Your tax dollars at work: the U.S. House has approved a bill that would provide $37 million to widen and extend the road to Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters. The provision was added to the massive $284 billion bill, now before the Senate, by two House Republicans. In other news, Wal-Mart reported profit last year of $10.3 billion.
Consider this:
Have you stopped for a moment to consider the long-term consequences of the Republican Party's fawning over religious extremists? Watch President Bush's judicial nominees. Watch the Democrats use the Schiavo matter to illustrate what might happen to other Americans if Bush's nominees are confirmed. And watch the congressional elections next year. If it's close, and if the Republicans lose their majority, look back to the crowd gathered since last week in Pinellas Park for an explanation. That, too, is Christian bashing.
Question:
If people who commit sex crimes against children are so dangerous that they have to be registered for life after serving their sentences, why are they let out of prison in the first place?
Oy Veh!
Rome, Italy, March 16, 2005
Special to The Raving Atheist
A top Catholic cardinal has blasted "The Da Vinci Code" as a "gross and absurd" distortion of history and said Catholic bookstores should take the bestseller off their shelves because it is full of "cheap lies."
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview with the Milan newspaper Il Giornale, became the highest ranking Italian Churchman to speak out against the book, an international blockbuster that has sold millions of copies.
"(It) aims to discredit the Church and its history through gross and absurd manipulations," Bertone, the archbishop of the northern Italian city of Genoa and a close friend of Pope John Paul told the paper in its Monday edition.
The central claim of the book, written by American Dan Brown, is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children. The Bible says Jesus never married, was crucified and rose from the dead.
"You can find that book everywhere and the risk is that many people who read it believe that those fairy tales are real," he said. "I think I have the responsibility to clear things up to unmask the cheap lies contained in books like that."
“The notion that Christ entered into a stable, monogamous relationship and raised a family is repugnant to every principle held dear by the Church,” said Bertone. “Jesus was a celibate, wild-eyed raving loner, despised and tortured to death his peers.”
Bertone also said that the claims made by the Code defied natural laws, noting that only those “not possessed of their full senses” could deny that Jesus is a resurrected 2,000 year old immaterial spirit who is invisible but simultaneously present everywhere in the universe. “Drink wine and it will turn into Christ’s blood,” Betrone said. “But be careful not to fall for the insane preposterous illogical fictions of madmen.”
In a hole?--Stop digging!
A POLITICAL PRICE TO PAY? APPARENTLY SO.
So, there he was ... Randall Terry, the anti-abortion zealot, screaming outside of the nursing home housing Terri Schiavo. He was screaming something about "hell to pay" if Terri Schiavo dies. He then went on to rant a bit about all of the work that the anti-abortion movement did to elect these Republicans, and that now is the time for them to deliver and perform.
You know what? This time Randall Terry may just be right. There just may be a political price to pay. But Terry is right for the wrong reasons. Republicans may pay a political price not because they didn't do enough to prolong the torture of Terri Schiavo, but because they did too much.
Have you seen today's approval ratings for President Bush? They're down. Way down. He's down to 45%. He was at 52% one week ago. This is the lowest point in his presidency. These polls are not because he hasn't done enough in the Schiavo matter. The downtrend is because he did too much. The largest loss of support was among conservative male church-goers. A majority of the American people were not impressed with the Republican Party's late night grandstanding this past Sunday, and Bush's rush back to Washington to sign a bill in the early hours of the morning.
Maybe conservative Republican politicians can learn a lesson from this. They were elected to reduce the size and intrusiveness of the Imperial Federal Government of the United States. They were elected to reduce our tax burden and lower government spending. They were elected to defend us against threats from abroad, specifically the threat of Islamic terrorism ... and to do so with preemptive action if necessary. In spite of the delusions of grandeur of the abortocentrist crowd and religious extremists, George Bush was not elected to facilitate a government takeover of the ovaries of every fertile American woman, nor was he elected to establish a theocracy.
