Nice to see so much money so wisely invested

By now, you all know that the Creation "Museum" has plans to build what they think will be a full-size replica of the mythical Noah's Ark, in order to fleece the drooling, uneducated rubes, of whom there are an unlimited supply. Setting aside exactly how he knows this replica will be authentic (hey, maybe the original had racing stripes — were you there?), it occurs to me that this could be a prime opportunity to do some actual science.

The first thing that should be done is that the ship should not have any modern construction methods brought to bear. The whole thing must be assembled by one old man (it's unlikely we'll find a 600-year old, but we'll split the difference and hire a septuagenarian) using nothing but pitch and hand tools. (Gen. 6:14) Next, assemble all the animals as described in Genesis, and tow the monstrosity out into the middle of the Atlantic, where it will be left for ten months without any resupplying while all of the animals are cared for by a crew of four men and four women inhabiting a grand total of three decks. Assuming the ship floats at all, we'll see who's alive at the end of that time. Deal?

Oh, what's that? This isn't a scientific enterprise at all, but a theme attraction? But gosh, isn't the whole sales pitch of Answers in Genesis that science is really on their side? What a fine, fine opportunity to make a real experiment out of all this. Just think of the look on that crusty old fellow Dawkins' face when it's all been proved! He'll be crying into his tea and scones, the blighter! Praise Jesus.

You know, take a minute to think of what $24.5 million would mean to — oh, take your pick. Research in childhood leukemia. Feeding the homeless. Getting people clean and sober and helping them with job training. Christians go on and on about how much more they're about the milk of human kindness and charity than anyone else. I don't see anyone being helped by this at all, except Ken Ham and Ken Ham's checking account. Like so many in the evangelical world, he plays multiple choice with his holy book.

I love love LOVE the WhirledNutDaily!

Apparently, the success of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows "renews concerns that children are being lured to Satan." After "concerns" they left out "...among dumbshits..."

Mail...some days are better than others

"Hi name is not important. I have a comment. I saw your videos on youtube. I don't like your attacks on the christian faith. I think your program is full of shit. The Atheist Experience just what the hell is that means. As for prove, you don't need prove to believe or haven't you figured that out. Let me tell you something. Atheist is the devils work. So go ahead bad mouth god. Your community will be blowen up as long with you garbage or what ever happens. The christian faith is not to brain wash people. That's just you people spreading lies. Your community is dedicated to nothing and that how it's going to be.
The man"

Fortunately, messages like this aren't all that common. We obviously don't think this represents the bulk of religious thought...but it does demonstrate the results of insular indoctrination and poor education. While this sort of thinking isn't the norm, it's not yet completely relegated to the cast-of-"Deliverance"-minority...but someday, it will be.

In which Insane Clown Posse reveal themselves to be, in fact, insane clowns

So by now most of you who get around on these here intarweebs know that we've all been having fun with this on Facebook and elsewhere all day. There is some amusement value to be had that Insane Clown Posse, a group of shitty hip-hip poseurs, have thrown back the curtain to reveal that they are actually shitty Christian hip-hop poseurs, and it was all part of a cunning plan. Surely this takes both the realms of Christian pop culture and hip-hop culture to all new levels of metashittiness.

But what I have to thank frontman Violent J for (did the "J" stand for Jesus all this time — who knew?) is his instant creation of a new online meme, the likes of which 4chan would die for. It all comes from these hilarious lyrics to their song "Miracles"...

Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist
Y'all motherfuckers lying and
getting me pissed.

Pure gold. "Fuckin' [insert any noun you can think of], how do they work?" And atheists now have a new meme with which we can mock fundamentalists for pretty much the rest of our lives. "Fuckin' flagellum, how does it work?" "Fuckin' trees, how do they work?" See? This shit practically writes itself, yo.

Praise Jesus and pass the Pringles!

