Bill Donohue reveals himself to be one of the Three Stooges, the dumb one

Bill Donohue‘s in the news again. And surprise, surprise. He’s OUTRAGED about something in the media. So what trite and meaningless target has he picked this time? It’s the new comedy film The Three Stooges, because it features a sexy nun character in a swimsuit and Larry David’s portrayal of a nun character. Whether David plays some sort of male nun or whether he’s supposed to be playing some hideous-looking female nun, I don’t know because I haven’t seen the movie due to its looking really stupid. Though now that I know Bill Donohue doesn’t like it, I might just buy a ticket after all.

So why do I bother to give this sickening pile of excrement more of that attention he desperately craves? Well, because it gives me another excuse to post my favorite audio clips of Donohue applying for the role of worst person in the world. In the following two clips, we hear Donohue on a radio show passionately defend nothing short of mass child rape.

Donohue tries every trick in the book and it all goes so horribly bad for him because he happens to be talking with someone who was themselves a victim of rape by a Catholic priest and who is incredibly well versed in the damning report of abuse in Ireland schools.

We hear Donohue deny the undeniable facts and make up a host of his own, followed by him being called out on his repulsive lies and truly despicable attempts to re-frame the whole scandal to paint the rapists as the true victims while painting the child victims of rape as greedy liars who made up their accusations. And when it’s pointed out to Donohue that even Catholic Church officials themselves have accepted more responsibility for these atrocities than Donohue is willing to allow, he actually insists that the Church is lying because they’ve been “beaten down” by some phantom media conspiracy to destroy the Catholic Church. If ever there were more proof that Donohue is a committed fanatic, that’s got to be it. To actually deny even the involvement that the Church itself has admitted to and suggesting the very people who would have the most to lose from admitting guilt are lying—that’s just bonkers!

The spokesman for Fox did an excellent job of responding to Donohue’s complaints about The Three Stooges film:

Fox disagreed that Three Stooges diverges from the original series. “The movie, in keeping with the spirit of the original TV show and its stars, is a broad, slapstick comedy,” a Fox spokesperson said.

“As the Stooges have proved over time, laughter is a universal medicine. The nuns that Mr. Donohue alludes to, are in fact, caring, heroic characters in the movie, albeit within the framework of a very broad comedy,” the spokesperson continued. “And as far as the nun attire, I think we did the audinece a favor by letting Kate Upton wear the nun-kini rather than Larry David — it could have gone either way. We invite you to see the movie and decide for yourselves.”

So let’s be clear here. Child rape is a-ok with Bill Donohue, but dressing a nun character in a sexy swimsuit is UNACCEPTABLE! Way to prioritize, Bill.

Related articles

• Catholic League pokes ‘Three Stooges’ for nun-sense (insidemovies.ew.com)
• ‘Three Stooges’: Catholic League Criticizes Comedy Movie’s Bikini-Wearing Nun (news.moviefone.com)
• Catholic League’s Donohue vows to fight rape victims ‘one by one’ (promoteliberty.wordpress.com)

Bill Donohue maintains reputation as one of the biggest douchebags on Earth

I’ve written before about Bill Donohue’s tireless defense of child rapists by downplaying their crimes, so this is really nothing new. Here’s what he recently said:

The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight—they weren’t children and they weren’t raped. We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents, and that the most common abuse has been inappropriate touching (inexcusable though this is, it is not rape). The Boston Globe correctly said of the John Jay report that “more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.” In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.

As usual, he’s wrong on all counts. Half of the sexual abuse involved female victims and just because some of the abuse happened to teenagers instead of pre-pubescents, that doesn’t make it okay. Not even close. Not only did the specific offenders rape underage (and sometimes very underage) minors but they abused their position of trust in order to do so. And worst of all, a point Donohue has no interest in acknowledging, the Church directly conspired to cover up these crimes and this cover-up reaches reaches the very top of the Church’s leadership.  The US court system has even served the pope with papers over his involvement in the cover-up.

It’s just appalling that he continues to maintain this untenable position and nobody seems interested in denouncing him or making any attempt to distance themselves from him. I even saw Donohue representing the Catholic League at the recent St. Patrick’s Day Parade in NYC. As far as I can tell, nobody suggested it would be inappropriate to allow a child rape supporter to participate in what’s supposed to be a family friendly parade.

