Five Before Chaos

No, it’s not a blaxploitation flick, although I could just hear the promotion for it…‘He’s back, he’s black, and he’s gonna put some Holy Spirit in whitey’s ass!’

Actually, from the best I could gather, it’s about two chocolate Jesuses (or is it ‘Jesi’?). There are two art exhibits opening up, one in the UK and one in NYC, during Holy Week (when the alleged resurrection of ‘zombie Jesus’ is celebrated). Both of them exhibits feature life-size sculptures of Jesus, made out of chocolate.

Of course, there’s the obligatory Catholic outrage from none other than blowhard Bill Donohue, of the uber-conservative Catholic League. You may remember him as the one that started attacking John Edwards a few months back for hiring some bloggers who said some nasty things about Catholicism on their blogs. Of the chocolate Jesus, he whined,”This is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.” Now putting aside for a minute the silliness of the words ‘sensible’, ‘Christian’, and ‘Bill Donohue’ all appearing in the same sentence, has he forgotten, is this really more of an assault than the Romans feeding Christians to the lions? And also, Catholics eat Jesus every Sunday at Holy Communion. What’s the difference if they were eating Chocolate Jesus instead of that little piece of cardboard ‘bread’? Heck, maybe if they were serving Chocolate Jesus, I would have gone to church more as a kid.

Seriously, I’m amazed at how quickly the Catholics love to whine even more than the fundies do with these things (perhaps it’s because there’s no sex involved). For a religion that used to pretty much literally rule the world, they really seem to be awfully insecure, whining with sanctimonious outrage every time something comes out which puts Jesus in a non-traditional perspective.

Nobody has complained about this chocolate Jesus. Are those little flecks of crisped rice? Blasphemy!:

Or what about Catholic Supply’s hoops and football playing (and super Causcasian/Irish hippie) Jesuses? Isn’t using God-magic cheating? C’mon, Jeez, they’re only kids, fer Crissake.

Now here’s a great idea for Easter: ‘White Chocolate Jesus with Liquid Cherry Center.’ Kids can prick the hands and feet to make their very own stigmata!

Oh, I get it… putting Jesus in ridiculous situations to make money from religious people… good, putting Jesus in a non-traditional context to make an artistic statement that may not be so nice… bad. Hypocrisy and lack of consistency seems to be the norm with a lot of these folks. I think that the artist of the UK Jesus, George Heslop, puts it best:

“Surely all the real human suffering in the world should be far more important than some argument about a chocolate effigy. But somehow these abstract symbols are treated with more respect than real world events.”

Indeed.

Added The Skeptic’s Dictionary to the FBC Read where you can look up all sorts of crazy things from Chelation Therapy to glossolalia. Added Eccentric Cinema to the film links, lots of oddball cult film stuff there. And finally, Diabologue, a wildly entertaining and diverse blog to the Vermont blogroll. Have a look and enjoy.

I love a good zombie movie, in particular the shlocky, gory variety (Romero, Fulci, etc.) Hopping around the web today, I came across a zombie that scared the shit out of me.. Phyllis Schafly, of the wingnut group the Eagle Forum. Schafly’s one of those far-right social conservatives who hates, I mean really HATES feminism, so much that she played a significant part in keeping the Equal Rights Amendment from passing a few decades ago. Still around, still dumb all over.

Anyways, Schafly rose from the grave and gave a speech at Bates College in Maine, recently, as a guest of the Bates College Republicans. Schafly’s got quite a mind on her there. Heck, she even thinks that it’s impossible for husbands to rape their wives. I’m not kidding:

At one point, Schlafly also contended that married women cannot be sexually assaulted by their husbands. By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape,” she said.

You’ve heard of the self-hating Jew or black, she’s the self hating woman:

“Women in combat are a hazard to other people around them,” she said. “They aren’t tall enough to see out of the trucks, they’re not strong enough to carry their buddy off the battlefield if he’s wounded, and they can’t bark out orders loudly enough for everyone to hear.”

She’s 81 now, but her ideas are more old and outdated than she is. Those zombies in “Dawn of the Dead’ got nothing on her.

Yeah, they’re still around.

This month, in keeping with the ‘when reality and facts don’t fit in with your worldview, just fabricate a new reality’ theme that seems to be so prevalent when talking about conservatives, in particular, religious ones, we’re going to look at another growing threat to logic and reason. No, it’s not megachurches, it’s creationist museums. And they’re sprouting up like a nasty herpes outbreak, all across the nation.

I’ve known about them for a while, but this recent article on Alternet by Chris Hedges puts all of the stupidity in one place in shocking clarity. A sample of the ridiculous things one can learn (and hopefully ‘unlearn’ afterwards by going to a school with a good science program):

…how Noah solved the problem of fitting dinosaurs into the three levels of the vessel–he loaded only baby dinosaurs. …Before Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, museum visitors are told, all of the dinosaurs were peaceable plant-eaters. The evidence is found in Genesis 1:30, where God gives “green herb” to every creature to eat. There were no predators. T-Rex had such big teeth, the museum explains, so it could open coconuts. Only after Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of paradise did the dinosaurs start to eat flesh.

