Rarely is the question asked…
Posted on November 10th, 2008 by
Ah, Mittens:
First, America must substantially improve our education system.
Needless to say, Mitt has lots of good advice:
He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party.
Yes, once he’s done getting rid of the people who got him elected, Obama should go out and hire the wise angels of that partisan- and politics-free utopia Mitt envisions (they can usually be found in Ann Althouse’s driveway or hiding behind David Broder’s glasses). Because if there’s one thing the election has shown, is that voters have absolutely no preference when it comes to the major political parties and the policies they have campaigned on. (Or is it for?)
If only we had earlier; Mittens might actually understand the way elections work instead of just assuming they’re there for powerful people to feel good about themselves.
Mittens bores me. Can we please have more coverage of syndicated columnist Chuck Norris? http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=80577
Thank you.
“Get rid of all those smart, clever, innovative people that got you elected, and get some people we loser Republicans can deal with.”
I don’t seem to recall this brave and inspiring post-partisanism from the mouths of our keepers of Conventional Wisdom in the MSM and elsewhere when Shrubbie and Gang were in charge. It was more like “Elections have consequences” and “Suck on this.”
Doesn’t he have some company to run or something? We need to find something for these so-called ‘statesman’ such has Mitt, Delay, Newt, and company to do. Something in a sealed room and far away.
Yeah, because if there’s one person’s advice you want to take after winning the Presidential election, it’s someone who couldn’t even make it past the semi-finals of the other side’s contest.
Shorter Mittens: how’s a loser like me supposed to get into the game when there’s all these smart adults talking to the president?!
“Obama should do this one thing that I want ….”
We’re going to be hearing a lot of that.
Why is Mittens even speaking? He shouldn’t be seen or heard.
He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party.
Translation from Wingnutese (idiomatic): We hate it when you win elections, so we’re going to try to sabotage you with destructive suggestions in unobjectionable language.
The fact is, you liberals should check out my latest recipe:
1 loaf of white bread
1 bottle of water
Pour water into bowl. Dip bread into water. Enjoy.
He’s still pissed Caribou Barbie got picked for the team rather than him, isn’t he?
I am all for President Obama placing some smart, capable Republicans in his administration. However we need to get that time machine technology ironed out so we can FIND some.
He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win
And go WAY out of his way to alienate the people who voted for him. Those suckers are DEMONcraps!!
Pour water into bowl. Dip bread into water. Enjoy.
I’m fresh out of water.
Can I use the blood of 666 unbaptized infants instead?
He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party.
Lemme see…he won a clear mandate running on the platform these folks helped develop, where Bush did not, and yet it was OK for Bush to retain his uberpartisans but it’s not OK for Obama to retain his cooperative and flexible consulting team?
LOL!
Mittens greatest hits:
* Lied that he saw his father march with MLK
* Strapped dog to car roof for family vacation
* Sons served their country by volunteering for dad’s campaign
RE that last point – after dad folded the campaign, did they all enlist to serve in Iraq?
And go WAY out of his way to alienate the people who voted for him
But, but, but, if you turn them into aliens, they’ll be sampling your precious DNA, and conducting those intimate body probes.
He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party.
The election proved this is a center-right country. Both Obama’s mandate and the spirit of bipartisanship demand he follow Romney’s advice.
That Chuck Norris piece is a smelly, sticky wad of hate. Is the “I’m your boss, now, boy” tone sticking in anyone else’s craw? Go tell it to Fuckabee, Mr. Octagon.
“Obama’s Post-Election Favorability: 70%”
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Mittens, President-elect Obama does not need your help. Don’t you need to send your maid out to buy you some more hair products or something? Do that. It’s a better use of your time.
Uh oh. I think Mittens is going to cry.
I hope the 2012 ticket is Romney/Palin so we can have “Mittens/Parka” as a campaign slogan.
My little brother is arguing for Palin/Delay so we can have “Pitbull/Hammer”.
I think the former is a more accurate representation of the threat that the Republican ticket is likely to pose to an Obama re-election campaign.
We also go with:
Jindal/Palin: Exorcism/Witch Doctor
Bachmann/Palin: Witch Doctor/Witch Hunt
Can I use the blood of 666 unbaptized infants instead?
Mitt and his progeny will have already done baptisms for the dead on them.
Palin/Giuliani = Pitbull/Lipstick
I hope the 2012 ticket is Romney/Palin so we can have “Mittens/Parka” as a campaign slogan.
Wouldn’t that be “Ken/Barbie”?
Wow, Romney’s so transparent. Read the whole paragraph from which the “He should dismiss the people…” line comes. I like how he suggests Obama has been concerned about his reelection and not the issues on which he ran during the campaign. I also like how he basically says “It’s my turn in four years—for the good of the nation.”
And then in his next response:
Right, because it was during his second term that Clinton had zero distractions and could therefore focus strictly on policy.
Mitt and his progeny will have already done baptisms for the dead on them.
Fuckin’ Mormons.
I don’t know why I bothered. It seemed like such a good idea at the time…
Well first let’s dispense with the obvious: Mittens was, is and always will be a tool. He didn’t appear to be too far “beyond politics” when he attacked Obama from far right-wingnutland during the election.
Beyond that, though:
Hang on…whose party was in charge of the country for most of the last decade? Where was our buddy Mitty then? He seemed OK with going neck-deep in hock to the Chinese at the same time as we underfunded education. And health care? Whoa-ho-ho, nobody on their side wanted to talk about health care. Everything was just peachy!
Also, this cracks me up:
I coulda sworn the whole idea of “imposing America’s labor [and environmental] requirements” was aimed at leveling the playing field. Oh wait, he wasn’t talking about a “level playing field” for the workers, just the owners. Knock down those pesky regulations that are holding us back in our race to the bottom!
Hey Mittens, have a nice time in history’s dustbin. You and Sarah and Newt ought to have lots to talk about.
He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party.
Oh. He actually SAID that. I thought you guys were joking. What an asshole.
I say replace Romney with his open mic lovin’ doppleganger.
First, America must substantially improve our education system.
Kind of late for that isn’t it? I mean we already had four years of the idiot-in-chief. If we had done it sooner, we would have had solid Democratic majorities and presidents for the past 30 years. Mittens must be feeling self destructive.
hey, hey, hey….ease off here. Didn’t mittens get a couple of silvers and a bronze or something?
One wonders where Mitt’s advice was when Bush was appointing Brownie to head FEMA and other such bullshit. Asshole.
Oh wait, he wasn’t talking about a “level playing field” for the workers, just the owners. Knock down those pesky regulations that are holding us back in our race to the bottom!
Reminds me – listening to NPR earlier today and heard some business-school asswipe on the excerable “On Point” program whining about how the American economy just isn’t “competitive”. Evidently it’s all the fault of us workers for requiring “uncompetitive” stuff like decent wages.
Second, we’re going to have to remedy our disproportionate health care cost disadvantage. America spends far more than any other nation as a percent of GDP on health care.
Efficient, cost-effective socialised medicine is a centre-right policy.
Socialised medicine has always been a centre-right policy
“First, America must substantially improve our education system.”
Um, I know this isn’t the same kind of subject-verb agreement problem that troubles those George Mason U law professors, but “our” is the wrong pronoun for America. Just sayin’
I hope the 2012 ticket is Romney/Palin so we can have “Mittens/Parka” as a campaign slogan.
