*sigh*

Could someone please tell me when we changed the definition of democracy? I seem to remember a time when it meant majority rules, i.e. the opinion of the majority is of highest precedent.

However, sometime in the last ten years or so someone changed the definition to whiniest rules, e.g. if two atheists are louder than two million Christians then the atheists make the rules. For some odd reason, our culture has decided it is better to offend the majority in order to avoid offending the minority. Where is the logic in that?!

I tend to be a realist. I don’t take to mushy traditions or revisionist history. I am very vocal about the fact that Christ was probably not born on December 25th; that most of our Christmas traditions (including gift giving and tree decorating) are likely derived from pagan rituals (just like Halloween and the Easter bunny). I will not argue that December 25th has any historical, spiritual significance.

However, this is the season in which we observe Christ’s birth. This time of year would have no significance whatsoever if the early Christian Church had not decided to observe Christmas at this time of year. Do you really think that retailers would pull out all the stops to lure in shoppers for “Winter Solstice” or “Yule Feast”? Would there be parades and a national holy day (er… sorry… holiday) for the “Saturnalia” or the rebirth of Sol? (With all due respect to my Hebrew brethren, Hanukkah is a great celebration, but so is Yom Kippur and kids don’t get out of school for that!)

My wife posted a poignant essay on her blog. The summation of this essay is that we, as Christians, should not be surprised when secular America takes Christ out of Christmas.

We can’t blame a world that has rejected God for not doing the job WE have been called by God to do! … If you know Jesus as your Savior, it is YOU who is supposed to say “Merry Christmas”…

While I totally agree that it is not Target’s job to promote Christianity, I think it is totally retarded for anyone to celebrate the “Holiday” season devoid of Christian symbols. If you are offended by the fact that this holly-jolly, gift-giving, peace-on-earth time of year is based entirely on the birth of Christ, then you should try to get yourself elected to the Senate and propose a Constitutional Amendment outlawing Christmas. Otherwise, shut your trap and have a Merry Christmas!!

photoshop – (fó´tó – shôp) v. To digitally manipulate an image.

I’m one of those geeks that turn cultural trends into verbs. I was one of the first people I know to use “google” as a verb. In the same manner, I have been “photoshopping” images for years and preaching that you can not believe your eyes anymore.

A couple of days ago I posted my first submission on Worth1000. If you have any doubt about the power of digital editing, spend some time over at Worth. You’ll be amazed. (The tutorial about artificial aging is my favorite.)

Now, it’s all well and good to photoshop for silly online contests. It’s another thing entirely to create images for the media that create a story where none exists (also known as lying). This is what you see on all those spurious tabloid covers and it’s called photo-chopping.

photo-chop – (fó´tó – chôp) v. To digitally manipulate an image for malicious or duplicitous purposes.

This is certainly not a new practice among the media’s dirtier dogs, but with the latest technology it’s that much easier and thus that much more tempting for journalists to make news rather than report it. I strongly encourage you to read this article about the history of image tampering. It will open your eyes to some of the things you may have seen but should not have believed.

It took me a while to figure out the riots that are tearing France apart. I read a few news blurbs trying to discover the reason behind the civil unrest, but all that was reported was that a couple of “youths” were “accidentally” killed by police. That just didn’t register with me.

That was until I finally found this piece which gives us a peak at the truth behind the riots. The “poor suburbs of Paris were set ablaze” by North African Muslim immigrants.

France has long been courting the Islamic community and welcoming any immigration that might “diversify” France. Now, according to Paris’ police union, the mostly Muslim “ghettos” around Paris are in a state of “civil war”. I am not making this up! The violence has spread to other cities with large Muslim populations and, if you can believe what you read on the internet (yeah, I know), there is currently an influx of illicit money and guns into France with the purpose of arming this “unrest”.

