God finally put to sleep

(The Onion)

From The Onion:

Citing an inability to adequately care for the aging all-powerful deity, members of the human race told reporters Monday that they were forced to put down God, the omniscient creator worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years. ...

In the hours since the passing of The Maker of Heaven and Earth, the human race told reporters that, while they certainly missed having Him around, they preferred to enjoy their fond memories of a younger and more energetic God.

“The excitability and joy for life He used to radiate was infectious,” said Maria Castellanos of Guadalajara, Mexico, referring to the days when the Divine Being would friskily follow the human race wherever they went and “get Himself into all kinds of trouble.” “But for the last millennia or so, He spent most of His time just moping around—rarely ever using His omnipotence and barely even capable of rendering miracles and answering prayers. He hardly even acknowledged [humanity] as we went about our day, really.” ...

Despite reporting a distinct feeling of sadness and loss, the human race confirmed today that they were also reminiscing on many memories of the Supreme Lord and Savior’s life, from His very first creation of the heavens and earth, to the time He rambunctiously flooded the earth for 150 days, to His allowance of the Holocaust from 1938 to 1945, to the sweet sunset he conjured on the evening of July 12, 1998.

“The thing that makes me feel better is knowing that He had a great life, even when things got a little rough at the very end,” Beijing-area human Huai Cheng said. “It’ll be hard letting go, but when it’s the right time, we’ll talk about getting another God.”

“Maybe even two of them,” Huai added.

Whoa! Let's not be in a big hurry about getting a new god, let alone two! I think we forget how much trouble a young god can be.

Let's see how it goes without a god for awhile. The worst thing we could do is get a new god on the rebound. After all, the big problem with the old god is that we were not thinking, but only feeling.

Sure, it will seem strange at first, not having anywhere to go on Sunday mornings. But it won't be bad, just different. And once the fog clears from our minds, I think we'll enjoy seeing things clearly for a change.

Let's try it at least, OK? After a few millennia, if we still miss the old god, we can think about getting a new one - maybe a smaller god, fully housebroken and calm-mannered. We don't want a new god who'll break all our nice things.

The Bible, Pt. 26: Leviticus, Chapter 16 - 20

This continues my reading of the Christian Bible directly from Part 25. All quotes are from the King James version, and the entire series can be found here.

Chapter 16:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they offered before the LORD, and died;

2 And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the vail before the mercy seat, which is upon the ark; that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat.

3 Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.

Remember, God killed two of Aaron's sons because he didn't like the kind of incense they burned while they were worshiping him. Very picky, this god (although, oddly enough, Aaron himself got away with creating a golden calf as a replacement god).

So Yahweh has Moses caution Aaron to make sure he does things just right. Aaron has to wear just the right clothing, sacrifice just the right animals, and flick their blood onto the altar the right number of times. Yes, on and on we go with the details of the blood sacrifices God demands.

8 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat.

9 And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the LORD'S lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering.

10 But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

Yup, it's a real live scapegoat! Neat, isn't it? Oh, the other goat - and the ram and the steer - get butchered and burned on the altar, as usual. God needs his blood. But the lucky one gets to carry the sins of the congregation off into the wilderness.

Note that, much later, that's the role of Jesus, too - only Jesus also gets to be the blood sacrifice. Very primitive stuff, isn't it?

21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness:

22 And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.

Sorry, but I'm skipping all the gory details of the blood sacrifices. I'm sick to death of blood sacrifice! It's gotten boring as hell! Does this stuff have to be repeated over and over and over again? At least the scapegoat is something a little different.

29 And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger that sojourneth among you:

30 For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD.

31 It shall be a sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls, by a statute for ever.

This is Yom Kippur. According to Wikipedia, it's the holiest day of the year for Jews: "This day is commemorated with two festive meals, the giving of charity, and asking others for forgiveness."

What, no sacrificing animals or transferring your sins onto goats? Did God change his mind, then? Did he lose his taste for blood? Or is it just because the Temple of Jerusalem hasn't been rebuilt. If it ever is, will God demand his blood sacrifice again?

And doesn't it seem odd that Christians ignore this completely? It's supposed to be the same god, after all. God's specific instructions for an "everlasting statute" aren't even recognized with a Christian holiday.

Chapter 17:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

...

3 What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp,

4 And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer an offering unto the LORD before the tabernacle of the LORD; blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people:

God started out wanting the blood sacrifice of firstborn males. (Luckily, you could substitute a lamb for your child.) Then there were sin offerings and peace offerings and trespass offerings and wave offerings. Then women were required to make sacrifices after every childbirth.

But now, God wants his share of blood every single time a livestock animal is butchered? I can see why the Temple of Jerusalem was described as such a slaughterhouse ("the smoke of the pyres, the bellows of terrified beasts, the sluices of blood, the abattoir stench").

12 Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood.

...

14 For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.

We've seen this before - we've seen all of this before (Leviticus is nothing if not repetitive) - but blood is magic, so God prohibits you from eating any of it. Funny how Christians ignore this, too (not that blood sausage is particularly popular these days).

Chapter 18:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the LORD your God.

3 After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances.

4 Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the LORD your God.

God has already given the Israelites his commandments - twice - in Exodus. So now, he repeats himself yet again - with variations, of course.

As we've seen before, these features make it abundantly clear that the Old Testament was originally a bunch of separate stories clumsily stitched together. If this were written by one person, God would give his commandments - his judgments and his ordinances - once.

After all, he's God. Do you think he'd forget something the first time?

