Saturday, April 24, 2010

Headlines - Saturday April 24

 
Pope Benedict XVI is named in a new lawsuit on child abuse in a case that will test the claims of diplomatic immunity claimed by the Vatican's lawyers, here. The claims stem from the alleged cover-up of abuse by a priest at a Catholic school in Wisconsin, Father Lawrence Murphy. The lawsuit seeks the names of potentially thousands of similar priests facing "credible allegations of sexual misconduct" against them. More here.
 
Next on the docket: nun-rapers

The stories just get worse and worse. The Catholic priesthood hasn't just been abusing children in various places, but also has a history of abuse of women, especially in Africa and India.

The crisis of religious abuse in Africa and India was brought to Rome's attention in 1998 when a four-page paper titled "The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and Rome" was presented by Sister Marie McDonald, mother superior of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa. A March 2001 National Catholic Reporter article detailed McDonald's claims, which included accounts of sexual abuse by priests and bishops.

McDonald quoted a vicar general in one African diocese who talked "quite openly" in Rome in 1996 about celibacy in Africa, saying, "Celibacy in the African context means a priest does not get married, but does not mean he does not have children."

The AIDS pandemic in Africa and India is said to have made nuns "safer" sex partners and, also for that reason, targets of priests seeking sex. (Some nuns also reported sexual abuse by mothers superior.) The women, culturally brainwashed not to challenge men or female figures of authority, felt they had no choice, and the priests took further advantage by arguing that Catholic rules for priests required them to have sex "only with virgins."

More allegations came from Sister Jesme, an ex-nun from the Indian state of Kerala, who told of sexual abuse and forced homosexual relationships in a 2009 autobiography. But when the book was released, a spokesman for the Syro-Malabar order of the Catholic Church in India dismissed it as a "book of trivialities."

"It's her experiences," he said, "but these are things that might creep into a society of communal living." He added that the church would not be shocked by the allegations, concluding, "The church knows about these things."

I'm pretty sure Catholic dogma does not say priests are allowed to have sex with virgins, so on the one hand, this is clearly a bunch of exploiters in clerical collars going well off the reservation; on the other hand, these abuses were plainly spelled out to the Vatican, which seems to have responded with its well-practiced negligence.

Of course, another factor might be that, just as is the case in remote Inuit villages, running a diocese in Africa or India is probably a high-profit-margin affair. The Vatican patriarchy might see little to gain in helping women.

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In which Mark Twain explains Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 
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William Shatner and Lin Yu Chun perform Total Eclipse of the Heart.
 
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Explode baby, explode! 
Drill baby, drill!

CNN:

A 1-by-5-mile sheen of crude oil mix has spread across the Gulf of Mexico's surface around the area where an oil rig exploded and sank, according to the Coast Guard.

"This is a rainbow sheen with a dark center," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry told reporters.

Officials do not know whether oil or fuel are leaking from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig and the well below, but BP Vice President David Rainey said "it certainly has the potential to be a major spill."
The good news is that, as I write, MSNBC is reporting that the rig is not leaking from the well, so -- for now at least -- all the environmental damage seems to be done. The reporters seem positively giddy about this, but we've still got a 1-by-5-mile oil slick to deal with. Seems to me that's still pretty bad. Eleven are missing and, at this point, presumed dead. So no happy news there, either.
 
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Dan Savage is promoting May 20th as the "First Annual Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" in reaction to the death threats made against the creators of South Park. It was nice knowing you, Mr. Savage.
 
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political pictures for your blog
 
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At least they don't have to leave their passports at the desk when they check into a hotel.....
 
