Posted 4:18 PM by Scoobie Davis

We are Living in Wingnuttia

A reader emailed me the link to this press release. At first I thought it might be a joke until I read the same thing on the Huffington Post:

For Immediate Release: December 28, 2006
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Washington, DC — Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics, remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. PEER is also asking Director Bomar to approve a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park visitors about geologic issues.

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

Park officials have defended the decision to approve the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, claiming that park bookstores are like libraries, where the broadest range of views are displayed. In fact, however, both law and park policies make it clear that the park bookstores are more like schoolrooms rather than libraries. As such, materials are only to reflect the highest quality science and are supposed to closely support approved interpretive themes. Moreover, unlike a library the approval process is very selective. Records released to PEER show that during 2003, Grand Canyon officials rejected 22 books and other products for bookstore placement while approving only one new sale item — the creationist book.

Ironically, in 2005, two years after the Grand Canyon creationist controversy erupted, NPS approved a new directive on “Interpretation and Education (Director’s Order #6) which reinforces the posture that materials on the “history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism [and] Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.”

“As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan,” Ruch added, pointing to the fact that previous NPS leadership ignored strong protests from both its own scientists and leading geological societies against the agency approval of the creationist book. “We sincerely hope that the new Director of the Park Service now has the autonomy to do her job.”

Posted 1:03 PM by Scoobie Davis

Have a Great New Year!!!
I've been away from the computer for a few days. I am working on a "Year in Political Hypocrisy" post that looks at the previous year. The only problem with it is that there was so much political hypocrisy that the post is becoming unwieldy. It should be out next week.

In the meantime, Robert Parry has a special report on the Moonie Times titled, "The GOP's $3 Billion Propaganda Organ." It's a long read (over 15,000 words) but should be read by anyone cncerned about this country. I've always thought that Moon and others low-balled the figure when they claimed that it has only been about a billion or so dollars that the Moon has pumped into the Times to keep it afloat. Quick note: Parry isn't kidding when he writes about Senator Orrin Hatch's ties with Moon. Hatch even co-wrote a song, "The Jerusalem Peace Song", for one of Moon's front groups.

UPDATE: I found this video of Hatch kissing Moon's wife's ass right before she declares the end of the completed Testament Age:

In 1993 the U.S. senator introduces his friend, the wife of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who proceeds to declare the end of the Completed Testament Age. For those of you keeping score at home: 1. Old Testament 2. New Testament 3. Reverend Moon's Completed Testament

Posted 4:31 PM by Scoobie Davis

Happy Festivus
I saw It's a Wonderful Life last week and it never ceases to make me think about Gary Kamiya's salute to a truly tight place: Pottersville.

Posted 4:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Article Every Democrat Needs to Read
Todd Estes on the permanent campaign.

Posted 10:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

Spring Break 2007 With Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter!
All my dreams have come true! Spending spring break having fun at the beach and engaging in hedonistic activities is so behind the times. If you really want to be on the cutting edge, you can see Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter at the Reclaiming America for Christ conference on March 2 and 3, 2007 in Fort Lauderdale (formerly America's college spring break mecca--see addendum). It won't be on the beach but will be held at D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Schlafly will be the main speaker for the Salt & Light Banquet. Coulter will be giving the closing session lecture. The topic of her lecture was not announced but one of the conference's topics is "Darwin's deadly legacy" and Coulter appeared in Kennedy's TV special with the same name (she also slammed Darwin in her most recent book Godless). Quick note on Coulter and Schlafly: Coulter wrote an unintentially hilarious 3-page paean to Schlafly in Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right.

