Hurricanes hardly happen...

Reddit has a discussion about emergency and hurricane preparedness.

Bloomberg News: Romney ‘rented’ Mormon church’s exemption to defer taxes for 15 years

SOTP!

One thing about field biology.... itching.

Sweden wants your trash.

Friday cats on Monday:  Grumpy cat gets tickled.

Cat turns archaeologist.

Liars and Truth-tellers

Tumbler overtaking blogging?

Bernie Sanders speaks the truth.

Counting the lies:



The entitlement of the Mormon male.  So apparently lying and ignoring his church's precepts to gain power is ok.  But it's fine, because he was a severely conservative ... no, liberal...no, conservative... governor.



Obama will come into his own?  I do hope so.

Mars panorama.

Silly brain.

The Five-Year-Old's Guide to the Galaxy

Dabs and dollops

How not to be a creepy harasser.  What a GOP controlled government would be like for women.  Besides... there is no war on women by the Republicans. Nope, nope, no way.

Eat less meat and save the world.

Emergency responder  cyber cockroach... which will inevitably be used to spy on humans....

Romney's religion will control him more than he acknowledges.

Hungary tosses out Monsanto and the IMF.  And speaking of Monsanto: Roundup Herbicide Linked To Parkinson’s-Related Brain Damage

Ralph Reed:  Hypocrite

Selling out the public education system.

 How to cope with suddenly being homeless.

The fun never ends

Well... it's one way to get that tithing money...Mormon Church 'owns unregulated gun sale website'

 Did Mitt Romney Take the 2009 Swiss Bank Account Amnesty and An Ex-Mormon Describes Some 'Secrets' Of The Church... that just might affect a president Romney's actions...

A State-By-State Guide to 2012’s Anti-Choice Laws (So Far) and the shift to deny even rape and incest victims an abortion.

 Missouri Votes to Allow Christians to Discriminate Against Non-Believers

 Sobering: Almost Half of Americans Die Close to Penniless

From markets to math

Watch this graph to watch financial market insanity:

This astonishing GIF comes from Nanex, and shows the amount of high-frequency trading in the stock market from January 2007 to January 2012. (Which means that the Knightmare craziness of last week is not included.)

I bet this school cut back on sex education as well, what do you think? Get Tested Or Get Out: School Forces Pregnancy Tests on Girls, Kicks out Students Who Refuse or are Pregnant

Protecting your identity online and more.

Merika the Beautiful.

Water Wars.

Finding lost pyramids with Google Earth?

Romney's Mormon sense of entitlement includes lying.



The gun.

If you don't have a facebook account you are a terrorist!... or just weird.

A creationist science text book.  And their distrust of set theory.

Things that go bump in the night...

And it's NOT Halloween...

Unexplained radiation coming from a shipping container.

Snakes in Florida that can eat deer.

Bank of America forecloses on house lost in hurricane.

Living in an oligarchy.

Greeks and Germans and the world economy.

The House of Representatives proving they are completely unable to think of how to create jobs.

Learning what living on 30 dollars a week for food is like.

Getting excommunicated by the Mormon church.

Reaching 7 billion people on earth and realizing that number doesn't affect an attitude change in those demanding that every sperm/egg union is sacred.

Blog sprinkles

Hilarious signs

Mofo snakes!:

THE EVERGLADES, Florida (Reuters) - The population of Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes make a home and breed in the fragile wetlands, officials said on Thursday.

[snip]

"They eat things that we care about," said Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park biologist, as he showed a captured, 15-foot (4.6-meter) Burmese python to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who was on his first fact-finding mission to the Everglades since the Obama administration took office.

With Snow maintaining a strong grip on its head, the massive snake hissed angrily at Salazar and the other federal officials who gathered around it at a recreation area off Alligator Alley in the vast saw grass prairie. It took two other snake wranglers to control the python's body.

"A snake this size could eat a small deer or a bobcat without too much trouble," Snow told Salazar before the secretary boarded an airboat for a tour of the Everglades.

How about small kids and elderly parents?!!1!? One more reason not to visit Florida....

How about making fuel efficient cars, you dimwits?

Industry Fears U.S. May Quit New Car Habit

Hunker down! The Mormons are coming!!

Blame already being prepared for the next inevitable terrorist attack.