Perhaps Republicans will take note. I truly believe that their control of the House of Representatives may be in jeopardy in next year's elections. Perhaps they'll learn from this. Maybe they'll start dancing with who brung them for a change, and pay attention to spending and tax cuts, school choice, national defense and individual liberty.
Some lessons are just learned the hard way.
And Finally!
Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places
Two long years have passed since the beginning of Bush's illegal, immoral, and unsanctioned-by-France invasion of Iraq. According to the flashing neon tote-board in Michael Moore's living room, over 1,500 troops have died without dignity. Goddess knows we've tried everything in the book to make the Shrub take his war toys and go home. Petitions. Protest marches. Organized hissy fits. Yet despite all our feminine hysterics, the chimp simply won't listen to reason.
But do not despair, for our beloved MoxieGrill's life partner, Kid Bastard, has the perfect plan to finally convince the swaggering fascist cowboy chimp to surrender his so-called "War on Terror":
"I am going to marry a man. And I'm going to encourage everyone to marry someone of their own gender. And if we can get enough people, we can have one big ceremony on the White House lawn. And then, after the marrying, comes the hot man sex...We are going to make George W. Bush watch live amateur gay porn on his front lawn in punishment for allowing and encouraging every travesty his cabal of bastards commits upon the world."
Not since's Kid Bastard shaved his balls for Jerry's Kids and ignited his farts for the endangered sea manatee, has his brilliant mind hatched such a noble and selfless plan. But it's been two weeks since he made his pledge, and the White House lawn remains oddly man-sex-free. Maybe his standards are too high. Maybe he's not shaking his little moneymaker around the right gay bars. But each day that he procrastinates, more Iraqi children suffer. Helpless, innocent Iraqi children, each holding a fluffy kitten with big, sad eyes.
So to assist him in his endeavor, I have rounded up three upstanding members of the Gay Community who would be more than happy to sodomize the crap out of Kid Bastard in the name of World Peace.
Bachelor #1: My cousin Dale just wrapped up a 15 year stint at the McNeil Island Corrections Center in Steilacom, Washington, and he's lookin' for some red hot lovin'. A compassionate crusader for social justice, Dale is horrified by the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and is anxious to teach Bush a lesson by buggering Kid Bastard. With his Level Three sex offender rating, he's highly skilled in the Art of Love - and with some fava beans and a nice chianti, he'll treat Kid Bastard to the night of his life.
Bachelor #2: Hairy back. Five o'clock shadow. Toothless grin. Rheumy, bloodshot, eyes. But enough about Moxiegrill. Lester, my former liberal arts professor at UC Berkeley, is ready to settle down with a "progressive, open-minded free spirit" who enjoys long walks on the beach, romantic evenings by the fire, the works of Oscar Wilde, and being spanked with a cricket bat "like the naughty little slut he is". A family man at heart, Lester has three beautiful children tied up in the trunk of his car. "But they won't be bothering us...not anymore, anyway."
Bachelor #3: Do you like Pina Colada? Jayjay is a socially conscious liberal whose forte is a pina colada enema that'll knock your birkenstocks off. Recently kicked out of the Boy Scouts simply because of his sexuality, Jayjay has has nothing but contempt for intolerant Christian evangelicals. "We're not 'freaks' to be mocked and ridiculed," he says as he carefully adjusts his tiara. "Homosexuality is a natural, beautiful celebration of love between two or more caring human beings and, in some cases, consenting adult rodents or other forms of open-minded livestock."
There they are, the cream of the Gay Community crop. Due to restraining orders and parole conditions, none of these gentleman can come within 500 feet of the White House, but they're perfectly willing to meet Kid Bastard in this white trailer for a night of unbridled passion. The blessed occasion will be video taped, and copies sent to each member of George Bush's bloodthirsty cabal, with a warning that Kid Bastard is fully prepared to have even more man sex until all U.S. forces are withdrawn from the Middle East. Don't think he won't, Shrub!
It's not like he wasn't already having man sex anyway.
