World News Korner

Courtesy of Media Matters:

By the end of Fox News' regular programming schedule at 11 PM EST on November 8, the network had acknowledged the fact that CBS pulled its 60 Minutes report in only one 26-second segment. On Special Report, host Bret Baier stated, "CBS is backing off a report on 60 Minutes -- we told you about last week -- that relied on a source whose credibility has crumbled."

I actually don't expect Fox to issue an apology, or retract anything they report, about this, the fast and furious debacle, or the fake IRS targeting Tea Party organizations "scandal."

After all only actual news organizations are directed by journalistic ethics.

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Courtesy of Slate:

Guns & Ammo editor Jim Bequette says he was hoping to generate a "healthy exchange of ideas on gun rights" when he decided to publish a column that veered ever-so slightly from the the usual from-my-cold-dead-hands rhetoric normally found in the pages of his magazine. It's safe to say that effort didn't go exactly as he had hoped.

After a swift and vocal backlash from readers and other Second Amendment enthusiasts, Bequette announced yesterday that he was stepping down immediately, and that the magazine was also cutting ties with the author of the piece in question, contributing editor Dick Metcalf. "I made a mistake by publishing the column," Bequette wrote in an apologetic letter to readers. "I thought it would generate a healthy exchange of ideas on gun rights. I miscalculated, pure and simple. I was wrong, and I ask your forgiveness."

So what did Dick Metcalfe do that was so wrong? He wrote this:

"I firmly believe that all U.S. citizens have a right to keep and bear arms, but I do not believe that they have a right to use them irresponsibly," Metcalf wrote. "And I do believe their fellow citizens, by the specific language of the Second Amendment, have an equal right to enact regulatory laws requiring them to undergo adequate training and preparation for the responsibility of bearing arms."

Clearly this guy does not clearly understand the 2nd Amendment as translated by gun fetishists who fantasize about the country being invaded by a brown skinned army or terrorists that can only be repelled by their private arsenal full of military style weaponry.

And clearly any attempt to dissuade them of that ridiculous concept, even from within, will be met with anger and viscious attacks from crazed gun nuts.

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"It wasn't just an accident that we were almost bringing about the end of the world, that was the point."

I started this blog in November of 2004. And I started it right after George W. Bush beat John Kerry to start his second term.

In fact it is that victory which is the only reason that you are reading these words today.

Somebody had to speak out.

They had to speak out about politics, and religion, and more importantly religion's impact on our politics.

They had to talk about those subject that are always considered taboo in polite get-togethers, family holidays, and conversations with coworkers.

What Rachel is reporting is not new information to me, that was what I was blogging about way back during the Bush administration. I typed until my fingers bled, but it seemed to make little difference.

Until that is 2008 rolled around.

But we are by no means out of the woods yet.

There is a reason that you will rarely see me talk about Astrology, Scientology, Shintoism, Hinduism, or any number of other beliefs which I find ridiculous and potentially damaging. And that is because they do not present the kind of threat that fundamentalism in Christianity and Islam do to this country.

Currently these two, and to be honest mostly Christianity, are to blame for most of the problems we are dealing with right now with public policy toward education, women's health, terrorism, LGBT rights, foreign relations, and numerous others which may or may not seem directly tied to religion.

Like I have said before I do not care if you carry a rabbit's foot for good luck on your key chain, check your horoscope every morning before deciding whether to go into work or not, or if you drop to your knees in prayer when you are confused about what choice to make next. None of those are any of my business, until you force them into the public forum and use them to make public policy, or attempt to force those beliefs onto our childen.

THEN it is our business. And it is especially our business if you use superstitious nonsense as a factor when deciding when or where to wage war, who does or does not deserve to live, or whether the planet will be around long enough for us to worry about a little thing like man made climate change.

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Okay so yesterday I got a little busy toward the end of my day and I did not pay as much attention to the article over at New York Magazine as I should have.

For instance it completely escaped my notice that all of the bulbs on their Christmas tree image played bits of audio from Palin's book. I only played bulbs one and two, which I wrote about here.

However the rest of the bulbs also play audio that is just chock full of insanity.

Here, see for yourself.

Bulb 3: "Because hearing a word you don't want to hear is a big frickin dill."

Bulb 4: "I bet Charles Darwin never understood this. If the world could be described as truly survival of the fittest why would people collectively be struck with the spirit of generosity in December." (Or with the desire to buy valentines in February, or dress up as monsters on October, or patriotism in July, or a yearning for turkey in November.? Boy that Charles Darwin never understood anything!)

