Atheists Want to Abort Baby Jesus, Oh My!

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Oh, is it possible for us atheists to be more evil? According to some, yes. The luridly purple (and highly inaccurate) prose of Christian fanatics know no bounds, and now includes the utter horror of atheists attempting to abort a birthed baby from thousands of years ago. Right, that just makes all kinds of sense! The actual problem? Oh, the usual – evil atheists and satanists are allowed to put up their own seasonal displays, messages, and billboards, quelle horreur!

The haters of all-things-Christmas, some of whom claim to be “freedom” lovers, are busy again this December trying to legally abort the baby in the manger.

If they could pull this off, it would be the ultimate late-term abortion, since that baby was born 2,000 years ago and lives eternally as the King of Kings.

Oh FFS. The idiocy is simply too much to bear.

The atheist-Satan alliance is becoming more visible than ever. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League noted in a recent press release that atheists and Satanists have the same goals: they hate Christianity.

Most satanists are atheists, who happily use satanism to smack fanatical Christians by means of using their own twisted logic. As for actual Satanists? They’re Christians too, and should be embraced by Christians, after all, you wouldn’t have a religion at all without your scapegoat, would you? It’s rather silly, the bad rap Lucifer gets, given that almost all of the vicious, bloodthirsty killing in the bible is the direct action of Yahweh. (If you haven’t read Drunk With Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible, by Steve Wells, I highly recommend it.)

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So, if you’re actually going to believe all that silly shit, looks like Christians are on the wrong side. Nothing new there. I just can’t continue quoting the idiotic column, but it is a goldmine of paranoid idiocy, so if you’re in the mood, here it is.

No Peace for Our Time.

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This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ‘ … We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.

British PM Neville Chamberlain, 1938

Make no mistake: Donald Trump’s Administration is coming for Indian Country—we’re suddenly big targets on his radar. We haven’t had quite this big of a place on the national and international stage in a long time. It makes sense—Native communities have about 25% of the nation’s on-shore oil and gas reserves and developable resources and this upcoming administration is oil-thirsty.

And they’re coming for what Tribes have; Dakota Access was the warm-up. Trump’s line-up of cabinet nominees tells us that his Administration is coming squarely for Native land and Native natural resources. Rick Perry, who sits on the Board of Directors for the Energy Transfer Partners (the company that owns the Dakota Access Pipeline), was nominated as the Energy Secretary. Trump also nominated Scott Pruitt to be the new head of the EPA; Pruitt said that “hydraulic fracking, a technological innovation that has done more to reduce carbon emissions in this country than any other technological advancement of our time.” No really—that’s what he said. He also wrote a letter to Obama In 2012, Pruitt and Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wrote a letter to President Obama asking to eliminate a Bureau of Land Management proposal that requires oil companies to disclose the chemicals used in fracking operations on Native American land.

These cats want to separate Native people from our lands and mineral resources. It’s westward expansion, manifest destiny!

Again.

Gyasi Ross has an outstanding article up at ICTMN about the current political mess, and what it’s going to mean to Indian Country:

The Thing About Skins: Make no mistake, Donald Trump’s Administration is coming for Indian Country.

In an earlier edition, Marty Two Bulls made his feelings about certain Indians active in the current mess quite clear:

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© Marty Two Bulls.

Subway Therapy to Be Preserved.

(Reuters/Lucas Jackson).

(Reuters/Lucas Jackson).

Since the election of Donald Trump, the walls of New York City’s 14th Street Union Square subway station have become a release valve for grief-stricken New Yorkers, who, outside of Staten Island, overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton. Created by artist Matthew “Levee” Chavez, “Subway Therapy” invites anyone to write down their fears, hate and hopes on a Post-It note and tack it on the station’s tile walls.

Thousands of Post-Its have formed a thick and colorful wallpaper over the course of six weeks, with many passengers stopping to read notes or take a quick photograph of the growing collage. Chavez estimates about 2,000 new postings are added daily.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to archive a large portion of the collection as a historical record. “Today, we preserve a powerful symbol that shows how New Yorkers of all ages, races and religions came together to say we are one family, one community and we will not be torn apart,” said Cuomo in a press statement Dec. 16. Cuomo himself posted a message of unity for New Yorkers during a Nov. 14 visit, scribbling down a line of poetry from the base of the Statue of Liberty.