6 None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.

7 The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.

8 The nakedness of thy father's wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy father's nakedness.

9 The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.

Yeah, no problem so far! Or when it comes to my aunts and my uncles, either, I assure you!

18 Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.

19 Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.

20 Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife, to defile thyself with her.

21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.

One of these is not like the others! Since we're talking about sex, you might think "thy seed" refers to semen. Apparently not. Apparently, this reference to Molech has to do with child sacrifice. It seems like an odd place to put it, though, don't you think? Anyway, we'll get back to this in chapter 20.

For the rest of that, note that multiple wives are just fine with God. You just shouldn't take your wife's sister as a new wife - not until the first one is dead, at least. Yeah, that seems wise to me. Sleeping with your neighbor's wife is probably not a good idea, either.

The other verse prohibits sex with a woman who's menstruating. We'll get to the punishments for that in chapter 20. This one, too:

22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Finally, we get to the one thing in Leviticus that modern Christians take seriously. Sure, it's also an abomination to keep leftovers three days. You must not wear clothing of mixed fibers, either. And, of course, God demands constant blood sacrifice.

But he didn't really mean all the rest of that stuff, huh? This god who killed two people because he didn't like the brand of incense they were using while they were attempting to worship him is just kidding about all the rest of these rules, right? No, he buried the one thing he really meant in this single verse in Leviticus.

OK, like everything else, it's repeated later. (God still has to specify the punishment.) But my point is still valid. Sorry, but if you're not killing and burning animals on a bloody altar, I can't think you really care what God says here. You're just indulging your own bigotry.

Chapter 19:

5 And if ye offer a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the LORD, ye shall offer it at your own will.

6 It shall be eaten the same day ye offer it, and on the morrow: and if ought remain until the third day, it shall be burnt in the fire.

7 And if it be eaten at all on the third day, it is abominable; it shall not be accepted.

You thought I was kidding about abominable leftovers, didn't you? :)

9 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.

10 And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God.

11 Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.

Not all of these things are bad, not at all. The first part of this is primitive charity. You leave some of your harvest for the poor to glean. What's wrong with that?

12 And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.

13 Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.

14 Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.

The first verse here doesn't refer to profanity, but to perjury. When you swear on God's name, you shouldn't lie.

The rest of these are good prohibitions, too. But do we really need a god to tell us not to make sport of blind people?

18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

When Christians cherry-pick from the Bible, this is one verse they almost always select. Yeah, the sentiment is great. But you have to pluck it out of a pool of sewage. Look at everything you ignore in Leviticus, just to pick out the verses you like.

The Bible is a huge book. It's hard to imagine a book this size which wouldn't have phrases you could pluck out of context and hold up as good examples. I doubt if there's a single religious text in the world where that wouldn't be possible, but you don't think all of them were inspired by a god. Of course not!

19 Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

20 And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free.

21 And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, even a ram for a trespass offering.

22 And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering before the LORD for his sin which he hath done: and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him.

And then you get this stuff. The first prohibits hybrid cattle, certain gardening practices, and the wearing of clothing made from linen and wool, both. That seems pretty strange, don't you think? It's petty, if nothing else.

The second is generous. When a slave woman is raped, you don't have to kill her, "because she was not free." Yeah, a good whipping is enough, huh?

The rapist, though, has to donate a ram to God. Then he's forgiven, too. Isn't that nice?

Do you think I'm being harsh? Maybe it was consensual sex, after all. Well, the different punishments doled out to them still wouldn't be fair. And given that the woman was "not free" - not that any women had much control over this stuff back then - it's hard to see much that's consensual about it.

27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.

28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.

29 Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

OK, no haircuts, no beard-trimming, and no tattoos. Oh, and don't prostitute your daughter, either. Right.

Of course, God isn't concerned for the girl herself, but he doesn't want the neighborhood to go downhill.

Chapter 20:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.

3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.

4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not:

5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.

Molech is another god, a Canaanite god, and at first, I assumed that this was just religious intolerance. Yahweh is a jealous god, after all.

Apparently, though, it's about child sacrifice. Wikipedia says that "Moloch had associations with a particular kind of propitiatory child sacrifice by parents." But what's that mean? "Associations"?

First of all, it's not uncommon for a religion to be accused of terrible things by members of some other religion. In fact, it's typical. Wikipedia also notes speculation that early Judaism itself practiced child sacrifice, suggesting that this prohibition was aimed against this practice in their own religion.

Otherwise, why would God have to command so emphatically that his followers not do that? Why would they? Also, if this were about the worship of some other god, why would Yahweh worry about it defiling his holy name?

My own view? I don't know. But I have to point out God's requirement in Exodus that the firstborn male of both livestock and people be sacrificed to him. God allowed an ass or a child to be "redeemed" with a lamb - i.e. the lamb would be killed, instead - but if you couldn't afford a lamb, you had to kill the ass.

Now, it doesn't specifically say that about your firstborn son, but it doesn't say anything at all. So I have to wonder if something hasn't been cut from earlier versions of Exodus. Note that, although we haven't gotten to Numbers yet, it does seem like virgin girls - captives kept alive after the Israelites killed everyone else in their families - were sacrificed to Yahweh.

9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

...

13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

Here again is the prohibition against gay sex (nothing about lesbians), with the punishment being death. Of course, the punishment is also death for cursing your parents and for adultery (among many other things). Again, if you're not going to follow all of Leviticus, I can't really take your biblical argument against homosexuality seriously.

14 And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you.

Ouch! Here's not just the death penalty, but death by fire. So why does this get such an extreme punishment? Sex with your wife and with your mother-in-law? Probably not a wise thing, but is it really "wickedness"?