Related articles

• Bill Donohue: Priest Sex Abuse Victims Were “Not Children” And “Not Raped” (crooksandliars.com)
• Why does the Catholic church allow Bill Donohue to speak for them? (scienceblogs.com)
• Jesus Thinks Bill Donohue Is a Dumbass (passthedoucheys.com)
• Bill Donohue Blames The Victims, Gays For Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal Once Again (lezgetreal.com)
• Catholic Group Claims Children Abused by Priests Weren’t Victims – They Were Gay (slog.thestranger.com)

News From Around The Blogosphere 3.30.10

1. Single unvaccinated kid source of 2008 California measles outbreak –

The family’s 7-year-old boy, who was intentionally unvaccinated against measles, was exposed to the virus while traveling in Europe. When he returned home to San Diego, he unknowingly exposed a total of 839 people, and an additional 11 unvaccinated children contracted the disease.

Three of those infected were babies, too young to have yet received the measles vaccines, and one of the babies was hospitalized for three days with a 106-degree fever, according to a report to be published in the April issue of Pediatrics.

Wow, that’s one hell of a path of destruction caused by a single anti-vax family. Thanks Jenny McCarthy.

2. Magnets can almost instantly change a person’s moral judgment – This would seem to pretty definitively debunk the notion of dualism and fairly conclusively show that the mind is, contrary to Deepak Chopra’s claims,  purely a localized phenomenon. It also further illustrates how absurd the evangelical notion of “objective morality” from “God” is.

3. Critical thinking and skepticism begins at childhood – Here’s a great story of a kid scientifically investigating the Tooth Fairy and successfully debunking it

But not all kids are brought up to be such critical thinkers.

4. New Harris poll confirms most Americans are dummies –

The poll involved 2,320 adults responding to true or false questions. Among many other disturbing facts, 14% of respondents said they believed Obama could be the Antichrist.

. . .

When broken into partisan results, it seems 24% of all Republican respondents hold this view, while only 6% of Democrats are that batshit crazy. But taken as a whole, the numbers in this poll are depressing. 32% think Obama is a Muslim. 23% think Obama is a racist. And 20% say Obama is “doing many of the things Hitler did.”

But I’m pretty sure Hitler didn’t hold a Passover seder in the White House…or cut out the middleman in student loans…or sleep with Michelle Obama.

5. Bill Donohue continues shameless campaign defending child rapists – Now he’s taken out an ad in the NY Times defending the man most responsible for ensuring the child rapists could continue to prey on more children, The Pope. Oh, and he’s moved on from blaming the families of the victims to blaming the gays. It won’t be long now before he blames everyone on Earth except for The Pope.

And he’s not the only one defending child rapists. . .

6. The Vatican has selflessly thought up 3 reasons why they feel The Vatican is not liable – The first is that the Pope, as head of state, is immune from prosecution (aka Joey Ratz does whatever Joey Ratz wants and if you get in the way, he’ll whack you or have your children horribly raped). The second excuse is that the American priests were not Vatican employees  (This should go over really well with the American Catholics). And the third excuse is that they’ve declared by fiat that the smoking gun evidence that has been confirmed by high ranking church officials is really not smoking gun evidence at all (I call this the Jedi Mind Trick defense – these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Now move along):

McMurry insisted Tuesday that Crimen is a smoking gun.

“The fact is, this document and its predecessors make it an excommunicable offense to reveal any knowledge of allegations that a priest has sexually abused,” he said in an e-mail.

The existence of Crimen did not become publicly known until 2003, when a lawyer noticed a reference to the document while reading a 2001 letter written by Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. McMurry is seeking to subpoena Ratzinger’s letter, which instructed all bishops to send cases of clerical sex abuse to him and to keep the proceedings secret.

As for that first excuse that a head of state can’t be sued, fine, let’s call it an act of war then. I hope the Vatican has a strong military.

Bill Donohue vs. Penn & Teller

Fascism’s best friend Bill Donohue is up to his old tricks again. Donohue is the head of the Catholic Legion of Doom–err, I mean the Catholic League. The man’s tried to censor more art and media than most people consume in a lifetime. Now Donohue’s targeting Penn & Teller for an upcoming episode of their skeptical Showtime series Bullshit, which Donohue informs us criticizing Catholicism.

