Topics

http://inspiredeconomist.com/2010/06/17/why-did-halliburton-buy-an-oil-cleanup-company-8-days-before-the-oil-spill/

There are innumerable of bits of information floating around in the battle over the narrative of this national disaster. This one is particularly disturbing. From AOL's Daily Finance just over a week before the spill:

"...the days of independence have come to an end for Boots & Coots as the company has agreed to sell out to Halliburton (HAL) for $240.4 million."

M&A in the industrial and oil services sectors is totally normal, but the timing in this case, is not. Boots & Coots sure seems like the perfect company to own if it would soon become necessary to get more involved with some oil disaster (emphasis mine):

I'm not one for the tinfoil hat emoticon but  

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37448356/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations, a decision one dissenting justice said turns defendants' rights "upside down."

A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are the first of the Miranda rights warnings, which police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But the justices said in a 5-4 decision that suspects must tell police they are going to remain silent to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.

The ruling comes in a case where a suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, remained mostly silent for a three-hour police interrogation before implicating himself in a Jan. 10, 2000, murder in Southfield, Mich. He appealed his conviction, saying that he invoked his Miranda right to remain silent by remaining silent.

Are we Britain yet?

http://www.crabrevenge.com/

Yes we sell pubic lice and yes we are proud of it
We sell you crabs to give to your ex girlfriend or whoever has pissed you off enough to make you seek revenge on them.. If you want a method of revenge that doesn't involve permanent damage or risk of personal injury or jail time, you have come to the right place.

my god it's full of stars

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2010/04/suing-mohammeds-heirs-for-libel.html

"You and your clients apparently continue to insist that Muhammed ibn 'Abd Allah al-Hashimi al-Qurashi may not be portrayed or caricatured. This implies that you and your clients give your unconditional support to the text of the Quran, as it exists today, as well as to the Hadith that, combined with the Quran (and the Sirat) form the basis of Islam and Sharia.

The descendants of the people whom your clients' forefather compared to apes, pigs and rats, and whose case we now represent, feel not only personally insulted, but also emotionally aggrieved by these denigrations, as their own ancestors have been ridiculed, persecuted and expelled from their lands, since the Quran and Hadith imply that non-Muslims are the enemies of Allah and therefore were and are to be treated as outlaws. Due to the fact that Muhammed ibn 'Abd Allah al-Hashimi al-Qurashi claimed, that not he, but Allah was the author of this insult and thus ascribed the saying to him, we find this not only blasphemous but also a thinly disguised attempt to decriminalize Muhammed ibn 'Abd Allah al-Hashimi al-Qurashi's own misdemeanors. This will possibly be addressed in a later court case."

And then it gets better:

The lawsuit demands an apology, and also that the offending passages of the Koran be changed or removed from all publicly available copies of the book in mosques, libraries, etc., by the end of this year.

It divides the offensive material up into seven categories:

1.       There are passages asserting that certain Jews are descendants of apes and pigs,
2.       that there is only one god and that this god is Allah,
3.       that Muhammed ibn 'Abd Allah al-Hashimi al-Qurashi is his last prophet,
4.       that everyone who does not believe this and the day of judgment are doomed to spend eternity in hell and here on earth they shall be persecuted, tortured or murdered unless they convert to the Muslims' god Allah and approve the Muslims' prophet Muhammed as god's messenger
5.       that Allah should furnish detailed revelations of certain people's sex-life,
6.       that Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah al-Hashimi al-Qurashi seen in today's light still is the best example people can have (in spite of his barbaric behavior).
7.       We also claim that the said Muhammad is responsible for a century-old persecution of women by asserting that they are worth less than men in intelligence, in matters of inheritance economy and parentage. For that we need a major alteration to be made public.

http://www.news.com.au/world/north-korea-sunk-south-korean-warship-killing-46-sailors/story-e6frfkyi-1225856989612

AN elite North Korean suicide squad of human torpedoes may have been involved in the sinking of a South Korean ship in mysterious circumstances.

South Korea's Defence Intelligence Command had alerted the Navy weeks ahead of the sinking that North Korean suicide squads were being deployed, according to reports in Seoul, Sky News reports

The "Human torpedo" squads were said to involve small submarines, Sky News reports.

They are navigated so close to the target that their torpedoes or explosives blow up both target and the attackers.

Video is gun mounted camera. 2 Reuters news staff were killed in this video as well.

Possibly nsfw, due to violence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik

In case Youtube url gets taken down:
http://collateralmurder.com/

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/oreilly-marine-funeral-protesters/2010/03/30/id/354287

No. 1 cable news host Bill O'Reilly said Tuesday that he will personally write a check to cover $16,500 in legal costs for the father of a fallen U.S. Marine who sued the members of a church who picketed his son's funeral.