Furthermore, like most of these (sex with your father's wife, sex with your daughter-in-law, etc.) both parties are put to death. But I've seen pretty much no indication in the Old Testament (with the possible exception of Judah and Tamar - and they did plan to burn her, at first) that women have the slightest say about any of this.

When men want a wife, they just "take" her. That's apparently all the ceremony that's required. Of course, they need the consent of her father, if they don't want trouble, but no one thinks to ask the woman what she thinks about the whole idea. Still, if it's the wrong match, she's apparently going to burn, too.

18 And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.

Here's another weird one. It's not the death penalty, at least, but if a man has sex with a menstruating woman, they both get exiled?

20 And if a man shall lie with his uncle's wife, he hath uncovered his uncle's nakedness: they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless.

I keep telling you, God, you don't have to worry about that. I'm not going to have sex with any of my aunts!

23 And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.

24 But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people.

25 Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean.

26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.

Again, God tells the Israelites that he's giving them someone else's land. Furthermore, he has separated them - severed them - from other people. He's their god, not the god of anyone else. And they're his people.

This is a very, very tribal concept, and Yahweh is a tribal god. He will support his chosen people if they obey him in every way.

This isn't the last verse in this chapter though. This is the last verse:

27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.

Yeah, God believes in magic. And no one is going to help the poor souls murdered - horribly - because of verses like this.

OK, that's enough. I'd like to get to the end of Leviticus next time - mostly because I'm heartily sick of it - but I don't know if it will take one more post or two. I hope this hasn't been too boring. The Bible has got to get better than this, don't you think?

___
Note: This entire series is available here.

Shut up!

(Jesus and Mo)

22 messages from creationists

Buzzfeed asked creationists at the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate to write a question or comment to people who support science. (The photos of these people, and their comments, are here.)

Some of them are just astoundingly stupid. ("If we come from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?" Really? Frankly, it's hard to believe that even a creationist is that ignorant.)

But in the above video, Steve Shives answers all of their questions, and does it in the nicest way possible.

Really, I couldn't do that. ("Does not the second law of thermodynamics disprove evolution?" What, did you think that scientists somehow forgot about that? If it were that easy to disprove evolution, don't you think someone would have pointed that out by now?)

Maybe I would have started out polite, but by the time I got to the claim that the Bible is a "theory," or that theories are "by definition... not testable, observable, nor repeatable," I'd be spitting fire. How could you be that ignorant of science, people? We live in the most technologically-advanced society on Earth! How could you know nothing about science?

But as I say, Shives is just incredibly polite about it. I don't know how he does it. Venaloid made a video about this, too, and his manner is a little more like what I'd expect from people like me. :)

I like how Jaclyn Glenn did this, too. She requested photos of questions/comments in the same format as the creationists used:



Those are ordinary people responding, and they're as diverse as you'd expect. But all in all, they do a pretty good job of asking tough questions, don't you think?

___
Edit: I'm not going to make a separate post on this, but check out these translations of the creationists' questions. It's pretty funny.

Deficit attention disorder

To hear Republicans scream about cutting spending, you'd think the deficit hadn't been cut in half during the five years of Barack Obama's presidency.

Of course, the reason the deficit went sky-high in the first place is because of Republican wars (waged, for the first time in our history, without raising taxes to actually pay for them), Republican tax cuts for the rich, and the Republican economic collapse (at which point, revenue decreases and spending increases automatically).

We're still spending more than we're taking in, but that's because we're still paying for those wars, Republicans have been adamant about increasing taxes on the rich (even though the Bush tax cuts were always supposed to be temporary), and because Republicans have been dragging their feet when it comes to getting us out of their recession. (They've been terrified that Barack Obama would fix what they broke.)

But where is the supposed 'mainstream' media pointing this out? Unfortunately, these days, 'journalists' aren't supposed to tell the truth. They're just supposed to report what both sides are saying (giving known lies the same status as actual facts).

Lazy journalism, or malicious?

Cenk Uygur is right. Even I tend to use "progressive" instead of "liberal," since the later term has developed all sorts of negative connotations, thanks to decades of concerted right-wing effort.

Well, they're good at that. They're good at labels. They're good at sound bites. They're good at propaganda. (It's just effective policies that they're hopelessly inept with.)

But if you look at the policies, if you look at the issues, Americans are generally far to the left of the Republican Party. Even Republicans themselves, to a surprisingly large extent. In general, we're even to the left of the Democratic Party (which doesn't take much, despite the hysterical rants about 'socialism' coming from the right).

If you want to follow up on this, here's an excellent article:

And if it always seems to happen this way – with the whole political system gravitationally sliding off to the right, not the left. A recent paper suggests why: American politicians, whether they're liberal or conservative themselves, chronically misperceive the voters who elect them as more conservative than they are.

Before last November's nationwide elections, David Broockman and Christopher Skovron, political scientists at the Universities of California and Michigan, asked almost 2,000 state-level political candidates about their voters' views. How did people in their district feel about same-sex marriage being legal, or whether the country needs universal healthcare? What were their views on abolishing federal welfare programs?

"Pick an American state legislator at random," Broockman and Skovron report in a new summary at the Scholars Strategy Network, "and chances are that he or she will have massive misperceptions about district views on big-ticket items, typically missing the mark by 15 percentage points."

The mismatch is most extreme among conservative politicians, who typically overestimate their voters' conservatism so much – by 20 points, on average – that they're essentially claiming their district is more conservative than the most conservative district in America. Most of those conservatives are sure their voters agree with them on same-sex marriage and healthcare – but in three-fifths of cases, they're wrong. ...

