Just when we thought Glenn Beck couldn’t get crazier …

Beck goes and makes a comparison between what appears to me to be an ill-cast Satan character in the History Channel series, “The Bible” and Barack Obama. Here’s a side-by-side:

Screenshot/AP

From Beck’s perspective, this was just another opportunity — he doesn’t really pass up any — to take a jab at Obama and vilify the president by any means necessary. In fact, this is a good summation of the general program of conservative right wing radio in general.

As for the Satan character, I always pictured Satan, were he to take human form, as a young and attractive alpha male kind of figure. Does the History Channel really want to go on record as casting the most evil being of all time as an old black man? The History Channel? Oh well. Looks like that die has been cast.

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Rainbow house

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In apparent protest of the assholes at Westboro Baptist Church, a nonprofit organization, Planting Peace, has bought a house across from the church. According to a recent MSN report:

Planting Peace’s founder, Aaron Jackson, told the Kansas City Fox affiliate that a small team of volunteers had painted the house.

“People keep coming out, honking horns, taking pictures,” he said. “There has been no negative response.”

Local artist Wendy Prentice volunteered as the project’s “color connoisseur.”

Jackson reportedly stumbled on the location of Westboro Baptist Church while surfing on Google Earth.

He found a “For Sale” sign sitting on a house across from it and immediately decided to buy the house and paint it with the colors of the pride flag.

I haven’t always been a big fan of the rainbow theme within the gay community or, for that matter, the flamboyancy that sometimes emanates from members of that community because if it’s equality they are after, they shouldn’t expend so much energy focusing on how they are so different than everyone else and just focus on getting the rights they deserve. But as vitriolic as members of Westboro have been against, not only gay people, but members of the military, I hope this gives them a good rub. It will surely spruce up the community from an aesthetics standpoint.

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CNN whiffs on Steubenville rape trial coverage

AP

Crooks and Liars has an article up about CNN’s recent coverage of the Steubenville, Ohio, rape trial that concluded earlier today. If you haven’t followed the case, two teens, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, were found guilt in the rape of a 16-year-old girl stemming from a party that took place back in August. One of the kids will face a minimum of two years in a juvenile facility, while the other will serve at least one year.

The Crooks and Liars article suggested that CNN anchor Candy Crowley was slanting the coverage almost in favor of the two teens who were convicted of rape:

Crowley was filled with sadness for two young men who took advantage of a drunk and possibly drugged young girl because the judge actually held them accountable for what they did. Instead of wondering aloud why they weren’t tried as adults, she was instead very concerned that now they would have to register for the rest of their lives as sex offenders.

They are sex offenders. And now they’re convicted sex offenders.

I watched a lot of the coverage from earlier today because CNN would “break into” a couple shows that I try to catch every week, Fareed Zakaria‘ “GPS” and “Reliable Sources,” with the latest from Steubenville. While I doubt that CNN’s intention was to appear to be a apologetic toward the guilty parties, this is certainly how it came off during news coverage and interviews.

During one segment, a CNN reporter in Steubenville even talked with Richmond’s father about how today was the first time he had ever told his son that he loved him and that he was never a big influence in his life. Sob story number one. The father even went on the defensive at one point to suggest that his son might be innocent, although Richmond and his father all but admitted straight out that the teen was guilty when they apologized to the family. CNN also had an attorney come on the air and talk about how the two teens could be damaged for life because their names would now be on the sex offender list, and they would probably have trouble finding work or even a place to live after they got out of jail.

Sure, CNN talked to the plaintiff’s attorney, and the reporter asked how the family was holding up, etc., but after watching CNN for more than two hours today, I can attest that the focus was largely on the two teens. I certainly didn’t hear any experts talking about what residual effects the rape might have on the girl. And I was particularly troubled by a video clip of Richmond breaking down and telling the victim’s family that he didn’t mean for it to happen. Sob story number two. So, a 16-year-old football star, who apparently is capable of memorizing a large playbook and executing those plays on the field, somehow accidentally has a few drinks, inadvertently drops his pants and inadvertently forces his johnson into another human being? That’s believable.