There is, I suppose, a certain breed of believer with whom there is no point in talking or engaging in any way. They just float around in Happyland with wide eyes and big smiles on their faces, impervious to any incursions by reality. Of course, they often feel compelled to contact us and share the "good news" of their delusions. Take this mail we got today (the rampant misspellings here can be attributed to ESL).

the one way to find out that God eksist, is to lay all your soul and heart to find him. and when you find him, you will see the world different, and see the truth.
but your an atheist so i know that you never will see the world through a different perspektive.

thats the way to find god

Ooo, got us on the ropes there. You may wonder why, since folks like this seem convinced that we're unwilling to see the world through a "different perspektive," they even bother to write us at all, but it's easy to understand when you realize that remarks like this are the defense mechanism of a believer who wants to pat himself on the back for doing his bit to "witness" to the godless while at the same time preemptively shielding himself from any responses he lacks the intellectual muscle to understand or rebut.

So occasionally, I think it'll be fun to reply to one of these, and I do.

It always amuses us when believers write to us to tell us we "will never see the world through a different perspective," because it means they clearly haven't figured out that most of us came from a religious upbringing. Furthermore, in our experience, it is almost always believers who refuse to see the world through any "perspective" that isn't centered on their God. When they accuse of this, it is something psychologists call "projection".

We are perfectly happy to look at other perspectives, but — and here is the important part — they must be rational perspectives, rooted in evidence. The problem with the advice you give us for "finding God" is that it is not rational. You are basically saying, "If you decide you want to believe in God, you will." But this is obvious. Anyone can fool themselves into believing whatever they wish if they are being irrational. They may even say they believe in things they really don't, simply for social acceptance, and they lose the ability to know what it is they really believe and what they don't.

To understand why your advice to us is irrational, watch as I take the exact sentence you wrote, and replace the word "God" with a number of other mythical beings. You will notice the advice works just as well for each one.

"the one way to find out that Zeus eksist, is to lay all your soul and heart to find him. and when you find him, you will see the world different, and see the truth."

"the one way to find out that Shiva eksist, is to lay all your soul and heart to find him. and when you find him, you will see the world different, and see the truth."

"the one way to find out that The Great Pumpkin eksist, is to lay all your soul and heart to find him. and when you find him, you will see the world different, and see the truth."

"the one way to find out that Sparkles, the Magic Fairy Unicorn eksist, is to lay all your soul and heart to find him. and when you find him, you will see the world different, and see the truth."

You see, it is all exactly the same. So, assuming you do not believe in Zeus or Sparkles the Unicorn, I hope you understand how this can hardly be good advice for distinguishing what's true from what's false.

The simple fact is that your beliefs, and the way you think people should decide what to believe in, are irrational. And you do not even respect the claims of your own religious beliefs as much as we do, because you are simply willing to accept them with a bare minimum of serious thought, while we insist on giving them very serious thought indeed.

So, do you think any of that sank in at all? Do you think the guy even heard a word I said? Let's check his reply...

hello again i will thank you for your answer:-)

Its important to see from your perspective also
because not every human do not see the world like i do.

i will not try to make you beliving, but if you change your mind somtimes God is always there. and i will say you that Love of God is bigger then you can imagine.;-)

(ps. love is the answer to all the mysteris in the bible. and its the only place evil can not find)

Thank you fore reading:-):-)
:-)God is Love:-)

Aw, isn't that sweet. All those smileyfaces. It's like he really wanted to drive home how completely unencumbered by actual brain activity his empty little head is, bless him.

Of course, he gave no indication he saw my perspective, or that he ever had any intention of doing so, or would know how to even if he did want to. He gives no indication that he engages in the trying task of thinking at all, at any time, about any subject, including his religion, which he simply allows himself to bask in the emotional euphoria of like someone who's just fired up an especially awesome blunt. Religion is indeed the opiate — or THC — of the masses, everyone, and it comes in dime bags. I'm guessing our correspondent has the munchies something fierce.

Ray Comfort recovers World's Stupidest Christian™ title from Denyse O'Leary

Just in case you were worried. See how much pure, unadulterated Raytardation you can catalog in this single passage.