The explanation for all this isn't necessarily cryptic, and Broockman and Skovron hint at what's probably at the root of it: conservatism talks louder, because conservatism talks with more money, because people with plenty of money tend to prefer conservative policies.

But labels are easy - misleading, sure, but very easy. Easy for journalists and easy for their viewers/readers. No one wants to take the time for a discussion these days, and a label is a perfect shortcut - as long as you don't care about the truth of what you're saying.

James Randi psychic surgery

This is James Randi on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, sometime in the 1980s, demonstrating how con artists perform 'psychic surgery' on suckers. Neat, isn't it?

___
PS. Since we're speaking of skepticism, maybe I'll post this video, too:



This is just a marketing stunt (for a remake of the movie, Carrie), but it's pretty funny, isn't it?

Look at how scared many of those people seem to be. Come on. If you witnessed something like this, wouldn't your first thought be that it was a trick?

We know that stage magicians, among others, can do seemingly amazing things, while we've never seen any evidence of psychic powers. So why would you assume that this was real?

Of course, those people could have been actors themselves, but I don't think so. Not from what I've heard, at least.

Jon Stewart's take on the Superbowl 'controversy'

The Daily Show
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I wasn't going to post this. After all, I just blogged about it the other day. And I've posted three video segment's from last night's Daily Show already!

But what can I say? I just like where Jon Stewart went with this.

Enjoy!

Terror on Bullshit Mountain

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One of the worst things about Republican lies is that they've got a media machine specifically set up to spread those lies.

Of course, the primary goal of Fox 'News' is undoubtedly to make money by scaring old white people (the average age of their viewers is 68, and they're even whiter than Mitt Romney supporters). But they do that by spreading Republican lies, and that's an important goal in itself for them.

The Daily Show veered off into pointing out right-wing hypocrisy, which is always fun. Note, in particular, this observation from Jon Stewart (as I say, money always come first to Fox):

Apparently, on Bullshit Mountain, corporations aren't just people, they're better people than you. Corporations are the good people, not the jackass two-legged kind who don't want to man the perfume counter at Macy's because it's 'Christmas Eve'.

But as long as we're talking about Fox 'News',  I wanted to point out this article by Frank Rich.

...Fox is in essence a retirement community.

The million or so viewers who remain fiercely loyal to the network are not, for the most part, and as some liberals still imagine, naïve swing voters who stumble onto Fox News under the delusion it’s a bona fide news channel and then are brainwashed by Ailes’s talking points into becoming climate-change deniers. They arrive at the channel as proud, self-selected citizens of Fox Nation and are unlikely to defect from the channel or its politics until death do them part. (As Sherman writes, “Ailes’s audience seldom watches anything” on television but Fox News.) ...

The Fox News membership is more than happy to be cocooned in an echo chamber where its own hopes and fears will be reinforced by other old white “people like us.”

All this might be true, but Rich loses me when he says this:

Rather than waste time bemoaning Fox’s bogus journalism, liberals should encourage it. The more that Fox News viewers are duped into believing that the misinformation they are fed by Ailes is fair and balanced, the more easily they can be ambushed by reality...

He points out that, though Fox is the "overwhelming leader" in cable news, that's still just a million viewers in prime time. And he adds that "there’s nothing in Fox’s viewership numbers, either in magnitude or in demographic hue, to suggest that there’s a significant number of voting-age Americans who at this point do not already know that Fox News is a GOP auxiliary and view it, hate-watch it, or avoid it accordingly."

Rich argues that we should ignore Fox, because it's already dying, and that focusing on Fox is "fighting the last war," instead of the wars to come.

But I disagree. First, we should note Fox extremism at least in part because that kind of thinking is dying. We need to demonstrate to rational Americans where faith-based thinking gets you. It's the same reason we point out the atrocities of the Taliban and the particularly loony statements of Christian dominionists.

There are better ways of thinking, better ways of determining what's true and what isn't, and the particularly crazy are good examples for our side.

Second, Fox 'News' makes a buttload of money. Therefore, it's a good example to corporations which also want to make money and to 'journalists' (loosely speaking) who want to get ahead. We can't offer responsible journalists more money, but we can make the irresponsible a laughingstock.

(Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert also make a lot of money, in part by making fun of Fox 'News.' They're comedians, not journalists, but this is still a very good thing.)

And third, neither Fox 'News' nor the Republican Party (if I'm not being redundant here) is unaware of their demographic problems, and they're not going to be complacent about letting either money or political power slip away from them.

Both will try to reinvent themselves. Heck, both are trying to reinvent themselves. Rich points out the difficulties they're facing, but that's not going to stop them. And they've got lots and lots of money to help with the attempt.

This doesn't mean we should just ignore everything else. Of course not. Libertarians are still crazy, even if they're not particularly welcomed by the conservatives who run Fox.

And progressives should definitely be focused more on the technology of the future than the technology of the past. But it's much too early to be writing obituaries for either Fox 'News' or the GOP.

Grass is green, the sky is blue, and Republicans lie

From TPM:

Despite the consistent refutation of their claim that the Congressional Budget Office said Obamacare would cost the country 2 million jobs -- even from within their own party -- Republicans are now putting the attack in congressional ads.

A new web ad by Rep. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan in North Carolina, blasts Hagan for "2 million lost jobs" because of her support for the health care reform law, the Washington Post reported.

"How many workers will have to lose their jobs?" the ad says. "How many people will have to pay for Kay Hagan’s loyalty to Obama?"

