This picture was taken on Highway 9 between Santa Cruz and Felton. This run-off was racing down hill to the San Lorenzo River at the foot of the mountain.
Atldax stressed that he used satanic symbols because they stood out."I don't believe in Satan or God. I don't care if there's a God or Satan because they have never spoken to me." he added.Hat tip to Dada.
The designer plans to create logos mocking, and critical of, other religions. "I plan to make something anti-Hindu because I think its caste system is awful. I am not considering any anti-Islamic work now because there are already a lot of anti-Islamic sentiments," he said.
"FSMISM n. a pseudo-religion invented to counter the theory of intelligent design. From Flying Spaghetti Monster, the joke-cult's deity. Members are sometimes said to be Pastafarians."You will find the glossary in the left column of their web page.
Top 10 links to Wikipedia from blogs: Podcasting, Hurricane Katrina, AJAX (a web programming script), Flying Spaghetti Monster (blogger Bobby Henderson's alternative theory to "intelligent design"), United States, Wiki, Folksonomy, London subway bombings, Web 2.0, RSS, meme (shared online info/activities) and intelligent design.A survey reported here says that:
Even though you may be dying to know whether more Portlanders venerate the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Buddha (29 percent vs. 20 percent), reading that many numbers in one sitting turns most folks cross-eyed. But if you want all the numbers, a full rundown can be found at wweek.com.
"Early this year, Sen. Rick Santorum commended the Dover Area School District for 'attempting to teach the controversy of evolution.'But one day after a federal judge ruled that the district's policy on intelligent design was unconstitutional, Santorum said he was troubled by court testimony that showed some board members were motivated by religion in adopting the policy."If this nitwit has just figured out that religious zealots are behind the ID movement, what is he doing in the Senate? Aren't our legislative representatives supposed to be at least marginally informed about what's going on?
Now that he's seen the light about ID, does he still believe that gay marriages will lead to people having sex with dogs? This idiot couldn't get a clue if he knew what a clue was. What a useless tool.The case highlighted Santorum's high-profile role in the debate over teaching evolution. He never entered the Harrisburg courtroom where the six-week trial took place, but his actions - most notably, an effort in 2001 to insert a "teach the controversy" amendment into a landmark education bill - figured prominently into the case.
It also has become a political issue for Santorum as he faces a tough reelection in 2006. His leading Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., has seized upon the senator's seemingly contradictory statements on intelligent design to portray him as a "flip flopper" who puts an ideological agenda above other interests.In a 2002 Washington Times op-ed, Santorum wrote: "Therefore, intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes."
But in recent interviews, including one in August on National Public Radio, Santorum said: "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom."
Christmas is supposed to be a season of peace and good will. The Religious Right, by turning the holiday into just another platform for mean-spirited attacks, makes a mockery of the values of the very person whose birth they are supposed to be celebrating.
A judge on Tuesday barred the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution at a Pennsylvania school, saying in a scathing rebuke to the school board that it violated a constitutional ban on teaching religion in public schools.
U.S. District Judge John Jones dealt a blow to Christian conservatives, who have been pressing for the teaching of creationism in schools and who played a significant role in the re-election of President George W. Bush.
"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in a public school classroom," Jones wrote in a 139-page opinion in the case, brought against the Dover School District.
Jones condemned the "breathtaking inanity" of the policy of the board, all but one of whom have now been ousted by local voters.
"Any asserted secular purposes by the board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective," he said.
Intelligent design holds that some aspects of nature are so complex that they must have been the work of an unnamed creator rather than the result of random natural selection, as argued by Charles Darwin in his 1859 theory of evolution.
Opponents argue it is a thinly disguised version of creationism -- a belief that the world was created by God as described in the Book of Genesis -- which the Supreme Court has ruled may not be taught in public schools.
Jones said the students and teachers of Dover High School "deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."
The school district was sued by a group of 11 parents who claimed teaching intelligent design was unconstitutional and unscientific and had no place in high school biology class.
In his ruling, the judge suggested the parents file a claim for damages and legal fees against the school district.