Brain hurt yet? The interesting thing, Hedges writes, is these severely reality-challenged people have worked hard to create an alternate fundie-wingnut ‘scientific’ infrastructure:

And yet, coming from the modern age, these Christo-fascists cannot discount science. They employ jargon, methods and data that appear to be science, to make an argument for creationism. They have created parallel research and scholarly institutions. They pump out articles in self-published journals to provide “evidence” that homosexuals can be cured, that global warming is a myth, that abortion can cause breast cancer, that something they call “post-abortion syndrome” leads to deep depression and suicide and that abstinence-only education is an effective form of birth control. This pseudo-science has seeped into the public debate. It is disseminated by nervous and timid media anxious to give both sides in every argument. Those who have contempt for facts and truth, for honest research and inquiry, are given the same platform by the press as those who deal in a world of reality, fact and rationality.

Scary stuff, something we’ve been hearing a lot of lately. And as easy as it is to dismiss them as crazy rantings of a lunatic fringe (which, in essence, is what it really is), the problem is that there are a lot of them. And yes, it’s also easy to look at how the political pendulum is finally swinging in the opposite direction and to take comfort that it’s a sign that their influence is diminishing. Perhaps it is. But the fact that we’re dealing with a bunch of zealots who are seemingly impervious to reason and logic is one thing. The fact that many of them won’t rest until we’re all living/believing the same way they do is what you do need to worry about.

Ok, film geeks. Bill Simmon is 3 for 3. Hopefully not this week.

Last week’s film was the French film, ‘Le Cercle Rouge’ (1970), directed by Jean-Pierre Mellvile. This classic film involves a cat-loving detective, a recently released thief, and an escaped murderer, with one heck of a jewel heist. As Norbizness pointed out, Hong Kong action director John Woo oversaw its restoration. You can read a bunch about this great film, here. And the Obligatory Stupid Trivia Question answer (also answered by Bill) was the connection between this film and several famous spaghetti westerns was the late actor Gian Maria Volonte, who plays the escaped murderer Vogel in this film; he also played the bad guy in the first two films of Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollars’ trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.

So here’s this week’s movie:

Title, year, and director, please. Extra credit if you can describe what’s going on in the scene. And the Obligatory Stupid Trivia Question: What (very loose) connection does this film have to actress Goldie Hawn? Fire away.

I hope I’m not beating a dead horse here, but these people are just as brainless as the fundamentalists in their inability to think outside of themselves, past their ideology, or past What Their Leaders Tell Them To Think (regardless of all the documented evidence that refutes what they’re told). And like the fundies, they really have no conception of what the scientific method entails or what ‘scientific consensus’ means. (this is the part where chanman or some other clueless con accuses me of parroting talking points and not thinking for myself – pardon me for listening to scientific consensus and ignoring the industry-paid shills, folks).

Another great piece at Alien and Sedition pointed me to a Washington Post article that really sums up where the problem lies. A few points:

How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It’s certainly true that many of them are…The truth is more complicated — and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement.

National Review magazine, with its popular website, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is “Planet Gore.” The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue.

Yeah, the ‘Gore agenda’. Now where have I heard that one before? Interestingly enough, the article points out how the GOP itself has taken steps to make sure the truth doesn’t come out from one of their own…

Meanwhile, Republicans who do believe in global warming get shunted aside. Nicole Gaudiano of Gannett News Service recently reported that Rep. Wayne Gilchrest asked to be on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio refused to allow it unless Gilchrest would say that humans have not contributed to global warming. The Maryland Republican refused and was denied a seat.

Reps. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), both research scientists, also were denied seats on the committee. Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification; if the GOP allowed Republican researchers who accept the scientific consensus to sit on a global warming panel, it would kill the party’s strategy of making global warming seem to be the pet obsession of Democrats and Hollywood lefties.

I really think what we’re going through now is the last stages of this, they’re kicking and screaming. It’s kind of how those Intelligent Design people keep holding on, as history and science marches against them. Ideology is even stronger than religion in many cases, and that’s what we’re seeing here. And all of that money from Big Oil. And, of course, resistance from those out there for whom the idea of having to modify their behavior to accommodate the well-being of society as a whole is just blasphemous.

UPDATE: More on the Big Oil Adminsitration’s efforts to keep the public in the dark and sow the seeds of doubt.

