"It's the only gum with the breath-freshening power of ham"

Burger King has come out with a cologne. Now I can attract hungry, feral cats anywhere I go. (Maybe I should insert a "pussy" double entendre here? Naw, let's not.)

The way to a man's heart may be through his stomach, but the way to a woman's heart — according to Burger King — may be through a new meat-scented body spray.

While fast-food chains aren't exactly best known for selling signature fragrances, on Sunday The Home of the Whopper rolled out a men's body spray called Flame by BK. The 5-ml bottles are available for sale in Ricky's stores in New York City and on a dedicated Web site, firemeetsdesire.com.

If you're salivating for a chance to marinate yourself in flame-broiled flavor, relax: The experience can be yours for just $3.99 — a small price to pay for some seriously mouthwatering mojo.

And if you're thinking "Hey, Burger King isn't exactly sexy", well then, you couldn't be more wrong:

You can see him beckoning you hither at their website.
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Family values in action

I love it.
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I feel so left out

Ed Brayton is so lucky... somebody sent him some racism! The KKK mailed some fliers in response to Obama's election, and a blogger scanned their copy. Now you can see that the "Marxist/Communist" includes equality for blacks, women, and gays, and that's why they have to be stopped!

(I wonder which Marxists / Communists they're fighting nowadays, anyway. Cuba? China?)
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Sunday Dead Racist Blogging: Comics Edition

Apparently in the early '60s, George Wallace had a mini comic printed during his campaign for governor of Alabama. Mostly it's about how he's such a swell guy, his background, and how he'll fight for the people of Alabama against that horrible federal government who wants to meddle in their affairs.

It kinda glosses over all the black people of Alabama that he would not be fighting for, of course.

You can read it here.
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Yet more evidence that the Bible was written solely by old men

Why else would there be a story whose moral is, "If you make fun of bald men, you will be mauled to death by bears"?

It's true!

They even have woodcuts of it, although those have to be the most poorly-drawn bears I've ever seen outside of an elementary school.
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I know I said probably no posting, but...

How could I resist posting about this?

The publishing company that owns the Curious George image says it is considering legal action to stop the sale of a T-shirt depicting Barack Obama as the monkey from children's books.

The T-shirts are being peddled by Marietta bar owner Mike Norman at his Mulligan's Bar and Grill in Cobb County. They show a picture of Curious Georgie peeling a banana, with the words "Obama '08" underneath.

...

Norman has said he got the T-shirts from someone in Arkansas. He started selling them at his bar -- known for the provocative, ultra-conservative political slogans often posted on signs out front -- in April but said he has no plans to mass market them.

The sales came to light this week when a loose coalition of local groups called a protest of the T-shirts.

About a dozen protestors rallied against the shirts Tuesday afternoon, condemning them as racist and asking Norman to stop selling them.

Norman acknowledged the imagery's Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey.

"We're not living in the (19)40's," he said. "Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears -- he looks just like Curious George."

Of course! We're not in '40s, therefore racist imagery isn't racist anymore! Because everyone knows that all racism ended in the '40s!

And a picture of the shirt:

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Life imitates art

A scene from Simpsons is particularly relevant:

Moe: *spray-painting a sign that reads UNITED STATES FOR UNITED STATESIANS* You know what really aggravateses me? It's dem immigants. Dey want all the benefits of livin' in Springfield, but they ain't even bothered to learn themselves the language.

Homer: *painting a sign that says HOMER SAY "GET OUT!"* Yeah! Those are exactly my sentimonies!

Barney: *incoherent, drunken vocalizations*

Moe: Ah, you said it, Barn.

Via Orcinus.
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Looks like we'll have to change the rules for Nevinyrral's Disk

Well. Larry Niven is apparently bugfuck insane.

Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their thoughts on how to protect the nation.

The group has the ear of Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen, head of the science and technology directorate, who has said he likes their unconventional thinking. Members of the group recently offered a rambling, sometimes strident string of ideas at a panel discussion promoting the group at the DHS science and technology conference.

...

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

"The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren't going to pay for anything anyway," Niven said.

Let's not forget that his fears are completely unfounded--undocumented immigrants don't receive a disproportionate amount of health care, and they do pay taxes into the system. But also, perhaps Niven is completely unaware that there are Spanish-speaking citizens of the U.S. who might also hear about these rumors? Wait, no. To Niven and his ilk, that's the whole point; despite directing all their rants towards "illegal aliens", they really mean that they just don't want any Latinos in the country at all.