Everyone at my church is praying for a Gary Bauer, George Allen pairing. I guess that would be a Snowflake Baby/Macaca ticket? Kind of unwieldly…
Reminds me – listening to NPR earlier today and heard some business-school asswipe on the excerable “On Point” program whining about how the American economy just isn’t “competitive”. Evidently it’s all the fault of us workers for requiring “uncompetitive” stuff like decent wages.
Yep. Productivity is up, but wages are down. Workers are doing their part, but it does seems like the executives with their lavish salaries aren’t showing their worth. There’s some sort of executive cult on Wall Street that has detached performance metrics for leaders from compensation.
“He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party.”
Brilliant advice. Who were the jerks who said Mitt is dumb as a bag of hammers?
Speaking of Rugged, he predicted Montana would go 60% McCain, but it only went 50.1%. He hasn’t been around here since. Maybe he needs to move to a state in line with his idea of “Real America”.
President-elect Obama would do well to draw his economic advisors from the Harding Institute.
Speaking of brilliant, and I apologize for going off topic, but I just had to share this gem from Malkin’s house of ill repute.
Regarding Al Franken’s race with Coleman:
#4 CantCureStupid said:
How can that moron Franken-dummy even be that close? That’s just sick.
Three letters: ACORN.
Could it be parody? Maybe, but we are dealing with Malkin fans, so…
Frankly, I don’t see how ANY combination of GOPer wiz-kid pairings can not be gold for the Hilarity Caucus in 2012.
Vote Hilarity Caucus in 2012.
Why would Obama dump the brilliant people he chose to help elect him? Does Mitt think they’d go work for him (M) if they were let go?
Everyone at my church is praying for a Gary Bauer, George Allen pairing. I guess that would be a Snowflake Baby/Macaca ticket? Kind of unwieldly…
Oh, that one’s easy: Racist/Racister
RE that last point – after dad folded the campaign, did they all enlist to serve in Iraq?
And Daddy will need some kind of publicity boost to get his political life kicked into a higher gear. No I bet the Romney boys are making themselves pretty scace.
Miriam Makeeba has died. 76
RIP Miriam. She died on stage having said she would sing till her last day.
Way to go.
Sing, dance, and have fun. Makeba would approve.
“Some individuals, at the behest of special interests, seek to prevent trade with other nations by imposing America’s labor requirements and other peculiarities. That is a disguised form of protectionism.”
Interesting to learn that not allowing goods made by child sweatshop labor to be sold in this country is an “imposition”. Or that our country being opposed to forced abortions and other gross human rights abuses is some kind of “peculiarity”.
Maybe Mitt has finally found a way out of his famous abortion flip-flop. He’s not technically anti-abortion, because he’s fine with forced abortions. But he’s not technically pro-choice either.
But I totally love his selfless advice — hire a bunch of Republicans and refuse to run for re-election. Who really gives a crap what Mittens thinks, though? Asking him is like asking the San Diego Chargers for advice on how to win the Super Bowl — and the strategy he’s recommending is to cut all your best players and forfeit the game at the half.
Romney/Norv Turner 2012!
What a dick. I’m especially fond of this piece of advice, offered by a Bush-supporter to our constitutional-law-prof president-elect:
1. Use and cite the Constitution. If that constitutional oath (“preserve, protect and defend”) is the central duty of your job description, then I would assume we will be hearing often from you about exactly how you are doing just that. There is no replacement for strict adherence, application and defense of the Constitution. And it’s high time that presidents quit tritely reciting the presidential oath only to abandon its tenets when they enter the Oval Office. You should be publicly quoting from the Constitution as often as a preacher quotes the Bible to his congregation – at least weekly. If you take this oath and challenge seriously . . .
What. A. Dick.
American Zen and the Art of Democracy Maintenance offers, I think, an important message that we ought not shelve our healthy cynicism just because the Obamaniacs are taking the reins of government. And I’m seeing a troubling lack of open-mindedness in the blogosphere since the day after the election.
The fact is, the Harding Institute is a bastion of Heartland values.
Chucky has never gotten over Bruce kicking his ass has he?
Intimate body probes … bug, or feature?
I got exactly this far in Chuckie’s little advice column,
before the urges to vomit and laugh uncontrollably were doing battle in my belly to the point where I could go no further.
So, Norris has been under a rock for the last eight years.
It also sounds like Chuck is asking, nay, begging, not to get his ass handed to him. Fuckwit.
The hilarious and depressing thing is that Romney has always been pretty moderate and sensible where remarkable at all – he’s a completely bog-standard New England Republican, and if it weren’t for how stunningly easy it was to get the Malkinite shit-moaters rallying behind him by saying ‘Reagan’ a lot, he’d actually be a pretty sensible choice as bipartisan appointees go.
Seriously, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Michael Moore could recite a long enough list of early 80s catchphrases and he’d become a dead-ender icon. Thank you, Mitt, for showing us all how easy it is.
Smiling Mortician,
Clearly, we have similar tastes in the absurd.
See, that’s exactly what we don’t need: class warfare. We all need to pitch in and force businesses to choose between cutting into their profit margins to provide benefits taken for granted in the Third World or paying their workers anything close to a living wage.
You know, to stay competitive with Burundi.
Intimate body probes … bug, or feature?
With aliens, can’t it be both? Some sort of bug-like creature feature?
Hey, there are good Mormons. Usually outside of the Jello Belt, but there are good mormons. Take Udall, for instance – hell of a guy, probably would have beaten Reagan in ’80 if it hadn’t been for Carter’s rat-fucking.
The Mormon Church is despicable (nota bene: Udall left it once they started digging their heels into the dirt over interracial marriage and other civil rights issues), but outside of the majority Mormons can be OK.
THE BEST THING ABOUT YOUR NATION’S HOMELESS IS THAT YOU CAN CONVINCE THEM YOU’RE AN ALIEN WITH ONLY A FLASHLIGHT AND A BULLHORN
Hey guys, I found someone who can out-stupid both Mittens and Chuck. I give you Assrocket (via Digby):
Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.
“Mitt Romney? Mitt Romney… Hmm, nope never..oh wait! Do you mean Willard the dog-catcher?”
Mitt: “In his second term, President Clinton made an effort to govern more from the center than from the extreme wing of his party, and by doing so, found greater support and greater political success. Perhaps it’s a paradox, the less political the agenda, the more political success one enjoys.”
“…and, perhaps to add to the paradox, the more political success one enjoys, the more a cabal of liars and hypocrites tends to impeach one for relatively trivial reasons. These attacks, denunciations, and impeachments are what I call ‘greater support and greater political success.’ Perhaps it’s a paradox, but I am able to say these, and other, similar blatant nonsense, and yet still feed and clothe myself most of the time.”
OT, but…dear god. From the WaPo account of the Obamas’ visit to the White House today:
Here’s how Obama tells the story:
“Obama!” the President said, shaking my hand. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours — that’s one impressive lady.”
“We both got better than we deserve, Mr. President,” I said, shaking the First Lady’s hand and hoping that I’d wiped any crumbs off my face. The President turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the President’s hand.
“Want some?” the President asked. “Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds.”
