More Prophet Muhammad Cartoon Madness

NOTE: I’ve updated this post to add even more pictures of the Prophet Muhammadcafter the horrific attacks against Charlie Hebdo. I promise I’ll continue to accumulate and display as many pictures as I can find every time any of these psychopathic extremist cowards attack anyone who would draw a picture of their imaginary friend. You’re welcome.

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So once again Muslims have lost all sense of rational thought and gone berzerk.

Yesterday the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who sparked controversy by drawing the Prophet Mohammed on the body of a dog, was attacked. Here’s the video.

Here are is the image that Lars drew that made these devout followers of the “religion of peace” come unhinged.

Now I can understand a newspaper editor somewhere being upset that the cartoon is poorly drawn and as funny as The Family Circus, but how is that rubbish worth even getting a little upset over?

I mean compared to some of the other choice pictures of the Prophet Muhammad I think this one is barely distinguishable and therefore a pretty weak bit of chicken scratch to be getting all worked up over don’t you think?

Now these other pictures…well I can totally understand wanting to go berserk over these.

Here’s the ironic part, as far as I know the Quran itself does not explicitly forbid images of Muhammad.  Seriously, go look it up.  There are a few supplemental hadith that have been written that explicitly prohibit Muslims from creating visual depictions of religious figures (including Muhammad) but since I’m not a Muslim I’m pretty sure I’m not even breaking those rules.

But this isn’t about the rules.  This isn’t even about a paradoxical god who is apparently omnipotent enough to know that I re-posted these pictures but too impotent to do anything about it himself.  No, this is about religious leaders getting their followers offended and incensed over nonsense slights in an attempt to misdirect the conversation away from the corruption of the leaders and the implausibility of their religion.  All religions do this to one degree or another, it’s just that many Islamic leaders go way too far and goad their followers to murder.

I personally suspect that 99.9999% of Muslims would not even contemplate killing someone who drew (or displayed) these cartoons on the Internet.  If that’s true then the only people I’m offending are the .0001% of Muslims who are irrational fanatical zealots who frankly should be mocked and ridiculed for holding such ridiculous beliefs. So mock and ridicule I shall.

By remaining silent in the face of such absurdity is to concede to their madness, and I will not.  In doing so I hope to plant a seed of doubt in the believer’s mind that maybe all all these “truths” are simply ridiculous old stories which have no basis in reality and should be ignored.

It probably won’t work, but I somehow feel the need to at least try.

The Bigger Trainwreck of the 2014 Midterm Election

After this past electoral trainwreck I invited the few Republican friends I have left on social media how a party that seems to exclusively serve the financial interests of the top 1% still manages to convince enough people outside of that demographic to vote (in my opinion) against their own self interests and win elections? What are the specific policies the Republicans champion that make you vote Republican, and how do you feel those policies serve your interests?

Not surprisingly the conversation quickly devolved into so much mud slinging of talking points and propaganda from both sides.

The theory I was looking to test is that neither Dems or Repubs are really on *our* side…the 99%. Both parties use BS rhetorical tricks and straw men to get us to rally behind one team or another, but it’s all under false pretenses because in the end the fluff issues like abortion or gay rights or guns or welfare or immigration are important-ish, but in reality they don’t matter to the real end-game. It’s all just cake and circuses to keep us distracted while the politicians sell us out and give all our money to corporations, rich political backers, and the military industrial complex.

One commenter observed how poor people received government subsidised cell phones and then sold them.  But so what?  For the cost of one Hellfire missile we can give nearly 100 poor people subsidised cell phones for a year. Sure, some people will just sell them, but many will depend on them and use them to get jobs they couldn’t otherwise get. And even if they do sell them that money will be immediately spent and go right back into the economy (many times over) benefiting us *all* rather than into a billionaire’s bank account doing nothing.

The worst example for me is (despite all the rhetoric) Obama is no liberal. It’s galls me to watch him win the presidency twice on a very progressive/populist platform but once he’s elected he governs like a moderate to right wing Republican. Even his signature “liberal” legislation of Obamacare (while better than nothing) was a Republican bill that is mostly a giveaway to insurance companies, yet those same Republicans don’t miss an opportunity to fake outrage so they can get their base all worked up over what was ostensibly a “win” for them. It’s ALL bullshit spread out for us to dance in and be distracted by while we’re fleeced into indentured servitude.

The real question is will we the collective population ever really wake up and realize it and *demand* better or will we just keep fighting amongst ourselves over so many spilled beads and baubles while the corporations dismantle all protective regulations and drive us into managed poverty? Reading the comments on that thread I sadly suspect…no.