And of course he's saying that he wants us to spread rumors that we're killing patients in order to drive away Latinos so that they'll die somewhere else. In short, he wants to kill Latinos without actually doing anything--although he might take up the direct approach later if the indirect way of killing them isn't effective enough.

What does any of this have to do with protecting the nation anyways? Oh no, we must kill off the sick and elderly before they topple our military and take over the Pentagon!

Via Sadly, No!
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Hoosier Tony Zirkle dances to the strain of the "I Was Not a Nazi Polka"

And this guy's from my state, too:

A congressional candidate is defending his speech to a group celebrating the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth, saying he appeared simply because he was asked.

"I'll speak before any group that invites me," Zirkle said Monday. "I've spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta."

I think the "my best friend is one" idea has hit bottom with this. I mean, see? Zirkle will appear on a black radio station! That proves he's not racist!

Zirkle compared his speech to other politicians appearing at Bob Jones University.

That... that doesn't help you any. You might recall that when President Bush appeared at Bob Jones University back in 2000, it pissed a lot of people off? And all they did was prevent students from dating people of another race--they weren't celebrating the birthday of Hitler.

Zirkle said he did not know much about the neo-Nazi group and that his intention was to talk on his concern about "the targeting of young white women and for pornography and prostitution."

...is this guy mentally ill or something? He didn't know much about the group? I assume he knew at least their name, which is the "American National Socialist Workers Party". Did this guy just sleep through history class?

Actually, apparently he did:

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn't know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

"This is just a great opportunity for me to witness," he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

Oh, well, sure--that's completely different from the National Socialist German Workers Party. How silly of us? And really, being surrounded by swastikas on Nazi flags, in front of a portrait of Hitler, at an event celebrating Hitler's birthday... well, who could possibly think they're Nazis because of that, huh? It's not like they were goose-stepping, doing the salute, and shouting "Sieg Heil!"

At the event, Hitler's birthday was observed with a cake with a photo of Hitler and the words "Seig Heil."

And really, it looks like Zirkle will fit right in:

The event was not the first time Zirkle has raised controversy on race issues. In March, Zirkle raised the idea of segregating races in separate states. Zirkle said Tuesday he's not advocating segregation, but said desegregation has been a failure.

But I'm sure he'll show up to talk on their radio stations, so obviously this means he's not a racist.

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Friday Dead Racist Blogging: "No-one's That Fast! You Must Be a Super Saiyan!" Edition

I was planning on posting something else this week, but I found this the other day and couldn't wait to share it:

Race lifts a man above himself: it endows him with extraordinary--I might almost say supernatural--powers, so entirely does it distinguish him from the individual who springs from the chaotic jumble of peoples drawn from all parts of the world: and should this man of pure origin be perchance gifted above his fellows, then the fact of Race strengthens and elevates him on every hand, and he becomes a genius towering over the rest of mankind, not because he has been thrown upon the earth like a flaming meteor by a freak of nature, but because he soars heavenward like some strong and stately tree, nourished by thousands and thousands of roots--no solitary individual, but the living sum of untold souls striving for the same goal.

--Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, in S.T. Joshi, ed., Documents of American Prejudice, p. 27

You read that right: being of pure race is a super-power!

Which might explain Wanted's The Future:


Although actually... this explains Super Saiyans perfectly! Especially why they're all blond-haired and blue-eyed!


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Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

It's Dr. Seuss's birthday! Spend the day looking over some of his political cartoons.


Hitler the taxidermist:


Hitler, Queen of the Sea:


Of course, Dr. Seuss wasn't perfect. Even though he ostensibly didn't like racism, he still had some... ah... well, he didn't like the Japanese:


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Racist attacks on Obama? Say it isn't so!

Mark Halperin thinks that McCain will have certain advantages over Obama that Clinton does not. Most if it a lot of bullshit that doesn't actually suggest McCain should try challenging Obama on policies (for instance, he thinks McCain could "Exploit Michelle Obama's mistakes and address her controversial remarks with unrestricted censure"--because his wife's comment is central to his campaign?). But some of them are more than just bullshit, they're racist bullshit. Halperin suggests McCain can, and by extension ought, to

Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama's unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

Yes, since he has an "unusual name" and an "exotic background" (compared to what?), he must be a sleeper-cell terrorist Islamofascist!

Although it seems that Clinton's campaign has been able to do just that. I'm particularly incensed at the response from Clinton's campaign manager, Maggie Williams:

"Enough," Williams said in a statement. "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.

"This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry."

