JISHOU, HUNAN — The Rifqa Bary saga just gets weirder and weirder. Now that the 17-year-old is back in her home state, her “benefactors” and “supporters” plan to hold a rally during the hearing that will decide whether she will return to her parents’ home.

In the reality-based world, a runaway child returning home would be a good thing, if the parents are decent, upstanding members of society, which the Barys appear to be.

In the apocalyptic world of the far-far-rightwing, however, Rifqa’s Muslim parents are sure to kill their Christian convert daughter, because, you know, all Muslims do that sort of thing, every day. Pamela Geller and her fellow Muslim-haters have themselves worked up into a froth, accusing the Bary family of every crime known to humanity, merely because the Barys are Muslim …

… and because Rifqa, whose own grip on reality seems kind of tenuous, has people convinced that her family will either kill her or arrange for her sudden demise once she returns to that lawless hotbed of Islamic terrorism, Columbus, Ohio.

Law enforcement officers and child welfare officials say the likelihood of Rifqa being killed is nil. Her parents are pretty normal sounding, middle-class Americans who have the “misfortune” of being dark-skinned Muslim immigrants with exotic names.

The parallels to the “birther” crusade are obvious. A lot of folks also cannot accept that a dark-skinned son of a foreign-born Muslim with an exotic name became president of the USA.

November 3rd, 2009 | Tags: anti-Islam, Florida, Islam, Muslim, ohio, Pamela Geller, rally, Rifqa Bary | Category: Civil liberties, Media, Random rants, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Only in America: a church in North Carolina will hold a book-burning party on Hallowe’en night to immolate “Satan’s Bibles.”

Not the books used by Satanists. No indeed, though I reckon you can bring them along. The Amazing Grace Baptist Church intends to toast such “perversions of God’s word” as

NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.

For good measure, the church near Waynesville, NC, also plans to add “Satan’s music” to the pyre.

such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contemporary Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.

and non-Bible books, too :

We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham , Rick Warren , Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll , John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn , Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa , The Pope , Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.

October 23rd, 2009 | Tags: Bible, book burning, Hallowe'en, KJV, Marc Grizzard, Satan | Category: Commentary, Random rants, religion | Comments (3)

JISHOU, HUNAN — I figure if Andy Schlafly, the perpetrator of Conservapedia’s Conservative Bible Project, can rewrite the King James Bible, so can I. Here’s my rendition of Mark, Chapter 1. (Please observe my copyright. Thank you.)

THE GOSPEL OF MARK (draft #1,216,593A)
Chapter One
1. This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus, as written by Mark, who believes Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.

2. The prophets wrote, “Behold, I will send my messenger to scope things out for you, to lay the groundwork, as it were.

3. “Someone will be crying in the wilderness, ‘Make way for the Lord, because he’s coming through! (No autographs, please!)’”

4. John the Baptist got his name because he dunked people in the river, saying baptism signified repentence for one’s sins.

5. He had quite a following all over Judea, and even among city folk from Jerusalem, who all came to be dunked in the Jordan River and to confess their sins.

6. John was a back-to-lander kind of fellow, dressing in clothes made of camel’s hair and wearing a leather loincloth; he also ate only locusts and wild honey.

7. He was overly humble, too. He said, “Somebody is coming who is so much better than I that I am not even worthy to untie his shoes.

8. “I have only baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Spirit of God!” (John failed to mention the new guy was his cousin, so he might have been a little biased.)

October 9th, 2009 | Tags: Bible, Conservapedia, Conservative Bible Project, Mark, rewrite | Category: Random rants, religion | Leave a comment

CHONGQING — Well, not literally, but pretty close. Via DailyKos, I learned today that Conservapedia (the Bizarro version of Wikipedia) intends to take the King James Bible and rewrite it into plain modern English, making sure the new version has no “liberal bias.”

The Conservative Bible will be a wiki, so it will be a group project, rather like giving a large group of monkeys enough time and equipment to recreate the works of William Shakespeare.

