Close Mindedness

So two seemingly unrelated events are happening today that actually are strangely about the same thing.

And that thing is Close Mindedness.

The inevitable backlash against the HBO documentary "Going Clear" is now in full swing with Scientology's cannon fodder throwing themselves over the barricades armed only with a Church website and no independent thoughts.

Their sole intention? To do the Church's bidding and discredit the film along with the author of the book on which it is based.

These are people not open to reason. People whose minds could not be more closed if they lived all their lives in a locksmith's basement.

And it's sad. Sad to hear people who cannot break out from the mental straitjacket they willingly took unto themselves when they allowed the Church to get their financial hooks in them.

They act just like the victims of any con. They can't believe they are being duped. And you can't persuade them otherwise. And the kicker? Having a financial stake in their own progression through "The Hierarchy", which binds them even closer to the cult and their not-really-benevolent Masters.

Classic mind fuckery.

And then there is the Canadian town of Chilliwack BC that is banning Richard Dawkins "The Magic of Reality", a book that might teach children about actual real world stuff - but they are still allowing the Bible because that is "suitable educational material".

Yes, in 2015, the cold and frozen North is still awash in cold and frozen minds.

Minds just as closed as any cultists.

All we can do is hope that reason will thaw the mental ice, breaking the bonds that hold some people in backward and dangerous thinking.

And I use the term "thinking" it the loosest possible way imaginable.

There's a Religious Bubble

If you ask people if they believe Washington politicians are living in a bubble in our Nation's Capital, you will receive a variety of replies, "Sure" and "Absolutely" and "They know nothing about real Americans" and "They are completely out of touch".

You know how it goes.

Now, I'm sure the argument of political insularity can be made, but I'm more inclined to think that the coziness of Washington and the lure of being close to the actual Seats of Power may have more to do with the perception of the Washington Bubble than it's actual reality.

After all, they do have to get out of DC occasionally, if only to get re-elected so they can come back to bask in K-Street's alluring glow.

No. I want to address a different bubble. And perhaps a more insidious one.

Amongst the ever fragmenting media landscape in which live, any politician can find a friendly outlet to announce his new "exciting legislation".

And for GOP types those outlets are programs like James Dobson's "Family Talk" and Bryan Fischer's gig on AFA radio and wherever there is a microphone with Tony Perkins from the FRC behind it.

These programs are actually Big Religious Bubbles where pols of varying intellectual stripes from Governor Mike Pence to Senator Rand Paul to Senator Ted Cruz to Representative Michele Bachmann of the United States House of Representatives of the United States to former Partial Governor Sarah Palin can get on the air and utter their complete BS without any push back.

"Death panels in Obamacare" - Of course there are.

"Our Religious Freedoms are under attack" - Yes! We have to do something about that.

"Reparative Therapy works" - You are so right Mrs Bachmann!

"Climate Change is a myth and any Federal regulations are insidious intrusions into States' Rights". And on and on and on.

And if there are callers on these shows.....they are all sycophantic ass-kissers whose sole purpose is to reinforce to the politicians that their Groundbreaking Proposals are....Groundbreaking and REALLY REALLY NECESSARY.

Oh yes. They are so necessary. And thank you Governor/Senator/Dog Catcher for bringing up this important problem. After all at the end of the day, it's "All About The Children".

And eventually all this sycophancy and all this self-congratulatory back slapping with no-one uttering a single probing question, yields us RFRA laws.

Laws that are unnecessary and very very divisive.

So actually, though I do think politicians get out of the Washington Bubble, what we have to ensure is they don't just step into the Religious Bubble when they do.

What is a Troll?

An inquest just took place in the UK city of Leicester concerning the suicide of a woman who was confronted by a Sky News reporter for a story about Internet trolls.

As this story is being reported by the BBC, it should be raising serious concerns.

The woman was seemingly obsessed with the Madeleine McCann abduction case and had tweeted over 400 times on the subject between November 2013 and September 2014.

Now to me that does not sound a lot. Many people become drawn into the latest "Case Of The Century" and want to comment on it. Or be part of it. Or let the world know that they really, really, really know what happened.

