If I Thought Screaming Would Help

I'd most certainly do it.

Update (11/6/06): Video of the sordid affair can be seen here. See if you can spot the theological contradiction. Hint: Focus on the woman wearing a pink wig and horns.

New Yuck Times: Bush Told the Truth About Iraq and Saddam

Well, that's not exactly what it says, and you can pretty much bet the farm that the Times will deny it confirmed any such suggestion. Whatever.

I'm also taking wages on how long it will take one of the leftist nutroots blogs to dismiss the story and mindlessly rant about the Times being manipulated by Karl Rove and his right wing media machine. (link via The Anchoress)

Will Mark Shea be Consistent?

In case you haven't been following, there is a running controversy in the Catholic blogosphere over the subject of torture and whether the Catholic Church views it as intrinsically immoral. Appropriately described magisterial fundamentalists like Mark Shea have consistently been arguing that "torture" is intrinsically immoral and that any professed faithful Catholic who questions it or says otherwise is a fortiori an apologist for Satan. So much for meaningful discussion with Mr. Shea.

Anyway, the basis for the magisterial fundy position on torture basically comes from one paragraph (paragraph 80) in a papal encyclical called Veritatis Splendor:

The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such [intrinsically evil] acts: "Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator".

Now, in addition to "torture," you'll notice that there are other things listed in the above paragraph like "deportation", "subhuman living conditions" and "degrading conditions of work..." With respect to these words and terms, so-called Apologists for Satan, such as myself, are of the position that they are ambiguous and, more significantly, undefined in Veritatis Splendor. As such, the above paragraph cannot, contrary to what the magisterial fundamentalists assert, be regarded as a doctrinal teaching of the Church. If it was, then how in the world can the Church Herself not be a tool for Satan in light of these reported charges against the Vatican's television station? (link via RelapsedCatholic)

Kerry Apologizes...

If you were too stupid to realize that his "joke" was not meant to be an insult.

"I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended."

Prime.Grade.Jerk.

How Left-Liberal is California?

Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown is probably going to be elected the State's Attorney General despite the fact that he essentially allowed sexual harassment to occur in his office while he was the mayor of Oakland.

Appearing next to Chuck Poochigian -- Brown's Republican opponent in the state attorney general's race -- Nereyda Lopez-Bowden accused Brown of ignoring her complaints about Jacques Barzaghi, who had been at Brown's side for decades before he was fired in 2004.

"He enabled Jacques Barzaghi for many years to continue his 'predatorial' behavior and harassment of women and men in the office," said Lopez-Bowden, speaking publicly about the incident for the first time.

Ms. Lopez-Bowden actually filed a lawsuit for the alleged acts by Barzaghi and settled out of court for $50,000. Settlements, of course, are not an admission of wrongdoing by anyone, but given the amount of money Ms. Lopez-Bowden received, she must have had a pretty strong case.

From an election standpoint, although this story would seem to be ripe for further investigation into Brown's character and fitness to be California's top law enforcement officer, the MSM has all but ignored or buried it (the hardcopy version of the Sacramento Bee news story that I link to above, for example, is on page A6). I can only imagine how much attention this matter would get from the MSM if, say, Linda Ronstadt's former boyfriend were a Republican and was named Arnold Schwartzenegger.

Why You Shouldn't Vote Democrat

Yeah, Kerry probably didn't mean to insult members of the military, but he did.

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."

You Should Really Read Andrew Sullivan's New Book

Because, as reported by James Taranto, it's critically acclaimed by none other than Andrew Sullivan. (link via Dean Barnett)

* "This is a book about ideas, not political prescriptions. . . . It's an attempt to start the long road back to conservative intellectual clarity. . . . If you still care about those first principles, and why they are more relevant today than ever, . . . buy the book."--Andrew Sullivan

* "If the book can prompt the usually level-headed David Brooks to contradict himself in order to criticize it and has sent Hugh Hewitt into conniptions, it might just be on to something about what has gone wrong with American conservativsm [sic]."--Andrew Sullivan

* "They're angry. They wouldn't be if they didn't know this book exposes them in ways few yet have."--Andrew Sullivan

* "These people are truly rattled by this book. I believe it's a depth charge into the degerenacy [sic] of the current conservative movement."--Andrew Sullivan

* "Why are so many contemporary 'conservatives' lying about the contents of this book? The only reason I can come up with is that they are deadly afraid of its arguments. . . . Which is why you should read the book."--Andrew Sullivan

This is Just Fishnet Stocking Weird

Some background: Tan Nguyen is the Republican nominee for Congress for the 47th Congressional District in California. Geographically, this district encompasses an area that is essentially in the middle of Orange County. The current occupant of this congressional seat is Loretta Sanchez, the only House Representative from the OC who is a Democrat.

Mr. Nguyen got himself into some trouble recently over a letter he authorized to be sent to several households about illegal voting. Questions about attempted voter suppression are being investigated. Needless to say, Mr. Nguyen is maintaining his innocence and going forward with an otherwise ill-fated and, as illustrated by the video below, increasingly comical campaign against an entrenched incumbent (who, ironically, won the seat back in the mid-'90's in an arguably illegal fashion).



(link via RedCounty)

Chick or Treat

Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost does a nice takedown of the infamous Jack Chick comics/tracts and the suggestion that they be given to little kids on Halloween.

To me, though, Chick is not just another anti-Catholic bigot. When I was a kid Jack Chick was the man who was responsible for more nightmares than the Twilight Zone and Kolchak: The Nightstalker combined. Chick not only scared the hell out of me, he made me afraid that hell was all around me.

While his comic books are less well known than his tracts, they were a primary source of literature around my fundamentalist church. In a typical display of twisted '70s fundie logic, our congregation believed that comics about Satan and the occult were more wholesome than reading about Spiderman or Archie and Jughead.

Republicans Don't Love the Lord

So affirms Democrat US Senate candidate, and "non-judgmental" judger, Harold Ford. (link via Powerline)



BTW, notice that Ford uses the hereto never before heard of word, "misfortunate". As one of the Powerline guys notes, if Ford were a Republican, he'd be ridiculed as being stupid.