Someone tell me if I’m imagining this…but after reading about the hand sanitizer, the image that popped into my head was that of Steve Martin staring at his hand to see if any black had “rubbed off” after that “slap my hand, black soul man!” bit he used to do with Garrett Morris in the SNL skits about the Wild N’ Crazy Czech Brothers who cruise successfully for foxes in tight slacks that show off their bulges.
Sweet baby jesus, please let us survive the next couple of months with this moron still in charge.
Looks like Assrocket is pulling out all the stops for this years ‘Fluffy’.
Good Luck and Goat Speed, ButtMissile!
The Mormon Church is despicable (nota bene: Udall left it once they started digging their heels into the dirt over interracial marriage and other civil rights issues), but outside of the majority Mormons can be OK.
Based on your example, the good Mormons are the ex-Mormons. There was a discussion (serious pants!) on TresToros about this very subject.
P.S. For people who aren’t going to read the link, I’m not in the “there are no good Mormons” camp.
Jennifer,
It could be that racist, on the other hand, I know Donald Trump (who never shakes anyone’s hands) and he’s a fucking obsessive nutcase about clean hands and carries that crap around in his own pocket. He won’t even let his assistant carry his sanitizer.
I think they’re afraid someone will steal their money if they don’t sanitize, those two.
I had to walk backwards in Smiling Mort’s tracks to the original Buttmissile quote.
What Digby says. My god. I like the explanatory gloss: “He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. ”
Oh, THAT’s why his style sometimes *seems* halting. Because he’s so careful and meticulous.
Seriously. Is this guy nuts? Or just fully committed to saying whatever he wants, regardless of the (obvious, long-acknowledged, indisputable, objective, etc.) truth?
He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting.
snk
BWAAAAAA
Sorry. I was just thinking about how much care and precision it took to choose the words “Peeance freeance”.
Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly.
Hametahametahametahameta…
That wasn’t me, that was a direct quote from Der President. He was speaking about the troubles in Bhutan.
Holy crap…jeezus, can you imagine being this chump’s kid and having to explain to your friends what a total asskissing dweeb dad is????
Intimate body probes … bug, or feature?
No goddamn alien is sticking any insects up my fundamental soundness.
actor – yeah, I know, it is true that’s how colds usually spread but…for God’s sake, does he pull that shit when he’s meeting foreign leaders too? I mean, the last time I was sick and had to go to the store, I told the clerk “go wash your hands so you don’t catch what I’ve got”, so I’m cognizant of that…but it just strikes me as crass to be in that big of a rush that you would just do it right then, right in front of the person who’s hand you’ve just shaken? It just seems uncouth to me.
The President turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the President’s hand.
I wonder how they worded that particular ‘duty’ in the job description…
I wonder how they worded that particular ‘duty’ in the job description…
*Best Jon Stewart impression of Bush*
“Heh heh..thass Money Shot Guy….heh heh”
Looks like Assrocket is pulling out all the stops for this years ‘Fluffy’.
Holy shit. That is some top-notch fluffing, for sure.
Alert Teh Editors!
He chooses his words with care and precision, but sometimes the English language fails to provide words with the exact meaning he seeks, forcing him to create his own.
but it just strikes me as crass to be in that big of a rush that you would just do it right then, right in front of the person who’s hand you’ve just shaken? It just seems uncouth to me.
Ya mean like, I dunno, rubbing the neck of a world leader or asking a sightless reporter “Can’t you see this?”
Intimate body probes … bug, or feature?
The new Victoria’s Secret collection, by Eulenspiegel.
…it just strikes me as crass to be in that big of a rush that you would just do it right then, right in front of the person who’s hand you’ve just shaken? It just seems uncouth to me.
It is, but at least he offered Obama some, so I guess somebody poleaxed a smidge of manners into him somewhere along the line.
Honestly, I have no idea how to handle that situation. I’d make a terrible diplomat.
Fun with scare quotes!
who squirted a big dollop of “hand sanitizer” in the President’s hand
The directive on hand sanitizers must appear in the chapter on security.
Personally, I would say the ex-mormons are the mormons who are both good, and clever. Of the observant LDS mormons, some may be good, but few are clever.
Granted, the LDS keeps so much information from its common members, and applies all sorts of social pressure to keep members from leaving. So I suppose some mormons simply don’t have the courage to leave, or are mostly ignorant of the stuff the church gets up to, but none the less have a properly adjusted moral compass.
It is actually pretty easy to draw a line between practising and non practising mormons. To be a member in good standing of the LDS, you HAVE to tithe. People behind on their tithing are often excluded from some temple events, and considered lapsed members. There is hell of a lot of pressure on mormons to tithe, and to give even more money on top of that.
Really, the question to ask mormon politicians is “do you tithe?” If they don’t, they have a fairly distant relationship with the LDS. If they DO tithe, they are fully paid up, fully committed cult members, and not to be trusted an inch.
I’d make a terrible diplomat.
For the low, low price of $19.96, you too can learn to share hand sanitizer with heads of state in a polite, dignified manner.
The new Victoria’s Secret collection, by Eulenspiegel.
“He puts the ‘lust’ in ‘lustig’!”
Bill Richardson refuses to do the shake and squirt. Would you want him in your cabinet? In your kitchen cabinet?
Sockpuppet – you’re dead on, all the way through, IMO.
Are you now, or have you ever been, a resident of Utah? You nailed it.
Of the observant LDS mormons, some may be good, but few are clever.
It is my great good luck to have a friend who is one of these rare observant, good, and clever cases. He’s a convert, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
Granted, the LDS […] applies all sorts of social pressure to keep members from leaving. So I suppose some mormons simply don’t have the courage to leave…
This is very true, and those who do break out can be deeply scarred by it all, even if they maintain some kind of relationship with their former LDS life.
The church has some properties I admire but on the whole I think it does a tremendous amount of damage to people.
When I was kid we had to pound our hands with flat rocks! We didn’t have any of this fancy shmancy “Hand Sanitizers”!
Hmmph!
For the low, low price of $19.96, you too can learn to share hand sanitizer with heads of state in a polite, dignified manner.
Cool! But I’m going to need to get a new suit, probably.
Wow! What a shameless blog-pimp I am!
He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party.
BWAH HA HA HA HAHAHAHA HA HA! That is all.
Where I come from, folks use deer scat as a hand sanitizer. How can you people stomach using all of those yucky chemicals? Hand sanitizer is nuthin more than liquid fluoride, which is used to subdue the masses, thanks to the Barfarian Unlimitatas.
Nah – no more than the good Catholics are ex-Catholics.
Pearl of Great Price is more generally progressive than a lot of modern Protestant and Catholic theology. The only problem is that it tends to get ignored when it conflicts with the Church objective of mainstreaming itself within the evangelical right.
The Catholic analogy works particularly well – it’s pretty easy to get along as a non-active LDS outside of the Jello Belt, but inside of it (e.g. where Mormons hold the majority and local government and society select for doctrinal rigidity) you’ve pretty much got a choice between being an obscene supplicant or a good apostate.
I’m sorry.
I don’t understand.
Why is one supernatural mythology any weirder than another?
You want to take out an insurance policy on your mortal soul?
You gotta believe fifty impossible things before breakfast. Don’t matter what you call the book or the deity.
And no matter what, science is your enemy, because we’re getting SO close, learning so much, “god” has to hide in the gaps. And we just keep filling the gaps. And wonder of wonders? No god ever seems to turn up. Heisenberg is the closest thing.