The Occupation Project, who inspired last week’s non-violent protest at Peter Welch’s office last week is having another sit-in at Bernie Sanders’ office tomorrow in hopes that he will not vote to approve the supplemental funding for the war. From the press release:

Citizen Sit-In  and Call-In at Senator Bernie Sanders’ Office to Protest War Funding

Meet in front of Burlington City Hall on Church Street at 2pm Tuesday, March 27 to plan

Walk to Bernie’s Office, 1 Church Street, between 2:20 and 2:30 pm

There will be a Citizen Sit-In and Call-In at Senator Bernie Sanders’ office in Burlington on Tuesday afternoon to voice dissent about the $100 billion supplemental war funding up for debate in the US Senate. Inspired by a national movement called The Occupation Project and Voices for Creative Nonviolence,  participants from all over the state will be asking Senator Sanders to vote no on the funding approved by the US House on Friday.  Iraq Veterans Against the War, college students, members of local peace organizations, and concerned citizens are all planning on participating either by visiting Sanders’ office or calling the office. They will meet in front of Burlington City Hall on Church Street at 2pm Tuesday, March 27 to plan.

They will then walk to Bernie’s Office, 1 Church Street, to arrive at 2:30 pm.  Participants will each decide for themselves how long they would like to stay at the office.

I called Sanders’ office a few moments ago, and the person on the phone told me that Sanders has not indicated how he will vote. His statement on the website isn’t clear, either:

In the coming week, the Senate is set to debate legislation that calls for a troop withdrawal from Iraq. Having originally voted against the war, Senator Sanders has been an outspoken advocate for bringing our troops home as soon as possible. “We have got to use the budget to tell the president that this war cannot go on. We have to bring our troops home as soon as possible,” Senator Sanders told Thom Hartmann during his weekly Air America interview program “Brunch with Bernie.”

So, if you are in opposition to the continued funding of the war, this is an opportunity to let Bernie know loud and clear.

My apologies to those of you regulars (there are actually a few of you now) for the lack of postings lately. Every now and then I get a week where the insomnia hits me and takes its toll, usually during a time when there is zero stress in my life, oddly enough. So I get cranky and lazy, so I deblogged for a while. This week I plan on looking a bit more at Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians”, as well as put up a good movie review. And Wednesday, of course, I will make another seemingly futile attempt to stump Bill Simmon with “Name that Movie”.

Anyways, here’s a nice linkdump for you to chew on. It’s nice outside. Why are you sitting here reading this?

As the Speedy Conzales attorney puge continues to gather steam, a few points to remember from Josh at TPM. First:

This isn’t about the AG’s lies. It’s not about the attempted cover-up. It’s not about executive privilege and investigative process mumbojumbo.

This is about using US Attorneys to damage Democrats and protect Republicans, using the Department of Justice as a partisan cudgel in the war for national political dominance. All the secrecy and lies, the blundering and covering-up stems from this one central fact.

And even if a crime were not committed (highly unlikely, at the very least there’s lying to Congress and obstruction of justice), for our Repub readers out there: if this is indeed true, does it not change the fact that it’s wrong? Or is it only wrong if a Democrat does it?

Also Josh points out why this is not the same as the firing that happens at the start of a new presidential term. This was done under the guise of some of the worst legislation of the modern era, the PATRIOT act. Like most things, it’s easy to draw a hasty generalization; this is a complex situation, and the deeper one goes, the worse it looks. And like I said, legality aside, if it’s wrong, it needs to be looked into.

Carpetbagger Report on how the conservative blogosphere is increasingly showing signs of dumping Gonzales.

Dr. Gerry Lower over at Smirking Chimp asks ‘What “Given” Right to Dominion?‘:

It does beg the question as to how Americans can feel that they have some “given” right to dominate world politics and economics. They cannot do so in the name of American “democracy” – because human rights and the values of democracy are entirely ignored by the Bush administration, by corporate capitalism and by the religious right wing. That explains how the U.S. can be decades behind the rest of the world’s democracies in honoring human rights.

Don’t you love it when Christifascists get what’s coming to them? Oregon teacher fired for ‘teaching critical thinking’. Thankfully the school board used its critical thinking skills and saw right through what he was trying to do.

‘Alien & Sedition’ is becoming one of my daily reads. The authors tend to offer a lot of in-depth analysis of many aspects of the conservative movement, not just soundbites. Check out the latest, The Ghost in the Conservative Machine.

Finally, Bob Geiger’s Saturday Cartoon Roundup. Enjoy.

Like many other technogeeks my age, my first computer was a Commodore 64, back in the mid-80′s. Although Commodore expanded with the Amiga line in the late 80′s, they didn’t survive the PC revolution, and went under. However, the BBC is reporting that Commodore may be returning.

New owner Yeahronimo Media Ventures has not ruled out the possibility of a new breed of Commodore computers.

It also plans to develop a “worldwide entertainment concept” with the brand, although details are not yet known.

Now, I build my own, so I won’t be rushing out to buy a new Commodore 640000, but it’s interesting to even hear the name ‘Commodore’ being discussed in a way that doesn’t involve Lionel Ritchie.