War on Islam 12.6

I Can't get enough of your love....

Barack Hussein Obama just loves him some surge. After all, you can’t just declare victory and go home. No, we’ve gotta make sure that every American in the National Guard does at least six tours of duty in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. I mean, hell, they signed up didn’t they. And, it’s not like they’re rich kids or anyone  the beltway elite cares about. Nobody gives a fucking shit about some bunch of lower middle class people who wanted to minimize their student loans and better themselves. They deserve to die. And, we’re going to give them every opportunity to do so. Indeed, we’ll make sure that they’ll want to just kill themselves! Because, this is the cause of Jesus Fucking Christ. To battle the demonic Muslim Hordes. Of course, some substantial percentage of absolutely vital military personnel are Muslim, but fuck them. Indeed, they should be rooted out, and shot, or anally raped and shit like that. We’re a Christian nation, and our military should be a Christian Crusade against the forces of whatever the fuck the Christians say we’re against this week. Just ask Pat Robertson.

Twenty percent of Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and we’re spending five billion dollars a day on the Christian Crusades. I sure wish Obama  really was  building concentration camps for those motherfuckers, because they needs them some concentration.

Rocky Mountain Low

Gee, I could have been at some meetings....

The Annual Meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and Religious Research Association just finished in Denver on Sunday, but I had more important things to do.  I couldn’t be more disappointed with the state of my subfield of the social sciences. A decade ago, there was much progress and more promise. Now, its considerably worse than when I entered the field 20 years ago. I  never thought I’d yearn for the bad old days when nice-but-not-very-sociologically informed  liberal Protestants dominated the meetings. Now, the core seems dominated by far right wing Christianists, hell bent on forcing their agenda on everything. I’m surprised they haven’t renamed it the Society for the Study of the Positive Effects of Christianity.

But, you know, I’m starting not to care. Maybe I shouldn’t have really gotten involved with these groups in the first place. I really like real sociologists. You know, ones who read American Sociological Review, and shit like that. I actually enjoy seeing people at the Southern Sociological Society meetings! I look forward to presenting papers and hanging out at the receptions at SSS (or the social movements section at ASA). With SSSR for the last five years, I feel like I’m going to court to defend myself from a frivolous charge of puppy molestation. It is true that I hate puppies, but I have never had sex with that puppy.

I have about twelve articles and two books that need completion. After that…I don’t know. I may start doing work in zoology….Or I could become dead wood and just ride my bike ALL the time!

Protest Potential Panned

Barney's not there....

Ah, the gay rights march. Or, more appropriately the LGBTQ march, on Washington. Because, well, that’s what the Christians and 9-12ers do and shit like that. What, exactly, is desired which is accomplished by this particular type of collective action? Given that participants no doubt spent at least $500 each to do this event, what else could have been done with that money? Is influence in Washington DC a function of the number of people on the quad in a march, or the number of dollars put into the reelection coffers of legislators? Barney Frank Knows.

I just love Barney Frank. He’s the best politician in Washington, and everyone knows it. If he were straight, he already would have served two terms as President. But, just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he thinks other people like him should waste time,  effort, and money on silly dramaturgical events. Great. Drama. And Queens. That’s gonna be a great help. Mass events have never helped groups seeking rights for gays and lesbians, because they are effectively used by countermovements. Bernstein’s comparisons of NYC and Portland are instructive.  Gays and lesbians constitute a greater proportion of the population than Jews–more than twice the proportion. They need to act like it.

Olympic Goatfucking

I got games

Yes, Illinois and the non-rightwing nutjob sectors of the US are reeling from the smack down by the IOC regarding the 2016 games. No Chicago. Rio. Chicago didn’t even make it out of the first round, despite being seen as an easy bet—at least among ignorant, arrogant Americans. The USSR had already long held the selection to the 1980 games when they decided to invade Afghanistan. The result was a boycott by many nations who thought that the Soviet’s unilateral interference in the politics of a supposedly sovereign nation overstepped the bounds of civility thought becoming of participants, and especially hosts, of the Olympic Games.  Unfortunately for Chicago, our current breach of civility is hanging out there like withering leaves on a storm-damaged tree….We’re a rogue nation. We violate civil rights. We torture people. We conduct wars against the conventions of international agreements. We prop up petty dictators, and assist other rogue nations who routinely flout normal moral standards of conduct. The IOC already regretted choosing Beijing. It was a horrific failure, and gave legitimacy to a bad state on top of the lack of appeal to consumers. Chicago wouldn’t have been as bad. But why would the international community want to honor the US with the Olympics? Brazil has done nothing wrong, and when they do, the investigate and prosecute. I was kind of pulling for Madrid, but that was unlikely given the recency of Barcelona…..