According to news reports, the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, located in Topeka, Kan., believe that God is punishing the United States because of its acceptance of gay people. The church garners attention for its views by protesting high-profile funerals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/us/30militia.html

WASHINGTON — Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an anti-government uprising.

In court filings unsealed Monday, the Justice Department accused the nine people of planning to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer, then plant improvised explosive devices of a type used by insurgents in Iraq to attack the funeral procession.

Eight of the defendants were arrested over the weekend in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. A ninth remained at large, the Justice Department said. The indictments against them were returned last Tuesday. The defendants were identified as members of Hutaree, described by federal prosecutors as an anti-government extremist organization based in Lenawee County, Michigan, and which advocates violence against local, state and federal law enforcement. The group saw local and state police as "foot soldiers" for the federal government, which it viewed as its enemy, along with participants in what they deemed to be a "New World Order," according to the indictment.

I don't have words.

http://www.wkrn.com/global/story.asp?s=12208009

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A Nashville man says he and his 10-year-old daughter were victims of road rage Thursday afternoon, all because of a political bumper sticker on his car.

Mark Duren told News 2 the incident happened around 4:30p.m., while he was driving on Blair Boulevard, not far from Belmont University.

He said Harry Weisiger gave him the bird and rammed into his vehicle, after noticing an Obama-Biden sticker on his car bumper.

Duren had just picked up his 10-year-old daughter from school and had her in the car with him.

"He pointed at the back of my car," Duren said, "the bumper, flipped me off, one finger salute."

You stay classy, conservatives.

Male. 23 years old. White. No history of severe illness. Part-time student. Part-time employment. Lost coverage off my parents insurance in January for not being "a full time student".


So yeah. can anyone tell me what my situation is now?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.
For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.
The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.
On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

Because I wanted a thread for it.


I think i just crashed the database we use for our contact mailings.

As in this is now the third attempt, and once again after 10 minutes of "Scanning for unused blocks" the completion bars barely at 50%.

Fuck you Filemaker 

http://www.dcbureau.org/20100203319/Trento-s-Take/trentos-take-fox-news-cant-upset-murdochs-saudi-prince.html

...It was not until a few days later that I learned what may have been behind the absence of a video clip on the Web site. I had said to Doocy that Saudi Arabian money was still financing Al Qaeda. Doocy did not react to my comment. But ten days later I learned that Fox's parent company, News Corporation, was, at the time of my interview, negotiating with a Saudi prince to vastly increase his stake in the company.

By the time I appeared on Fox News, Prince Alwaleed was about to become News Corp's fourth largest voting shareholder (behind the Murdoch family, Liberty Media, and Fidelity Management & Research Co, a mutual fund). The prince has repeatedly defended his homeland as a problem-free place. What he has failed to mention is that he has personally donated huge amounts of money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/8516319.stm

Scientists say that a meteorite that crashed into Earth 40 years ago contains millions of different carbon-containing, or organic, molecules.
Although they are not a sign of life, such organic compounds are life's building blocks, and are a sign of conditions in the early Solar System.
It is thought the Murchison meteorite could even be older than the Sun.
The results of the meteorite study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We are really excited. When I first studied it and saw the complexity I was so amazed," said Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin, lead researcher on the study from the Institute for Ecological Chemistry in Neuherberg, Germany.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/02/09/think-tea-party-movement/

Yes, there is an option for "Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories"

http://gizmodo.com/5462539/hubble-detects-mysterious-spaceship+shaped-object-traveling-at-11000mph

Hubble has discovered a mysterious X-shaped object traveling at 11,000mph. NASA says that P/2010-A2 may be a comet, product of the collision between two asteroids. Or a Klingon Bird of Prey. Either way, UCLA investigator David Jewitt is excited:/quote]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116688&sectionid=351020704

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez Wednesday accused the United States of causing the destruction in Haiti by testing a 'tectonic weapon' to induce the catastrophic earthquake that hit the country last week.

President Chavez said the US was "playing God" by testing devices capable of creating eco-type catastrophes, the Spanish newspaper ABC quoted him as saying.


Chavez said the killer earthquake followed a test of "weapon of earthquakes" just offshore from Haiti. He did not elaborate on the source of his claim.

The outspoken leader had earlier accused the US of occupying Haiti "under the guise of the natural disaster."

At least 11,000 US troops have been dispatched to the country to provide security for aid distribution efforts.

