"I'm a man of faith." "Faith in what?" "Hey now, my beliefs aren't up for discussion!"

Huckabee wonders why people are so fascinated by a creationist running for president. (Although as an aside, it is somewhat interesting that people are grilling him about it, if only because the media generally treats creationism as "just another side" rather than the mind-shriveling lunacy that it is)

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher who has surged in Iowa with evangelical Christian support, bristled Tuesday when asked if creationism should be taught in public schools.

Huckabee — who raised his hand at a debate last May when asked which candidates disbelieved the theory of evolution — asked this time why there is such a fascination with his beliefs.

Gee. You say such things as this--"Faith doesn't just influence me. It really defines me."--in your television ads, trying to score political points by making your dogma that allows you to ignore reality and evidence the cornerstone of your campaign, and yet you can't fathom why people are asking you about it?

This sounds just like Romney. Sure, he's a Mormon, he's a "person of faith", and he claims that we need someone with "faith" to guide this country. Yet when people begin questioning the insane tenets of his beliefs, all of a sudden his religion is off the table. Not up for discussion.

Well guess what, you poltroon politicians? You don't get to have it both ways. Either you have to talk about your belief in hundred- or thousand-year old fairy tales, or you shut up about them. I'd like to suggest the latter, but then we might actually elect one of you without knowing the full depths of your mental vacuity. So please, Huckabee, tell us more about how you don't believe that we came from no stinkin' monkeys.

And everyone else, keep asking him about it.
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That's it, Romney, take some of the heat off Giuliani

Despite trying to base his campaign in part around his opposition to illegal immigration, Mitt Romney was using immigrants to do his lawn work.

Standing on stage at a Republican debate on the Gulf Coast of Florida last week, Mitt Romney repeatedly lashed out at rival Rudy Giuliani for providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants in New York City.

Yet, the very next morning, on Thursday, at least two illegal immigrants stepped out of a hulking maroon pickup truck in the driveway of Romney's Belmont house, then proceeded to spend several hours raking leaves, clearing debris from Romney's tennis court, and loading the refuse back on to the truck.

In fact, their work was part of a regular pattern. Despite a Globe story in Dec. 2006 that highlighted Romney's use of illegal immigrants to tend to his lawn, Romney continued to employ the same landscaping company – until today. The landscaping company, in turn, continued to employ illegal immigrants.

Two of the workers confirmed in separate interviews with Globe reporters last week that they were in the country without documents.

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Today's zombie racist

Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of the National Review.

When one of their reporters was caught saying blatantly false things about Hezbollah in Lebanon, she replied that he wasn't to blame for making it up, but rather for being too credulous in believing his sources. And the reason for that isn't that it's the duty of a good reporter to check his facts--hell knows that there's hardly a reporter around who does that anymore--but because Arabs are known liars.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas."

Uh-huh. Looks like the American tendency to demonize other races is alive and well, too.
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Sunday Dead Racist Blogging: Im in ur dreams, stealing ur women

Sort of a follow-up to this post. By reading this article on lynching, I found an article from the Atlanta Constitution on September 6, 1906:

NEGRO, SEEN IN DREAM, CAUSES DEATH OF GIRL

Crazed with a frenzy of fright at the dream that a negro was trying to kill her, Miss Annie Morgan was overcome with an attack of heart trouble and died within a few minutes.

Crying out in her fright, Miss Morgan ran out of her room shouting "A big negro is standing over my bed trying to kill me with a knife," then she sank to the floor unconscious and died in a few minutes after a physician was summoned.

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I really like "Fornigate"

...but alas, that is not the 'official' name of the Giuliani scandal. Instead, the Orange Overlord has declared that henceforth it shall be known as Sex on the City.

Your evil will be done.

But man, the more people look at this, the more misappropriations they find.

The Shag Fund not only paid for the 11 tryst visits to Hamptons.

-- It paid for hotel and other expenses for mayoral aides -- in addition to the security detail -- who also went with the mayor to the Hamptons on the tryst weekends.

-- Nathan's NYPD-chauffeured trips (without Rudy) to visit her parents in Pennsylvania, 130 miles outside the city.

-- NYPD detectives and city-owned undercover Dodge to drive Nathan around the city.