It is  disturbing is to see the American Right gloating about this as if it is a failure for Obama, and this schema seems to dominate most discussion in the US (but nowhere else!!! Everyone else KNOWS why we didn’t get the Games). Obama’s home city doesn’t get the Olympics. This is perfect for fat ugly fucks like Bill Bennett and Rush Limbaugh. But, the reason why Obama’s hometown isn’t going to get the Olympics is because of the policies of the Bush Regime. The world does not forget our atrocities, even if we choose to ignore both.

Teabagging the Anti-Christ, and Jimmy Carter Knows Redneck

I still have Lust in my heart

Jimmy Carter was the second best President of the 20th Century, despite being screwed over by Congress and the Fed— who did everything they could to make him look bad. If we did what Carter had proposed, every car would get 50mpg, we’d have mass transit in all major US cities, rehabs instead of prisons, and peace in the Middle East.

And, it is an undeniable fact that Jimmy Carter is a redneck. A real one. He’s a farm boy from Bumfuck Georgia. He may be a rich farm boy, but he can drive a tractor, and has killed chickens and pigs and shit like that. And Carter attended and was very active in an all white Southern Baptist Church all of his formative years and much of his adult life in an era of emboldened racism in this subcultural community.  And, gods damn it, if anyone knows about racism, it’s a good Christian redneck!  Jimmy Fucking Carter says that when some punk , cracker-ass, sissy -fuck, worthless-rich,  Son of the Confederacy, KKK, motherfucker shouts out “You Lie” to an African American President of the United States of America,  what the redneck  really means is “Nigger, Nigger, Nigger!” Anyone arguing this point with Carter just doesn’t understand redneck.

Fun times out here in the religion and politics world, what with all of the Christians awaiting the apocalypse and contemplating whether Jesus will return to slay the evil anti-Christ Barack Hussein Obama, or if Obama will be stricken in some other manner by the power of the Lord  (or maybe the Holy Spirit will pull this one off, he likes killing people).  But, of course, many in this subcultural identity group are more circumspect. They think that perhaps Barack Hussein Obama is not the anti-Christ, but it’ll probably instead be one of his kids. The cute one, Malia, or whatever, probably.

I wonder what the supposedly housebroken “evangelicals” are doing these days? Are they off at 9-12 rallies as well? Protesting the Anti-Christ? Opposing health care for people who can’t afford it? Jesus fuck,   I’m interested in hearing the contorted arguments from affluent “evangelicals”. But, the usual suspects seem silent on health care for the less advantaged.

Instead, Christian Sociology is off whining about how awful it is that women no longer submit to the marriage proposal of someone who made an agreement with her father. Yes, the demise of courting is now a lamentation of the religious right. After all, you wouldn’t think they’d use their religion to contemplate protracted war, or poverty, or environmental devastation or something? No, the most serious problem is that unmarried people are having sex. Not teenagers, mind you. Oh no.  Grown adults are actually having sexual relations before marriage. And, often, young adults don’t marry their partners in fornication, but instead move on to a partner they find more compatible. Delaying marriage means having sex before marriage. Oh. How. Awful. Because, of course, sex is yucky and horrible–not to mention evil and sinful—and any woman  who has had sex before marriage is defiled, and unbefitting of marriage, or even rape! (I swear to fucking sheep that I’ve heard a Jesus freak nutcase forcefully proclaim that a fellow student was worthy of rape). And, worse yet, we wouldn’t want women checking out the package and deciding for herself, now, would we? I guess that depends on what you’re packing…

Our little Christian pseudosociologists imagine a world where single people have sex with everyone they meet, and fornicate with no goal of a permanent relationship. That little fantasy ain’t happenin’ (the one with them sucking some cock in a porta-potty might). In the real world, normal adults have caring relationships, which include sex. Sex is typically conducted in a responsible fashion, using modern methods of birth control and hygiene, and the occasional sex toy.  The religious right is condemning the normal and quite functional sexual lifestyles of most Americans, and some wackjob sociologists are the biggest cheerleaders!