What a crock of shit. No, making sure that photo got sent to the Drudge Report is an "obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today", since you clearly weren't winning when people are paying attention to them. His response to it, on the other hand, is an expression of tolerance of other cultures and a condemnation of the attitude that finds this picture to be scandalous. It is the exact opposite of divisiveness--it is inclusion.

Unfortunately, the Clinton campaign seems to have adopted the right-wing talking point that up is down in matters of race. As Dave Neiwert writes,

[T]hey'll tell us with a straight face that in transcending identity politics, Obama is in fact all about identity politics. Why, the Queen of Hearts couldn't have argued it any better.

Of course, we've been hearing variations on this schtick for some years: Efforts to overcome the effects of institutionalized racism, such as affirmative action, are in fact acts of racism themselves, we're told. Being intolerant of racists is just another kind of bigotry. And it's those minorities and their identity politics who are all obsessed with race -- why, whites (and especially white conservatives) are now perfectly color-blind, dontcha know?

So when Obama's campaign insists that one should be tolerant and acceptive of other cultures, including wearing the traditional clothing of a culture that one visits, that is "being divisive."

It's disgusting that the Clinton campaign has apparently bought into that kind of bullshit.
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A bit late, but I felt the point worthy of being made

I didn't mention it at the time, but a couple weeks back some animal-rights terrorists flooded a scientist's home because she did research on animals, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage. They threatened her further by saying that she should feel lucky because their first choice was to use fire, not water.

This naturally led to wide-spread condemnation among sciencebloggers. However, most of the bloggers responded by pointing out that animal research is exceptionally useful for creating cures for humans, and is absolutely irreplaceable. We could not, for instance, use computer models to do the studies we need. They also pointed out that it animal researchers are not, in fact, sadists who get their jollies torturing cute and fluffy animals, and no, they didn't spend their childhood plucking the wings off of flies. Researchers are very concerned with the care of animals and there are strict rules in place to prevent unnecessary animal testing, and to make it as humane as possible.

I agree with all this, and I in no way mean to detract from any of these points. It's very important to point out that these despicable stereotypes of scientists who work with animals is completely fanciful. However, many of the animal rights groups have a reasonable concern: they don't think it's appropriate to study animals to benefit humans. So when Shelley Batts at Retrospectacle writes

Biomedical scientists do not live a wicked life, as the ALF [Animal Liberation Front] seems to believe. They are involved in research due to a passion for knowledge and a reduction of human suffering,

she's partly talking past these people. They don't care about any reduction in human misery (except maybe their own) that comes at the expense of misery in animals. And this may be a valid complaint.

Except, as you've already concluded by reading the banner at the right of this post, it's not entirely true. Researching animals helps humans, sure, and that's a perfectly valid reason to do it. But for those concerned about the animals, this research also helps animals. I'm surprised that in all of the blog posts or comments that I read on this subject, apparently no-one thought to bring up this simple fact--animals benefit from our research, as well.

For instance: antibiotics were, and are, tested in animals. Antibiotics clearly are used to help humans, but they're also used to help animals. My parents have an antibiotic salve for the purpose of treating animals--horses, dogs, cats--which came in handy recently when one of our cats was injured. This page points out numerous benefits to animals that have resulted from animal research, which include vaccines against numerous diseases and improved treatment of other ailments. HorseFacts.org, where I got the banner, point out other wonderful developments in equine treatment that resulted from animal research.

If animal rights activists really want to help animals, the best way is to let scientists study them so that we can help keep them healthy, and cure them when they're ailing.
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Pot calling kettle a piece of kitchenware

I stumbled across this post today, wherein razib highlights a comment left on another blog post:

It seems to me that Mormonism is indeed a lot more illogical than mainstream Christianity. It suffers from logical contradictions that Christianity does not- for example, how can someone be retroactively baptized? Why would God say that polygamy was OK for Brigham Young but then not OK anymore after Utah became a state? How do the Gods of multiple universes interact? Most importantly, how is it even logically possible for man to become God? This last bit, about man becoming God, is not just highly offensive to me, it's also logically incoherent- if God and man are not inherently of unfathomably different kind, then the term 'God' has no meaning.

Yeah. "Normal" Christianity suffers doesn't have any of those problems. Nothing like a man being a god in Christianity, no sir! And God certainly never changed his mind anywhere from the Old Testament through the New--consistent the whole way through. And as for multiple gods interacting, well, Christianity doesn't have that problem, since its three gods all do the same thing (kinda like this), except when they don't.