To single out the mormons as somehow more deluded or more generally evil than any other sect that insists it knows all about divine beings that, in spite of their omnipotence, won’t lift a finger to establish some kind of proof of their actual existence is to say that THIS thief is somehow better than THAT one, based on some ambiguous scorecard.
Nope. Sorry. It’s the twenty first century. Science understands the size, age and scope of the universe. Science understands matter at its most fundamental manifestations. Science is on the brink of understanding the way the universe works, why stuff has mass, what makes a universe come into being and what caused US to be, well, US.
Any idiot that doesn’t tremble with excitment and pride at these events, and rather throws in their lot with fifteen hundred year old goat herds is closing her eyes and walking away from the very things that make us special.
*SIGH*
mikey
He shouldn’t bring them in by hand, of course. They don’t want to catch the black.
When I was kid we had to pound our hands with flat rocks!
When I was a kid, we didn’t even have germs. We had to make do with ritual-impurity taboos.
Agreed, but we’re discussing the difference between throwing in your lot with an eighteenth-century grifter or the characters in a nineteenth-century grifter’s Bible fan-fiction. It’s pretty critical – the characters at least take pains not to know about the cotton gin.
I’m pretty firmly of the opinion that the Mormon mythology isn’t any worse than any other. Utah coulda been settled by Bahai the way it was by Mormons and the dynamics at work would be identical – and keeping it out of ‘Christian’ the way a lot of Christers like to do is silly. But the church sucks ass, and while there are churches that do not, they just happen to have very strong opinions against believing what they do without giving them money and time.
Please tell me Matt Taibbi was out of the country today …
I think the sanitizer story is from an earlier WH visit, as I read it last night somewhere, Thinkprogress, iirc. Regardless, it illustrates what a dickhead the guy is.
I figure Condi was telling him he needed to warsh his hands when he went to the john and he took things a little too far.
To single out the mormons as somehow more deluded or more generally evil than any other sect that insists it knows all about divine beings that, in spite of their omnipotence, won’t lift a finger to establish some kind of proof of their actual existence is to say that THIS thief is somehow better than THAT one, based on some ambiguous scorecard.
Teh Mormons singled themselves out with regards to Prop 8, mikey.
Otherwise no one would be talking about them.
(Although the fact is, magical underpants make me laugh.)
I apologize to the community for being underpantsist.
Well, my criteria for dividing religions into “deluded” and “dangerous” is pretty simple. Any which make claims of fact which are proven to be false, are deluded.
Any which have a central organisation, where a leadership of a few people “interpret” the holy scriptures (or just write new ones), are dangerous. Where this power is consolidated through threats of eternal damnation, or social ostracism in this world, it is doubly dangerous.
A large group of people following the marching orders of a mortal, believing that god speaks through them, is fucking dangerous. That kind of religion MUST be destroyed for the good of humanity.
“I apologize to the community for being underpantsist.”
It’s too late. The community takes note of your bias.
First, America must substantially improve our education system. We’ve fallen behind, particularly in areas of math and science.
For example, kids need to learn more about the planets, such as the planet Cobol, where I come from. Also genetics, and how the blacks descended from the devil, while the Indians are genetically related to the Israelites.
Second, we’re going to have to remedy our disproportionate health care cost disadvantage. America spends far more than any other nation as a percent of GDP on health care. This effectively is an enormous tax on the economy and on our businesses.
To remedy that, we need to have a reformed health care that only covers Viagra and hair-styling products.
Third, our national debt is excessive and our entitlement obligations pass a massive burden onto the next generation.
Notice how this bit is totally unrelated to the paragraph above where I say:
“The bailout of Wall Street” was a terrible choice of words. No one wants to bail out anything, especially Wall Street. The objective of the legislation, however, had a much broader purpose: to stabilize our financial system, to keep it from complete collapse. Sometimes that broad purpose may require saving individual companies, as with AIG
The community takes note of your bias.
So THAT explains the drape!
I don’t suppose you folks have checked out NoIQ recently?
Larry Johnson is going after John McCain for not “defending” Sarah Palin from the “horrible slurs” that suggest she wasn’t qualified to be VP.
His argument goes something along the lines of “Obama was unqualified and dangerous compared to Hillary, so we voted for McCain, who was obviously the better candidate. But McCain now refuses to defend his inexperienced and naifish VP pick, which only goes to show he was dangerously unsuitable to be President. Therefore…uh….SARAH PALIN!”
I wouldn’t mind so much if they were just the slightest bit intellectually honest and admitted “We didn’t want to vote for Obama for irrational, entirely human reasons, so we threw our lot in with McCain.” But instead they have to tie themselves in knots trying to justify these ridiculous about faces.
You want to take out an insurance policy on your mortal soul?
This sounds like a great business opportunity. Damnation Insurance. The mark, er, client pays a monthly premium until death. Upon presenting proof that the client is actually burning in hell, the survivors receive benefits.
This could totally work if I wasn’t burdened with this damned conscience.
Senator McCain, have you no decency?
Linky for schadenfreude. This is better than freepers accusing FOX of being too liberal.
Romney must be pleased that Obama is already following his sage advice, (to some degree).
For example it was on the news today that Obama, like Romney, is against the number of Gitmos to be equal to 1 (one).
That’s bipartisanship we can believe in!
The community takes note of your bias.
One-sided commentary.
…the planet Cobol, where I come from.
Heh.
I’m from the planet Fortran, myself.
Relevance FAIL
Well, my criteria for dividing religions into “deluded” and “dangerous” is pretty simple. Any which make claims of fact which are proven to be false, are deluded.
Ok. This works for me.
As an educational project, please tell me which religions you do NOT divide into “deluded” and “dangerous” categories.
Thank yew…
mikey
First step? Teach the kids not to transition from the 3rd to the 1st person in the same sentence.
Waitaminit – is this Fool pie guy the one who said we were all punk-rock-listening philistines, or whatever?
No way am I shutting off the piefilter to find out.
I dunno, X. Gilchrist.
I, for one, am grateful for all these fine, upstanding individuals who come here to describe in passionate detail their love for delicious pastry-topped fruit deserts.
I find this innocent devotion to baked fruit in pastry to be delightful, and I encourage them all to continue to tell us of their favorite deserts…
mikey
I encourage them all to continue to tell us of their favorite deserts…
I don’t think you will be disappointed. Call it a hunch.
I highly doubt that is Genuine The Fool™ posting.
It strikes me that we think more, erm, “highly” of The Fool than he realizes, and thus it is far more likely someone resurrecting what is commonly known as “Old Meme” for “teh lulz” rather than a Genuine The Fool™ sighting.
I could be wrong, offer not valid in Montana, etc.
I think the sanitizer story is from an earlier WH visit
Yes, the passage is from The Audacity of Hope. It’s from when Bush invited Obama and other first-time senators to the White House in 2005.
Is it really so hard to understand that republicans don’t want to see anymore of that team that got Obama elected? All they did was elect a black guy with the middle name Hussein and he was the first democrat to carry Robert E. Lee’s home state in 44 years. By all means, dismiss them as soon as possible and move sharply to the right.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© will not respond to poseurs who make Foolish grammaturgical criticisms.
Is this religion the one where you get your own planet? Or am I thinking of that Tom Cruise thing?
