I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now, but you may have only caught it in clips, so here’s the entire interview/debate for those who missed it…

Just when you think that you’ve heard and seen it all with these two, they come out with this. Now why can’t the rest of the mainstream media make the news this interesting and thoroughly entertaining?

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Bill O’Reilly Vs. Jon Stewart: The Entire Interview

In case you missed it, President Obama spoke for around an hour at the GOP House Issues Conference, and it seemed surprisingly calm. For the most part, everyone conducted themselves rather well; the truth was… hit or miss, but it was still a night and day difference from what the health care debates of last summer looked like in the mob-rule town hall meetings with Republicans screaming into an empty void.

Some of my favorite quotes from Obama, emphasis added:

You know, Mike, I’ve read your legislation. I mean, I take a look at this stuff — and the good ideas we take. But here’s — here’s the thing — here’s the thing that I guess all of us have to be mindful of, it can’t be all or nothing, one way or the other. And what I mean by that is this: If we put together a stimulus package in which a third of it are tax cuts that normally you guys would support, and support for states and the unemployed, and helping people stay on COBRA that your governors certainly would support — Democrat or a Republican; and then you’ve got some infrastructure, and maybe there’s some things in there that you don’t like in terms of infrastructure, or you think the bill should have been $500 billion instead of $700 billion or there’s this provision or that provision that you don’t like. If there’s uniform opposition because the Republican caucus doesn’t get 100 percent or 80 percent of what you want, then it’s going to be hard to get a deal done. That’s because that’s not how democracy works.

So I mean, I think we can score political points on the basis of the fact that we underestimated how severe the job losses were going to be. But those job losses took place before any stimulus, whether it was the ones that you guys have proposed or the ones that we proposed, could have ever taken into effect. Now, that’s just the fact, Mike, and I don’t think anybody would dispute that. You could not find an economist who would dispute that.

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Obama at the GOP House Issues Conference

Ironically, Pope Benedict XVI, whose beliefs would better place him in the Middle Ages, is encouraging priests to use modern technology, such as websites, blogs, and social networking, to spread the “Good News,” as if 2,000-year-old mythology should still be considered “news” at this point. Our first “Defrocked” of the new year questions the Church’s new direction…

tl;dr

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Defrocked: Pedo 2.0

The always classy Westboro Baptist Church (the assholes behind the “God Hates Fags” campaign) recently launched their latest abomination creation – a music video parody of Lady Gaga’s hit single “Poker Face.” Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up, people. Take a look…

And I thought that Charlie Check’m video was painful to sit through. In case you wanted to know (and I’m not sure why you’d want to inquire further), that’s Megan Phelps-Roper, the granddaughter of WBC founder Pastor Fred Phelps, singing like she’s in the first round of American Idol in a video that looks like it was directed by Phil Thomas Katt. The rotten old fruit apparently doesn’t fall far from the tree. This video is the follow-up to the church’s December 22nd “press release,” which resembles an old Angelfire page more than it does any official document…

“Thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed…Will He reserve His anger forever? Will he keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest.” Jer 3:3,5

“Art” and “fashion” are the euphemisms, the guise under which proud whore Lady Gaga teaches rebellion against God (incidentally, her claim to the title of “lady” is sound only if she tacks on “of the night,” thereby alluding to another euphemism of what she is.) As much as she’d like to pretend otherwise, there’s nothing new or different about this particular hussy’s pretentious prancing. Does the simple slut truly think that she can change God’s standards by seducing a generation of rebels into joining her in fist-raised, stiff-necked, hard-hearted rebellion against Him? Get real!

Even as she gives lip-service to “liberating” her young fans, Lady Gaga brings them into slavery to their own corruption, teaching them to glory in their shame. She hates you! “For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness…While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption!” 2 Pet. 2:18-19

YOU’RE GOING TO HELL.