These are sad people for the most part. And some like Nancy Grace get paid a shitload of money to pick at the carcass of the collective human misery such cases produce. And do it night after night after night. And why is Nancy special and this lady not? Because of a towering insight? Because of having the biggest microphone? Because she CARES so much more than regular folks? Of course not. Nancy is just so very special because she thinks she is.

So this woman in the UK made 400 posts over almost an entire year. And she didn't actually send them specifically to any members of the McCann family who eschew a social media presence. So where is the harm? Where is there any modicum of wrongdoing? How did the Sky News reporter track her down to confront her over her trolling? Did he find her by journalistic sleuthing? By serious gumshoe work?

No her name was on a list.

The reporter, let's call him Mr.B, told the inquest he and a cameraman confronted the woman after Sky News obtained a dossier of alleged Twitter trolls handed to police.

So the cops gave him the list? Why would they do that? Is that even legal? Was it their list? If it was, why are they keeping lists of people who aren't committing any fucking crimes?

If the list came to the cops via some Internet busybodying "watchdog group", we need to know who they are so that in the future, we can stop them from making and passing on such lists to any law enforcement agency. They are the 21st century equivalent of meddling old people with nothing better to do than report their utterly groundless suspicions about shit they know nothing about to the authorities.

This woman took her LIFE because she was on that list. And the people who compiled it should be named and ashamed. And the police officers who gave it to the reporter should be ashamed.

And the reporter should be ashamed.

But like Nancy Grace when she hounded that poor Vietnamese woman to suicide, he isn't.

And the real tragedy is, no-one is.

And if anyone can explain this sentence from the BBC report, you are a better person than I :-

"Coroner Catherine Mason concluded she had killed herself and called for sales of helium to be regulated."

Janet Strikes Gold AGAIN!

So once again on her comedic radio program yesterday (03-12-2015) our favorite Christian goofball Janet Parshall excelled herself with a guest of such monumental stupidity talking on a subject of which he knew precisely nothing. I refer of course to "Doctor" John G.West of the Discovery Institute.

Yes. Sorry I used the dreaded D-word. But sometimes you just can't get away from the fuckheads that abide there. Sorry.

I'm not sure why the program was on a full month after Darwin Day, maybe it was a rebroadcast. More likely Janet doesn't know what a "calendar" is.

But "Doctor" West was there to talk Darwin and absolute fucking nonsense. And he did not disappoint.

Now I hear you ask, what does "Doctor" West know about biology? Is he one of those turncoat scientists who falsely get their degrees and then renounce all the science they were taught and to go to Seattle and write shit about their discipline?

No. He's not one of those. Not a scientist. But a feces producing writer he surely is.

He's the author of "Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest".

And what understanding of science does he bring to his book writin' endeavors?

Precisely none.

Because as Wikipedia says: "West received an undergraduate degree in Communications (Editorial Journalism) from the University of Washington in 1986. From 1986-1989, he served as Managing Editor of Public Research, Syndicated, which distributed essays on public affairs to more than 700 daily and weekly newspapers. He received his Ph.D. in Government from The Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) in 1992".

And academically that's all he's got. No Science. No Insight. No Freaking Idea.

So well done Janet, once again you went above and beyond your usual crass idiocy to find a man who knew nothing about what he was talking about. And you put him on the radio for an hour, fed him softball questions and had him take some phone calls from soft brained callers.

Because I always want an hour of a pontificating idiot from the Discovery Institute with no qualifications in science telling me what's true when I turn on my radio.

Goofing with PicsArt

Scared now?

2015 - Movie List: Sequels, Reboots and Pointless Remakes

Sorry we are already in March so hopefully you have avoided the first four titles listed.

Here is my annual list of movies to avoid if you can for 2015. Yes, I do realize that the Hunger Games and Star Wars may be impossible to avoid, but I do think all the rest are very worthy of your inattention this year.