I've encountered this sort of thing a lot--people going on and on about how crazy Mormonism or something else is, apparently totally oblivious to how completely batshit their own religion is. I remember a conversation between my parents and a friend of theirs from a while back that was precisely about this--Romney being a Mormon--and everything they said I just sat and mused, "And how is that any different from, say, Catholicism?"

Or people will bring up the fact that blacks weren't accepted into the priesthood of the LDS until 1978, as if this somehow meant that current Mormons must be racist. In fact, the above commenter continued

There is also some reason to believe that Joseph Smith faked his supposed 'revelations', most notably making up the whole polygamy business to justify his prodigious lusts. Not to mention that Mormonism served until the 1970s as America's last religious bastion of racism, and continues until today as a bastion of patriarchy.

Yeah, Mormons were the last religious bastion of racism, which explains why Bob Jones University wouldn't allow interracial dating until 2000. Must've been the dreaded Mormon influence. And as for patriarchy among Christendom? Too easy. Don't even have to bother with that one.

But I am endlessly amused that this commenter can sneer that Smith faked his revelations, and yet say this after being told that the word 'virgin' as applied to Mary was a mistranslation:

When they chose that term to translate 'young woman', whether it was gramatically correct or not, they presumably did so because they had been inwardly prompted to do so by God, who intended to make it clear to the world that there would be a virgin birth.

Yeah. Smith? Must've been making it up. But a bunch of random illiterate yokels who mistranslated a word that led to this guy's unhealthy fixation with "Saint" Mary? Clearly, their typographical error was directed by God. Paul's hotline to god is probably also undeniable, and nobody could ever question the claims of whatever drug-addled sot wrote Revelations.

I do have to wonder, though, what exactly God was doing when they wrote the original draft of the Bible. Why did he let that error of 'young woman' get into the original Hebrew and then have to have it "fixed" later? He was probably out telling Joseph Smith to fuck a lot.
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Poe's law in action!

If you're not aware, Poe's Law states

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

Conservatives seem to have a real problem with this. I'm not sure that they even understand the concept of satire--I remember the day they began to figure out that Stephen Colbert wasn't serious. And now, well, Sean Hannity doesn't seem to realize that the Onion is satire, either:

HANNITY: By the way, Halloween is a liberal holiday, because we're teaching our children --

COLMES: Oh, come on. Please.

HANNITY: -- to beg for something for free.

And last week, the Onion ran this cartoon.
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When god speaks to people

...why can't he ever tell them this?


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Friday Dead Racist Blogging: A Dinner is Worth a Thousand Niggers Edition

Soon after he had been inaugurated, Teddy Roosevelt had Booker T. Washington come to the White House to advise him on racial issues. While he was up there, Washington had dinner with President Roosevelt--an action which inflamed the country. Senator Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman of South Carolina railed, "The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again."



--"The Night President Teddy Roosevelt Invited Booker T. Washington to Dinner", Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 35, Spring 2002, p. 25
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Close...

...but you also need to add that the Free Market will solve everything.
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Freud would have a field day with this

A book that tells children that interracial couples gay people are normal, loving couples that should be treated like other people are horrible, filthy items that ought to be banned, or better yet, burned. "We must protect the children from Heather Has Two Mommies!" scream the religious right. Because we all know that "gay" = "buttsex", and children can't be subjected to that.

What, then, should we subject them to instead? Well, back in 1997, there was this one choice:

Attempting to negate positive effects of gay-inclusive children's books such as Daddy's Home and Heather Has Two Mommies, the anti-gay radical religious group International Healing Foundation (IHF) is renewing a national scheme to place an anti-gay children's book, Alfie's Home, in schools and libraries. IHF director and Alfie's Home author Richard Cohen suggests in the book that (male) homosexuality is caused by distant fathers and sexual molestation, theories widely discredited. John Spear, Director of Field Services for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Teachers Network (GLSTN), says education should provide a safe and affirmative environment for all students. "Alfie's Home promotes hatred, bigotry and stereotypes which wreak havoc on schools and the educational process."

What is Alfie's Home, you ask? Well, here are some pictures of its pages.

...yeah. So apparently, showing a gay couple as happy and well-adjusted and perfectly normal is disgusting and warping for children.

Showing a young boy being raped by his uncle? Perfectly all right. Children need to know that this sort of thing happens, after all.
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At least this one's up-front about it

Some Virginia nutcase writes,

As a Christian, I think it's time to rid ourselves of this notion of freedom of religion in America.

Christians hate freedom! We ought to invade their countries and convert them to secular humanism.

Ed Brayton has more.
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