“…to glory in their shame.” What?! While I usually feel the need to comment and point out the sheer absurdity of religion in its every form, I feel like this is that one time where the blinding stupidity just speaks for itself. There’s just no need to point out how ridiculous this is. I guess if I’m GOING TO HELL anyway, I might as well get acquainted with what I’ll be watching on repeat while I’m there.

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God Hates Lady Gaga – Westboro Baptist Church’s Parody of “Poker Face”

In a twist of irony that’s making my head spin, George W. Bush, the man behind the recession whose shady backdoor business dealings have kept him and his family billionaires for generations, is warning the American people to watch out for “shysters” who are trying to scam people out of their Haiti donations. He can’t even keep a straight face (Seriously…what is with that shit-eating grin?) as he tells David Gregory of MSNBC’s Meet The Press that our money will be “spent in a transparent, accountable way.” I guess “irony” isn’t the only word he doesn’t know the definition of…

Harken Energy, Enron, Halliburton, AIG, Goldman Sachs…these names don’t ring a bell, Dubya? I guess it’s only a crime when you’re not the one profiting from it.

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Video: Dubya Warns Americans to Watch Out for Shysters – Oh, Sweet Irony!

Asinine, hateful comments with absolutely no historical legitimacy from Pat Robertson that effortlessly undermine a tragedy? That’s standard for the 700-year-old “700 Club” host…

Televangelist Pat Robertson said Wednesday that earthquake-ravaged Haiti has been “cursed” by a “pact to the devil.”

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” he said on Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club.” “They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.”

But ballsy, go-for-the-throat reporting from “Good Morning America”? That took me by surprise. Let’s be honest – “GMA” is known more for its recipes and cute little fluff pieces than it is for attacking Christian hypocrisy, so I just had to post this video to our new YouTube channel, cleverly titled Muckmakers. (That’s your cue to go subscribe!) My favorite part is at about 2 minutes in when they start listing all the other tragedies he’s used to push his fanatical agenda…that’s some real reporting, folks, not just some holiday craft ideas for bored housewives. Brings a tear to my eye, ABC.

You won’t see this sort of thing on daytime television again for a long time, I’m sure, so admire this little fluke now while you still can.

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Video: Good Morning America Rips Pat Robertson for Haiti Comments

Yes, YouTube is full of pointless videos of people getting whacked in the balls and kids singing pop songs karaoke-style into their webcams, but there are many users who actually do something purposeful with their accounts, like DonExodus2. Last spring, he made a video entitled, “Casey Luskin: Liar, Hypocrite, Imbecilic Assclown.” (Pure poetry, isn’t it?) In it, he ripped apart the Discovery Institute’s moronic representative and his appearance on Fox News, where he was given over 8 minutes to attack real science without any “fair and balanced” opposition. So eager to crush any opposition to their unfounded and just downright untrue views, they had him censored by reporting his video to YouTube, who has been known to remove atheist and freethinker videos regularly because of complaints from religious viewers who would rather silence others than rebut them. I’ll let him tell the rest of the story…

Notice that once a lawyer gets involved, YouTube changes its tune. But what does the Discovery Institute have to hide? If their research is so bulletproof and their findings so true, then why go through such great lengths to take down a little YouTube video with only a few thousand views? Not to mention that they have millions of dollars donated to them every year by churches and Republicans from all over the country…it’s clear that they can buy 8 minutes of public programming whenever they like to say whatever they like. The reason is simple – one person does make a difference. Every time someone with a brain makes their voice heard and the truth known, it makes a much greater impact than any amount of money could ever buy. So whatever you do, keep blogging, keep making videos, keep debating every fundie you meet…just keep intelligence alive by killing intelligent design.