The titles are listed by proposed chronological release dates ( Jan to Dec )

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death
Taken 3
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Divergent Series: Insurgent
Furious 7
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Mad Max: Fury Road
Pitch Perfect 2
Poltergeist
Insidious: Chapter 3
Jurassic World
The Transporter Legacy
Ted 2
Magic Mike XXL
Terminator: Genisys
Minions
Mission: Impossible 5
The Fantastic Four
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Sinister 2
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend
Hitman: Agent 47
The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials
Hotel Transylvania 2
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Alvin and the Chipmunks 4
Point Break

---||---

Damn! This list of crap gets longer every year. And like every year, I implore you to not see these movies to try and make the producers and the studios give us something ORIGINAL.

My take on European "Radicalization"

This is my take on the thorny subject of the radicalization of young men in Europe and their going off to fight in the Middle East for idiotic causes like ISIS.

These views are my own. But I do have to say I haven't seen this theory expressed anywhere else amongst the reams and reams of utter bullshit I have read or the hours and hours of rationalizing drivel I have heard from so called "experts" in this area pontificating as they do, like Popes on meth.

Heck, today on National Public Radio, I swear to god some guy was talking about them being drawn to a "Utopian vision of a Perfect Caliphate". What The Flying Fuck?

No. That's not it.

That's not it at all.

Why do these young men go? ( I will address the three young girls from the UK at the end of this post )

They are drawn at least initially for the fighting. It really is that simple. It's a "my group against your group" mentality. It is football hooliganism with a hot AK-47.

Hooliganism and this urge to fight gets deeply embedded into young men very early. Once you are loyal to a football team, you are LOYAL TO YOUR TEAM. And once put yourself into your "firm", it's "us against the rest". And before you ask "Are you equating soccer and religion?" Yes I am. There are still a couple of Catholic vs Protestant rivalries in the Football League that define their fans in just this very way, albeit not at the levels of intensity of years gone by.

Now what you have with these young men is a focused identification with their religion as that which defines their group. Hell, it defines their very identity within a Western culture in which they feel utterly adrift. And what they see, even if they are by some financial measures successful, is that members of their group do not succeed. They do not reach the pinnacles of success in their adopted countries achieved by people who they see as less than role models and less than worthy of any modicum of respect.

Basically it is the same with working class football hooligans. They band together in a group to commit violence against other people not in the group. And they aren't doing it for a cause or a Utopian ideal - they are doing it because (a) it defines them in their most important social grouping and (b) it's fun chasing down the other guy and giving him a serious seeing-to.

That's exactly what you have with these young muslim men. Their faith defines their group and they simply want to fight people not in the group. Initially at least they aren't fighting in any way for any religious ideals or beliefs or for Quranic justification. They just want to fight. Fighting is what the purposeless do because it is all they feel they can do.

And guess what? Out in the Middle East there's is a whole thing going on where you can fight and be praised for it. A heady cocktail indeed. And they get lauded and they get recognition and they get justification from their elders and they get to shoot real fucking guns.

Now, the initial reason to go maybe for the fighting, but may I suggest many actually do get a rude awakening when the rubber meets the road in Syria and the gun is finally warm in their hand?

What happens then? Then, they get purged from ISIS or El Shabab or whatever group warily took them in. They get accused of being Western spies or Zionist infiltrators. They get dead in a ditch with a hole in the back of their head and no-one to say "I told you so". And only the most hardened will remain to fight another day - monsters like Jihadi John and his motley band of Brits - trapped in a deadly shithole of their own choosing until the drone that they will never hear coming, kills them.

We do hear frightening numbers about how many have gone to fight. I wonder how many are left a month after getting to place they so mistakenly thought would see them as brothers. I believe many don't live to see the error of their travel decisions. Probably many cannot convince the groups they so want to join that they are true believers. Which when you think about it, they initially aren't. They aren't upon arrival True Believers. At first they are there for the fighting. That is what they've shown up for. Later they may get to have the threads of Islamic justification draped over them and their murderous actions.

Given all the above, what can be done to stop this idiotic desire to fight?

That is a hard question. Only time will break a religion's hold. Education won't. As we see from hearing about the universities and colleges attended by people like Jihadi John. You have to break the link to the group that these young men are so self-identifying with.