One thing that surprises me is that these fools still think that Obama is a naive person who they can lead by the nose . This is the man who ran rings around the Clinton and the Republican political machines . The man who knew that Pa. was in the bag and concentrated elsewhere when his supporters were getting nervous that McCain was gaining ground there . The man who knew what he wanted to convey to the Americans in his half-hour infomercial and was so sure about it that he had it recorded days before the broadcast in a political climate that was seemingly changing by the hour . Sorry Mittens , if there is a man who knows his own mind it’s Barack Hussein X .
OK, so you all want to know what I was doing while all you liberals were giggling and gloating like a bunch of children. I’ll tell you:
I’M DRAGON KING WANG CHUCK. Everytime you’ve ever agreed with him you were really agreeing with me, your old punching bag The Truth. How will you recover from this? We all know you liberals can’t handle being tricked. You value being ‘smarter’ than everyone else too much. How are you sure your new messiah isn’t tricking you either? Think about that, liberals…
“You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him [guess who] to Adolf Hitler.“
“As an educational project, please tell me which religions you do NOT divide into “deluded” and “dangerous” categories.”
Good question Mikey. Most of them would be considered philosophies rather than religions. But I am being charitable, and saying that religions which only make unfalsifiable claims are not deluded. It is one thing to dream up some weird shit, but continuing to insist it is true when reality shows it is false, is where the line into insanity is crossed. Deism is just about the only one which inherently fits the unfalsifiable category, but most religions can also be made to fit, by denying or watering down any of the ingredients which disagree with reality.
It depends what definition of a religion you take. Ask a Christian what defines a member of their religion, and they will rattle off some bollocks about jesus or something. Myself, I take the approach that if a person self identifies as a adherent of a certain religion, then they are one.
I do know some Christians who have watered the whole thing down to “jesus supposedly said some things which look good to me” without believing in any of the specific claims the bible makes, even about heaven/hell, the existence of god, the resurrection, or any of that stuff which is normally considered essential to the faith. That sometimes manages to fit into the unfalsifiable category, although it is a type of faith closer to mere admiration of a role model than conventional religion. Never the less, if someone is happy with that as their “spiritual side”, I won’t argue.
If you consider atheism/agnosticism to be “religion”, then they pass the test by not making any falsified assertions, whilst being theoretically falsifiable.
In case anyone is wondering, I identify as ignostic, a type of non-theism which postulates that the whole question of “god” is pointless without an actual definition of “god” which isn’t just pulled out of someones arse.
It was Missoula with all this latte-sipping Volvo driving liberals that skewed the polls so close for the black Muslim Marxist. But don’t worry, the rest of Montanans are still very proud Ruby Ridge Black Helicopter watching “rugged” individuals who put country first.
Congressman Broun prefers a 4-way! Hey, Matt T., is this your dude in the House?
I do know some Christians who have watered the whole thing down to “jesus supposedly said some things which look good to me” without believing in any of the specific claims the bible makes, even about heaven/hell, the existence of god, the resurrection, or any of that stuff which is normally considered essential to the faith.
Ok, sure, but how is this different from straight up atheism?
It doesn’t serve the palliative process of offsetting death, and it can’t have even an imagined impact on wealth or harvest.
So ultimately, it’s nothing more than being afraid to risk your mortal soul on the rather obvious possibility that the whole thing is a manipulative concoction.
I’ve never been comfortable hanging with cowards…
mikey
Romney giving Obama advice about government, education, foreign policy & economics, eh?
Well now … benefit of the doubt time: let’s see – how many hallmark accomplishments has Mittens achieved in ANY of these fields?
(… crickets …)
Sorry, but making a buttload of money with Bain via leveraged buyouts doesn’t really qualify as groundbreaking stuff – nor does investing in cutting edge companies like Dominos or Staples – & other than that, he’s got jack.
Yeah, who better for Obama to listen to than a guy who got his ass kicked by the guy whose ass OBAMA kicked? What could possibly go wtong?
Heck of a job, Mittie!
Butt-Missile really said in all serious without a shred of irony that Bush is a precise public speaker and Obama is a sloppy—
Oh wait. Figured it out, never mind.
Mikey: It is very very common in the UK. Bear in mind that most of these people don’t even believe in “souls” at all, and none of them go to church more than once a year, and that only for the christmas carols.
The UK is full of “cultural christians”, people who don’t know or care much about any of the actual faith, but still have bits of christianity stuck in their collective culture. I suppose I fall into that category too. I celebrate christmas, although I prefer the pagan aspects more than the overtly christian aspects. I say “god dammit” when I stub my toe, despite not believing in either god, or damnation.
There are plenty of people with only barely more christian faith than me, who none the less, call themselves christians. Think of them as Unitarians who sleep in on sunday mornings. In some ways it is caused by intellectual laziness, but who can blame them? Religion really isn’t worth thinking about, until some other fuckers religion starts treading on your toes.
Religion really isn’t worth thinking about, until some other fuckers religion starts treading on your toes.
And doesn’t that explain the whole thing?
I encourage them all to continue to tell us of their favorite deserts…
And even better, just now on the TV box I’m watching Heroes and Kristen Bell’s little chirpy blondie character charms her way into a bad guy’s house by bringing by a pie and asking “Do you like pie?” when he answers the door.
That’s quality entertainment.
And doesn’t that explain the whole thing?
IOW, shorter all religions: My milkshake is better than yours.
My milkshake is better than yours.
Scientologists can teach you, but they’ll have to charge.
Troofie , one does not agree with the nicks . One agrees ( or disagrees ) with the comments . Only a wingnut can believe that a nick has same credibility as regards one’s positions as 12 years voting record in state and US senate .
Clever and practicing Mormons, Exhibit #1: Terry Tempest Williams.
That’s the only one I can think of.
On to the deep stuff … There’s a certain extent to which all religious mythology is logically equivalent in terms of its irrationality. If you believe in the existence of entities that cannot be empirically proven to exist, then you are irrational. So, yes, Mormons and mainline Xtians and Scientologists and Hindus are all to some degree delusional in the same way. And yes, one reason why LDS beliefs may look crazier to us is that they are younger and therefore fresher in the history books and easier to refute. In fact, they make some very specific, non-allegorical claims that are easily refutable (like Native Americans being a lost tribe of Hebrews). So while they do look crazier, their beliefs are logically equivalent to any other theist mythology.
But … and I say this as a professional philosopher … logic ain’t everything when it comes to belief. Logic cannot actually settle whether one ought to believe in deities, not believe in deities, or remain agnostic about the existence of deities. A lot of people seem to maintain the position that only agnostics are truly rational since one cannot disprove the existence of deities, but one also cannot disprove the existence of unicorns and I know no agnostic about god that is agnostic about unicorns. Likewise, to maintain an atheistic belief is to maintain a belief about the non-existence of something which cannot be proven to non-exist. I think theists have a much higher burden for demonstrating why their beliefs could be rational, but I am not willing to say that my atheism is airtight on the logic front.
All this is to say, that even if Mormons and all other flavors of theism are logically equivalent they are not functionally equivalent. Mormons look crazier because they are crazier. You know, that whole thing about ducks being like ducks.
I’M DRAGON KING WANG CHUCK.
And so’s my dog.
And Ann Althouse.
Sort of a crowded market already, no?
Here I thought you were D.N. Nation. I’m so confused.
My milkshake brings the boys to the yard.