-- NYPD detectives and city-owned undercover Dodge to drive Nathan's friends and family around the city even when she wasn't in the car.

-- NYPD security detail for Nathan, personally approved by Bernard Kerik.

-- NYPD cops to walk Nathan's dog.

I'm sure that dog-walking and chauffeuring count as protecting and serving, right?

Oh, and speaking of the police. One of Giuliani's rapid-fire excuses for the bills was that he was simply trying to expedite payment of American Express bills. But the current police commissioner says he doesn't know what Giuliani's talking about:

New questions were raised today about Rudy Giuliani's explanation for submitting police security expenses to obscure city agencies while he was mayor of New York and carried on a secret affair with his mistress, who also was given use of a police driver and city car.

Giuliani said Thursday the unusual billing practice was not intended to hide anything but instead to speed payment of American Express credit card bills.

But the current New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said today he knew of no problems with the delay of payments before Giuliani was mayor, when Kelly served under Mayor David Dinkins, or since.

"I don't recall anybody, any statements about delay," Kelly told reporters.

Those pesky facts, always getting in the way of a good alibi.
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Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Biblical Edition

Since last week was National Bible Week... well, I should've posted this last Friday, I guess. But I didn't, so I'm posting this now: a list of Bible verses used to justify hatred of miscegenation. This list was copied from the end of the book Whom Has God Joined Together?, by Dallas Jackson. Jackson is a living racist--the book was only published in 1990--but many of these same verses were bandied about by dead racists, as well.

I've provided something of an annotation here, a brief explanation of the thought process that lead them to conclude that these verses prove God hates exactly whom they hate.

• Genesis 1:11-31
  God created all the animals "after his kind" (which was taken to mean species or race), and he declared that this was "very good."


• Genesis 2:18-23
  God created Eve, whom Adam said was "flesh of my flesh." So she was created the same race as Adam.


• Genesis 6:9
  Noah was declared "perfect in his generations", which must mean that his genealogy was racially homogeneous


• Genesis 12:14-20
  Pharoah tried to get it on with Sarai, Abram's wife, which made God plague him and his house. Clearly because they were of different races.


• Genesis 24:1-4
  Abraham makes his servant swear to go on a trip to get Isaac a wife from "my kindred" instead of the surrounding Canaanites. Obviously this must be about interracial marriage and not interfaith.


• Genesis 26:34-35
  Esau married Hittites, which "were a grief of mind" for Isaac and Rebekah.


• Genesis 27:46
  Rebekah frets that Jacob might marry a woman like Esau did.


• Genesis 28:1-9
  Isaac commanded Jacob not to marry a Canaanite, but to go to Laban and get a wife from him.


• Genesis 34:1-34
  Shechem a Hivite rapes Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and tries to marry her. So Jacob's sons slaughtered the entire city. Supposedly this is because Shechem wasn't of the same race--it's not like anyone would care if their sister were raped by someone of the same race.


• Exodus 11:1-7
  "The Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel". God discriminates against the races, why don't you! It's the cool thing to do.


• Exodus 20:14-17
  "Adultery" is redefined to mean "miscegenation", so God forbids it in the ten commandments even! How do they justify this bizarre definition? Well, "adultery" shares the same root as "adulterate", which means to make impure--and obviously that's what miscegenation does. And I'm sure this was true even in the original Hebrew, but there's no need to check or anything.


• Exodus 33:16
  Moses's people will be separated "from all the people that are upon the face of the earth." Go segregation!


• Exodus 34:10-17
  Verses 15 & 16 say not to join another religion, or even to let your kid marry someone of another religion lest they get tempted to join that religion. Why people seem to think that this is therefore a racial thing and not a religious thing is beyond me.


• Leviticus 18:1
  Uh. This was probably a typo.


• Leviticus 20:22-26
  God's commanding the Israelites "not [to] walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you." So, no goose-stepping then?


• Numbers 25:1-18
  Phineas (or Phinehas) saw "one of the children of Israel" with a Midianitish woman, so he ran into their tent and killed them both with his spear. For this, God rewarded him with "the covenant of an everlasting priesthood." So God blesses people who kill race-mixers. Today, some violent Christian Identity groups refer to themselves as the Phineas Priesthood.


