February 1, 2006 by s.z.

'SPECIAL ALERT! NBC to mock the Crucifixion of Christ' This very special alert comes to us from Don Wildmon and the American Family Association (emphasis in the original). Dear World o'Crap, NBC, fresh from giving us the anti-Christian The Book of Daniel, has decided to hit back at the Christian community by presenting an episode of Will and Grace which mocks the crucifixion of Christ.  On the April 13 edition of NBC's Will and Grace, Britney Spears will appear as a Christian conservative sidekick to Sean Hayes' homosexual character, Jack, who hosts his own talk show. Jack's fictional network, Out TV, is bought by a Christian TV network, leading to Spears contributing a cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's." To further denigrate Christianity, NBC chose to air it the night before Good Friday. "Cruci-fixin's"!  I can't believe the nerve of those blasphemous bastards at NBC!  And I bet I know just what kind of recipes the tarty Britney will be fixing too: sacrilegious treats such as Easter Rolls, in which Jesus is represented by a marshmallow, and his body is cremated inside a crescent roll. And hey, this recipe is mocking Christianity too. Let's make a sandwich with your favorite filling. The crust will symbolize GOD THE FATHER. It is the outer protection for the rest of the bread. The white bread symbolizes JESUS, because He is white and pure without sin. Now the filling, whether it be peanut butter and jelly or chicken salad, it will symbolize the HOLY SPIRIT. Like the peanut butter and jelly fills the sandwich, the Holy Spirit fills us. Use Easter cookie cutters to cut your sandwich into an interesting shape. GIVE THANKS AND EAT AND ENJOY! God the Father is crust?!?  Jesus is Wonder Bread?!?  And the Holy Spirit is peanut butter?  This is a perversion of everything I hold dear -- help, help, I'm being persecuted!  Don admonishes us to (a) send an angry email to the chairman of NBC, complaining about how our religion is being mocked ("NBC does not treat Jews, Muslins or other religions with such disrespect. Yet the network demonstrates a deep of hostility toward followers of Christ"); (b) demand that our NBC affiliate not air this episode, and (c) print a copy of Don's petition which demands that the episode not be aired, and make our fellow church members sign it during Sunday School class.  But I don't think that goes far enough -- what about those websites where I found these sacreligious recipes?  Don, you said that if I felt your efforts are worthy, I should make a small donation to help you in your fight against "Cruci-fixin's." Here's my offer: if you will extend your efforts to a battle against Easter Rolls, Easter Sandwiches, Jesus Merengue Cookies (you leave Jesus in the oven over night in this one), and "Resurrection Cake" (in which Golgotha, the place where our Lord was crucified, becomes a delicious chocolate cake). then I'll consider sending you some money. 7:17:27 PM

Lesson o' the Day It comes from Paul, the Powerliner who didn't rate a homoerotic nickname. Al Gore might well be president today if he had meet the American public's expectations for decorum. And all he did was sigh a few times. There's a lesson there, but the Democrats haven't learned it. So, kids, no sighing.  Especially not in front of the Supreme Court, which will rule against you if you don't meet the American public's expectation of decorum in the way you breathe. 6:38:47 PM