'VICTORY FOR SCIENCE'
Christy Rehm, one of the plaintiffs, said: "This is a victory for education, a victory for science and a victory for science education."
Richard Thompson, head of the Thomas More Law Center which represented the defendants, said in a statement: "The founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change (was) in violation of the constitution that they drafted."
Asked about the ruling, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president has said he believed such decisions should be made by local school districts.
"The president has also said that he believes students ought to be exposed to different theories and ideas so that they can fully understand what the debate is about," he said.
The six-week Harrisburg trial, one of the highest-profile court cases on evolution since the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," was closely watched by Christian conservatives in other states who are planning similar initiatives.
The Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State called the court decision "a significant blow to religious right-led efforts to sneak fundamentalist dogma into public schools under the guise of science."
Is there anyone more useless than Condi Rice? She was Russert's first guest, and he gave her ten feet of rope to hang herself with. On the eavesdropping front, she actually said, "I am not a lawyer" -- not once, but three times. Even Richard Nixon said "I am not a crook" only once.
Russert repeatedly asked her why Bush didn't get approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court before wiretapping Americans, and her answer was that Bush had Constitutional authority because he's commander-in-chief; that he has "statutory authority"; that he got authority from the Attorney General and the National Security Agency's general counsel and inspector general; and that he briefed Congressional leadership.
What part of the Constitution? "I'm not a lawyer." What statute? "I'm not a lawyer." Those are administration officials, not the FISA court. "I'm not a lawyer."
....
When Condi wasn't channeling Nixon, she painted herself as a big fan of the 9/11 Commission -- you know, the one whose formation the Administration fought tooth and nail, and the one whose successor group flunked BushCo on protecting us from terrorism. When, defending Bush's lawbreaking, she cited the 9/11 Commission and said how important it was for us to "connect the dots," I couldn't help thinking of her testimony, when she said that the Presidential Daily Briefing headlined "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within US" was "a historical document." If that's how well she connected the dots then, no wonder she's doing so badly at coloring within the lines now.
....
The guests on the reporters' roundtable that followed were Gwen Ifill of PBS and John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal. This is the moment in the show when Washington reporters totally repress the fact that they are human beings, citizens, or people with emotions and moral compasses, and instead treat what is going on solely as political theater. In this segment, it's all meta-, all-the-time. Polls, strategy, tactics: you bet. Outrage, disbelief, authenticity: what do you think this is, Comedy Central?
Early this fall, I came upon what is reportedly the largest Democratic blog on the Internet, democraticunderground .com.
In addition to the profanity-laden "Bush=Hitler" discourse and Internet links, an advertisement read:
"Fish Wars on Cars - On Your Car and in Their Face; Stick-on Emblems - Poke fun with chrome car emblems: Darwin Fish, Jeebus, Hooked Fish, Dead Fish, Fish 'n Chips, Gefilte, Pagan, Reality Bites, Shark, T-Rex enjoying a fish snack, etc. ... We also have bumper stickers and Bush Soap to remove W's scum ..."
Fish wars? In their face? Jeebus? Feeding Christians to animals? Poke fun?
It's "fun" to openly ridicule the Christian faith and the God Christians call Savior? Is "in their face" something that should be part of our educational curriculum? Should defacing a religious image be entertaining sport?
I have a great sense of humor. In fact, the same site had an ad with a photo of Condi Rice kissing President Bush and the caption made me laugh.
A click on the ad link at democraticunderground.com revealed an even larger array of hateful, anti-Christian car emblems that ridicule the Ichthys symbol in various and imaginative ways.
There also was a Satanic pentagram for sale. Perhaps it's for those whose Christian-bashing car decoration collection was complete.
An ad promoting desecration of Christian religious symbols so brazenly and proudly displayed on a popular Democratic blog is troubling enough. What I find even more disturbing is apparently this ad is just fine for the people who visit this blog. Why was it up for even one day?
Do they have the right to display the ad? Yes.Wagging finger alert!
Is it right? No.
The decent thing to do would have been for Democratic bloggers in droves to immediately demand the removal of the ad.
