A Whole Lot About Mostly Nothing

Oh my. Lovely.

You get the feeling that they are genuinely surprised to find that Catholics are attaching far more importance to the descration of the Eucharist than, say, the desecration of a Rosary. They seem to have reeled a bit at the volcanic response. Now they are getting their footing and realizing this *really* ticks off Catholics and so, like eight year olds, they are enjoying being in (they think) the position of saying, “Take one step closer and I’ll torture your cat!”

I won’t mince words. Myers is an evil man. (I won’t go that far, but he is an asshat of the first water and engaging in evil acts.-ed) And as evil men, particularly evil intellectuals, tend to be, he is also a mad man as are most of his acolytes and followers. One need only read Pharyngula to know this. Not all atheists are driven mad by their atheism. Many are quite respectable human beings. But those who make it their raison d’etre tend to be made crazy by it. That’s the tragedy of sins of the intellect. They don’t just make you stupid. If you persist in them, and particularly if you persist in them to this degree, they make you crazy.

(snip)

The hatred breeds lies like, “I’m just exercising freedom of expression”.

No. You are committing theft, vandalism, and incitement.

Or else you lie and say, “Unless Catholics can prove the Eucharist is actually the Body and Blood of Christ and not a worthless cracker, I’m just guilty of being rude.”

No. Catholics are under no obligation to prove that in order to show that you are guilty of theft, vandalism and incitement.

(snip)
Yet another demented lie to cover up your naked act of aggression is to play the victim:

It’s just so darned weird that they’re demanding that I offer this respect to a symbol that means nothing to me.

The answer to this lie is that *nobody* is demanding Myers offer respect to the Eucharist. He’s blasphemed the Eucharist on his blog off and on since forever. Catholics are free to disagree with him, just has he is free to disagree with them. That’s the first amendment in action and I, for one, am glad to live in the land that is not Canada where even demented professors whose careers are stuck in Wilbur Weed Boxtop Diploma Mill can have a voice in the public square, if only to serve as a warning to normal people of what hatred of God can do to the human mind.

(snip)

Myers’ logic is that of Kristallnacht, punish all Catholics everywhere with theft, vandalism and incitement because of the (alleged) actions of a couple.

OoohWEE!! Read it all. Wonderful.

ALSO, a a great round-up at The Daily Kraken.

Kevin Jones also thinks PZ is an asshat and deserves reprimand, at least.

UPDATE: Somewhat interesting combox exchange at Mark’s with some of the more lucid Pharyngulites.

It is instructive to note that even these calmer people toss out “challenging” questions -as if no one has ever thought of them before- and are then directed to consult proper Gospel commentaries.  And guess what?  All they do is re-phrase the question, and suggest that our lack of actual response indicates sure evidence that the Church is bogus.

In part cause he says that he absolutely intends to follow through on his desecration.

The man reminds me of a rabid homophobe who has secret homosexual tendencies.  The more he raves at the object of his secret obsession, the safer he feels.

Minnesota Indy interview (full of softball questions.  The comments are typical, though tjswift is hilarious.

Anchoress.

Cartago Delenda Est.

Frances Beckwith here and here.

Catholic League news release.

Fox News on the original foofaraw that got PZ’s panties all in a bunch.

Washington Times.

Fr. James Martin in America.

Then PZ went and posted all the public information on a couple of lintheads who sent him evil threatening e-mails.  PZ ended up taking them down, because his sycophants went crazy on the lintheads.  PZ re-wrote the post, with this classic quote:

It is most definitely not intended to incite harassment. I do not want you to be dunning these people with email, threatening them back, signing them up for spam, or otherwise being a jerk. For one thing, we can’t be certain that an innocent’s account hasn’t been hijacked; for another, we’re supposed to be better than that.

Res Ipsa Loquitur.  They cannot be better; philosophically, logically, they are acting exactly as they should; with malice and venom.  PZ knew that was going to happen, and he simply didn’t care.  Orac, another ScienceBlogs writer, took PZ to task on this idiotic action of his with great charity:

What on earth did you expect, P.Z., posting the e-mails and the entire headers?