Evolution has no explanation for man's beginning. Some of its believers think that perhaps there was a big bang, but they don't know where the materials came from for it to take place. They don't know what was in the beginning, but they are certain that there was no God. They believe the scientific absurdity that life rose out of non-life. It was simply a case of evolution-did-it.

Truly, I'm amazed the guy survives from day to day with such a profound lack of basic intelligence.

Here's more, if you think your poor skull can take it.

McLeroy's moronity gets press across the pond

Just in time for the end of his SBOE career, Texas' moron du jour Don McLeroy is profiled in this piece in the Times. Unlike the mealy-mouthed faux journalism of the US, where everyone is expected to play nice and all views no matter how foolish are to be accorded "respect," McLeroy here is unambiguously painted as a pants-on-head ignorant ideologue openly attempting to politicize education. Just another reason to be grateful he's been shown the door.

"I love science," he protests. Of course you do, Mac. Like priests love kids.

It ain't just Rush and Pat

Seriously, how primitive in its development does one's poor little brain stem have to be, to be the kind of person who interprets, in this day and age, natural disasters as some form of divine wrath? Seriously, I can understand cave-dwelling hominids cowering in their caves from a thunderstorm thinking this way. But in a 21st century civilized, technological, post-Enlightenment society? Get on board the short bus, tardboy!

Who else can we add to this parade of thermostupid? Oh, how about the reliably batshit crazy Brannon Howse? Here we see Brannon exercising his considerable prophecy skills to predict God's next meteorological snit.

Brannon believes America may very well see a serious crisis this week such as flooding in the North East for Obama's treatment of Israel in the past few days and particularly for his treatment of Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Why does Brannon say this?

Because Brannon is a paste-eating fuckheaded moron, that's why. The above was posted March 30. Anyone remember the news reports of flooding in the northeast the following week? Nope, me neither.

Denyse O'Leary supplants Ray Comfort as World's Stupidest Christian™

After holding the title courageously for most of his adult life, Ray Comfort has been forced to relinquish his unofficial designation of World's Stupidest Christian™. Meet the newly crowned title-holder, Denyse O'Leary, whose risible record of attempted evolution denial has leveled up into heretofore unexplored realms of awesomeness with this quoted passage, which simply must be read to be believed. Warning: you will lose about 20 IQ points just reading this, but the fact you won't be able to stop laughing for a week should, one hopes, compensate.

Congratulations, Denyse, the new reigning World's Stupidest Christian™! Take a bow.

Just says it all, don't it...

(...sigh) Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

It should be noted that this level of illiterate paste-eating chowderheadedness is not always indicated in home schooling situations. In fact, you'll hear from a number of progressive, atheist parents on the TFN blog who have chosen, wisely, to homeschool because Texas is doing is damnedest to turn public schools here into little Christian houses of indoctrination. If I were a parent, I'd homeschool, absolutely. How else could I be sure my kid was getting a sound grounding in history and science, free from right-wing ideological revisionism? But it's true that a significant amount of homeschooling is done by fundamentalist Christian parents seeking to destroy their kids' minds and future opportunities by entrenching that very ideology. And I think that's what we're seeing the hilarious after-effects of here.

HT: TFN Insider

The intellectual entirety of the Tea Party movement in one screencap

Cue the fail at the Teabagger Convention: Here's cover girl Sarah Palin, after banking 100 large to give a speech slamming overspending and greed, answering one of the pre-screened questions by looking at notes written on her hand.

As a number of folks have already remarked, most of us were a little more subtle about this kind of cheating in junior high school, for chrissakes. And 53% of Republicans think she's more qualified to sit in the White House than Obama!? Look, whatever you think of the man's policies, he's definitely not a complete paste-eating chowderhead. I knew this country was into breeding the stupid, but I'm always astounded at how polluted the gene pool has really gotten.

Global Warming Denial and God Belief

I've often wondered why the religious nuts are most often the most vocal against global warming. On the surface, it seems incongruous. When the topic is God, they prop up the flimsiest evidence and put their fingers in their ears, yelling "la la la" when there is solid evidence against supernatural belief. When the topic is global warming, however, these same people ignore the evidence and claim to be highly educated skeptics.