Venezuelan media have reported that the earthquake "may be associated with the project called HAARP, a system that can generate violent and unexpected changes in climate."

HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, is a study run in Alaska directed at the the occasional reconfiguration of the properties of the Earth's ionosphere to improve satellite communications.

I think he saw this and thought it was a documentary:

http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1193

Here's my favorites:

I will not name my variables after nasty tropical diseases, or executives who are under indictment for fraud.

Elevators are not toys, nor should they ever be wired into the corporate net.

The elves in the lobby's "winter holiday" display must remain unmolested.

I will not dial someone at random and conference them in to the building's intercom system.

http://gizmodo.com/5443231/toddler-sucks-on-a-usb-cable-ends-up-in-the-hospital

Here's a sad reminder that USB cables belong plugged into peripherals, not children. Toddler Trinity Anderson was playing with a USB cable plugged into a laptop and put it in her mouth, which shocked her and knocked her out.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/sci-fi-weapons/all/1

Even the angriest mobs would probably think twice about trying to pass a Taser Shockwave barrier. It is the less-lethal equivalent of a claymore mine. Push the big red button, and it will fire 24 electrified probes at the same time in a single direction.

Good read.

http://www.gaythugdating.com/


There's nothing i can quote to give this the justice it deserves.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBPw2O_1rS7s&pos=9

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Bernie Madoff went to Duke University Hospital on Dec. 18 with injuries consistent with an assault, ABC News reported, citing the network's WTVD affiliate in North Carolina.

Madoff had facial fractures, broken ribs and a collapsed lung, the ABC affiliate said, citing people familiar with the situation it didn't identify. Madoff was discharged from the hospital two days ago, according to the ABC-WTVD report on ABC's Web site.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/17/twitter-reportedly-hacked-by-iranian-cyber-army/

We've received multiple tips right around 10 pm that Twitter was hacked and defaced with the message below. The site was offline for a while.

We're looking into this and awaiting on a response from Twitter.

The message read:

Iranian Cyber Army
THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To....

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?
WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST
Take Care.

*insert obligatory TWEET ME BACK here*

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html?mod=igoogle_wsj_gadgv1&

WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America's enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.

The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas. They also point to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington's growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

http://copssaylegalize.blogspot.com/2009/12/great-news-from-congress.html

Here's how Congressional appropriators themselves describe the news:
Removing Special Restrictions on the District of Columbia:...Also allows the District to implement a referendum on use of marijuana for medical purposes as has been done in other states, allows use of Federal funds for needle exchange programs except in locations considered inappropriate by District authorities...

Well then. Good news i suppose.

I'm leaving in 30 minutes (which is now, well, now) to meet up with my hoity toity executive students. Again. Fourth time this week, which is awesome for me, but there's something they do which annoys the batshit out of me.

Fucking company cards.

I really shouldn't complain. They buy round after round after round all the while merrily laughing about chocking it off as business networking. They buy 400 dollars worth of sushi without even blinking an eye. They have no fear of reprimand over excess expenses, because hell, their companies are paying for their MBA, why would they be spanked for spending even more company money?

I don't get it. How can they get away with that? They aren't CEO's (yet). It's like they have no care or concern as long as it's someone else's money. The borg will fund their fun, no questions asked. How the fuck can they be this wasteful when jobs are supposedly so sparse? How can they get by without being audited? I can't imagine shareholders being ok with this, especially since i know damn well this money isn't from some big reserve that exists just for executive bonuses Someone please explain this to me, because i really don't get it.

Maybe i'm just 22 and naive about the world, but fuck.



Which brings me to another thing. Some of them easily pull 6 figures, but the moment it becomes an opportune time to spend some of their own money on something "fun" related a vacuum is created from the sheer force of their assholes slamming shut.

Spend without fear, until it's time to pitch in your own funds.


Here's another topic, similar bullshit. Fuck academia. I've been denied a raise for 2.5 fucking years at this point. And i've asked and pointed out reasons why I need and deserve one (minimum wage has gone up almost 2 dollars since my last raise) to no avail. I'm continuously told the education institution i work for has had a hiring freeze for a year and a half now, and no one is receiving raises. Even though professors and deans have. To hell with staff. And then all of a sudden the students in my program are in town, academia cums itself, and lo and behold, the state's money is miraculously funding flights cross country, hotel bills, and paying them excess of 5k to teach individual 3 hour sessions, or even to help teach sessions. Not even teaching. I shit you not, we flew in some guy from arkansas in May for 3 days. We paid him 5k a day. The only thing this fucker did was sit in a chair at a computer BESIDE me, and entered data into a spreadsheet that was written on a paper while i organized said papers. 2 hours into this simulation, jackass gets up and leaves to go back to the hotel for something, and I sat there for 3 fucking hours entering the data into the spreadsheet AND filing the fucking papers. For my same rate.