Clearly you didn’t think things through.

Posted by: Orac | July 14, 2008 4:57 PM

But he did.  PZ is a sanctimonious, hypocritical asshat, a fundamentalist prophet of the Church of Atheism, but he is not stupid.  He knew what would happen.

Anyway, there is more, much more, more than one could possibly care to stomach over at Pharyngula, but those can be searched for by others.

I for one, am very curious to see exactly what he does to commit sacrilege to the Eucharist.  Not for any real harm that can come to Christ; I am confident that He can take care of Himself.  No, I am more curious to see how it further illustrates PZ’s consistent, pathological hatred (that word is used carefully) of religion, particularly Christianity.

Keep this statistic in mind -Metro Seattle went 65% Democratic in the 2004 Presidential race- when considering the oft-held tripe that liberals are more compasstionate. (Amusingly, I tried to find a quote about compassionate liberals on kos. Here’s what I found:

That’s right. Nothing.)

Big surprise. But let us allow the NetNuts their delusion that they really are the Party of Compassion (despite evidence here, here, and here, just for starters, that this idea is all a bunch of hooey). Here is some concrete proof that these are utter horsefeathers.

Driving home from work early Sunday, (State Trooper Kim) Triplett encountered an overturned SUV on Interstate 405 in Renton. Several people were injured, including a man who was trapped beneath the vehicle and gasping for breath.

Triplett parked on the freeway and tried to commandeer passing motorists to help her lift the vehicle off the man. Many ignored her pleas, driving through the accident scene as if it were an obstacle course, Triplett said.

It wasn’t until she stood in front of several vehicles and forced the drivers to stop that she was able to get enough help to lift the SUV off the injured man.

(snip)

Triplett was still in uniform and on her way home at the end of her 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift when the cars in front of her began braking and skidding on Interstate 405 just south of Highway 900, she said.

She saw a woman crumpled in the middle of the HOV lane, Triplett said. An injured girl sat nearby. In the right lane, a 1990 Ford Explorer lay on its side.

Cars kept pushing through the lane between them, driving over photographs, CDs and clothing that had been scattered when the SUV flipped over. Shattered glass glistened under their brake lights.

The accident had just happened. No one had even called 911, Triplett said.

When she got out of her car to help the woman, Triplett didn’t see the 18-year-old man trapped beneath the driver’s-side door of the Explorer. But then she heard him screaming.

She grabbed a bright-yellow emergency blanket from her patrol car and draped it over the woman so people wouldn’t hit her. She then crossed traffic to get to the pinned man.

“He was gasping and gurgling,” Triplett said. “He was in 40 seconds or so of losing his life.”

Triplett knew she couldn’t lift the SUV alone. She tried waving down cars, which were still passing slowly in the lane between the victims, but nobody stopped. Some people said, “Sorry, I’m late for the airport,” or told her they had to get to work as they drove by.

People were callous, Triplett said (no frickin’ duh -ed). One car brushed her leg as it passed.

(Snip)

“Finally, I decided to forcibly stop cars and ask people to get out and help me save this guy,” she said. “I basically stood in front of the cars until somebody got out.

Let’s revisit that stat: 65% of King County residents (that’s Metro Seattle) voted for John Kerry in ‘04, ostensibly because he is of the more “compassionate” Left. Out of the easily 100 cars that passed this unfortunate trio even before Trooper Triplett arrived, don’t you think at least ONE of the 65 “compassionate” liberals that stats suggest ought to have driven by the accident might have stopped to help?

Hell no, they had planes to catch/jobs to tend to.

Damn liberals. And damn all King County drivers. Self-indulgent assbuckets, relying on the Nanny State to solve all problems.

H/T Rachel Lucas

The Nanny State shows increasing signs of ascendancy when a Quebec court decides that dad has been too harsh in forbidding his daughter from attending a school trip.

Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier of the Quebec Superior Court ruled on Friday that the father couldn’t discipline his daughter by barring her from the school trip.

