For $40/year, this service will send an email to your loved ones after believers disappear in the coming rapture. There's a deadman switch that will send the messages automatically if three of the five owners don't log in every three days.

I guess I'm a believer, because I'll bet those guys are going to disappear mysteriously. The site doesn't say what happens to the money.

It might be kind of interesting to do this properly: let the designees of each individual account be notified if the account-holder doesn't log in. Might be useful for journalists, abused wives, bloggers, and other folks in fear for their lives from governments and wackos.

Over in Fallujah, Iraq, according to the Associated Press, United States Marines are handing out coins bearing Christian messages, especially that old fundy call sign, “John 3:16”, to anybody who wants one, and to lots of people who don't. That's not going over too well with the Moslem locals, as you might imagine. But at least our guys are consistent, harassing atheist soldiers more than they do Iraqis. Meanwhile the United States Air Force academy has been taken over by James Dobson's crew. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that the whole G-d blessed US military aparatus has been taken over by what I shall tactfully euphematize as “crackpot christofascist nutjobs with napalm and nukes.”

Looks like the plans to immanentize the eschaton and hasten Jesus are proceeding apace. Maybe it's time for me to repent.

For what it's worth, all my cheating on this test was done within the normally accepted parameters.

See the pic from PBS.

The Band logo on the wall is a nice touch.

Thanks, Paul K!

You may recall how Fredo Corleone Harry Reid and the rest of the clueless Democrats in the Senate enthusiastically bought into the pious shitpile of festering stinking lies and prevarications that was the testimony of Michael Mukasey, the “Good German Republican”, at his confirmation hearing for the position of Attorney General, when he swore, jawohl, that he would uphold the constitution no matter what, yessir, even unto the gates of Hell or the White House, whichever came first, cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, yah sure, you betcha, because I am a Federal Judge of Impeccable Credential and Pedigree, don't you know, and I uphold the law, and I vas not ein SS guard I don't change my stripes to fit the fashion, and blah blah blah blah blah.

And so he became the highest law officer in the land, with a pat on the back and a friendly howdy-do & welcome, hail fellow well-met, from Harry and Diane and all the other fine Presbyterians & toothless cowards in the Greatest Deliberative Body in World(tm). Alberto is gone! Michael is here! Integrity has been restored to the Department of Justice! Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, Hail Dorothy! (Senators Obama, Clinton, Dodd and Biden just happened to be out of town for the vote, how unfortunate!)

Below the fold: Recalling an old chestnut from the late lamented Chad Mitchell Trio. [Read More!]

The candidacy of that squirrel-frying huckster from Arakansas is just about over, so this is likely moot, but Wittenburg Door has a nice little report on a recent conversation between the candidate and the ponzi-scheme grifter Kenneth Copeland, who works the Christian “long con” better than anybody.

Here at Wetmachine we have a tradition of posting what the New Critics called “close readings” of arcane texts. Usually these close readings are done by Harold Feld in Tales of the Sausage Factory or by Greg Rose in Econoklastic, and most often the closely-read documents are obscure legal decrees, rulings, opinions, pronouncements, etc, originating from the Oracle at Federal Communications Commission, or they're drafts of some lobbyist-written telecommunications bill lurking in the shadows of some state legislature or congressional committee, hoping to become law while nobody's looking --although occasionally Harold treats us to a scholarly exegesis of a biblical or Talmudic text.

Over at Enter the Jabberwock, my erstwhile OpenLaszlo colleague Josh Crowley has a long-running series of close readings of illustrated tracts by the crackpot so-called “Christian” fundamentalist Jack Chick. Crowley calls these analyses “Chick Dissections”. In them he mercilessly skewers the artwork, logic and theology of individual Chick tracts. He does this in a direct, unironic voice, taking each frame of the comic book under review at face value. In other words, he does not come at them with a knowing, jaded air of sophistication and superiority. He engages them on their own terms.

When I first saw these Chick Dissections I wondered what the point was, since the comics themselves are so ineptly drawn and poorly reasoned that they basically are self-refuting; they are their own parody.

But, you know, Jack Chick is not some lone nut promulgating his paranoid ravings in photocopied pamphlets on a streetcorner to an indifferent audience of dozens. He's a lone nut promulgating his paranoid ravings to an audience of millions, some of them quite credulous, through his website and publishing empire. The fundamentalist meme, in Christian, Islamic, Hindu, or whatever form, is a present danger to civilization. Therefore Jabberwock/Crowley is right to resist it. The Chick Dissections are not to everybody's taste, but Jabberwock is providing a valuable service. And he's often quite funny. [Read More!]

By way of the great “religion watch” blog Wittenburg Door I come upon this story about Senator Chuck Grassley's investigation into megachurches :

Senator Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican whose middle name is “Mr. Accountability,” concluded a two-year investigation of big “prosperity church” ministries with a few suspicions about whether the spirit of the tax code might be in peril. So he sent out letters requesting full voluntary financial disclosure to six of those organizations–three big ones and three not so big.

The story begins with a lede that is, dare I say it, nearly Feldian?

Yes, that was the sound of 148 televangelists all trying to get through to their lawyers at the same time yesterday morning as the faxes from the Senate Finance Committee sputtered into their headquarters.

Amusingly enough, the story was written by one John Bloom, better known to some as Joe Bob Briggs. Bloom is a fascinating guy, and if you can track down the profile of him by Calvin Trillen that appeared in the New Yorker in 1986 (summarized here), you should do so. I have always cherished one line attributed to Bloom in that article: “Never start a fight with an anarchist. He do not care. He flat out do not care.” Bloom writes for Wittenburg Door under both names-- commentary as Joe Bob, reporting as John. And clearly he do care, in this case.

John of Wetmachine says check it out.

What is the right name for the American political group that finds the constitution to be outdated for today's world, political correctness an object of derision, civil liberties to be dangerous, and seeks to abandon the ideas of the national founding fathers (as well as I imagine the majority of our actual parents and grandparents).

The media refers to such folks as “conservatives”, but I can't find any sense in which that is true.

Some of this group are called “Neo-Conservatives.” This deliciously oxymoronic term specifically refers to the students of Leo Straus, who believed that the intellectual elite needed to deceive the masses through a culture of fear in order to perpetuate ... well, to perpetuate something. It's never been clear to me what. Anyway, it's not right to assume that every Bushie is a Neo-Con, or even a student of philosophy. And besides, what do you call the deceived masses that support them? Are they also Neo-Cons?

“Republican” is not right either. I don't think that every one of today's Republicans subscribes to this radicalism, and the ideas are certainly not true of historical leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, or Alexander Hamilton.

“Right wing” may be relatively true, but it isn't very specific. Same for “Radical”.

Ironically, the ideas of the early 1800's “Radical Republican” movement in Britain might be described today as... “liberal.”

Current usage of the term “idiot” seems apt. But again, historically this term was used to refer to people whose mental development was inhibited or disordered from the norm. My experience is that many such folks are happy, caring, sensitive, sincere, and eager to be helpful. None of this seems to apply.

Seriously, what do we call the putsch against the last 300 years of liberal ideas such as the rule of law and protection of the individual?

I don't know why I'm so fascinated and charmed by this stuff...

Neat thing built on Laszlo, and links to news of Laszlo funding. Cool stuff.

And then... bam... a comparison to a product from a Croquet company (Qwaq).