Five Before Chaos

Although grindhouse theaters were dwindling in the early 80’s, a common B-movie theme was still the out-of-control-juvenile-gangs-of-the-future theme. I remember seeing the trailer for this one back in 1982 when I went and saw The Road Warrior, and finally got around to watching it a few months ago, and it was a blast, lemme tell ya’ folks. Class of 1984 has got it all… a horrible song by Alice Cooper, a pubescent Michael J. Fox, angel dust, a teacher who cuts off a guy’s arm with a table saw, and one of the Van Pattens from “Eight is Enough”. What’s really hilarious as you watch this film is the main gang that’s scaring everybody is so pathetically non-scary. The leader (Van Patten) could easily have had his ass pulverized by the smallest guy on the football team, yet he practically runs the school. Perhaps it’s the sneer and the haircut, who knows? It’s really funny that this film came out in ‘82 and they figured things would have all of a sudden gotten this bad in only two years.. Then again, it was the era of Reagan so things did go downhill rather quickly:

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Just to let you know, it’ll probably be a bit light here at FBC over the next week or two. Lots of construction projects to finish, firewood to be harvested, and I started grad school this week. So bear with me and keep stopping by. In the meantime, have a look at this great Olbermann piece on Clinton’s continual moving of the goalposts. Here’s to hoping that today puts the nail in her coffin, although I’m not too optimistic on that account.

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Tags: hillary clinton, Keith Olbermann

What the hell is it with the educators in Florida? They keep trying to get ID in the classrooms, and ‘academic freedom’ nonsense that would allow teachers to basically teach whatever horseshit they wanted. And fear of wizardry. Yup, that’s what I said. A Florida substitute teacher has been fired for doing a little slight-of-hand trick that makes a toothpick disappear.

The trick requires a toothpick and transparent tape. A sleight-of-hand maneuver causes the toothpick to disappear then reappear. At least, so it seems. In reality, the toothpick hides behind the performer’s thumb, held in place by the tape.

“The whole thing lasted 45 seconds,” Piculas said.

He said the students liked the trick. He showed them how to do it so they could perform it at home.
One student in the Rushe Middle class apparently took the trick the wrong way, Piculas said. He said he was told the student became so traumatized that the student’s father complained.

As someone said in the comments on the article, “Someone needs to beat the shit out of that traumatized kid.” Now, apparently, other reasons were cited for his dismissal as well, but given that ‘wizardry’ statement, that may be a ruse. Given the widespread anti-intellectualism of the state, I wouldn’t be too surprised.

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Tags: superstition

It’s really funny how when you look at some of these films, they really just seem to be manifestations of all the many fears conservatives have had over the years but never seem to come to fruition. Crapping one’s pants seem sto be a prerequiste for being an American conservative. Afraid of people of color, gays, and young people, among other things. Such as the gals in Switchblade Sisters. I think I might have actually dated one of these fine ladies:

This one’s the religious right’s nightmare about a gay outlaw biker gang, The Pink Angels. From the days before political correctness was even a figment of the imagination:

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..or something similar. The Dem campaign has been increasingly painful for me as of late. This country is more screwed up with some serious problems than I can ever remember in my 37 years of existence and the most important issue of the day facing Americans is what Obama’s preacher said. I’m finding myself screaming at my computer monitor more and more lately. It’s unreal how unbelievably fucked up the media has become in the last decade, and even more is how much damage it’s enabled to happen to our country and the world at large.

I had mixed feelings about the Obama-going-on-Fox thing. This was compounded by the fact that I discovered last week that one of the people I’ve worked with for over 10 years, a regular Fox-watcher actually believes that “al-Qaeda has gotten to Obama. He’s in with them.”

Silly me for thinking these kinds of people only lurked in the right-wingnutosphere of blogland. When she said this, I could only respond, “I’m sorry.” My point is that the majority of Fox-watchers already have their minds made up, irregardless of “facts”, which more often than not, they can’t seem to bother themselves with anyways. So, I didn’t see real net advantage to Obama going on there.

It was this context that apparently prompted an exceptional diary over at Open Left today that examined the radical change in the media now that the well-oiled right wing infrastructure is in place. Now, you really need to go read the article, called “The Impact of Presidential Candidates On the Media OR What Obama Should Have Done on Fox News”, but have a look here at the example he gives… Dan Rather’s grilling of then-candidate George H.W. Bush about his bullshitting on his role in Iran-Contra. The first segment offers some background, and the second is the interview. Rather tears Bush a new asshole and doesn’t let him control the agenda:

As the diary points out succinctly. can you even imagine a journalist questioning someone in position of power like that, unless it came from the right-wing spin angle? It shocked the hell out of me, lemme tell ya. And I don’t think we’ll ever see something like this again, as the ‘journalists’ are more concerned about Laura Bush cooking on the Today show or some teen flavor-of-the-month feeling guilty for showing a bare shoulder on a photo-shoot. Oh, and flag pins. Gotta have flag pins, very important.

