How specific are Biblical End-Times Predictions?

Okay, once again, I saw another ridiculous attempt by an Evangelical to proclaim that we're living in the end times. You know, I see this kind of stuff all the time, and it's always posted by an idiot who doesn't know Jack or shit about history.

Here is a text version of what the usual claims are:

In the end times, there will be...
(1) people Claiming to be spiritual leaders
(2) Persecution of Christians
(3) Wars and Unrest
(4) Earthquakes
(5) Rise in Law-breaking
(6) Famines
(7) Diseases
(8) lack of sincere Love
(9) Sun and Moon darkened
(10) Stars falling
(11) Gospel preached around the world
(12) Jesus returns...

So I have some questione for all the Evangelicals out there who trully believe that the current time is the end times. These are all easy questions, but I'm willing to bet that nobody can answer them. Here goes:

1. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when people haven't claimed to be great spiritual leaders?
   
2. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when there was no perceived persecution of Christians.
   
3. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when there were no Wars and Unrest.
   
4. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when there were no Earthquakes.
   
5. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when there were no people perceiving a rise in Law-breaking.
   
6. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when there were no Famines.
   
7. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when there were no Diseases.
   
8. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when people were not perceiving a lack of sincere Love on the part of other people.
   
9. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when the Sun and Moon were darkened (I'm assuming this is about eclipses, which happen nearly every year).
   
10. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when there were no Stars falling (Meteorites, novae, comets, etc)
    
11. Can you name one single year or decade in the last 2000 years when there were the Gospel was not preached around the world.
    
12. Finally, is there one single year or decade in the last 2000 years, when any one of the above 11 conditions was not happening?
    

I can prove to all of you, by simple historical facts that anyone can look up on the web, that all of the above questions must be answered with "No." in order for you to be honest and consistant with history. Anyone who claims any answer other than "no" is cordially invited to prove me wrong. If anyone can prove me wrong, I will post a mesage to that effect, proclaiming that I was wrong, and acknowledging that you beat me.

The only rule will be that you can't win by listing a year for which not much was written about. In other words, if you pick a year, and there literally is almost no history written about that year, it doesn't count. You will need to establish your claim as a searchable historical fact, such as on Wikipedia or another reliable source, and you must post the link.

Sarah Palin Debates someone else...

I'm seriously disappointed in the Vice Presidential Debate of October 2nd, 2008. Yeah, I'm disappointed that Sarah palin did not give us more vapid moments, as she's given us for the last month or so. Keith Oberman of MSNBC has a collection of her most vapid moments Here. Check them out, as they give you a comprehensive idea of just what a dumbass she really is. I'm disappointed that she just stood there with her beauty-contest vapid smile glued to her face, as though this were just another chance to charm a bunch of men who see her as a piece of meat. I'm disappointed that she didn't answer a damn question that she was asked -- yeah, in a way I'm disappointed that she didn't do a good job of actually debating, and that she didn't surprise me. I mean, every question she was asked was given a patented pre-written-and-memorized talking-points answer, just as though she spend the last few nights cramming and memorizing a bunch of specific answers that her handlers have been writing for her. It sounded just like that, too -- not spontaneous at all, just like a kid in grammar school blurting out a memorized paragraph.

The only thing that had me laughing was her yokel way of speaking, like I was watching Margie Gunderson from the Cohen Brothers movie, Fargo. All the "Yah. You Betcha" and "gosh darn" was so quaint that it made her appear to completely lack any sense of modernity. She was like June Cleaver on prosac, only without brains (June Cleaver was actually a well-educated, smart character).

What I was disappointed about was on so many levels that I can't pick just one. I mean, I wanted to see her either have a mental meltdown and look like a dumbass, or I wanted to see her suddenly, and uncharacteristicly actually be sharp and incisive, but what we got was less than either extreme. I could feel Biden's frustration as she just kept saying what sounded like the same 3 or 4 paragraphs over and over again, never actually answering any questions, as though she was oblivious to what was being asked. I kept wanting him to jump out of his character and say "Are you going to answer any of these questions, or what? I kept wanting to see him pulling his hair out, like I was about to do, every time I heard her piercing voice saying "Maverick... Maverick... Maverick".

