational basis, reason, for a State using sexual orientation as a factor in denying homosexuals benefits or imposing burdens on them? Is there any other rational decision-making that the Government could make? Denying them a job, not granting them benefits of some sort, any other decision?

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, I cannot. I do not have any — anything to offer you in that regard. I think marriage is -­

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: All right. If that -­ if that is true, then why aren't they a class? If they're a class that makes any other discrimination improper, irrational, then why aren't we treating them as a class for this one thing? Are you saying that the interest of marriage is so much more compelling than any other interest as they could have?

MR. COOPER: No, Your Honor, we certainly are not. We — we are saying the interest in marriage and the — and the State 's interest and society's interest in what we have framed as responsible pro -­ procreation is — is vital, but at bottom, with respect to those interests, our submission is that same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are simply not similarly situated.

But to come back to your precise question, I think, Justice Sotomayor, you're probing into whether or not sexual orientation ought to be viewed as a quasi-suspect or suspect class, and our position is that it does not qualify under this Court's standard and -­ and traditional tests for identifying suspectedness.

The — the class itself is — is quite amorphous. It defies consistent definition as — as the Plaintiffs' own experts were — were quite vivid on. It — it does not — it — it does not qualify as an accident of birth, immutability in that — in that sense.

Again, the Plaintiffs -­

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: So you — so what — I don't quite understand it. If you're not dealing with this as a class question, then why would you say that the Government is not free to discriminate against them?

MR. COOPER: Well, Your Honor, I would think that — that — I think it's a — it's a very different question whether or not the Government can proceed arbitrarily and irrationally with respect to any group of people, regardless of whether or not they qualify under this Court's traditional test for suspectedness.

And — and the hypothetical I understood you to be offering, I would submit would create — it would -­ unless there's something that — that is not occurring to me immediately, an arbitrary and capricious distinction among similarly situated individuals, that — that is not what we think is at the — at the root of the traditional definition of marriage.

JUSTICE KAGAN: Mr. Cooper, could I just understand your argument. In reading the briefs, it seems as though your principal argument is that same-sex and opposite — opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated because opposite-sex couples can procreate, same-sex couples cannot, and the State's principal interest in marriage is in regulating procreation. Is that basically correct?

MR. COOPER: I — Your Honor, that's the essential thrust of our — our position, yes.

JUSTICE KAGAN: Is — is there — so you have sort of a reason for not including same-sex couples. Is there any reason that you have for excluding them? In other words, you're saying, well, if we allow same-sex couples to marry, it doesn't serve the State's interest. But do you go further and say that it harms any State interest?

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, we — we go further in — in the sense that it is reasonable to be very concerned that redefining marriage to — as a genderless institution could well lead over time to harms to that institution and to the interests that society has always — has — has always used that institution to address. But, Your Honor, I -­

JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, could you explain that a little bit to me, just because I did not pick this up in your briefs.

What harm you see happening and when and how and — what — what harm to the institution of marriage or to opposite-sex couples, how does this cause and effect work?

MR. COOPER: Once again, I — I would reiterate that we don't believe that's the correct legal question before the Court, and that the correct question is whether or not redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would advance the interests of marriage as a -­

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, then are — are you conceding the point that there is no harm or denigration to traditional opposite-sex marriage couples? So you're conceding that.

MR. COOPER: No, Your Honor, no. I'm not conceding that.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, but, then it — then it seems to me that you should have to address Justice Kagan's question.

MR. COOPER: Thank you, Justice Kennedy. I have two points to make on them.

The first one is this: The Plaintiffs' expert acknowledged that redefining marriage will have real-world consequences, and that it is impossible for anyone to foresee the future accurately enough to know exactly what those real-world consequences would be.

And among those real-world consequences, Your Honor, we would suggest are adverse consequences.

But consider the California voter, in 2008, in the ballot booth, with the question before her whether or not this age-old bedrock social institution should be fundamentally redefined, and knowing that there's no way that she or anyone else could possibly know what the long-term implications of — of profound redefinition of a bedrock social institution would be. That is reason enough, Your Honor, that would hardly be irrational for that voter to say, I believe that this experiment, which is now only fairly four years old, even in Massachusetts, the oldest State that is conducting it, to say, I think it better for California to hit the pause button and await additional information from the jurisdictions where this experiment is still maturing.
Then Justices Breyer and Ginsburg get in on it:

JUSTICE BREYER: As long as you are on that, then I would like to ask you this: Assume you could distinguish California, suppose we accept your argument or accept Justice Scalia's version of your argument and that distinguishes California. Now, let's look at California. What precisely is the way in which allowing gay couples to marry would interfere with the vision of marriage as procreation of children that allowing sterile couples of different sexes to marry would not? I mean, there are lots of people who get married who can't have children. To take a State that does allow adoption and say — there, what is the justification for saying no gay marriage? Certainly not the one you said, is it?

MR. COOPER: You're -­

JUSTICE BREYER: Am I not clear? Look, you said that the problem is marriage; that it is an institution that furthers procreation.

MR. COOPER: Yes, Your Honor.

JUSTICE BREYER: And the reason there was adoption, but that doesn't apply to California. So imagine I wall off California and I'm looking just there, where you say that doesn't apply. Now, what happens to your argument about the institution of marriage as a tool towards procreation? Given the fact that, in California, too, couples that aren't gay but can't have children get married all the time.