Let me just segue this post into a discussion about education and evolution. Coulter's stands on Darwin and evolution can be attributed to one of two scenarios: 1) Coulter is so incredibly obtuse that even an Ivy League education couldn't wipe the stupid off her (thus putting Coulter into the tiny camp of Ivy League-educated opponents of evolution such as George W. Bush); 2) Coulter doesn't believe her own bullshit about creationism but sees it as a way to pander to the yokels. I believe scenario two is the case. I know Coulter well enough to know that she's not stupid and that she's cynical enough to play the fundies like a ten-dollar accordion (Coulter, who grew up in the New Canaan, Connecticut suburbs, has pandered to the neo-confederate crowd also).

Here is the Reclaiming America for Christ website

Addendum: Requiem for a Party Town. Fort Lauderdale used to be America's top college spring break destination until puritans like D. James Kennedy put pressure on the local government in the 1980's to clean up Ft. Lauderdale's rep as a hedonistic playground for college students. Kennedy and others were responsible for the election of Doug Danziger as vice mayor of the city. Danziger wanted to make the city more "family-friendly" and was largely responsible for a police crackdown on college students on spring break (Ft. Lauderdale outlawed parties in 1985)--resulting in an exodus of spring breakers to places like Daytona Beach and Panama City. By the end of the 80's, the spring break population in the city had gone from 350,000 to fewer than 20,000.

Vice Mayor Danziger made his bones with the fundy crowd and was considered a rising political star with the sectarian right until, as luck would have it, he was videotaped having sex with escort Kathy Willits (billed as "America's Favorite Nymphomaniac") and quickly sank into obscurity.

Posted 5:33 PM by Scoobie Davis

Just Found Out About This
Sin City 2 Like the first one, it's a Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez project.

Posted 9:34 AM by Scoobie Davis

Person of the Year
Even though Time picked me and you as their persons of the year, I think it was a cop-out. I prefer Salon's Person of the Year, S.R. Sidarth:

Macaca and all the missteps that followed helped convince voters in these affluent, well-educated and increasingly diverse zip codes outside Washington that they had grown tired of George Allen. But the same voters may also have recognized Sidarth, born and raised in northern Virginia, a straight-A student at a state college and a member of the local Hindu temple, as their neighbor. Allen was just a California transplant with dip and cowboy boots who had glommed on to the ancient racial quirks of his adopted home. Sidarth was the kid next door. He, not Allen, was the real Virginian. He was proof that every hour his native commonwealth drifts further from the orbit of the GOP's solid South and toward a day when Allen's act will be a tacky antique. Allen was the past, Sidarth is the wired, diverse future -- of Virginia, the political process and the country.

Posted 9:26 AM by Scoobie Davis

Let It Be a Fight to the Death
Judith Regan Versus Rupert Murdoch

Posted 11:11 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Last Generation

The other day, I and other mockers noted the column in WorldNetDaily that warned readers of the food plant with roots in Hell that is feminizing American males: the soybean.

Today in WorldNetDaily, pop eschatologist Hal Lindsey on the last days:

The growing nuclear cooperation between Persia [Iran] and Gog [Russia] is of special importance. It provides one more bit of evidence that supports the conclusion that this is the last generation in human history before the return of Jesus Christ for His Church and the onset of the Tribulation judgment period. . . If you don't know Jesus, now is the time to get down on your knees and introduce yourself. While there is yet time to do so.

If you're a Rapture believer and you're counting the days until God uses His holy vacuum cleaner to suck you up into Heaven, here's the bad news: this isn't the first time Lindsey told us that we were living in the last days. In his 1970 book The Late, Great Planet Earth (which was the bestselling book of the 1970's), Lindsey predicted that the End would occur within one generation of the establishment of the state of Israel (1948). This and most of the things Lindsey predicted in the book didn't pan out.

Lindsey's apocalyptic writings are not a fun read--unlike Jack Chick's books such as "The Last Generation" (one of my favorite Chick tracts that contains immortal dialogue (e.g.,"If I turn in a sicko, will I get a reward?" and "@!!!***! Take this heretic away. Dispose of it, or use it for food."). To be fair to Lindsey, I prefer comix and I haven't yet read the sequential art version of Lindsey's book There's a New World Coming (published by Al Hartley's Spire Christian Comics in the 1970's).