After the debate was hilarious. Right wing bloggers, media pundits, and others, proclaimed that "she held her own", and actually said that her debating skills were great, "because she successfully avoided answering the questions she didn't want to answer." Since when is not answering the questions you're asked in a debate a sign of strength?! Pat Buchanan, sexist as ever, on Keith Oberman's show, commented that she won because of her good looks and smile. Yeah, that's pretty much what he said. It's hard to believe that American political debates have become so vapid, provincial, and just plain dumb. It was embarrasing watcing a debate between a college educated long-time US Senator, who is respected by many world leaders whom he has met, and a college drop-out who has been hastily groomed and propped up like a new Barbie doll, completely unprepared, completely outclassed, and completely incompetent. Who would even consider pairing such an uneven match? Oh, yeah... I just remembered. Most viewers are dumber than Palin, and wouldn't know that she evaded any questions if they had it pointed out to them. Oh, well... I doubt that Palin has helped McCain's campaign at all. He will lose. Perhaps he wants to lose, because he can't bear the pressure from his party anymore, and he's just sick of it all. Perhaps he chose Palin because he knew she'd prevent him from winning. Let's wait and see!

The Top Ten Signs that your Church is Insane

I know, this is very short, and probably not too humorous, but it had to be done, as the idea has been in my head for a while...

1. They preach the end of the world is nigh.
   
2. They tell you that just thinking about sin is just as bad as committing it.
   
3. They preach that creationism is science while evolution isn't
   
4. They preach that women shouldn't have leadership positions over men.
   
5. They tell you to home school your kids
   
6. They tell you that you may need to move to a safer town, usually in another state, to avoid the next war.
   
7. They tell you who you should vote for.
   
8. They speak in tongues.
   
9. They handle poisonous snakes, drink poison, etc.
   
10. Your Pastor proclaims that he's the second coming of Christ.
    

Voter Caging: The legal way to supressing voters!

I came across this interesting article online, which reminded me of a bunch of stuff that I already knew, but which was floating around the back of my head, amid memories of last week's television, music, and video game strategies I'm currently using. Jim Crow Lawswere the series of laws in southern states, which from 1876 till 1965, kept black people separate and unequal from the white population. Part of the Jim Crow laws were rules about voting, which kept black people's vote from getting counted, or which prevented them from even voting in the first place.

One way Black voters were prevented from voting was the POll Tax, which denied votes to people who payed no income tax (as many black people had no income). The most famous way black voters were kept from voting in some parts of the south, were laws mandating that all voters must pass a reading test prior to voting. White voters would rarely, in fact, almost never, be challenged at the polls to take these tests. Only black people were given them. The Black voters would arrive and be given a book to read a passage from. The book would be written in a foreign language like Greek or Classical Latin, and of course, inevitably, the black voter could not read it, so they would not be allowed to vote.

Nowadays, however, more modern, computerized ways of voter supression are being used, and almost exclusively by the Republican party. The practice is called Voter Caging, and is traced to the telemarketer term used to describe how mass marketing firms send out junk mail to addresses on their databases, and erase the entries of people whose mail comes back as "undeliverable".

This is exactly what happened in the 2004 election. But the story is a little more complicated than that. Republicans have been challenging black people's votes, and districts which vote mostly democrat, all throughout the 20th century. They in fact, are the only political party that regularly makes accusations of voting fraud, and which seeks court orders challenging whole districts and individuals.

According to BBC reporter Greg Palast, best-selling journalist, and accused terrorist, the GOP has offices all over the country which work in advance of elections to challenge votes in every state.


According to Slate magazine:

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and—you got to love this—American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation—and the soldiers were overseas.

In 1986, the RNC tried to have 31,000 voters, most of them black, removed from the rolls in Louisiana when a party mailer was returned. The consent decrees that resulted prohibited the party from engaging in anti-fraud initiatives that target minorities or conduct mail campaigns to 'compile voter challenge lists.'

Back in 2004, many of the Republican's challenges were routinely denied action by the courts, which had come to see the annual voter challenges for what they were.

New targets for the Republicans now include people whose homes were foreclosed on during the recent mortgage crisis. Apparently, if you've lost your house, you stand a good chance of losing your vote, as well.

The whole process by which the Republicans perform this voter supression, is outlined in this report, which explains the whole chain of discoveries that led reporters to figure this all out.

But perhaps the biggest eye-opener in this is the fact that many of the Judges that the Bush administration fired amid great contraversy, were judges who declined to investigate Republican challenges to votes during the 2004 elections. Apparently the republicans are punishing them for not helping them prevent more people from voting against them.

This is Your Nation on White Privilege

I didn't write this. I got it from The Red Room, but found it so compelling and utterly full of the irony of the Republicans, and the way they reason their way into self-contradiction, that I had to share it. Tim Wise not only hits the nail on the head with why these hypocrites should not be trusted, but he pretty much completely demolishes any notion that McCain and Palin are honorable people who are who they try to market themselves as. So please enjoy this. I am going to look up relevant links to all the facts listed here, which will take time, so keep checking in from time to time as they are added.


This is Your Nation on White Privilege
by Tim Wise
9/13/08


For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it,perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while if you're black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school, requires it), you are a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American institutions.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do -- like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives close to Russia -- you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because suddenly your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36 minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and then Harvard Business school, and yet, still be seen as just an average guy (George W. Bush) while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then to Harvard Law, makes you "uppity," and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.) and that's OK, and you're cut out to be president, but if you're black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."