MR. COOPER: Yes, Your Honor. The concern is that redefining marriage as a genderless institution will sever its abiding connection to its historic traditional procreative purposes, and it will refocus, refocus the purpose of marriage and the definition of marriage away from the raising of children and to the emotional needs and desires of adults, of adult couples. Suppose, in turn -­

JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, suppose a State said, Mr. Cooper, suppose a State said that, Because we think that the focus of marriage really should be on procreation, we are not going to give marriage licenses anymore to any couple where both people are over the age of 55. Would that be constitutional?

MR. COOPER: No, Your Honor, it would not be constitutional.

JUSTICE KAGAN: Because that's the same State interest, I would think, you know. If you are over the age of 55, you don't help us serve the Government's interest in regulating procreation through marriage. So why is that different?

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, even with respect to couples over the age of 55, it is very rare that both couples — both parties to the couple are infertile, and the traditional -­

(Laughter.)

JUSTICE KAGAN: No, really, because if the couple — I can just assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of 55, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage.

(Laughter.)

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, society's -­ society's interest in responsible procreation isn't just with respect to the procreative capacities of the couple itself. The marital norm, which imposes the obligations of fidelity and monogamy, Your Honor, advances the interests in responsible procreation by making it more likely that neither party, including the fertile party to that -­

JUSTICE KAGAN: Actually, I'm not even -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: I suppose we could have a questionnaire at the marriage desk when people come in to get the marriage — you know, Are you fertile or are you not fertile?

(Laughter.)

JUSTICE SCALIA: I suspect this Court would hold that to be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, don't you think?

JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, I just asked about age. I didn't ask about anything else. That's not -­we ask about people's age all the time.

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, and even asking about age, you would have to ask if both parties are infertile. Again -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: Strom Thurmond was — was not the chairman of the Senate committee when Justice Kagan was confirmed.

(Laughter.)

MR. COOPER: Very few men — very few men outlive their own fertility. So I just -­

JUSTICE KAGAN: A couple where both people are over the age of 55 -­

MR. COOPER: I -­

JUSTICE KAGAN: A couple where both people are over the age of 55.

MR. COOPER: And Your Honor, again, the marital norm which imposes upon that couple the obligation of fidelity -­

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: I'm sorry, where is this -­

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I'm sorry, maybe you can finish your answer to Justice Kagan.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: I'm sorry.

MR. COOPER: It's designed, Your Honor, to make it less likely that either party to that — to that marriage will engage in irresponsible procreative conduct outside of that marriage. Outside of that marriage. That's the marital — that's the marital norm. Society has an interest in seeing a 55-year-old couple that is — just as it has an interest of seeing any heterosexual couple that intends to engage in a prolonged period of cohabitation to reserve that until they have made a marital commitment, a marital commitment. So that, should that union produce any offspring, it would be more likely that that child or children will be raised by the mother and father who brought them into the world.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Mr. Cooper, we said that somebody who is locked up in prison and who is not going to get out has a right to marry, has a fundamental right to marry, no possibility of procreation.

MR. COOPER: Your Honor is referring, I'm sure, to the Turner case, and -­

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes.

MR. COOPER: — I think that, with due respect, Justice Ginsburg, way over-reads — way over-reads Turner against Safley. That was a case in which the prison at issue — and it was decided in the specific context of a particular prison where there were both female and male inmates, many of them minimum security inmates. It was dealing with a regulation, Your Honor, that had previously permitted marriage in the case of pregnancy and childbirth.

The Court — the Court here emphasized that, among the incidents of marriage that are not destroyed by that — at least that prison context, was the expectation of eventual consummation of the marriage and legitimation of — of the children. So that -

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Cooper.­

Here's the bottom line, folks:

1) In an age when marriage is no longer about blending families, or about the inheritance of land; where any man and any woman can marry in any state in the country even if they are both eighty years old and reproduction is never going to happen; when infertile couples or even fertile ones can adopt children unrelated to them; when it's possible for Newt Gingrich to be twice-divorced and still sell himself as a family-values Republican; when Mark Sanford can jet to Argentina on his low-income state's dime to fuck his girlfriend and then be welcomed back two years later as a "saved and forgiven" virtuous man; when houses of worship perform WEDDINGS, not MARRIAGES, it's time to just 'fess up and admit it: Marriage is simply this: A public commitment, made to one's friends, acquaintances, and the state, which ties people together in a variety of ways. And ultimately it just does not matter what two people do in their bedroom, or what their speech cadences are, or whether they like Judy Garland or Will. I. Am -- or both.

All over this country there are gay couples who live together just as a married couple does -- but when push comes to shove, such as medical issues and inheritance, these people are not regarded as first-line relations to each other in the way recognized spouses are. Gay couples are in everybody's neighborhood. They send their kids to school every morning and have cookouts on the weekends and cheer on their daughter's softball team and get up and go to work and mow their lawns on Saturday. And in most states, they and their children are not regarded as "real" families because Alexa has two daddies or Jayden has two mommies. This isn't just offensive, it's ridiculous. And if it didn't affect real people's lives, it would be comical -- like speculating on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or like the kid in George Carlin's "heavy mysteries" bit, where you come up with the most absurd situation possible and ask, "Would that then be a sin then, Fadda?"

My favorite quote on this comes not from the Court arguments yesterday, but from Amanda Marcotte:
It's been 44 years since the riots of Stonewall pushed the gay rights agenda into the public consciousness in a big way. Since then, Mick Jagger went from dangerous sex symbol to the guy dancing in a Maroon 5 video, hip-hop was invented, and the fashionable jean silhouette has changed roughly 187 times. We've given the homophobes plenty of time to think this over. It's time to move on without them.
Also too: Maureen Dowd, of all people (NYT).

