Rich Fulcher on last night’s ‘Late, Late Show’ with Craig Ferguson
Dangerous Minds pal Rich Fulcher gets serious with Craig Ferguson last night. Rich will be my guest on the DM talkshow taping this weekend.
Dangerous Minds pal Rich Fulcher gets serious with Craig Ferguson last night. Rich will be my guest on the DM talkshow taping this weekend.
No one who has watched the staggeringly scary documentary Jesus Camp will ever forget creepy Pentecostal kids minister Becky Fischer, whose ministry has been described as fundamentalist “brain washing” or “child abuse” by an awful lot of people (click here for some “special” highlights from Jesus Camp if you haven’t seen the film).
Fischer instills her pre-teen flock with such time-honored (but IQ deficient) Pentecostal traditions as a belief in exorcism, the reality of everyday demons, that they are “present day apostles” fighting “spiritual warfare,” how to be a good Republican and of course… learning how to speak in tongues! (Ask yourself why the fuck would any right-thinking person want their kid “taught” how to “speak in tongues” in the first place? The answer is easy: NO ONE with a functioning brain would!)
This woman is a menace to the minds of these children. No surprise either that her Kids in Ministry website also features the “teachings” of brainless bigots like Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs.
On a brighter note, probably seven out of ten of the kids who were unfortunately born to couples dumb enough to entrust their children to such warped indoctrination will eventually come to realize that Becky Fischer is a complete idiot and quite a bizarre human being with very, very strange, unscientific and ignorant beliefs and will want to get the fuck out of the Church as fast as they can. Partially as a direct result of being exposed to this weirdo when they were young.
Becky Fischer teaches children an organized system of superstition and ignorance, no more and no less. It’s too bad that there is no government-mandated psychological screening of people like this before they’re given a bunch of young minds to skull fuck.
Christian crazy lady, Cindy Jacobs has a new video. Cindy’s a (self-proclaimed) prophet and shit, right? So her followers have asked been her exalted prophetship: “Hey, Cindy, what’s with all of these bird deaths? Does this mean it’s like the end of days or something?” And this is what she spake unto them: It wuz teh gayz! And Bill Clinton!
According to biblical principles, marriage is between a man and a woman , so we have to say “what happens when a nation makes a decision that’s against God’s principles?” Well, often what happens is that nature itself will begin to talk to us – for instance, violent storms, flooding. And you know there are actually some patterns that you can see where a nation will make a decision that is contrary to the principles of God and after that there is some kind of answer that God gives, being the God of creation, the God who created nature, but we don’t always understand what He’s saying.
Well, there’s something interesting we have been watching – let’s talk about this Arkansas pattern and say, could it be a pattern? We’re going to watch and see. But the blackbirds fell to the ground in Beebe, Arkansas, well the Governor of Arkansas’ name is Beebe. And also, there was something put out of Arkansas called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by a former Governor, this was proposed, Bill Clinton. As so, could there be a connection between this passage [Hosea 4] and now that we’ve had the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell where people now legally in the United States have broken restraints with the Scripture because the Scripture says in Romans 1 that homosexuality is not allowed.
It could be because we have said it’s okay for people who commit these kinds of acts to be recognized in our military for the first time in our history, there is a potential that there is something that actually happened in the land where a hundred thousand drum fish died and also where these birds just fell out of the air.
The way I see it, the only thing that could explain the unlikely situation that there are people out there who give a shit what Cindy Jacobs thinks is that must be plenty of people out there even dumber than Cindy herself. That’s pathetic, almost impossible. She’s a flaming idiot.
Hey Cindy, do some more of your “blaggah, blaggerbah hoolio como sunumfry” talk. I love it when you do your “speaking in tongues” routine. Shit cracks me up!
Via Right Wing Watch
This shit isn’t cute, never was. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) and at least 15 others were shot at point blank range today. Is it a coincidence that she happens to be in Sarah Palin’s cross-hairs ?
Twenty House Dems from districts that McCain carried in 2008 voted for the health care bill, and Sarah Palin has a target on every single one.
The targets were released on the six month anniversary of Obamacare, and include a lot of familiar names such as John Boccieri (OH), Chris Carney (P N) Gabrielle Giffords (AZ) and Ann Kirpatrick (AZ). The site invites donations, social networking, and the unbeatable Sarah love that has led to a 26:11 win/loss record of candidates in GOP primaries. Granted, some of those were in safe districts, but she’s also pulled off massive upsets that probably outshadow her less successful picks.
Regardless, this site should go a long way towards knocking off the politicians who put their party affiliation ahead of their constituent’s demands. It was announced via a tweet from SarahPalinUSA: “Lies, Damned Lies – Obamacare 6 Months Later; It’s Time to Take Back the 20!”
tweet from Palin: “Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” Pls see my Facebook page.”
Metaphor, no more…
via Tbogg@FDL
A handful of images of the current goings-on in the airports of America. This is where we’re at, saw it for myself while traveling over the holidays. How do these pictures make you feel? It seems almost too obvious to state that I find this security theater horrifying and deeply depressing. We’re too stupid to take care of our sick and poor and we’re too stupid to be bothered by random public humiliation. What’s next?