Rape is so serious a charge that, unlike some other crimes, people can’t just serve their time and the go about their business after jail. No, it’s so serious that it haunts them most likely for the rest of their lives. And whether the news channel meant to or not, CNN came off as actually sympathetic to these two guys, and why? Because they just happen to be two years too young to be tried as adults? Bullocks.

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Tweets of the day: Pope edition

[tweet https://twitter.com/Behman1123/status/311991982916521984]

[tweet https://twitter.com/niccichenet/status/311992403458416640]

[tweet https://twitter.com/CommonestMan/status/311992401650675712]

[tweet https://twitter.com/SeabassDumont/status/311992378317758464]

[tweet https://twitter.com/AFP/status/311992314706935809]

[tweet https://twitter.com/Forrest_R_Smith/status/311992308025397248]

[tweet https://twitter.com/SenecaPrattles/status/311992261376360448]

[tweet https://twitter.com/MartinNYID/status/311992064713830400]

[tweet https://twitter.com/williamcontrol/status/311941507613609989]

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Server scare

So, I accidentally let my contract with the web hosting to expire, and the site was down for a short period of time. But in the interim, I was afraid that I might have lost months of posts from whenever I last backed up the website. Happily and thanks to the good folks at IXWebhosting, the site is back up, and none of the files were lost. Now, I’m off to back up the server.

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Heil, mein Führer

This billboard, which is on rotation in my town in East Tennessee, pretty well embodies the fringe movement in this nation and their ludicrous and desperate attempts at scaring people into distrusting and even hating the Democratic Party or progressives. Following the logic of the sign, we are supposed believe that either President Obama or our leaders in Washington as a whole are secretly plotting to take over the nation by enacting stiffer gun control laws, as if we actually live in a dictatorship like Nazi Germany circa 1942. This is beyond absurd, of course, but I’m starting to think that the fringe right in this nation are about on par with the 9/11 conspiracy theorists and the supposed UFO abduction victims, and as such, should be treated with as much contempt and mockery for first, failing to seriously advance any viewpoints that may actually improve this nation and the world, and second, by actively working to keep us slavishly in the dark ages and so far behind parts of Europe, China and Japan that we may never be the greatest country again … whatever that means.

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Ehrman: ‘Intense research has a way of changing your mind’

Bart Ehrman: The Gospels Were Not Written by Eyewitnesses:

Critics of the above video might say something like this: Well, Ehrman, a former believer, is asking us to take his word for it on the credibility of the gospels, just as the gospel writers ask us, implicitly, to make a decision about whether they are telling the truth or not. The difference is that Ehrman’s statements are based on mounds of research (“Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth” and “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why,” whereas the gospel writers were relying on memory and oral tradition. As John Dominic Crossan shows, much of the content of the gospels were later additions or embellishments to all-but-lost earlier works like the Q Gospel.

But even if, as Ehrman points out, some of the gospel content is indeed genuinely from eyewitness testimony, it still suffers from the human problem. That is, modern day testimony about events can’t always be trusted. How much less are we to trust testimony from someone living 2,000 years ago in a backward part of the Middle East? This problem is compounded by the fact that the gospels were written in Greek, not Aramaic. If we had stories about Jesus in Aramaic, they would be more believable, but only scantly so. And why couldn’t the Son of Man simply write the things he wanted us to know himself, rather than leaving that duty in the hands of fallen man?

I mean, the logical incongruities are so immense that each day that I contemplate Christianity (or any other religion for that matter), the more stunning it is to me that adults, who use logic in every other area of their lives, essentially shut off their brains once they open the Bible or enter the church.

In any case, here is a lengthier and more detailed lecture from Ehrman on the subject:

Why live?

I found this little anecdote on Reddit and thought it pretty aptly answers the questions that is often posed to nonbelievers: If you believe that death is really the end, what is the point of life? Here is the way yoyoslender explained it to his religious friend:

He asked what i thought would happen when we die. I told him that we would cease to exist, no thoughts or movement or anything of the sort. He then asks me what the point would be if that were true. He said, “if we dont have anything to live for, why live?” I thought for a bit, and remembered how much he loves minecraft. So i said that it is like hardcore mode in minecraft. He seemed confused. I said, “if everything is lost when you die, then why play hardcore mode?” He responded, “to see how far you can go before dying.” “That’s atheism.”

Splendid.

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