You know, I’m perfectly willing to believe anyone is anyone, but I do require evidence: show me The Buttocks.
Sockpuppet, I think ignosticism is a very interesting position. But my inner Wittgenstein always reacts badly to the notion that you have to have some very precise and isolated definition of a term in order to discuss it. You cannot do that with any big concept, let alone “god.” If you want a definition of god, you just look for how people use it and what role it plays in our language games and forms of life. When I take that route, I come down squarely in the atheist camp. I am perfectly willing to take a very strong stance on the non-existence of any deities like what the Xtians/Muslims/Hebrews—let alone the Mormons—believe.
Damn right it’s better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge
Yep, the religion of peace.
Was that the super-awesome surprise Truth kept going on about?
I feel like I’ve just watched an M Night Shamalyan movie.
But my inner Wittgenstein always reacts badly to the notion that you have to have some very precise and isolated definition of a term in order to discuss it.
My outer Quine looks like a topiary elephant. It doesn’t matter what the inside looks like.
That’s what I always say.
I usually get slapped, though.
Inner Wittgenstein? Is that when your insides is made a bunch of nothing but “parts is parts”?
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
LOOK, A MARXIST!!!
As far as I’m concerned, deism is not just a false proposition but one so ridiculously unverifiable that raising it is debasing the conversation. That’s the kind of agnostic I am – someone who thinks atheists are giving God too much credit by even denying it exists.
You can extrapolate unicorns from horses. You cannot extrapolate God from anything in the universe; and considering how powerfully and well physics explains the cosmos, there is no place for God even if we were to leave aside the moral quandaries at work.
Realizing that God could not exist as we are told he does was profoundly liberating – the way I have always told it, I was being driven to school at age 12, had a test in my first period class, and realized after an off-hand suggestion by my mother that I was really supposed to pray that God change traffic – while people my own age were not just starving but fighting in the fucking Congo War.
I retained faith in what I call now the Enlightenment Jesus for some time – that is, the loose set of Enlightenment liberal virtues that we associate with Christ and post-E followers of any other messianic religion tend to associate with their Messiah (of all of them in real life, probably Mohammed comes closest, with the Bahaullah and the Buddha being tied for a close second) – and even religions without any kind of messianic figure, like Judaism or Hinduism, tend to regard as a human ideal. I lost this faith when I realized that it wasn’t unique to or conversant with the Bible.
Religion, to me, is important as much as it interacts with society, comforts the individual, and informs people’s view of the world. And to that extent, most religions are objectively inferior to later, more scientific and comprehensive ideologies.
Of course, I do suspect that Mikey discounting these guys as 1500-year-old shepherds is a little unfair. Especially in terms of later theologians, in much of the world religion attracted the smartest people (or at least the smartest men) alive; it’s depressing how much brainpower was being put into deciding how many angels could dance on what, but at the same time no religion can completely ignore the actual problems facing society and thrive. Plato did a pretty good job of sketching out man’s relationship to the world in spite of believing the sun was hauled across the sky daily by a handsome guy driving a cart, and as far as I’m concerned one of the great atrocities of European history was the Reformation turning what had formerly been a well-rounded intelligensia into a bunch of people feuding over how many nails the Roman Empire killed a 1500-year-old Palestinian schizophrenic with and scattered natural-physicist apostates.
And all that said, I’ll take a theist like Fred Clark over an atheist like Megan McArdle any day.
You need to teach your dog to face forward for the webcam.
I am squicked out by religions which claim that the Embodied God died in some unnecessarily gruesome way. Guess that makes me an ughnostic.
one reason why LDS beliefs may look crazier to us is that they are younger and therefore fresher in the history books and easier to refute.
I was going to say something mean-spirited about another example of a crazy-looking religion made up in the 1940s and 50s by a collaboration of scammers and crackpots being the Wiccans, but then I got sidetracked looking at the Uncyclopedia entry.
The URL for ‘wiccapedia’ has been allowed to lapse. This is inexcusable.
Speaking of Wittgenstein, nothing but nothing beats the horrendously terrible The Jew of Linz, which suggests that Wittgenstein’s effeminacy is primarily responsible for Hitler’s low opinion of Jews. Roz Kaveney’s review is great, although difficult to fucking find.
I am squicked out by religions which claim that the Embodied God died in some unnecessarily gruesome way.
Me too, which is why last night I was saying I liked the Buddhist story about Siddhartha Gautama dying by accident from a dodgy pork curry (even though he was supposed to be a vegetarian – the sources disagree).
Somehow that proved I was naive about the Tamil Tigers. I’m not very good at religious discussions.
Some of us leave Christianity because its claims are impossible to prove and its demand for irrational belief is far too easily exploitable, and the bright light of scientific truth is too seductive to ignore.
Others of us leave it because we find LARPing too hands-off.
There is an alternative reality in which Wittgenstein became a best-selling science-fiction author instead of a philosopher, and is best-known for writing “I Have No Mouth, and Thereof I Must Remain Silent”.
Saint Emeric died of a hunting accident. A boar got him. Gruesome? Most likely. Unnecessarily gruesome? Quit the contrary!
Hell, babe, my AUNT died in an unecessarily gruesome manner.
Dude. I killed a guy with a bayonet once. A fucking BAYONET!
Think about that. I ripped his guts apart with an 8 inch knife attached to the end of my rifle. Whaddaya think his eyes were looking at? Lemme help you out. They were looking at MY EYES, sobbing, with my steel killing him, begging me to stop. Asking me WHY?
And you wanna, what, somehow CLASSIFY one death as, I dunno, what, different or better than another?
Death is natural. It’s part of life. Until we start taking it upon ourselves to kill THESE folks over here because they’re BAD, and THOSE folks over there because, well, whoops, sorry folks, you just got in the fucking way.
Fuck a whole bunch of that….
mikey
“I Have No Mouth, and Thereof I Must Remain Silent”
Wasn’t that the sci-fi novel that had eight thousand chapters which were only a sentence each?
QuitQuiteWasn’t that the sci-fi novel that had eight thousand chapters which were only a sentence each?
Sounds like a real page turner.
I hope the 2012 ticket is Romney/Palin so we can have “Mittens/Parka” as a campaign slogan.
This is *full* of win. Tragically for the satirists, while Willard is still convinced that his awesome hair practically entitles him to be President, he’d have to beat both Palin and Gingrich to get on the Republican ticket. And both Sarah-cuda and Teh Newt are quite capable of taking him down in a fistfight, never mind a Rethug primary. While Mitt’s got the same narcissistic sense of limitless entitlement as the two top media favorites, his silver-spoon upbringing in a series of highly gated communities just didn’t equip him for the kind of single-minded vicious thuggery that the modern GOP base so loves. He’s callous and self-centered enough to insist his ‘beloved’ wife ruin her precarious health in service to his political ambitions, or to blithely torture the family dog in front of his kids, or to ‘regretfully’ authorize throwing hundreds of people out of work to give his vulture-capitalist firm a brief uptick on the stock market, but he’ll never have the balls to risk his camera-ready dental work and media-buffed image in a real political brawl.