That's right. Some fucker got free airfare, hotel, food, and 15,000.00 dollars state money to enter data into a fucking spreadsheet for 2 hours, a task i had to do (and had done every simulation prior to this one), and i still get denied a fucking raise of ANY kind. Nevermind that im a fucking gofer bitch that does ANYTHING and EVERYTHING needed, and my entire pay from this part time job for the 2008 calendar year was barely over what they paid this fucking douche bag to do for 3 fucking days. Which i had to do.

God i fucking hate academia. It's bullshit.


Fuck it. I'm going to go get shitty on company cards, and then i'm just going to go back to being pissed off and broke. Fuck Rent. That musical sucks.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6946030.ece

In the forests and remote islands around Seattle, police are setting traps for a barefoot teenage outlaw who has eluded them for nearly two years.

Police say 18-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, whose escapades are turning him into a folk legend, is a one-man crime wave, responsible for 50 burglaries as well as stealing light aircraft, which he taught himself to fly from video games, and several speedboats.

He lives in the woods, shuns shoes and catches his own food. His only technological aid is a pair of thermal-imaging goggles to hunt at night and his weakness is pizzas, which he asks to be delivered at the edge of the woods

Police believe he fled to Canada and then, a few weeks ago, came back across the border to Idaho where he stole a Cessna 182 and flew to Seattle. He crash-landed in a forest clearing and walked away with cuts and bruises.

Since then he has been accused of stealing other planes for hops around the islands in the Puget Sound, including another Cessna belonging to a disc jockey who vented his frustration on radio, saying: "He still doesn't know how to land a plane in one piece."

He evaded a police pursuit by crashing a Mercedes-Benz into a roadside gas storage tank, using the explosion as a diversion to escape back into the woods where, he says, he feels like a Native American.

This was followed by the largest manhunt in recent memory. Three dozen sheriffs, aided by specialist armed units and an FBI helicopter, fanned out across Camano Island but failed to capture him. "We saw him, we think, but it's like he disappeared in front of our eyes," said one sheriff.

Makes balloon boy look like a bitch. 

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14742737

Human geneticists have reached a private crisis of conscience, and it will become public knowledge in 2010. The crisis has depressing health implications and alarming political ones. In a nutshell: the new genetics will reveal much less than hoped about how to cure disease, and much more than feared about human evolution and inequality, including genetic differences between classes, ethnicities and races.

In 2010, GWAS (genome wide association studies) fever will reach its peak. Dozens of papers will report specific genes associated with almost every imaginable trait—intelligence, personality, religiosity, sexuality, longevity, economic risk-taking, consumer preferences, leisure interests and political attitudes.

Is it Gattaca yet?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233384/The-REAL-king-jungle.html

Former British Army captain Ed Stafford, 33, is well on the way to becoming the first man in history to walk from the source of the Amazon in the mountains of Peru to its mouth in Brazil. And he's not doing it in the hope of achieving notoriety, nor is he being paid handsomely for his efforts. No, he's doing it out of a sense of adventure - for the sheer derring-do.

His satnav is broken and even if he had enough money for guides, he wouldn't be able to get them anyway for this section of his expedition.
The locals are too scared of jaguars
to go into the jungle. The big cats find pickings lean in the dry season and a juicy explorer would be a welcome addition to their diet. Ed is, of course, unarmed. A gun might give protection from the wildlife, but it would guarantee hostility from the people.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6935558.ece

According to Clause 2 of the Bill, a person who is convicted of gay sex is liable to life imprisonment. But if that person is also HIV positive the penalty — under the heading "aggravated homosexuality" — is death.

The Bill has not been endorsed by the Ugandan government but it has allowed it to proceed, and some top officials are said to have praised it.

A Canadian government spokesman said: "If adopted, a Bill further criminalising homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda."

The Bill proposes a three-year prison sentence for anyone who is aware of evidence of homosexuality and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours. And it would impose a sentence of up to seven years for anyone who defends the rights of gays and lesbians.

