Our Wacky World—4/6/2014

There was a big mudslide and a number of people were killed. Let's take the story up close and personal...

"Right after the huge slide event of Jan. 25, 2006, Daniel Miller revisited the area. He saw that instead of people moving out, five more new homes...were being built. Even as they could still hear the huge tree trunks in the recent slide snapping in two, more nails were being pounded in. Ironically, a new 2006 law in the State of Washington had gone into effect prohibiting the building of more homes in danger areas such as this."

So far so good. People rebuilding in the path of the next disaster, tempting fate a second time, nothing new about that…

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"...one of the main activists protesting the 2006 zoning law to prevent runaway building in hazardous areas was Thomas Satterlee. He was one of the leaders of the activist anti-government “Patriot” movement, organizing armed militias in the area to fight back against the “big bad Government.” In the 1990s, he tried to declare the area as “Freedom County” and hoped to run it without any oversight from state or federal law"

"...he and his family are among the missing and presumed dead."

Oh good, one of those guys. Guess the government can't touch him now. (Skepticblog)

But I know you're dying to hear it—the even more pathetic backstory to the backstory...

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"By the time it petered out in the late 2000s, Satterlee and his fellow secessionists had announced their independence from Snohomish County (based on a petition that drew more than 12,000 signatures), appointed a sheriff (a former FBI agent who legally changed his name to “Fnu Lnu”) and demanded that Snohomish officials halt governance of the roughly 1,000-square-mile area that they claimed as their own."

"Lnu made assurances that he did not intend to carry a firearm in carrying out his new duties, but Snohomish County officials grew more concerned that the group could pose a threat of violence, particularly after two Freedom County supporters showed up at a county councilman’s home in the dead of night to demand $750 million."

Comedy gold.. (NBC)

Update: Check out Satterlee's twitter account.

"When even [senator Dianne Feinstein], who's never met a national security program she didn't like, says it's bad, it's bad. ...Feinstein is the dysfunctional mother who insists her national security boys would never do anything wrong. But the Senate is always quick to protect themselves from abuses they tolerate for ordinary citizens"

Crooks & Liars


Fake bomb detectors arise from the grave in Romania:

"Maybe I'm wrong but a scientific guy at the same level of competence like me should disprove me, not the BBC."

BBC

"After investigators had initially 'laughed at' the claims linking the [titanium] golf clubs to the fires, research led to hard evidence that there was indeed a connection."

Bleacher Report


God is on Russia's side:

'What gave Buchanan a thrill up his leg this time was Putin's defense of the annexation of Crimea, wherein the autocrat declared Russia to be a Christian nation. 

'"Heard any Western leader, say, Barack Obama, talk like that lately?" Buchanan wrote.'

TPM

Putin also insulted George Bush's dog. What a man.

It'll always be happy hour in Georgia:

"The bill allows people with a weapons permit to carry loaded guns into bars, as long as they do not consume alcohol — although the bill does not say how that caveat would be enforced."

Crooks & Liars


Another "celebrity" talking about moving somewhere else:

'[Steven] Seagal, a Republican who is thought to be a relatively close acquaintance of Putin partly due to their shared love of martial arts, said that Putin is "one of the great living world leaders" and that he "would like to consider him as a brother."'

'Seagal also said that although he loves the United States, it is possible — "sometime" — that he will follow the lead of French movie star Gerard Depardieu and take Russian citizenship.'

He can hang out there with Eric Snowden.

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. (The Moscow Times)

Jesus cannot abide a tomboy:

"You're probably aware that Timberlake Christian School is a religious, Bible believing institution providing education in a distinctly Christian environment.. We believe that unless Sunnie as well as her family clearly understand that God has made her female and her dress and behavior need to follow suit with her God-ordained identity, that TCS is not the best place for her future education"

Crooks & Liars

'The 24-year-old "continued to perform this experience as she grew up assuming, as mentioned, that 'everyone could do it.'" This is how she described her out-of-body experiences: "She was able to see herself rotating in the air above her body, lying flat, and rolling along with the horizontal plane. She reported sometimes watching herself move from above but remained aware of her unmoving “real” body."'

