Bibles, hypocrites, and venn diagrams

Changing or misquoting history damns you to repeat it

 

A Dump Truck of News

The GOP debate from several viewpoints.  Fact checking. Lack of presidential qualities. And how much nuking and bombing do they want?  Because fear works... or at least it did during the Bush era.  Will it work again? Because the GOP really really really wants to start WWIII because that's what they're good at.  War.  Because it's good business.

Tom Tomorrow.

Who let the fascist dogs out?  The GOP thought they could contain them....kept feeding them raw meat... encouraging them to distrust government...

(And why AREN'T we talking about the Saudi role in terrorism?)

If everyone is going to carry a gun, we need this new invention to stop bleeding to be a mandatory item too.

Homes on Mars.

This El Nino seems to be extra special.

Badass women of WWII.

Liberals live in their own bubble too.

George Bush ignored several pre-9/11 warnings to avoid a paper trail... but we knew this.

The melting of the permafrost brings all sorts of things to light.

The Bible?  Or the Koran?

Mr. Rogers was truly an excellent man.

George Takei takes on mayor who thought interment was a good idea.

British Muslims tell off Daesh.

States' rights ... and wrongs

You go, Georgia!

A Georgia man panicked parents and children at a local park and baseball field by randomly walking around and displaying his gun to anyone he encountered in the parking lot. According to witnesses who spoke with WSB-TV, the man wandered around the Forsythe County park last Tuesday night showing his gun to strangers, telling them “there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Just what exactly did you think would happen when you pass these kinds of laws? That people would behave in a civilized manner?  Really?

You go, South Carolina!

SC GOP candidate: Women cause ’95 percent’ of divorces by loving their kids too much

And

SC Republican wants to end public schools: Nothing ‘in the Bible about state education’

And you go, Tennessee!

TENNESSEE PASSES BILL ALLOWING THE BULLYING OF LGBT STUDENTS IN THE NAME OF ‘RELIGIOUS FREEDOM’

You go, Alabama!

Alabama’s chief justice: Buddha didn’t create us so First Amendment only protects Christians

You go, New York!

 NYC cyclist arrested for using cellphone to film cop, told iPhones are ‘being used as guns’

ARRRrrrrrrrrrr....

Talk like a pirate day... or maybe not.



Damned females getting all the jobs!  Or something.

Dogs.

Roman tile floor found in Turkey.

Russia has a huge site of diamonds... enough to flood the world with sparklies.  And drop the bottom out of the diamond business....

Put a burka on it!

Soon, EVERYONE will have a giant marble to run their electronics, their house, their car.....



The Bible is more violent than the Koran.

Update:  Found over via Bryan of Why Now?'s place:


Top Ten Pickup lines for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day

(We came up with these in an effort to interest The Other Dave (Letterman) in TLAPD. His staff liked 'em, but alas, his show was"dark" the week of Sept. 19.)

10 . Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?

9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?

8. Come on up and see me urchins.

7. Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.

6. I'd love to drop anchor in your lagoon.

5. Pardon me, but would ya mind if I fired me cannon through your porthole?

4. How'd you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?

3. Ya know, darlin’, I’m 97 percent chum free.

2. Well blow me down?

And the number one pickup line for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day is …

1. Prepare to be boarded.

Bonus pickup lines (when the ones above don't work, as they often won't)

They don’t call me Long John because my head is so big.

You’re drinking a Salty Dog? How’d you like to try the real thing?

Wanna shiver me timbers?

I’ve sailed the seven seas, and you’re the sleekest schooner I’ve ever sighted.

Brwaack! Polly want a cracker? … Oh, wait. That’s for Talk Like a PARROT Day.

That’s the finest pirate booty I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Let's get together and haul some keel.

That’s some treasure chest you’ve got there.

Top Ten Pickup Lines for the Lady Pirates

By popular demand ...