Can you imagine a reporter questioning Bush or McCain like this and not letting them off the hook? Neither can I. The ones that would, like Amy Goodman and such don’t have the access or the platform to make it happen.

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I saw this in the Argus yesterday and then in more detail over at Pharyngula. It’s probably the first news story in a fortnight that pissed me off and didn’t involve that sleazebag Hillary Clinton. Some parents in Wisconsin are being charged with second degree manslaughter, because they let their daughter die in a diabetic coma. Her death was easily preventable. Here’s the stupid, outrageous part:

Even as her 11-year-old daughter lay dying on a mattress on the floor of the family dining room on Easter Sunday, Leilani Neumann never wavered in her belief in the power of prayer.

“We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her,” Neumann said, according to a police report. “My husband, Dale, was crying and mentioned taking Kara to the doctor, and I said the Lord’s going to heal her and we continued to pray.”

Prayer didn’t save Madeline Kara Neumann, who died of untreated diabetes March 23.

And now, the law is poised to come down hard on the girl’s parents, Leilani and Dale Neumann, who were both charged with second-degree reckless homicide Monday by Marathon County District Attorney Jill Falstad.

If convicted, the parents face maximum sentences of 25 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Good. They should rot in jail for this one, and should set an example. Get a load of this:

According to the police report, made available with the charging documents, Dale Neumann said “throughout the interview that he and his family do not need any traditional medical intervention nor do they ‘believe’ in it.”

The document also states: “Neumann said his family never gets sick and if they would, prayer and God would heal them.”

Neumann and his wife are idiots. They don’t “believe” in traditional medical intervention which saves thousands and thousands of lives every day, instead putting the life of their daughter in the hands of the Sky Fairy. They also said that thy thought her symptoms had to do with puberty. Because you know, things like this just typically happen in puberty, no different than zits:

Meanwhile, Leilani Neumann told police that by Saturday, “Kara was laying on the couch. Her legs looked skinny and blue. I didn’t realize how skinny she was. We took her to my bed where I got her warm. I thought it was a spiritual attack. We stayed by her side nonstop and we prayed.

A “spiritual attack”? They have three other kids that they haven’t killed yet, who thankfully have been taken away. Good thing, because there was no “teaching moment” to be had here:

Dale Neumann told investigators that “given the same set of circumstances with another child, he would not waiver in his faith and confidence in the healing power of prayer,” according to the interview statement.

So he’d do it again, and he would not waver in his confidence, even though it didn’t even come close to working the first time and his daughter is dead. Unbelievable. Let’s hope that in addition to jail time, they get some serious deprogramming, too.

UPDATE: Shawn Peters has a look at the legal aspects of this case here (it’s not as open-and-shut as you might think).

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Tags: religious kooks

The only decent reason for Rolling Stone magazine’s continued existence is the fact that Matt Taibbi writes for it. His latest is a real hoot: he goes undercover on a batshit insane fundie retreat: Jesus Made Me Puke.  He joins a megachurch and actually gets on a bus to go to one of those crazy “Encounter Weekends” in which the truly pathetic listen to a bunch of nonsense, cry a lot, and come away even more braindead and suggestible than when they went in there. But first he had to look the part:

I slunk in my seat, trying to look inconspicuous. My disguise was modeled on other men I’d seen in church — pane glasses and the very gayest blue-and-white-striped Gap polo shirt I’d been able to find that afternoon. Buried on a clearance rack next to the underwear section in a nearby mall, the Gap shirt was one of those irritating throwbacks to the Meatballs/Seventies-summer-camp-geek look, but stripped of its sartorial irony, it really just screamed Friendless Loser! — so I bought it without hesitation and tried to match it with that sheepish, ashamed-to-have-a-penis look I had seen so many other young men wearing in church. With the glasses and a slouch I hoped I was at least in the ballpark of what I thought I needed to look like, which was a slow-moving hulk of confused, shipwrecked masculinity, flailing for an Answer.

But I don’t think he was prepared for what he was going to experience. He even had to make up some sort of story, his being that his dad was an alcoholic circus clown that used to beat him with his oversized shoes. And they bought it. The crazy part was the ‘deliverance’ part at the end, which involved the usual nonsense of puking in paper bags, speaking in tongues and casting out of all sorts of demons:

“In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!” Fortenberry continued. “In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!”