And time is all that works. That is why there is no Protestant Crusader group channeling young men to Middle Eastern Christian militias. Those would-be recruits have no association with a "Mother Church" as their defining social group. In fact, they have their footie teams for that. And their fighting goes on within that restricted arena.

Infiltrating Islamist Groups sounds like it could help, but once the rat is found in the pack, that will only ever reinforce the "us against them" mentality of would-be jihadists.

Only time and making religion a smaller and smaller part of these young men's lives can save us.

And time takes time to achieve its erosive goals.

---||---

And briefly to address the UK schoolgirl issue....

Yes, I realize that my whole fighting-thesis does not apply. But two things do:-

1. As an article I read only today states, these girls are dazzled by these guys on social media. They are groomed within a religiously twisted framework to see these young men as admirable and worthy. If fact, worthy of marriage. The jarring reality of the life of a cheap camp follower is what awaits them. Many will never survive the shames that will be heaped upon them. A few of these young men may come back to the West, radicalized and ready to commit acts of unspeakable barbarity, but none of these girls will come back. They are lost to us and to their families. Swallowed by a glamour surrounding a blackest despair.

2. The alpha-males ( or those who see themselves as that ), always attract women. Why? I don't know. It is how the world spins. Alas, even in an organization involving the propagation of manifest evil, some naive young girls will only see the gleam in a killer's eye and not the knife he holds that puts it there.

Ohmigosh - Amazing music video!

Sapphica - Ready - Official Music Video - 4K Uncensored Full Length Cut: http://youtu.be/tKvZwo1jOdM

Cartoonists Respond

http://www.slideshare.net/ssuser63877e/cartoonists-react-to-attack-on-satirical-magazine-charlie-hebdo-in-paris?from_m_app=android

Ever gotten scammed when out of a job?

Just got this email.....

I found your resume on Monster.com when searching the IT and Sales Categories.

No you didn't. I ain't listed there.

 

My name is David xxxxx and I am sending you the following brief description sharing information about a company I started where I can set up people in home based businesses as IT recruiters where there is no cash investment involved and the income potential ranges from $100k to $400k.  If you are interested, great. If not, please forward this message to others you know who may be a good match.

This is a clearly a fucking pyramid "home-based business" scam. He's so going to want my money at some point.

 

I was in the IT recruiting industry for many years ending my career as VP of a national IT staffing firm then deciding to work for myself from home as an independent recruiter. 

VP? Of what? Vagina Polishing?

 

Linkedin has made it possible to build lists of companies, managers and IT experts in specific IT specialties.  Using Linkedin as the central resource, I was able to build a 6 figure income home based recruiting business and am now looking for 4 individuals to invite into my business and do the same thing.

LIAR. LIAR. LIAR. You troll LinkedIn looking for marks.

 

There is no investment required and this is a very real 6 figure income home based business opportunity.

No it isn't.

 

I own two businesses. abc.TxxxxxxSxxxxx007.com is a business where I am paid to help IT recruiting firms hire and train their recruiters. 

 

abc.MSBSxxxxx.net is the specialized IT recruiting business that I am looking to find 4 individuals to get involved with.

 

To clarify,  I was able to leave a corporate job to build a successful home based recruiting business and am looking to find 4 people who are at a time and place in life where they would like the chance to break free from corporate jobs and get into a home based business. I can set up 4 people with a specific plan, online virtual office, access to professional level Linkedin, payrolling of consultants and a step by step training program that is a direct path to a 6 figure income as a home based IT Recruiter.

No you can't you dickwad. You couldn't set a table let alone set up a Company.

You just want my money to be part of your great fucking "opportunity".

 

If you are not interested, I wish you the best. If you are interested, please send me an email that includes your Linkedin profile link and request the complete description. I will reply with a copy of the complete description as a WORD document.

As Liam Neeson would say "Good Luck".

 

Best wishes to you in 2015 ( AND FUCK YOU TOO )

 

 

David xxxxx

954-abc-xxxx

We specialize at helping companies and people find each other for the purpose of new contract and permanent jobs within the Microsoft stack starting with SQL Server and up to all the various MS related development lanuages and tools.