Digby discusses an intelligent assessment by Richard Clarke about the Bush administration's reaction to 9/11. I think Clarke is being too kind. I believe the Bush administration had been waiting with bated breath to see what excuse (any excuse) they could use to attack Iraq, and although the attack was horrific, they used every bit of it to push their Neocon political agenda that had been waiting in the background for a decade. A decade. They just slotted tab A into slot B and they had their war.

The George Tiller this woman knew and loved.

Ameritaliban?

This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today. From the introduction to Part 1:

"Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their pow

Mingora, Pakistan in the Swat Valley destroyed during the fighting. The Taliban must be pleased.

Does this mean there'll be a Second Lady and a Third?

Or that Michelle had better have more kids?

John Aravosis of AmericaBlog:

Did the Mormons baptize Obama's mother, after her death, without his knowledge or consent?

How nice to know that when I die, I'll become a Mormon. I guess as long as I'm guaranteed my own planet....

Hatred beaten back

Two steps forward, one step back:

California officials will investigate whether the Mormon church accurately described its role in a campaign to ban gay marriage in the state.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission said Monday that a complaint by a gay rights group merits further inquiry.

Executive director Roman Porter says the decision does not mean any wrongdoing has been determined.

Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, accuses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of failing to report the value of work it did to support Proposition 8.

A representative from the Salt Lake City-based church could not be reached for comment.

And:

A Miami-Dade circuit judge Tuesday declared Florida's 30-year-old ban on gay adoption unconstitutional, allowing a North Miami man to adopt two foster kids he has raised since 2004.

In a 53-page order that sets the stage for what could become a constitutional showdown, Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman permitted 47-year-old Frank Gill to adopt the 4- and 8-year-old boys he and his partner have raised since just before Christmas four years ago. A child abuse investigator had asked Gill to care for the boys temporarily; they were never able to return to their birth parents.

''This is the forum where we try to heal children, find permanent families for them so they can get another chance at what every child should know and feel from birth, and go on to lead productive lives,'' Lederman said in court before releasing the order. ``We pray for them to thrive, but that is a word we rarely hear in dependency court.''

''These children are thriving; it is uncontroverted,'' the judge added.

University of Phoenix

Apollo Group Inc. has agreed to pay $1.89 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination against non-Mormon employees at its University of Phoenix Online division.

The amount of the settlement, which still requires court approval, is believed to be the largest in a religious-discrimination case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to EEOC regional attorney Mary Jo O'Neill.

The class-action lawsuit, filed two years ago, covers 52 former enrollment counselors who charged that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were favored in sales leads, promotions, tuition waivers and more at the for-profit school.

[snip]

The University of Phoenix and Apollo were long dogged by murmurs of Mormon influence. Apollo's longtime chief executive officer, Todd Nelson, was active in the church, and the company was said to heavily recruit church members as enrollment counselors.

I wonder if they teach how to hate gays at this school as well?..

The ugliness hatched by the Mormon Church and the Catholic Knights of Columbus

Will be challenged in court:

Reporting from San Francisco and Los Angeles -- After losing at the polls, gay rights supporters filed three lawsuits Wednesday asking the California Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8, an effort the measure's supporters called an attempt to subvert the will of voters.

"If they want to legalize gay marriage, what they should do is bring an initiative themselves and ask the people to approve it," said Frank Schubert, co-chairman of the Proposition 8 campaign. "But they don't. They go behind the people's back to the courts and try and force an agenda on the rest of society."

Lawyers for same-sex couples argued that the anti-gay-marriage measure was an illegal constitutional revision -- not a more limited amendment, as backers maintained -- because it fundamentally altered the guarantee of equal protection. A constitutional revision, unlike an amendment, must be approved by the Legislature before going to voters.

The state high court has twice before struck down ballot measures as illegal constitutional revisions, but those initiatives involved "a broader scope of changes," said former California Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grodin, who publicly opposed Proposition 8 and was part of an earlier legal challenge to it. The court has suggested that a revision may be distinguished from an amendment by the breadth and the nature of the change, Grodin said.

They've just exposed what their churches really stand for, and it isn't tolerance, understanding and the core belief that God is Love.

The Catholic Knights of Columbus and the Mormon church have just proved they are supporters of hate and exclusion, that discrimination drives their churches. They wanted this proposition, an amendment that actually DENIES civil rights, written into the California Constitution.

Why?

Don't give me the lies and stupid shit that schools and children are under attack, that churches will be sued. Marriage between gays has been law since May. Have these things happened? No.

So why?

Because these churches need a scapegoat to beat to death in the village square to unite their faithful.