Why is it that mainstream media continues to call this “civil unrest” and the perpetrators “youths”? How can they continue to insist that all this “unrest” was caused when “two youths jumped over the wall of an electrical substation and died, thinking they were being pursued by the police”?! Can someone explain to me the difference between the “unrest” in Paris and the “war” in Chechnya? Could some on clear up the distinction between French “youths” and Iraqi “terrorists”? Yyyeah. That’d be great.

This should come as no surprise to anyone level headed enough to see the modern democratic party for what it is. Still, the hypocrisy of the left has reached new lows in recent weeks.

Maryland’s first black lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, has fallen under increasingly ugly attacks from the black democrats in his state. Steele is running for the US Senate and he represents an increasing trend in conservative Republican minorities. This trend is stealing minority votes from the liberal Democratic party, something Democrats can ill afford. Desperate times… so they say.

Lt. Gov. Steele has been pelted with Oreo cookies (implying that he is “white on the inside”). He has been caricatured as black singing minstrel on liberal web sites, and even faced gross racial slurs that, if uttered by a WASP like me, would result in riots in the streets.

But, what-ho? Do you mean it was not some calloused white hate-monger hurling these opprobrious epithets? Nope. It was members of his own race such as former NAACP president Kweisi Mfume. In justifying his bigotry, Mr. Mfume said, “There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names.” By that argument I could say that Kweisi Mfume, by virtue of his African name, is obviously a nigger. But I wouldn’t say something like that because I’m better than that. (Apparently, Mr. Mfume is not.)

According to Maryland State Senator Lisa Glidden, also a… person of African descent, “Party trumps race.” Frankly that’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a very long time. (Well, no, it’s not. Keep reading. It gets worse.)

Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said, “Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community. His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people.”

So that must been that Ted Kennedy, the whitest cracker in the Democratic party, knows more about what blacks need than the quite black Mr. Steele. And according to Mr. Kennedy and his Democratic party, blacks need more handouts from the government to make sure they don’t get a real education, leading to a real job, leading to real housing and real opportunity for advancement. Forcing blacks to rely on federal welfare keeps them in federal slave camps… oops! I mean federal housing projects… where they can continue to attend the worst schools in the nation and be taught by the most underpaid and bitter teachers the important lessons in life, which are, of course, vote Democrat and use condoms. Why just think how the world would fall apart if those kids found out the truth and became Republicans!!

This just in…

Madonna (the “entertainer”, not the mother of our Lord and Savior) has declared that, “Most priests are gay.”

In other news…

Most “entertainers” are stupid.

We now return you to your regular programming.

(via Drudge)

Is it any wonder why people like me despise advertising? It completely insults my intelligence. Now, it’s one thing to entertain. I get a huge laugh out of those employment commercials where the guy works in an office full of chimps. That’s fun. But it’s another thing entirely to expect me to believe nine out of ten doctors agree on anything. And if you know anyone who actually believes drinking a particular brand of beer will attract super models please do the gene pool a favor and run them over with your SUV.

Internet advertising is even more aggravating than ads on TV. (Don’t even get me started on pop-up ads.) Keyword based advertising is supposed to connect ads with the people interested in them. But what it really does is show just how stupid advertisers think the people are.

Case in point, I was reading an article about the mold problem along the flooded gulf coast. The keyword ad engine saw “mold” on the page and chose to display this ad for mold test kits. Now click on the thumbnail and see if your intelligence is not insulted.

The following link is rated R for foul language. I don’t generally post such gratuitous linguistic crimes, but this one is worth it.

Penn and Teller have a show called… well… Bull[Poop], on which they expose the lies behind some of our societies odd behaviors. They’ve covered topics from alien abduction to recycling programs. Penn uses lots of foul language, but makes very valid points (although I don’t agree with every topic they’ve covered).

They did a scathing expose on PETA which you can view here. (This is the rated R link I talked about.)

If you’d rather protect your virgin ears, I’ll sum up the finer points of the video.

Simply put, PETA thinks animals are more valuable than people.

