I usually don’t read forwards, but this one was sent by one of our trusted readers, and I think it’s worth reposting here:

Dear Friend,

In just a few days, the White House Correspondents Association will decide which news organization will be awarded the seat recently vacated by Helen Thomas. The news organizations most actively vying for the seat are FOX, NPR and Bloomberg News.

FOX News is a right-wing propaganda outlet, not a legitimate news agency. In recent weeks the network has turned the volume up on its race-baiting political agenda. The media assault on Shirley Sherrod is just a latest in a series of racist and politically motivated attacks on targets like Van Jones, ACORN, and Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

It’s bad enough that we have to fight the constant smear campaigns and appeals to racial paranoia from FOX and the right-wing media. We can’t let them have the best seat in the White House press briefing room and the legitimacy that it confers.

I just told the White House Correspondents Association to give the best seat in the briefing room to NPR, not FOX. I hope you will, too.

Have a look and take action at the link below:
Help NPR beat FOX News

This meeting happens Sunday, so take 30 seconds and sign this petition asap. You can check out NPR’s classy letter to the white House Correspondents Association here. I haven’t seen one from Fox, so I’m assuming that it looks something like this:

Deer white black House,

Their is a front row seat with our name on it and we need to fill it with a hot chick. that’s right – Hellen Tomas (sp?) was an old wrinkly ballsack and we’re the…um…not wrinkly ballsack that teabags you while your sleeeping and posts that shite on the internet. Wait…anyway, we have Sarah Palin and that chick from Fox n Friends…you know the bitch…blonde hair (all our hosts are blond LOL). You know wich one we mean becuz we’re the #1 top rated news station in the world by the poll we just conducted ourselves, so youve def seen her. So yea, if you dun’t were just going to rag on you more, (jk LOL but srs we will) so do it unless you want too get bored to def by NPR. My grandpa listenz two that shit for fucks sake. you don’t want to be like him – hes wrinkly too like my nutz in yer face lolepicpwn.

Laterz,
FOX

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NPR Vs. Fox News

With an eye-catching title like that, you may have been expecting some sort of metaphor or deep poetry at work here, but no, there’s just this awesome tea/coffee cup with the cutest picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthulhu jumping of a trampoline I’ve seen all week on it.

As a skeptic, sci-fi nerd, and big fan of religious parody, I wholeheartedly approve. My friend Kenna paints cups like this by hand, and this one in particular is for sale along with several others, so check out her Etsy shop if you’re so inclined. She does accept customer orders, but I don’t think I can think of anything more awesome or random to paint on a porcelain cup.

(Yes, I know this is completely off-topic. No, I don’t care…it’s fucking Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthulhu on a goddamn trampoline. STFU.)

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The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Cthulhu, and a Trampoline

If there’s anything worse than kids anymore, it’s their goddamn parents, and while children have an excuse to believe in invisible men and fairy tales, their guardians in this already harsh enough world should have woken up to reality a long time ago. By forcing their prejudices and beliefs on their children in their early formative years, they not only scar them for life mentally, but many times physically as well, all in the name of something that they’ve been too afraid to question all these years. Our first example comes from Oregon; a lovely couple from Beavercreek (Do you need more explanation?) let a mass of blood vessels grow over their infant daughter’s eye to the size of a tennis ball because they figured god would just magically make it disappear. Now they’re facing first-degree criminal mistreatment charges…

The Wylands’ 7-month-old daughter, Alayna, was placed in state custody earlier this month after child-welfare workers received a tip about the untreated and ballooning growth. Doctors said that the condition could cause permanent damage or loss of vision.

The Wylands and their church reject medical care in favor of faith-healing — anointing with oil, laying on of hands, prayer and fasting. The parents testified at a juvenile court hearing last week that they never considered getting medical attention for Alayna. According to court documents, Rebecca Wyland anointed Alayna with oil each time she changed the girl’s diaper and wiped away the yellow discharge that seeped daily from the baby’s left eye.

The area started swelling, and the fast-growing mass of blood vessels, known as a hemangioma, eventually caused her eye to swell shut and pushed the eyeball down and outward and started eroding the eye socket bone around the eye. It’s rare to see a child with an advanced hemangioma because the condition typically is treated as soon as it’s detected, said a doctor who testified at a hearing before Van Dyk last week.

A little faith in god never hurt anybody, right? Tell that to little Alayna, but make sure you tell it to her right side, so she can actually see what the face of an apologist asswipe looks like. That way, when she’s older and hopefully taken away from these brainwashed psychopaths completely, she’ll know who deserves to have anointing oil pumped into every open orifice next time they catch the common cold. While the custody battle is still up in the air, the article does leave us with a great end note…

Timothy Wyland was a widower when he married Rebecca Wyland two years ago. Wyland’s first wife, Monique, died of breast cancer in 2006. She had not sought or received medical treatment for the condition, said Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner who signed the death certificate.