Mitt’s great “business success” consisted in running his inherited millions into tens-of-millions by serving as the clean-cut “stakeholder” who could persuade his fellow Mormons to invest their mandatory tithes with the suspiciously-non-redstate “gentiles” who actually incorporated & ran Bain Capital. His best shot at the White House would have been acting as the photogenic figurehead for the fReichtard / Talibangelical / Robber Baron triangle that is the modern GOP. Unfortunately, the election of an African-American with a scary Muslim-sounding name & less-than-CEO-quality hair seems to indicate that a majority of American voters may have sufficiently overcome their qualms that Mitt’s greatest talents are no longer required on the national stage. Which will not, of course, keep him from making a further public nuisance of himself, as per the current atrocity.
Sip, don’t gulp … & don’t forget to tip your server.
Loneoak: I only gave a very simplified definition of Ignosticism, and no details about my own particular extension of that argument.
I think if you want to simply grasp the closest definition of “god” which is available, then you have to take an equally loose grasp of the word “exists”.
Now, there are an infinite number of definitions you can apply to “god”. The factors involved in assigning a probability of that god existing, are how closely the definition matches observable reality, and how internally consistent the definition is. Then, assuming those factors to be equal, the most simple definition is preferred. The likelihood of god existing is both 0 and 1, depending on which definition you pick. If you take Einstein’s definition of god, which was pretty much “the universe”, then the likelihood of that god existing is 1, or an infinitely small fraction less than 1, if you take issue with the idea of absolute certainties for whatever reason.
Now, if you take the average religious dogma, they define god as something horribly complex, which is expected to break the laws of physics, and contains some fairly straightforward contradictions, and some even worse problems. For example, finding a workable definition of omnipotence.
You have to resolve virtually EVERY single theological argument in the entire religion before you can even arrive at a definition of god, which you can start to attempt to prove or disprove.
So. That crazy homeless guy yelling that his hat is god? He’s right. Assuming he is wearing a hat.
I am squicked out by religions which claim that the Embodied God died in some unnecessarily gruesome way.
The big JC and his death get all the attention, and thus some seriously gruesome deaths don’t get the time they deserve. Take Sebastian, for example. He got shot full of arrows (the iconography attests to this). This didn’t kill him, though; a subsequent clubbing did. Then his body was thrown in an outhouse.
Take Sebastian, for example.
Indeed.
The museums and churches of Italy are heaving with lovingly rendered examples. Like that one fellow – St. Elmo? – who had his intestines wound out onto a capstan.
Speaking of gods, thus saith Jack Bruce:
Clash of the titans!
Cream is 10 times the band that Led Zeppelin is.
OK, now this discussion is really out of my league. ‘night, all.
Sebastian? Wittgenstein? What’s with the Derek Jarman theme?
Check out St. Agatha.
I was going to say something mean-spirited about another example of a crazy-looking religion made up in the 1940s and 50s by a collaboration of scammers and crackpots being the Wiccans, but then I got sidetracked looking at the Uncyclopedia entry.
Well, you have to have to give the Wiccans points for driving the Talibangelicals nutz (moar nutz) by insisting that veterans be allowed to ask for a “demonically inspired” religious emblem on their tombstones. And apart from giving the Fundroids of all flavors fits, Wiccans at least are mostly free-lance philosophical scammers…
Don’t bother glaring at me that way, I’m just an animist, and we get no respect from anybody.
As for connoiseurs of gross religious symbolism, while depictions of St. Agnes are always good for the “eww” factor, my personal top recommendation would be a certain illuminated manuscript at the Metropolitan Museum showing the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew. According to legend, Bart was skinned alive. This *particular* rendition includes a final panel with the flensed saint-to-be offering his ex-integument to his astonished torturers, and the exquisite detail — every tooth in his exposed grin a tiny perfect pearl! — could give Bill Kristol nightmares.
mikey: To be wholly fair, the early Christians pretty much judged martyrs exclusively on the basis of gruesome death style points, and Peter, a part of this para-gnostic mortal-masochist tradition, had the authorities string him up upside-down so he’d die faster.
Of all the ways you can go, crucifixion is probably the nastiest. Unless you can get someone to break your legs for you, it’s too low-intensity to induce shock and yet still involves continuous shifting, agony, and creeping shortness of breath – and depending on the kind of job they did and the time and place they did it, it could last until you died of hunger or thirst. The only one I can think of that’s worse would be smallpox, which for some poorly-understood reason strongly inhibits shock. Which, considering what smallpox does to you, is just goddamn terrifying.
Getting gutted alive is not exactly on my top three, but considering that shock tends to set in after a solid chest shot and those are pretty physiologically uninvasive compared to laceration, you’d probably have a worse time dying of pneumonia.
The main problem we wind up having with death is that we gotta go through it – people like to believe they won’t, and that leads to transhumanism or rapturism or any other kind of mystery cult. The only comforting answer, in physiological terms, is that consciousness is only very loosely connected to exterior time – and the things connecting the two are pretty high-level in terms of functionality. That we won’t take what makes us us with us might mean at some point things are just going to slow out asympotically into eternity, function after function winking out and time slowing gradually to the granular speed of neuron intercommunication. Zeno’s arrow, a sort of internal heat death.
Of course, it’s only postponing the inevitable: the inchoate darkness that came before us. Difficult – maybe impossible – to even imagine.
This is why, in general, I like those theists best who act as if they don’t have a scorecard to worry about. We are all trapped in this life whether or not there’s something attached to us that isn’t. Treating the soul or karma or Frequent Flyer Miles like the objective is ignoring what we do know for the comfort of what we don’t.
Me [still thinking about Wittgenstein]: If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.
Doktorling Sonja: Daddy, you haven’t quite grasped the narrative conventions of children’s fantasy.
Congressman Broun prefers a 4-way! Hey, Matt T., is this your dude in the House?
*Sigh*…yes. Still. I honestly thought we’d see the end of him this time around, but I forgot how much Southerners like voting for the guy who’s already in office, especially one who shares the contempt most of Georgia has for Athens, Atlanta and people who can read. On the upshot, Broun’s a hidebound reactionary but at least he’s a consistent hidebound reactionary. Perhaps we can still give Saxby Chambliss his walking papers.
St. Denis picks up his head.
The person who invented the water heater has improved more lives of more people than all of the philosophers and all the gods who have ever existed. You can quote me on this. — RobNYNY1957
Take Sebastian, for example.
Or consider the tale of the martyred Saint Urich, who was shot, stabbed, strangled suffocated, and bludgeoned.
Hell, then, alec, I got a saint for you.
Teenage NVA sapper, was halfway thru the wire when he cooked off a trip flare. The hot magnesium sprayed his face, and he stood up just in time to catch the edge of a claymore across his lower belly. Mind you, I’m sitting in a nasty little hole thirty meters away, watching the whole thing.
So anyway, this kid, fifteen, maybe sixteen years old, his eyes burned out of his head, well, his guts slithered out of his belly, long ropes of intestine and gristle, and he fell across some concertina and tangled up, his arms and his clothes and his guts.
Our perimeter got probed all night, and I sat there, crouched in a muddy hole, under illum rounds, watching this kid die. Took him about six, seven hours, all blind and terrified, all alone with his guts in the dirt, unable to move, tangled in the wire and sobbing for his mother.