The New York Historical Society will work with the NY Metropolitan Transit Authority to gather and preserve the sticky notes as part of its History Responds program. “We are ever-mindful of preserving the memory of today’s events for future generations. Ephemeral items in particular, created with spontaneity and emotion, can become vivid historical documents,” said the society’s president Dr. Louise Mirrer.

Other articles have noted that:

The New-York Historical Society will also let New Yorkers place notes on its glass walls starting Tuesday, Dec. 20 through Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

I think everyplace should have Subway Therapy, whether there’s a subway or not. I could use one here in nDakota, not that I think it would be allowed to stand for 10 seconds.

Via Quartz.

The Twelve Days of Trumpmas.

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The Religious Reich have a Xmas wish list, one they fully expect Santa Trump to fulfill. Just the wish list here, click over to Right Wing Watch for the grisly details.

After jettisoning all of their rhetoric about public morality and personal character in order to help Donald Trump get elected, Religious Right activists are now hoping the president-elect fulfills the promises he made to the social conservative movement during his campaign.

Trump, who received the support of around eight in ten white evangelical voters, spent months boasting that he is a “great Christian” who will restore the long-lost holiday of Christmas and create “the strongest Christian lobby.”

[…]

“Like President-elect Trump, we have much to celebrate this Christmas season,” the National Right to Life Committee declared in its December newsletter, rejoicing in Trump’s anti-choice policies and Cabinet picks.

As Christmas approaches, Religious Right activists are reminding Trump of the good deeds they did to help elect him and demanding that he, in turn, deliver on his promises. Here are just 12 of the gifts the Religious Right is expecting from Trump in the new year:

  1. Nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court.
  2. Repeal the Affordable Care Act.
  3. Sign the First Amendment Defense Act.
  4. Rescind Nondiscrimination Protections.
  5. Defund and Investigate Planned Parenthood.
  6. Reinstate the Mexico City Policy.
  7. Codify The Hyde Amendment.
  8. Sign a 20-week Abortion Ban.
  9. Sign The Conscience Protection Act.
  10. Repeal The Johnson Amendment.
  11. Federal Voucher Funding.
  12. Curb Immigration, Ban Muslims and Stop Refugee Resettlement.

The details aren’t pretty. If all this is managed, we’ll be well past the welcome to fascism stage. Via Right Wing Watch.

NC: Repubs Attempt Coup.

Rep. Garland Pierce (D-Scotland) addresses protestors during a special session at the North Carolina Legislature. CREDIT: AP Photo/Gerry Broome.

Rep. Garland Pierce (D-Scotland) addresses protestors during a special session at the North Carolina Legislature. CREDIT: AP Photo/Gerry Broome.

The Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature is not happy that voters last month chose a Democratic governor and a liberal majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court. And today, they could take advantage of an “emergency” legislative session to pass a series of bills that would minimize the impact of the voters’ choices by limiting the power of the other two branches of government.

This is from an earlier article on Think Progress, about the panicked coup attempt by NC repubs, who aren’t at all happy that Cooper won the election. In doing so, they have pulled out the dirty tricks playbook:

The Republican leaders of the North Carolina legislature called an emergency special session this week ostensibly to send funding to parts of the state devastated by Hurricane Matthew. Yet they used the opportunity to rush through a series of bills designed to limit the power of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who unseated Republican Pat McCrory by a narrow margin in November.

“It now seems to me the hurricane session was just a ruse to get us here,” Sen. Jane Smith (D-Columbus) complained.

Rev. Dr. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP, agreed, and called the move “an insult to the democratic values held by all people of goodwill in this state.”

“It is immoral, it is unconstitutional, and this illegal session is a direct attack on the people of North Carolina,” he said. “To convene in Raleigh under the pretext of a special session called by the Governor to provide relief to those affected by the hurricane and wildfires continues the worst of this extremist legislature’s legacy: making unjust laws to give more power to themselves, on the backs of those most vulnerable.”

There are now active protests taking place once again in North Carolina, where it just wasn’t enough for the voters to speak their mind and oust McCrory.

Via Think Progress.

Oh, How Conservative Times Have Changed.

Herblock March 29, 1950 cartoon that originally defined McCarthyism.

Herblock March 29, 1950 cartoon that originally defined McCarthyism.