Wonderful. Why? Well, the base reason is about women, of course. When you are a Christian Redneck you learn that women are incapable of doing many important tasks, and can’t do any of the essential tasks of society (whatever those may be, nobody knows). And, women are commanded by the gods to obey their men. If they do, things will go smoothly. If not, the woman must be punished. If the woman does what she is told, she may be admonished by a grateful master, and she’ll feel that warm fuzzy feeling of enchanted gratitude. Christian Patriarchy! Jesus fucking shit. If you had told me when I was an undergrad in the 1980s that half of the tenured faculty in my area of sociology were going to be unabashed supporters of Christian Patriarchy I would have switched majors to zoology and studied the genetic foundations of polymorphisms in midwestern Lampropeltis Getula.

Of course, unlike our fake sociologists. Jimmy Carter actually engages in critical reflection on his religious commitments. Indeed, Jimmy gave the Southern Baptist Convention the finger in 2000 over their increasingly hostile stance towards women’s rights, and their demand that women obey their husbands. I guess that means he’s not an “evangelical” anymore. You can’t be an “evangelical” and support egalitarian relationships or anything like that, can you?

The Injustice of Good Fortune, or how you’d be better off shooting your dick

Thankfully, I missed

In the latest saga of African American Hick NFL stars being stomped down by the MAN, Plaxico Burress was just sentenced to actual prison time for not shooting his own dick off in a bar. You gotta know, if he had shot his dick off, we wouldn’t be talking about sentencing, this would all just go away, quietly. Like when white drunk people  shoot themselves in bars. That happens all the time, especially in Texas. Never makes the news. Rarely results in a conviction entailing anything other than a small fine. After all, the drunk fuck shot themselves! Yes, they committed a crime. They took a gun into a bar. But, thankfully, They Shot Themselves. Punishment over. OK?! Jesus fuck.

But, since Burress is a big black guy, shooting himself in the leg (which cost him millions of dollars), is not enough punishment. No, we need to waste a million or so  in taxpayer money investigating, prosecuting, and incarcerating a guy who nearly shot his dick off. I’m thinking, he probably won’t do that again…But, this is really about spending a million bucks to publicly humiliate the black guy who has a shot at making some money. You know, like that Michael Vick guy.  I’m a redneck. I know people who fight dogs. Some of my old friends were into high end dog fighting.  I have never heard of a white person being incarcerated for dog fighting. I’m sure it has happened, but to imprison a first time offender?!!! I can’t believe that.

And, Burress plead guilty!!! Don’t these guys know how to hire an attorney?! Johnny Cochran must be rolling in his grave…

Maybe Jesus will Heal everyone

 

Healthcare is for Nazis

Gee, I see all of those supposedly moderate “evangelicals” are all hot an bothered to make sure that every American is given basic health coverage. Oh, wait, no. They’re not. They don’t give a shit. Not even about an innocuous extremely conservative proposal to simply amp some competition into the insurance oligopoly. The supposedly moderate evangelical crowd is too busy pushing for early marriage and and to end access to birth control and sex education. They want women to get knocked up no later than their early 20s, get married to the sperm donor, and quit school and abandon their careers. No, on access the health care, the supposedly “middle ground” religious conservatives are letting the crickets do the talking. But, you can’t hear the crickets through the rabble of the more genuine Christians. The birthers and teabaggers! They don’t want the guvment messing with their Medicare. And, they heard about the mandatory abortions, and the federally funded penis enhancement, soylent green, and the horrors of godless communist Muslim negro homosexual health care. Awesome.

Of course, Obama keeps courting these religious folk, in hope that some good somehow comes of it. I can’t quite see the rationale for appointing people to senior slots in the executive branch when they did not support your candidacy, but Obama, he’s got WAY more HOPE than I do. The NIH director is a great case in point. Oh, so he actually believes in science? Really? I’m sure that’s true when you’re talking about hard core medical research. I suspect that it is not true when you ask him about social scientific issues and priorities. We’re sitting on the better part of a decade of giving priority to funding research on religion and health, pushing to somehow make it possible to prescribe Jesus for all ailments. In the meantime, basic research on racial disparities, health care access, diet, exercise, environmental hazards, and even negative effects onf religious factors on health, have gone wanting. Recent RFA’s from NIH suggest that nothing has changed. No RFA on racial disparities, but a highly publicized one on “spirituality and health”. I don’t even know what “spirituality” means, so I know that the person who wrote the RFA doesn’t.