Posted 10:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Consortium News Blog
Consortium News is the site where you will find the news that the mainstream media doesn't have the guts to print or broadcast. They now have a blog. Check it out and if you're a blogger add it to your links.

Posted 3:46 PM by Scoobie Davis

Jeff Greenfield
It's interesting that Greenfield bemoans the "conspiracy theories" that portrayed Bill Clinton "as a drug ring- and murder-enabler." However, Here was Greenfield when he had a chance to skewer one of those conspiracy theorists:

Appearing as an "expert" on the Viewpoint special, [Rush] Limbaugh denied twisting the rumor [in which Limbaugh misinformed his listeners that a newsletter claimed "that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton, and the body was then taken to Fort Marcy Park"]: "Never have I suggested that this was murder," [Limbaugh] said. ABC's Jeff Greenfield, in a taped segment, further covered for the talk show host, claiming that Limbaugh "broadcast the rumor as an example of the more wild stories circulating."

One thing to keep in mind is that although Limbaugh downplays his Foster rumor-mongering to mainstream journalists like Greenfield, he still fans the flames of Vince Foster paranoia to the inhabitants of Wingnuttia (his radio audience) despite the fact that it's been over ten years since Foster committed suicide (and several investigations have found no evidence of foul play--e.g., click here and here).

Posted 11:23 AM by Scoobie Davis

Is George W. Bush Satan's Helper?
This fundy web site thinks so. It has this photo of Bush giving what appears to be the Devil Horn hand gesture. Apparently the writer doesn't know that the gesture means a lot of things--Bush's daughter Jenna went to the University of Texas at Austin where the gesture is known as the Hook 'em Horns.

This isn't the first time a president has been accused of being aligned with Old Scratch. In his excellent biography Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley, Timothy White pointed out how some Rastafarians--enraged about Ronald Reagan's anti-weed policies--concluded that The Gipper was the Antichrist because each of his three names (Ronald Wilson Reagan) had six letters (666).

Posted 10:22 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Raftman's Razor on PBS
When I attended the 2005 LA Film Festival, there was a short film I fell in love with: The Raftman's Razor. It will be on PBS's Independent Lens on the 27th. Here's more info on the film and info on getting a VHS or DVD copy.

Posted 12:24 PM by Scoobie Davis

Only on WorldNetDaily
Those of you familiar with this site know about how I feel about Joseph Farah and WorldNetDaily. (Via the Huffington Post) WorldNetDaily is now aiming its sites on the "devil food" that transforms clean-cut American children into queers: soybeans.

Quick notes on homosexuality and/or WorldNetDaily: Today I received a "holiday note" (via e-mail) from WorldNetDaily's Star Parker. Someone should report her to Bill O'Reilly for using the word "holiday" instead of "Christmas". . . Anti-gay crackpot Paul Cameron (click here and here) recently weighed in Mary Cheney's soon-to-be family. Those of you familiar with Cameron won't be surprised that he's not happy that Mary is preggers. Cameron and Cheney deserve each other. . . Terry Krepel of ConWebWatch's article "The 'Forced Homosexualization' of Joseph Farah". . . Another reason it's called WingNutDaily: Farah's embrace of the Clinton Body Count.

UPDATE: Since I and other bloggers mocked this article, someone changed the title of the article from " A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals" to "Soy is making kids 'gay'"

Posted 3:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Megachurch Gay Sex Scandal
Move over, Ted Haggard. Paul Barnes is joining you (via HineSight).

Probably the most entertaining gay sex scandal involved the now largely forgotten Billy James Hargis whose Christian Crusade was a forerunner to the Majority Majority and the Christian Coalition.