As House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) explained Wednesday, the CBO analysis did not conclude that Obamacare would result in 2 million jobs being "lost." It said that some Americans would choose to work less under the law -- and, if you added those lost hours together, they would be the equivalent of 2 million full-time jobs.

Sure. Some people continued to work - often despite chronic illnesses - because they simply couldn't get health insurance any other way. But this makes Obamacare a huge benefit for them, not a drawback. They're not "losing" their jobs.

Stephen Colbert had a segment about this last night, too - and about the Obama Administration's rather feeble attempt at explaining the truth.

But that's the thing about lies. They can be simple, because any connection to reality is just coincidental. The truth is often harder to explain than a lie. It's just,... you know, true.

I'm sure we'll hear this a lot from Republicans now - especially if it seems to work. They know it's a lie. They're not that stupid. But by and large, they are that cynical and that unprincipled.

___
PS. Did I mention cynical and unprincipled? Also from TPM:

Some supporters might have been confused by recent campaign websites that appear to be soliciting donations to support a candidate, while the literal text of the site is actually about defeating the candidate. It's a trick that's been popping up more frequently, and it's perfectly legal -- even if it looks deceiving.

Earlier this week, the National Republican Congressional Committee set up quasi-campaign websites for House Democrats facing tough re-election battles, including Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Amanda Renteria (CA), Martha Robertson (NY), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and John Tierney (MA). There was also a site for Alex Sink, the Democrat hoping to recapture the late Rep. C.W. Bill Young's (R) seat in Florida.

The websites were nearly carbon copies of a campaign website to support the candidate right down to the URL; one domain was registered as JohnTierny2014.com. The key detail is that they asked for donations to "help defeat" the candidate -- something only careful readers might catch.

Stay classy, GOP!

I'm reminded of a comment by Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr., years ago: "I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."

The sketchy story of Jesus

Yup. These are my objections in a nutshell. In less than five minutes, he demonstrates how unreliable the whole story really is.

And notice how Mark ends, with the women not telling anyone? "They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid." If they didn't tell anyone, how did it come to be written in Mark?

This is how fiction is written. In fiction, we can see what 'happens' without anyone even seeing it, let alone telling someone else. But that's because the author just makes up the story. If it were fact, there would have to be some way we could know what really did happen.

Obviously, that's not the only problem with this, and the video explains most of it very well. I just thought I'd add that little point.

Koch blocked

The Daily Show
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This is funny, but it's scary, too. Negative campaigning works - not always, of course, but if it didn't work, politicians wouldn't do it. (Note the political power of the NRA!)

And money works. Money hasn't become hugely important in our political campaigns for no reason. By and large, the side with the most money wins. That's why the wealthy have been able to buy politicians - not because politicians are inherently corrupt, but because they want to win elections.

After all, it's not that the wealthy can vote any more often than the rest of us. The Koch brothers still only have two votes between them. (And let me tell you, they hate that and would change it just as soon as they got the power to do so.)

No, their power depends entirely on their money, especially in this post-Citizens United world where corporations are considered 'people' - and people who can spend unlimited amounts of their own and other people's money to control our government, at that.

Thanks to decades of 'trickle-down' economic policies, including George W. Bush's enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, wealth and income inequality are at record levels in America. So the very rich have plenty of money to spend on politics - especially since they expect to get all that, and more, returned to them by the government once their politicians get elected.

But they lost in 2012, despite all the money they spent. So now, they're jumping into local elections, which are much, much cheaper to buy. Sure, it didn't work in this particular election, but you can bet it will work elsewhere.

Still, this story does demonstrate one thing very clearly: these billionaires only have the power we give them. They can't elect anyone unless we're ignorant enough and gullible enough to go along with what they're peddling. They could spend every cent they had on attack ads, but they still need us to vote their way.

And they don't have the majority. Unfortunately, all too often, they've got the majority of people who are actually willing to get off their butts and vote. Well, they try to discourage voting, too. They try to make it as difficult as possible, and they try to convince people that it won't make any difference (while simultaneously trying to make their own supporters angry enough to make the effort, themselves).

All too often, that works. Money works. If it didn't, we wouldn't have this problem. But it doesn't have to work. That's entirely up to us. These people only have the power we give them.

Beginning Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

(Waldo's tileset)

I almost missed the end of the world. I was new to town, looking for work (unsuccessfully) - no friends and no family. When the lights went out, I just pulled out a book, then went to bed when it got too dark to read.

The next morning, I heard on the radio that the world had gone mad. We were told to stay inside, to barricade the door and let no one enter - no one. Well, that wasn't too tough for me, since I had nowhere to go, anyway.

The last radio station, before it disappeared forever, told of evacuation shelters and gave the address of one outside of town, not too far away. So when zombies started breaking down my door, I slipped out a back window and ran. I was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, with nothing but a small clasp knife in one pocket.

However, there was no one and nothing at the evac shelter when I arrived the next morning, and no sign that there ever had been. No zombies, either, which was a relief. But I wouldn't be able to survive long without food and water. And I needed a way to protect myself, because I couldn't run forever (while zombies, apparently, could).

In desperation, I found a rock and smashed apart a wooden bench - frightening myself with the amount of noise I was making - to get a two-by-four. Then I whittled down one end so I could grip it securely and pounded a few nails into the other. I certainly wouldn't want to be hit by it, but I couldn't say how it would work against zombies.

Then I tried to think of what I should do - what I could do.


I've blogged about Cataclysm, the free rogue-like zombie survival game, before. The new version is Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and I've blogged about that, too. But I haven't played it for almost a year, and there have been many changes since then.