The judge’s decision, made from the bench, applies only to the girl’s unusual circumstances, lawyers for both sides said, trying to dispel visions of grounded teenagers rushing to the nearest courthouse to overturn their parents’ punishments.

Madam Justice’s “logic”?

Lucie Fortin, the lawyer representing the 12-year-old, said the judge found that depriving the girl of the school trip was an excessive punishment.

She said the girl has already been forbidden to use the Internet and her father also punished her by cancelling her participation in an extracurricular event.

The trip, a three-day outing within Quebec supervised by teachers and volunteer parents, marked her Grade 6 class graduation from elementary school.

“She’s becoming a big girl. … It’s a unique event in her life,” Ms. Fortin said.

How in the name of all creation does a freaking court decide if poor little Spoiled BratGirl is a “big” enough girl to override Dad’s legitimate discipline concerns?

This crap is going on in Canada, I know. But it may well meander its way down here, at which point, if I am still a parent, I must consider moving to another country that still recognizes the family as the primary social unit of society.

What is the logical end of this sort of State intervention? What kinds of kids can we look forward to?

See, now little spoiled Mackenzie can now sue her dad and get the correct car with the correct color.

This is no little cavil I am ranting about here. This is nothing less than the huge signpost that society as we know it is about to crumble.

Talk about rising divorce rates, homosexual marriage, rising teen pregnancy and STD transmission rates. Yes, those are all there as well. Take away a parent’s right to discipline, and now the State is signaling that it is the primary arbiter of society. And we all know how well the State does when it manages the monopoly on some service/commodity: It all goes to hell.

This is, simply put, really bad, bad news.

ANCHORESS as usual has more info, as well as coverage on the Canadian school that called Child Welfare on a family because a teacher’s aid felt the child was being abused based on what a local psychic had been telling her, and the school administration bought this nonsense!! Anchoress also talks about Canada’s outlawing of spanking and its lockdown on free speech.

(from PostSecret.com)

Honey, it ain’t what God was thinking.  It is what we are thinking.

Thomas Beatie, a former woman who is now a pregnant man, defended (her) decision today to have a baby, saying (she) has a “right to have a biological child.”

Despite removing (her) breasts, growing a wispy beard and legally having (her) gender changed from female to male, Beatie, 34, kept (her) female sex organs intact because (she) hoped to have a child some day.

After years of struggling with (her) sexual identity and deciding to live as a man, (she) did the most womanly thing possible — (she) became pregnant.

(Or not thinking, as the case clearly is here.)

So, to sum up: Woman born as woman decides she’s a man.  Has name and gender legally changed (there is a rendering unto Caesar that he in his most power-drenched fantasies never dreamed of demanding of his subjects), yet keeps sexual organs intact so that he/she can do “the most womanly thing possible” and get pregnant.

To the mailer of the card above: Honey, this isn’t God.  This is us, screwing everything up as much as possible.

Ray Kurzweil wants to live forever, and claims that he will be able to do so after the upcoming “singularity’ occurs. He states that soon, we will be able to replace most if not all of our organs, and then after that, digitally “download” our consciousnesses onto computers, so that in the event we keep ourselves downloaded, we can live forever. Currently, he takes over 180 vitamins a day to prolong his life (so damned many pills, he has to hire help to manage which pills to take when) and sees a Denver-area physician once a week for longevity treatments. This physician charges $6000 per visit.

Somehow, some way, we all yearn for the unreachable, the immortal, the divine. There is that impossible desire within each of us for that level of perfection that cannot be achieved here on earth.

Aquinas taught many. many moons ago that this yearning for a perfection that we cannot know from experience here on earth shows that there must in fact be a God; how else can we explain this inexplicable yearning?

Kurzweil feels this. But as a committed rationalist, he must pursue his arid vision of digital immortality, and he sinks ridiculous sums of money into that pursuit.

What a tragedy it shall be for the man when he finally does die, sees that the old Manichean dualism is but a sham and a freeway to waste and misery.