Well, the power of Jesus juju worked so well the first time, why not let your bet against the fates ride once again, right? You’ll notice in the countless stories like these that it’s never the parents who are suffering from the lack of medical treatment, but their defenseless children who can’t (or have been convinced not to) help themselves. At least Monique had the decency to drop dead before bearing a child that she and Mr. Wyland could torture. This time, 44-year-old Timothy chose the impressionably young Rebecca, about half his age at 23, to birth the fruit(cake) of his loins.

If that story doesn’t make you think twice about “honoring your mother and father,” I don’t know what will. Oh wait, I do – Part 2 of this series. Check back soon for another story that’s guaranteed to make you cross your legs in pain…that is, if you still have anything left down there to feel it when these parents are through with you.

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Why Religious People Make Terrible Parents: Part 1

Yeah, we posted about this a while back, but it lends itself to just a few more jokes, I think…

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Defrocked: The Ref

Via @ignoranceftw:

“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP. I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.” – Rand Paul, the self-proclaimed “Tea Party” candidate who won the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky (May 21, 2010)

Because, left to their own devices, big business always adheres to their word with no political pressure needed whatsoever. And it’s so un-American to question the same corporations that have fucked the working man on wages and benefits since this country’s inception and then moved all of the damn jobs out of the United States as unemployment continues to increase…you know, the same working man the Tea Party is supposed to represent. One of BP’s own drilling partners, Anadarko Petroleum, freely admitted in a statement last month that BP’s actions basically amounted to “gross negligence or willful misconduct,” but we should just take them at their word that it was a freak accident, right? It’s no wonder that this moron represents the Tea Party – he’s another astroturfing Republican in “revolutionary” clothing. I guess it’s no surprise, either, that this gaffe-machine is losing steam, and supporters, as quickly as his rise to fame began.

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Ignorance FTW: Lay Off Big Business

Via @ignoranceftw:

“Just to be clear, the U.S. government through the Department of Defense goes out and attempts to target and kill people, a lot of people, who haven’t been indicted.” – Michael Leiter, Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center (July 2, 2010)

To read the full interview in which he said this, and its context (which only makes him look worse), check out our post “Leiter Is Living Proof of Why Obama Must Stop Continuing Failed Bush Policies.”

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Ignorance FTW: The U.S. Government Kills a LOT of People

General David Petraeus has been oft-quoted recently for his bold, “We are in this to win,” statement, but how do we define “win” in the War on Terror? Not everyone can get what they want (or what they deserve) out of this continually costly conflict, and were any of the U.S.’s goals ever really achievable in the first place? Much of this is due to the fact that the Bush administration pushed us into this conflict in the first place and that, after watching the bills and the bodies pile up since 2001, we haven’t learned a damn thing. The Obama administration has had an ample amount of time now to wake us up from this “stay the course” mentality, but in a pointless attempt to be a “centrist,” Obama is not only making the same mistakes, but allowing the same people to make them.

Michael Leiter has been the Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center since 2007, and he’s made it quite clear over the years that he’s the type of guy who prefers security (or a false sense of it) over freedom. Like most Bush employees, he’s all for stripping everyone of their civil liberties in the name of “protecting the American people,” even if those people are Americans themselves, and then claiming that we’re fighting the War on Terror to protect those very liberties. It seems that you’re more likely to get picked up by a government agent who labels you as a threat than a terrorist who labels you as an infidel, and apparently both would treat you with the same lack of humanity. Leiter hasn’t changed this tune, either, yet he kept his position when Obama took office in 2009. Take a look at what he recently told Newsweek…

Q: But what is the standard that you use for targeting a U.S. citizen [who has not been charged with a crime] and what is the decision-making process for targeting that individual?

Leiter: Just to be clear, the U.S. government through the Department of Defense goes out and attempts to target and kill people, a lot of people, who haven’t been indicted.

Well thanks for making it clear that the U.S. government is still a bunch of fascist assholes who have no respect for freedom, never mind warrants. He continues…

Q: When the Bush administration declared Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, an enemy combatant, stripped him of all his legal rights, and threw him in a military brig, there was an enormous outcry from the civil liberties community. Here, the Obama administration is going one better than that; they’re saying, “We can kill this guy. We can take him out.” And there’s been very little public debate about how that decision was made. Doesn’t the government at least owe a [fuller] explanation of how it’s reaching these decisions?

Leiter: I absolutely agree with you. These are tough issues that require a full and open debate. That may not mean there’s a full and open debate about an individual…because there are sensitive sources and methods involved. But certainly, the policy decisions about the ways in which we should or should not use force demand a full and open discussion…But I will tell you from my perspective as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, if someone like Anwar al-Awlaki is responsible for part of an operation to kill more than 300 people over the city of Detroit, I think it would be wholly irresponsible…not to at least think about and potentially direct all elements of national power to try to defend the American people.

These issues “require a full and open debate,” but we’re not going to debate them and we’re just going to do what we want anyway. Awesome. Pardon me if that’s about as comforting as a Big Brother monitor installed in my living room. So how many of these psychos are we cowering in fear from?