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Video: Creationist “Discovery Institute” Tries to Censor Opposition

Never one to waste any moment he can get in the spotlight, Rush Limbaugh used the press conference after his hospital visit on New Year’s Eve to pontificate about the merits of our current health care system, claiming that his situation was proof that no reform is needed. And since he can’t seem to open his cigar hole without lying, he claimed that he received no preferential treatment for being a celebrity. Here’s his version of the story…

And here’s the truth…

When Limbaugh called 911, he received special treatment from the Kahala Resort Hotel to start his king-like medical service. The hotel staff got him out of the venue in such a way that he could not be seen by on-lookers. When Rush arrived at the medical center, the hospital managers made sure the entire wing that Rush was on was placed on restricted access status.

That means even if you had a loved one who happened to be on the floor Rush Limbaugh was on at the hospital, you could not just walk up there to see the person you were concerned about. You had to check in, and may have been turned away depending on who you were. All of this was done by others to benefit Rush Limbaugh’s peace of mind so that he could recover faster. He did.

I just took my mother to the hospital to have surgery today and we were supposed to be in and out within two hours – it took over six. Four of those hours were spent waiting for the doctor to return to the building. According to her nurse, the doctor had to “step out” for a little while. When I saw him come back in, he had a cell phone to his ear and a shopping bag in his hand. My mom wasn’t allowed to eat or drink for the entire previous day, she sat with an IV in her hand for more four hours after her surgery was scheduled to begin, and this guy thought it would be a good time to go to the mall and spend some of that fat paycheck of his. Yes, this wasn’t an emergency, as in Rush’s case, but my point here is that the rest of us don’t get an entire wing dedicated to our care and recovery – we get what the rest of the peons get.

Rush is so clueless as to how things actually work in the real world that he didn’t even realize that this particular hospital that he was praising was staffed by union nurses and “is a shining example of progressive health care reform.” As it turns out, Hawaii has one of the greatest percentages of organized workers of any state and also has the highest percentage of organized RNs…but we shouldn’t expect a moron like him to know something like that. He’s paid to talk, not to research, after all. (The wing closing, however, was obviously connected to his celebrity…another reason he’s so out-of-touch.)

So I found it hilarious that we received this comment from a reader when we posted about Limbaugh’s chest pains and our strong hopes for a not-so-successful recovery…

david
Why is it that you libs are the ones to “save the earth” through your taxing bleeding hearts yet are the most mean spirited of all? You are the real terrorists this country should be fighting and may be in the near future. You are the ones that our forefathers came here to get away from. Try Cuba I think they need you

Right off the bat, let me just point out that when Bush’s tax cuts for the rich expire this year, the wealthiest people in the nation will be paying more, which, according to your “tea parties,” is exactly what you wanted, right? And comparing liberals to terrorists makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, considering terrorists use violent religious extremism to get what they want, whereas the current administration was democratically elected by a landslide. Our forefathers were fighting to build the democracy that put the Democrats in office, if I remember my history classes correctly. I may not agree with everything they’re doing, and I certainly don’t think that they as “liberal” as they should be in many of their policies and decisions, but to imply that “this country should be fighting [them] and may be in the near future” sounds like your side is hoping to incite violence, which sounds way more like terrorism than health care reform.

But let’s get to the main reason that you are an absolutely misinformed simpleton, David – Rush isn’t one of you. You probably consider yourself Mr. Average Joe, standing up for freedom in the free world by working 9-5, watching football, and drinking beer, and guys like Rush play people like you like a fiddle. While you scraped together your last few bucks to buy a bottle of champagne for New Year’s, Rush Limbaugh spent his holiday at the Kahala Hotel & Resort in Hawaii, probably snorting lines off a hooker in a grass skirt. Tell me the last time you and your family (I’m going out a limb and assuming that you have people that care about your sad, pathetic soul, which is a stretch, I know.) were able to even go a vacation at all, never mind to a classy resort in Hawaii. This guy pulls in over $38 million from people like you annually, yet you still buy into his “I’m just a middle-class schmuck like you!” shtick and nod at every one his agenda-laced opinions like a good little dittohead. If America is about rebelling against the establishment, as you say it is, then you’re the philosophical equivalent of a policeman in full riot gear beating down a teargas-blinded protester with a nightstick. You say that we’re mean-spirited? This is a guy who has made his living from offending people and crossing the lines of decency (and truth), spouting hateful, racist, and spiteful comments on a daily basis, and we’re mean-spirited for giving it back to him? It’s funny how hateful words are only wrong if you don’t agree with their sentiments. I think anyone who wishes the president (and, therefore, the country) to fail simply because of their political leanings is way more unpatriotic than a blogger wishing death upon a cigar-chomping elitist who brainwashes 20 million weekly listeners into voting against their own interests for his personal financial gain, but I guess that makes me a Godless-Cuban-Nazi-Anarchist-Socialist. Next time, show us your sources, not your ignorance, jackass.