Yes, yet again i'm posting a new thread for a youtube link, however i feel this one is going to get discussion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33UU6MKuWSE&feature=player_embedded

Mildly NSFW, and highly 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXxLbLvCRrk

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/search/label/This%20Week%20In%20Holy%20Crimes

Here's an excerpt:

Texas: Pastor Tomas Gonzales sentenced to 15 years for molesting five year-old girl.
Uganda: Pastor Obiri Kojo Yeboah arrested for fraud for wearing a hidden electrical device to deceive parishioners into thinking his touch was slaying them in the Lord. Bonus: The Pentacostal Church is outraged at faked miracle healing.
New Jersey: Father Michael Fugee removed by Archdiocese, saying they just learned of his 2003 molestation conviction.
Michigan: Pastor Randy William Strong sentenced to one year in jail for molesting ten year-old boy.
DC: Pastor Henry Lyons, who served five years in prison for embezzling $5M from the National Baptist Convention, is now suing the organization, claiming they defrauded him of the votes necessary to once again become their president.
England: Vicar Peter Hedge found guilty of more than 30 counts of rape and sexual assault on underage boys.
Georgia: A new website has been launched to serve those molested and sexually abused by pastors of the Church of God In Christ.
Italy: Vatican bureaucrat Father Cesare Burgazzi gets charges dropped after high-speed chase through transsexual prostitution district during which he injured three cops. Friends in high places.
Israel: Rabbi Yosef Schneider arrested for defrauding investors of millions.
California: Rev. Christine Daniel arrested for selling fake cancer cure and hastening the deaths of at least six people. Bonus: Daniel used to sell her potions on TBN's Praise The Lord show.
Delaware: The Catholic Archdiocese of Wilmington declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy after petitioning the court in vain for an "equitable settlement" for 142 victims of molestation by priests.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/22/2721165.htm

A small rural town in New Zealand has been forced to cancel one of the highlights on its social calendar - a rabbit-throwing contest.

About 400 people live in Waiau in the South Island. This weekend the town will hold its annual pig hunt.

In previous years a 'rabbit throw' has been organised for the local children, who compete to see how far they can hurl a dead bunny.

But the event is now off, after New Zealand's equivalent of the RSPCA got wind of it.

Animal cruelty inspector Charles Cadwallader says throwing bunnies is sick.

"Do you throw your dead grandmother around for a joke at her funeral?" he asked.

The organiser of the pig hunt, Jo Moriarty, says it is political correctness gone mad.

"You know, the children of the community here are fantastic, they love their animals," he said.

New Zealand has more than 30 million wild rabbits.

I have no words.

Edit: Fixed.

(original link: http://www.dump.com/2009/10/19/guy-resigns-writes-hilarious-farewell-email/ )

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/10/column-just-say-no-to-blasphemy-laws-.html

Around the world, free speech is being sacrificed on the altar of religion. Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion. This growing movement has reached the United Nations, where religiously conservative countries received a boost in their campaign to pass an international blasphemy law. It came from the most unlikely of places: the United States.

While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any "negative racial and religious stereotyping." The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians. Though the resolution was passed unanimously, European and developing countries made it clear that they remain at odds on the issue of protecting religions from criticism. It is viewed as a transparent bid to appeal to the "Muslim street" and our Arab allies, with the administration seeking greater coexistence through the curtailment of objectionable speech. Though it has no direct enforcement (and is weaker than earlier versions), it is still viewed as a victory for those who sought to juxtapose and balance the rights of speech and religion...

http://tinyurl.com/ylyog63

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A 6-year-old boy climbed into a homemade balloon aircraft and floated away Thursday, forcing officials to scramble to figure out how to rescue the boy.

Live footage from a local TV helicopter showed the balloon gliding quickly through the air.

Larimer County sheriff's spokeswoman Eloise Campanella says the device, which is shaped like a flying saucer, has the potential to rise to 10,000 feet. Sheriff's officials last saw the device floating south of Milliken, which is about 40 miles north of Denver.

Campanella says the 6-year-old climbed into the access door and was in the airborne device.

[old]

I've been imbibing this glorious half bottle of lime smirnoff i discovered in my fridge, so keep that in mind as this rant evolves and develops. That shit tastes like lime green skittles too. It isn't bad. And I usually hate flavored vodka.

Anyways. So today's a special day kiddies. Know why? It's the one year anniversary of the cementing of my utter and total contempt for the christian ideal of god. This may not seem special to most of you, but most of you haven't gotten to spend 22+ glorious years within the bible belt and the sporadic massive crosses that seems to be anywhere you drive:


I never knew jesus was hung from a handle-bar dildo.