10. What are YOU doing here?

9. Is that a belayin' pin in yer britches, or are ye ... (this one is never completed)

8. Come show me how ye bury yer treasure, lad!

7. So, tell me, why do they call ye, "Cap'n Feathersword?"

6. That's quite a cutlass ye got thar, what ye need is a good scabbard!

5. Aye, I guarantee ye, I've had a twenty percent decrease in me "lice ratio!"

4. I've crushed seventeen men's skulls between me thighs!

3. C'mon, lad, shiver me timbers!

2. RAMMING SPEED!

...and the number one Female Pirate Pick-up Line:

1. You. Pants Off. Now!

Napoleon was right.

"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain." Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France.

Albert Einstein: “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”

Romney's 'tax' plan.

Ann Romney's horse behaves itself.

Climate change.  And North Carolina decides to deny science.

Obamacare helps women.

US resists losing control of the Internet... to a UN agency.

Murray's law.

Traditional biblical marriage.

Jim Hightower warns us that police will be using drones. What could possibly go wrong?

Aaannnnddd... here we are. Birth defects in Iraq. All that depleted uranium in Bush and Cheney's wonderful awesome bunker buster bombs has arrived. War crimes anyone?

Bill Moyers Makes It Clear: Requiring An ID Is Voter Suppression And Unconstitutional:

 

You can make any of the holy books

Justify almost anything:

Only 14 members in this church

So what better to bring in new members but by a good old-fashioned book burning?



I love the overalls... means he's a true heartlander, right?

h/t to mf of Monkeyfister.

Wouldn't that take out the entire New Testament?

Conservative Bible Project Cuts Out Liberal Passages

Blog sprinkles

When you really really want to have a digger toy that works.

Economic downturns force people to make cheaper cuts of beef taste delicious.

Oh, SHUT UP. Who the fuck cares what you feeling right now, Georgie? We're still digging out from the wreckage you caused during your eight horribly long years in office.

Bibles burned in Afghanistan ... by our military. Where are the frothing writhing religious wingnuts on this?:

The US army in Afghanistan has burned Bibles printed in local languages, a US colonel in Afghanistan has said, amid concerns they could have been used to try to convert Afghans.

"My understanding is that the [military] leadership confiscated these Bibles so that they could not be distributed around Afghanistan," Colonel Greg Julian told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

"It was their best judgement at the time, that the best way to deal with it, was to destroy them and I understand that they were burnt."

Al Jazeera broadcast footage earlier this month showing troops apparently discussing how best to convert Afghans to their faith.

How very odd: Gasoline prices swing higher before holiday. Who could have predicted this?!

Obama and Cheney at 40 paces:



Keith Olbermann's special comment:



The party that loves America so much that they'd never do anything to hurt it for partisan reasons?

The NRSC has just plowed another $750,000 into Coleman’s recount effort, raising questions about whether GOP donors are funding an effort they know is doomed merely to keep the seat empty as long as possible.

Asked about this, Van Dongen said the goal was to put Coleman in the seat, but added: “Is it better empty than in Franken’s hands? Hell, yeah.”

The horrors of a 'preventive-detention law'. President Obama, are you actually considering this?

And a Bible instead of the Constitution!

For those who don't get the reference, Herbert Hoover's quote, a year before the 1929 crash. Inspired by Fearguth's post on American Street.

No 70 virgins?

70 RAISINS?

There seems to be a discrepancy in the history and translation of the Koran:

Islam watchers blogged all weekend about news that a secret archive of ancient Islamic texts had surfaced after 60 years of suppression. Andrew Higgins' Wall Street Journal report that the photographic record of Koranic manuscripts, supposedly destroyed during World War II but occulted by a scholar of alleged Nazi sympathies, reads like a conflation of the Da Vinci Code with Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail.

Why would the Nazis care? I think they were doing all sorts of work setting up for their 1000 year Reich and were into all sorts of research. (Hard work creating your own reality, you know.) Why would they keep a variant of the Koran yet suppress it?:

Why were the Nazis so eager to suppress Koranic criticism? Most likely, the answer lies in their alliance with Islamist leaders, who shared their hatred of the Jews and also sought leverage against the British in the Middle East.

What will happen now?

When the Atlantic Monthly story on Koranic criticism appeared nine years ago, author Toby Lester expected early results from the Yemeni finds.