(The title comes from a Larry Niven novelette of the same label and can be found in his short story collection Tales of Known Space. I recommend it without reservation. A scientist thinks he has the secret to unlimited power by harnessing the potential found in a quantum black hole. Of course, the man loses control of the forces he is manipulating and they destroy him. A timeless tale. Kurzweil is re-living it as we speak.)

Creepy.

I can’t help it.  I listen to the chanting on this video, apparently the brainchild of Will.I.Am. of the Black-Eyed Peas, and I start flashing back to videos of hundreds of crazed brownshirts stamping their feet, hurling their arms straight out and screaming “Sieg HEIL” at the appearance of their Fuhrer.

Now, I understand that Obama is no fascist, and I am not trying to compare him to Hitler.  But I AM comparing the fawning of his sycophants to that of the unthinking adulation and obedience the Germans gave to der Fuhrer.  And that adulation is dangerous, both to Obama, his followers and the country at-large.

HT: Anchoress 

Though this is really a smaller example of a larger truth: America is becoming a nation of vandals and Peeping Toms. We gather our cultural fruits by demanding to know the most intimate details of our most useless people (cf: Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, Lindsay Lohan, Brangelina, Owen Wilson and [though it pains me to say it] Heath Ledger), and we claim that we have every right to blare personal secrets as loud as we can in the name of Freedom of Information (cf above: The unfortunate Ms. Spears again, Missus’ Smith, Lohan, and Mssrs. Wilson and Ledger). But a particularly vile form of this latter sin is performed noted by “gay conservative” Andrew Sullivan and by The Advocate, the “Award-winning LGBT news site.” Their view on outing is as follows:

I don’t think there is any good argument for outing a closeted politician who supports gay rights. But any secretly gay person who uses his bully pulpit to vilify his own people deserves the treatment gay blogger Michael Rogers is now meting out in the nation’s capital. Rogers has caused consternation everywhere, from the Log Cabin Republicans to the Human Rights Campaign, by announcing that he will out any closeted Republican who espouses antigay positions or works for a congressman or senator who does. (LINK)

Now I am not going to provide a brief regarding the outing of closeted anti-gay politicians. That does indeed smack of hyopcrisy, and as such behavior occurs within the realm of public servitude, the covers probably need to be yanked. But note that sympathetic legislators get a free pass.

As they should. As the saying goes amongst the MRTs, what goes on behind closed doors is no one else’s business. And in a truly secular way, there is wisdom in that position.

But what of people outside of politics?

I advocated that the media honestly report on gay public figures’ lives in the same way they report on straight public figures’ lives. As far as I was concerned, this was “reporting”—or, as some of my colleagues described it, “equalizing.” (LINK)

Cute little bit of sophistry there, “equalizing.” The ridiculous Andrew Sullivan continues:

“. . .There comes a point, surely, at which the diminishing public stigmatization of homosexuality makes this kind of coyness not so much understandably defensive as simply feeble: insulting to homosexuals, who know better, and condescending to heterosexuals, who deserve better. It’s as if the closet has had every foundation and bearing wall removed but still stands, supported by mere expediency, etiquette and the lingering shards of shame. Does no one have the gumption just to blow it down?” (ibid)

That may be politically valid, but it is personally no better than an intellectual form of rape; the violent taking of something that rightfully belongs to another.

Lemme tell you a story. I’ve been on a Shakespeare kick lately. It is no coincidence that in directing our school’s first-ever full length play, Much Ado About Nothing, I’ve been immersing myself in many things Shakespeare and about things related to him. Been reading a history on English kings from the 15th century, from which period Shakespeare drew the source material for his noted historical plays, including Richard II Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III. I’ve burned out the Blockbuster server in asking for Shakepearean films, including Hamlet, Henry V and again Richard III. It is this last film that the connection to the odious Advocate and the meritriciousness of Andrew Sullivan come into play.