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Friday, June 08, 2012

Will the Secret Service care about this?
Posted by Jill | 7:33 PM
During the George W. Bush years, a T-shirt or poster could get you a visit from the Secret Service.

I wonder if today, lynching the first black president in effigy will do the same:



Yes, "Pastor" Terry Jones is a kook, but is he really all that much different from Newt Gingrich calling Barack Obama "The Food Stamp President", or public officials distributing photos of Obama's face photoshopped on a monkey? When it's just a matter of degree, is there really a difference?

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Thursday, April 05, 2012

Maundy Thursday
Posted by Bob | 10:23 PM
Judge refuses to drop charges against U.S. Catholic bishop


(Reuters) - A Catholic bishop in Kansas City must stand trial on charges that he failed to report a priest found with pornographic pictures of young girls on his Church computer to police, a judge said on Thursday.


Bishop Robert Finn, head of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, faces one misdemeanor charge that he failed to tell authorities that Church officials had found disturbing pictures of unclothed little girls that appeared to have been taken by a popular local priest, Father Patrick Ratigan.

Finn's defense sums up why we detest these men. With divorce, birth control, abortion, LGBT rights, Catholic moral law takes precedence over civil law. The Church has its own rules. But charged with failure to report to police child pornography found on a priest's computer, this is what Finn claimed:
Missouri statutes requiring clergy, school teachers and others to report suspected child sexual abuse were "vague."
also, Bishop Finn
had no duty to report the situation to authorities, because he was not the "designated reporter" within the diocese and could rely on someone else within the diocese to notify authorities.
The judge tossed out those grounds for dismissal. Finn was trying to claim that  weak civil law took precedence over his Christian moral obligations.   I suppose only  God & The Pope have the power to punish him.

Except for a few isolated, courageous voices among the Bishops, here & recently in Ireland, these clerical executives seem to have little or no sense of the evilness they have permitted & covered up.  It reaches all  the way to  Pope Benedict XVI. Why is that so?  Why are  they not  grief-stricken & shamed? Why are they not engaging in extreme expressions  of atonement? These corrupt & cowardly Bishops  should be crawling on bloody knees & hands to Shrines of the Blessed Virgin,  resign their offices, & retire to austere & silent cloistered monasteries (after they do their prison time), never to show their faces again.

Lawsuits by victims of perverted priests have emptied the coffers of Archdioceses & in some places bankrupted them. Hundreds of schools & parish churches are closed. Some deserve to be shut down, but in no instances does the  Church admit it is due to pedophile priests.  But laity connects the dots, Only ultra-conservative Catholics, like those represented by Rick Santorum,  defend the Bishops. They want to return the Church to the era before Pope John XXIII & Vatican reforms.  For them, if Father O'Malley in Going My Way was raping altar boys, just quietly transfer the Singing Priest from St. Dominic's to St. Mary's, & if Ingrid Bergman notices, she's just a nun, she can be sent to Borneo.

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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Tim Tebow is NOT Jeremy Lin
Posted by Jill | 6:24 AM
It's so breathtakingly stupid, so, well, WILPONIAN, that you almost have to wonder how a long-standing Mets fan like me can still be gut-punched by anything a sports organization does. You'd think that after nearly fifty years of watching that baseball team in Flushing make so many dumb moves, I'd be immune to sports organizational stupidity.

Maybe it's true that we in the New York area just don't understand religious people. But the only explanation for why the Jets organization decided it was a great idea to bring Tim Tebow and his thanking Jesus every time the ball leaves his hands to New York is that they looked at Madison Square Garden and saw the Knicks go on a tear the minute Jeremy Lin took to the court for the first time and either started believing that God really does micromanage sports games, or more likely, decided that wresting the back page of the Daily News every Sunday frm the classy Giants organization was worth any downside to bringing Jesus of the Rockies to the most heathen place in America.

But Linsanity was never about Jeremy Lin's faith. God didn't become a Knicks fan just because a devout Christina joined the team. Linsanity occurred because Jeremy Lin was a better player than anyone expected and because no one knew how to play against him yet. Add to that the mystique of Harvard and how there's still a fair amount of cognitive dissonance around the idea of an Asian basketball player (Yao Ming notwithstanding), and you have enough to satisfy the maw of the New York sports press. Yes, Jeremy Lin is devout, but he hasn't made it part of his public persona. He's a Book of Matthew Christian:

6:5
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:6
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

No one hates Tebow because of his faith. If they did, Jeremy Lin would be just as reviled, and he's not. Lin's faith appears to inform his life, not define it to the near-exclusion of all else. With Tebow, you get the sense that the show -- the dropping to the knee, the praising of Jesus in every post-game interview -- is less about his faith than about creating a public persona. That may not be the case, but it certainly appears that way.

Linsanity has died down now that teams have learned how to play against Jeremy Lin. He's still a fine player, but no one's treating him like a god anymore. Tim Tebow led the Broncos to winning six games, in Denver, against crummy teams, and he became a god. The difference is that in buying into the media hype and allowing himself to become Tebow®!!!, he betrayed his own savior's words -- something Jeremy Lin has never done.

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

No. Just. No.
Posted by Jill | 5:33 AM
One of the problems with being a cynic is that you're all too often right.

In January I sat riveted in front of the Patriots/Broncos playoff game, rooting for Tom Brady and the Pats to pound Denver into the ground, just to end any idea of having to endure sportswriters insisting that it was God Himself who brought Tim Tebow this far into the postseason. I knew what I was doing was dangerous, because the gods don't like this sort of thing, and it can really come back to bite you. As a result, I approached the Super Bowl with much trepidation, certain that I would be punished for my New York sin of rooting for New England at all by a humiliating Giants defeat. When that didn't happen, I was able to exhale, certain that the gods had forgiven me, because strange pacts with the devil happen in sports fandom. Ask Joe Boyd. For that matter, ask any long-suffering Mets fan.

