Oh right. Sticky green weed.
Headline
Atheist vicar may go on preaching

Yes, a Vicar in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands is an atheist.
Quote
What I believe to be God is a human experience."

I'm not talking about whether or not that makes sense, but if you're going to be a vicar, it seems to me that the biggest requirement is that you believe in God.

Posted by: Veeshir at 12:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A few weeks ago, a poll run by DailyKos and Research 2000 (No links to DKos) conveniently claimed (in conjunction with a book Kos is writing comparing the GOP to the Taliban) that the Republican Party is overrun by kooks, freaks, racists, weirdos, birthers, teh ghey bashers, etc. Not surprisingly, said poll was greeted on the left as proof of the claims the "Reality Based Community" had always held about us, our views, our leaders, and everything not Obama.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the moral high ground for the left: somebody bothered to fact check the data and ask a few questions, and they found *gasp* the poll has some serious issues. The questions include such serious polling flaws as question selection, wording, sampling, follow ups, and so forth. And when rabid right winger Nate Silver throws cold water on the poll, one must conclude that Kos was not trying to seriously sample the attitudes of his political opposites, preferring instead to have the answers written beforehand, and the fill in work performed in such a matter as to validate his ideas. Quote Silver:

In short, it appears to me that the Kos/Research 2000 poll -- probably for reasons having to do with the nature and ordering of the questions although other hypothesis are plausible {umm...agenda setting and a sense of "inevitability" that most lefty polls try to establish?-ed} -- wound up with a very and perhaps unrepresenatively conservative set of Republicans. Upon further examination, I'd encourage caution in interpreting its results. I'm happy that pollsters are exploring "politically incorrect" attitudes such as these, but they require a lot of sensitivity to survey design. I'm not sure that Research 2000's methodology, which led by hitting the respondent over the head with a 2x4 with questions about impeachment and socialism, really got it right.

Look, I am not going to deny that the GOP and Conservative Movement do not have some rough elements in it. But are they as prevalent as the left tried to claim, and then used this poll as validation? Who knows. But I do know this: any suspicions of a Kos sponsored poll being fair and reliable, all while they claim Rasmussen should be marginalized, should be supported. Any person who does not believe that DKos-R2000 is an outfit that has and will massage and manipulate numbers and data in an effort to establish a politically charged meme and a lefty self feeding sense of inevitability that polling can create needs to have their head examined. And anybody who still wants to use this poll in their agenda setting needs to fuck off with butane and do better research.

Posted by: eddiebear at 11:55 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Calling Pres. Obama "Professor"? Racist.

Telling him to "go gangsta" on the GOP? That's perfectly fine!

Yes, I know the reference in the article is to Capone.  But the spelling is the non-traditional one used to refer to primarily black gang culture.  It's terrible!  It's offensive!  HE'S A WITCH BURN HIM!

Look, it's nonsense on stilts to imagine that this is motivated by racial animus given the author and the advice being presented.  But if the Left wants those rules, the Left is going to be held to the standard which it espouses.

I think it's time someone went to a refresher sensitivity training course or 12.

Posted by: alexthechick at 10:48 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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If this actually happens, what do we do with Gorak and his family? Put them in a zoo?

As scientists come closer to completing a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, creating a living person from an ancient DNA sequence is becoming a real possibility, according to Archaeology Magazine.

In 2005, 454 Life Sciences began a project with the Max Planck Institute to sequence the genetic code of a 30,000 year old Neanderthal woman. Now nearly complete, the sequence will let scientists look at the genetic blueprint of humankind's nearest relative, understand its biology and maybe even create a living person.

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with that?

FIRE BAD!!!!! CATS AND DOGS DOMESTICATED NOW?! "CARS" SCARY!!! WHAT IS LOUD SHINY METAL GIANT BIRD??! SALAD DRESSING TASTE WEIRD!!! WHAT IS "INCOME TAX"??!! GRARRRRGHH!!!!

Posted by: Sean M. at 01:54 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Madame Speaker thinks she can ram Obamacare through?

Lemme see. After months of polling, special elections, legislative stalemates, massive and growing to massiver disapproval numbers, shady bribes and backroom deals, protests, and a general sentiment that this bill will be so unpopular, Charles Manson trying to give unwanted goatse giveaways will be more popular than this bill, Madame Speaker thinks this is a spiffy idea?

Really? I mean, fucking really?

Well, okay.


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Posted by: eddiebear at 12:50 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Heh, you all saw the latest brouhaha, Palin had a bracelet on that she said was in honor of her son's deployment to Iraq and some lefty started screeching about how the bracelets were for memorializing soldiers killed in action, not live soldiers.
Crooks and Liars piled on (link to Crooks and Liars for pointing and laughing purposes only, someone delete if it's against the rules like a Sully link).
Their conclusion?
Horrifying.