McCarthyism hadn’t been long over when I was born, and the effects of the hunt for communists and other undesirables had far reaching ripples. The John Birch Society was still going strong, and Russia was most definitely perceived as The Enemy. This sentiment echoed right on down the 1960s, and I remember being called a commie hippie more than once. Anything conservatives didn’t like was labeled “commie” – engaged in activism for peace? Commie. Against the Vietnam war? Commie. And fluoride in the drinking water was a commie plot, too. You couldn’t get away from the intense anti-Russia sentiment, it was everywhere, and there was a great and abiding fear of Russia, too. The Cold War was everywhere, and Nikita Khrushchev was in the news every 5 minutes for years.

If there was one thing you could count on from conservatives, it was their united hatred and fear of Russia. Although this quieted down in subsequent decades, it never really went away, in spite of Gorbachev and Glasnost. There were always cons somewhere, pointing a trembling finger at Russia. Given all that, it’s remarkable just how much things have changed, in a very short time.

A new YouGov/Economist poll found that among registered Republicans and Trump voters, more than a third now hold a “favorable” view of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Though a majority still view Putin negatively, right-wing media — which spent years holding Putin up as a “better leader” than President Barack Obama — set the stage for Republican opinions to shift in the autocrat’s favor, leading to a nearly 50-point swing in support from conservatives in just over two years. And after the United States intelligence community publicly disclosed that its members believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election, many right-wing media figures doubled down on their support for Putin and are downplaying Russia’s involvement in the election.

Putin is an authoritarian “strongman” who has cracked down in Russia on freedom of speech and freedom of the press, signed into law draconian anti-gay legislation, and invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine. Nevertheless, for years, right-wing media have praised Vladimir Putin as a great leader, comparing him favorably against Obama. Fox figures have consistently lauded the Russian autocrat as “a real he-man” and have claimed that Putin has “come to the diplomatic rescue” of President Obama. One Fox host even went so far as to proclaim that she would like Putin to be president of the United States “for 48 hours,” so he could fight ISIS. In 2014, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan suggested that Putin is “one of us” and applauded him for “planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity” with his policies against reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights — evidence, Buchanan suggested, that God is on Putin’s side in his clash with the West. Even conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh once admitted that Putin was “saying things I agree with” when the Russian president announced that he “opposed the adoption of Russian orphans by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender foreign couples.”

Primed by right-wing media, Trump voters now hold a more positive view of Putin and Russia. Since July 2014, Republican voters’ opinions overall of Putin have improved by 56 points, and in 2016 they voted for a candidate in Trump who is openly sympathetic to the autocrat and even invited his government to hack personal emails from Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. According to the poll, 35 percent of Trump voters and 37 percent of registered Republicans now hold a “favorable” view of Putin.

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Now, even though the U.S. intelligence community has stated that its members are “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations,” some right-wing media are siding with Putin and downplaying the severity of the hacks.

My, my. A complete shift from Enemy to Saviour. Via Media Matters.

Got Hitler?

"Got Hitler?" mug. Screenshot.

“Got Hitler?” mug. Screenshot.

Got Hitler? Got Retard? Got Pepe? These mugs were recently pulled from an online Walmart store.

In a listing that no longer appears on Walmart’s site, a company called JM Holdings LLC was selling a mug with the words “got retard?” emblazoned on the side, in the style of those “got milk?” ads. Walmart, like Amazon (which also had a listing for the mug that has since been removed), allows other companies to sell products through its site. This gives the other company a way to reach millions of potential customers, while Walmart.com’s offerings are that much more robust. It is a problem, however, when Walmart appears to be selling mugs with offensive terms on them.

[…]

JM Holdings told Vocativ that the slogans on these mugs are not necessarily intentional, but are generated based on words in the dictionary.

Anyone who believes that, I have some lovely bridges in my garage. You might get away with this excuse with the word retard, but Hitler and Pepe? I don’t think so.

When informed about the Hitler mugs, a spokesperson for Walmart said the company would be reviewing JM Holdings’ entire inventory.

Via Vocativ. Unfortunately, an otherwise good, succinct article is littered with the usage of “alt-right”. This has to stop. When you’re discussing the sale of a “Got Hitler?” mug, it’s safe enough to go with nazis.