Perhaps the gods have just gotten their Manning signals crossed, confusing Eli and Peyton, because no sooner had the Broncos come to terms with Peyton Manning than the speculation and bloviation began that St. Timmy of the Wobbly Pass (™ Tbogg) might be coming to New York to breathe down newly-contract-extended Mark Sanchez' neck.

No sooner had this story broken when the sports press, always eager for a story no matter what the reality of what life for an ostentatious Bible-pounder (let alone the rest of us) would be among the left-wing Communist Jewish homosexual pornographers that populate the New York metropolitan area, started to simultaneously orgasm at the propsect of Jesus of the Rockies bringing The Knee to the heathen.

Matt Miselis of Bleacher Report does it by subtly implying that Mark Sanchez lacks the manliness of Christ on a Cracker -- implications that have followed the Broadway musical-loving Sanchez since he got here (despite the fact that Guy-Gods Trey Parker and Matt Stone not only love musicals, but wrote one):

Tebow, the most popular sports figure in the U.S., could ultimately win the minds and hearts of the New York Jets.

The Jets aren't saying that Tebow is an ultimate challenger to Sanchez at the quarterback position, but in reality, he will get the opportunity to do so.

He will impress the likes of Rex Ryan, who has an adoration for the hard work and passion that he brings to the game every week. He saw the dynamics of Tebow last season against his top-10 defense in the final two minutes of the game.

New offensive coordinator Tony Sparano could attempt to create Wildcat formations for Tebow. His role in John Fox's scheme led to a division title and a playoff win over the Pittsburgh Steelers—though it seems that defenses began finding ways to limit Tebow's explosiveness.

Yeah. Because Antonio Cromartie, who has already nade no secret of HIS view on the Spreading of the Word, is going to listen to a mediocre overly-hyped quarterback when he doesn't listen to the one he's got already. Who hires these writers?

Clark Judge at CBS Sprts has gone totally off his nut, insisting in his bizarro sportswriter universe that such a fish-out-of-water scenario makes sense:
The New York Jets reportedly are one of the teams inquiring into Tim Tebow, and it's about time. They should. In fact, they should take a long, hard look into trading for the Denver quarterback because ... well, because it makes too much sense not to.

I'm serious.

First of all, he's no threat to their starter. That would be Mark Sanchez, and I don't care what you think of him. I care what the Jets think of him, and they just made a long-term commitment to the guy. Yeah, so they flirted with the idea of adding Peyton Manning. It doesn't matter. This does: They extended Sanchez's contract by three years, guaranteeing him $20.5 million in 2012 and 2013.

That means someone believes in him, so Tebow wouldn't come in to push or challenge Sanchez. He would come in as a backup, and maybe that's a backup to the recently-signed Drew Stanton, too, I don't know. What I do know is that he could be perfectly suited for an assortment of packages designed by new offensive coordinator Tony Sparano.

Wait. So the Jets should get Tebow so Sparano can design plays just for a second- or third-string quarterback? Is that how it works? Where do they find these guys?

I mean, I'll admit that I can be a sucker for a Byronic sports hero who loves show tunes like any red-blood American female of any age who isn't dead, but even in a rational universe, Sanchez doesn't deserve to be jerked around twice in a week, first by having his team gaze lovingly at Peyton Manning, then bringing him roses and candy in the form of a contract extension, essentially telling him, "I'm really sorry, baby, this time it'll be different, you're the only one for me", and then almost immediately casting a loving gaze at Tebow.

Thank God for rational people like Daily News scribe Gary Myers, who actually understand the New York sports scene (even while getting his own dig in at Sanchez' alleged diva behavior):


No doubt Sanchez would set an NFL record for pouting when 80,000 Jets fans, clad in their new green No. 15 jerseys, begin chanting, “Tebow, Tebow, Tebow” after Sanchez throws his first interception of the season.

Sanchez needs some tough love from Ryan and needs to be to be pushed by a real NFL quarterback, but Tebow is a novelty act with limited quarterback skills. Sure, he led the Broncos to the postseason, and even won a playoff game last year with his unconventional quarterback style.

But that was a once-in-a-lifetime run.

Tebow is nothing more than a fullback. At best, he’s a Wildcat quarterback offensive coordinator Tony Sparano could work into his playbook. Still, bringing in Tebow is not worth all the collateral damage his presence would cause.

Damn right. Except for the part about the 80,000 Jets fans calling for Tebow the minute Sanchez throws an interception. Jets fans may be boorish, but while they may not love Sanchez, I'm not sure that turning MetLife Stadium into a tent meeting is going to work for them either.

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Thursday, February 02, 2012

Thursday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said
Posted by Jill | 5:37 AM
Today's honoree: Amanda Marcotte, for her accurate analogy of the anti-choice movement to a medieval witch hunt.

Money quote:
Anyone who thinks breast cancer can be neatly cordoned off from this growing circle of hate for all things women's health care is fooling themselves. That's not how witch hunts work. The fear here is not about fetuses or babies per se, but a deep-set fear of female sexuality. Already anti-choicers have scooped breast cancer under the umbrella "abortion", claiming that abortion causes breast cancer. (It doesn't.)  Komen would rather side with people who see breast cancer as god's judgment on you for having an abortion rather than side with people support comprehensive health care for women.

