cheese it, the cops!

Unscrupled and unlearned and Rubes

In which Crusader AXE corrals Moses, Mohammed, Newt Gingrich and Jeff Imelt's predecessor and drags them over to Crispin's place for a game of Texas Hold'Em dealt by William of Occam.

Bitchslap a reactionary with me for the sake of your health

It's sad, but due to high student loans, exploding tuition costs, costs of text books and the rising pice of Ramen,  this is what our suffering graduate students go through in order to fund their education...well, that and sell sperm and eggs and organs and stuff...

http://madartlab.com/2012/10/02/creative-dissonance-episode-4-trampolarchery/

Now, on a vaguely related topic, I invite you to visit my last post over at Veterans Today which I mentioned here and cross posted at the Defeatists and Vets...the subject of Pussy Riot really dumbfounded some folks...who were already pretty dumb. I managed to offend the anti-semites, the anti-Bolsheviks, the pro-Russian orthodox, the anti-Solzhenitsyn capitalists and the anti-Zionists. Hurrah! A pick five...

The poor suffering Russian Church...which of course was totally subservient to the Czar, did a deal with Stalin and then continued with the bureaucratic-oligarchy of demented old men and signed on with Putin as soon as he showed up on the screen. 

So read or re-read the post but have fun with the comments. What I've found in my reading of various blogs is that a lot of them don't get a lot of comments. There are a lot of smart, informed and interesting folks who write and post over at Vets. However, the comments are far less diverse than the opinions of our readers. Crispin has had the rare success of actually attracting readers who respond and do so intelligently...you folks can be trusted to dangle few particles and not begin sentences with a preposition. In fact, some of you actually show familiarity with the subjunctive. And, beginning a sentence with a conjunction, you are not ignorant, race-baiting, anti-semites and reactionary fools. 

So, should one of the comments so move you over at Vets, please, comment back. I find that my habit of responding to comments produce more comments as well as responses. Of course, these people have nothing to do when they've patched their tin-foil hats, covered the windows to prevent the CIA black helicoptes from seeing them and Fox News has reverted to Laura Ingrahm re-runs and Vegematic-Pocket Fisherman-COMBO!!! infomercials. 

Have some fun with them. 

In which Crusader AXE addresses a reasonably important issue of the day...

Neither Crispin nor I have devoted a lot of space to Pussy Riot. Probably a mistake on our part -- but I'm not writing much these days, and Crispin probably listened to their music, had the fillings fall out of his teeth, and torn between philosopher and rock critic, kind of punted. Musically, they are wretched...they make the Sex Pistols seem expert with their instruments and in a class with with the Three Tenors vocally by comparison with the Russian women. In fairness, Crispin caught on long before I did and put electrons to electrons to comment on Pussy Riot and punk and as usual, did it knowlegably and well. Me, well, he occasionally corrects my grammar and spelling errors. Which amuses me...

Which is not the point -- the Sex Pistols aren't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because they were good but because they were a harbringer of something else. In much the same way, Pussy Riot deserves some attention. Granted, it's not like Sakharov and Solzyenitsen formed a Russian version of the Ayett Brothers. But, they're musicians, poets and intellectuals who did something in marginal taste to make a point and are getting two years in Gulag light as a result. Gulag Light is not the Russian Version of Camp Cupcake, more the Russian Version of a supermax...

So, we could pay some attention. And, the poetry is not without some merit -- reminds me of the lyrics to some of the work of the Afghansi, the Soviet era grunts facing the Muhajadeen. Worth considering. 

And, Putin is an asshole...so, why not?

an attack on jeremiah wright is an attack on the black church itself. i accept that. and i want to say that an attack on crispin sartwell is an attack on . . . yourself. on your own mother. on god. on america. on decency and solidarity. on the internal revenue service. on all the aluminum cans that ever were. on miley cyrus. on square circles and circular squares. on mediocre poetry. on childhood. on...oh fuck it.

hurricane pat

so pat robertson seems to be threatening my very own home county of york, pa. or perhaps it's god doing the threatening. doesn't bother me much cause god is a wimp. he's too chicken to mess with york, county, pa. really, he needs some e.d. meds to deal with his impotence. at any rate, pat, eventually he'll kill you too. i'm not threatening, you understand, but one day you'll call on him and he'll laugh in your face.