Donohue also wants you to know that this episode airs on August 27, because it’s important that you know exactly what day it’s on so that you can, I guess, not watch it. And while advertising the show, he’s also calling for Showtime to cancel the show and fire the Penn & Teller. Good luck with that one, Bill.

And of course, Bill trots out his favorite lame-ass argument he always uses:  You wouldn’t pick on Islam because it’s only become acceptable to offend Catholicism. Never mind the fact that this argument has yet to ever prove true. PZ Myers was more than willing to desecrate a Koran right alongside Donohue’s Nabisco-produced god. And really, is there anyone who honestly thinks Penn & Teller would hesitate to offend Islam?

On August 27, Showtime, owned by CBS, will feature a vicious assault on Catholics. In the season finale of Penn & Teller’s show, they “take on the secretive inner world of The Vatican, the holy city of Catholicism and home of the Pope.” How do we know it will defame Catholics? Because on the show’s website, it says so: There is a Showtime Advisory for “Graphic Language, Adult Content.”

If Showtime posted that warning about a show on Islam, Muslims would brace for the worst (and so might CBS). But Muslims need not worry: it’s not all religions that Showtime likes to trash–just Catholicism. Indeed, Showtime is currently working on a show, “Revelation,” that promises to be at least somewhat respectful of Protestantism.

What will the upcoming show be like? On his Twitter page, Penn Jillette brags how he rips a Catholic encyclical on sexuality: “I’m dressed as Darth with a condom c–k light saber.” He even boasts that the show is “hardcore,” admitting that “we attack the Vatican.” From trashing The Last Supper to mocking Catholic prayers, anti-Catholic bigots who feed on this kind of stuff will have a stomach full.

This is not the first time Showtime has featured a vile Penn & Teller show. In 2005, Mother Teresa was called “Mother F—ing Teresa,” and her order of nuns were branded “f—ing c–ts.” The year after, Jillette said on his CBS radio show that Mother Teresa “got her [sexual] kicks watching people suffer and die.”

Just recently, Jillette took after me again in his usual foul way. That doesn’t matter, but what matters greatly is his pathological obsession with bashing Catholics and their religion. There is no legitimate place for this kind of frontal assault on any demographic group.

CBS/Showtime needs to send Penn & Teller a message and let them know that they have crossed the line for the last time. This should be their final season. We know that they’ve been told before to drop the Catholic bashing, and yet they persist. By doing so, Penn & Teller have effectively stuck their middle finger right in the eye of CBS.

You gotta laugh at his classic super-villain, “. . .they have crossed the line for the last time.” Can’t you just picture him pounding a mechanical fist against his desk and startling his evil cat as he says that? And again, really? After 7 seasons of criticizing just about everything under the sun from New Age Medicine to bottled water to 12-step programs, it’s only NOW that they’ve “crossed the line?”

You gotta hand it to Donohue though. The man passionately defended habitual child rapists but a chocolate Jesus sculpture and a  silly TV show mocking that parody Donohue calls a religion is “crossing the line.” Way to prioritize your values there, Bill.

Truly no non-persecuted individual is better at crying persecuation than this guy. He’s even got a book coming where he exercises his Constitutionally protected free speech to talk about how persecuted he and his cult brethren are, Secular Sabotage: How Liberals are Destroying Religion and Culture in America. According to the “review” of the book by the sicophantic L. Brent Bozell:

“Secular Sabotage” is serious business. Donohue insists the United States should be considered unequivocally a Christian country. Eight out of ten Americans consider themselves as such. Indeed – and I didn’t realize this – the United States is the most Christian country, in quantitative terms, in the world. “In fact,” states the author, “the U.S. is more Christian than Israel is Jewish.” And yet if this is so, why can’t we celebrate Christmas? Why can’t our children pray in school? How did we just elect a president who insisted the United States ought not to be considered a Christian nation?

