JohnnyRussia's Guide To Picking Up Girls

So there I was today, and life was good. I played 9 holes of golf, which I hadn't done since four years ago or so with one of my brothers-in-law on an island in Canada. I like to cheat when I play, but I didn't do too much of that this morning.
Later on in Hermosa, a lovely little blonde seemed to be, like, into me. We talked about Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot (although she didn't get my "Desolation Row" reference.)
She started rubbing my thigh and telling me how she thought I "got" her.
First warning sign.
She smiled and started talking about "God." She was a Notre Dame graduate, and I said, "Oh--you mean "Taliban U?"
She didn't get that reference, either.
Anyway, she was not at all impressed with my lack of, um, piety or superstition or whatever it was that seemed to make sense to her. I also think that she wasn't too thrilled by my review of the whole priest/altar boy thing.
She asked me about my religious views.
Crickets....
She looked a bit upset and said,"That's a deal-breaker."
I didn't even know we had a deal.
And then she left...
Cock-blocked by Jesus.
Thank "God."

Oh, For Christ's Sake...

From NBC Sports:

Look, if there's anything that proves President Obama isn't a Muslim, it's the fact that he skipped church to go play golf. That's as American as a fife and drum on the Fourth of July. But despite the fact that Ward Cleaver tried to get away with the same thing in practically every episode of Leave it to Beaver, conservative-leaning blogs are in a holy uproar of Obama's frequent golf outings. Example: he's played 43 rounds of golf -- 23 of them played on a Sunday. That's more than Bush in both terms! That's about every other week. How Christian. NOT.

The Obama's are on a 10-day vacation at Martha's Vineyard. From the Boston Herald:

Instead of attending church services at one of the dozens and dozens of quaint, island Christian churches yesterday morning, the commander in chief hit Our Lady of the Fairways, aka the Vineyard Golf Club, yet again, to play 18.
It was Obama's second outing to the posh, private golf club since landing Thursday on The Rock. The prez teed off at 8:30 a.m. under cloudy, drizzly skies. A perfect day to be inside. Like, say, in church!
Now you'd think, with polls showing that one in five Americans believe Obama is a Muslim -- and with the furor over the president's flip-flops on the Ground Zero mosque -- that his White House handlers might have orchestrated a nice little photo op of the first family doing a little vacation worshiping yesterday morning.
Because, despite the administration's insistence that Barry is a Christian and that he prays daily, most Americans have noticed that Obama rarely attends church. That's a noticeable departure from previous presidents, such as George W. Bush and Clinton, who were on their knees every Sunday.
Of course, the last time Obama had a regular church, it was Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright fame, and, well, we all know how that turned out.
The president's handlers have said Obama doesn't attend services regularly because he doesn't want to be "hugely disruptive to congregations." This is apparently not an issue on the golf course.

Heartening to see the media focusing on the pressing matters of the day, isn't it?

Why Not An Atheist To Balance The Scales Of Justice?

Marc Cooper makes a great argument for nominating an atheist to the Supreme Court:

As President Obama considers nominees to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a debate bubbles as to whether religion should play a role in his choice.
This is a no-brainer. The religious views of the next justice of the high court must absolutely be a decisive factor.
Though the court without Stevens will be left with six Catholics and two Jews, the open seat should not go to either domination. Nor should it go to a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Muslim or even a Zoroastrian. If it did, that would make nine people who all have one religious principle in common: a belief in religion.
Clearly, the next person to take the bench should be an atheist.

While few sitting politicians have the political courage to name a declared nonbeliever, it is something that Thomas Jefferson (and several others among the founders) might well have done.
In an 1823 letter to John Adams, Jefferson was forthright about his views of religion, and Christianity specifically. "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter," Jefferson wrote. "But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors."
In other words, Jefferson liked what Jesus, the man, stood for, but could definitely do without the rest of the bunk.

Cooper's whole piece is here.

Crazed Catholic Apologist Bill Donohue Gives The "All Clear" To His Boy's Club.

H/T: Gawker.

WWBD?

Life advice from Brit Hume.

Oy vey...

Oh, For Christ's Sake!

Five-Finger Sunday School.

H/T: "The Best-Looking Man in Show Business Today" (TBLMISBT.)

Gee, Pat, Funny You Mention A Noose...

The God Squad--(AKA the Religious Right), embodied above by insane charlatan Pat Robertson--prayed and prayed and prayed that their right to openly act upon their hatred for their fellow man remain unfettered. I mean--Christ!--WWJD?

Well, all that wasted time spent pleading with their imaginary friend was for naught, because Satan (played here by President Obama) signed the hate-crimes bill that so threatens a religious person's right to cause bodily harm and/or death to people that don't look, think or act just like them.

Gee, thanks, Satan!

And On The Seventh Day God Ended His Work & Watched "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

(H/T: HuffPo.)