The Ultimate Place to Hide Your Stash: The Super Jesus Bible Box

This will undoubtedly be a controversial post, but I like to think it could also be seen as a good instructional on how to make something practical (dare I say useful) out of an book of debatable value.  It’s my attempt at public service. I know, I know…you’re welcome!

So the way I see it it’s obvious most people ,especially most of the Bible’s most devout “true believers”, have never really read their their blessed best seller. What with all of the divinely sanctioned torture, genocide, slavery, global scale interspecies mass murder, and cannibalism who can blame them right? It’s quite obvious the book is an incoherent collection of superstition, bigotry, misogyny, and general ignorance that nobody really wants to read…which is *exactly* why this is the perfect practical repurposing of project for something like this. What’s better is the Bible is a book you can reasonably expect to find in almost every American household and neither you nor any visitor would ever imagine pulling it down off the shelf to read it. It really is the perfect place to hide something in plain sight.

Now obviously those with a Christian Taliban mindset will protest that this desecrates their “holy” book. If  I’m honest I suspect they could probably make a compelling case. I prefer to think I’m just cutting out the bad parts (albeit a bit imprecisely) and making something much more valuable in the end. Obviously it was part of God’s divine plan that I should create something this awesome for you, so yeah, thank God.

So without further ado, here is how you too can make your very own Super Jesus Bible Box.

Tool required:

• Elmers Glue (regular old school glue is perfect)
• Box cutter (or a reciprocating plunge cutter if you’re a fancy carpenter person)
• Two pieces of 3/4″ plywood that are slightly larger than your book
• Optional: Three to Four wood clamps or “C” clamps.

Step 1: Get a Bible  It’s possible you have a Bible laying around your house already but it probably belonged to your Grandma so it has some sentimental value. The best alternative option is to get one for free! Luckily if you’ve ever stayed at a hotel there is usually a fresh never-been-opened Gideons right there in the nightstand for you to take. Don’t feel guilty, when you take that Bible literally nobody will miss it, and you’re helping overcrowding in the world by freeing up very valuable space in the nightstand drawer. Of course if you’re not a frequent traveler you can always buy an authentic Gideons’ Bible stolen on your behalf from comedian Doug Stanhope. Obviously you’ll have to go to one of his shows to buy it at the merch table but even so still I highly recommend this option because he’ll also autograph it for you (which is very thoughtful). Of course you can use another book instead but I would strongly advise against that because no matter what it is there’s a chance someone someday would actually want to read it. Okay you certainly could do this to a copy of the Quran or the Torah, but don’t do this to any other book because we’re not monsters here, you wouldn’t want to ruin a book that’s actually useful.

Step 2: Wrap it  You’ll want to keep the first book of Genesis and maybe a little of Exodus preserved  in page form so the book can be opened and shown to be what appears to be a fully functioning no secret compartment containing Bible. Just take some saran wrap and cover the cover and pages to be preserved.  Now would also be a good time to carefully remove a specific page from elsewhere in the Bible that you can use later as the bottom of your book. For example if your name is Mark or Luke or Habakkuk you might want to cut out that cover page and save it for later. Or not…there are other great options too.

 

Step 3: Glue up the outside walls of your box Using a brush or sponge apply a smooth but liberal coat of white Elmers glue to the outside edge of the unprotected pages and let it dry. You may want to put something heavy on the book to hold the pages flat and tight while the glue dries. You may also want to do another coat or two of glue after it dries just to make sure the outside of your box is nice and solid. Be sure to rinse your brush clean when you’re done because you’re going to need it again later.

 

 Step 4: Cut out the box So the traditional method for cutting out the pages is by using an exacto knife or box cutter.  I’ve done this before and it’s surprisingly hard work and the easiest way to develop carpal tunnel ever devised.  You should do it by hand at least once so you’ll truly appreciate how much better an option it is to use a plunge cutter like this one here. Yeah, I know, you’re welcome (again).

 

Step 5: Fix the sides At this point your hands are a little tired but you  hopefully have the void of your box cut out all the way down. Nicely done! However you may now also notice your book doesn’t close very well because the pages get a little puffy and irregular where they’ve been cut. Yeah, you didn’t do anything wrong it just does that. No fear, the next step fixes that.  Again get your sponge or brush and apply a liberal amount of glue to the interior sides of your box. It’s fine if you get glue on the bottom and top facing of the page too but we really want good coverage on the sides. Once everything is covered well you can remove the saran wrap from the first few chapters, close your book as normally as possible, place it between two pieces of strong plywood, and use three to four clamps to compress your book flat again. If you don’t have clamps you can probably just place something heavy like a couch on your plywood/Bible sandwich, but the clamps really will give you the best results. Be careful not to over tighten the clamps though or you could deform the spine of your book and that would be bad. Let this sit and dry overnight.