(And as for Rush, please fucking die next time…if only your heart would fail as bad as your listeners do at making a well-reasoned political stance…but at least your survival is a great example of what an improved health care system can provide, even if it doesn’t always save the right people.)

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Rush Limbaugh Survives to Lie Another Day

Could it be? Perhaps a belated Christmas gift? The internets are ablaze with buzz that Rush Limbaugh has been hospitalized this morning due to chest pains. Could the slobs heart finally have given out?

Hopefully, I’ll be able to update this post later on and spread the word that this piece of shit is dead. Fingers crossed.

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Rush Limbaugh Hospitalized

Always eager to play the role of oppressed minority in a country where they are the overwhelming majority, I’m always amused by the cries of Christians who claim that Christmas is under attack by those who either celebrate other holidays or those who just don’t celebrate Christmas at all. They declare that, “Jesus is the reason for the season!” and they scoff at the mention of any other “happy holidays.” But as with most parts of their church’s history, they tend to forget the real reason that Christians celebrate Christmas – assimilation. Many ancient religions celebrated the Winter Solstice on or around December 25th – the ancient Babylonians, for example, celebrated the feast of the Son of Isis on the 25th. Where Christmas took most of its inspiration, however, was from the festival of Saturnalia, first introduced around 217 BC. (Yes, that’s one long-ass time before Jesus.) It lasted almost a week, starting on the 17th and culminating around the 25th. Here are some of the highlights…

During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

Leave it to the Christians to take something cool like human sacrifice, naked caroling, and week-long anarchy and turn it into a two-hour mass where you have to listen to that same lame story about some old guys following a star to visit a baby in a manger (a story also taken from the pagans, by the way) while you prop up grandma in her pew to make her appear awake. Every Christmas tradition we know today, from the Christmas tree to giving presents to mistletoe, was originally derived from one silly religion or another, but certainly not from Jesus. In fact, in keeping with early Jewish tradition, the early Christians really didn’t celebrate birthdays at all, which is probably why there’s no mention of the day or year Christ was born in the Bible…it just wasn’t that important to them. (My, how times have changed.)

Christians had a tough time converting the pagans, as I’d imagine it’s hard to get people to give up substance abuse and human rights violations for eternal guilt and constant pious misery, so the early Christian leaders let them keep their holidays, as long as they said “Christ” in place of “Saturn.” The early Christmases were not unlike the original festival, with sexual indulgences and copious amounts of drinking. And it wasn’t until 350 AD that Pope Julius I declared that the 25th would be an official celebration of the birth of Christ, which didn’t sit well with the Puritans and many other Christian sects, who dismissed it as a blasphemous pagan tradition. Here’s another piece of history that I’m sure the Christians would love to forget…

Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.

As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.” On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into anti-Semitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw, 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

Merry fuckin’ Christmas, right? So the next time someone tells you to get into the holiday spirit, make sure to down the rest of the eggnog, strip naked, and sing carols while sexually violating the blow-up Santa in your neighbor’s yard as you throw rocks at passing Jews. If the police try and stop you, take a cue from your Christian brothers and cry religious oppression. They may take away our public nativity scenes, but they may never take our history!

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Pagans Are the REAL Reason for the Season!