It appears that Bill Donohue must have worn out his blessed DVD copy of The Passion of the Christ. Now he's watching HBO.

I mentioned the uptight, humorless Catholic League scold here the other day, and it looks like he still hasn't found his funny bone.

Why's the King of Catholics fuming this time? Blame it on Larry David.

Yup, David's fictional wayward peeing on a Jesus painting during Sunday's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" has Donohue pissed off again:

The self-righteous comedy critic was not amused:

Mention Larry David in a word association game and "Seinfeld" rolls off the lips. That show, which David created, wrote and produced, was brilliant. "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is not. Indeed, last night's episode demonstrates that David's best years are behind him. He ought to quit while he's ahead.

At one point in the show, David goes to the bathroom in a Catholic home and splatters urine on a picture of Jesus; he doesn't clean it off. Then a Catholic woman goes to the bathroom, sees the picture and concludes that Jesus is crying. She then summons her equally stupid mother and the two of them fall to their knees in prayer. When David and Jerry Seinfeld (playing himself) are asked if they ever experienced a miracle, David answers, "every erection is a miracle." That's what passes for creativity these days.

Was Larry David always this crude? Would he think it comedic if someone urinated on a picture of his mother? This might be fun to watch, but since HBO only likes to dump on Catholics (it was just a couple of weeks ago that Sarah Silverman insulted Catholics on "Real Time with Bill Maher"), and David is Jewish, we'll never know.

Pulling out your ol' anti-Semite card again, eh, Bill?

Anyway, HBO felt compelled to respond to Donohue:"

Anyone who follows Curb Your Enthusiasm knows that the show is full of parody and satire. Larry David makes fun of everyone, most especially himself. The humor is always playful and certainly never malicious. "

Conversely, Bill Donohue is never playful and certainly always malicious.

The Devil, You Say!

Ah, religion! Snake oil for the soul has many sleazy salesmen, but perhaps none as bitterly angry at this modern world as Bill Donohue. The Catholic League's apoplectic president is mad, mad, mad, and he's mad at the heathens! Donohue just knows we are going to H-E-double-toothpick!

So, all you deviant secular sickos, let's join HuffPo's Jason Linkins, who noticed that the Washington Post gave God's l'il gladiator way too many column inches as he rants at the evils along the Highway to Hell:

Did you know that "secular saboteurs" want to "tear down the economic structure of capitalism and replace it with socialism, and eventually communism?" They do, and they will do so by killing Jesus, and letting the Marquis de Sade have his way with the corpse, or something. And all of this perversion will be made into a movie, by Roman Polanski:

There was a time when Hollywood made reverential movies about Christianity. But those days are long gone. Now they just insult. And when someone finally makes a film that makes Christians proud, he is run out of town. Were it not for Mel Gibson, there would have been no "Passion of the Christ." But for every Harvey Weinstein who likes to bash Catholics, there is always someone else waiting in the wings to do the same.

Yes, it was just terrible the way Mel Gibson was "run out of town" with the assload of millions of dollars he made from his movie, Plan 9 From Nazareth, which was about Jesus and which should have allowed Mel Gibson the right to drunkenly denigrate Jews and call people "sugartits," just like the Bible says.

Anyway, Donohue is pretty sure that his side will win the culture war, ban gayness, and finally, maybe, get a Christian elected president and/or Christmas recognized as an important holiday:

The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.

This more or less explains why Donohue's house smells vaguely of dog shit.

Hypocritic Oath.

Oh, fer crissakes....

From the Village Voice (one of my favorite pinko, Commie rags...):

Some conservatives have decided that calling their mortal enemies Hitler, or murdering them and writing the word "Fed" on their chests, may be a counterproductive way of achieving the abortion-free oligarchy our Founders envisioned. So,World magazine tells us, Liberty Counsel, an adjunct of Jerry Falwell's Liberty College best known for its efforts to litigate the Christ back into Christmas, announces Adopt a Liberal, a prayer campaign in which the godly will "adopt a liberal who is in authority for regular, intense prayer in accord with St. Paul's admonition to his disciple, Timothy." The program's emblem shows a red, white, and blue-sleeved arm grasping what appears to be an uncooperative man by the wrist...

In this Christian spirit they name Mike Bloomberg ("pro-abortion, pro-gun control, and pro-same-sex marriage"), Hillary Clinton ("advocated that homosexuals should be able to serve in the military without concealing their unnatural sexual preferences"), Barney Frank ("openly homosexual... 100% committed to their stated goal of suppressing religious expression in public life"), Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ("mocked the building of a wall to protect the US-Mexico border"), and of course Barack Hitler Obama ("He calls himself a 'citizen of the world,' a term that reflects his support of a 'one world government'"), among others.