 

Step6: Dress the sides Once you unclamp your book it should look nice and flat again. When you open it you’ll notice one or two pages are now glued over your opening. This is a good thing. Take your box cutter and make a cut right down the center of the page and then make two additional cuts along the top and bottom edge of the void. This should make a cut in the shape of an uppercase “I”. Fold the flaps back out of the void and apply a thin coat of glue to the interior edges and bottom of the void. Now simply bring the cut page flaps into the void and press then smooth to cover over the sides. Now we still need to dress the top and bottom edges of the void so put some glue on the top of the page and bring another page down on top. Repeat the above procedure except make your cut in the shape of an uppercase “H” this time. This will give you flaps to dress the top and bottom edges. We’re almost done now.

 

Step 7: Dress the bottom Now you have some options for covering the bottom of your box. You can choose to use the page you salvaged earlier or you can get more creative and put a picture of your own creation there. Either way just cut it to size and glue it in. You can optionally put another thin coat of glue over everything inside the void of the box just to make it a little more durable, but once all the glue dries you’re now the proud owner of your very own Super Jesus Bible Box. Awww yeah, who’s your savior now? Happy stashing!

 

A Forgiving God?!

I honestly don’t know what Christians are talking about when they tell me God is a loving and forgiving god.

Really? I mean according to the Bible He’s willing to torture every human who has ever and will ever live because the first two people he created stole a piece of fruit from a tree.

Okay to be fair some will say that it wasn’t about the apple per se’ but it was because they disobeyed God and because it gave them the knowledge of good and evil?

But wait, I still don’t know why he’s mad.

1) Every kid disobeys their parent at some point or another (it’s what kids do).

2) I would WANT my kids to know the difference between good and bad

3) He’s God…he could easily erase that knowledge or, if he’s really stuck, why not  just kill Adam and Eve off, cut down the fruit tree, and make Adam and Eve 2.0 from scratch. Why prove how “forgiving” you are by punishing everyone else for eternity because one couple committed misdemeanor petit theft?

Then again God was kind of a moron for putting the tree there in the first place so expecting him to be rational about all the rest of it just wouldn’t make any sense would it?

Greatest story ever told.  Yeah, right.

Of Science and Lies

It’s beyond frustrating to look at those who populate the congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

The Committee’s chair, Texas’ Ralph Hall, when asked about the evidence that humans were altering the climate, replied, “I don’t think we can control what God controls.”

Add to him intellectual giants like Missouri’s Todd “legitimate rape” Akin and Georgia’s Paul Broun.  Broun recently said that “…evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory…all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell.”

It’s one thing if your crazy brother believes this crap, but these are congressmen who make decisions that effect all of us.  The Republicans get to choose this committee’s membership so if you’re an intelligent Republican you should call your congressman to express your embarrassment and outrage that they keep putting people this willfully ignorant on this critical committee.

Welfare Queens by the Numbers.

I’ll make this quick.  Mitt Romney thinks about 47% of Americans “pay no taxes” and are “dependent upon government”.  To me this conjures up horrific images of welfare queens.  The fact is that as of 7/26/2012: only 4.1% of the US population is on welfare.

Not 47%…4.1%.

And in case you’re taking the Republican bait and conjuring up some kind of racial stereotype in your mind you should know that of those who are on welfare 39.8 % are black and 38.8% are white.

And lest you think this 4.1% of Americans take no responsibility for their lives, it’s worth pointing out that 19% of welfare recipients are on it for less than 7 months and only 19.6% are on it for more than 5 years.  So assuming one has to do something for more than 5 years for it to be established as a “way of life” it appears that 0.8% (less than 1%) of our population has made welfare a way of life.

Let me put this in a different perspective.  In 2006 about $59 billion was spent on traditional social welfare programs while $92 billion was spent on corporate subsidies. Our government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance.

Now those same corporate welfare queens are bribing our politicians with obscene Super PAC campaign contributions in an effort to get  those politicians to further cut regulations and increase the corporate handouts.

It’s enough to make a guy sick, except I live in America and I don’t have health insurance (and Mitt doesn’t think I deserve that either).

When is 26 > 134,000,000 ?

134 Million is the approximate number of Americans it takes to make up 43% of the U.S. population.  But the 134 Million people I’m specifically talking about are the ones who comprise the 50 million lowest income households in America.

