Get Cynical

A documentary called England Their England: Monsters, Maniacs, and Moore.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

And lastly, Part 4.

(via io9)

(via Atheist Media Blog)

From Alternet:

2. Sarah Palin believes the U.S. Army is on a mission from God.

In June, Palin gave a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God, her former church, in which she exhorted ministry students to pray for American soldiers in Iraq. “Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God,” she told them. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan.”

And there’s video of that one:

From The Big Picture (of course):

Hurricane Ike just rolled across Cuba, and soaked parts of Haiti – both regions still reeling from recent Hurricane Gustav. Ike appears to be weakening now, but is headed tward the Gulf Coast of the U.S., and may yet strengthen. The crew aboard the International Space Station was able to take a photo of Ike from 220 miles overhead last Thursday – one in a long series of great NASA photographs of hurricanes from space.

I get email:

Re: Unsolicited comment from the peanut gallery

Dear Chris,

I enjoy your blog and, hey, it’s your blog so do with it as you will… just thought I’d give you feedback that I’m among those who think it’s gotten too political lately. There are a billion political blogs out there and to turn yours into another one dilutes what was so grand about it. Yours was/is unique and a different animal and I hope you’ll return to what made it so special before this election campaign cycle began.

Best regards,
Steve

My response:

Dear Steve,

Fuck off.

Best,
Chris

No seriously Steve. Fuck off. Stop visiting this blog. You’re sucking up bandwidth and I’m sick of paying thousands of dollars a year for Steve’s entertainment. I checked his email address to see how often he contributed or commented to this site and wasn’t surprised to find one comment. It’s always the people who contribute the least who are the ones that complain the most. I get complaints like this all the time. Dear Chris, I think your blog has too many videos… Dear Chris, I think your blog has too many pictures of cats… Dear Chris, you post too much about atheism etc etc.

This blog has always been and always will remain a reflection of what interests me at any given day. Is that self-indulgent? Of course it is. It’s a blog! I’m not going to cease posting what interests me because some asshat thinks he’s entitled to have a blog catered to his whims.

Update:

And I’m not the only blogger getting these types of emails.

It’s definitely the best sales pitch ever for selling concrete blocks.

(via A jlobster tweet)

From HuffPo:

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, as McClatchy reported, “aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization.”

Economists and analysts pounced on the misstatement, saying it demonstrated a lack of understanding about one of the key economic issues likely to face the next administration.

“You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country’s mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn’t speak well for her, I’d say.”

Added Andrew Jakabovics, an economic analysts for the progressive think tank, Center for American Progress: “It is somewhat nonsensical because up until yesterday there was sort of no public funding there. Even today they haven’t drawn down any of the credit line they have given to Treasury. ‘Gotten too big and too expensive’ are two separate things. The too big has been a conservative mantra for a while and there is something to be said of that in that they hold about half of the mortgage guarantees that are out there. And in the last year they have been responsible for roughly 80 percent out there. The ‘too expensive to tax payers,’ I don’t know where that comes from.”

From DiscoverMagazine’s Bad Astronomy blog:

Both Senators Obama and McCain have made cursory statements about various aspects of science, but that’s not enough. Science is critical, absolutely critical, to the health of the US, so we need better and more in-depth answers. To get them, a group of six citizens created Science Debate 2008 to “… restore science and innovation to America’s political dialogue.”

They asked each candidate a series of science questions. As of this moment, Obama is the only one who has answered, though McCain says he will.

Obama’s answers to these questions are, to me, very heartening. He has been accused of giving no specifics when answering questions, but that is misleading at best (the noise machine is very good at making noise). In these answers he does indeed give many specifics, and to my eye is taking the right road to scientific progress and innovation in this country.

I won’t detail all his answers, but I do want to point out some specific things he wrote.

Some really good answers on this list. Here’s what Obama has to say about Stem Cell research:

I strongly support expanding research on stem cells. I believe that the restrictions that President Bush has placed on funding of human embryonic stem cell research have handcuffed our scientists and hindered our ability to compete with other nations. As president, I will lift the current administration’s ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001 through executive order, and I will ensure that all research on stem cells is conducted ethically and with rigorous oversight.

I am also aware that there have been suggestions that human stem cells of various types, derived from sources other than embryos, make the use of embryonic stem cells unnecessary. I don’t agree. While adult stem cells, such as those harvested from blood or bone marrow, are already used for treatment of some diseases, they do not have the versatility of embryonic stem cells and cannot replace them.

From Talk To Action:

Antiabortion militant and all-round theocratic activist Jay Rogers of Florida, whose blog is called The Forerunner, writes:

Pray for John McCain’s salvation and speedy death. (Google The Forerunner’s articles on Imprecatory Prayer if you think this is harsh.)

And then there is this guy, a self-described Christian Reconstructionist whose blog handle is Ixion, and is apparently from Tennessee:

McCain’s VP choice, Sarah Palin, suddenly made me want to vote for him, as long as the LORD smites him while he’s in office. She’s consistently conservative on all the issues, and if she’s good enough for The Forerunner, she’s good enough for me. The Forerunner agrees with me that McCain must be smitten, as well, so I’m obviously not alone in my viewpoints.

After a long response to a well-researched Daily Kos diary by Dogemperor, discussing Palin’s religious history and raises some important concerns, Ixion comes back around to his main point.

May the LORD cause McCain/Palin to win the White House in 2008, and then smite the godless McCain in favor of Palin. Amen.

Note: The Forerunner blog has since changed the “speedy death” part.