The bottom line is that the Obama plan is the most conservative possible plan to reform health care. It leaves insurance companies–the source of most of our health care delivery problems in the US—in the game. It will make them work harder, if it passes. It’s not adequate or efficient. A single payer system would work well in the US, as it has in Canada. That keeps doctors and hospitals private, but puts the check in the mail from the state. Just like Medicare and Medicaid. The administrative process could be simplified dramatically, eliminating the need for a Medicare/Medicaid/New plan distinction.

Or we could continue with this faith-based healthcare….

Onward Christian Mercenary Terrorists

Anal Rape for Jesus

Well, if ever there was any doubt, the  mercenary armies hired by the United States to create mayhem in Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, and in the U.S. (it will soon come out), are following a higher calling. Just like those C-Street assholes, who can do no wrong, even when they do wrong, because Jesus H. Christ is on their side. They are forgiven. We are killed, raped, and tortured! But, good Christians can do no wrong, and evil doers (that would be the non-Christians, or those liberal Christians) must be punished. Very cool. Love how my tax dollars go to support this most vile form of religion!

We’ve already heard about Blackwater torturing, kidnapping, and raping American civilians (white ones, even!). Now, it appears that they killed a few of the whistleblowers who exposed their graft and illegal arms dealing. The Dept. of Justice is finally beginning an investigation. From The Nation:

“Among those leveled by Doe #2 is that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”:

 To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

 Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard.” Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince’s employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as “ragheads” or “hajiis.”"

    In other news, anal rape isn’t torture. The war on Pakistan continues. The SURGE is going great in Afghanistan; deaths of American troops are back up to where they were in the Bush era.

 

 

Finally, a non-Christian Terrorist in America!

Still a religious nutjob

Wow, after years of scouring the country looking for non-Christian domestic terrorists, the Feds found this wackjob nutcase in North Carolina. Boyd is a convert to Islam, who was a mercenary working for the CIA in Afghanistan. Of course, his terror operation looks strikingly like a low budget attempt to start up a new Blackwater-KBR-Halliburton. They were training for jihad in other countries, you know, just like what Boyd did in Afghanistan. YeeeeeHaaawd!!!

As soon as I finish my book, I’m following through on my threat to write a paper called “Bringing Psychopathology Back In.”  Rates of serious mental illness accompanied by delusions are estimated at over 4% lifetime incidence, not including dementias. It is unfathomable that this, combined with a variety of other conditions and deprivations which weaken cognitive ability, has no effect on social commitments like religious beliefs and behavior, and political beliefs and behaviors. Just ask the poor woman who heads the Health Department in Honolulu. She hears from 50+ psychotic morons every day asking about Obama’s birth certificate.  Why would someone want to become a mercenary and kill people? NUTS. Convert from psychoconservative Christianity to psychoconservative Islam. NUTS. Some nuts are harmless. Other nuts aren’t.

Skip’n to Jail

Deconstruct This!

Skip Gates. I only saw him once when I was at Duke, which  is probably more than most people. He was jumping out of Stanley Fish’s Jaguar convertible somewhere up at the top of the loop. I don’t think he ever taught a class at Duke, but Skip had a profound effect on administrative policy. He was the “ last straw” for superstar scholar hires who immediately leave and never contribute shit. After Gates, there was more attention to spreading resources more evenly and building departments across a variety to disciplines to strengthen the University–instead of trying to build a star-power english deparment while starving sociology, for example.

Interesting incident. Even moreso looking at this picture. Was the ‘racist” cop the black guy? He looks to be in charge!! He’s the guy walking off , having his white guys haul off the Harvard Prof who talked shit to him. It’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds. Of course, the treatment of Gates is totally unacceptable. A person has a right to break into their own house, and the response should have been “thank you sir” when he showed them his ID. But, it looks like the person he insulted may have been a black guy…maybe one who’s sick of being looked down upon by those fucking Harvard assholes….