1. This sentence is actually gibberish.

2. AND the sap can't even spell "languages". Pretty sad if people get duped by this assclown.

 

Best pic ever

An idiot and a blithering idiot.

Time Talk Pinterest Attitude

I got this email from Pinterest:

**snip**
We'll recently removed your board "Back Now In Color" because it included pins that go against our policies. Like we mentioned in our earlier emails, we don't allow sexually explicit things on Pinterest. We do allow works of art and educational pins, like you might see in a museum or classroom.

Please remove any other pins that go against our policies. Otherwise, your account could be suspended.

The latest pin we removed was on this board and its description was " ". (Sorry, but we don't have a link to the image.)

Thanks for your help,

The Pinterest Team
**snip**

OK where do I start?

1. Repinning

Forgetting for the moment that I do not pin stuff that is contrary to the Pinterest TOS, I do repin. A Lot.

I think it is very reasonable to assume if Pinterest allows me to repin, THEY HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THE ORIGINAL PIN. And so they shouldn't come after me as a repinner of content I FOUND ALREADY EXISTING ON THEIR SERVICE.

Why are they threatening me with account suspension when I'm only doing what their service was really designed for? (Sharing by repinning).

2. What was my bad pin?

Fuck. They can't tell me. I don't think I did anything against their TOS, but I can't freaking see what they thought was doing so. So what can I do to not piss of the Pinterest Puritans again? Nothing I think except to only repin pictures of kittens. And if in doubt, don't repin. Just to keep my account?

3. I don't react kindly to bot-threats.

And Pinterest gives me no recourse to ask them why they've done what they've done.

So now, let my new sarcasm-laden boards begin.

4. My suggestion for handling repins.

If the original pin I repinned was contrary to the Pinterest TOS, pick on that user. Email him. Threaten him with account suspension. To repinners, simply replace their repin with a post like "Original pin has been removed by Pinterest because it violated our TOS".

Leave that in the repinner's board for two weeks so they can see there was a problem and then automatically remove it.

---||---

Right now Pinterest's cavalier and frankly threatening attitude to their users is Fucking Appalling.

And they really need to work on that.

Duck Dynasty Is Fake!

Everybody needs to watch this.

And you want me to be a Customer?

The head of North American operations for the company I work for just quit. The head of our enire VoIP development is "stepping back from work".

And today the CEO announced he is quitting on the eve of what he had been telling us is the "The Most Exciting Development in our Industry ever".

What does that say to any potential customer for my company?

It says "Run the fuck away from us at the fastest possible speed. Because we won't be here in two years"

Never knew what doom felt like until today.

The 2013 Movie Crapfest List

Here are all the sequels, unnecessary remakes, comic book
and crap movies for 2013 in one vomit sized little package....

Scary Movie 5
Evil Dead
Jurassic Park 3D
Iron Man 3
Fast and Furious 6
The Hangover part III
Man of Steel
Monsters University
Despicable Me 2
The Lone Ranger
Grown Ups 2
RED 2
The Wolverine
The Smurfs 2
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
Kick-Ass 2
Riddick
Insidious: Chapter 2
Machete Kills
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Oldboy
Carrie
Paranormal Activity 5
Anchorman: The Legend Continues

This looks like a bigger list than last year! I'll probably
see "Sin City", but all the rest are a waste of anyone's
dollars and time.

Email to Janet Parshall

On her radio show this week, Janet Parshall, she of the regular mangling of the English language, had on a father and son team talking about a book they had written on Biblical Forgiveness - whatever the fuck that is.

I had to send her the following email after listening to what was said by these two men - one of whom's wife had walked out on his marriage...which Janet felt it was important that we knew. Go figure.

**snip - email to Ms Parshall**
Normally [Janet -sic] your radio program is just funny, but on 3/6/13 you moved it over into utter cruelty.

"If a woman is raped in a dark alley, she HAS TO FORGIVE her rapist to release him from punishment."

OMG. I have no difficulty understanding why this man's wife walked out on him.

What an uncaring, unfeeling, unloving thing to ever say. Why didn't you challenge him Janet?