Rush Limbaugh has explained the connection. After identifying himself as a creationist he said, "I simply cannot accept the fact that we would be created to do things that would destroy our environment..." Sadly, such a person would never ponder the possibility that they might be wrong. Or that their own denial is part of the problem.

On both topics of God and global warming, their minds are made up.

A day without abusing the Texas SBOE is like a day without sunshine

What never ceases to amaze me about the Texas State Board of Education is the dazzling arrogance with which they blindly soldier on in the face of almost total loathing from everyone in the state who isn't a rabid fundagelical teabagger. This is a pretty conservative state, gang, but when you get an editorial like this from the newspaper in Denton — just a short drive north from the DFW Metroplex, so it's not exactly the tree-hugging lefty Sodom that is Austin — you know you've gone so far over the top in your demagoguery that you've literally lapped yourself and gotten jammed up your own ass. The lead to this piece is pure win, and the rest ain't bad at all. All you have to do to show how dire things are at the SBOE is simply to describe what they do.

Being ignorant is nothing to be ashamed of, but it is nothing to be particularly proud of either. A large and disruptive segment of the Texas State Board of Education is not only ignorant — a state that we all share at various times and on various subjects — it is proudly and aggressively ignorant, which goes beyond simple ignorance and ventures into the territory of malignant stupidity.

Gold. Of course, the defining characteristic of the extremist ideologue is to take the fact that everybody hates you as validation of your perfect and utter rightness in all things. After all, as Dan McLeroy has so bravely said, somebody's gotta stand up to alla dem expertses!

At the Texas SBOE, the fail flows like a river

If you've been following the Texas Freedom Network's blog, odds are your heart rate has been boosted to lethal levels over the insanity of the Texas State Board of (Mis)Education's attempts to rewrite American history so that social studies textbooks reflect right-wing Christianist agitprop. (McCarthy was a hero, Phyllis Schlafly is as important as the Founding Fathers, and the Civil Rights Movement was really overrated.) This is dangerous stupidity. And the degree to which these assclowns are so wedded to wingnut ideology that they cannot do basic fact checking is illustrated by the revelations in this article. Just go read it for yourself. It's a jaw-dropping level of idiocy. Clearly, there is no bottom for Terri Leo and her ship of fools to scrape.

The most persuasive evidence I've yet seen that there may not only be a God, but that he dearly, truly loves us!

This.

Seriously, Jon Stewart, Colbert, Rachel Maddow, Olbermann must not be able to stop dancing with glee! This is rapture!

Ill-educated fools in charge of education

Yes, it's another Don McLeroy post. This Washington Monthly piece is currently making the rounds. If you haven't seen it, you aren't aware of just how bad things are in Texas.

Seriously, this will make you ill. Is there no depth to the ideological delusions cretins like this want to enshrine in our schools? Don't answer that, it's rhetorical.

In honor of McLeroy, and inspired by one of PZ's headlines today, I thought I'd create a little article of anticreowear, for all your scientifically sartorial needs. I plan to wear mine proudly. Those of you obsessed with the whole "civility" thing will clutch your pearls and admonish me sternly about it, I'm sure. Go ahead and take your concern as noted in advance. Read the attached article — shit, just read the first two paragraphs — and you'll understand, I hope, why I'm beyond any pretense of civility with the likes of McLeroy.

Scientist portrayal in Avatar

I've seen Avatar twice now. I already reviewed it on my personal blog. I didn't love it exactly, but I had to see it a second time because, despite its flaws, I knew my seven year old would think it was awesome. He did.

However, I do want to add one quick thing about it. In the past, I've complained often about the way movies portray scientists as closed minded eggheads who don't understand the way the world really works, and skeptics are regarded as blind fools who wouldn't recognize evidence that's whacking them over the head with a cricket bat. For more of this discussion, see the Atheist Experience archive, episode #530 about "Skeptical straw men in fiction."