• They’ve run campaigns comparing chicken and beef processing to the Holocaust. So chickens are at least as valuable as Jews.
• They espouse and financially support terrorist who firebomb medical facilities that use lab animals for testing. So mice are more valuable that the millions of humans who benefit from modern medicine.
• They insist on “total animal liberation” including the abolition of pet ownership, which they call “slavery”. So gerbils deserve the same rights as African Americans.

What this video does best is expose the wild hypocrisy of the militant animal rights movement.

• The vast majority of PETA’s contributions come from animal lovers who own pets. PETA would make it illegal to own pets.
• PETA holds protests at animal shelters where sick, injured, and stray animals are euthanized. PETA’s own shelters euthanize two thirds of the animals they receive.
• PETA would outlaw medical testing on animals and the use of animals to produce medicine. The vice president of PETA is a diabetic who uses insulin that was developed through animal testing (on dogs) and was produced with the use of animals (probably pigs).

Ahh, I love the smell of bacon in the morning. That and the sound of “activists” eating their own words.

Through a link of a link of a link, I came across an article written back in 2000 by the founder and former director of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore. Moore does a great job debunking the current enviro-nazi rhetoric and defacing 21st century environmentalist movement.

I now look at the mainstream environmental movement that I loved and can barely recognize it. Why? Because it has abandoned science to follow agendas that have little to do with saving the earth.
…
We have an environmental movement that is run by people who want to fight – not to win.

Please read the complete article here.

(via TenNapel)

Once again, I find myself five posts behind and several days late on the latest news. Jeez, this information age keeps burying me in information!

So, today, I am forced to do another bulk post to get myself caught up. I now present this week’s Non-News Update! <Big Fanfare />

The pundits that be continue to butt heads regarding the tragedy du jour, Hurricane Katrina. In one of the saddest displays of unbrained journalism I’ve ever read, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Bruce Babbitt in which Mr. Babbitt insists that Congress must determine whether or not to rebuild New Orleans. He states, “New Orleans will survive only as an island surrounded by miles of open water.” I don’t even know where to begin debunking this pile of monkey hurlage.

First, Congress (as in the legislative branch of the federal government) should have absolutely no say in the future of New Orleans. New Orleans has its own city and county governments, not to mention the State of Louisiana, all of which are rightly in charge of their own jurisdiction. You would think Mr. Babbitt, who did time on President Clinton’s cabinet, would understand that we live in a federal republic where state’s rights are held sacred… most of the time.

Second, New Orleans is still there. Yes, there is much damage and muck to be dealt with, but Mr. Babbitt makes it sound as if the city had been scraped into the sea.

Third, Mr. Babbitt bases his hypothesis on the scare-tactic rhetoric of tree-hugging, global warming, fear mongers (of which he is a shining example) who have been proven wrong scientifically over and over again. The theory that “sea levels are likely to rise two to three feet in this century.” is based entirely on the fuzzy math of ice cap depletion.

None of this should come as any surprise given Mr. Babbitt’s track record (which you can see more of here). This guy is an A-1 eco-nazi nut-job.

Now, allow your gaze to drift to the right were the other end of the political spectrum has discovered some striking evidence in defense of our good Mr. Bush.

As you may know, President Gee-Dub, speaking the press, accepted responsibility for the quality of the response to victims of Katrina. What you may not know is that the quality of the response was, in fact, better than that of previous hurricanes. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an opinion piece which includes a remarkable quote from an Army National Guardsman who has been deployed in many similar disaster relief efforts:

“The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.”

The article goes on to point out that, after Hurricane Andrew, it took five days for the National Guard to organize and arrive on the scene in Florida. In Louisiana, however, the guard was there in only three days. So, if the government was racist in its Katrina recover effort, then the 2002 government must have really had it in for all those poor, elderly, caucasian retirees in Florida!

A former Air Force logistics officer is also quoted with regard to the MSM‘s false charges:

“We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on ‘star Trek’ in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree… You cannot just snap your fingers and make the military appear somewhere.