How can the idea of trashing an important Christian symbol be cute or funny?
Jeebus? How does mocking what Christians believe to be the holy name of Jesus seem even remotely acceptable?
Why is it OK to have one of these dreadful things displayed on a car? I've seen them all over. Free speech? Yes. Moral? No.
Would a swastika superimposed over a Star of David be acceptable? How about a big fat red circle and slash over the Crescent Moon of Islam?
I taught my children to respect every single individual on Earth. It's what the Bible teaches us. God doesn't look at anything except the heart (Romans 2:11, Hebrews 4:12, 13:1-2).
Who dreams up defacing or mocking any religious icon no less doing so by sticking it on their car? It should be unthinkable to anyone. I wonder, too, what are the adults regularly visiting this Web site teaching their children or teens? What type of example are those who use these offensive symbols on their cars setting?
What do you think? Carol Van Drie of Lansing has been married to an Army officer for 26 years. She is a member of the State Journal's Community Advisory Board. Write to her c/o Lansing State Journal, 120 E. Lenawee St., Lansing, MI 48919.
CNN's Hatchet Job on Scott Ritter: "Over on MSNBC, Curtis & Kuby co-host Curtis Sliwa compared him to 'a sock puppet' who 'oughta turn in his passport for an Iraqi one.' But the nadir came later on CNN when makeup job Kyra Phillips interrogated him, implying that he was being paid by Iraq and all but calling him a quisling.I sent countless messages complaining about Kyra Phillips to CNN's feedback email addresses, but she is still employeed there so I gave up and changed the channel.
'Ha! Excuse me; I went to war against Saddam Hussein in 1991. I spent seven years of my life in this country hunting down weapons of mass destruction. I believe I've done a lot about Saddam Hussein,' he replied. 'You show me where Saddam Hussein can be substantiated as a threat against the United States and I'll go to war again. I'm not going to sit back idly and let anybody threaten the United States. But at this point in time, no one has made a case based upon facts that Saddam Hussein or his government is a threat to the United States worthy of war.' "
The organization Media Matters for America, a media research center, has highlighted her July 12, 2005 statement that there was "definitely a major smear campaign going on" against White House adviser Karl Rove. [1] Others have criticised her for a segment on April 21, 2005, in which one of her guests said that research showed that it was "a proven fact" that "children in same-sex couple homes are 11 times more likely to be abused sexually." Instead of challenging the assertion, she called it a "bold statement." [2]Maybe she is on the White House payroll.
While interviewing House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Phillips was accused by Pelosi of repeating the views of the Bush administration. Pelosi said "if you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll." [3]
I was watching CNN's Kyra Phillips repulsion of the video of protestors who had surrounded a media bus in Denver, CO yesterday. Following the president, their progress had suddenly been detained by protestors against Bush's war.
Unable to dismount the bus, Kyra Phillips spoke with CNN's Elaine Quijano on board as cameras relayed images of the angry citizens outside, some flipping Bush the finger. This obviously made Kyra Phillips uneasy, as she apologized for the images being flashed across her network. Phillips was apparently embarrassed by the anger of citizens being manifested in the form of a simple gesture alongside the signs they were carrying.
Keep in mind the simple flipping of the bird in anger at Bush's policies is shameful and embarrassing to CNN, while their *Rah-rah* lead-up to Bush's war and the subsequent attrocities are not. A squeamish Phillips concluded the interview with Quijano and her repulsive images thusly, "Once again Elaine Quijano.... I just....get off this video, Elaine Quijano, thank you so much, some protestors there, obviously anti-war protestors comin' up on the media bus there as the president arrives there in Denver, CO..."
Dada would suggest if Kyra Phillips finds such gestures of the protestors offensive, she get help having her head extracted from her bodily orifice too "embarrassing and offensive" to mention here so that she'll be able to report objectively before a background of tortured Iraqis, of tens of thousands of maimed and murdered Iraqi women and children; of over 2,100 dead American soldiers and thousands more wounded.
Oh wait, never mind. CNN doesn't show us those gruesome images. Fingers of angry protestors already tests the limits of what they can report. So disregard my previous suggestion, Kyra Phillips. You can leave your head up that bodily orifice.