In the 1995 film production of Richard III, the sublime Nigel Hawthorne plays George, the previously treasonous Duke of Clarence. Hawthorne gives a substantial and moving portrayal of the confused, complicated and treacherous Clarence. I recall watching this and saying, “Hmmm. Is there anything else this man has done?” All I have thus far seen else of him is the whimsical At Sachem Farm (also known as Uncorked in the US), where he does a hilarious turn as a modern day isolate hermit, sitting atop a marble pillar on his estate, meditating and reveling in his newfound lack of responsibility, while his distracted relatives (most notably a rather stressed and greedy nephew played by Rufus Sewell) run about the place.

And that’s all I ever saw of the man. My recent researches reminded me of Richard III and Hawthorne. So, I looked him up. Found out that he died in 2001 from pancreatic cancer, that he had been gay, and -here’s the part where I get pissed off- he was outed -by the Advocate- prior to the 1995 Oscars, for which he was nominated best actor for his turn in The Madness of King George. Hawthorne spoke about that Oscar ceremony and his unhappiness at having been outed without his permission:

CrankyCritic: Did you enjoy the ceremony?
Nigel Hawthorne: No, it was very uncomfortable.

CrankyCritic: Because you were “outed” just prior to the ceremony?
Nigel Hawthorne: It was kind of difficult because I was taking Loretta Swit, who is a friend, and my partner. We were given three seats and I was told that there would be two seats together and the third at the back. So I had to make a choice. I wrote to Loretta and said ‘Look you must understand that we’ve lived together for 20 years and I cannot not be sitting next to [him]. Would you mind sitting at the back?’ And straight away she said “I totally understand. You must do it.” But then they changed and they gave us three seats together.
It was a very difficult situation because I was outed by this magazine called The Advocate. I didn’t know the magazine. I don’t mix in those circles. We lead a very quiet life. The Goldwyn office asked if I would do an interview with The Advocate and I said I don’t know what is. They said it’s a gay magazine and it has a small circulation. You have a lot of interviews. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I said well let’s leave it. I was doing theater in the West End and they approached my producer who told them that I had done 70 interviews and that I was all interviewed out. They said “Well, if he doesn’t give us the interview we’ll write the story anyway”.

So I called this girl up and said …
“I understand you wish to write a story about me”.
“Yes.”
“May I ask you a few questions, first? Have you got a lover yourself?”
“Yes,” she had.
“Are you happy?” This she was.
“And how long have you been together?”
“Six years.”
“Is it a man or woman?”
“It’s a woman.”
“Well, now you understand my situation. So please respect it.”

We did the interview and, apparently, I never saw it. It was never sent to me but it was apparently sympathetic. But of course the world press got hold of it and it was splashed all over the papers and really horrific. It was terrible. We had to hire four security guards to keep them away from the house. When I came to the Academy Awards, I had to be smuggled to the airport and we were actually checked in in the car park. It was ludicrous because I was then mid-’60s and we’d lived together 20 years. I was doing then what I’m doing now, advertising a movie, and every question was about my personal life. So it was very difficult. Now that that’s happened, it’s done.

Sorry, Advocate, but that is just plain old, dead-field bullshit. Who in hell designates you the public distributor of people’s private lives? Hawthorne deserved every right to determine for himself when -if ever- that information was to be disseminated.

He learned -as he was forced to- to live with the gross intrusion of The Advocate, and perhaps in the end he felt that it was better to have done so.

But with the liberal crowing about the need to increased personal autonomy and personal rights -and above all, the right to privacy, through which both sexual and abortifacient “freedoms” march supposedly unhindered- it strikes me as more than passingly hypocritical for a liberal organ such as The Advocate to then pull stunt that really is little better than those espoused by the long-despised Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The Advocate is a swinish publication for outing Hawthorne, just as Esquire smirkingly states that Kevin Spacey “has a secret.”

If Spacey wants to out himself, let him do so in his own good time. If Derek Jacobi is gay, same rule. If Jacobi is straight, for that matter, the same rule still applies. Ditto if he’s addicted to gardening. Whatever.

We are becoming a nation of vandals and Peeping Toms. It is repulsive.