To fully grasp the magnitude of today, we must start from the beginning. Like all perfect little zealots, I was born a baptist, or as they like to think of themselves, a "true christian". I was force-fed all the traditional fodder, consisting of and not limited to that god knows everything you'll ever do, you are a little shit compared to god/jesus, jesus loves you but gods hate you because 6000 years ago some people ate an apple, liberals and democrats are the reason god has turned his back on america, killing any innocent is ok because this is the only true christian nation, all the founding fathers were the exact same christians as we have today, the southern baptist convention is too lenient on sinners so that's why our baptist church isn't part of it (the real reason was the church was wacko, and they were denied membership), and tons of other bullshit. I specifically remember being 8 years old and one of the kids that was in sunday school all of a sudden stopped coming. I couldn't understand why, and it was explained to me about the time i was 14 that he had an older brother that had come out, and the family refused to send him to jesus bible brainwashing camp and as such the family was shunned out of the church. From age 6 to 17 I spent almost every week of summer attending the various bible schools that existed across our little buckle of the bible belt town. And this brings us to the first pivotal moment.  

When i was 16 i did what most 16 year olds do, and stumbled into the first love of my life, which also happened to be the taker of my vcard. When i say i was head over heels as any 16 year old would be after a year and a half with the same girl it should set the stage. This relationship ends, abruptly, and as a lot of stupid 17 (it ended a month before my birthday) year olds do, i became angsty and began asking questions. Four months before this happened, the true christian baptist church i'd attended all my life kicked the old preacher out because he basically stole money from the offering to buy himself new garage doors. I guess god told him it was ok. So the deacons met, and decided our church was going to start holding auditions to fill the role of perfect zealot preacher. This search goes on for 6 months (my birthday is in january, they chose the fat fundamentalist in question in march). They settle on a man that looks like jerry falwell had an illegitimate love child with pat robertson which was done by them both masturbating onto a cross and allowing rosie o' donnel to proceed to reenact the masturbation scene from the exorcist with said cross, but i digress. So they get this red faced fundamentalist that believes in the absolute and total literal interpretation of the bible, and by bible i mean the old testament. All that shit jesus said about loving thy neighbor and everyone else, fuck it. This was election year, 2004. I was just starting to understand the concept of being able to think for myself, schmuck, and as such i realized i have leftist viewpoints. This new hellfire and brimstone pastor would weekly profess that all centrist and leftist ideals were the direct problem with the world, and how god wanted bush to be elected. The pastor set out 2 bush/cheney signs next to the sign with whatever message of the week in front of the church for the entire year (they also did this with mccain palin). He would weekly tell the members of the church that god wants them to vote for bush, and if they voted for kerry they would be spitting in the face of god. This confused me greatly, because i knew that it was wrong. At the time, i had a best friend that was lutheran, and i had gone to the occasional service with him. One of these eventful services included and explanation of the two concepts of free will and pre-destination. I couldn't comprehend them, so i let it stew inside me while i formulated the proper question to ask.


P-rob's love baby.

Fast forward to summer, 2004. I'm 17, have a goatee (so therefore im evil), and am in an angsty state of being. My parents referred to me as "goth", but you're free to make your own labels. Or not. Whatever. Anyways, it's bible school time, so i do what i've done my whole fucking life, and go to bible school at the church i've been attending since i was born. It was the second night, and everyone over the age of 12 was gathered together for some singing fuck practice for no reason. At this junction, the pastor is speaking to everyone trying to instill the fear of god into everyone, and for whatever reason asks the crowd of young minds if they have any questions about god. I immediately raise my hand, am called on, and ask the question that had been bothering me for weeks: How is free-will possible if pre-destination exists?. The pastor whispers to a deacon that proceeds to walk up and pulls me aside for being "insubordinate". I'm escorted downstairs into a room with about 4 collapseable metal chairs. I'm told that i was stirring questions in the mind of the youth and therefore was commiting evil, and things would have to be done to handle the issue. I'm then locked in the room and left there for about 20 minutes. The 6 Deacons enter, and force me to sit in a chair in the middle of a circle of them. They then proceed to lay hands on me and pray in tongues. One of them kneels in front of me, sticks his finger in my face, and tells me that i have great leadership potential in the church but that satan himself was using me for evil and stirring doubt among the young members of the congregation. I'm then told my parents have been contacted, and that i'm not to return to bible school this year unless i've decided to serve the lord. My mother picks me up, and i'm promptly grounded.

That was the event that started my doubt, and resulted in me never attending service again.