NEWS FLASH: Drudge Lied! Via Michelle Malkin ("KERRY'S "53 PERCENT" LIE"), here's DRUDGE: KERRY CLAIMS: 53% OF CHILDREN DO NOT GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL Wed Feb 01 2006 10:43:40 ET Sen. John Kerry claimed this morning on NBC TODAY that 53% of America's children do not graduate from high school -- a claim that raised eyebrows in the NBC control room, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT. Kerry made the comments after host Katie Couric asked the former presidential candidate about Bush's State of the Union call to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science. COURIC: He wanted to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science. KERRY: That's terrific. But 53 percent of our children don't graduate from high school. Kids don't have after-school programs... He didn't ask America to sacrifice anything to achieve great goals and the biggest example is making the tax cut permanent for the wealthiest people in America. The average American struggles to find time to take carry of families, working two or three jobs... It's a disgrace. He did not tell the real state of the union. Kerry's 53% claim conflicts with a recent press release from the U.S. Census Bureau: "High School Graduation Rates Reach All-Time High" And the Census Bureau's own website states: 85.9 Percent Of Americans Aged 20-24 Are High School Graduates. (U.S. Census Bureau Website, www.census.gov , Accessed 2/1/06) While Kerry obviously misspoke, Drudge gets points only for truthiness.  First, the Census Press Release that Drudge cites isn't all that recent -- it's actually from June 2004, even if he did access it today. And second, 85.9 percent of Americans aged 20-24 are NOT high school graduates.  Rather, they have "completed high school either by earning a traditional diploma or by alternate means such as an equivalency test."  The National Center for Education Statistics explains why the difference could be significant: In recent years, research on the adult outcomes for GED credential holders, as compared with dropouts on the one hand, and regular diploma recipients on the other, has fueled a debate over the value of the GED credential. There is conflicting evidence in the research literature concerning the effects of having a GED credential on labor force participation, employment, earnings, wage rates, postsecondary program participation, and persistence in postsecondary programs.  And even when you're talking about high school completion rather than graduation, the most recent NCES available (apparently they stopped keeping track of this kind of stuff after President Bush took office) indicates that only 64.1 percent of Hispanics aged 18-24 qualify.  Maybe something that somebody should be concerned about? NCES stats also indicate that kids whose family incomes fall into the lowest 20 percent were "six times as likely as their peers from families in the top 20 percent of the income distribution to drop out of high school."  Will training more math and science teachers be the big fix for their educational difficulities? So, despite his erroneous claim, Kerry's over all point (that President Bush's initiatives won't do anything for many poor families in this country) remains valid. 2:22:56 PM

Judging a Man By the Content of His Character As a nice tribute to Coretta Scott King, Michelle Malkin brings us "MORE ON THE CONSERVATIVES=RACISTS STUDY" (you know, the "Washington Post's smelly little article on an unpublished study purporting to associate conservative support for President Bush with bias against blacks"). My favorite debunking is by Dafydd from Big Lizards (all emphasis in the original): The fallacy here is, naturally, the error of predetermined causality: is the correlation between Bush voters and people who find it "more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces" due to innate racism? And if so, do racists just naturally tend to gravitate towards Bush? Or could it be that when blacks learn that a Caucasian is a Republican, they direct such a torrent of hate and racial bigotry towards him that they virtually guarantee that he won't be able to associate his tormenters with "positive concepts?" Republicans are the real victims of racism in America, in that blacks are so hateful to them that they have no choice but to vote for George Bush.  If black leaders -- such as Harry Belafonte, Cynthia McKinney, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barak Obama -- to the enthusisatic applause and cheering of ordinary, middle-class blacks, routinely show rampant and hysterical intolerance of anyone to their right; if they prattle incessantly about racial preferences and "reparations" for slavery; if bad employees who happen to be black constantly threaten an EEOC lawsuit whenever a company tries to let them go -- is it really a racist reaction for someone to have a hard time associating various "positive concepts" with blacks, given the recent history? I think that what Dafydd is trying to say is that it isn't racism if blacks really are intellectually, morally, and esthetically inferior to whites. It's like showing pictures of Arab faces to Israeli Jews and concluding that the latter must be racially prejudiced, because they have a hard time associating "positive concepts" with Achmed, Ramzi, and Mohammed. Sure, after the way that blacks keep suicide bombing GOP headquarters, you couldn't expect Republicans to associate any "positive concepts" with Antwan, Condi, and Clarence. But if such wariness is a rational response, then this study shows only that districts that produce more Bush voters are likewise more rational; while districts that produce more Democratic voters are more likely to be living in a fantasy of cultural relativism, where every culture is equally good, and we cannot in fact even judge them except by their own terms. Being prejudiced against blacks is the only rational reaction to how mean and nasty they are.  In fact, only delusional people don't hate African-Americans..  I would bet that if the authors of this study were to ask the same questions of blacks, they would find an even larger percent of black Republicans who have a hard time associating those "positive concepts" with black faces. It would not, however, be "self-hatred" or prejudice, but rather post-judice: black Republicans have an enormous load of history to back up their angry reaction to most "brothers." How do you love someone who nakedly hates you? See, even black Republicans hate black people, so it must be okay to be prejudiced against an entire race.  In my opinion, we need to pass some Civil Rights laws in order to protect Republicans from all the abuse they have had to take from black people for the last 150 years or so.  And I don't think that we can say that Republicans will have achieved full equality in this nation until there are as many Republican presidents as there have been black ones. 1:49:22 AM