POSTSCRIPT:  Came upon this little tidbit after further poking around:

He’d been quite happy to live a quiet life with Trevor before being outed by the American press after the success of The Madness of King George. How did that make him feel? “Extremely angry. I felt it was a terrible intrusion on my privacy.”

Gee, I wonder why?

None.  There IS a hope for some type of consistency, but it ain’t morals.

Money:

And I’m absolutely f****** (edited by siteowner) sick of talk about the importance of the right to treat women who get abortions, people who fight for reproductive rights, or those who provide abortion as morally inferior. I’d take the moral superiority of an abortion doctor who crawls through a pile of often gun-wielding protesters to help desperate women any day over someone who runs around saying we need to pander to people who are uneasy with women’s rights. Their churchiness has nothing to do with it.

So, while she and the rest of the moonbats are babbling that pro-lifers stop caring about the fetus once it’s born, SHE shows their absolute amoral purity by saying that they stop caring about the woman once she has killed her own kid.  The abortion doctor who kills the kid is the height of moral purity.

Absolutely incredible.  At least pro-lifers have the moral consistency to CARE about the baby being actually born AND cares about the woman after she kills her own kid.

Mandy, she simply disregards the kid and sells the aborting mother down the river once she’s done her part in adding to Moloch’s Blizzard of Blood.

It is consistent, OK.  Absolutely consistent Amorality.

(The link to the original nightmare article is not posted right now because WordPress is having a wino attack.  I’ll try again later).

It is just amazing to read some of the swill bandied about on the Far Left. It is getting more and more to be like the Freakshow at the circus.

The basic premise of this article -that McCain will be difficult for the Evil Party to beat in November- is correct. But for all -I mean ALL- the wrong reasons.

But what we must absolutely remember is that even though political junkie liberals see McCain for the phony, war-mongering, woman-hating, lobbyist-loving, K-Street sellout that he is, there’s no reason to think that our accurate perception is shared.

THAT’S an accurate perception? Well, then. Let’s see what other hallucinations Mandy the Berserk is serving up tonight.

. . .we just hope that he looks so tired and worn out that people pick the vibrant, youthful-looking Democrat against him, which describes both candidates in the contest.

To quote Harlan Ellison, “you’ve got to be pulling my gotkes.” I’ll freely admit that Obama is vibrant and youthful; that’s part of his charm, as well as his ability to present himself as a Rorschach inkblot for all dissatisfied American voters to then project their own wishful thinking desires upon him, and he becomes All Things for All Voters.

Which is a carny-barker scam of the first water. . .but that is also all beside the point. How in HELL can Mandy call this:

. . .”vibrant and youthful”?

Moving on to the next Clozapine symptom:

all these things put together are often no match for a mainstream media that openly campaigns for the Republican.

What.

Utter.

BULLSHIT!!!!

And Gore won anyway. He didn’t win enough to keep the Republicans from stealing it, no, but a few things have changed since that dark election 8 years ago.

Good God almighty. This ancient tripe. The way Democrats win close elections is to count and re-count the votes until they get the result theywant, then end any further re-counts.  It worked in Washington State. It damned near worked in 2000 on the national level. Not that Bush is my all-time favorite president. but he’s a DAMNED sight better than the Bloviator, and dammit, he won honestly.

In the aftermath of the election, independent recounts were conducted by The Miami Herald and USA Today, concluding that Bush would have won in all legally requested recount scenarios. . .

Move the f*** on, you deranged cow.

We have the blogs.

Frankly, I’m not so sure of that. And even if it IS true, do you think that laying claim to some hundred thousand people who sit on their cans all day reading other people’s writing is going to make THAT much of a difference? Face facts, people. The value of Kos, DU and their ilk is going to lessen significantly once the conventions are over. At that point, all the people they can call over to their side will already be there; their only hope to dissuade potential McCain voters, none of whom will be reading that deranged moonbattery anyway.

Just amazing to read some of the swill bandied about on the Far Left. It is getting more and more to be like the Freakshow at the circus.