Via Coilhouse:

An excellent question and perhaps an unexpected one; but only to those that didn’t know Steve Peterson. The science teacher at Oblong High School and head of the A/V club, Peterson was a regionally-known expert on the subject of ancient cultures — specifically fish people from Sirius. Long after the school day would end, Peterson could be found, alone, recording an extraordinary body of work that cast a critical eye on the accepted theory of the origin of life on this planet. What arose from these tapes was a revelation, a vast series of clues including ancient Egyptian art and mythology, fish hats, the Pope, and Taco Bell. Also, breasts and penises.

Those who would dismiss Peterson as insane or a mulleted quaalude user are misinformed. In the days leading up to his mysterious disappearance, Peterson mentioned to many that he was being followed; his house staked out by individuals in a windowless white van. Peterson was last seen on March 5th, 1987. A student, James Whitlock, passed him on the street and grew concerned, describing Peterson as appearing “spaced out, more than usual I mean.” Whitlock approached him and asked if everything was ok, to which Peterson responded that indeed it was and that he “just needed a burrito.”

It should be obvious, then, that Steve Peterson was no madman. No dear reader, that is merely what they want you to think. The reality is that he was simply too close to the truth and the powers that be had him removed. This is all that remains of his life’s work; his revelation. All we can do know is carry on his memory and continue to ask: Who are these fish people?

Oh, my dears, if only you knew…. (TEKELI! TEKELI! IÄ DAGON!)

(The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago)

 
Imagine how hard it would be to get out of bed in the morning if you knew that over half of the people who knew you thought you were an embarrassment? Imagine now that you are a politician with that kind of affection out there for you. Would you bury your head in shame like a normal person? If you’re Rep. Michelle Bachmann, probably the stupidest person to currently hold elected office in America today—and that’s really saying something—you double down!

A new survey of Minnesotans shows that a majority of residents — 56 percent — are embarrassed by Rep. Michele Bachmann. The release of the survey, commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and Credo Action, follows recent high-profile statements by Bachmann that she believes President Barack Obama wants to “annihilate” conservatives, that the U.S. faces a “curse” – and extinction — if it fails to support Israel, and that government must “wean” Americans off of social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.

The Bachmann survey results, released exclusively to the Minnesota Independent, measure responses to the question, “Do you think Congresswoman Michele Bachmann does Minnesota proud in Congress or embarrasses Minnesota?” While 56 percent of respondents statewide said they were embarrassed by Bachmann, 29 percent answered that they were “proud” of the Sixth Congressional District Republican, and 15 percent were “not sure.”

Predictably, 87 percent of Democrats polled said they were embarrassed, while only 12 percent of Republicans agreed (58 pecent of Republican respondents said they were proud of Bachmann).

Poll: Majority of Minnesotans ‘embarrassed’ by Bachmann (The Minnesota Independent)

 
I had not heard this one, but trust me, it’s a fuckin’ doozy… Reposting the entire article here, via Secular Humanism:

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush by James A. Haught

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”

Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”

It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.

 
Back when time and sleep were of the more surplus variety, I would sometimes spend the tail end of a late night with that horse-happy, cigar-waving TV preacher, Dr. Gene Scott.  Scott wasn’t like the other preachers littering the cable crap-scape.  He had a Ph.D. from Stanford, and, as he often demonstrated while dissecting a bit of scripture at his beloved dry-erase board, was fluent in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.

He was also, apparently, fluent in alcohol.  Oh, and womanizing.  As the Internet Monk’s Michael Spencer says in his terrific article on Scott, “I Just Couldn’t Look Away.”

And while his shilling for money was a near-constant, his gruff persona and random cutaways to his ponies (and “pony girls”) made it all seem oddly endearing.  After an hour or so of watching, it was hard to not start hoping Scott got some of that cash he was asking (barking!) for.

So…in short, was he crackpot?  Absolutely.  But, hey, he was an L.A. crackpot.  And just the type of self-possessed subject to attract director Werner Herzog.  What follows at the bottom is the little-seen documentary Herzog made of Scott in 1980, God’s Angry Man.
 

Barbie Bridges vs. Melissa Scott
 
Gene Scott died close to 5 years ago from complications arising from prostate cancer.  His younger-by-40-years wife, Melissa Scott, seized took over the still-profitable ministry’s reigns—and still dodges allegations of having had a possibly pornographic past (see above).

 
Charles Johnson posted this today over at Little Green Footballs, I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing it here:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today that there is no difference in beliefs between the GOP and tea partiers.

“There really is no difference between what Republicans believe in and what the tea party activists believe in,” Boehner said during an appearance on the conservative Mike Gallagher’s radio show.

Boehner said his advice to Republican lawmakers going into this fall’s elections has been to “prove it to the tea party activists that we really are who we say we are.”

If you take Boehner at his word, then, here are some of the things Republicans believe in.

 
Pennsylvania dog groomer Holly Crawford, 35, went on trial yesterday for selling online for “hundreds of dollars” cats with pierced ears.  According to Melinda Merck, an animal cruelty investigator and veterinarian, the piercings not only damaged the cats’ hearing, but they hampered as well their sense of jumping and balance.  Not to mention dignity!

Gothic Kittens: Woman Charged With Animal Cruelty For Selling Pierced Cats Online

4chan recently lost its collective shit over some Twilight kids who beheaded a dog for MySpace cool-points (apparently it was already dead). Behold this stupendously embarrassing video and stare deep in the heart of the CHILDREN THE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE THINK OF THE CHILDREN OUR FUTURE CHILDREN FUTURE

Find out about the whole “Shadow” saga here. (Very NSFW.)

 
The Hollies soundtrack really adds something to this, doesn’t it?

Police are on the look out for an odd criminal who was caught on CCTV repeatedly sniffing the bum of a supermarket worker. The pervert - who is balding, ginger and about 40-years-old - has been seen smelling the rears of Co-op workers in Plymouth, Devon.

Cops say he has done this at least 20 times and have released the footage of him sniffing peopled bottoms in the hope that someone can identify him. The clip clearly shows him pretending to pick items from shelves near staff and sniffing their bum.

Via Newslite.tv

 
Do space aliens “tag” us with implants the same way we microchip our beloved pets? Are we their pets?

The jury’s still out on that front, but if you are an Angeleno and suspect you’ve got an alien implant, then next weekend, at the Pickwick Gardens in Burbank, Dr. Roger Leir, M.D., a SoCal-based podiatrist, well-known to UFOlogists, George Noory fans and Fortean-types will be on hand to help.

Leir no longer feels the need to debate the existence of UFOs; it’s the implants he’s more concerned about, considering them proof positive of the alien reality. What Leir’s research wants to get to the bottom of is, what are their motives? What are their plans for us? And how the heck did those otherworldly implants get there in the first place?

Also appearing at the event is conspiracy theorist Jordan Maxwell, a fellow who describes himself as “a preeminent researcher and speaker in the fields of secret societies, occult philosophies, and UFOlogy since 1959.” Maxwell is scheduled to lecture about “The Hidden Dimensions in World Affairs.”

The tinfoil-hat brigade should be out in force at the event, which will be hosted by Noory himself. A lil’ zany? Perhaps, but something tells us that the people-watching will be very interesting.

The Hidden Dimensions in World Affairs event, Feb. 7, 2 to 9 p.m. (doors open at noon), Pickwick Gardens, 1001 Riverside Drive, Burbank. $50

I have been left completely speechless by the video. Stick with it, it gets progressively more insane every minute.

(UPDATE: This guy has a whole YouTube channel AND ALL OF HIS STUFF IS BRILLIANT. Who is this guy???)