Popular Science

Our Wacky World—3/7/2014

"Newly Discovered Piece Of Cheese 
Is Older Than Jesus"

Check it out—I can put a huge headline up at the top just like CNN does now. (Popular Science)

So Putin the First wants to annex the Sudetenland. Yes, despite all the bitching about Godwin's "law" the analogy is very apt in this case. Needless to say, the Conservatives have a love/hate relationship with him:

Probably not

'The American right admires Putin. They want to gush over how manly and strong he is while simultaneously calling him a tyrant. That’s where all this “wrestles bears” bullshit comes from. Like Putin, the American right only has one definition of masculinity and that’s the tendency to be authoritarian and violent. If Putin were an American politician, he would be a wildly popular conservative. He hates all the right people, strikes the macho pose whenever possible, advocates for theocratic government and is a hyper-nationalist. He’d fit in perfectly.'

What's not to love? (Dispatches From The Culture Wars)


Ted Nugent is also a liar, among other things:

"I’ve been a cop in Lake County, Michigan, since 1982 thereabout. I conduct federal raids with the DEA and ATF and U.S. Marshals and the FBI and Texas Rangers and heroes of law enforcement."

None of which is true. (Dispatches From The Culture Wars)


This is rather long but fascinating—I can't decide which of a dozen paragraphs to quote so I'll use the own that takes a swipe at an evangelist:

'In 2009, she published The Narcissism Epidemic, a follow-up written with another of Baumeister’s former students, W. Keith Campbell. Twenge claimed that narcissism among Americans was rising at the same rate as obesity, and documented how the mantras of the self-esteem movement had begun infiltrating churches, with God himself being redrawn in our new self-obsessed image. Pastor Joel Osteen, for example, preaches in Lakewood, Houston, at the biggest church in America. “God didn’t create you to be average,” he tells his congregation. “You were made to excel.”'

Yeah, god wants everyone to be above average. Makes sense to exceptional Americans. But there's much more to the article... (Medium)

"NOTE: This is NOT a political issue, but A MATTER OF SELF-DEFENSE and a time that TRUE PATRIOTS MUST STAND !!! Most of us are not able to get close enough to Obama to capture and remove him, but some are. This REWARD is to encourage all who have the ability and opportunity to CAPTURE and permanently REMOVE Obama from the White House and Washington -- to do so."

In order to access the FaceBook page you have to have an account. I guess he doesn't realize how evil FB is. (Crooks & Liars)


Psychic fraudster finally sees the light—in a courtroom:

'Looking frail and downtrodden, Marks, 62, of Fort Lauderdale, sobbed as she apologized to her victims, her family and everyone she hurt, saying her former clients had been some of her best and closest friends. "At the time, I didn't realize what I was doing was wrong," she said, begging the judge for mercy. "Now, I realize that I caused a lot of hurt and disappointment.'

So she didn't realize until now that this was wrong:

"...Marks also exploited her grief after Deveraux's 8-year-old son, Sam, died in an ATV accident in October 2005. Marks tormented her with claims that the child was not in heaven and that Marks could transfer the child's soul or spirit into the body of another person, reuniting mother and son 'to keep him out of the flames...'"

Scum. (Sun-Sentinel)

Egyptian General performs familiar sounding miracle:

"'I defeated AIDS with the grace of my God at the rate of 100% . And I defeated hepatitis C,' said Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abdel-Atti, head of the Cancer Treatment and Screening center."

"'I will take the AIDS from the patient and I will nourish the patient on the AIDS treatment. I will give it to him like a skewer of Kofta to nourish him,' Abdel-Atti said, referring to a dish made of ground meat. 'I will take it away from him as a disease and give it back to him in the form of a cure,' he said. 'This is the greatest form of scientific breakthrough.'"

CNN


Remember that expensive high school football stadium in Texas? "Which one?," you may ask. Well:

"A nearly $60-million, taxpayer-funded football stadium in Allen, Texas, north of Dallas, was closed indefinitely this week, 18 months after opening, because of 'extensive cracking' along the concrete concourse, district officials said."

LA Times

Our Wacky World—2/22/2014

This was on the CNN front page the other day:

"The 13 Most Influential Candy Bars of All Time--We interviewed candy experts and historians to determine which bars made the biggest impact on the chocolate-bar industry—and the world at large."

So Bill Nye "debated" Ken Ham about evolution. Everyone predicted a disaster for science based on past experience (hint: creationists never "debate," they just do a Gish Gallop). And the winner was...