The man uses hyperbole like it’s going out of style. Am I missing the part in that paragraph that explains how Christians are margionalized or persecuted? Donohue really felt it was necessary to write a book arguing over literal semantics. Donohue, you can call this country whatever the fuck you want. You can call it a Zoroastrian nation for all I care. That doesn’t change the facts that the U.S. is full of non-Christians, and that  the U.S. legally cannot, and should not, respect the establishment of religion, any religion. Plus there’s a decent chance this nation will be majority Muslim in 50 years, so do you really want to declare whichever religion can claim the most citizens the official religion of the land, especially considering that the majority religion in this nation is Protestant, not Catholicism.

Bill Donahue loves child rapists

Catholics downplaying abuse

Yesterday, I blogged about the awful findings of a 9-year-investigation into Catholic reform school in Ireland involving decades of child abuse and cover-ups. Well now Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is playing apologist by making excuses for the rapists because they happen to belong to his gang. It’s truly obscene and goes way beyond the pale, revealing what a horrible human being Bill Donohue really is. Instead of condemning decades of atrocities, he condemns the media for, as he claims, blowing this scandal out of proportion:

Reuters is reporting that “Irish Priests Beat, Raped Children,” yet the report does not justify this wild and irresponsible claim. Four types of abuse are noted: physical, sexual, neglect and emotional. Physical abuse includes “being kicked”; neglect includes “inadequate heating”; and emotional abuse includes “lack of attachment and affection.” Not nice, to be sure, but hardly draconian, especially given the time line: fully 82 percent of the incidents took place before 1970. As the New York Times noted, “many of them [are] now more than 70 years old.” And quite frankly, corporal punishment was not exactly unknown in many homes during these times, and this is doubly true when dealing with miscreants.

Regarding sexual abuse, “kissing,” and “non-contact including voyeurism” (e.g., what it labels as “inappropriate sexual talk”) make the grade as constituting sexual abuse. Moreover, one-third of the cases involved “inappropriate fondling and contact.” None of this is defensible, but none of it qualifies as rape. Rape, on the other hand, constituted 12 percent of the cases. As for the charge that “Irish Priests” were responsible, some of the abuse was carried out by lay persons, much of it was done by Brothers, and about 12 percent of the abusers were priests (most of whom were not rapists).

The Irish report suffers from conflating minor instances of abuse with serious ones, thus demeaning the latter. When most people hear of the term abuse, they do not think about being slapped, being chilly, being ignored or, for that matter, having someone stare at you in the shower. They think about rape.

By cheapening rape, the report demeans the big victims. But, of course, there is a huge market for such distortions, especially when the accused is the Catholic Church.

What’s just completely disgraceful is how Donohue treats decades of covered up abuse as if these are just a few widely spaced, isolated incidents that could happen anywhere. Now given Donohue’s Catholicism, I can certainly understand how he could think child abuse is a regular occurrance. But for those of us who aren’t sexual deviants, this is not routine and is not exceptable. . .EVER! Believe it or not, Bill, there are actually reform schools that have no history of abusing children AT ALL!

Bill Donohue reveals his true character here by opting to condemn the messengers while making excuses for the abusers. And why does he make these excuses? Because they’re Catholics like him. Somehow I doubt Donohue would be so quick to defend Muslim abusers. Any conpassionate, decent human being who happens to be Catholic would condemn the abusers as betraying everything Catholics stand for. Bill, on the other hand, can’t seem to muster the outrage.

Possibly the most absurd argument Donohue makes here is the one where he passionately declares how most of the rape that we now know was deliberately covered up took place way back before 1970. Ohhhh! That’s different. As everyone knows, rape becomes more and more acceptable the further back in time you go. Give me a break! Who gives a shit when the rape occurred? What’s important is that it happened and that it was covered up, which only ensured that it would happen again. And we now know for a fact that the rape did continue for many, many years.

Donohue even arguably blames the victims themselves when he drops the line:

More than 30,000 children, most of them delinquents, passed through one or more of Ireland’s Catholic-run institutions from the 1920s through the 1980s.

I can’t even fathom why he’d feel the need to even include the part that says “most of them delinquents” if not to suggest they somehow brought this on themselves or somehow deserved it. If anyone else can think of an alternative theory as to why he includes this, I’d really love to hear it.

