In Your Face Henderson!

It was a hellish week, not only because I'm still making the transition to daywalker status, but because of some crazy work stuff. Suffice it to say...Garth Brooks fucked us.

(Not really...but that just sounds funny.)

As far as blogs go, I've been really digging Balloon Juice lately. (Last one on my blogroll over there on the right.) I never really read it, but I found some links to it one day and have been back ever since. I find myself reading some of their stuff and thinking to myself, "Well, I guess I don't have to do that post."

And they've been on a roll.

Here's Tim F. taking on the global warming skeptics and asking:

Is there something inherently liberal about avoiding catastrophe?

It seems to me that the sad saga of warming denial illustrates a major weakness of conservative monementarianism. Climate science isn’t really partisan in any meaningful way, yet as long as the movementarians think that attacking the science will score a vctory against liberalism they will go on attacking just the same. All the petro lobby needed to do was polarize a scientific matter along political lines and the rightwing movement willingly became what amounts to the private army for a cause almost completely tangential to their individual interests.

That bold part is mine. That's a point I've been thinking about on and off ever since Al Gore won the Nobel Prize.

What's with the contempt for all things environmental? I can understand the petro lobby angle, but Tim is right about the spontaneous army of dittoheads. That phenomenon I don't understand, the blind unthinking loyalty.

I see that in the torture debate too. People who would condemn torture if it was done by Saddam Hussein or the Viet Cong defend torture by the United States government with pathetic legalisms and definition changing. Enhanced interrogation? What the fuck?

John Cole has more outrage, the full context of which can be read here.

Let me say that again. Bush’s administration has tortured men who were factually innocent.

Not men who got off on technicalities. Factually Innocent.

Your hypothetical demands that the government be CERTAIN of the following things:

This man is who we think he is.

This man knows what we think he knows.

No non-torture technique will work.

Patterico, you work with the government. You know for a fact that it gets things wrong all the time. Even when we go through the huge and complicated process of a trial, it gets things wrong. And we aren’t talking anything like a trial here. In reality, we are talking about torturing suspects. That is not a power to be given to the government.

That's what I said!

On a completely unrelated topic, Michael D. takes a few swipes at smokers, but ultimately defends us:

Another day, another smoking ban. Let’s play a game: Which of these is a public place? Restaurant, Shopping Mall, Grocery Store, Dance Club, My House, Your House, Ice Cream Store, Bowling Alley, Law office, Bus Station…

If you answered “none of the above” you’re right! Each is a private establishment. So what, specifically, gives the government the right to ban smoking on this privately-owned property?

Fucking voters, that's who.

Fucking voters, man...

Anyway, my point is Ballon Juice is a good inside-blog blog.

And speaking of inside blog stuff, check out this stuff from the Cat, Justa:

The war for oil is a war for the beast,
The war on terror is a war on peace

Alright, dude, we got the lyrics. Where's the song?

Remember, Remember the 11th of September

There is one reason I won't be supporting Rudy Giuliani's run for the presidency, and it's not even a good one.

It can be summed up in three words:

September the 11th.

Oh Lord, Save Us From Your Followers

It's well known that I'm somewhat hostile to religion, especially the Christian religion, which bears the brunt of my hostility since it is, after all, the religion that I lost.

That's why I find this story quite amusing. (Old link...the prayer service already happened.)

As an atheist, I don't find much merit in the power of prayer, but I do believe (and studies have shown) that it does have a psychological effect on the person doing the praying. So it can't be discounted outright. As a meditative state, it works. But beyond that? Well, I'm still in need of further convincing.

I don't, for instance, believe that muttering a prayer takes your words and thoughts up to God. Nor do I think you can ask for things, not even to bless this food or to keep Johnny safe in the war...especially not to bring rain.

Besides, petitioning the sky god for rain? Hasn't civilization moved a little beyond that?

It's disturbing enough that the governor has no qualms about injecting a little church into the state, but it's even more disturbing that the governor presumably thinks this might work, even just a little bit. One has to assume the governor and some of his fellow prayers (prayers?) are being genuine, that they aren't participating in a publicity stunt, that if they just pray hard enough, it just might rain and Georgia's drought problems will be solved.

And this is the governor!

There are a lot of things a governor can do for his drought-stricken state, and praying shouldn't even be on the fucking list, man. Has the man never heard of conservation? Water fucking management? Maybe he should tour Colorado and see how we deal with our droughts.

We deal with it. We don't pray on the capitol steps that Jesus deals with it. That dude's got bigger problems anyway, and trust me on this, he's got nothing to do with Georgia's drought.

So Governor Sonny Perdue thinks that his psychologically comforting but pointless act will help bring rain, that's great. I have a psychologically comforting but pointless act of my own that might help.

This bong hit is for the rain. And this bong hit is for you, Sonny. May God bless your food and all the rest of that junk.

Dust My Broom

For the past couple of weeks, I've been on a massive blues kick, personified by Chester "Howlin' Wolf" Burnett. This man is a god.