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Monday, January 09, 2012

There are none so blind as those who will not see
Posted by Jill | 9:27 PM
Especially those who think theocracy is a bad thing unless it involves worship of Tim Tebow Jesus.

Rick Santorum, yesterday, about why Iran is such a threat:
They're, they're a theocracy. They're a theocracy that has deeply embedded beliefs that the, the afterlife is better than this life. President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said the principal virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran is martyrdom. So when your principal virtue is to die for your--for Allah, then it's not a deterrent to have a nuclear threat if they would use a nuclear weapon. It is, in fact, an encouragement for them to use their nuclear weapon, and that's why there's a difference between the Soviet Union and China and others and Iran.

Deeply held beliefs that the afterlife is better than this life? You mean like this?
"God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Eph 2:4-7).

That's from the New Testament. You know, the one that Christians like Rick Santorum regard as a holy book.

A principal virtue being to die for your deity? You mean like this:
According to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the official martyrology contains the names of 132 Catholics who have died for the faith since 2001. But this is not a complete list. Its 2005 report acknowledges that there are “many more possible ‘unknown soldiers of the faith’ in remote corners of the planet whose deaths may never be reported.”

Dying for Christ seems almost surreal to most Westerners. We live in a part of the world where Christianity rarely makes the news unless it is to be mocked or defamed. Otherwise, the media is strangely silent about modern Christian martyrdom. “Three things distinguish anti-Christian persecution and discrimination around the world,” said Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “First, it’s ugly. Second, it’s growing. And third, the mass media generally ignore or downplay its gravity.”


The denizens of wingnuttia say that Iran's top leaders believe "that the end of days has come" and this makes Iran more likely to deploy a nuclear weapon against the United States. Rick Santorum is one of them. And yet, the US has nuclear weapons and also a sizable number of people who believe the end of days has come. So why is it OK for us? Because our religious nutballs worship someone different?

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Monday, January 02, 2012

Insert your own "finishing up with a bang" joke here.
Posted by Jill | 12:17 PM
According to TPM, the Iowa Caucus of Ricks Perry and Santorum is all about Teh Sodomy.

I don't think even gay ninteen-year-olds think about gay sex as much as the Two Ricks do.

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Sunday, December 25, 2011

Sayeth the Lord: "Because day after day after day, all you do is mutsche me."
Posted by Jill | 7:35 AM
If God himself was behind the Denver Bronco's recent run, then He sent Tim Tebow a little message about humility yesterday.

Merry War On Christmas, everyone.

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Friday, November 25, 2011

Oh fer cryin' out loud....
Posted by Jill | 2:18 PM
You know, some days I'm glad I'm not a full time blogger. I think having to deal with Teh Crayzee seven days a week would drive me insane.

Today, Faux Noise misses no excuse to get its panties in a twist about the Secret Kenyan Muslim Manchurian Candidate in the White House:
President Obama did not include any reference to God during his weekly address titled, “On Thanksgiving, Grateful for the Men and Women Who Defend Our Country.”

His remarks were void of any religious references although Thanksgiving is a holiday traditionally steeped in giving thanks and praise to God.

The president said his family was “reflecting on how truly lucky we truly are.”

For many Americans, though, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on how blessed and thankful they are.

The president said the “most American of blessings” is the “chance to determine our own destiny.”

He called the very first Thanksgiving a “celebration of community”

“We’re also grateful for the Americans who are taking time out of their holiday to serve in soup kitchens and shelters, making sure their neighbors have a hot meal and a place to stay,” he said. “This sense of mutual responsibility – the idea that I am my brother’s keeper; that I am my sister’s keeper – has always been a part of what makes our country special.”

The president said that belief is “one of the reasons the Thanksgiving tradition has endured.”

But nowhere in the 11-paragraph address does he mention the Almighty.

Because after all, unless you invoke the Baby Jesus 5,498,632 times a day, God only knows what might happen. Hell, you might start to think....and thinking means asking questions. And we mustn't have that. It would be unseemly.

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Thursday, November 24, 2011

Only America would have a holiday the point of which is gluttony...
Posted by Jill | 8:56 AM


...followed by an orgy of consumerism. Is there anything more American than that?

Because Mr. Brilliant has no family and I have none living close by, Thanksgiving is a quiet affair here at Casa la Brilliant. When Mr. B's father was alive, I once did a big Thanksgiving dinner for the three of us, with fresh fruit, handmade ravioli with vodka sauce (neither of them handmade by me), turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and something for dessert that I don't remember. Then we started just going out to eat on Thanksgiving.

I grew up with the doctrine that eating out on Thanksgiving is depressing, so my mother made a turkey every year, or else we went to the home of one of her friends. But in recent years, I've discovered the pleasure of letting someone you don't know do the cooking. The last few years we've gone to the Thanksgiving Brunch at the Short Hills Hilton. This is pricey, but they do a lovely buffet spread (which Mr. B. likes for its variety) with unlimited champagne or mimosas. If you're a big eater, you can start at the omelet station for eggs, bacon, and sausage and then move on to trips for appetizers and hot food. If you're more like me and always find today to be a minefield, you case the joint first looking for what's OK to eat and then take a little of the things that looks good and also look like they won't have you in the cardiac ward of St. Barnabas on the way home. They do some lovely salads, and have great smoked whitefish, and then I tend to lean towards things like ale-braised shortribs and orichiette with broccoli rabe and sausage and maple-glazed carrots. After 56 Thanksgivings and the advent of Trader Joe's sliced turkey and frozen mashed potato discs making it possible for even non-cooks like Mr. B. to prepare a turkey dinner any night of the week, the whole "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner seems kind of ho-hum.