Keep in mind that this is a free game, created and maintained by volunteers. There's a wiki - also maintained by volunteers - and I highly recommend that you go there for information. But the wiki tends to assume you know what you're doing, which wasn't really the case for me. So I'm going to include some very basic instructions here.

First, download the latest stable version here. (I downloaded the Windows 'Graphical Stable' version .9, so that's what I'll be talking about.) It's a zip file, and it just has to be unzipped into whatever folder you want. (In Windows, I simply created a "Cataclysm" folder on my C: drive, then dragged the contents of the zip file to that. That's all there was to it.)

The original game - like many rogue-likes - used ASCII graphics, but Cataclysm: DDA comes with three different graphical tilesets. Now, I'd been watching this playthrough on YouTube, and he was playing the game with Waldo's tileset, which looked pretty neat to me, so I downloaded that one. (The screenshots here are from Waldo's tileset.)

Again, there wasn't any information about what to do with the file, once I downloaded it, but it wasn't hard to figure out. Each tileset comes in its own folder, and you just put that folder in the gfx folder under your main Cataclysm folder. Done.

To start the game, double-click on the executable file (or make a shortcut for your desktop, at I did). It's not actually difficult, not at all. It's really very easy. But there aren't any instructions which tell you these things.

(Waldo's tileset)

There was a wooded area east of the evac shelter, although the shelter itself stood on open ground. South of that, a suburb extended almost to the forest edge. I was fearful about going back into town, but I needed supplies, so I headed that way. Maybe the forest would provide some cover.

There were zombies near the houses - including one massive brute that looked like he'd shrug off anything I could do to him with my nail-studded two-by-four - but they didn't spot me. However, I could only find one house with an unlocked door on my side of the building.

I did find a small backpack, though - a very welcome find - and a warm can of Coke. (Hurray! No drinking out of the toilet just yet!) And I spotted an electric car out front, though I wasn't able to get to it. I made a note to come back later ('N' while on the map).

Although I was careful to stay out of sight of any zombies, they apparently heard me - or smelled me - as I searched the house. Or maybe it was just coincidence that I heard heavy footsteps nearby. At any rate, I ran out the back and left. Discretion is the better part of valor, right?

On my vway back to the evac shelter, I picked some strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries I found growing wild. I don't live in a society of abundance anymore, but of scarcity. I need to keep my eyes open for anything I might possibly be able to use.

And speaking of keeping my eyes open, I almost blundered into a minefield! That's not something I ever expected to encounter here in America!

I had a chance to try out my club, too, when a sewer rat attacked me. What, was it rabid or something? Luckily, I brained it with a rock before it got close enough to bite, then smashed it with my club.

And then I skinned it. I might not be hungry enough to eat a rabid rat right this minute, but who knows about tomorrow?


When I started this game for the first time, it appeared in a very small window with a menu of options (though even the Help file didn't say anything about what to do next). Well, what you want to do next is go to Options (use the arrow keys or press 'o').

There are several tabs of options, though it took me awhile to figure out how to go from one to the other. (Duh! Use the tab key! Or the < > keys.) Use the up/down arrow keys to select an option and the left/right arrow keys to run through the choices.

For the most part, I left this stuff at default. (Note that the game defaults to 'static spawn,' which is exactly what I wanted. Check out this post for more details about that.) However, I really needed to make the window bigger.

So I tabbed over to 'Graphics' (note that this is where I selected Waldo's tileset, too) and experimented with 'viewport width' and 'viewport height.' These default to something like 16, which gave me a very small screen. But setting the width to 90 and the height to 30 gave me a window which pretty well filled the screen. As I say, you'll want to experiment with this (if you're using a different tileset, that might make a difference, too, I don't know).

When you're done, hit Esc to exit options and save your changes. Note that the screen size won't change until you exit the game ('Quit') and restart it. So it might take a number of attempts to get the viewport height and width the way you want them. But it's pretty simple, once you know what to do.

Back on the opening screen, when you're ready to begin, you'll need to create a new 'World.' I left that entirely on the default settings. Then you can start a 'New game,' which will involve creating your character. There are lots of options for that - stats, skills, traits, professions. I recommend checking the wiki for detailed information, or you can watch this video, which will show you how to get started.

I chose to play an unemployed man with minor skills in Survival, Dodging, and First Aid, a Fast Learner with Night Vision and Light Step, but also Poor Hearing, a Weak Stomach, Lightweight (re. alcohol and drugs), and a Wool Allergy.

I recommend that you experiment. As I say, there are lots of options, and your character isn't likely to last long, anyway. Plus, each game is different. Even with the same character-type, you'll likely play differently because you'll find different equipment and encounter different enemies.


It was only noon when I got back to the evac shelter, and I still had almost nothing for supplies, so I decided to raid a different part of town. Again, I tried to pick an isolated home at the edge of the suburbs, but I ran into a pack of zombies.

These didn't appear to include the most dangerous types, so I lured them onto a fence and killed them all - but not without taking damage. In particular, I received a deep bite to my leg. Now, I'm absolutely paranoid about ending up just like these creatures, so I built a fire, heated my knife blade, and cauterized the wound.

That hurt like hell, so I gathered up what few supplies I could carry and limped back to the evac shelter, spending the rest of the afternoon resting and reading.

The cold woke me up before dawn. I'd been sleeping on the floor, in my clothes, with no blankets, and it was cold. I'd killed another rat, so I had meat, and I'd found a few apples, but I was thirsty. So far, I'd found no reliable source of water.