• Numbers 36:1-13
  Here we have the daughters of Zelophehad commanded to marry among their father's tribe (of the multiple Israelite tribes). God is really picky.


• Deuteronomy 7:1-6
  Verse 3: don't marry the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, or Jebusites, and don't let your kids marry them. Cause God hates foreigners. Well, technically God hates the natives of Israel, so he killed them all and gave the land to the Hebrews. But genocide is okay when you're totally benevolent.


• Deuteronomy 32:7-9
  God "separated the sons of Adam [and] set the bounds of the people." Clearly, God endorses segregation. And also condemns migration. Unless you're white, then he's totally in favor of spreading to new lands.


• Joshua 23:1-16
  If you intermarry, God will let other people kill you. So, you know, don't do it. Or brown people will kill you.


• Judges 3:1-11
  The Israelites "dwelt among" foreigners, married their children to them, and worshipped their gods. So God got pissed and sold them into slavery. But it's only the marrying them that really got him mad, not the serving their gods. God's much too mellow to get upset by that.


• I Kings 8:49-53
  God "separated" the Israelites, but somehow this applies to everyone else, too. You'd think he'd have said something to that effect somewhere, though.


• I Kings 11:1-13
  Solomon's wives, many of them foreign, turned him away from God, and God got angry. But it wasn't the worshipping other gods that did it, but the marrying foreign women. Marrying seven hundred of them also wasn't a problem so much as their skin color.


• I Kings 16:29-33
  Ahab married Jezebel (a Zidonian) and started worshipping Baal. So, uh... yeah. These people have crappy reading comprehension.


• Ezra 9:1-15
  So the Israelites are all marrying other peoples, right? And Ezra--a totally righteous dude--is all "Oh noes! What'll we do?" And God's like, "Don't do that, man!" And Ezra's like, "Dude, you are awesome!"


• Ezra 10:1-44
  All the people who had intermarried dumped their wives and gave up a ram for penance.


• Nehemiah 9:1-3
  The Israelites all separated themselves from the other people, so therefore Christians should, too. They just want to be popular, y'know?


• Nehemiah 10:28-34
  All the people who had intermarried promised they wouldn't do that anymore. It's like some racist after-school special. "I promise I'll never do drugs get it on with darkies again!"


• Nehemiah 13:1-3, 23-31
  The Hebrews separated from "the mixed multitude" in the first part, and then Nehemiah found little biracial children and decided to kick their ass. I mean, he beat them, he tore out their hair. That'll teach 'em to be biracial and bilingual! Note: God endorses violence.


• Esther 3:8
  Supposedly this is supposed to mean that the Jews were keeping separate, though I think this guy doesn't really understand what "dispersed" means.


• Job 12:7-9
  Look at animals and learn from them. Now I ask you: have you ever seen animals spending time with animals of another species?


• Proverbs 2:16
  This guy takes most any mention of "strange" women to mean "of a different race". So wisdom will deliver you from intermarriage, which is good, because going with her will result in death.


• Proverbs 5:3, 20
  See above.


• Proverbs 23:27
  "Strange" women are traps. You think it's all going good and then BAM! You wake up without a kidney.


• Isaiah 2:1-9
  Especially verse 6--God has forsaken the Israelites because they intermarried. The psychic thing is okay, though--God just loves watching John Edward.


• Jeremiah 2:1-29
  In verse 20, God calls Israel a "harlot", which means "adulterer", and--as we saw above--"adultery" means "miscegenation." No-one mangles the English language like a Christian trying to justify his position with the Bible!


• Ezekiel 16:1
  I think this is a typo. In verse 2, though, God says he'll explain exactly what Israel's abominations are. And they apparently include: (16:15) being a harlot, like above; (16:26) screwing Egyptians; (16:28) screwing Assyrians; and (16:29) screwing Canaanites and/or Chaldeans. Wow, Israel really is a harlot.


• Ezekiel 44:1-23
  ...y'know what? I'm getting tired of this. No more explanations, just a list.