For me, the worst part of Thanksgiving is the pitying looks that colleagues give you when you say that it's just going to be dinner for two on Thanksgiving. It makes me understand in a far lesser degree what my colleague who recently underwent treatmet for breast cancer described as "That Look". If I had family close by, I'd be there for Thanksgiving. But I don't, and Mr. B. doesn't, and sucking down unlimited champagne and eating pears poached in port wine with goat cheese is a pretty damn pleasant alternative. It's my one concession to consumerism over the Thanksgiving weekend, since I have zero intention of going anywhere near a store this weekend, unless it's to Trader Joe's to buy that big tray of sliced turkey breast and stuffing just so we can say we have turkey leftovers to eat while we watch the increasingly bad New York football teams play.

This year in Blogtopia (™ Skippy), we are highly amused at Pat Robertson's bafflement about whether mac and cheese is "a black thing":



I realize that Thanksgiving is supposed to be about the Potatoes Mashed and Sweet, but for my money, if you're going to eat a high-fat, high-glycemic index food on Thanksgiving, which is all about comfort food, why NOT macaroni and cheese?

I realize that to admit a fondness for macaroni and cheese at my advanced age is akin to confessing to still liking Smarties (which I do) when you are above the age of ten, but we all have guilty pleasures, and that one is mine. And I'm not alone.

You can pretend you aren't making comfort food by coming up with recipes like Rustic Fried Sage and Chicken Apple Sausage Mac n Cheese with Autumn Chutney, and Wild Mushroom and Grana Padano Macaroni and Cheese, but we know the truth.

I mean seriously. Grana Padano mac 'n' cheese? "Autumn chutney"?

I've made passable mac 'n' cheese using cheddar, but it can be difficult to get the sauce consistency just right. Cheddar mac can be a bit grainy. Ken Johnson of Amarillo Grilling says his secret is French butter, though I suspect that the four kinds of cheese he uses for his amazing rendition of this dish has something to do with it, because his macaroni and cheese leaves no pools of separated grease on your plate, but is just forkfuls of rich, creamy, cheesy, crunchy heaven.

Here are some other recipes that look worth trying if you're inclined towards an early death because there won't be any Social Security by the time you hit age 66:

Are you going to argue with Paula Deen's Creamy Macaroni and Cheese? I'm not.

Likewise for Smack Yo' Mama Macaroni and Cheese.

Soul Food Macaroni and Chees uses the entire cheese counter at Fairway, but it does have Velveeta in it, so i'll forgive that something called Soul Food Macaroni and Cheese is on a web site called Epicurious.

If you like a little heat with your mac, try this recipe from Lynne's Country Kitchen (even if "Lynne's Country Kitchen" sounds like it should be featured in the next Blues Brothers movie: Blues Brothers 2012: Whatever DID Happen To Jonny Lang Anyway?).

Admit it. You now want macaroni and cheese today.

Have a great day, everyone. And go the fuck to sleep tonight. The tchotchkes will still be in the stores tomorrow.

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Someone in the media needs to ask Rick Perry about this
Posted by Jill | 10:09 PM
If Barack Obama had to answer for the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and explain his association with him, then Rick Perry has to answer for this guy:



(h/t this, via DCap)

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Making having a period a crime
Posted by Jill | 5:40 AM
There are times when I wish Abraham Lincoln had just said "Don't let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha."

Mississippi is about to vote on an amendment to its state constitution to bestow personhood on fertilized eggs:
A national effort to put abortion bans into state constitutions is looking for its first victory next month in Mississippi, where voters are being asked to approve an amendment declaring that life begins when a human egg is fertilized.

Supporters hope the so-called personhood initiative will succeed in a Bible Belt state that already has some of the nation's toughest abortion regulations and only a single clinic where the procedures are performed.

The initiative is endorsed by both candidates in a governor's race that's being decided the same day. While Mississippi is the only state with such an amendment on the ballot this fall, efforts are under way to put the question to voters in at least four other states in 2012.

[snip]

"We feel like the docs and the patients are getting caught in the middle of a war between the anti-abortion folks and the pro-choice folks," said Dr. Wayne Slocum of Tupelo, head of the Mississippi section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a group that opposes the initiative.


It's one thing to declare that human life begins at implantation of a fertilized egg, since that's when a pregnancy actually begins. That too has its problems, because of the possibility of making miscarriage a criminal, or even capital, offense (something the state of Georgia has already considered).

The American College of Obstetricans and Gynecologists has stated unequivocally that pregnancy does not occur intil a fertilized egg is implanted, and that up to 1/3 to 1/2 of fertilized eggs never implant. These then dissolve and become part of the so-called "products of menstruation."

Of course science and medicine have absolutely no place in the misogynist dogma of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade. What's imiportant is that the evil sluts who won't keep their legs closed must be punished by bearing a child -- and those who harbor that 1/3 to 1/2 of eggs that never implant must be investigated, and perhaps criminally charged, if they have a period.

There's only one way to deal with this, and that is for women of reproductive age to start sending their used sanitary products to the Mississippi statehouse, along with letters asking if legislators of that state plan to examine every woman's menstrual fluid in a futile search for dissolved fertilized eggs....or if they just plan to jail every woman who ever has her period on the grounds that she might have "murdered" a fertilized egg.