That is it, plain and simple.

And how utterly cynical and ugly.

I just don't see why Proposition 8 is so threatening to Mormons

The LDS First Presidency announced its support for Proposition 8 in a letter read in every Mormon congregation. Since then, California LDS leaders have prompted members to sign up volunteers, raise money, pass out brochures produced by outsiders and distribute lawn signs and bumper stickers. Bishops have devoted whole Sunday school classes and the weekly Relief Society and priesthood meetings to outlining arguments against same-sex marriage. Some have pointedly asked members for hefty financial donations, based on tithing. Others have even asked members to stand or raise their hands to publicly indicate their support.

Gary Lawrence, writing in the online Meridian Magazine, compared opponents of Proposition 8 to those who sided with Lucifer against Jesus in the pre-mortal existence. Others have questioned such members' faith and religious commitment, accusing them of undermining the prophet.

Literature written by Proposition 8 proponents is freely distributed in Mormon wards, giving the impression the church approves it, but much of it is "misinformation," said Morris Thurston, an LDS attorney in Orange County.
Thurston has circulated a point-by-point refutation to an anonymously authored document that has been widely disseminated by Mormons, "Six Consequences . . . If Proposition 8 Fails." Thurston argues that most of its arguments are either untrue or misleading.
He welcomes critiques of his analysis, but some have been hostile and many question his motives.
"I feel like I am entitled to my opinions, especially when they involve legal matters," Thurston said, "and I don't think I should be compared to Satan's minions."

From someone who was a Mormon:

My point is this: the Mormon Church is pulling out the stops. These kinds of wedge issues help them retain members by engaging them in "causes" that make people feel special and on God's side. There is no discussion in church or outside about fairness, the Golden Rule, and Unforeseen Legal Ramifications. Being part of a crusade is exciting... and never mind who gets hurt!

Update 10/27: Steve of SteveAudio has a wonderful post on the people who are against Proposition 8.

Update 10/30: Emptywheel of Firedoglake tells the story of her experience with Mormons and their hatred of gays.

John Aravosis of Americablog notes: Legal Adviser to Prop 8 Campaign Compares Gays Who Want to Get Married to Nazi Germany.

Update 11/3: Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors posts a video.

Writing about religion can make you lose your faith

Stephen Bates of the Guardian:

I never wanted to be a religious affairs correspondent. I had always regarded it as a slippers and pipe sort of a job, to be given to ageing hacks in beige cardigans working their way towards retirement.

[snip]

Anyway, weren’t we all pretty ecumenical these days? Didn’t religious chaps and chapesses think the best of everyone, even those not of a like mind? How wrong I was. This was in the days before 9/11, George Bush’s election and the dawning realisation of the murderous impulses of religiously inspired Islamic terrorism, but I soon discovered there were quite enough feuds to be going on with even in the good old Church of England. The first inkling was when I opened what was to become my favourite religious periodical, the English Churchman, a deeply conservative publication which still calls the Pope the Anti-Christ, publishes the odd article suggesting slavery was not really such a bad institution and argues that Margaret Thatcher’s worst mistake was allowing shops to open on Sundays.

[snip]

The religious correspondent is the one specialist on the Guardian who has to justify his specialism to the sceptics, on the paper and outside (“Why do we have to read this rubbish?”), and to our many religiously inclined readers (“Why are you always so hostile to religion?”). The Guardian actually gives more space to a wider range of religious (and non-religious) opinions than any other paper. That is precisely because religion is important as a philosophical, political, cultural, social and historical motivating force across the world and, despite the best efforts of atheists and secularists – some as fundamentalist in their beliefs as the most dogmatic religionist – will remain so.

Now I am moving on. It was time to go. What faith I had, I’ve lost, I am afraid – I’ve seen too much, too close. A young Methodist press officer once asked me earnestly whether I saw it as my job to spread the Good News of Jesus. No, I said, that’s the last thing I am here to do.

I wonder if he ever reported on the Pastafarians...

It would have been a lot more fun and tasty than writing about the weirdness of preacherman Huckabee's son, the necessity of Congress in "Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith" or the tenets of the Mormon religion....

Muslim to Mormon

There's only a few vowels and consonants difference....

John Aravosis of Americablog:

Romney can't have it both ways. Either religion in politics matters or it doesn't. Romney says it does matter, but only when someone else's religion is the subject of scrutiny. His religion only matters when he intends to jam it down our throats after he's elected. Then again, both ways is the way Romney lies it best. First pro-gay, then anti-gay. First pro-gun, then anti-gun. First pro-choice, then pro-life. And now he's flip-flopping on whether the religion of a nominee is a relevant factor in their employment.