"I've been thinking a lot about Condi lately, when I haven't been thinking about Hillary. They both make me feel bad, but for different reasons. I feel bad about Condi because in spite of her deliciously humiliating European adventure, she still seems to be enjoying this rock-star-slash-dominatrix thing; just last night, in the Ukraine, she coyly dismissed the suggestion that she might be a presidential candidate and giggled over the numerous references to herself as a warrior princess. Meanwhile, I feel bad about Hillary for all the obvious reasons, including this week's position on flag-burning and last week's position on Iraq (you can find it on her website). "I completed a poll for Zogby earlier today in which I was asked to choose whether I'd vote for (1) John McCain or Hillary Clinton and (2) Hillary Clinton verses Condilikestorture Rice. In both cases I chose the third option (someone else or as I'd have phrased it - ANYONE else).
"Going all the way back to Panama, we've been involved in every war, with the exception of Somalia."Rendon helped overthrow Manuel Noreiga by planting anti-Noriega stories and photos in the media. In 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Kuwaitis hired Rendon to help convince the world to go to war in their defense and Rendon even set the stage for the media by handing out flags of the U.S. and other coalition countries to citizens of Kuwait City so they could wave them in front of TV cameras.
"We lost control of the context. That has to be fixed for the next war."Bastard! How does he sleep at night?
Bush "claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one," said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. "I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."Christian conservatives always have their panties in a knot over something, but it's fun to watch when they turn on each other.
Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas sales rather than "holiday specials" and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation rather than for "winter break." They celebrated when House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) insisted that the sparkling spectacle on the Capitol lawn should be called the Capitol Christmas Tree, not a holiday spruce.
Then along comes a generic season's greeting from the White House, paid for by the Republican National Committee. The cover art is also secular, if not humanist: It shows the presidential pets -- two dogs and a cat -- frolicking on a snowy White House lawn.
"Late Friday, Gov. Kathleen Blanco released 100,000 pages of memos, handwritten notes, e-mails, phone logs and other documents requested by congressional committees that are investigating what happened behind the scenes in the frantic days surrounding the deadly Aug. 29 storm.
....Among those documents are the back-and-forth communications between Blanco's office and the White House, starting with a letter Blanco sent President Bush a day before the hurricane hit.
'I have determined that this incident will be of such severity and magnitude that effective response will be beyond the capabilities of the state and the affected local governments and that supplementary federal assistance will be necessary,' Blanco wrote.Three days after the storm, Blanco complained to the White House that FEMA had still failed to fulfill its promises of aid. While cloaked in customary political courtesies, Blanco noted that she had already requested 40,000 more troops; ice, water and food; buses, base camps, staging areas, amphibious vehicles, mobile morgues, rescue teams, housing, airlift and communications systems, according to a press office e-mail of the text of her letter to Bush.
"Even if these initial requests had been fully honored, these assets would not be sufficient," Blanco said. She also asked for the return of the Louisiana Army National Guard's 256th Brigade Combat Team, then deployed to Iraq.
....
The stack of documents also includes a timeline put together by Blanco's staff detailing the state response; notes expressing frustration about missing items such as a communications center for police and rescuers promised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and police reports, including logs of calls from people trapped amid the floodwater. Other documents show how Blanco's aides were inundated with requests from celebrities and dignitaries wanting to visit the city.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Saturday she hadn't seen the documents.Tensions between state leaders and the White House seemed at times near the boiling point. At 3:49 p.m. on Sept. 2, after appearing with Bush at a Mississippi news conference, Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., wrote Blanco's staff, "I am returning home to baron (sic) rouge in hoping I can accomplish something for the people I represent other than being occupied with PR."
He added that Bush's "entire effort on behalf of the federal government has been reflected in his and his people's nonchalant attitude to the people of LA. You may give him this to read."
"A judge Thursday ordered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration to remove a state-produced video intended to look like an objective news report from a government Web site. "Now California has been slimed with BS just like in Washington and it stinks. Phewwww! It stinks.