Bulb5: "Hooah! I couldn't have said it better myself!" (Uh, okay.)

Bulb 6: "It is Christ who empowers every act of good will toward men in our otherwise fallen hearts." (Yep, clearly there is NO good to be found in the hearts of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, or those Atheist bastards.)

Bulb 7: "It's about that little baby wrapped in those swaddling clothes, who arrived long before hope and change became political manipulations." (Methinks SOMEBODY has not read anything about Roman politics.)

Bulb 8: "Let's think this through. Without God as an objective standard, who's to say what's wrong and what's right?" (I guess to think that through you would have to have a brain, right?)

Bulb 9: "Many on they Left see faith and family as oppressive, But he Right sees them as indispensable." (Yep no religious or people with families on the Left. Sure called that one.)

Bulb 10: "Perhaps Christmas causes so much anger because the very name of the holiday broadcasts the name above all names." (Who's angry about Christmas? I freaking love Christmas! Well that is until some holy roller starts telling me I cannot love it unless I worship at their church of course.)

Bulb 11: "Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News network, once asked me 'What the 'bleep' is so offensive about putting up a plastic Jewish family on my lawn at Christmas time?'" (Oh, I bet Ailes is just thrilled to be mentioned in this turd of a book.)

Bulb 12: "So are you ready for some good old fashioned words? Here are some, work, honesty, courage, justice, thrift, perseverance." (And does the lady who grifts money from strangers for a living, lies constantly, quit her job halfway through, and has her books written for her know the meaning of these words?)

Bulb 13: "The logical result of Atheism, a result we have seen right in front of our eyes, in one of the world's oldest and proudest nations, is severe moral decay." (Well as the Atheist father of a young woman who has no drug problem, no illegitimate children, and who works hard for her money, I would just like to say, fuck you lady!)

Bulb14: "There are few things that anger a secular liberal atheist more than a horizontal plank intersecting a vertical plank, a cross, on public land." (I like how she felt she had to define what she was talking about, a cross, so that her listeners would understand it.)

Bulb 15: "The war on Christmas, is the tip of the spear of a larger battle to secularize our culture, and make true religious freedom a thing of America's past." (First there is no "war on Christmas, and second few secularists care what, or how, people worship, just so long as they keep it out of politics, and keep it in their churches, synagogues, and temples where it belongs.)

Bulb 16: "Walgreen's 24 page nationwide circular used the word 'holiday' 36 times without one mention of Christmas." (Clearly a store run by Satan.)


Bulb 17: "Yet we can't print enough currency, or food stamps, or free Obama-phone vouchers to compensate for failing families." (First, there was no "Obama-phone that was a free phone offered to the poor since before George Bush was elected. Second is she REALLY going to talk about "failing families" in a boo with HR name on it?)

Bulb 18: "You don;'t have to be intimidated by the political correctness police." (The what police?)

Bulb 19: "Sadly there are no Chick-fil-A restaurants in Alaska." (Okay, that one's true. But how is that related to ANYTHING concerning Christmas?)

That is some grade A moosepoop contained in this book my friends, and I have NO idea how ignorant one would have to be to legitimately wish to buy it. Though I could see it being purchased as a gag gift, a campfire starter kit, or a doorstop.

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Courtesy of the New York Times:

The correspondent for a disputed “60 Minutes'’ segment about the attack last year on the United States Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya, apologized on the air Friday morning. The reporter, Lara Logan, said it was a “mistake'’ to put on a security officer whose credibility has since been undermined by his diverging accounts of his actions that night.

Ms. Logan said on “CBS This Morning'’ that the news division was misled by the officer, Dylan Davies, adding, “We will apologize to our viewers, and we will correct the record on our broadcast on Sunday night.”

Mr. Davies appeared on the program, broadcast Oct. 27, and wrote a book about his experiences, "The Embassy House,” under the pseudonym Morgan Jones.

On Friday afternoon, the publisher of “The Embassy House,” Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster that specializes in conservative nonfiction, said in a statement that it would stop selling the book.

The apology by Ms. Logan followed the disclosure by The New York Times Thursday evening that Mr. Davies had provided the F.B.I. an account that contradicted the version of events he provided “60 Minutes.'’ On the show, and in the book, Mr. Davies presented a vivid, on-scene description of the attack, including his own role as a participant in the action.