And sadly, Donohue isn’t the only Catholic nutcase who’s response to these findings is disgraceful. The new head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Archbishop Vincent Nichol had the audacity to praise the abusers’ “courage” to “face these facts from their past, which instinctively and quite naturally they’d rather not look at.” This sort of backwards thinking reminds me of Rabbi Avi Shafran, who in a single column criticized Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger for being not as heroic as the media hype while praising Bernard Madoff for his “courage” for owning up to his crimes.

And to further illustrate how misplaced Archbishop Vincent Nichol’s priorities are when it comes to abuse, he along with his predecessor “joint offensive yesterday against atheists and secular society,” according to this aptly titled Times Online article, “Archbishops of Westminster attacks atheism but says nothing on child abuse.” Huh? Nichols views myself and Richard Dawkins as worse sinners than than repeated child rapists.

Here’s my favorite of the many quotes the article posted of people outraged by Nichol’s cavalier position on the abuse:

Patrick Walsh said: “Rubbish is too kind a word for what the Archbishop has said . . . It is the verbiage of unreason, and it leaves me cold. What the Archbishop really has to do is take a long hard look at the character and nature of the people he is talking about and ask himself if they are capable of being good.”

Though to be fair, Nichols is better than many other Roman Catholic leaders in just one way:

Despite his controversial comments, Archbishop Nichols was one of the few Roman Catholic leaders to say that the perpetrators, who have been granted anonymity and may never be prosecuted, should be held to account.

The fact that the Catholic Church is still protecting these monsters instead of throwing them under the bus to prevent them from striking again even now is sobering news to say the least.

Bill Donahue is pissed. It must be Tuesday

Professional Offendee Bill Donahue of The Catholic League is. . .wait for it. . .offended at a new movie. I know what you’re thinking. This is an old story. After all, The War on Christmas ended in December. . .and Religulous has been out on DVD for a while now. . .and Webster Cook and PZ Myers defiled Cracker Jesus almost 9 months ago. . . and the chocolate Jesus statue hasn’t been heard from in a year. . .and nobody even saw the movie Goya’s Ghost anyway. . .and The Golden Compass hasn’t been in theaters since 2007. . .and The Da Vinci Code has been out of theaters longer than that. . .and the ABC TV show Nothing Sacred was cancelled 10 years before that around the time Dogma left theaters.

So after protesting EVERYTHING already, what the fuck is making Donahue angry now? This time it’s the movie Angels and Demons that’s got hold of the stick up Donahue’s ass:

Donahue accused Brown and Howard of “smearing the Catholic Church with fabulously bogus tales.”

To which Ron Howard responded:

“And let me be a little controversial: I believe Catholics, including most in the hierarchy of the Church, will enjoy the movie for what it is: an exciting mystery, set in the awe-inspiring beauty of Rome,” Howard wrote.

Apparently, Ron Howard has far more diplomacy than I do as I would have told Donahue to grow up and get a fuckin’ life, followed by an detailed explanation of how actors pretend to be other people to play out stories that aren’t real and that if Donahue ever sees a moving train on a film screen, it can’t harm him because it’s only an illusion. Idiot.

News From Around The Blogosphere 12.5.08

Oh no! It’s the “Gay Mob!” Run for your lives!! – Apparently there’s a new mob in town. . .and they’re FABULOUS!! The usual Christian fascist organizations including Bill Donohue’s Catholic League put out an ad in the Times condemning the “violence and intimidation” against the Mormons and other religion churches who supported California’s Prop 8. Though last I checked, peacefully assembling to express outrage in protest was not an example of “violence and intimidation” but rather the single most important right we have as Americans. The gays and those who support them didn’t even throw any tea in the water. The ad says that the Mormons are being attacked “for merely participating in the debate at all.” Sorry assholes but they did A LOT MORE than participate in spirited debate, as they actively organized a campaign of hate and intolerance, violating the terms of their tax exempt agreement with the United States government to use their large numbers to impose their will on public policy. Then of course they feign respect for free speech that is offensive to their religion when obviously this is not the case. I’m looking at you, Donohue.

Orac explores the tendency of celebrity models to embrace woo – Here he particularly focuses on Carol Alt who is convinced raw foods can cure cancer.