Then had to backtrack when the makers of the bracelet said, "Ummmm, those are for live soldiers, we sent one to Palin and one to Biden in the last election."
Read the whole, fairly short post and the update where they have to say, "Ummm, nevermind". They were in quite the lather until reality so rudely intruded.
Heh.
At least the post didn't go down the memory hole.
Via Just One Minute, he has a link to Huff Po's page with correction.
I'll save that link until tomorrow. It'll be a nice morning laugh.

And if someone wants to get OUTRAGED!!!!!1!! think about this
Why haven't we seen that bracelet on Joe Biden? Is he ashamed of his son deploying to Iraq?
I know I've been told I would never have to use a /sarc tag, but in case you can't tell,
/sarc

Biden can't outrage me, he can only make me cringe or laugh.

Update
I was going to say, "Read the comments" but there's a lot of hate and not a lot of humor.
One comment prays her son doesn't die because then she'd play the martyr, another replies to that comment by saying something about how Palin's hoping her son does die so she can use it politically.

Posted by: Veeshir at 11:16 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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The hate never ends on MSNBC. Chris Matthews and crew went completely bananas tearing Palin apart for her Tea Party convention appearance, calling her, "an empty vessel ready to be filled by ideology she doesn't understand."

Before I go further, let me issue my standard quotation of Jim Geraghty that he wrote after the Vanity Fair hit piece: "There’s room in this world for a profile that is critical of Palin, but that preferably didn’t begin with the supposition that she is the root of all evil in the political world."

Chris Matthews does not seem to read Geraghty's stuff.

Please read a substantial portion of the transcript at NewsBusters, but brace yourself for some weapons-grade radioactive hating before reading or watching.

Of course, there's some jibing about her writing on her hand:

MATTHEWS: Well, I don`t know. I just don`t know what to make of this, Richard Wolffe. This is like something that every kid in school can understand, crib notes.

RICHARD WOLFFE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Crib notes. Teleprompter no good, but crib notes OK.

(LAUGHTER)

WOLFFE: And there were only six words on it.

(LAUGHTER)

Ok, I still don't get it. Out of six cribbed words she pulled a passable speech and Q&A session. Obama needs a full prompter set-up to speak to school students.  How does this make her stupid?

MATTHEWS: Well, so you`re not saying there`s -- well, let me go to you, Mark. It seems to me the issue here isn't that she took notes. I`m looking at notes now. We all look at notes. It`s when you sneak them on your hand! She could have put that on an index card and nobody would have made a big issue, but she had to look like she was just pulling it out of the air, so she pulled it off her hand like a palm reader!

Posted by: JoeCollins at 10:50 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Heh, some dude in Taiwan made that monstrosity.
You have to love the Beretta logo and "Made in USA".
It's a 6 shot, 12 gauge revolver.

Via some blog I've never heard of, the Munchkin Wrangler.
All I know about him is that he doesn't know how to skin a squirrel (at least, he said it was hard, skinning a squirrel is a breeze if you cut right, you grab at the tail and pull the skin off like a coat).

Posted by: Veeshir at 09:00 PM | Comments (128) | Add Comment
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Yawn, another day another beltway-better saying, "What happened to the great, intelligent, Obama?"
Quote
How could such smart people do so many stupid things?

Because they weren't smart, you were willfully ignorant (which equates to functional stupidity).
Obama was never tested. Remember the one semi-difficult question?
Quoth Obama
I don't want you to waste your question.

Posted by: Veeshir at 02:05 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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I wonder if his recent drop in ratings and sanity had any impact on this piece of genius.

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: That`s next, but first tonight`s worst persons in the world. The bronze to Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. You`ll remember, the record setter for longest monotone question to the president at their meeting. Her new debt solution? Allowing younger Americans to privatize their Social Security accounts, where they can get wiped out the next time the mortgage industry or some other form of legalized gambling wipes out another chunk of the economy. By the way, federal budget debt {?-sic} is a good thing in a recession. It`s not a bad thing. As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, it`s about the same as it was in 1970 {??-ed}, as it is right now, far less than it was throughout the Reagan administration.

 

Sigh. I guess math and history were not in the curriculum at the Cornell Ag School.

Posted by: eddiebear at 12:40 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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So I was opining about how the IOC needs a good global worming protest to get some snow on the mountains.
atc(ISIAC) said, "The obvious answer is to hold them in DC."
Sure, we all laughed at her, but who's laughing now?
In talking about DC's problem with getting rid of snow
Quote
Neighboring counties have started work on their own snow mountains at sites around the capital. Because of their size, the mountains will likely freeze and stick around long after the rest of the snow melts.

There are snow mountains all over the place, I was going to get a pic of the one under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, but it's most of a mile away and the walkway isn't shoveled and I don't have snowshoes.
Click the link for one mountain range dwarfing a tractor trailer.