But Mr. Davies told the F.B.I. that he was not on the scene until the next morning, according to two senior government officials who were briefed on the investigation of the attack. That account, the officials said, is consistent with an incident report produced by the Blue Mountain security business, which had been hired to protect United States interests in Benghazi and which employed Mr. Davies.

Well hell, THAT'S good news!

CBS News may have followed the lead of Fox News, but at least they have enough integrity to retract a bad story and apologize for providing false information.

Somehow I don't see that ever happening over at Fox.

Let's see the Republicans continue to make a mountain out of this Benghazi molehill now. At least one of them, Lindsay Graham, certainly shut his mouth in a hurry.

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Courtesy of Pakistan Today:

Malala Yousufzai’s recent book ‘I am Malala’ will be banned completely due to its ‘controversial’ contents in all private schools across the country, Pakistan Today has learnt.

The decision was announced by All Pakistan Private Schools Federation President Mirza Kashif on Wednesday who said children were idealising Malala and reading her book will leave them in a ‘confused’ state of mind.

“Our academics have thoroughly studied her (Malala’s) book and have concluded that reading that book will only confuse our children. Malala’s defence of Salmaan Rushdie in the name of freedom of expression, not writing Peace Be Upon Him after the name of prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and criticising the Quranic injunctions about the status of women in testifying as witnesses are only a few things which will challenge the ideological foundations of our next generation,” Kashif said while talking to Pakistan Today.

Interestingly, the private schools owners have taken the decision on their own while the government has nothing to do with the decision.

“It (the book) is not part of the curriculum and hence the government has nothing to do with our decision. The federation has taken the decision on its own in order to save children from getting confused,” Kashif added.

Further explaining the ban, he said, it would not be allowed to keep the book in any school library or use for co-curricular activities - essay writing or debating competitions.

“We can see from her writing that she has not authored the book herself. Even if she has, it creates a lot of doubt amongst our kids regarding religion which we, being Muslims, can never allow,” he added.

So Malala stands up for education in her country, takes a bullet to the face from the Taliban for her troubles, and this is how Pakistani educators respond?

I guess this is what's to be expected when religion takes precedence over education.

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And on a related topic.

For many Americans it simply does not matter how much data scientists present concerning the fact of evolution. Because if it creates that "extremely uncomfortable" feeling, or questions the foundation of their faith, they simply cannot allow themselves to consider that it is true.

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Miss Universe 2013 Gabriela Isler, from Venezuela, center, waves after winning the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, Russia, on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2013.


Read Full Article Source here
Author:
By Associated Press

Courtesy of Patheos:

The media failed to tell the real story of how we reached the shutdown and brink of default. To get what’s happening to the GOP and, to America, you need to understand the theology of the extremist frankly stupid and misinformed evangelical heartland. We don’t have a political problem. We have an evangelical stupidity problem. The Republican Party has fallen into the grip of an evangelical-led group of religious fundamentalists who are either true believers or who know how to cater to them. Now the experience of the hostage taking these “Christians” did in the shutdown is over, it’s worth figuring out how things got so crazy because they will again– until we admit who and what is at the root of our political dysfunction.

In the late 19th Century a battle began between fundamentalists and liberal Protestant theologians. The battle between those who claimed to believe in the Bible literally and those who wanted to bring historic fact, science and nuance to their faith raged on into the 20th Century. By the mid 20th Century the liberals had won the argument but they lost the popular vote as it were. But for all its popularity fundamentalism was no longer intellectually respectable. So it was rebranded by a core group of image conscious preachers and evangelists as “evangelicalism” to take the edge off the scorn reserved for faith rooted in biblical literalism.

The echoes of the bitter theological battle left the evangelicals feeling embattled and adversarial. Then from the mid 20th Century forward, Billy Graham, and many other evangelicals (including my late evangelist father and religious right founder, Francis Schaeffer) convinced a huge swath of America to convert to born-again faith.

While the evangelical camp grew the mainline denominations shrank. The fine print of conversion to a hot literal faith included a directive to not to trust facts (the way those liberals did) but to look for special information which was visible only to the faithful. This way of thinking led inadvertently to an us-or-them view, revealing those with whom you disagree to be not just wrong, but lost, or even willfully evil. When politicians operate from this mindset, the agenda is no longer political. It’s a holy war. While the Tea Party gets blamed, there tends to be silence about these folks’ religion. But to cover the story of the takeover of the GOP by extremists without delving into the beliefs behind it is inexcusable. I’m not anti-religious. I’ll be in church next Sunday. I’m just against the insanity of literalistic, retributive theology that’s the basis of the bitterness evident in the recent shutdown and near default.