It was a rather eye-opening experience, in that it showed the deep psychological underpinnings that go with this kind of territory that makes believers willing suckers impervious to fact. It’s a fantastic and entertaining smartass read, classic Taibbi, and he really picks up on how so many of these suckers do indeed fit the stereoetypes we have of them.

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Tags: matt taibbi

Yep, the crazy uncle whose Christian compassion extended to disowning his lesbian daughter is still around. And apparently the GOP is just not fetus-lovin’/gay-hatin’ enough for him. As Frederick Carlson lets us know over at Talk to Action, Keyes is seeking the nomination for the party for people whom the GOP isn’t crazy enough - the ironically named Constitution Party.

Alan Keyes, perennial Republican presidential primary contender, popular orator on the Religious Right, and one-time Obama opponent in his race for the Senate from Illinois — is now the probable presidential nominee for the Constitution Party, which his holding its national convention in Kansas City, Missouri this week. Keyes, who had been considering bolting the Republican Party for at least a year, meeting privately with the CP National Committee on more than one occasion, took the leap last week and announced that he would seek the CP nomination.

The neotheocratic Constitution Party, which has been on the ballot in more than 30 states for every presidential election since 1996, kicked off its national convention in Kansas City yesterday.

Carlson goes on to speculate that this could indeed be a headache for John Sidney McCain, in that it gives the ones who find McCain not god-crazy enough to vent their frustrations. Apparently McCain’s endorsements from the hateful Godidiots John Hagee and Rod Parsley aren’t good enough. No surprise, consiering the views of the Constitution Party’s founder and former nominee Howard Phillips. Get a load of these nuggets of wisdom for the ages from Phillips (all of which you can find here, as well as the sources):

Q: How would a Constitution Party governor or state legislature punish homosexuals?

A: It’s not my intention to go into somebody’s home and see what he’s doing in there. What a president can do is stop the billions of dollars in subsidies to homosexual groups to teach safe sodomy, which is what AIDS education is. (here)

The Supreme Court has no right to amend the Constitution, and appointing pro-life justices is irrelevant. The unborn child is a person, and even [Roe v. Wade author Justice Harry] Blackmun conceded that if the unborn child is a person that abortion is unconstitutional. I’ll appoint pro-life U.S. Attorneys who will prosecute abortion doctors for homicide.

The radical, anti-growth, anti-business, environmental socialists could not pass their so-called Clean Air Bill costing us $40 billion per year until George Bush pushed it through.

[Those who] advocate. separating church from state are hypocrites unless they similarly insist upon the separation of education from state, because every government-subsidized and regulated school has become an establishment of the officially approved state religion, censoring prayer, subsidizing sex, denying creation, rewriting history, undermining parental authority, denigrating Biblical values, and dumbing down the children so that they may be no wiser than those who run our government.

Funny how that laundry list of grievances against public education are what many rational thinking people would consider to be the prime example of how to dumb down a kid. So, yes, these people almost make the GOP look rational, so it’s good to know Keyes has finally found the party where they won’t treat him like the crazy uncle anymore; he’s one of them!

As to whether or not it will hurt McCain, who knows. The GOP hasn’t really stopped pandering to the fundies, because even though some of them know they’re just being used, they still have nowhere else to go,and their sheeplike mindset keeps ‘em in the flock.

Anyone else out there think Keyes sounds like Kermit the Frog when he speaks?

UPDATE: Apparently, Keyes is too kooky even for the C.P. nutters. They picked someone else.

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That Higher Ground show I went to last Sunday was the best show I’ve seen in quite a while. The band was smokin’, although I don’t know what the club was thinking when it booked some horrible noise-rock opener band that looked like something out of a Verizon commercial. But the Greyboy Allstars were obviously having a lot of fun up there. Karl Denson was quite the frontman, and he had that pointy jazzman goateé thing going, too.

Someone actually made a rather funny video involving a muppet-like version of the GBA, of their recent song, Still Waiting. You can check out the band’s website here. Have a good weekend.

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Tags: greyboy allstars

Fridays at FBC usually mean laziness, in that a lotta YouTube action ends up happening. Just couldn’t pass up this silly video that all three candidates played on the WWE wrestling show. Hiilary called herself “Hillrod”, possibly an allusion to the fact that she’s screwing/giving the rod to the Democratic Party. Obama said something about a smell… But McCain’s is undoubtedly the funniest, in that he sounds like such a crotchety old man that I was expecting him to wave a cane and yell, “Get off my lawn, you gawdamn kids!”, and then immediately fall out of his rocking chair.

Friday Nite Funk… with Muppets! coming up later tonight. Alan Keyes is stopping by tomorrow.

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Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, John McCain