Well, she did it, people! This Republican lady, Jan Brewer, has signed a bill to destroy her state by making it a misdemeanor to not carry immigration papers around if you look Fishy. Sucks to be brown in Arizona "today." Enjoy the weekend, the end. YouTube, Arizona Republic
 
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GREAT NEWS, EVERYONE! "When Sens. John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman release their climate bill on Monday, they expect to have the backing of three of the five major oil companies, Mother Jones has learned." Sounds like a real tuffy! Check out the rundown of proposals at Mother Jones. ("Agriculture would be entirely exempt from the cap on carbon emissions.") Can't wait to fight for these juicy rewards all summer and fall! Mother Jones
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Everything about this is disgustingly wrong.

Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad after a judge agreed Friday to the inmate's request for the method, renewing a debate over what critics see as an antiquated, Old West-style of justice.

Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles, a rarely used relic that harkens back to Utah's territorial history.

Why the hell is execution by firing squad still an option in Utah?  Whatever one's thoughts on capital punishment, I can't think of one decent reason as to why this barbaric act is still allowed.  It's 2010, assholes!  Let go of the 1800s already.

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John Cole runs down a partial list of right-wing beliefs.

-stem cell research is murdering babies

-Al Gore is a greater threat to America than climate change

-John Kerry is a war criminal and George Bush is a war hero

-liberals want to teach your kid to be gay

-liberals want to abort your baby

-the estate tax is the greatest infringement on human liberty ever-we can drill our way to energy independence

-you have to torture people in order to keep America safe

-liberals want to release terrorists into our cities

-only the second half of the first amendment and the second amendment count

-the more you cut taxes, the more money the government will take in

-free markets will handle everything

-evolution is just a "theory"

-liberals hate America

-ACORN stole the 2008 election

-lying about a blowjob is a serious crime, lying about a war is not

-Obama is a socialist Muslim Kenyan

While I'll freely admit that not all conservatives adhere to every one of these beliefs, no one could honestly argue that prevalent conservative thinking, at least among the rank and file, is centered around these very notions.

So what does all this say about conservatives in general?  The easy response would be to label them all as bleepin' morons – but that would be disingenuous.  As Cole points out, decades of right-wing BS by the conservative establishment in combination with a wingnut media whose very existence is based on distorting every issue liberals rally around, has led to a conservative base of badly informed individuals.  We saw it last summer at town hall meetings and we see it today at tea party hate-fests.  These sadly pathetic people are ignorant of the truth. They just don't know it.

When Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are where you turn to for information, then you are doomed to live in a world where up is down and a liberal bogeyman hides behind every corner.  You are doomed to a world of ignorance and close-mindedness which has little room for either logic or compassion.  In essence, you have doomed yourself to a dark world of self-imposed autistic delusion.

It can't be fun living in an alternate universe where unfounded hate, criticism, fear and distrust are the principles which guide your very existence.

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How crazy is Glenn Beck? This crazy.

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Value Added Tax - Bad Idea

Marc Perkel Letter to the Editor

News reports say that President Obama is considering a value added tax. That would be a really bad idea. A value added tax is really a national sales tax and it is a tax paid mostly by the poor and middle class because they spend all their money and the rich don't. Instead, I would rather see them rais taxes on the rich to pay off the deficit because the deficit was caused by the rich.

During the Bush administration the deficit ballooned because of the huge tax cuts for the rich. The bank bailout was to bail out the rich. Subsidies for the housing market were to keep housing prices up for the benefit of the rich. So why should we tax the poor to pay the debt of the rich?

The poor and middle class already pay taxes the rich don't pay. We pay medicare, medicaid, and social security taxes on the wages we earn where the rich pay no payroll taxes on their capital gain income, which is taxed at a lower rate. And finally Mr. President, you pledged not to raise taxes on people making less that $250,000 a year and we expect you to keep that promise.

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A jury on Friday ordered the Boy Scouts of America to pay $18.5 million to a man sexually abused by a former assistant Scoutmaster in what is believed to be the largest such award against the national organization.

And don't forget the Mormons conspired to cover it up.

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Who would have thought ...
 
There'd be a position for "Mop Boy" anywhere other than a peep show?

The Party of Fiscal Conservancy
at work:

WASHINGTON — Senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were being paid to police the financial system, an agency watchdog says.