The evangelical subculture has bought into an angry God whom we must placate by being saved through a revivalist born-again formula. This pits the true believer against not just science but any information that comes through nonapproved channels. There are two kinds of facts: theirs and ours. This theology has trained millions of brains to choose between God and truth. The folks that believe in a literal Bible don’t believe in evolution, in global warming, in gay rights or, we now know, even in increasing the debt limit. These are not theological issues per se but the spirit of sectarian warfare is at the heart of the bitter refusals to be swayed by mere facts.

This of course is exactly what I have been talking about for the last nine years as well. The Tea Party is just the latest incarnation of a nasty little group that has been attacking our fundamental rights for decades.

And they are part of the underlying darkness which continues to permeate our politics and endangers our future.

The more we recognize this, and report on it, the harder it is for them to operate in secret, and the quicker they will be removed from power. Perhaps not soon, but someday.

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The video introduction that plays right before Palin takes the stage is filled with imagery from her SarahPAC funded bust trips and photo-ops, with snippets of her voice saying vague yet patriotic things, and the voices of others, including Bill Clinton and Ted Cruz, saying complimentary things about her.

It ends with the image of that bear standing on its hind legs, and the words "It's YOU who inspire ME!"

Which of course should be translated to say "It's YOU who paid my way here."

Palin goes on to kiss Iowa's ass hard enough to leave lip shaped bruises and then manufactures a mythology about loving Phyllis Schafly as a teenager and having a "Concerned Women for America" decal on her window while in college. Which is most likely a complete fabrication, and simply another attempt by Palin to shape her past for the audience to whom she is speaking.

Of course she calls Schafly the original "Mama Grizzly." (How many times has she used this line now?)

Palin then goes on to conflate freedom in America with religion, and that leads to the "War on Christmas," which "coincidentally" allows her to talk about her new book.

"I say in a very jolly Christmasy way that enough is enough, enough is enough of this politically correct police out there that is acting to erode our freedom to celebrate and exercise our faith." is one such quote.

There are other quotes, taken directly from the book as well. (Many of them I reported on yesterday.) And they are just as ridiculous here as we thought they were then.

Apparently Palin did not receive the memo about the fact that CBS had to retract their Benghazi story, so she goes on to attack the Atheists as having faith in a government that allowed the IRS to target the Tea party, allowed the NSA to spy on its citizens, and, of course, could not be bothered to defend the consulate in Benghazi. Not to mention tossing out war veterans from seeing monuments during the government shutdown. (For any of you who may yet have wondered if this pathetic, hateful creature had any shame, I think you can put that question to rest now.)

There are also attacks on Obamacare (Sham-wow advertising, train wreck, losing health plans.), attacks on the President's policies (Using the problems created by Bush to do it,), and attacks on intellectuals. (Hey!)

Palin keeps referring to the "Church of Big Government" and clumsily attempts to suggest that IT is where the intellectuals and non-religious go to worship. All while suggesting that our "problems" are due to a lack of faith in God.

Palin also pimps the Tea Party and slams the Republicans who are falling out of love with them, claiming that the Teabagger message is the message that will repair what she sees are the problems with the country. She also says that we are going to soon see the end of the "Era of Obama." (Yes, in 2016, just in time to usher in the "Era of Hillary.")

Then Palin compares the national debt to slavery, after first assuring her audience that it is not racist.(Nice try.)

After this Palin decides to pepper her speech with references to her family, playing hockey ("Haven't we all been that hockey goalie, deflecting as many of the radical Left's pucks as possible?") , playing basketball (Piper), and other tidbits to remind them that she is still just that small town gal from Wasilla.

The speech is essentially one long screech, chock full of regurgitated Palinisms, and attacks on Obama, all with the intent of rousing the crowd to vote in the 2014 elections and, of course, buy her book. She stumbles a lot, and seems to lose her place more than once, always recovering by increasing the volume of her voice as if making a point.

All in all it is a rather transparent, and pathetic performance. However considering her audience, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, I doubt they will notice, or care.

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I always find it laughable when religious people refer to Atheists as arrogant.

We are anything but. We openly admit how little we know and how willing we are to have our minds changed by new information.

All that we know for certain is that the answer to the great mysteries of life were absolutely not answered thousands of years ago by primitive desert dwellers.

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I think this is probably one of the best illustrations I have seen that explains what is happening in our country right now.

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