Cool Stuff Friday.

The Plains Taco features elk meat and duck fat. It can be garnished with a plethora of tasty ingredients. RoseMary Diaz.

The Plains Taco features elk meat and duck fat. It can be garnished with a plethora of tasty ingredients. RoseMary Diaz.

First up, Frybread. If anything is holy, it is wonderful frybread. Makes me long to be back at the Oceti Sakowin camp, stuffing myself on Melania’s frybread. If there were gods, this would be their food.

Of all the foods most commonly associated with Native American culture, frybread has long been at the center of the table. From one end of the continent to the other, from region to region and tribe to tribe, there are hundreds of recipe variations on the tempting and tasty treat.

Whether inspired by ingredients found close to home or by those from locales a bit more exotic, each of our gourmet variations on frybread bring a creative alternative to the classic treat, and can be down-sized for snacks or appetizers.

Plains Taco

Filling:

2 pounds ground elk meat

2 tablespoons rendered duck fat (may substitute grapeseed, olive, or sunflower seed oil)

2 tablespoons red chili powder

½ teaspoon garlic powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Garnishes:

1 cup endive leaves, rinsed, patted dry, ends trimmed

½ cup cherry tomatoes, quartered

¼ cup diced scallion

½ cup grated provolone cheese

¼ cup pine nuts, whole or coarsely chopped

Optional:

½ tablespoon sliced or diced habanero or serrano pepper

In a large skillet, heat duck fat to melting, or add oil of choice. Heat on medium-high heat for several minutes. Add meat and sauté until brown. Add chili powder, salt and pepper. Mix well, and break up any big clumps of meat.

Spoon meat mixture onto prepared fry breads. In order given, add equal portions of garnishes to each fry.

Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.

Prairie Taco

Filling:

4 quail, fresh or frozen and thawed

1 tablespoon sunflower seed oil

4 strips bacon

¼ teaspoon ground sage

Salt and pepper to taste

Garnishes:

½ cup tomatillos, quartered

¼ cup sliced green onions, including stalks, rinsed, trimmed, and patted dry

½ cup sunflower sprouts

½ cup grated smoked gouda

Bacon from pan, crumbled or coarsely chopped

¼ cup sunflower seeds, raw or toasted

In large skillet, add oil and quail. Roll quail in pan to coat evenly with oil. Place bacon strips along sides of quail and cook over medium heat, turning quail after three to four minutes. Increase heat to medium-high/high, and continue cooking quail just long enough to brown, about one to two minutes on each side. Remove from heat, place on paper or cloth towels to allow excess oil to drain. Continue cooking bacon until brown and crisp, then remove from heat and drain on towels. When cool enough, remove meat from quail in long, downward, stripping motions. Spoon onto prepared fry breads. In order given, add equal portions of garnishes to each frybread. Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.

Rosemary Diaz (Tewa) also has Frybread rules and a recipe for basic frybread at ICTMN, which is sporting a brand new look. Given all the pheasant hunting which takes place here every year, I’d be more inclined to substitute pheasant for the quail in the Prairie Taco, but frybread and its toppings is a matter of endless variation, so go Native, and have fun!

Next up, one of the best ideas I have seen in a long while, with superb design: A Reader.

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All images © Paco Ulman.

First-year architecture and urban planning students at the Estonian Academy of Arts have designed and created a shelter titled ‘READER’, a place where people can get away from their daily routine. Among other structures developed by the students, the shelter is located in the national park Lahemaa of North-Estonia. READER was constructed within five days and is made of pine plywood panels. The whole construction stands on three beams supported by nine adjustable legs on the ground. The exterior appears to be a basic cube, whereas in the inside visitors experience the undulating cave-like contours.
People are invited to enter the shelter to escape from their hectic lives into the pages of fiction and fantasy. The winding contours inside the shelter are an attempt to imitate the pages of a book, and metamorphose from a wall into a bench that seats three people. The ribbed walls usher in diffused sunlight which makes the shelter a comfortable niche, where anyone can come with a book and forget about all their troubles.

All images © Paco Ulman.

All images © Paco Ulman.

You can see more images at iGNANT.

Then we have some video game history, with Howard Scott Warshaw:

Via Great Big Story.

And finally, Sea Turtle conservancy!

Via Great Big Story.