And ultimately, yeah, you’re right. That’s religion. That’s what they honor, and that’s the sickness and the barbarism that we MUST find a way to eliminate from our experience. Because once you’ve seen it, once you’ve SMELLED it, you want nothing to do with that fucker god, except maybe for a chance to put live rounds in his ass…
mikey
Ok, so since I don’t believe in heaven or hell, or even in god, can I say that Christ, or the fictional character as conceived by those who wrote the new testament, still had some things of value to say without being someone who hedges their bets? I mean, I come down on the side of those who think that either extreme – those who ascribe the highest value to religious beliefs (or delusions) and those who ascribe zero value to them – are pretty much equally full of shit. But that’s the rub, isn’t it? Religions invariably universally insist that you swallow the whole enchilada, or none at all.
Personally, I don’t get the whole fear of death bullshit, which is what kept me from ever becoming a true believer in any religion, because let’s face it, when you get right down to brass tacks, any religion that promises an afterlife is more or less just bribing people with what they most want to believe – that they will continue to exist even after death. I mean, sure, on some level, the worse thing a conscious being can contemplate is…no longer having consciousness – ceasing to be. But how lame is that? I mean, hell, when you die and there’s nothing after that, you won’t ever know it because…uh…you’ll be dead. It will cause you no emotional anguish. So all the life after death shit actually accomplishes is causing anguish to the living about the “what ifs” of what happens after death. Answer: nothing. Because you’re fucking dead.
As I always like to say, life is hard, get a fucking helmet.
“To a Baby Born Without Limbs” from The Anti-Death League by my favourite cranky Tory Kingsley Amis:
This is just to show you who’s boss around here.
It’ll keep you on your toes, so to speak,
Make you put your best foot forward, so to speak,
And give you something to turn your hand to, so to speak.
You can face up to it like a man,
Or snivel and blubber like a baby.
That’s up to you. Nothing to do with Me.
If you take it in the right spirit,
You can have a bloody marvelous life,
With the great rewards courage brings,
And the beauty of accepting your LOT.
And think how much good it’ll do your Mum and Dad,
And your Grans and Gramps and the rest of the shower,
To be stopped being complacent.
Make sure they baptize you, though,
In case some murdering bastard
Decides to put you away quick,
Which would send you straight to LIMB-O, ha ha ha.
But just a word in your ear, if you’ve got one.
Mind you DO take this in the right spirit,
And keep a civil tongue in your head about Me.
Because if you DON’T,
I’ve got plenty of other stuff up My sleeve,
Such as leukemia and polio,
(Which incidentally you’re welcome to any time,
Whatever spirit you take this in.)
I’ve given you one love-pat, right?
You don’t want another.
So watch it, Jack.
Is there a topic? Can I go off it?
A few threads ago, people were harshing on Heinlein’s later books. Then this turned up on Boing Boing:
Ah the synchronicity.
pace the hypothesis that the first coupla Ender’s books were written by Mormon literati to justify key doctrines, especially vis a vis Hitler, it could be that that tumor was doing the writing for him.
Of course, I kid. I only know of one bit of sci-fi written by a tumor.
Huh, didn’t work. Here it is again, maybe.
Or not:
http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Demons%20Passage&pagetitle=The+Demon's+Passage§ion=fiction
Damn finicky HTML.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/243834.php
Wow. What better person to pitch an unreliable, overpriced, gas-guzzling, backfiring, high-maintenance ideology than Mitt Romney — the used car salesman of politics.
There is a place for Mittens in the new administration.
His shoulders could serve as kind of a free-ranging landing strip and enable Obama to land anywhere and not just at major airports. Just long-line Mr. Above-Politics out of the belly of Air Force One, circle back and presto: The president gets to land in previously unimagined places and Ol’ Runner-Up-to-Bible-Spice gets some rough empathy for a dog lashed to the roof of a station wagon.
Jesus got stabbed too, though (at least the way I heard it) to speed stuff up for him. Which I found a little weird as a kid because, dude, that Roman went straight to heaven for stabbing Jesus? I hadn’t really thought about shock in regards to the nastiness of a given death; disregarding shock factor I feel like burning deaths would be way, way up there for me as worst way to go, but I get the impression that a lot of actual burning goes more the smoke-inhalation/shock route.
Hadn’t known that about smallpox preventing shock, either, but that’s pretty cool! (Regarding nasty-*looking* diseases = Ebola for the win. The Hot Zone is a craaazy book…)
New thread please. We have broken this one.
Broken thread? I dunno. I liked the ADL lyrics a lot. As the Jewish saying goes, “If God lived on earth, the people would break his windows.” MIkey here is writing about stuff that’s more relevant than Mittens or Norris, and I actually happen to feel that a soldier wanting to talk about what he saw* always times-out everyone else’s conversation. Just because we can’t think of a reply doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen. And as an ex-Catholic I enjoy all the hagiography. Does the Roman soldier who stabbed Jesus have a name, a sainthood and a group of people who use him as patrons? St. Lawrence ought to be the patron saint of barbecue, guess why?
Fact is, as Orwell wrote, even an ordinary “natural” death involves degradation and suffering. Pulmonary edema has many of the aspects of crucifixion, except for the showbusinessy aspects, like having the hands nailed up and the exposure and whatnot. Remember that line in the movie Jesus of Montreal? “This was the mid-east we’re talking about, so there would be heat and insects. Flies. It would have been worse in Assyria, they favored impalement.” Me, I want to be killed with kindness; maybe a quick needle after a dirty weekend in Portland.
Oh, the hand sanitizer. It’s basically rubbing alcohol in gel which is good news. I was afraid it was loaded with antibiotics like dish washing liquid and that it was just going to create worse germs. When I read that anecdote in Barak’s book, I was converted to Obamaism on the spot. That detail captured the false populism of W., and the fact that he noted it shows that Barak is not just a good looking nice guy who is going to bend over backwards for the Mitt Romneys of the world.
*obviously, I mean traumatic stuff, not “Me and my buddies got to spend a week in Subic Bay with these pint-sized hookers and a case of Philippine vodka…” und so weiter.
Mr. Romney, Mr. Norris, Mr. Broder, the noted political analyst Paul Westerberg has got some important information for you.
Is this thread broken or merely bent out of shape?
In any case, since it’s a free-for-all, I’ll add my sincere conviction that religion is curable.
Also, go here to chat live with a a Mor
mon missionary!.An acquaintance reports:
He also asks, “Let’s make these people staffing these chat boards explain themselves and flood their chat system, as well…;-))“
He [Obama] should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party.
Oh, what, like Joe Lieberman?
Bunch of punk rock posers and pussified philisitines if you ask me.
Oh, its me, bitches.
Favorite religions, eh?
The Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic
Don’t know, don’t care.
Works for me.
Anne Laurie @6:15
I think you underestimate Romney’s chances. Hair may be out but money and institutions still matter in GOP.
The plutocrats and the management class provide GOP’s financial backing and they are uncomfortable with populists like Palin and Huckabee who are already being thrown under the bus. Think tanks, columnists, radio hosts know where their pay comes from and are likely to be singing the Mitt’s praises for the next four years.
uh just gotta say to Mikey “um wow… sorry that happened” [lacking accurate words here] to you and many others like you. That kid coulda been at home by now drinking rice wine with his grandkids running around the hooch and a bunch of your buddies could be doing the same – what a fucking waste of time, money, people, and the future – i dunno maybe real leaders can avoid pointless wars….
I am new parent so when I saw this after visiting the museum I woke up a bit (its dedicated to those people who could not start a family and experience the joy of being parent) anyway peace be with you and other veterans – thx