So I headed south, towards the edge of town, again. I was still hoping to find a building I could loot in peace, but I ran into more zombies. I killed one (can you kill something that's already dead?) and started to explore a home when more zombies crashed through the windows. I escaped out the back, but I'd found only a few cans of warm pop for my efforts.

So I decided to head into the forest. Surely I could find water somewhere. But as the day wore on, I began to panic. I'd found nothing. On the bright side, nothing attacked me. I saw a wolf, a few giant spiders, and a weird kind of fungal creature, but only at a distance. And it's easy to break contact in the forest.

But I was getting thirstier and thirstier. Eventually, I stumbled upon a highway - and the bodies of scientists. I don't know what killed them, or why they hadn't come back to life like the rest of humanity, but that wasn't important. What was important is that, among their other equipment, they'd been carrying bottles of water!

So I guess I won't die of thirst today. However, I'm a long way from shelter, in the middle of a strange forest, and I still haven't found a safe, reliable, and permanent source of fresh water. My only weapon is a nail-studded club, and I'm not an experienced fighter in any case.

But I'm alive, which is more than you can say for everyone else in the world, as far as I can tell. No, I can't be the only person still alive, can I? What would be the point of going on then? No, I'm not giving up. I might die, but I'll never quit.

___
Note: My other posts on Cataclysm, and other computer games, are here. The sequel to this post, with more tips on beginning play, is here.

Bette Oops

Funny, isn't it? These people would rather bitch than save money. They'd rather rant and rave about Barack Obama - gee, why is that, I wonder? - than even check out 'Obamacare' for themselves.

Some people will be paying more for insurance, of course. I will be,... probably. I'm one of those people insurance companies love. I pay my premiums and never go to the doctor for anything. And so I had a catastrophic plan with a super-high deductible, and I just... hoped that it would cover everything else if I ever did need it.

Well, one problem with insurance is that you never really know what kind of plan you've got until you need it, and by then, it's too late. Now, under 'Obamacare,' insurance companies can't slip exceptions from coverage into the fine print. (And they can't dump you when you get sick, either, which they could - and did - do previously.)

So I've got a better health insurance plan, but I'm paying more for it. Of course, it could be that I'll get a subsidy for part of that. Right now, it's impossible to tell, since my income varies so dramatically from year to year.

But it might be that I won't even be paying more for it. Still, if I am, that's OK. I can afford it, and this is helping a lot of people who can't. Sure, I'd rather a single-payer plan or a government option, like expanding Medicare, but for millions of people, this is a whole lot better than nothing.

Jesus was wrong

This is the "Jesus Was Wrong" series of videos, by Profmth Mitch, combined into one video clip.

The first seven minutes is his original "Jesus Was Wrong" video, while the rest of it responds to the comments about it which he received.

Right-wingers are upset about this?

This is the official Coca-Cola version of that Superbowl ad right-wingers are currently having kittens about. Hard to believe, isn't it? (The Superbowl ad - which is the one I've been seeing from Coca-Cola on YouTube, too - is the same basic ad, though it was condensed to just one minute.)

Note that, just recently, right-wingers got their knickers in a twist about this ad, which dared to show a 'real Amurikan' married to a Muslim woman.

And then, the Republican Party got MSNBC to apologize abjectly and then fire the offending employee who dared to suggest that "maybe" the right-wing (not Republicans, note, although it was the GOP which claimed to be offended) would have a problem with a biracial couple.

Well, now what? Is MSNBC going to apologize to their fired employee and hire that person back? Why not? Hasn't the right-wing just demonstrated the truth of that tweet?

Here's TYT explaining about the latest insanity coming from the right:



Yeah, this is Coca-Cola, a giant multinational corporation which is trying to sell more soft drinks by appealing to all of us.

That's different from the Republican Party, which is trying to win more elections by appealing to as few of us as they possibly can - a shrinking minority of timid, bewildered, perpetually-angry racists and bigots.

Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur cover this well, but let me just add a couple of small points. First, sadly, Teddy Roosevelt did write that quote credited to him by Allen West. It wasn't when he was president, though, but three days before he died in 1919, at a time when racism was enjoying a resurgence in America.

Well, we're better than that now, aren't we?

And second, the author of America the Beautiful (the lyrics, though not the melody) was apparently a lesbian. So it's especially ironic to hear the right-wing complain about a gay couple in the ad, isn't it?

The Colbert Report
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You know, more and more I'm coming to realize that the right-wing wants people to hate America. They love having enemies. Most of us would think that people singing "America the Beautiful" in any language - indeed, whether they were Americans themselves or not - would be a very good thing.

But not the right-wing, which doesn't just love to hate people themselves, but actually desires to be hated. Well, they're getting their way,... but I wonder how they expect to win elections that way?

Pat Robertson justifies genocide

Note that, if you buy this, it's justification for all genocide. Obviously, all people are going to raise their children to believe the same things they do. So if you disagree with them, the right decision is to kill them all - men, women, and children?

Oh, no, I misspoke. According to the Bible, you're supposed to keep the virgin girls as sex slaves. You just kill everyone else (and I mean everyone).

Clearly, this is moral, right? I mean, it's commanded by God.

I only have one question. I understand how you have to kill infants, because who knows what horrible things they've already been taught by their parents, right? But how do you keep those young rape victims from teaching such things to their kids - especially since God also hates birth control?

Or did God mean that you're supposed to kill them, too, but only after you rape them? Oh, being moral is hard, isn't it?