They also invite prayers for the "Unknown Liberal," whom readers may "feel free to select" from the traitor-American community at large and "adopt." So if you wake up in a car trunk somewhere in Alabama and faintly hear the Bible being read aloud, you'll at least know who you're dealing with

If on the remote chance a Liberty Counsel member has landed here, welcome, comrade! Lemme tell ya about climate change and the need for a robust public option...

And--hey--if you promise not to pray for me, I'll promise not to pray for you...

Limbaugh's Ghoulish "Death Book" Lies.

I'm not a believer, but Rush Limbaugh invoking God and using Ted Kennedy's death to further the lie about "death books" seems pretty f*cking unholy--even to me.

(H/T: Media Matters.)

Michele Bachmann: Minnesota Brain Freeze.

Jesus Christ. Prayer, fasting and "death panels." Does Sarah Palin have a sister from another mother or what?

From the Minnesota Independent:

On Wednesday Rep. Michele Bachmann was part of a star-studded “teletownhall” meeting to discuss health-care reform. The event, billed “Keeping Faith with the Unborn,” was sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The organization’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, claimed that there were some 350,000 listeners on the line.

Bachmann was joined by North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, most famous for calling Matthew Shepard’s murder was a “hoax,” and former Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, who made national headlines by refusing to concede after losing her re-election contest November. But even with such veteran political pugilists sharing the phone line, Bachmann managed to distinguish herself during the 90-minute phone call.

The 6th district Republican quoted the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, attacked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for receiving political contributions from amedical doctor who was murdered in May, and called on everyone to get down on their knees and pray that health care reform fails. Bachmann didn’t always make sense, but she undoubtedly scared the living daylights out of anyone on the line.

Bachmann repeated the myth, adopted early by Sarah Palin, that the health-care plans being debated in Congress would set up “death panels” to determine which old folks are entitled to health care. “Thank God that Sarah Palin said that,” she told the callers. “These are true.”

(Editor's note: Bullshit.)

“We all need to consider that in God’s timing that he may have allowed us, as members of Congress, to be in the position that we’re in just for this specific issue right now,” she said. “Everything that all of us have worked together and labored for over the years, all of it could be undermined with this one bill. President Obama realizes that. The radicals that are on the pro-abortion left, they realize that. They could win it all. And the unborn, and the vulnerable, the disabled and those at the end of life could lose it it all.”

But it was Bachmann’s fervent call to utilize prayer and fasting to beat back health-care reform efforts that was the true highlight of the call.

“That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the listeners. “Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.”

I've been to Minnesota. I like Minnesota. But who the hell from that great state votes for this delusional dumbass, anyway?

Michael Jackson Drives Them Up A Tree.

This makes about as much sense as you'd expect:

From Channel 13 News in Stockton, CA:

A Stockton family says the image of Michael Jackson appeared on his tree stump the day the King of Pop died.

Like the "Virgin Grilled Mary" or "Cheesus," the family thinks they've got an unusual spiritual image staring right at them from their own front yard. Felix Garcia has lived in the house for 22 years, and has never noticed the apparent image in his birch tree stump.

"I was standing by that bush, and I looked up and saw that image here," Felix said.

Many people in the crowd who gathered to look at the stump Sunday afternoon saw the resemblance, but why would Michael Jackson appear instead of a religious figure -- or even any of the other celebrities who recently passed away?

"Because Michael Jackson was an icon to us," said one neighbor. "To Stockton, Michael Jackson meant more to us than Jesus, to some people. I think they're both about even."

Jacko sold more records, but Jesus moves more books.

What The #@$% Is Newt Gingrich Babbling About Now?

Clinging To Guns & Religion.

From ABC News:

A pastor in Kentucky is redefining the tradition of wearing your Sunday best to services by encouraging his congregation to strap on holsters and bring their weapons to church.

Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church in Louisville, Ky., says that he organized an "Open Carry Celebration" to promote responsible gun ownership.

"As a Christian pastor I believe that without a deep-seeded belief in God and firearms that this country would not be here," Pagano told ABCNews.com. "I'm not ashamed of that fact. I'm proud of it."

The celebration scheduled for Sunday, June 27, will feature YouTube videos promoting gun safety and will ask congregants to join in singing patriotic songs, according to Pagano.

A $1 raffle to win a free handgun will also be part of the festivities.

Do the Beat Farmers double as the church choir?

Well let's pack up the kids and take a break, get away
Leave the hustle and bustle of living from day to day
And I know that the crime in the city is-a getting worse
So we're going on down to the gun sale at the church

Well my lady's all set to have us a real good time
Baby Johnny's got fins but he don't seem to mind
So the family's all ready to pray at the holy perch
That's set up in the middle of the gun sale at the church

Well we'll ask the lord to forgive us all of our sins
And we'll look at the latest in gold plated firing pins
Well my two main men are Jesus and old John Birch
So we're going on down to the gun sale at the church

Damn--I Missed The National Day Of Prayer Again This Year.