The rationale and methodology of this ill-conceived project piece of crap are so wrong on so many levels that’s it’s hard to know where to begin.

The King James Version (1611) was an English translation from the Hebrew, Latin and Greek texts then available, done entirely by members of the Church of England. It became the “standard Bible” among English-speaking Protestants, largely because of its poetic language and of the breadth of the British Empire.

Conservapedia’s head simians plan to retranslate the English in the KJV translation, which is a lot like playing “Telephone” with the Scriptures. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

There’s nothing wrong with retranslating the Bible. It’s been done dozens of times already. But the new versions start from the original texts, not the KJV. For example, the New International Version (which apparently is too liberal for the monkeys at Conservapedia) was a joint project of 100 scholars in several different countries and different churches, who referred to texts and archaelogical evidence that were unknown 400 years ago. The complete NIV Bible came out in 1978.

October 6th, 2009 | Tags: Bible, Christian Revisionism, Conservapedia, revisionism, rightwing, stupidity, wingnuts | Category: Random rants, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — The International Olympics Committee picked Rio for the 2016 Summer Olympics, placing the Games in South America for the first time in history. That’s a good thing, and Rio can be congratulated for a job well done (bem feito).

Photo gallery of happy cariocas.

Chicago coulda been a contenda, but it was cut in the first round of votes. Folks in the Windy City were understandably disappointed. In fact, the whole USA should have been disappointed, except …

Michelle Malkin: “”Chicago and Tokyo eliminated. No Obamalypics. Game over on Obamalympics. Next up, Obamacare.”

Rush Limbaugh: “The worst day of Obama’s presidency, folks. The ego has landed. The world has rejected Obama.”

Newsmax.com: “ChicagP\/\/n3D!”

Glenn Beck: “Please, please let me break this news to you. It’s so sweet.” Then he went on the report the happy news that Chicago (a large city in the USA, by the way) didn’t make the first cut.

WTF? Right-wing flacks must look at everything through their magic I Hate Obama™ spectacles blinkers. Where others see bad news for Chicago, they see only good news for “their side.” While other commentators should express outrage, or at last disappointment, at Rio winning the spot, the wingnuts gloat that Obama (who had little to do with Chicago’s original bid) lost the case.

Malkin was outraged that Obama visited Chicago schoolchildren and asked for their support. (I saw a photo of three happy Rio kids celebrating victory with Brazilian flags painted on their arms. I wonder if Malkin would cluck her disapproval at that, too.)

October 3rd, 2009 | Tags: Barack Obama, Bizarro, chicago, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, newsmax.com, Olympics, right wing, Rio, rush limbaugh | Category: Random rants | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Some citizens of the USA seem to forgotten their basic civics, if in fact they ever learned civics in the first place. So here is a primer. Feel free to share this among your anti-Obama associates.

The United States of America is a constitutional republic, in which legislators (Congressional representatives and Senators) are elected by popular vote, and the president and vice president are elected in a two-stage electoral process – a popular vote and an Electoral College vote.

Whoever gains the most votes (a plurality) in an election is the winner of the election. In the USA, which has two dominant political parties, practically speaking this means whoever gains a simple majority of the votes is the winner.

For example, in the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama and Joe Biden received 52.9% of the popular vote, and John McCain and Sarah Palin, 45.7%. The remaining votes went to nominees of several smaller parties. In the Electoral College, Obama/Biden netted 365 votes and McCain/Palin, 173. Thus, Obama/Biden won the election by a clear majority.

In a republic, an elected official serves everyone, regardless of who voted for him or her. This precept has been the basis of British and American government for centuries, and has a history reaching back to ancient Greece and Rome. The winner represents all of his or her constituents, whether those constituents like it or not.

September 5th, 2009 | Tags: Barack Obama, civics, constitution, election, lesson, Obama-haters, USA | Category: Random rants | Comments (1)