war on people of faith, day 3:

despair, people of faith. soon we will post the video of our masked avengers boning and filleting bill frist. renounce your so-called gods or face the same fate. if we left the education of our children to you, people of darkness, we would still be teaching them that the sun orbits the earth. to prevent this, we will resort not only to school board meetings but to mass executions and acts of terror such as the world has never seen. you, people of faith, have your zarqawis and your rudolphs, your ashcrofts and popes. we sneer with contempt at these admittedly sadistic amateurs. tremble, people of faith, for we will expunge you from the face of the earth you despise. you will no doubt thank us as we send you slowly into a transcendence of this fallen plane and on to your eternal reward. ask your "god" to have mercy on your "soul" as we destroy your actual bodies.

via the great el serracho: assmonkeys. join the presidential prayer team . the secular humanist jihad has y'all squarely in its sites, though we acknowledge your superior web design.

but the rage of the blogosphere today (you might start here) is the following deep question: whose fault were the crusades? this is deep because there are exactly two possible answers: our fault or yours. the idea or as it were fact that we were all supremely deluded idiots who had long ago stopped thinking about whether god really actually wanted us to kill each other was beyond the ken of any chump whose views have come down to us through the ages. (i always hold out for the notion that everywhere from istanbul to constantinople there were cynical assholes muttering to those they trusted: "these people are deeply, utterly deluded.") some of these deep historians claim that it was a war of christian intolerance and aggression against a peace-loving and can't-we-all-just-get-along muslims. others have insane jihadis descending like a swarm of nasty locusts on turn-the-other-cheek followers of the prince of peace. (of course the "agenda" is set by the great historian ridley scott's interpretation. i would regard orlando bloom's view as definitive.) but i say this. the real aggressors and the real victors of the crusades were us, the secular humanists. when we arrived in jerusalem as a naked horde of ethical society types, unitarians, and scientists howling for rationality and urinating on one another, the crusaders and jihadis alike were taken aback. and when we fried them with the napalm and stuff our research institutes produced, they were taken aback again.

speaking of the history of boredom: it's christian cheerleading camp . really. and it's not a porn site.

The police here have refused to say what led them to arrest Mr. Rader, a city codes enforcer and a church leader, 31 years after the first killings in Wichita, but they have acknowledged that the B.T.K. serial killer's peculiar and persistent communications with the public, particularly in recent months, worked to their advantage in the investigation.

i knew btk was gonna turn out to be a church leader. as with me , it was probably the commandments that made him psychotic. most christians end up this way.

the mighty adam draws out attention to this . it's not easy to be persecuted the way tom delay is persecuted. nor is it easy to die of bleeding hemmorhoids, as tom delay deserves to. actually i think tom delay has been visited upon america as punishment for our, um, stupidity.

they shoot atheists, don't they?

adam sends me this . hey it ain't easy being an atheist. but at least while this dude was alive he had the satisfaction being right.

contd 2

white people are oppressed. men are oppressed. the rich are oppressed. the whining of people who are actually downtrodden, exploited and reviled can become insufferable. but the whining of people who are on top of the world as they declare their victimhood is grounds for violence.

contd

ever since constantine converted the roman empire, christianity has been a tremendous political power, rolling around the world to force conversions, torturing its enemies, etc. that is of course absolutely impossible to square with the gospels, which portray christ as himself persecuted and a defender of the persecuted. so after all these pogroms, after all these inquisitions, holocausts, as evangelicals like ashcroft suspend the constitution and start torturing moslems, as the most powerful man in the world is an evangelical christian, as the armies of christendom roll through the islamic world , christians need to persist in their fantasy that they are persecuted.  get to the truth: y'all are the greatest persecutors this planet has ever known.

persecution

i have seen some pathetic idiots and whiners in my time but those who claim that american christians are persecuted  take the cake. the evidence? that some religious expression - especially if it is directly state-sponsored - is limited. maybe it shouldn't be in some of these cases. but "persecution"? only in the sense that rulers are persecuted by their subjects when their subjects occasionally petition them, in the sense that oppressors are persecuted by the people they oppress, in the sense that huge majorities are persecuted by tiny minorities and so on. look: y'all control the government of the united states, the richest, most militarized nation on earth. what the hell do you want? more coming.