More groping of the elderly, the infirm, children and nuns after the jump…
Pianist Billy Taylor died yesterday at age 89, leaving a lasting legacy as America’s consummate jazz advocate.
Soon after getting his degree in Music Education, the Washington D.C.-raised Taylor became the house pianist at New York’s legendary Birdland, where he stayed throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s, playing with Bird, Dizzy and Miles and solidifying his role as a fixture and statesman in the city’s jazz scene.
But Taylor is perhaps best known as this country’s premier jazz educator, among the first to declare jazz “America’s classical music.” His long-running Jazzmobile project has produced concerts and educational programs throughout the American Eastern seaboard for 45 years.
Taylor was also the first to bring jazz thought and theory to mainstream American radio and TV. He was the jazz correspondent on CBS News Sunday Morning and on NPR.
But before all that, as the McCarthy era faded and Jim Crow was on its last gasp, Taylor was music director on an NBC show called The Subject is Jazz, which ran in 1958.
After the jump: Watch Nina Simone sing the Taylor-penned Civil Rights movement anthem “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”…
As if there is any doubt posed by the question “Are we slouching towards Idiocracy?” what else can a sane person conclude when confronted with headlines like “Conservatives Split Over Oppposition to Anti-Obesity Campaign” (WHO would be PRO-obesity aside from a politically astute moron like Sarah Palin? Surely the morbidly obese must make up a large percentage of her supporters) and “Kentucky Creationist Museum to Feature Dragons, Unicorns.”
Aside from a similar accident of birth on the North American land mass, I don’t perceive myself as having ANYTHING in common with someone who believes that dinosaurs and unicorns were on Noah’s fucking Ark (or Sarah Palin supporters for that matter)! Do you? Where is the commonality when IQs have become this stratified? And where is this mess headed when the stupidest people in the country are the only ones reliably voting? It’s really getting frustrating to read the news these days. I feel like there is a new low reached almost daily. The dumbness used to be a little more spread out.
Truly, it’s undeniable at this juncture that “the dumbs” are really starting to take over and if these shit-for-brains types are allowed to continue dominating the conversation, then all bets are off for the future of the American republic. I can’t help but to feel we’re about to reach a tipping point towards some serious bad craziness. If you can convince a man that dinosaurs and unicorns were on Noah’s Ark, you can convince this man of ANY darned thing (like millionaires and billionaires pay too much in taxes or that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president).
Reblogging this from Barefoot and Progressive:
I asked Answers in Genesis if there will be dinosaurs on their Ark. They said yes.
I’ve since asked if there will be fire-breathing dragons on their Ark.
My visit to the Creation Museum last week told me that the answer is a strong “probably so.” Digging through the AiG archives this morning, I now see that Ken Ham says the answer is an emphatic “yes”:
Being land animals, dinosaurs (or dragons of the land) were created on Day Six (Genesis 1:24–31), went aboard Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6:20), and then came off the Ark into the post-Flood world (Genesis 8:16–19). It makes sense that many cultures would have seen these creatures from time to time before they died out.
There will be dragons on their Ark. [What about Godzilla or Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster? Will non-American “dragons of the land” be considered for inclusion?—RM]
But here’s one more question for you: Will there be unicorns on the Ark?
According to Ken Ham and AiG, the answer is yes.
“Some people claim the Bible is a book of fairy tales because it mentions unicorns. However, the biblical unicorn was a real animal, not an imaginary creature.”
“Modern readers have trouble with the Bible’s unicorns because we forget that a single-horned feature is not uncommon on God’s menu for animal design. (Consider the rhinoceros and narwhal.) The Bible describes unicorns skipping like calves (Psalm 29:6), traveling like bullocks, and bleeding when they die (Isaiah 34:7). The presence of a very strong horn on this powerful, independent-minded creature is intended to make readers think of strength.”
“The absence of a unicorn in the modern world should not cause us to doubt its past existence. (Think of the dodo bird. It does not exist today, but we do not doubt that it existed in the past.). Eighteenth century reports from southern Africa described rock drawings and eyewitness accounts of fierce, single-horned, equine-like animals. One such report describes “a single horn, directly in front, about as long as one’s arm, and at the base about as thick . . . . [It] had a sharp point; it was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but fixed only in the skin.”
“To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail.”
There will be unicorns on the Ark. So this is what we’re left with:
Thanks to [Governor] Steve Beshear, Kentucky is no longer just known as the state whose governor endorsed and gave $40 million in tax breaks to people who want to tell children that science and history explain that a 600 year old man herded dinosaurs onto a big boat 4,000 years ago.
No, Kentucky will now be known as the state whose governor endorsed and gave $40 million in tax breaks to people who want to tell children that science and history explain that a 600-year-old man herded dinosaurs, fire-breathing dragons and unicorns onto a big boat 4,000 years ago.
But Steve Beshear wasn’t elected to debate religion, he was elected to create jobs…
Ouch! I just want to pull the covers over my head when I read something like this, don’t you? Obviously, requesting a unicorn chaser would not really be appropriate here…
If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking? (Discovery)
I woke up this morning and as I was waiting for the coffee to brew, I dialed up the Huffington Post and read the following headline:
Number of Americans lacking medical coverage now exceeds the population of Spain.