One thing that Avatar really has going for it is that the scientist characters were clearly right. The military wanted to charge in with guns blazing; the scientists just wanted to study the planet's ecosystem and establish diplomatic relations. The scientists emphatically were not egotists filled with hubris who were tampering with forces of nature they did not understand. And when they talked nerd talk, it's presented as charming. They got geeked out and excited about the stuff they were seeing, and this was treated with affection for new discoveries. When Grace visits a new part of the world in order to try to treat her serious wounds, the first thing she says is "I have to take some samples!"

So the movie itself was thoroughly implausible all the way through, and the political aspects were annoyingly oversimplified. But treating scientists as real good guys and giving them believable reactions counts for something in my book.

Okay, so now that we're all agreed we don't play nice...

Via PZ and WikiLeaks, in case you hadn't seen this bit of timeless comedy gold, you can now download Kent Hovind's entire "doctoral dissertation" for "Patriot Bible University," a farcical Christian outfit housed in a doublewide offering correspondence courses. If the above is an example of what "Patriot Bible University" considers an acceptable lead-in to a dissertation, then let's just say the whole preposterous charade that is fundamentalist "education" is even more hilarious than you think.

While we're on Hovind (and it's worth noting that this remains one of our most trafficked posts ever), I'd like to add a rider to remarks that Kazim and several commenters made in the preceding post. I agree it's most important to attack ideas and not the people expressing them — but only to a point. Yes, the ad hominem attack is a fallacy, and is most commonly used simply to score cheap shots (and yes, I've been guilty of that one), or when the arguer has run out of intellectual steam and can't muster rebuttals to strong points made by his opponent.

But this is a very different thing from attacking people when they have demonstrated, by their statements or actions, that they are not merely wrong but bad and foolish people. Kent Hovind is a case in point. First off, I don't see anything unacceptable about calling a person who is convinced to the core of his being that dinosaurs walked the earth alongside humans an "idiot." This is not name calling, but merely descriptive, in the same way I have pointed out that Richard Dawkins' referring to Ray Comfort, the World's Stupidest Christian™, as an "ignorant fool" and my referring to him by his unofficial title of World's Stupidest Christian™ are not insults but descriptors*. Listen to Ray talk and read his writings, and his stupidity is on raw display. It cannot be denied any more than you could deny getting wet while standing in a thunderstorm. There is simply no way to refer to him other than to call him what he is: a stupid, ignorant fool.

Hovind is a man who is not merely ignorant but arrogant and entitled. He is convinced he is above the law, and remains unrepentant even when a ten-year jail sentence served to show him he was wrong on that point. Moreover, he has had an impact on a number of sycophantic followers, whom he has taught to lie and prevaricate just as he does. Read the comments from Hovind's defenders in that old post of ours, and you'll see them spouting the usual run of tortured, self-serving falsehoods to claim Hovind's conviction on rather blatant tax fraud was Christian persecution at the hands of a Satanic government. So, QED, Kent Hovind has significantly damaged not merely the intellectual but the moral development of hundreds if not thousands of people. He has caused demonstrable harm.

He is also, in his self absorption, utterly cold and heartless to those who really do care about him. Listen to the audio clip between Hovind and his wife Jo. Listen to her try to express her feelings to him, her concern over the rightness and wrongness of the situation they find themselves in, and then listen to him shut her down with icy finality. He's right, he's always right. Because he's God's wingman. He doesn't need to change, he's perfect. It's she who needs to "advance." You have to wonder if we witness, in that exchange, the entire dynamic of fundamentalist Christian marriage in microcosm. Is this really a world in which unfeeling, authoritarian men are simply deaf to any of their wives' emotional and moral concerns? Sure seems that way.

So, yes, I will always concentrate on attacking arguments first. But I will not refrain from condemning people worthy of condemnation. So go laugh at Kent Hovind's "dissertation," and then laugh at Kent. Because he's an ignorant, arrogant, entitled, cold-blooded, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, felonious piece of shit. Quote me.