More evidence that “post-abortion syndrome” doesn’t exist

Marketing crappy Christian programming with the Devil – On Monday The Prayer Channel, a Catholic religious television station in New York, will be rebranded as NET (New Evangelism Television).

“The Church has used the good vs. evil conflict to promote religion for two centuries,” [a spokesperson for the Cesario Migliozzi ad agency] added. “In our campaign, the Devil urges viewers to avoid good TV and stick with ‘crappy, pointless, bad television,’ said Ad Agency partner Michael Migliozzi in announcing the new campaign. “There is even an online petition fronted by the Devil, in which viewers pledge not to tune into NET.”

At the website StopGoodTV.com, you can speak to the Devil himself, only he never really comes close to answering your questions making this kind of an epic fail. I mean it’d actually be cool if he had some good generic answers like a magic 8 ball, but consider me underwhelmed.

WHAT’S THE HARM?

Couple kills their 1-year-old daughter with a hammer – Why? To “rid her of demons” of course.

WHY WE FIGHT:

Here is a great story of a closeted atheist he just came out to his Christian wife.

AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:

Watch Dr. Kirsten Sanford’s The Science Word

Cell Phones Found To Affect Memory In Lab Rats – “Can radiation from cell phones affect the memory? Yes — at least it appears to do so in rat experiments conducted at the Division of Neurosurgery, Lund University, in Sweden. Henrietta Nittby studied rats that were exposed to mobile phone radiation for two hours a week for more than a year. These rats had poorer results on a memory test than rats that had not been exposed to radiation.”

News From Around The Blogosphere 11.19.08

Stem Cells to the rescue – Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs.

Yesterday I blogged about Focus on the Family cutting 202 jobs. Well today Oral Roberts “College,” cut 100 jobs today, illustrating once again that God Hates Morons:

“Oral Roberts University will lay off about 100 employees, days after it agreed to a near-$450,000 separation agreement with its former president who resigned amid a spending scandal. The layoffs represent roughly 10 percent of the university’s work force.”

Bad news for Professional Murderer Kevin Trudeau –

Kevin Trudeau Banned from Infomercials For Three Years, Ordered to Pay More Than $5 Million for False Claims About Weight-Loss Book

Sadly, getting hit by oncoming train would have been a more appropriate punishment but I’ll take what I can go. Hey, when it comes to scum like this, I can be petty and vindictive too. This is not about First Amendment Rights. One of the few exceptions to free speech we have in this country (and one that I agree with) is when measurable harm has taken place. It’s the proverbial shouting fire in a crowded theater or even slander/libel. And in this case, it’s got nothing to do with the mere exercise of free speech but is about misrepresenting his products and scamming consumers.

New study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds gingko is utterly, utterly useless against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease – Though the extract has been long promoted as an aid to memory, it failed to produce results in “the longest and largest test of the extract in older Americans.”

“We don’t think it has a future as a powerful anti-dementia drug,” said Dr. Steven DeKosky of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, who led the study.

Extracts from ginkgo tree leaves have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, but earlier research on ginkgo and memory showed mixed results. Annual U.S. sales of the supplement reached $107 million in 2007, according to Nutrition Business Journal estimates.

The study including 3,000 people, ages 75 and older.

Catholics for Choice published a scathing criticism of Bill Donohue and the Catholic League – And they NAILED IT!

50 facts you might not know about Barack Obama – And no, this does not include his being a secret Muslim and a member of the New World Order. . .cause everybody already knows that, duh! And finally a fellow Lefty is president. . .left-handed that is. And who knew he had something in common with George Costanza.

Now this pisses me off! – the Mercury Militia have claimed 2 more celebrities: Goose and Rainman. That’s write, rumor has it that Anthony Edwards and Dustin Hoffman are antivaccinationists. I don’t really give a crap about Edwards but Hoffman!! NOOOOOOO!!!!

There is some hope though:

The reason I wonder if they really are involved with this pseudoscientific naturopathic quackery is because the only place their names are mentioned is in the title of the press release, and I’ve been unable to find any other information on the web linking them to this effort other than–you guessed it–copies of this press release.

Well at least Ashton Kutcher became awesome:

. . .as opposed to Pamela Anderson, who’s crazy.