Ouch! How fucked up is that? It’s just so depressing. Why? How was it allowed to get this bad?
Yep, there are currently 59 million of us without healthcare here in thee greatest country on earth, whereas the EU insures 100% of its population, cradle to grave, by law, including dentistry! Every major industrialized economy in the world has universal health care… except for us. We’re the exception. I don’t think this is exactly the brand of “American exceptionalism” Sarah Palin is talking about all the time, but it’s sure the way it looks from where my ass is sitting.
What we’re getting in 2014—if the Republicans can’t repeal it in the meantime—is a step in the right direction, but it’s not great. What would have been great is a single payer system, but that would have also been too easy!
In Europe for their tax dollars, they get universal health coverage. We here in America get a bunch of weapons and give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires who don’t need ‘em. Why? Because Fox News said we should. Let’s face the cold and clammy facts: we’re a country of idiots, run by a class of amoral scoundrels and criminals.
Why there isn’t rioting in the streets over the turn for the (much) worse the quality of life has taken in America is a mystery. How is it possible that it’s gotten this bad without major social unrest? Beats me.
And then to make me even more depwessed, I read this article, “America in Decline: Why Germans Think We’re Insane: A look at our empire in decline through the eyes of the European media.”
Der Spiegel has run an interesting feature called “A Superpower in Decline,” which attempts to explain to a German audience such odd phenomena as the rise of the Tea Party, without the hedging or attempts at “balance” found in mainstream U.S. media. On the Tea Parties:
Full of Hatred: “The Tea Party, that group of white, older voters who claim that they want their country back, is angry. Fox News host Glenn Beck, a recovering alcoholic who likens Obama to Adolf Hitler, is angry. Beck doesn’t quite know what he wants to be—maybe a politician, maybe president, maybe a preacher—and he doesn’t know what he wants to do, either, or least he hasn’t come up with any specific ideas or plans. But he is full of hatred.”
The piece continues with the sobering assessment that America’s actual unemployment rate isn’t really 10 percent, but close to 20 percent when we factor in the number of people who have stopped looking for work.
Sound like a country you know? The thing I keep obsessing over is “How much longer can the “smarts” and the “dumbs” co-exist in America?” We really don’t want the same things, you know? Sooner or later something’s got to give and it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Read more of America in Decline: Why Germans Think We’re Insane (Alternet)
Thank you Steven Otero!
The charming cover of Merry Crassmas
Click play to hear all of Merry Crassmas!
The end of 1981 likely saw highly influential British anarcho-punk band Crass both energized and exhausted after dropping their third album, the remarkably complex feminist manifesto Penis Envy.
One speculates that the idea for their final release of the year came to the band as a “eureka!” moment. Why not release a 7” novelty record made up of a department-store-style, organ-and-drum-machine medley of their anthemic and obnoxious tunes, including “Big A Little A,” “Punk is Dead,” “Big Hands,” “Contaminational Power” and others? Slap on an innocuous Santa Claus intro and obnoxious outro at the end, pop it into a sleeve with a strange and horrific collage of an Xmas-day family holiday scene by Gee Vaucher, and you’ve got an instant inside-joke punk classic on your hands.
As a horror-day bonus for you Crass-heads, here’s a wide-ranging, as-yet-spotlighted 2007 interview from pancrack.tv with your man, drummer Penny Rimbaud…
Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Crass remasters and epic interview
Crass: There is No Authority But Yourself
Music for Crass: Mick Duffield’s Christ the Movie
The unexpected Crass-Beatles Nexus Point
At first, Christian fundamentalist group Repent Amarillo’s recent charming video of their firing-squad execution of a Santa piñata in the name of putting the Savior back in to the holiday seems typical.
But after reading Canadian cannabis activist Dana Larsen’s 2003 article on the apparent psychotropic and shamanic origins of Santa Claus and many other Christmas traditions, it made some deeper sense to me.
Skip down to the explanatory vid…
According to Larsen, the Lapps of modern-day Finland and the Koyak tribes of the central Russian steppes had holy men in their ranks who regularly imbibed the hallucinogenic red & white amanita muscaria mushroom (also known as “fly agaric”). These ‘shrooming shamen proved to be the model of the figure we now know as Santa Claus.
Larsen also contends that the Christmas tree was originally seen as a “World Tree”, typically a fir or evergreen, species under which the amanita muscaria mushroom thrived:
The World Tree was seen as a kind of cosmic axis, onto which the planes of the universe are fixed. The roots of the World Tree stretch down into the underworld, its trunk is the “middle earth” of everyday existence, and its branches reach upwards into the heavenly realm.
So, of course, the North Star around which all stars seemed to revolve was always aligned with the top of the tree—thus the star on top of the modern Christmas tree. These ancients also saw the magic mushroom springing up as “virgin births” seeded by the morning dew, which is symbolized by the tinsel on the tree. Trippy, eh?
Also:
Below is the least campy video I could find that draws a bunch of the connections between Santa and the ‘shroom. Enjoy!
Thanks to Lexie T. for the heads-up!