evil Bible verses

It's always worthwhile to point out the bullshit that permeates the Bible. Jaclyn Glenn does a pretty good job of it while being visited by Lord Satan.

funny hat

Too rich. Last week Pope Francis, the man in the rilly silly hat, said that "to kill in the name of God is satanic". Eh? Whassat?

He was referring to the murder of French priest Fr. Jacques Hamel, 85, who was killed July 26 during Mass by Islamic terrorists. But Frankie also linked it to the early Christian days when the Roman Catholic Church itself reigned supreme and killed, jailed, and tortured in the name of God.

Popemeister Frank just declared all of the perpetrators of the Crusades and the Inquisition to be satanic! 

Satan is just as much of a fiction as Jesus Christ and God is/are. You don't have to resort to supernatural bullshit to explain or excuse ignorance and the savage cruelty of primitive (or "modern") men. 

I mean, no doubt the early Christians killed because they "believed" and others didn't, and no doubt these Islamic freaks today believe devoutly in a slightly different permutation of a god, but Satan was not and is not pulling their strings, fer Chrissakes! 

Enough with the supernatural crap! It's just ignorance and evil acts committed by overzealous people.

"fuck it!" he was not heard to say

Pope Francis: 'killing in the name of God is satanic'

from the Catholic News Agency

Vatican City, Sep 14, 2016 / 02:09 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Referencing the recent murder of French priest Fr. Jacques Hamel, Pope Francis said the persecution of Christians happening today, under any form, is a work of Satan.

“This cruelty that asks for apostasy, let’s say the word, is satanic,” the Pope said in a homily Sept. 14.

“Today in the church there are more Christian martyrs than in the first times. Today there are Christians who are assassinated, tortured, jailed, their throats are cut because they don’t deny Jesus Christ,” Francis stated.

Pope Francis' comments were made during an early morning Mass celebrated in memory of Fr. Jacques Hamel at Casa Santa Marta Wednesday.

Fr. Hamel, 85, was killed July 26 in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of Rouen, while saying Mass. The assailants, who were armed with knives, declared their allegiance to the Islamic State, and were later shot dead by police.

“To the first Christians, apostasy was proposed – that is, say that our god is the true one, not yours. Make a sacrifice to our god, or our gods. And when they didn’t do this, when they refused apostasy, they were killed. This is repeated today,” the Pope said.

“How much we would like that all of the religions would say that killing in the name of God is satanic.”

Pope Francis called Fr. Hamel one of the newest martyrs in what is a new wave of Christian persecution happening around the world, saying that the priest accepted his own martyrdom with Christ “on the cross.”

Even in the difficult moment of his death, Fr. Hamel, Francis said, saw who his assassin was and he said clearly, “'Be gone, Satan!'”

“May he from Heaven – and we should pray to him, eh, he’s a martyr!” the Pope said, “we have to pray to him that he give us the meekness, fraternity, peace, and also the courage to say the truth: To kill in the name of God is Satanic.”

Original.

Jesus thinks you're a jerk

No one has come close to filling the niche or the shoes of Frank Zappa since he passed on. I guess the Frank was diluted a little too much in the young 'uns.

Somehow that reminded me of a classic Frank Zappa tune, "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk." Even though it was written with Pat Robertson and Jim and Tammy Bakker in mind, it is still, in a way, timely.

So here's all you do...Start up the video, and then follow along with the words below while you listen to the music. 

Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk

Yes, friends . . . Pass the plate around, friends . . . Join us, friends . . . 

There's an ugly little weasel 'bout three-foot nine 
Face puffed up from cryin' 'n lyin' 
'Cause her sweet little hubby's 
Suckin' prong part time 
(In the name of The Lord) 

Get a clue, little shrew 
Oh yeah, oh yeah 
Jesus thinks you're a jerk 
Would he really choose Tammy to do His Work? Unh-unh 

Hallelujah! 
(Yes, friends . . . ) 

Robertson says that he's The One 
Oh he sure is, if Armageddon 
Is your idea of family fun, 
An' he's got some planned for you! 
(Now, tell me that ain't true) 

Give me that old time religion! 

Now, what if Jimbo's slightly gay, 
Will Pat let Jimbo get away? 
Everything we've heard him say 
Indicates that Jim must pay, 
(And it just might hurt a bit) Just a bit! 
But keep that money rollin' in, 
'Cause Pat and naughty Jimbo 
Can't get enough of it (let's dance!) 

Perhaps it's their idea 
Of an Affirmative Action Plan 
To give White Trash a 'special break'; 
Well, they took those Jeezo-bucks and ran 
To the bank! To the bank! To the bank! To the bank! 
And every night we can hear them thank 
Their Buddy, up above 
For sending down his love 
(While you all smell the glove) 

Henry Cisneros, ladies and gentlemen! 