PS. I thought I'd give you an example of what Pat Robertson is talking about. This is from Numbers, Chapter 31 (it's not the only incident of genocide in the Bible, I assure you):

7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. ...

9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.

10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.

11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. ...

14 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.

15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ...

17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

...

25 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

26 Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast...

27 And divide the prey into two parts...

28 And levy a tribute unto the LORD ... one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:

29 Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest, for an heave offering of the LORD. ...

31 And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the LORD commanded Moses.

32 And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the men of war had caught, was six hundred thousand and seventy thousand and five thousand sheep, ...

35 And thirty and two thousand persons in all, of women that had not known man by lying with him. ...

37 And the LORD'S tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen. ...

40 And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD'S tribute was thirty and two persons.

Hmm,... I wonder how many men, women, and children they slaughtered - on God's orders - if there were 32 thousand virgin girls left for booty?

Oh, and note how God wants his share of everything - including the girls. Guess what happened to the 32 girls they sacrificed to God? True, there are no specific directions for human sacrifice in the Old Testament (maybe that part got a bit too embarrassing for later believers?), but it's pretty clear what this means, isn't it?

These young girls are included with the sheep, the cattle, and the asses which God demanded in blood sacrifice, and there's absolutely no indication that they suffered a better fate than the animals.

Yet, according to Pat Robertson, all this is perfectly moral.

Why I play Arma 3

OK, this doesn't really show why I play Arma 3. This is just a neat video trailer for one of the many user-created missions in the game - and a mission I've not actually played myself, at that.

I play Arma 3 with the friendly group of fellow fans at Not-Quite-Dead-Yet, most of us older than the average gamer and none of us overly serious about the game. And we play cooperatively, us against the computer AI, with as much teamwork as we can muster without pretending that we're actually in the military.

I mean, the explosions are great, and I'm continually enthralled by the lighting in the game, but those are still secondary. Or maybe even tertiary. :)

Of course, you can play the game on public servers with random people if you want. But I don't think that's much fun. You can play PvP (player vs player) or TvT (team vs team) if you want. You can play it like every other first-person shooter - just run and gun, with instant respawns - if you want.

But none of those play-styles interest me. Yet being overly serious about the game doesn't interest me, either. Most of us at NQDY are newbies, and none of us are experts - especially not me! We laugh at things like this:



There are more videos and screenshots here, if you're curious. I was going to pick out a more typical video clip of our gameplay, but I'm not sure there is one. We're always trying different missions with different leaders, different equipment, and different outcomes.

Frequently we're confused, often a bit disorganized, and sometimes even frustrated (the game is still being updated, and missions often have bugs), but we always have fun. (If you want to see expert gameplay, that's not us. Check out Dslyecxi or Jester814, maybe.)

I don't usually play multiplayer games. In fact, except for this, I stick entirely to single-player games. I even bought this game expecting to play it by myself. But after playing Arma 3 with these guys,... well, there's just no comparison.

Given that some of us are retired and others live in timezones 6 or 7 hours ahead of mine, I'm always being tempted into a game of Arma 3 - or doing the tempting, myself. :)

___
Note: Check out my other game-related posts here.

Chris Christie is losing it

(Bob Englehart)

You might have noticed that I haven't been posting anything about the Chris Christie bridge scandal (well, OK, this cartoon, maybe - but that's more about the Republican Party in general).

The thing is, I felt it was more a local matter in New Jersey, despite Christie's presidential aspirations, which was also getting plenty of attention already. Plus, it's more about old-fashioned corruption than right-wing lunacy (not that that's any better, but it's not my usual focus).

Then the Christie people released this email, defending the governor and blasting David Wildstein, his latest accuser and a Christie insider, as follows:

He was publicly accused by his high school social studies teacher of deceptive behavior.

OK, now this has moved into lunacy, don't you think?

Here's how TPM puts it:

It's genuinely shocking that a sitting governor and presidential aspirant finds himself or his key defenders writing a sentence like this: "He was publicly accused by his high school social studies teacher of deceptive behavior."

I mean, is that a joke? Or, he's someone who "made moves that were not productive"?

Seriously, who wrote this?

What's funny is that many people who know the guy have no trouble saying Wildstein in a brilliantly sleazy guy, someone with a taste for dirty politics and would, as the letter finally says, do and say anything to save David Wildstein. So even as a scorched earth attack it's a pretty hapless effort. It shouldn't be hard to find damning things to say about this guy.

In the cited articles, you see some of the inherent difficulties of the situation. Sleazy liar is Gov's "eyes, ears inside The Port Authority"!

That helps.

I don't know anything about this scandal, except for what I read online. I wouldn't trust any of these people any farther than I could throw them, so I'm not going to prejudge the outcome of the investigation.

But just the fact that Chris Christie has surrounded himself with people like this really says a lot about him, whether he knew about the bridge closure or not. If these are his supporters - no, not just his supporters, but his trusted lieutenants - what does that say about him?

And now, when fighting back against one of them, Christie accuses the guy of being criticized by his high school social studies teacher? Did he not play well with others in kindergarten, either?

This is turning into a complete farce, isn't it?

Seth Andrews at Reason in the Rock 2012

This is Seth Andrews of The Thinking Atheist at Reason in the Rock 2012 in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Yeah, it isn't new. And I know it's impossible to watch all of these things. (If you do have the inclination, the Arkansas Freethinkers have a lot more of these talks - from Reason in the Rock 2012 and 2013, too - here.)

But it's good stuff. It's both entertaining and touching. In part, it's about his deconversion, and that kind of thing always interests me. So watch it or not, it's up to you. I just thought I'd post it.