"Ham’s own Answers in Genesis website so far has not posted anything crowing about their great victory–just a bland recounting of the points Ken raised without a summation of who they think was the winner! The PR-savvy Discovery Institute website, which always comes back the next day after a debate bragging about how they 'won', instead is criticizing Ham for making them look bad with all his ridiculous YEC ["young earth creationist", i.e., the Earth is is only 6000 years old blah blah] nonsense. Now they have a post redirecting our attention to their own Stephen Meyer debating Charles Marshall, trying to steer away from what they call 'Ham’s fiasco'. Even Pat Robertson scolded Ham for making Christianity look stupid! But the real clincher was a poll on Christian Today, a site that should favor Ham. As of their last posting, their poll shows Nye won 92% to 8%!"

Unlike Sarah Palin, Bill allowed himself to be coached. Please note that this is not the end of the bitchfest. There are plenty of people who are still pissed off at him and the commentators supporting him, although the initial furor seems to be dissipating into "well, it could have been worse" if not outright admission that maybe it was a good thing after all—for once. (Skepticblog)

"Norwegian convicted mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has threatened a hunger strike if prison authorities don't upgrade his video game system to a PlayStation 3, among other demands. 'You've put me in hell...and I won't manage to survive that long. You are killing me.'"

He's had trouble settling in all along as I mentioned in an earlier post. (The Register)

"The $10 bill, as everyone knows, features President Alexander Hamilton -- undeniably one of our greatest presidents [sic] and most widely recognized for establishing the country's financial system"

The last part of that statement is correct. The rest is not. (CNN)

Click and read the bigfoot article

It's that time of the year again— the sheer comedy gold that is the annual UFO conference:

'"Patty Greer was a professional musician for decades, playing the harp and piano and singing with bands. In 2004 she trusted the wrong dentist and was poisoned severely by mercury fillings. For years she was seeking a healing miracle, and when everything failed she headed to the UK Crop Circles. Laying in Crop Circles day after day she developed (what appeared to be) a telepathic communication with the Circlemakers." With no previous training or experience in film making, she says that she became a filmmaker when she had an out-of-body experience in a crop circle in 2007, and she has visited over 100 crop circles. She later found out that the first Crop Circle she visited was fake, but she had extraordinary experiences in it, anyway.'

It just gets better from there. Note that this is merely day three of a four day convention so there are more posts on the blog. (BadUFOs)

We have a winner for the most clueless enthusiast award—a hemp oil fanatic:

"Cell phones are just one of the culprits. Look at studies of cancer rates of people who live near and around high tension power lines. I myself did not understand the importance of all this until a friend of mine cured his heart condition by having two electrical problems in his home repaired." 

"Can someone out there give me a rational explanation as to why fluoride seems to be in everything these days and please do not call me and try to tell me it’s to prevent tooth decay? Did Hitler not use fluoride in his death camps to keep the inmates calm so they would not try to escape or revolt?" 

"After studying all this scientific jargon, I had learned what amounted to nothing. But the [hemp] oil continued to work the miracles so who was I to question it."

Anything that defies logic is true. And there's a lot more of it on that page. (Phoenix Tears)

Oh ye of little faith:

"Jamie Coots died of a bite during a snake-handling ceremony. Coots was...one of the stars of National Geographic’s reality TV show Snake Salvation."

JREF

"Japanese zookeepers successfully capture fake gorilla"

CNN

"Parents killed girl by making her drink too much grape soda"

CNN

"Pennsylvania Man Wins $5 Million After Relatives Push Him Over in Portable Toilet Leaving Him A Quadriplegic"

Turley's Blog

"Bills was arrested in Indiana and police say that the video camera showed him splashing the dog cages with kerosene. However, the sprinkler system quickly put out the fire. Between the video camera and the sprinkler system, this does not seem like a particularly well-thought out arson conspiracy."

Turley's Blog

And here I thought only Glenn Beck did this sort of thing (snort):

"Subscribers to CNN host Newt Gingrich's email list are receiving supposed insider information about cancer 'cures,' the Illuminati, Obama's 'Secret Mistress', a 'weird' Social Security 'trick,' and Fort Knox being 'empty.' While Gingrich's team has previously claimed that they work hard to 'vet' the organizations they rent the email list to, they have repeatedly violated their own apparently low standards. 

"Gingrich Productions has sent at least 15 sponsored emails for Stansberry & Associates...a disgraced financial firm that was fined $1.5 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission for engaging in 'deliberate fraud' and profiting from 'false statements.' The firm sells financial products by pushing conspiracies about the Obama administration. Founder Porter Stansberry recently said it's 'fucking bullshit' that people get upset at him for using slurs like 'nigger' and 'fag' when he's 'not the least bit bigoted.'

BTW, Newt demanded that secretary of state resign after saying that global warming was the greatest threat to America or some such crap. (Media Matters)