Fast forward once more to last year. I have a great aunt that by all regards i should call grandmother. My biological grandfather was a prick by all means of the word, and my bio grandmother was a bit of a flaky whore. My great aunt in question was the sister of my twat grandfather, and pretty much single handedly raised my mother from about age 4 to age 16. But i digress. This grandmother figure in my life that baby sat me all through elementary school and was the sweetest, kindest, more christ-like old (just for you TGRR) lady i've ever encountered got to experience the joys of a horrible affliction of stomach cancer. I know of no other way to state this other than this woman was probably the protestant answer to the concept of a nun, and was one of the reasons i held out a smidgen of faith/hope. For 3 months it ate her up from the inside. It caused ulcers that leaked her own stomach acid out into her body. She was in unimaginable, constant pain for 3 months. It was bad. Finally, her body gives up and she dies from this unspeakable pain that her god saw fit to gift her with as a reward for her dutiful service throughout the years. That day was a year ago today.

The rest of that side of the family are crazy fundies, by all regards of the word. They sent one of my cousins to a bible brain wash camp in north carolina for making the mistake of mentioning her bi-curious teenage affairs. They want to have the service at the church that she attended since it's founding. They decide to have the preacher that kicked me out of bible school for asking a fucking question manage the service. I attend, expecting horror and i wasn't disappointed. The fundie preacher in question turned her fucking funeral service into a god damned southern baptist revival, complete with having fucking congregation members come up and give their own god damned testimonies standing next to my dead aunts fucking coffin. Never mind the fact that their fucking god saw fit to punish this sweet old lady with fucking stomach cancer and unimaginable pain for the last 3 months of her life, not even allowing her the dignity to die in her own home. I was told this is "god's love" and "god's mercy".

After the most profane funeral i've ever attended i go home and sit and drink, much like i'm doing right now. I then realize that the concept of servitude towards god is complete and utter bullshit.

And here I am now. Kinda drunk. Yay? Yay.

So it's with all this in mind that i declare today fuck christianity/god day.

Drink in solidarity with me.


Edit: Added a picture of the pastor, and here's the link to the church in question and their horrible fucking website. Feel free to contact them with your kindest regards. The lady in question is under in memory, sylvia clark http://www.statelinechurch.org/

http://www.bartcop.com/dear-republicans.htm

Fuck you. No, I'm not joking. I'm sick of this bullshit.

I'm sick of the way you've corrupted the public discourse. The way you've made it acceptable to hurl any insult you like at public officials. The way you blame us for the current atmosphere of hatred by accusing us of starting it with hating Bush. Like Bush didn't come on the heels of eight years of your tireless efforts to destroy Clinton by any means necessary, like Bush didn't give us good reason to complain. A couple of posters on a website compared Bush to Hitler and you've used it as free license to compare Obama to Hitler 24/7 and I'm sick of your hypocrisy, where it's acceptable to say shit about Obama that you would have had an apoplectic fit (and did) if anything remotely similar had been said about your guys. Keith Olbermann calls Cheney a fascist when he was actually using fascist tactics and you think that gives you the freedom to call Obama a fascist, socialist, Marxist constantly for no reason at all. Fuck you and your bullshit false equivalency.

I'm sick of the way you've made the populace stupid. Around a fifth of your populace thinks the sun orbits the earth, over half think evolution never happened. Your populace actually believe the media has a liberal bias. Not because it has, you have the most conservative media in the free world, but because you've shouted it so loud and so often that you've brainwashed the public into believing it, like the battered wife who parrots her husband's insults. You've got a whole segment of the populace shouting about socialism and fascism and none of them know what the fucking words mean. You've convinced them that fascism is a left-wing thing. You've got them so turned around that some of them actually believe global warming isn't happening. Fuck you.

I'm sick of the way you try to destroy the whole concept of government. You've tricked the people into believing that government can't do anything right, always being careful to exclude the army because you love your bullets and bombs but you've so destroyed the public's ability to reason that they don't even think of interstate highways, the space program, the national parks program, etc. Government is always great when it's doing what you tell it and inevitably corrupt when it isn't. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your rewriting of history. You've bleated so loud and long that Reagan was a great president, that the New Deal didn't work, that cutting taxes increases revenues, that you actually have the people believing this bullshit. And these are the same people who will go on to become teachers and fill their student's heads with this self-same bullshit. Reagan was a mediocre president at best who had the good fortune to be in power when the USSR collapsed under it's own weight and you bastards have turned him into the Second Coming. You've rewritten history so that everything foul and hateful and wrong can be attributed to a Democrat while everything worthwhile is a Republican's glory. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your dragging the center ever further to the right. How many whackjob fringe ideas have you dragged into the mainstream? The aforementioned idea that tax cuts increase revenues, the Laffer Curve, the idea that Welfare harms the poor, the idea that there's rampant fraud in Welfare, the idea that whatever is good for corporations is good for the country. And you push these ideas through your corporate media and you do it so long and loud that they become part of the accepted political landscape and because it is easier to tell a lie than to debunk one, we never get away from this rancid shit. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your casual criminality. Teddy Kennedy, a man who's boots you were not worthy to lick, was just buried and all I've heard from my rightist friends for days is Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick, Chappaquiddick. Your fucking golden boy raped the Constitution, mainly because he wanted to; tortured random people (and waterboarding is torture, fuck you too) essentially because he wanted to; spent like a drunken sailor, essentially because he wanted to; invaded a sovereign nation, essentially for the loot and destroyed people's lives, essentially for the evilulz and you bastards are obsessed with a fucking accident a Democrat had decades ago? You don't go on about Laura Bush killing some guy decades ago. Fuck you.