---

*Speaking scientifically, I know I cannot prove that Ray is necessarily the world's stupidest Christian. There may well be many who are much much stupider. But if so, then they — unlike Ray, who proudly flies his stupid flag in public at every opportunity he gets, many of which he instigates himself for the attention — have the sense to stay out of the spotlight about it. Which, in turn, would make them smarter than Ray by just that much. So perhaps it can be proved that Ray's the stupidest after all.

Bogus miracles, fake news, intellectual and moral cowardice

Okay, this is fun.

The other day we got an email from a fellow who described himself as an atheist, but who professed he was a bit taken aback by a miracle claim that had come his way, about a Florida doctor who is supposed to have prayed a man back to life. He pasted a news story into his email, and some quick Googletronic Googlefication confirmed my suspicions: that this is one of those stories making the rounds in fundagelical circles, that they email one another as a big social reinforcement exercise, but for which there are no accounts — either confirming or disconfirming — from a secular source anywhere.

I tracked the story down to one website (which probably isn't the one that originated it, but they're certainly spreading it), Australia's Catch the Fire Ministries. Here you may read the 2007 story in full. It is written in the form of a press release, but it comes from Assist News Service, one of those phony Christian "news" services that feeds press releases to the likes of the 700 Club, and probably WorldNutDaily, the AFA's One News Now, and so on. The medical "conference" at which this miracle testimony was given is — you guessed it — a "Christian doctors' conference". If it dismays you that there are people out there with at least enough going on between their ears that they can pass eight years of med school, eight years of residency, go on to become M.D.s, and who are yet gullible and nonskeptical enough to swallow bullshit about Jebus doing miracle resurrections in the ICU, it should. And really, they're everywhere.

Anyway, in response to the first comment on that page I linked to, where some dimwit tries to say that "...unbelievers will ignore the doctor’s eyewitness testimony and will cite the fact that they have never witnessed such an event," I wrote:

No, we will point out that there’s not a shred of evidence that this anecdote is true. A Christian doctor gives a testimonial in front of other Christian doctors abut praying a man back to life, and hallelujah! they believe him. Big surprise there. No religious confirmation biases at all, nosiree.

Christians have a little problem understanding that the plural of anecdote is not data.

You should not be surprised that my comment was not approved. Unlike atheist sites, many Christian sites are completely closed to comments from dissenting voices. (This is perhaps the one regard in which Ray Comfort can be said to be better than most of his ilk. But then, baiting atheists is really the only shtick Ray has.) We only turn moderation on to prevent outright spam and trolling from guys like Dennis Markuze. But we love it when guys like Seth R. in the Mormon thread, or "MrFreeThinker" drop by to mix it up.

But that isn't the most fun part. Guess what is. Catch the Fire Ministries sent me a concern-trolling evangelizing email! They wouldn't let my comment through, but they will use my email address for stuff like this. Hilarious.

May the one true living God bless you Martin, atheists and all people with His Saving Truth and Everlasting Love! (John 3:16-21)

We at Catch the Fire Ministries will keep praying for you to believe the Bible (Word of God) as the mighty Voice from Heaven that calls, “I died on the cross for you and rose from the dead to save you from eternal death, hell and destruction! Repent of your unbelief / doubt and surrender your life (past, present and future) to Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord before it is too late!”

Time is running out as we will soon stand before Him face to face as our Final Judge! (Revelation 20:11-15)

Say, 'Yes to Jesus, Yes to Heaven Forever!'

Say, 'No to Jesus, Yes to Hell Forever!'

Make the Right Choice, Your Eternal Future Depends On It!

I wrote back:

Hello, and thanks for writing.

So, it's the usual thing, in other words. Lacking evidence, Christianity must resort to threats to compel belief. Most atheists have heard this tiresome routine before, and it always makes us shake our heads sadly that you do not realize how much it confirms both how intellectually and morally adrift your religion is.