• Hosea 5:1-7


• Hosea 6:4-10


• Hosea 7:1-10


• Malachi 2:1-17


• Matthew 24:36-39


• I Corinthians 10:1-10


• Hebrews 12:16


• Hebrews 13:4


• II Peter 2:9-16


• Jude 7-11


• Revelation 2:11-16


• Revelation 5:9


• Revelation 7:9


• Revelation 10:11


• Revelation 11:9


• Revelation 13:7


• Revelation 14:6


• Revelation 17:15


• Revelation 21:24


• Revelation 22:1

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Bush wants to surrender to the terrorists!

WHAT!?

The Bush administration intends to slash counterterrorism funding for police, firefighters and rescue departments across the country by more than half next year, according to budget documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Homeland Security Department has given $23 billion to states and local communities to fight terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, but the administration is not convinced that the money has been well spent and thinks the nation's highest-risk cities have largely satisfied their security needs.

The department wanted to provide $3.2 billion to help states and cities protect against terrorist attacks in 2009, but the White House said it would ask Congress for less than half — $1.4 billion, according to a Nov. 26 document.

The plan calls outright elimination of programs for port security, transit security, and local emergency management operations in the next budget year. This is President Bush's last budget, and the new administration would have to live with the funding decisions between Jan. 20 and Sept. 30, 2009.

Way to show the country that you're serious about protecting it from terrorist attacks! I mean, some of us were beginning to think that you were just raising the specter of terrorism to score political points and get re-elected. Good for us that you're not all talk.

The proposal to drastically cut Homeland Security grants is at odds with some of the administration's own policies.

How's that for understatement?

This is understandably causing a bit of resentment among legislators.

"This budget proposal is dead on arrival," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. "This administration runs around the country scaring people and then when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, they say 'sorry, the bank is closed."'

California receives a large share of the counterrorism money each year, and could lose more than $200 million under the White House plan.

Boxer was particularly incensed about the proposal to end money for port security — a big concern on the West Coast. "California's ports carry over 47 percent of all goods imported into the United States," she said. "A terrorist attack at any of California's ports could shut down our nation's port system and result in a mind-boggling loss for our nation's economy."

Bipartisan opposition to deep cuts emerged from New York, another state that would be hard hit.

"To zero out essential Homeland Security programs which have more to do with protecting Americans and fighting the war on terror than much of the money spent in Iraq shows how warped and out of touch this administration's priorities are," said Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat.

The proposal "goes totally in the wrong direction," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "This would be a very grave mistake, and I will do all I can to stop it."

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Further Giuliani updates

Tim Grieve at Salon lists the various defenses the Giuliani campaign has offered thus far to his charging random NYC agencies for his police entourage while getting booty calls with his then-mistress. They seem to be going for the spaghetti defense: throw out everything they can and see what sticks (so far, none of them have). I think my favorite is number 4, though:

Shortly after the Politico story broke, Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor under Giuliani, told the Daily News that the practice of billing obscure city offices for mayoral security has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani." When told Thursday that spokesmen for Giuliani's predecessors disagreed, Lhota said he needed to "reverse" himself. "I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," he said. "I should only talk about what I know about."

So when Lhota said "every mayor of New York city does this", he only meant during Giualiani's era. That is, only Giuliani did this.

And it doesn't stop there! There was breaking news yesterday along the theme of misappropriation of city funds for Giuliani's affair:

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

"She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

...

The former officials told ABCNews.com the extra costs involved overtime and per diem costs for officers traveling with Giuliani to secret weekend rendezvous with Nathan in the fashionable Hamptons resort area on Long Island.

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Not so much 'impossible' as 'routine'

Squirrels really work for their food.



Although, really, it's mostly just climbing things and walking across other things. Squirrels do that all the time. The only remotely interesting parts are when it leaps from part of the obstacle course to another (which probably isn't far outside what squirrels do in trees anyways); the fact that it seems to be dragging the little red cart forward by pushing along the sides of the tube (again, not that amazing); and the initial jump, where it "lands" on a windmill blade. But that's just amusing.

When they start solving complex puzzles that open the way to the next obstacle, then I'll be impressed.
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"You know who gets a bum rap? Hitler. Now I ain't saying the Holocaust was faked or anything, but you gotta--"

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: "I don't like Mussolini or fascists, but I think they had some good ideas. Like invading third-world countries and demonizing their victims as 'barbarians'."

And in case you weren't aware of the deeper irony in this, Goldberg is the author of a book entitled Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Of course, it was originally titled Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton.
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