Posted by: Veeshir at 11:22 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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Seriously, fuck this shit. If this is the sort of unsolicited prison goatse that comes from the Porkulus, then fuck it hard, fast, long, and freaky deaky style with the flagellum of a fucking amoeba.

Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

Nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been spent on wind power, funding the creation of enough new wind farms to power 2.4 million homes over the past year. But the study found that nearly 80 percent of that money has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines.

Eighty. Fucking. Percent? What. The. Fuck?

Hey, I'm all for alternative fuels and shit like that, but is it too fucking much to ask a President and Congress allegedly on the side of "the working man" to fucking help American workers and manufacturers?

But that's just me.

Posted by: eddiebear at 09:49 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Updated below the fold
Updated again, snow done edition
Day 7.
Still alive. Beer running low, scotch holding out. Dog looking tasty.
Remember this pic?

Updated


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Posted by: Veeshir at 08:20 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Wow. This oughta get good.

Two reliable sources confirm the investigation is "very fresh," but could not say precisely what it is prosecutors are looking at other than questions about public integrity {ha!-ed}.

Paterson has been under fire by members of his own staff and legislative leaders for awarding the contract to Aqueduct Entertainment Group, a group that includes former Congressman Rev Floyd Flake, whose political support the Governor had been aggressively seeking {quid pro quo?-ed}.

Flake had said publicly that he was considering endorsing Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for governor, if he decides to run. The loss leading of a black Democratic leader's support would be a serious setback for Paterson. After the contract was awarded to Flake's group, the Governor met with the Queens leader, but Paterson's office denies any endorsement was discussed {heh-ed}.

Capitol insiders say the deal was politically motivated  {nah! Really?!? You don't fucking say-ed}. The Governor has defended the decision to grant AEG the right to operate video lottery terminals, saying they are suited for the job and that the decision was a unanimous one made by him, the leader of the State Senate and the Speaker of the Assembly.

Posted by: eddiebear at 11:55 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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That's really the only way to explain how David Brooks makes any goddamn sense anymore.

(Well, that, or the fact that he's always been a fucking douche.)

Posted by: Sean M. at 10:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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The hits keep on coming for the IPCC and their reliance on flimsy evidence for catastrophic claims.
Quote
TREES will not uproot themselves and embark on blood-soaked killing sprees by 2035, global warming experts have admitted.
...snip...
"It appears the claim was not based on new data or field research but on that bit with the angry, talking trees in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
...snip...
There is a supplementary source, and yes it is that bit with the angry, talking trees in The Wizard of Oz.

Surprisingly enough, they're standing by their prediction that trees will mate with little people bringing forth a new, super-race of Gaians. (note: Link not safe for work.... or sanity, or stomach. Contains graphic depictions of hobbits fucking a tree).

First link via Tim Blair, second link via some blog nobody reads (thank goodness).

Posted by: Veeshir at 08:03 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I have to admit, I'm torn on this one. Except for the many $billions in their budget, this could be a good thing.
First, Obama has NASA ending the space shuttle program, and against its replacement,  while siccing NASA on Global Worming.
On the one hand, NASA's budget is huge and they'll be spending it on bullshit, global worming, eco-wacko crap instead of something useful like, oh, their fucking job. You know, the third word in their acronym. 

On the other hand, NASA is about useless and this means there's a metric shitload of rocket scientists (and other space specialties) looking for work.
There has to be a way to make money out of space. First, scientific experiments and tourism going up to mining and colonization. I doubt there'd be a shortage of people looking to move to Mars or the Moon and willing to pay for it.
Richard Branson is probably already hiring and so are the X-Prize types. Heck, Boeing or Lockheed Martin might get into space travel and a lot of these people probably already work for them.

Posted by: Veeshir at 04:33 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Yeah, especially this reich winger.

To quote somebody we all know:

"Heh".

Posted by: eddiebear at 01:06 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Slublog covered it, Ace covered it, now it's Veeshir's turn.
I'll be less long-winded (surprise, surprise).
John Brennan says the GOP shouldn't politicize Obama's handling of the War on (Some) Terror.

Ummmm, weren't you the asshole who on Sunday said the GOP knew all about giving a terrorist the same rights I have because you called them and told them the FBI was on the job? An assertion that was patently ridiculous and untrue?

So who's politicizing what now?
Typical fucking Obama official. Always blaming everything on everybody but yourself.

Posted by: Veeshir at 01:06 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Behind hotassery and shoes, duh, we may have ourselves a big ol' natural disaster.

Everyone run! Yellowstone is gonna blow!

I called dibs on the shotguns and shells in the coming ZA.

Who knew that Emmerich was a prophet?

(Also since I got the blu-ray of ID4 the other day, you know what's a fun game - trying to count how many American flags are in it.  I'm starting to understand why some of my insane lefty friends now hate that movie.  Good times, good times)

Posted by: alexthechick at 12:49 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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