The SEC's inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The memo says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2 1/2 years since the financial system teetered and nearly crashed.
 
That's great. A big spoogefest as the economy went tits up. WTF is it with Republicans and sex? It's like they're a buncha little, repressed hornsters who gotta touch themselves all day long.

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Tea-bagged Geico man fires back
 
Recently, the Geico spokesman left an insulting (but hilarious) telephone message for the Tea Baggers' little astroturf extended family, FreedomWorks.
 
FreedomWorks' Matt Kibbe then posted Douglas' cell number on biggovernment.com, which caused Douglas to get harassed and ultimately sacked. 
 
None of this hubbub prevented Douglas from making light of the situation in his own riveting little video...
 
 
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Former Bush official charged for erasing computer files I have a feeling that, little by little, more and more members of the Bush crime family will be finding themselves in this awkward little stress position:
Former U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch was charged today with criminal contempt of Congress in connection with his notorious use of Geeks On Call to scrub his computer while under investigation for misusing his office, according to a court filing in federal court in Washington. [...]

That was in late 2006.

I just adore skipping down Memory Lane, especially when it leads me to a happy ending.

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Eighteen vets kill themselves every day.
 
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Conservative nostalgia for the days of President Bush has been running strong recently, with billboards of Bush's picture and the phrase "Miss Me Yet?" popping up around the country. Now, College Republicans at Western Kentucky University have decided to honor their dear leader with the creation of a "W" Day.
 
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Common street trash
 
Sarah Palin goes to Knoxville court to continue destroying 22 year old who found her Yahoo password two years ago

Sarah Palin is now using her vast political knowledge and expertise as one of America's greatest leaders to help brutally prosecute a dumb college student who figured out her incredibly easy e-mail password hint two years ago and uploaded a few screen shots to some web forum leading to a day or two of pranks which meant nothing in the end and probably just boosted her career through faux-victimization, the only weapon in her arsenal; she is awful. MORE »

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Happy birthday, Hubble
Full name: The Hubble Space Telescope, sent into space 20 years ago today.



It has made images such as this a part of our lives (for those who are paying attention):



That is the Carina Nebula. (Photo from here)

Edwin Hubble was one of the very first Rhodes Scholars. He had a masters degree in Spanish, was a lawyer, he quickly gave up the law, earned a Ph.D in astronomy and he served in the Army in the First World War. Dr. Hubble was the first to recognize that what other astronomers were nebulae in our galaxy were, in fact other galaxies. Astronomers before WW1 had noted that some of the nebulae they had observed were
redshifted, the stars were redder than they should have been. Dr. Hubble realized that the redshift meant that those galaxies were moving away and that the Universe was expanding.

It was very appropriate to name the Space Telescope after Dr. Hubble. The telescope is so well known that if you mention "the Hubble", a large number of people outside of the scientific community will know what you are talking about.

One of the saddest things about the retirement of the Shuttle is that the Hubble will not be retrieved at the end of its service life; it will be de-orbited and allowed to burn up as a useless bit of space junk. For what the telescope has added to our understanding of the Universe, it deserves better.

Hubble will be replaced by the
James Webb Telescope. The JWT will be at the 2nd Lagrange Point, or nearly a million miles from Earth. The risk is that if they screw up in grinding the mirrors of the JWT the same way that they screwed up in grinding the mirror for the Hubble, the JWT will not be as useful as they hope, for unlike Hubble, nobody can fly to fix the JWT.. Presumably, the mirror-makers are well aware of this.

If you feel like reading:

Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae

Hubble: Imaging Space and Time
 
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h/t Dick
 
Rating Agency Data Aided Wall Street in Mortgage Deals
One-Fourth of Nonprofits Are to Lose Tax Breaks - can they please start with the LDS and Roman Catholic churches? Please?
At last: ...a legislative model for Utah.  Yeah.  F**k them Feds.  But keep sending those checks, please.