And anyway, I notice that in your zeal to evangelize you utterly failed to refute or even respond to my point. Where precisely is the evidence that this doctor prayed a man back to life? "Uh oh, gotta thump my Bible harder!" is not a way to deal with tough questions.

So, what else you got?

Martin

PS: I noticed you refused to approve my comment. The kind of cowardice that suppresses dissenting opinions and hard questions rather than addressing them is indicative not of righteousness, but insecurity and weakness.

(And before some creotard latches onto my PS, thinking he's found a "gotcha" quote exposing atheist hypocrisy about intelligent design, be aware the scientific community has addressed ID, comprehensively, and shown it to be vacuous and utterly nonscientific rubbish. It's kind of what the whole Dover trial was about.)

Christianity is peddling an inferior product. Its adherents know this, and yet they cannot allow their reason to overcome their emotional investment in the fear of death and desire for a celestial daddy who'll keep them safe from the monsters under the bed. So this is why, when you ask a tough question, many times they'll just stick their fingers in their ears and sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in a loud voice until you're done, at which point they'll switch on Witnessing Mode, ignoring everything you've said. I know the answer to my last question: they got nothin', and they'll prove it by writing me back (if they do) with just more Bible quotes, more emotional appeals, more veiled threats of the dire fate that awaits me if I reject God's "love," and ad infinitum into the moral wasteland and rhetorical cul-de-sac that is evangelism.

If they do write back, I will naturally let you know.

No! Not Sarah too!

For those of you who don't keep up with Ed Brayton's enjoyable blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, he has a funny post today featuring an excerpt from Sarah Palin's new book that does a pretty fair job of illustrating why the lady hasn't got what it takes to be elected dogcatcher let alone leader of the free world, followed by some hearty criticisms. Go read and enjoy. But I thought I'd just mention that I couldn't help being struck by one passage from the book in particular. Here's Sarah kvetching about how incredibly controlling Nicolle Wallace, Sarah's official minder on the McCain campaign, supposedly was.

But something always struck me as peculiar about the way [Wallace] recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn't have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House's homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn't do it.

ZOMG! Oh noes! Did Sarah actually use the phrase...shudder..."shout-out"!?!? Dear Lord in Hebbin, she must be an inner-city gangbanger! Somebody quick...alert Brannon Howse!

---

PS: I never cease to be amazed at the way the GOP continues to elevate Sarah Palin to rockstar status despite her consistent ineptitude and penchant for whining and casting blame on others for her shortcomings. I have a little hypothesis as to why this is so, and it goes like this (ahem): Take a look at the kinds of people who make up arch-conservatism and the radical right in America these days — you know, the teabaggers, the Glenn Beck zombies, etc. — and you'll see, in the phrasing of vintage Mad magazine, the usual gang of idiots. To wit, fundamentalist Christians whose favorite sport is their strident denial of anything in the world of politics and science that contradicts their cherished beliefs and ideologies. In their world, intellectualism, education and expertise are all bugs rather than features. They love Sarah because she represents them to a tee in her combination of intellectual mediocrity, hubris, and embarrassing lack of self-awareness or any sense of irony. Sarah famously could not name the three countries covered by NAFTA, and yet she's seriously being pushed as the Republican front-runner to challenge Obama in 2012. She's so clueless that she can actually write this in her book, about her respect for Hillary Clinton...

Compared to the guys [Clinton] squared off against, a lot of her supporters think she proved what Margaret Thatcher proclaimed, ‘If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.’

...and her fans will be so clueless that they'll read this and not immediately roll their eyes that such a remark came from the keypad of a woman who couldn't be bothered to finish out even her first term as governor. Way to get it done, Sarah!

Well, every political party gets the candidate it deserves. And the rise of Sarah Palin's superstardom, at a point in her career when she should be treated as little more than a joke whose fifteen minutes were up long ago, demonstrates just how low the formerly Grand Old Party has sunk. Yes, there are plenty of moderates in the GOP outside of the "base" who are groaning in dismay that Sarah has become the party's glamour girl and hope for the future. Heck, the rising schism has me heating up the popcorn...