So for the past three days, for almost 12 hours on the hour a sleazy-ass telemarketing firm has been calling my phone hawking bogus lotteries. It’s a different person on the phone each time (and you can hear the factory’s worth of souless bastards in the background). Every time I tell them to take me off the list, and an hour later I get the same call.

Normally the number is blocked, but there was an error in the caller ID last time and I got their number.

Here it is: 651-829-3110

Have fun with it Internets. Give ‘em hell.

It’s like a babel fish for those trying to understand just what the hell the Right Wing is saying. I mean, they obviously haven’t read their own text the way they act.

112th CONGRESS 1st Session

H. RES. 211

Expressing support for designation of the first weekend of May as Ten Commandments Weekend to recognize the significant contributions the Ten Commandments have made in shaping the principles, institutions, and national character of the United States.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

April 7, 2011

That’s right, 22 Congressmen have been beavering away in the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to bring this job creating, debt reducing, colossal waste of time and money to the floor for a vote.

Yes. The 10 Commandments. You may have watched the movie. Ten outdated laws of ye old bronze age, that have no place in our modern society and often trumpeted as the bedrock of US law (they aren’t, but why would sheep critically think about it?), is once again taking up time in our Congress.

Why? Why would I rail against this? Let’s examine.

1. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Well, no, you’re not. In fact, you’re nothing more than a fairy tale to more than a quarter of US citizens. Moreover, given it’s a tick-box on a census form, a further percentage of that remaining 75% was just too lazy or chicken shit not to check it.

Given this is a secular nation, the 1st Commandment is worthless to us, if not insulting.

2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.

We’re two commandments in, and so far there zero relevance for the national character of the United States. Shit, given how most worship their local sports teams this whole country should be one giant smoking crater.

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

Well, god damn it all to hell. Doesn’t that just violate one of our lovely Amendments. 0 for 3, Congressmen.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Surprise Christians, you’ve been fucking this up for decades! The Sabbath is Saturday. Imagine the collective sphincter tightening if they actually had to honor Judeo values instead of that bullshit Judeo-Christian line they love to spout? 0 for 4.

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

Being nice to your parents isn’t by any means a religious value. It is, however, a catchy Desmond Dekker song. It’s by no means shaped the principles, institutions, and national character of the United States.

0 for 5.

6. You shall not murder.

Wait, a version of this is on the law books! However, it’s also a law recorded in many other places before the Ten Commandments came together. So can we really give it credit? Is this not common sense?

Let’s cut them a break and give half a point. so, 0.5 for 6.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

This certainly isn’t a law in the US. It’s not like we stone people to death for it. It gives some leeway in a divorce case, and that’s about it. On the flip side, it does seem to be a major past time for preachers of mega-churches, often with other men!

0.5 for 7.

8. You shall not steal.

Much like 6, laws against stealing have been around for thousands of years. Kind of hard to give credit here for this being a Christian value that shapes the nation. I’ll be consistent and give it another half point.

1 for 8.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Why, lying is a national past time. Just ask Congressman Kyle.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

Ho, ho, ho, this is a rich one. Again, keeping up with the Jones is a national past time. Moreover, this one was a classic for arguing the bible actually encouraged slavery (after all, if God didn’t want you to have slaves, why tell you not to covet your neighbor’s slaves?). You want to claim that as a Christian value representing America, be my guest.

So in all two half points out of ten. Did the Ten Commandments have a role in shaping our national character, laws, and institutions?

Fuck no.

Is the GOP wasting a lot of time on this bullshit?

Hell yes.

And this is why religion needs to be out of politics, wholesale.

It’s a waste of all our time. It’s shoddy thinking

It makes otherwise nice and intelligent people do stupid things and make ridiculous justifications.

The Westboro lunatics visited Maryland this week.

Maryland came out and counter-protested. It’s heartening to see people push back against hatred.

Photo: Joshua McKerrow — The Capita

Things I liked

The counter protestors, including a number of men dressed as Jesus, carried signs relaying the Christian icon’s message of love and waving American flags.

The crowd cheered as members of the Freedom Riders motorcycle club passed the dueling protests at the intersection of Disney and Annapolis roads, revving their engines to drown out the shouts from church.

And of course the lunatic side does everything they can to maintain their reps as nutjobs:

“What the heck’s wrong with these people?” said Shirley Phelps-Roper, a spokesman for the church and daughter of Pastor Fred Phelps.

“This is their never-dying soul … There isn’t any middle ground, you understand? You’re either going to obey or you’re not going to obey. If you don’t obey, you’re going to hell and you’re going to be cursed in this life, just like what you see happening in this country right now.”

What a horrible god they worship. Kneel in fealty and obey or burn for eternity.

Really, who wants to put up with either of that shit?

Hurray for sanity, and all those that came out to show Westboro’s ideas are fail.

So, perhaps if I believe hard enough in the existence of the Marvel universe, I can get all super stretchy like Mr. Fantastic. Wait until the wife gets a load of that…

“Science doesn’t have all the answers for everything,” has to be one of my favorite tropes. No fucking shit, lady. However, there are many more answers than yesterday, and the year before that, and the 50 years before that.