Health Care Freedom – aka “Freedom Is Slavery.” This is the equivalent to the creationists’ proposed “Academic Freedom Laws.” People are much more willing to swallow the barrel of a shotgun when it’s wrapped in “Freedom.” As a wise senator once said, “This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.”

Want to know which stores deserve your hard-earned money this holiday season? First here’s this year’s annual Naughty and Nice List from Liberty Counsel, a Christian Right organization. And then there’s this rational alternative Naughty List, a list of people, companies, and organizations that gave over $5,000 in support of California’s Prop. 8, ending same-sex marriage in the state.

I’ve called the American Family Association bigots but many Christians insisted they love gay people and just hate gayness, causing me to substitute the term “fascist” instead. Well, I’m switching back to “bigots.”

And if you just change a few words, you get this.

Should atheists adopt the Godless label? – Probably not, but this is a funny read.

WHAT’S THE HARM?

When homeopaths kill by neglect

A healing therapist died after a minor injury went gangrenous because his ‘inner being’ told him not to see a doctor, an inquest has heard.

Russell Jenkins shunned conventional treatment for his foot injury after he trod on an electrical plug at home.

He instead tried the ancient remedy of putting honey on it but his toes later went black and began to stink.

AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:

Got Raw Milk? – “Raw milk is illegal in many countries as it can be contaminated with potentially harmful microbes. Contamination can also spoil the milk, making it taste bitter and turn thick and sticky. Now scientists have discovered new species of bacteria that can grow at low temperatures, spoiling raw milk even when it is refrigerated.”

‘New’ Penguin Species Found Using Ancient DNA – “Australian and New Zealand researchers have used ancient DNA from penguin fossils to make a startling discovery that may change the way we view species extinctions.

A team from the University of Adelaide, the University of Otago, and Canterbury Museum in New Zealand has identified a previously unknown penguin species while conducting research on New Zealand’s endangered yellow-eyed penguin, one the world’s rarest penguin species and the subject of an extensive conservation effort.”

Floppy-footed Gibbons: How Early Humans Walked? – “The human foot is a miracle of evolution. We can keep striding for miles on our well-sprung feet. There is nothing else like them, not even amongst our closest living relatives. According to Evie Vereecke, from the University of Liverpool, the modern human foot first appeared about 1.8 million years ago, but our ape-like ancestors probably took to walking several million years earlier, even though their feet were more ‘floppy’ and ape like than ours.”

Long-lost ‘Furby-like’ Primate Discovered – “A team led by a Texas A&M University anthropologist has discovered a group of primates not seen alive in 85 years. The pygmy tarsiers, furry Furby-like, or gremlin-looking, creatures about the size of a small mouse and weighing less than two ounces, have not been observed since they were last collected for a museum in 1921.”

Iron Age Monument: Soul Lived In Stone? – “Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an Iron Age chiseled stone slab that provides the first written evidence in the region that people believed the soul was separate from the body.”

News From Around The Blogosphere 10.17.08

THIS DAY IN GOD:

Bill Donohue’s lame spin on trying to get YouTube to put age requirements on viewing videos of host desecration – Now he’s saying:

“we do not object to making fun of Catholics, or for that matter Catholic beliefs and practices, just so long as they are made in good taste”.

This led PZ Myers to bring up that Webster Cook, the student who unwittingly began Crackergate and was the first victim of Donohue’s wrath, didn’t make fun of Catholics or Catholicism at all. He merely took the Eucharist with him instead of eating it? The only thing tasteless I here was the cracker.

Oh, and for the record, the age-requirement on YouTube is a joke. It asks you if you’re over 18 and any idiot can figure out that they can view the content by simply pressing the button that affirms they are 18. If that’s all it takes to appease Donohue, I wish he’d said so sooner.

Edmond, Oklahoma officials trying to tear down wall between church and state – The Edmond Visual Arts Commission in Edmund, Okla. wanted to spend $3,900 of taxpayer money to put a sculpture of Jesus in front of a Catholic gift shop:

June Cartwright, chair of the commission, told the Associated Press that the sculpture was viewed simply as a piece of art and is not a religious endorsement.

“It’s a piece of artwork,” Cartwright said. “It doesn’t state that it is specifically Jesus. It is whatever you perceive it to be.”