So why am I talking about the lowest earning 43% in America?  Because their collective net worth doesn’t equal the net worth of the 26 individual billionaires who are trying to buy this year’s election.

Bernie Sanders recently released a study that showed 26 billionaires who have already given $61 million dollars to the Republican politicians and Super PACs this election season.  When you consider that low income households, by definition, don’t have much disposable income it’s fair to estimate the relative political contributions of the poorest 43% of America is most certainly a percent that rounds up to 0% when compared to the donations of our gang of influential billionaires.

What’s worse, the $61 million contributed from the billionaires does not include the $100 million that Sheldon Adelson has promised, or the $400 million that the Koch brothers have pledged to spend during the 2012 election season to defeat President Obama.

This sort of discrepancy of power and influence is the core of the problem with the Citizens United ruling.  Now we have a handful of billionaires who can overwhelm the airwaves with money and negative ads while hiding in near complete anonymity and remain unaccountable.  So while some Americans have the time and attention to get political information from multiple sources, the vast majority of Americans don’t.  For the bulk of America a deluge of attack ads full of fabrications are their primary source of information and irresistibly persuasive.

So while the average American citizen has the liberty and freedom to make their own choices, it’s insurmountably difficult for them to do so intelligently when they’re being force fed so much misinformation by a few billionaires with no accountability. Historically speaking 98% of elections are won by the candidate with the most money.  Democratic and Republican politicians alike will find they are forced to court the richest of the rich because they will be the only way the politicians can get enough money to get elected.  And then our government will be truly and completely bought by the rich, whereby they can stack the system even more in their own favor.

I’m really not interested in this outcome.  The only way to stop this is to pass a constitutional amendment that declares that corporations are not people, and that all future political campaigns are publically funded.  I know it’s a long shot but given the Citizens United ruling from our corporately owned Supreme Court we are left with no other choice.

Visit Wolf-Pac, sign the petition, pledge a few bucks, tell your friends.  Every little bit helps and maybe, just maybe, we can change this stacked game and make it work for all Americans, not just the 26 richest ones.

Santorum Concedes: ‘We Will Never Have…Smart People On Our Side’

No really.  I’m not making a joke this time, he actually said it.

So this means that this video describes his base?

Look, I miss the old Republican party.  Back in the days of Eisenhower and even Nixon the party had genuine ideas.  They were willing to make compromises and, you know, actually govern.  Today’s Republican party has been hijacked by a radical right wing evangelical element of conservatives like Mr. Santorum and Mrs. Palin.  They have no interest in governing and instead focus on obstructing all progress even if it means tearing down the country to do it.

Well, at least they know who are in their base.  God help us.

No One Murdered Because Of This Image

And unlike the followers of some other more insecure gods, nobody was outraged to the point of committing murder because of this image.  And that’s saying something because that’s some pretty fun depraved stuff right there.

I love the Onion.  http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/

Extremists

This about sums it up.

Extremists

Open letter to my Republican friends

Let me put it out there first that I think there are many things Obama is doing very very wrong.  Among the topics I’m most frustrated with Obama over are things like him not eliminating FISA and not closing Guantanamo.  I despise him for not even trying to pass universal single payer health care when he started the negotiations that resulted in the Affordable Healthcare Act.  I’m utterly dismayed that he has followed an executive policy that permits him to kill Americans on foreign soil via drone strikes with no trial or due process whatsoever.  I hate that he has prosecuted and deported almost as many immigrants in 3 years (1.2 million) as George W Bush did in 8 (1.57 million).  I absolute loathe that he hasn’t prosecuted even one of the bankers who nearly collapsed our global economy through their criminal actions.

So for as much as you may be hearing that Obama is a Marxist Communist Liberal, to me Obama is a moderate conservative and a  corporate suck up who is not even remotely close to being liberal enough.  Not like it’s a big surprise here but I’m probably the single most liberal guy you know, so I lose my mind when time after time Obama offers up warmed over right wing policies and the Democrats cheer.  I feel like screaming when re-branded proposals from the American Heritage foundation are ushered in with holy day fanfare just because they’re coming from a president with a “D” following his name.

As Republicans go I generally like you, but unless you think it’s a good idea for us to go down a political rabbit hole where we’re just going to discover how much we deeply disagree with each other I think you should remove me from your pro-Romney mailing list.  You see for as much as I desperately disagree with many of Obama’s policies or cringe at his pandering or hate his uncontested capitulations to the right, I also happen to think that Mitt Romney is the single most loathsome, insincere, and mendacious corporate tool to ever run for president.

Sincerely,

Super J