It’s what we like to call ‘making progress’ and ‘figuring shit out’.

————–

Oh wow, its gets better.

“Dr. Wendy Walsh is not even licensed. The California Board of Psychology website lists her as “Pyscholog­ical Assistant number PSB35274, unable to practice psychology unless supervised by Dr. Adam Scheck.” She has a PhD, but cannot legally call herself a psychologist. It’s illegal for her to present herself as one.”

Full on CNN fail.

Here we are three months into the fiscal revolution and just look at the amazing budgets and job creation bills that are pouring forth. Oh wait, that’s on the other-dimensional-Earth.

The right-wing wave of newly installed representatives have been busily increasing government meddling through the introduction of bills that want to track and monitor what goes on with women’s vaginas (going so far as to have the IRS investigate!) while simultaneously trying to push creationism into the classroom.

The original is bad ass.

The latest flurry of activity is to now reaffirm a 1950′s McCarthy-era mistake of epic proportions. Changing the national motto to “In God We Trust.”

If there was a more insulting phrase that could be foisted on this secular nation I can’t think if one.

So now’s your chance to tell your representative it’s time to stop fucking around with bullshit resolutions. Put the real national motto back where it belongs.

The phrase we need now more than any ridiculous sectarian posturing – E pluribus unum.

Out of many, one.

People have been calling Sarah Palin a vapid airhead for years now. It gets some people upset, who think this women is actually smart, and the label of airhead is just pure venom directed out of jealousy and/or fear.

This video clip should put this debate to rest. Really. Unless of course you actually think the ‘Sputnik moment’ was and is a Communist plot.

America’s ‘Sputnik moment’ was a wake-up call and a severe kick in the ass to get our own Space Program (re NASA) into gear before we were left behind by the Russians.

The above clip is just one of many pouring out of the Fox Network all spouting the same nonsense. If that doesn’t put to bed the Fair & Balanced bullshit… not much else will.

A few days ago Salmaan Taseer, Governor of the Punjab province, was shot from behind. Mumtaz Qadri, who was assigned to Taseer as a bodyguard, pumped over twenty rounds from his assault rifle into Taseer’s back.

Salmaan’s supposed crime? Defending a woman, by speaking out that she should not be killed. Why was she to be killed? She had been said to have committed the crime of blasphemy.

Here we have Qadri, bouyed by numerous outspoken sharifs, mullahs, and politco-religious groups of Pakistan, not only admitting to the killing, but, with those others, claiming it was a good, justified, and righteous killing.

Over what? Over differing beliefs. In this particular case over an insult to their god, Allah. So here we have a tale, one where mortals must defend the honor of a supposed being – a being claimed to be powerful enough to create a universe and all the laws therein – but apparently not powerful enough to defend itself from possible slander.

This tale is pervasive. Blasphemy laws don’t just exist in Pakistan, and this odd notion that the most powerful being in the universe must be protected from criticism because it cannot protect itself can be found throughout all religious societies.

If that is not a shining example of madness, of the insanity of religious beliefs, I don’t know what is. More frightening, this is merely the beginning of the tale. The shrill cry of religious extremism is fast gaining ground in Pakistan and those who would oppose it are being cowed into silence by threat of death. Taseer was an example to all those that would try to talk sense – it will not be tolerated, your reward will be a
gunshot in the back, blood on the street, and legion are those willing to bring these threats to fruition.

The ramification here is that Pakistan is not without teeth. It has a capable military and possesses nuclear weapons. That thought combined with the open celebrations of Taseer’s death as shown in the Guardian’s article creates quite the queezy spot in my stomach.

Madmen with the weaponry, moreover the willpower to kill based off of a faulty, bronze-age belief system. Rationalism cannot win in the face of that.

It only further proves both Christopher Hitchen’s point, that eventually religion poisons everything, and Steven Weinberg’s quotable, “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.”

Humans have walked on the moon.

We’ve sent robots to the outer most limits of our solar system.

We’ve split the atom.

We’ve peered billions of years into the past to watch stars explode.

We’ve created a system by which all humans on the earth can communicate with one another no matter how far apart, how high above or far below the earth.

We’ve even created life with the seemingly infertile.

All this we owe to reason, to the sciences, to logic and human ingenuity.

What lofty goals we have achieved.

Comparatively what have superstitions given us? Tales and stories at its best.

Its worst is being brought to bear on Molly Norris. She’s a cartoonist and the creator of a “Draw Mohammed Day” – an exercise to show the insane  reactions that fundamentalists have. It was an exercise that should have left everyone laughing.

Ardent believers of ancient superstitions have taken away Molly’s freedom. The Seattle Weekly News writes:

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It’s all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoon.

How in this day and age are these bullshit beliefs tolerated? That people would threaten violence over fairy tales, much less cartoons of fairy tales, is intolerable.

Will you continue this legacy of stone-age nonsense or will you help this generation and the next leave behind this worthless, puerile crap called religion?