Jesus, I Gotta Pee!

      Notice anything missing in this picture?

     Yup. Paying customers in the A-hole Seats at the new, Disneyfied Yankee Stadium.

     There's something else missing in Yankeedom, too: the freedom to ignore flagrant displays of manipulative jingoism and religious dogma in a facility that was built with lots of public, secular funds.     

     Excerpted from The Nation:

     One day last August, Bradley Campeau-Laurion just wanted to leave his seat and use the bathroom at the old Yankee Stadium. The 30-year-old New York resident had no idea that nature's call would lead him down a road to perdition where he would be accused of challenging God, country, and the joys of compulsory patriotism at the ballpark...

     Not only do the Yankees expect fans to stand during the singing of patriotic songs, but during the Bush era they virtually mandated fan support for the Iraq War, all the while extorting tax breaks and other public subsidies from city, state and federal governments to build their new $1 .5 billion cathedral of baseball. (Separation of sports and state anyone?) For the Steinbrenners and the high-rollers who occupy Yankee Stadium's $2,500 (editor's note: actually, $2,625.00) top-shelf seats, this kind of power patriotism wedded to corporate welfare must be sweet as champagne...

     All Campeau-Laurion did was try to go to the men's room during the seventh-inning stretch. In swooped two New York Police Department officers working security detail, who reportedly roughed him up and threw him out of the ballpark. Now Campeau-Laurion has filed a civil suit against the the city, the cops and the team for violating his rights...

     (Campeau-Laurion said): "I don't care about 'God Bless America.' I don't believe that's grounds constitutionally for being dragged out of a baseball game... I simply don't have any religious beliefs... It devalues patriotism as a whole when you force people to participate in patriotic acts,..."It devalues the freedom we fought for in the first place."

     This ugly incident raises a series of inconvenient questions: why does America feel compelled to bind sports to patriotic ritual? Why are publicly funded facilities like stadiums used to promote private religious or political beliefs? And given the putrid start of the Yankees's season, shouldn't management be more concerned with what's happening with the players than with the fans? All should stand with Campeau-Laurion until we get some answers.

     Although Campeau-Laurion's run-in occurred last year at the real Yankee Stadium, there has been no change in club policy, and Yankee fans continue to be serenaded with both the standard pre-game "Star-Spangled Banner" and the additional "God Bless America." The latter--along with "Take Me Out To The Ballgame"--has remained a fixture of the seventh-inning stretch since immediately after 9/11. 

     It seems that according to Yankee brass, you'd be well-advised to take care of your business when you're buying your peanuts and Cracker Jack, and after you're expected to acknowledge an apparently pinstriped entity blessing the land of the free and the home of the brave.

     Yup, baseball's here. Go Dodgers. 

Don't Call A Plumber For Policy Advice & Don't Get Sex Education From The Pope.

From the UK's Timesonline:

The Pope courted further controversy on his first trip to Africa today by declaring that condoms were not a solution to the AIDS epidemic – but were instead part of the problem.

In his first public comments on condom use, the pontiff told reporters en route to Cameroon that AIDS "is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

Pope Benedict has previously stressed that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.

He said the "traditional teaching of the Church" on chastity outside marriage and fidelity within it had proved to be "the only sure way of preventing the spread of HIV and Aids".

Strangely, the Pope didn't cite the classic abstinence parable of the chaste priest and his captive flock of intimidated altar boys in his latest fictional morality tale. 

He's Just Not That Into You.

Maybe he's on the line with a scientist.

From Frank Rich in the New York Times:

     The religious right is even more in denial than the Republicans. When Obama nominated Kathleen Sebelius, the Roman Catholic Kansas governor who supports abortion rights, as his secretary of health and human services, Tony Perkins, the leader of the Family Research Council, became nearly as apoplectic as the other Tony Perkins playing Norman Bates. “If Republicans won’t take a stand now, when will they?” the godly Perkins thundered online. But Congressional Republicans ignored him, sending out (at most) tepid press releases of complaint, much as they did in response to Obama’s stem-cell order. The two antiabortion Kansas Republicans in the Senate, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, both endorsed Sebelius.

     Perkins is now praying that economic failure will be a stimulus for his family-values business. “As the economy goes downward,” he has theorized, “I think people are going to be driven to religion.” Wrong again. The latest American Religious Identification Survey,published last week, found that most faiths have lost ground since 1990 and that the fastest-growing religious choice is “None,” up from 8 percent to 15 percent (which makes it larger than all denominations except Roman Catholics and Baptists). Another highly regarded poll, the General Social Survey, had an even more startling finding in its preliminary 2008 data released this month: Twice as many Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in the scientific community as they do in organized religion. How the almighty has fallen: organized religion is in a dead heat with banks and financial institutions on the confidence scale.

OMG!

(There goes another GOP wedge issue...)