Q: Let’s get a sense of what the overall threat picture looks like right now. [White House chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel said [recently] that about half of Al Qaeda has been eliminated in the last 18 months. How many people is that, and how many people are left in the other half?

Leiter: I think [CIA director] Leon Panetta said on Sunday, and I agree with him, that in Afghanistan, you have a certain number, a relatively small number, 50 to 100. I think we have in Pakistan a larger number.

Q: How many?

Leiter: Upwards – more than 300, I would say.

WHAT?! So there’s roughly 400 of these assholes and I’m still supposed to feel threatened?! About four times that amount work in the White House alone, and those people are doing way more to shit on my way of life than these 400 motherfuckers hiding out in caves on their magic prayer mats. We’re still spending billions of dollars on these wars and sacrificing thousands of troops to stamp out a bunch of idiots so pathetic that they’ve resorted to hiding dud bombs in their underwear. Are we serious? Leiter even admits that the more of these people we kill (or accidentally kill) in these wars, the more potential terrorists we breed, so why continue to recruit?

And speaking of the underwear bomber, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Mr. Leiter was in charge of the NCTC when this occurred, and they ignored several valid warnings, including those from the bomber’s own father, and watched it happen. (Sounds eerily like 9/11, doesn’t it? We let the shit hit the fan so we have enough fear and confusion on our side to justify doing whatever we want.) He was the one who was famously lambasted in January for taking a skiing vacation during the incident, dodging the press and all accountability. It was up to a few brave everyday civilians to tackle the would-be bomber, not some highly trained “super spies” (like this fucking winner) funded by our tax dollars. Hell, the Obama administration even defended him and said he deserved the break…from what, exactly? Wasn’t Bush the guy who said he was declaring the War on Terror to keep us safe after he failed to keep us safe?

So, in other words, even if we agree to surrender our civil liberties and grant our government the right to assassinate any American citizen they want, without checks, balances, or due process, in the name of national defense, we still aren’t any safer because they’re not even doing their fucking jobs in the first place – they’re too busy defending their “right” to indiscriminately shoot people. Even more awesome. Leiter’s got to go, and so does this outmoded idea that we have to give up our rights to keep them. It’s about time Obama started cleaning house and dusting the cobwebs from an administration that failed so badly that they got him elected in the first place.

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Leiter Is Living Proof of Why Obama Must Stop Continuing Failed Bush Policies

Every once in a while, I question whether or not it’s polite to point out every single time I’m proven even just a little bit more right on something than I already was, but then I realize that I don’t give a fuck and rub it in anyway…

Ethnic Tibetans’ ability to thrive in high altitudes with low oxygen is the fastest genetic change ever observed in humans, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science.

The evolutionary biologists say the results of their study, which compares the genomes of 50 Tibetans and 40 Han Chinese, shows that Tibetans rapidly developed a unique ability to survive in altitudes above 13,000 feet, where oxygen levels are about 40 percent lower than at sea level.

Survival of the fittest…adapting to harsh environments…Yeah, that definitely sounds like the theory that we all incestuously came from two people’s kids in a garden, then were wiped out by a worldwide flood and repopulated by the lone surviving family’s incest. Science may be less kinky, but it’s certainly much more fascinating…

Human adaptation to high altitude is a field of obvious interest, but another reason for the appearance of three studies on the same subject in matter of a few weeks may be that the technology to assess which parts of the genome are under selection has only recently become available.

You mean as science learns more (thus creating new technology), we learn more?! What a concept! Many of you may think this is just common sense, but then you learn that people like this guy actually exist (despite evolution)…

In every debate I’ve had with evolutionary scientists, the arrogant, asinine accusation is made, “Well, evolution is scientific while creationism is religion.” Evolution is about as scientific as a voodoo rooster plucking ceremony in Haiti. Almost.

Chicken bones and pins in cursed dolls? Fucking stupid. Humanity was created by incest and saved from their sins by a god who is his own son and was martyred to please his own will? Totally plausible and rational.

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Further Proof of Evolution Found in Tibet

Via @ignoranceftw:

“The Bible’s 66 books were written over a span of 1,500 years by 40 different authors on three different continents who wrote in three different languages. Yet this diverse collection has a unified story line and no contradictions.” – iPhone app “Fast Facts, Challenges & Tactics” by LifeWay Christian Resources

For all these Christians’ internet savvy, I guess they never came across this useful little website.

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Ignorance FTW: The Bible Has No Contradictions

We’re starting a new series on Muckmakers called Ignorance FTW, so what better day to start this feature than on the most popular day of blind patriotism, July 4th? Every few days, we’re going to update this category with quotes from various muckmakers that perfectly display the ignorance of their ideas or beliefs, so I guess it’s also appropriate that George W. Bush start us off…

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” – George W. Bush, explaining his communications strategy, or “stratergy,” if you will. (May 24, 2005)

We’ve also started a Twitter page just for these quotes, so if you’d like a regular dose of ignorance, please follow us @ignoranceftw. And don’t forget – our regular site was one too.

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Ignorance FTW: American Propaganda