Jim and Pat should take a pole 
(Right up each saintly glory-hole), 
With tar and feathers too -- 
Just like they'd love to do to you 

('Cause they think you are bad -- 
Yes, they do! 
And they are very mad) 

'Cause some folks don't want prayer in school! 

(We'd need an ark to survive the drool 
Of Micro-publicans, raised on hate, 
And 'Jimbo-Jumbo' when they graduate) 

Convinced they are 'The Chosen Ones' -- 
And all their parents carry guns, 
(Hey, look! Godzilla!) 
And hold them cards in the N.R.A. 
(Ah, hellfire, Melvin, hey hee!) 
(With their fingers on the trigger 
("It's hot.") 
When they kneel and pray) 
("I mean that . . . ") 

With a Ku-Klux muu-muu 
In the back of the truck, 
If you ain't Born Again, 
They wanna mess you up, screamin': 
"No abortion, no-siree!" 
"Life's too precious, can't you see!" 
(What's that hangin' from a neighbor's tree? 
Why, it looks like 'colored folks' to me -- 
Would THEY do THAT . . . 
They've been doin' it for years! 
Seriously?) 

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the dynamic Eric Buxton 

Imagine if you will, 
A multi-millionaire TV Evangelist, 
Saved from Korean Combat duty by his father, a U.S. Senator 

Studied law -- 
But is not qualified to practice it 

Father of a "love child" 
Who, in adulthood, hosts the remnants 
Of papa's religious propaganda program 

Claims not to be a "Faith Healer," 
But has, in the past, 
Dealt sternly with everything from hemorrhoids to hurricanes 

Involved with funding for an 'undeclared war' in Central America 
Claiming Ronald Reagan and Oliver North as close friends 

Involved in suspicous 'tax-avoidance schemes', 
(Under investigation for 16 months by the I.R.S.) 

Claims to be a MAN OF GOD; 
Currently seeking the United States Presidency, 
Hoping we will all follow him into -- 
The Twilight Zone 

But, hey! What if Pat gets in the White House, 
(No fuckin' way, Ike, 
You know what I mean) 
The rights of 'certain people' disappear 
Mysteriously? 

Now, wouldn't that sort of qualify 
As an American Tragedy? 
(Especially if they cover it up, sayin' 
"Jesus told it to me!") 
(I mean vapor tight, we're like this, okay? 
I mean that) 
I hope we never see that day, 
(I mean that. Right here. It's hot. It's hot.) 
In The Land of The Free -- 
Or someday will we? 
(92?) 
Will we? 
(96?) 

And if you don't know by now, 
The truth of what I'm tellin' you, 
Then, surely I have failed somehow -- 
Surely I have failed somehow 
Surely I have failed somehow 

And Jesus will think I'm a jerk, just like you -- 
If you let those TV Preachers 
Make a monkey out of you! 

I said: 
"Jesus will think you're a jerk" 
And it would be true! 

There's an old rugged cross 
In the land of the Stainless Maiden -- 
It's just burnin' on the lawn 
But this person looks like Tom Braden! 

Jim and Tammy! 
Oh, baby! 
You gotta go! 
You really got to go! 
Jim and Tammy got to go 

FZ: Ladies and gentlemen, this is intermission. Get your butt out there and register to vote! Would you please? See you in a half an hour!

other Zappa lyrics

southern progressives

Contrary to the "you're all a bunch of backwoods retards in the South" myth, there are a lot of progressives in the south. We do tend to cluster in the larger cities, but not all the time.

Witness Trae Crowder, aka The Liberal Redneck, and his friends from rural Tennessee. And get your ass to the polls, son.

rigging the election

I have been worried about accurate election results since 2000, when I volunteered to be a poll worker with the new electronic voting machines in Harris County, Texas (where Houston is located). I didn't trust the unverifiable electronic machines then, and NOTHING has been done about them since, despite repeated public outcries and countless calls to Congress members. 

Some Democrats have been working to make our elections verifiable, but they get over-ruled by the GOP every time. But frankly, not enough Democrats are on board.

It's inconceivable to me that we still use these unverifiable machines. It's as if they are an open invitation to rig the elections. And now that we have a megalomanical narcissist running for President, verified results are more important than ever.

The Election Won’t Be Rigged. But It Could Be Hacked

by Zeynep Tufekciof the New York Times

In my old workplace, right next to the comfortable couches where we would take breaks, we kept a voting machine. Instead of using the screen to pick our preferred candidate, we played Pac-Man. We sent Pac-Man’s familiar yellow chomping face after digital ghosts with the same kind of machine that had been used in 2008 in more than 160 jurisdictions with about nine million registered voters.