White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you ever sold drugs.

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you "dangerously naive and immature."

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because a lot of white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

A Heartbeat away!

Think Sarah Palin is ready to be Vice president -- or potentially the President?
When asked her opinion of the recent government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Palin ignorantly stated that the two had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers,” which shows a basic ignorance of what were not government programs, but private corporations!

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are privately owned banks that were no burden at all to taxpayers. As the federal government takes them over, they will now become our burden. This basic ignorance of these two well-known institutions, and Palin's ignorant comments about them should concern anyone who votes for McCain. Do we want someone in the white house who is so ignorant that they don't even know the basic facts of a currently in-the-news organization?

Of course, what happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not unlike what happened in the Savings and Loan crisis in the late 1980s. Guess who was receiving bribe money from Charles Keating during that scandal, and publicly rebuked by the senate back then? You guessed it -- John McCain! Can we really trust this guy, who helped bring about one of the costliest financial scandals in US history, and who willingly accepted bribe money and attempted to obstruct justice? Because of people like McCain accepting bribes to lobby on behalf of financial criminals, US taxpayers had to shell out 160 billion dollars. Neil Bush, son of former president George H. Bush, alone, cost taxpayers 1.6 billion dollars!

In the Savings and loan Scandal, McCain was cleared of impropriety, but publicly condemned for exercising poor judgement. What does this speak of his character, even now? He makes poor judgements, apparently, and his running mate is clueless. What a great combination!

Palin is a Religious nut-job, plain and simple!

I'm not going to hide behind any careful wording here, because it's not really neccesary. The title says exactly what any reasonable person will conclude after they see the evidence I present.

But first, let's go back a few months and see what happened in the press when someone commented about Barack Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. As you will remember, Wright made a few statements that can be considered highly charged and inflamatory rhetoric. Wright said things that a lot of people think, and which he presented as opinions, as opposed to what God was telling him to say. In fact, he pretty much never claimed to be God's mouthpiece when making these statements. For example:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people... God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In it's context, there really isn't anything insane about this rhetoric. He's merely stating a political opinion, and using facts and opinions. This is not something that we can really point out as evidence of insanity on Wright's part, or Obama's part, for attending his church. The plight of Americans of african heritage is pretty well documented and lived by millions of people. Wright, and many other Americans of African ancestry are pretty well justified in their anger, and are entitled to these opinions.

As we remember, the media took this story and essentially condemned Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright, to the extent that Obama had to publicly denounce him. Well, let's hope the media is fair to Obama, and takes an honest look at Sarah Palin, because old video of her at her church reveals something that should be considered far more contraversial, and perhaps reveals that her beliefs are quite insane. The videos come from the official Wasilla Assembly Of God Church website, and when they showed up on You Tube, the church took them down. A direct link to their online video library is here.

You can watch some of the video of Palin addressing her church over at the Huffington Post. I mean, she literally tells these people that getting an oil pipeline built is God's will, and that the Alaskan government can only do good when the people are "right with God". Okay, maybe that's not too contraversial. Lots of reasonable people in America talk that way. Hold on, there's more.

Her church holds weekly prophecy sessions, and in this video, Palin learns that we're living in the final days, before the end times, and that the Iraq war is God's will. Scary stuff. Lots of fundamentalist nut-jobs believe this stuff. Do we really want to have this person one heartbeat away from the presidency? I mean, we just spent 8 years having George W. Bush, who believes many of the same idiotic things, ruin this nation's economy, world alliances, and cheapen the constitution.

Oh, so you don't think that's so bad? OKay, watch this video of Palin's church, as these people act like lunatics running amock in an insane asylum.

Think Palin has normal beliefs now? Think this church, which she is still a proud member of, is a normal church, full of normal average folks? Want to see a future vice president or potentially a president roll around on the floor, mumbling gibberish, and foaming at the mouth? Better yet -- think foreign diplomats would be amused by it if she did it for them while they were visiting her in the White House?

Let's get real, folks. Palin is a fundamentalist whack-tard, as are all people whose churches teach this end-days prophecy shit, and who do the Jesus-boogie on the floor while speaking in tongues. It is insane behavior, period. No sane individuals do this kind of stuff, or believe that kind of prophecy crap. The press needs to air these videos, to be fair to Obama, because of the lynching he got for what Rev. Wright said. Rev. Wright may have pissed off some white people when he made his remarks, but at least he didn't jiggle around on the floor like someone getting holy shock-treatments from the lord. Be fair. Show Palin's church to the world so everyone can be fully informed about McCain's Vice Presidential pick.