Um, no. That’s Jesus no how much I want it to be Angelina Jolie naked. Fortunately, the mayor has decided not to spend taxpayer money on this. But am I the only one amused by the fact that Jesus is depicted playing with kids when this was to go up in front a Catholic gift shop? Or that the sculpture is titled, “Come Unto Me?” I guess Jesus is a fan of the money shot.

Lately Evolution-deniers have been quite predictably been exploiting the recent statements by lone scientist Steve Jones that humans are no longer evolving. They’re saying see, even the “evolutionists” are admitting that there’s no evidence of human evolution (how they interpreted that from Jones’ actual statement is beyond me), but Jones is a minority opinion on this matter. Here PZ Myers argues why “that is impossible.”

Speaking of PZ, the man rocks! – His blog has got an enormous readership and I contacted him earlier today and asked if he’d plug stopjenny.com and he came through.

sCAM using bogus biomedical boards and bogus medical organizations to sound legitimate – I’m reminded of “Healthy Directions,” the sham medical organization that named “Dr.” Rashid Buttar among the top 50 doctors in the country.

Gnomes return to Argentina – That’s right, Argentinians have reported more sightings of a black-clad, sideways-stepping “midget monster” in a pointy hat. So if you see something that looks kinda like a dog and barks kinda like a dog, you’ll know that it’s really a gnome. I sense some implausibly blurry video coming on. Here’s the earlier video from last March:

And the latest blurry video can be found here.

The future is looking bright without electricity – Flexible sheets of light owe their luminance to compounds known as organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs may make household lamps obsolete.

ATHEISM DISCRIMINATION:

Conservative columnist Melanie Phillips has figured out cause of all the world’s woes: atheism –

“I see this financial breakdown, moreover, as being not merely a moral crisis but the monetary expression of the broader degradation of our values – the erosion of duty and responsibility to others in favour of instant gratification, unlimited demands repackaged as ‘rights’ and the loss of self-discipline. And the root cause of that erosion is ‘militant atheism’. . .”

It goes on for the longest run-on sentence in human history. Oh, and she’s also a denier of evolution, the safety of vaccines, and global climate change. The Trifecta!

Actor Mark Wahlberg is reported as being “still rattled” by a 2004 fan-charging incident – Why did actor Mark Wahlberg have a screaming fan pulled off of him by security guards? According to Wahlberg:

“The only thing that was a bit disturbing was she had a pin (badge) on that said ‘God is not real’ and that was upsetting to me. But I still pray for her to this day. Hopefully she’s changed her mind.”

Wahlberg is reported as having a small chapel in his Hollywood mansion.

Pete Stark

The New York Times publishes an article addressing the seeming lack of atheists in politics. Here’s a direct link to the article:

Only one of the 535 members of Congress, Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, publicly identifies as a nontheist, according to the Secular Coalition of America, a lobbying group based in Washington. For that matter, the coalition has existed for only three years and runs with two staff members and an annual budget of about $300,000. As both presidential candidates ardently court religious voters, atheist support is considered so controversial that several Democrats writing on the atheist blog Petty Larseny quipped that the best way to hurt the Republicans was to form a group called Atheists for McCain.

Actually, there are at least 22 members of Congress who admitted to Lori Lipman Brown that they did not believe in a god but only Stark was willing to be outed. But I have to say that that Atheists for McCain would be a great idea if McCain’s candidacy wasn’t sunk already. We’ll have to remember that though for the next election.

AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:

Emotion And Scent Create Lasting Memories – “In a series of experiments with sleeping mice, researchers at the Duke University Medical Center have shown that the part of the brain that processes scents is indeed a key part of forming long-term memories, especially involving other individuals.”

Radical Advances In Optical Technologies? – “A new research field called transformation optics may usher in a host of radical advances including a cloak of invisibility and ultra-powerful microscopes and computers by harnessing nanotechnology and “metamaterials.”

Einstein’s Relativity Survives Neutrino Test – “Physicists working to disprove “Lorentz invariance” — Einstein’s prediction that matter and massless particles will behave the same no matter how they’re turned or how fast they go — won’t get that satisfaction from muon neutrinos, at least for the time being, says a consortium of scientists.”