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Sunday, October 09, 2011

Why not thank Irving Berlin? Or was he too Jewish?
Posted by Jill | 1:08 PM
Sorry for no posting for a few days, but I was out of town visiting family, and couldn't connect to the intartoobz for a few days despite having two laptops with me. Besides, I've kind of been in a funk for a few days about the death of Steve Jobs. Not quite sure why, other than the obvious narcissistic ones about the Apple stock in my IRA and the fact that Jobs was only four months older than I am, and how it kind of feels like the end of an era -- sort of the way it did when George Harrison died. But I'm back now, and while I'm too tired to muster up too much righteous outrage, this tidbit made my head explode:
Bryan Fischer of the conservative Christian group the American Family Association floated an interesting theory about why there hasn't been a "Muslim attack" since Sept. 11 during his speech before the Values Voter Summit on Saturday.

"By God's blessing, we have not been hit by a Muslim attack since 9/11," Fischer said. "I suggest that in part, we have Major League Baseball to thank. You remember that the week after 9/11 Major League Baseball converted the seventh inning stretch from the singing of 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame' to the singing of 'God Bless America.'"

"Now 'God Bless America' is not just a song, it is a prayer. When we sing that we are inviting God to bless America, to stand beside her and to guide her through the night with a light from above," Fischer said.

"So for one brief, shining moment every night, Major League Baseball has converted our stadiums into cathedrals in which tens of thousands of ordinary Americans lift their hearts and voices as one and ask God to watch over and protect the United States," Fischer said.

"Ladies and gentleman, I think that those prayers have been heard and they have been answered," Fischer said.

For some strange reason, Talking Points Memo chose to accompany this insane raving of a lunatic with a photograph of Mr. Met, of all mascots. I'm not sure if this is some kind of Jew Jew Jew code, given that the Mets are owned by the Wilpon family who are embroiled in the Bernie Madoff mess. But please forgive me for echoing that scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen says to Tony Roberts that even the waitress asking "'d'you eat?" was really saying "Jew eat?" as some kind of anti-Semitic slur; I'm sure I'm looking for hidden meanings where there are none.

But while I've gotten used to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade insisting that their Great White Alpha Male Punitive Father Figure In The Sky thinks they are so important that He has nothing better to do than listen to these ignoramusus mutsche him all day long, when you start bringing the game of baseball into your insane ravings, and at the risk of going all Annie Savoy on you, that's cause to take these people to the woodshed.

Fred Wilpon didn't write God Bless America, and neither did the Yawkey family, nor the Steinbrenners, nor (Goddess forbid) the Bush family. None of those infuriating baseball players (I'm talking to YOU, Mr. Reyes) who think God hit their home run for them wrote the song. It was written by a guy whose history is similar to that of my own grandparents and to so many Jews who came to this country from Russia and Poland in the early years of the 20th century to escape the pogroms in their home countries.

Irving Berlin wrote God Bless America in 1918 after being drafted into the Army specifically to write patriotic songs and songs of Army life that were performed in all-soldier revues such as "Yip Yip Yaphank". Like most Tin Pan Alley songwriters, he had cranked out an astonishing amount of material before the war, and "God Bless America" was just another throwaway tune that he'd written and put away until Kate Smith's manager asked him twenty years later if he had a song put away somewhere that she could sing. There's tons of material on Irving Berlin at Wikipedia and elsewhere, so I needn't do a full biography here.

Irving Berlin, like the mother from whom he'd originally heard the phrase "God bless America", loved his country for the opportunities it had given him and his family -- opportunities for which the people Bryan Fischer would like to see running government would deprive future generations of immigrants, as well as those who see their status in the middle class fleeing from them more every day. Irving Berlin was a man whose family fled religious persecution to come here to the very same country in which people like Bryan Fischer and the Republican candidates seeking his favor would deprive people like him, and other non-Christians, of their own ability to worship as they please -- or not to worship at all.

But why let things like the history of the song that religious bigots like Bryan Jeffers want to co-opt get in the way of feeding their own religious chauvinism? It's so much easier, and more comforting, for them to forget that their favorite song was written by a Jew whose family came here after watching their village burned to the ground and instead to believe that like the King James Bible, which they seem to think was written by God in English, that it somehow belongs to them and then alone.

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Thursday, September 15, 2011

No one can say they weren't warned
Posted by Jill | 6:25 AM
I still think that the Money Guys who ran the Republican Party are going to rally behind Mitt Romney. Rick Perry, who has demonstrated again and again that he's for sale for the right price, is someone with whom the Money Guys thought they could do business, but the only deity the Money Guys worship is Mammon, and Rick Perry can't necessarily be relied on, since he refuses to tone down the religious batshittery even to run for president.

I realize who his audience was here, but this is 100% consistent with his Apostolic Reformation beliefs.

One can only wonder what those Americans who are not Christian face under a possible Perry presidency after seeing this (emphasis mine):

Perry said Americans need more Christian values in general. “It is important that [Christian leaders] stand in the pulpit every day and defend those values, those Christian values,” Perry said. “America is going to be guided by some set of values. The question is going go to be: Whose values?”

The Texas governor said he believes America will be guided by “the Christian values that this country was based upon.”


And if you don't subscribe to Perry's notion of Christian values? Who knows? He's already perfectly comfortable with executing those who have done no wrong.

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Saturday, August 27, 2011

So whose button will this guy be wearing, Bachmann's or Perry's?
Posted by Jill | 11:52 AM
Meet your average Republican:
A 24-year-old Oregon man — who told police that he was a “Christian warrior” — has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly firebombing a mosque last November.

Cody Crawford faces 10 to 30 years if convicted of firebombing the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center, which is about 200 feet from his house. Although his DNA has been connected to the crime scene, Crawford has maintained that he’s “100 percent innocent.”

In an unrelated incident, Crawford had ranted to police about Muslims, according to court documents.