I'm sick of you praising pure evil. You're letting Dick Cheney be the standard-bearer for Republicanism. Dick Cheney, a man so nakedly evil that even his friends call him "Darth"; a man so callous that Lex Luthor would recoil in terror; a man who probably has dismembered hitchhikers in those man-sized safes and kills plants by his mere proximity. Fuck you.

I'm sick of your attempts to tilt the playing field permanently in your favor. Democrats filibustered a few of Bush's most hateful judicial picks and you pricks started screaming about doing away with the filibuster but now you're in the minority, you're filibustering absolutely everything you can and whining when you don't get the chance. You ignored everything the Democrats had to say when you had power and now that you don't, you scream that everyone must be bipartisan. You don't budge a fucking inch on anything but you insist that everyone must compromise to meet you. That's your idea of politics: Don't move an inch, force the other guy to come to the right to meet you and call the result a "compromise". Fuck you.

I'm sick of your corporatism. You dress it up in false populism but anyone with half a brain can see that you're the brought and paid for subsidiary of big business. You keep pushing tax cuts as the answer for absolutely everything, you keep sabotaging every attempt to control the excesses of big business. You genuinely think the world would be a better place if it was a combination of Bill Gibson's dystopian vision of a corporate dominated world and Ayn Rand's bullshit Objectivism, yet another entry in mankind's endless attempts to find a moral justification for naked greed. You've taken the clinically insane spewings of a woman literally to the right of Hitler (pardon my Godwins) and the 1984-like vision of a dystopian author and convinced yourselves that would be a good place to live. Big business is the enemy of the people, always has been. The ideal for the corporate class is to have a small pool of people rich enough to buy their fucking crap and a much larger pool of people so poor and with so few options that they can be used and abused at the corporation's whim. A corporation's objective is not to look after you, it is to make ever-larger profits by any means necessary. You bastards want to reinstate fucking slavery to the corporate class and you've made the public so fucking stupid that they actually swallow the bullshit you're serving up, they actually want to enslave themselves to the corporations that abuse them at every turn. They actually care more about the corporations right to make obscene profits than they care about their child's right to live on a habitable planet. Fuck you.

Fuck you, you scumridden shitehawks, you make me sick. Just fuck off and die.

https://text.vzw.com/customer_site/jsp/messaging_lo.jsp


That's right, forged/anonymous text messages to any Verizon customer. Have fun.

[Bill would give president emergency control of Internet]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency....

http://imgur.com/vxVfD.jpg

Which one of you was that?


Edit: fixed that annoying link text.

http://intershame.com/on/Fox_Nation/

Words can't describe.

Here's the intro from that site:

On the day longtime U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy passed away, news outlets around the country devoted a considerable amount of time to remembering his career. Fox News reporter Molly Line contributed to one such article posted on foxnews.com.

Like most websites, foxnews.com allows its readers the opportunity to provide feedback about the stories they post.

Below is a sampling of those comments. Be warned - most, if not all of these are not safe for your intellect...

Edit: added quote

http://www.mediaite.com/online/rush-limbaugh-thinks-obama-is-after-his-penis/

I would remind the rapper Jay-Z, Mr. Z, it is President Obama who wants mandated circumcision. We had that yesterday. That means if we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama.

http://bigbigpix.blogspot.com/2009/08/brain.html

Researchers from Japan's ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person's mind and display them on a computer monitor. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people's dreams while they sleep.

One step closer to a cyberspace deck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks3Wc9QqgyM&feature=popular

Skip to 3:30.




RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/world/asia/27china.html?_r=1&hp


Pretty shitty to have happen, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it on the rise in the coming years.

And people are acting like they care.


In other news, he was the last surviving veteran of WW1. I guess now no one will ever be able to properly explain to me why the Kaiser's pointy hat pissed off a bunch of people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/5907316/Private-Harry-Patch.html

.

Enjoy.