Posted 3:10 PM by Scoobie Davis

Biggest Unreported Story on the 2006 Elections: A Huge Setback for Amway/Quixtar/Alticor

Pyramid scheme and success cult Amway/Quixtar is a microcosm of the Republican Party's vision for America: it has a small elite at the top who are multimillionaires but the vast majority of its distributors make very little or lose money. In fact, its structure is similar to another dysfunctional organization--the Unification Church: both Amway and the Moonies have a small elite who live like royalty but most of their members work their fingers to the bone to ensure that the elites retain their lavish lifestyles. Ironically, those at the bottom rungs of both groups tend to the most enthusiastic members--their enthusiasm (cynically drilled into them by their leaderships) apparently is all they have. Both have a theocratic view of American government (click here and here. Amway and the Moonies are also similar in that the hierarchy of both groups gives massive financial support to the Republican Party.

Anyone who has been to an Amway rally knows about the cultish nature of the group (Dateline NBC did a report on Amway and the videos of the Amway rallies are scary--click here and click on the top link--also read former Amway insider Eric Scheibeler's online book Merchants of Deception). Despite these reports, Amway continues to run a quasi-criminal enterprise with relative impunity and is able to maintain a veneer of respectability in the public's mind (though my Google bomb of Amway helped educate web surfers).

There is some recent great news about Amway/Quixtar: 2006 was an unmitigated disaster for the group:
1. Dick DeVos, son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, was soundly defeated in the Michigan gubernatorial election. Although DeVos' campaign spent $41 million (that's not a typo) on the campaign, he garnered only 42 percent of the vote against incumbent Jennifer Grandholm. DeVos is a hardcore theocrat who hold reconstructionist/dominionist views and a member of the notorious Council for National Policy.
2. Former Amway distributor Tom DeLay not only was indicted and resigned his seat but his seat went to Democrat Nick Lampson.
3. Amway distributor Richard Pombo (R-CA) lost his House seat.
4. The MLM Liberal Blog reported that many of the GOP members of the House and Senate who lost their seats had received money from Amway.

Amway's defeat is a victory for America.

UPDATE: Minddig sees parellels between Amway and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Posted 12:48 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry on journalistic giant, the late great Gary Webb. Not surprisingly, Moon's Washington Times was at the forefront of the attacks on Webb.

Posted 4:29 PM by Scoobie Davis

Former Member of Florida Governor-elect Charlie Crist Team Uses Chick Tracts (to Bash Islam)

O'Neal Dozier, pastor for the Worldwide Christian Church and who was a member of Charlie Crist's election committees was dismissed from Crist's team in September after he distributed anti-Islamic Chick tracts after learning that a 29,000 square foot mosque was planned to be built near his church. Chick tracts that address Islam are highly inflammatory (I interviewed Chick and Fed Carter when Carter's project at the time was "The Little Bride"; chick told me that this tract really "sticks it to Islam"; Indeed, it does!) Dozier called Islam, "a cult" and said, "we don't want our area to be a breeding ground for terrorists."

Chick's Battle Cry newsletter has the full story.

Other Anti-Islam Chick tracts: "Allah Had no Son"; "Men of Peace?"; "Who is Allah?"; "The Sky Lighter"; and "The Pilgrimage"

Posted 3:12 PM by Scoobie Davis

Fighting The Christmas Warriors with Ridicule
Simon Maloy and Brad Reed has the holiday spirit.

Blast from the past: me talking to O'Reilly himself about the War on Christmas last year. Disclosure: I celebrate Festivus.

Posted 9:52 PM by Scoobie Davis

No, I'm Not Making This Shit Up
Real quote from William Bennett: "In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority."

Posted 8:25 PM by Scoobie Davis

Pan's Labyrinth
I went to a sneak preview of Pan's Labyrinth on the San Diego State campus tonight. I gave it an 8 out of 10. An actor colleague didn't like it that much. I've met director Guillermo del Toro a couple times. I love his attitude.

Posted 9:51 AM by Scoobie Davis

Howard Kurtz
I'm doing some research on Howard Kurtz. If there are any articles you would like to recommend, e-mail me.