Facing the Music

Being a prominent critic of PZ Myer’s isn’t all roses and daffodils.  There’s the associated turmoil of being slandered, mocked and marginalized by the corpulent trained seals in PZ’s traveling circus show.

I’m running with the circus seal analogy today because that’s what naturally springs to my mind when I imagine all the misshapen #atheismplus girls in sundresses feeding PZ Myers grapes and wiping the resultant spittle off his beard.

Some folks wonder why I brave the hoary mobs of PZ’s minion.  To quote the acclaimed ex-FTB author Al Stefanelli,

For one, I am fucking retired. Retired, meaning I don’t blog for money, don’t write for money and I don’t go on speaking gigs. Additionally, I know I am none of these things they call me and the people in my life that matter to me also know it. Their rants, accusations and attacks against me, as well as their willful ignorance and persistent desire to take my sporadic and occasional writing completely out of context have no bearing on my personal happiness. It’s Game On.

Game On

I just took the time to check in over at PZ’s website, aka the No-Tell Motel in Morris, and the post with the anonymous serial rape charges against Michael Shermer is still up.  PZ has frozen the comments at just over 4000 while simultaneously mentioning the anticipated (subsequently delivered and now fully broached) Shermer legal action.

Now we sit back and wait.  Maybe @mykeru will start a reverse countdown clock for us to watch while we wait for an army of Brooks Brothers lawyers to swarm Morris?  He’s been pretty reliable and manages to post way more content than most of the people on the BlockBot list who have to simultaneously manage to write and send all those threatening emails to Rebecca Watson (in order to maintain his special gravitas).

Unfinished Business

I never did find that microwave popcorn I went hunting for the other day here in Germany.  The stuff that I did manage to locate was a variation that included a sweetener for a sugar flavored popcorn experience.  I just want salt and maybe some well imagined artificial butter flavoring.  Worst part is that I could have picked it up over in Holland the other day if I hadn’t forgotten after leaving my favorite “coffee shop”.  I told you at the start, it isn’t all roses and daffodils.

Edited to add (I am not making this up): WordPress auto-suggested the tags “circus seal” and “Rebecca Watson”.  So much win.

Enjoy.

GOP Irrelevancy

Good morning all,

First off. housekeeping. Woke up 55 years old this morning. Happy birthday to me.

I’m just old enough to remember when all the “lazy blacks” in Detroit were so busy making cars that that moniker didn’t work so well.   A lot of people I remember fondly from my youth had good union jobs and lived well. Then Reagan came along and garrotted the unions in 1980.  Many believe Reagan also killed Disco, but Disco never died. Reagan stuffed it in a duffel bag and sent it to Guantanamo.

In any event, the country has been on a Republican built road-to-Hell since then.  Republican greed totally destroyed any chance for those of my generation to implement the dreams and ideals we all grew up cherishing.  Our fathers had just landed on the moon and we were poised for Mars just about the time the crazy old man got hold of the wheel and steered us off into the direction of Star Wars instead.

There’s still a ray of hope for our children and grandchildren, if we don’t allow them to drown in the slime pit of oil dependency and warmongering the Republicans have built into our system.  We’ll see.

Big shout out to all the Walmart workers who stood against the corporate tyrants.  Walmart can’t compete in an environment where civility and fair play are honored above institutional profits.  They fizzled here in Germany after pissing a billion dollars away, and at the end of the day, they weren’t even able to offer lower prices than their competitors!!

How Can the Republicans Regain Relevance?

Having graduated from high school in Fort Dodge Iowa (1976 – State of Iowa Scholar), I can say with some authority that what the Republicans need to do to become relevant again. I expect my suggestions to be received by the GOP with all the enthusiasm and applause as pre-election Nate Silver polls, but it might help if somebody from the great plains, who isn’t a highly paid (bought off) beltway insider adds a main-street view. I am pretty sure I have mentioned these things before, but the Republicans weren’t listening to me then and they likely won’t listen to me now, but if ever there was a time when Googling “mainstream viewpoints” and “U.S. voters” might interest a Republican, this seems a likely moment in time for that occurrence.

Republicans need to drop their crazy ideas on reproductive freedoms. This last election cycle saw things spin so far into crazy town that there were candidates actually advancing the cause of rapist’s rights in having their unholy offspring borne by our mothers, wives and daughters. I have a memory of Mississippi trying to outlaw condoms, but that might have been spin from their “rights of the zygote” legislation that failed, even in the bastion of the Baptist holy land. At the end of the day, the Republican adoption of the Christian Bible as a handbook for political and scientific guidance is as ill-advised, un-American and disgusting. Relying on faith over facts is not a road to success into the future.

Modern Republicanism is now 20 percent politics and 80 percent fundamentalist Christian Reconstructionism. This is something they used to know enough to hide because they knew it was a losing minority position. I remember noting the TRUE percent of “lunatic fringe” Christians when Pat Robertson ran for president. IIRC, it was about five percent, and I doubt the actual numbers are higher today (40% of US now “non-religious”).

What the Relignicans lack in numbers they try to make up for in astroturf and echo chambers. Fox (Faux) News is HELPING elect Democrats now that everybody isn’t afraid to laugh at the Naked Emperor.

I have an iPad mini to unwrap.

Happy Birthday to Me.

Enjoy.

Bullshit Mountain – Outsourcing Edition

•  Tim Fuller I know there are hundreds of low income kids who could train to be excellent doctors if given the opportunity, and who would be willing to work for a fraction of what doctors are overcharging now. I say let the government pay to train qualified students willing to work for less and the doctor shortage you are concern trolling about would be solved in one graduation cycle. Enjoy.

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•  Tim Fuller Daddy, I don’t want to be a doctor when I grow up anymore because I can only make enough money for one vacation house and two exotic import cars. F it all Dad!! I am going to live in a VW camper down by the river. #TVRealityShowHITMAKER Enjoy.

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• Vicki Stanfield Tim, maybe if you can keep them off crack and other illegal things they are involved in. You have to have motivation and the Bill Clinton’s you speakl of don’t have what it takes. Put that in your bong and smoke it.

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• Vicki Stanfield Clinton’s kids with their pants on the ground. I’ll let you go Tim Fuller, I don’t want you to be late to your night job at MacDonalds.

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• Tim Fuller Run along Ms Vicki, if that is even your real name. I smell a communist agent provocateur among us here folks. No honest God fearing, apple pie eating, John Wayne worshiping American would misspell our nations most prominent fast food retail establishment. My second theory involves the Republicans, under Karl Rove paying a piece of that 350 million he swiped from rich ignorant trust fund bastards to third world English speaking squatters who continually post insipid rightwing astroturf. In either case, your cover is blown. Enjoy.

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• Tim Fuller One last thing there Habib…I mean Ms Vicki. “cover is blown” is an American idiom meaning that the con you are trying to perpetuate upon us has been exposed. Now run on down to the local falafel shop before all the good outside goat meat has been sold and you’re left with that crunchy crap next to the bone. Enjoy.

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• Vicki Stanfield Sorry, but I don’t patronize McDonalds like the fat liberals who have no self-control and turn around to sue them.

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• Tim Fuller You keep practicing there Habib and one day your broken English won’t be as transparently bogus as it is today. On that day you will graduate to Microsoft tech support hotline where you will pretend to be Randy from Montana. Slumlord millionaire. Enjoy.

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