Von Bothmer, Puin, and other scholars will finally have a chance to scrutinize the texts and to publish their findings freely - a prospect that thrills Puin. "So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Koran is just God's unaltered word," he says. "They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Koran has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Koran has a history too. The Sana'a fragments will help us to do this.

In 2005, Puin published a collection of articles under the title, Die dunklen Anfange. Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und fruhen Geschichte des Islam ("The dark beginnings: new research on the origin and early history of Islam," Hans Schiller Verlag, 2005). This drew on the work of the pseudonymous German philologist "Christoph Luxenburg", who sought to prove that incomprehensible passages in the Koran were written in Syriac-Aramaic rather than Arabic. Luxenburg's thesis became notorious for explaining that the "virgins" provided to Islamic jihadis in paradise were only raisins. The Koran, according to the research of Puin and his associates, copied a great deal of extant Christian material.

[snip]

The Islamic world is forced to adopt an openly irrational stance, employing its power to intimidate scholars and frustrate the search for truth. It is impossible for Muslims to propose a dialogue with Western religions, as 38 Islamic scholars did in an October 13 letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders, and rule the subject of text criticism out of the discussion.

[snip]

Throughout the Internet, Islamist sites denounce the work of a handful of marginalized scholars as evidence of a plot by Christian missionaries to sabotage Islam. What the Muslim world cannot conceal is its vulnerability and fear in the face of Koranic criticism. In the great battle for converts through the Global South, this may turn out to be a paralyzing disadvantage.

Sounds vaguely like some of our own homegrown fundamentalists who become rabid and froth at the mouth when challenged on biblical translation....

We need this really big arena where all religious literalists can gather clutching their own specific translation of their holy book. Then they can attack each other with their gospels and hymnals. Last one standing wins....

Update: Suggested in comments by DistributorCap:

Because we are entering the holiday season

I give you "The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses" By David Wong and Owen Ball.

If the Bible had been written by King Leonidas and the rest of the Spartans from 300, it would probably read pretty much the same as it does now.

It turns out, the Bible is already chock full of ass kicking. Here are the verses that make us want to take to the streets and put some unbelievers to the sword.

It has pictures! And Bible verses! And ass kicking!

Did I say pictures?

I heard this woman on the radio

Trying to make her case for the removal of books from school libraries that she found threatening or offensive, ones that described sexual activity, incest, rape, drug use. Linda Lopez wants to remove books that do not agree with her translation of the Bible, which she says is the literal word of God.

Um... Has she READ the Bible? All that sexual activity, incest, rape, and drug use is in the Bible and how! Lots more about odd rules for preparing food, ways to treat slaves and wives, stoning people for transgressions we no longer think of as crimes.....

By her definition of threatening books, the Bible would be on the list.

And how on earth would she 'clean up' the library? There would be no books in it at all.

Start with your own family, Linda Lopez. You cannot sweep all difficult situations away from your kids, you cannot protect them from the world. The only thing you can control is your relationship with your kids. Faith should not be so weak that the parent must run ahead trying to change things, block things so it is never challenged. The children's religion should support them in the world not make them afraid of it. Religion should have muscles, should be able to stand up for itself. Ideas should strengthen it, not threaten it.

Isn't God supposed to be Truth?

Texas Senate passes Bible teaching in public schools

And it's now going to the governor to be signed. Steve Bates at the Yellow Doggerel Democrat has the Democratic reply.

Now THIS will fix premarital sex, teenage misbehavior, crime, illegal aliens, the health care crisis, the war in Iraq....

Update 5/26: Steve corrects me: the reply [he] published is that of an individual State Democratic Executive Committee member. She does not represent the Texas Democratic Party on this issue.

Virgil Goode is afraid of Muslims

and promises to beat them off with his Bible.

TPM Muckraker has more:
"...Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) sent a short letter to supporters warning that the U.S. must close its borders to guard against the influx of still more Muslims. In it, he also proudly recounts his retort to a Muslim student who asked him why he did not include the Koran with The Ten Commandments on his wall. "As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, The Koran is not going to be on the wall of my office," he says he told the student."