Strangely, the media has not made much of the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans which were not utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck.

The Mexican Army is on American soil for the first time 150 years, but this time it has nothing to do with the Alamo.

45 trucks crossed the border last Friday carrying about 200 military personel (and about 800 “undocumented volunteers”… Juuuust kidding!). Fifteen trucks are loaded with water, which, of course, hurricane victims have been warned not to drink. (Pah-dum-tshh) Click here to see exclusive pictures of the convoy just before crossing the border.

The Mexican government also announced that it had dispatched a Mexican Navy cruiser to the Mississippi coast, pictured here.

In a follow-up to several previous posts, the woman who claimed to have found a human finger in her Wendy’s chili, along with her co-conspirator husband, pled guilty to attempted grand theft and other charges relating to her false claim.

David Boyd, from the District Attorney’s office, said, “Thankfully, law enforcement thwarted their successful efforts at theft.” Uhhhh, right. I think he means that the cops discovered the plot before it succeeded. Anyway…

Anna Ayala faces up to ten years in prison for her failed fast food finger finding fraud. (Oooh! Impressive alliteration!) Several employees of the San Jose Wendy’s franchise were laid off after sales dropped 70% in the wake of Ayala’s false claim.

Her attorney voiced her remorse. “There are a lot of people that work for Wendy’s that were harmed. She always felt a lot of remorse about that.” Umm… “She always felt a lot…” Googly moogly, don’t you have to take a couple of English classes to get a law degree?

Richard Hatch, the openly homosexual winner of Survivor’s $1 million prize, has learned that, even if you survive Survivor, you can’t survive the IRS.

Hatch got slammed with a 10-count federal indictment for tax evasion and mail, wire, and bank fraud. The fed offered him a plea deal back in January for lesser charges, but he reneged on that deal. Free advice of the day: When the fed offers you a plea deal, take it!

You can read the full indictment over at The Smoking Gun.

Turns out the harmless gay millionaire hired an accounting firm to do his 2000 taxes in 2002 (just a wee bit late). The firm gave Hatch the return form which said he owed Uncle Sam over $400,000 in taxes and fees. Naturally, he wanted a second opinion, so he hired an independent accountant to crunch the numbers. Only problem is, he forgot to mention to this accountant several sources of income. This accountant figured that Hatch owed over $200,000. Better, but not good enough for Hatch.

He asked the accountant to draw up a return not including the $1 mil from Survivor. The accountant did this only after Hatch signed an agreement that the return form was for informational purposes only. This last return was more what Hatch was looking for: a tax return of $4400. Much better. Hatch signed the fraudulent return form and mailed it in.

Now, ripping off Uncle Sam is one thing, but American’s most famous “snake” didn’t stop there. Ripping off charitable donations is so much more fun!!

He was invited to be on a pilot episode of a reality show about giving money to charities. Naturally, a show about giving to charity doesn’t want to pay a millionaire to be on the show. Instead, they agreed to pay Hatch’s share to a charity of his choice. Hatch gave them the name of his favorite charity, Horizon Bound, which at that point did not exist. Hatch then ran down to the town hall and shuffled the paperwork to create his very own non-profit organization named… you guessed it… Horizon Bound. The $25,000 check to Horizon Bound landed in Hatch’s mail box. Not satisfied with mail fraud, Hatch decided to add bank fraud to the list when he altered the check to include his own name. Then he deposited the check in his personal account and, naturally, failed to declare any of this on his taxes.

All of this was in 2000, after Hatch’s Survivor claim to fame. I won’t even go into his 2001 tax evasion (where he failed to claim over $360,000 in income and several thousand dollars of “contributions” to Hatch’s favorite charity… himself).

When all is said and done, Hatch could face several years in prison and oodles of fines after which he’ll be lucky if he if he can call himself a thousand-aire. On the up-side, being a homosexual in prison is like being a fat guy at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Bon appetit, Mr. Hatch.