No woman should ever be told she HAS TO forgive her rapist.

I'm dumbfounded. Utterly crestfallen that you gave this misogynitic idiot airtime.

Really, this was the lowest you've ever stooped. And you've been very low before.
**snip ends**

This piece on Janet Parshall's show rivalled the time I heard a pastor on Moody Radio's "Midday Connection" describing a woman as being born as the result of a "RAPE RELATIONSHIP" - and the female sheep on that show didn't challange that asshat either.

Apparently being Born Again makes you Fucking Stupid - especially if you are a woman.

Kayden Kross' Mainstream Movie!! BLUE DREAM Trailer

Dennis Rainey is a Big Fat Liar

And here he is.

So we reach the time of year where radio charlatans and their so called "ministries" pull out all the stops to get their sheeple to donate to their "work". Often of course, with the brilliantly unbiblical coercion of the "matching donation". Both Jim Daly of "Focus On The Family" and James Dobson of "Family Talk" love to use this ruse to get donations. But as I have to point out again and again, a cheerful giver isn't a guilty giver. Which most assuredly is what these organizations are making of their followers by using the terrible manipulation of the matching donation.

But today, on the last day of 2012, Dennis Rainey of the "Family Life Today" radio show wrapped up the usual end-of-year plea strong arm tactics in a story that was evidently such a monstrous lie that even he corrected himself - well, just a little bit.

Mr Rainey told a story from 2012 of children opening their piggy bank and scotch taping $400 to the walls of their bedroom ( "well, that must have been a big piggy bank" ) along with a note that these CHILDREN wanted their parents to use the money to go to a "Family Life Today" Marriage Conference. Which naturally they did, making their pathetic marriage better and Mr Rainey's pockets just a little bit fuller.

Does anyone with a brain think this actually happened? Children would have $400 dollars in singles in their piggy bank? That they would even know about what a "Marriage Conference" is? That they would know you got to go to such a huckstery event by coughing up your money to a charlatan like Mr Rainey? That children are in anyway interested in the very abstract notion of "marriage" as it applies to their moms and dads? Really? They might want their parents to be happy, but they surely don't know anything about any kind of "conference" events that supposedly can make that goal happen.

No. I'm afraid this story doesn't pass any test for authenticity or for truth. It stinks of falsehood. As I said, even Mr Rainey caught himself questioning the size of the piggy bank.

So really telling such a story of blatant lies simply does make Mr Rainey a Big Fat Liar.

And of course, let's not forget, he runs a "ministry". An organization where "bearing false witness" isn't frowned upon, it is encouraged - especially when it gets the gullible to part with their money.

Shame on Mr Rainey. Shame on him.

Guardian.co.uk - William Faulkner estate sues Sony over Midnight in Paris line

Guardian.co.uk - William Faulkner estate sues Sony over Midnight in Paris line

Sometimes you hear the truth

This morning on "Eric and Audrey in the Morning" on WRMB radio, they were interviewing Janet Parshall about her new book - the one with optional crayons. And as all right wing Christian stations are doing right now, the piece eventually had to degenerate into a plea for people to vote.

Then, in order to show they weren't actually pushing the GOP line ( duh! ), Janet went off on a riff about sharing a Bible study with people you disagree with politically in the hope of some sort of Jesus-inspired meeting of the minds. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about, "Political parties are not important, but don't forget, Jesus was a Republican. And vote your VALUES. Like Jesus would, as a supporter of smaller government."

You know...arrant unbibilical fucking nonsense.

But what Janet ended up saying was that after reading the Good Book together......

"You might change your mind".....OR..........

"I MIGHT CHANGE YOUR MIND."

Priceless! The GOP position, NEVER wrong. Janet, NEVER wrong, never persuadable. But the Baby Jesus could sway you from your Liberal, Socialist Democrat ways!

I guess sometimes the Truth just simply Cannot be Hid.

Hey! How about this though? Maybe Jesus made Janet say what she did to expose her for what she is, a GOP shill of the worst kind. After all, by their stripes you shall know them.

And we all know where Janet stands.