“You look like Obama,” he said to a McMinnville officer in December. “You are a Muslim like him. Jihad goes both ways. Christians can jihad too.”

The documents reveal that Crawford also told authorities that “only Christians could understand him, that he was a Christian warrior that they were persecuting.”

“You will never know the truth about the mosque,” he allegedly said.

The firebombing came just two days after Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who had occasionally attended the mosque, was arrested in connection with a plot to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony Portland.

Mohamud’s plot was reportedly uncovered with help from the Muslim community.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

I wasn't kidding about the heretics' pyre
Posted by Jill | 5:38 AM
I've been posting about the dangers of the Christian Reconstruction/Chritian Dominionism movement for years. But now that two of the three top candidates for the GOP nomination for the presidency are adherents to this movement, it's time to start shouting what this movement is from the rooftops. Unfortunately the larger urban papers are too "genteel" to allow its columnists to cover this 13th century lunacy, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazetta isn't:
The first time I ever heard of the Christian Reconstruction movement, now known as Dominionism, I thought it was a gag.

Who in their right mind wanted to live in a world where the Old Testament civil and ceremonial laws would become the template for local and national politics? It was a profoundly dark theology even by the standards of the dour Calvinism I considered reasonable at the time.

According to the tenets of Christian Reconstruction, it was up to Christians to bring the whole world into submission to Jesus Christ. Once that was accomplished (with God's help, of course), the Old Testament laws that guided ancient Israel would be dusted off and applied to civil societies across the globe, including America.

The motivating idea behind Christian Reconstruction was that Christ would never consider returning to an Earth consumed by spiritual decadence. The world needed to be "cleansed" to attract a procrastinating Jesus who was already 2,000 years overdue. It was up to Christians to take over and make him feel welcome.

In a world made more acceptable to Jesus, homosexuality could not exist and all non-Christian religions would be outlawed. Women would be restricted to managing the home and raising children, leaving millions of jobs to be filled by once-unemployed men.

Disobedient children would be subject to execution if they didn't repent, taxes would be light and slavery would be allowed as long as safeguards were included so that it didn't become an abusive or racist institution again. A stint in slavery would be limited to seven years.

All legal disputes would be settled by consulting the Ten Commandments or the Pentateuch. The irony is that many of the people who advocated this nonsense are some of the most vociferous critics of Shariah law in America today.

[snip]

I didn't take Christian Reconstruction as a political philosophy seriously until I met an actual Theonomist (follower of God's Law) in the real world.

"Oscar" was in his early 20s, as was I, when we met. He was a Jewish convert to Christianity, so he was always on the defensive. As a young believer, he fell in with a mob of Theonomists in San Diego before moving to Pennsylvania for college. The primacy of the Old Testament in Christian Reconstructionist thought appealed to his sense of cultural identification.

Since I knew he was from a family of Holocaust survivors, I asked him what he thought of the mandate that all non-Christians would have to convert or die. Oscar said that if his relatives refused to become Christians or submit to forced exile, then they would suffer the civil penalty for practicing idolatry. He would carry out the execution himself if called upon to do so by the Christian state.

Do you honestly believe that a Republican Congress, populated by men and women who cannot control their own impulses and so need a punitive religious structure to keep them on the straight (in all senses of the word) and narrow and cannot imagine not needing one, would stop an authoritarian president and the followers who regard him or her as a quasi-Messiah, from implementing such mass killings and exile of heathen by executive order if they believe they were told to do by God?

If you don't already know about Christian Reconstruction, it's time to change that.

(via)

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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Meet Rick Perry
Posted by Jill | 6:30 PM
Note to Rick Perry: If you're going to run for president, it's probably not a good idea to get caught in poses that confirm what people whose votes you're going to need may already think about you:


(via)



(via)



(via)

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Sunday, May 22, 2011

Meet Your Average Republican Voter
Posted by Jill | 5:49 AM
Here's how Republicans manage to pull stuff out of their asses and have people believe it: Because they target people like these:
They spent months warning the world of the apocalypse, some giving away earthly belongings or draining their savings accounts. And so they waited, vigilantly, on Saturday for the appointed hour to arrive.

When 6 p.m. came and went at various spots around the globe, including the East Coast of the United States, and no extraordinary cataclysm occurred, Keith Bauer — who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture — took it in stride.

"I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God," he said in the bright morning sun outside the gated Oakland headquarters of Family Radio International, whose founder, Harold Camping, has been broadcasting the apocalyptic prediction for years. "I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth."

But he added, "It's God who leads you, not Harold Camping."

Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver, began the voyage west last week, figuring that if he "worked last week, I wouldn't have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen." After seeing the nonprofit ministry's base of operations, Bauer planned to take a day trip to the Pacific Ocean, and then start the cross-country drive back home Sunday with his wife, young son and another family relative.

[snip]

In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick, of Staten Island, said he was surprised when 6 p.m. came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world.

"I can't tell you what I feel right now," he said, surrounded by tourists. "I don't understand it. I don't know. I don't understand what happened.

"Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here," he said.


It tempting to feel sorry for gullible dupes like these, except that these gullible dupes are the same people who made Rick Scott the governor of Florida, and Scott Walker the governor of Wisconsin. These gullible people are the same people who read Andrew Breitbart and listen to Sarah Palin. These are the same people who gay-bash and want their particular brand of Christianity to become the mandatory state religion. These are the same people who scram "Keep the government out of my Medicare" and elect people like Paul Ryan. They are stupid, frightened ignorant people who are beyond learning, who are beyond allowing anything like empirical reality to interfere with their already-established worldview. So today we get to point at them and laugh.

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