Remember:

Isn't it strange how some people rabidly support the war

When there is no chance they'll ever have to fight in it?

Glenn Greenwald of Salon has an article up about Romney's manly adventure cheering on the Vietnam War while doing all he could to stay far away from signing up:

More repugnantly still, both the NYT article and accompanying video contain all sorts of quotes from Romney and his co-missionaries complaining about how very hard life was for them in France because it was so difficult to convert people, without any sense of how that "hardship" compared to their fellow citizens' fighting and dying in the Vietnam jungle. It's hard to put into words what twisted self-absorption and lack of empathy is required to wallow in such self-pity -- exactly the same strain that led Romney earlier this year to equate his sheltered sons' work on his presidential campaign with other Americans' sons and daughters who are in the Iraq war that Romney so loves and exploits for political gain.

Romney's draft-avoidance isn't quite as shameful as Super Tough Guy Rudy Giuliani's, whose deferment request was denied in 1969, thus placing him at imminent risk of being drafted, when he somehow convinced the federal judge for whom he was clerking "to write to the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and reclassification as an 'essential' civilian employee." The very idea that a first-year judicial clerk, just out law school, is "essential" for anything is absurd on its face. Yet the swaggering tough guy Rudy Giuliani used that blatant lie to ensure that someone other than himself was sent to fight in Vietnam.

But Romney's record is hardly better. Although he claims he was ultimately convinced by his dad that the war was wrong, he spent most of the war cheering it on -- from the same safe and sheltered distance where one finds most of our right-wing tough guy warriors today, the ones who understandably recognize themselves in both Romney and Giuliani. Needless to say, a centerpiece of both of their campaigns is how "tough" and courageously pro-war they are.

Censorship by two Mormons

Taylor Marsh's experience in tangling with two Mormons she worked with who censored her site without permission.


(Via the General)

Mormons, Carlyle, Mitt Romney and Bush

Ripley at Zen Cabin has done the research:

In case you missed it, here’s a dKos diary I wrote about 18 months ago, noting the curious representation of BYU grads in the Bush administration – esp. in Legal and Environmental positions. I also mentioned some connections to Exxon-Mobil and Diebold.

That diary was inspired by an innocuous report I ran across about D. Kyle Sampson taking the Chief of Staff spot at the DOJ. Needless to say, it’s become semi-relevant again and received some renewed attention. That, of course, led me to start digging around again.

After connecting dots, Ripley notes:

So, Romney’s former investment firm, Bain Capital Partners – along with Thomas Lee Partners and the Carlyle Group – are under investigation by the DOJ, which is littered with BYU grads. I won’t go so far as to say there might be cause to claim conflict of interest, but it makes me wonder how far these investigations will progress. Granted, with Sampson’s exit, things may change but I’d still cast a wary eye on any conclusions in this matter. (I need to do some digging on these particular cases, so don’t assume there’s a conspiracy, yet. I just wanted to put this thread out there for thought.)

And after frightening us all, Ripley says:

Again, I don’t know, yet, if there’s really any cause for genuine concern – and I certainly don’t have an axe to grind with LDS (at least not at the moment). But I find it curious that BYU and LDS are so heavily represented in the Bush administration, esp. in light of Romney’s Presidential candidacy. The question I have to ask is this:

Is Bush (or Carlyle/Bain/LDS, et al) pushing for a Romney Presidency? If so, why? I’ve read claims that LDS isn’t very particular about where its members earn their money, as long as they’re tithing. Is LDS making a slowmotion power grab? How is it that Romney raised more funds than his opponents last quarter? sure, MCain is a dead-stick candidate, but still…

So. Long skirts, covered heads, multiple submissive wives, chickens in the backyard, large families.... What's not to like with the incoming new world order?

Don't think the fundamentalists are gonna like this.....

Bush has a Mormon Cabal?

I didn't know they were that into corruption and governments...

Ripley did the research a while ago.

Update: Speaking of Mormons, Trifecta at New Pairodimes talks about the puff piece on Mitt Romney that Hugh Hewitt has written.

Don't even think about bashing on my door at eight in the morning!

Aussie John Safran takes it personally when Mormons knock on his door persistently and flies to Salt Lake City to promote atheism.