This was at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, where researchers had been able to reprogram the voting machine without even breaking the “tamper evident” seals.

Voting isn’t a game, of course, and we need to trust the machines that count our votes. Especially this year. Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, raised the possibility of “rigged” elections, and his former adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. has warned of a “blood bath” in such a case. A recent poll found that 34 percent of likely voters believed the general election would be rigged.

It’s unclear what mechanism the Trump campaign envisions for this rigging. Voter fraud through impersonation or illegal voting is vanishingly rare in the United States, and rigging the election by tampering with voting machines would be nearly impossible. As President Obama pointed out in a news conference last week, where he called charges of electoral rigging “ridiculous,” states and cities set up voting systems, not the federal government. That’s true, and it means the voting machine landscape is a patchwork of different systems, which makes the election hard to manipulate in a coordinated way.

But it’s still a bleak landscape.

Over the years, the team at Princeton, cooperating with other researchers, has managed to disable and tamper with many direct recording electronic systems that use touch-screen computers without a verifiable paper trail.

I’m not the only one who is worried. This month, Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, said his department was concerned about infiltration of the nation’s electoral systems. Experts have warned about voting machine vulnerability for years, but nothing has changed.

The mere existence of this discussion is cause for alarm. The United States needs to return, as soon as possible, to a paper-based, auditable voting system in all jurisdictions that still use electronic-only, unverifiable voting machines.

I study the impact of technology for a living, and I’m a former programmer. I happily bank online, and use my smartphone to message friends and family. I support and trust encryption to protect ordinary people’s communication. I even believe computers will probably turn out to be safer drivers than too-easily distracted humans. I’m not averse to technological solutions.

In this case, though, we need to stick with methods that allow a paper trail that is verifiable after the election. No matter how you vote, there should be a tightly guarded paper record that can be used for audits, if not for the initial counting. This is not just because paper verification is more tamper-resistant than our insecure voting machines. Our elections need to be open to oversight without the need for voters to understand how encryption works. We can’t tell them to simply trust the experts, especially when people are deliberately sowing distrust.

There is another upside to relying on paper. Audits of such systems can require something else that, at first glance, seems like a hindrance: People need to show up to do them. As the “hanging chads” debacle in Florida demonstrated in the 2000 election, paper systems, too, can be badly designed. However, in a healthy democracy, requiring people to show up is a good thing.

There are already minefields ahead for this election. Georgia, for example, relies on electronic systems that leave no paper trail. The machines in Georgia are also quite old, and a Brennan Center for Justice report found that their software was “outdated” — primarily using operating systems like Windows 2000. This not only puts them at risk for crashes and lost votes, but also leaves them more vulnerable to hacking, as such older software no longer receives fixes for security flaws.

Since 1996, Georgia has voted for the Republican candidate in presidential elections, but this year a batch of recent polls have painted a tight race — with some polls even indicating that the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, may have an edge. If the race is close, and the outcome questioned, voters in Georgia will have no means to audit the results. Other potential swing states, like Pennsylvania and North Carolina, also use electronic machines with no paper trail, at least in some counties. According to the nonprofit Verified Voting, people in at least a dozen states could encounter that same situation.

We have also seen concerns about foreign nations meddling directly in United States elections, via hacking or other means. This is an unlikely scenario; however, the fact that people are even voicing such concerns makes it all the more urgent to dispel them. As Matthew Green, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in cryptography and cybersecurity, said, “There is only one way to protect the voting system from a nation-state funded cyberattack: Use paper.”

Fortunately, there is a reliable and transparent method that combines convenience and the ability to perform an audit: paper ballot systems with optical scan counting. Avi Rubin, an expert on election security who is also a professor at Johns Hopkins, testified about a decade ago that when properly put into effect, these systems have many advantages. People can keep voting even if the equipment fails; it’s possible to audit results; and the systems are easy to use.

It is too late to fix everything for this election. But we should start planning to verify and audit voting wherever possible. For jurisdictions that still use electronic-only voting, we need to guard the machines, to avoid the kind of direct tampering that can turn them into Pac-Man consoles. Randomly selected units should also be used as “test only” machines on Election Day, to check that they are tallying the votes correctly.

States like Georgia that need to replace their creaky machines should use this opportunity to switch to optical-scan ballots — and, when necessary, jurisdictions should receive federal aid to upgrade to systems that include a verifiable paper trail.

Campaigns spend a great deal of effort to get people to vote. We need to do more to make sure that nobody can cast doubt that everyone’s vote is counted.

Original. And you can keep an eye on these shenanigans by visiting The Brad Blog periodically.

SPI from the sky

What the hell? How about a short video of South Padre Island (SPI) recently shot from the air? Our future home is looking good.

Quick! Before the sea levels rise and swallow up the island!!