Month: September 2009

Blasphemy Can Be Fun and Creative!

Buck Banks

Blasphemy

Are there topics you shouldn’t be allowed to discuss? Some governments and institutions — and even some individuals — want to keep certain topics off limits, like health care, for instance.

This is especially true with religion. In many places, discussions and questions about religion are discouraged, even punished. But how can we come to our own conclusions about religion if we can’t freely examine and discuss it?

To encourage free expression and to celebrate Blasphemy Day 2009 (Sept. 30), the Center for Inquiry and its sister organization, the Council for Secular Humanism, are sponsoring a Blasphemy Contest.

Blasphemy: n. the act of denying or scoffing at God or God’s alleged attributes.

To enter, all you have to do is create a phrase, poem or statement that would be or would have been considered blasphemous. Entries may take any form (haiku anyone?), but must be 20 words or less. The top five winners will receive CFI T-shirts with their submission printed on the shirt.

In addition to the shirt, the first place winner will also receive a mug imprinted with the winning phrase, recognition in Free Inquiry magazine, general publicity, and, naturally, eternal damnation.

Submit entries to blasphemycontest@centerforinquiry.net. Details and contest rules may be found on the Campaign for Free Expression Web site.

DEADLINE: ONE WEEK
Entries must be received by midnight, October 1, 2009.

Verbatim

Buck Banks

No one. It’s all the same old guys who were in leadership with me, and those old guys aren’t the leaders the party needs.

— Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), in an interview with Politics Daily, on who he sees as the party’s “up-and-comers.”

FBI Investigating Possible Anti-Government Lynching in Death of Kentucky Census Worker

Jon Ponder

photo-biprll-spaprkmanThe AP is reporting that the FBI is investigating the hanging death earlier this month of Bill Sparkman, 51, in rural Kentucky to determine if Sparkman, a census worker, was killed because he worked for the the U.S. government.

Sparkman’s body was found hanging in a tree in a cemetery in the Daniel Boone National Forest in southwest Kentucky on Sept. 12 with the word “FED” scrawled across his chest.

Sparkman, who also worked as a substitute teacher, was tasked by the Census Bureau with conducting door-to-door interviews in the area.

“Our job is to determine if there was foul play involved — and that’s part of the investigation — and if there was foul play involved, whether that is related to his employment as a Census worker,” FBI spokesman David Beyer said, according to the AP.

A spokeswoman for the Census Bureau’s regional headquarters in Charlotte said she was informed by the FBI that Sparkman’s death was being investigated as “an apparent homicide.”

Asked about the motive behind her son’s death, Henrie Sparkman told the AP: “I have my own ideas, but I can’t say them out loud. Not at this point… Right now, what I’m doing, I’m just waiting on the FBI to come to some conclusion.”

At this early stage, nothing can be ruled out including suicide and other more typical motives, but if it was murder, the mode of death is eerily reminiscent of lynchings during the Jim Crow era.

A report from local television offers insight into Sparkman’s character:

Concern… gripped the staff of Johnson Elementary last Thursday when Bill Sparkman didn’t show up for his after school work assignment.

“He was always where he was supposed to be, when he was supposed to be. He didn’t call..he didn’t show up,” said [school official] Gilbert Acciardo.

…Sparkman had recently beaten the odds in an often fatal form of cancer. That was while he spent two years earning a teaching degree while holding down two jobs. And school staff say he was always dependable. Then on Sunday his body was found more than 30 miles away in a rural part of Clay County.

“We have the same questions everybody else does — what happened to Mr. Sparkman? Because we know what police have told us,” said Acciardo.

On the website for Western Governors University, where Sparkman recently received his teaching degree, he offered a testimonial:

“To be here today at graduation at Western Governors University means so much; not only for the degree itself, but for everything that I learned towards the degree, for everything I’ve been going through for the last few years with the education and otherwise, it just means so much more for me to be here. I realized to be here today and to take part in the fulfillment of my goal, of a dream that has been building, it has just been super.”

The Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door canvasing in the area.

Take the Right Wing ‘Think Tank’ Poll on the ‘Leftist’ Agenda

Jon Ponder

The Heritage Foundation, which is oxymoronically characterized as a “conservative think tank,” is collecting email addresses via an online poll. The wording of the questions is tilted to the extreme right, of course, with gems like “Do you think leftists in and outside of Congress will succeed in prosecuting Bush administration officials for “war crimes?” and “Do you think leftist policies are putting our free-market economic system in danger?”

So if you have a few spare moments, cruise over the Heritage Foundation site and take the poll.

First Hurdle Cleared for Californians to Vote on Legalizing Pot in 2010

Jon Ponder


via videosift.com

The state of California is having a tough time making ends meet these days, but proposals to legalize and tax marijuana, which could generate over a billion dollars in new revenue every year, have generally met with skepticism, derision and/or political cowardice by the state’s elected leaders.

In March, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco introduced AB 390, a bill that would legalize and tax marijuana. In July, the state tax board estimated that if Ammiano’s bill were to pass, it would produce $1.4 billion in new tax revenue every year.
art-fake-maprijuana-ad
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in his youth, was caught on tape toking a doob (see video above) opposes AB 390. Anticipating his veto, there has been little enthusiasm for the bill in the capitol.

Whiffing important but controversial legislation is standard operating procedure in Sacramento, so legalization activists have recently begun taking matters into their own hands. Two separate ballot initiatives that would legalize and tax marijuana have now been greenlighted for signature-gathering by the secretary of state’s office. Each will need to collect about 490,000 signatures by Feb. 18 in order to appear on the November 2010 ballot.

It is currently a felony to sell a joint or grow a marijuana plant in California. California NORML estimates that it costs the state $170.3 million annually to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate marijuana offenders. As part of their deal-making to close the state’s multi-billion dollar budget gap, the governor and the legislature are negotiating strategies that would dramatically reduce the state’s burgeoning prison population. And yet Schwarzenegger appears to be averse to releasing non-violent pot offenders as a group. Observers predict that the cuts in prison rolls may be made arbitrarily instead, which could lead to the release of serious offenders and leave harmless stoners behind bars.

Politically speaking, if one or both of the initiatives qualify for the ballot next November, it can be assumed either of them would draw out young people, civil libertarians and liberals, which would help the Democratic candidates, including ticket-toppers Sen. Barbara Boxer, who may be opposed by ousted Hewlett-Packard (and McCain campaign embarrassment) CEO Fiorina, and either San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has announced he’s running, or Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, who has not.

Finally, even if one or both of the ballot initiatives were to pass next year, marijuana possesion would still be illegal under federal law. In August, the Obama administration DEA made its first raids on the state’s legal medical marijuana industry.

New Ad from Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die: Protect Insurance Companies

Jon Ponder

From Will Ferrell and company at Funny or Die — the folks who brought you “Prop 8: The Musical” — comes this new parody of a political ad in support of the rights of hard-working, overpaid medical-insurance executives.

Cast includes Will Ferrell, “Madmen” star Jon Hamm, “Reno 911” co-creator Thomas Lennon, Masi Oka from “Heroes” and others.

Excerpts:

“People are saying a lot of mean things about health insurance companies and their executives and it’s gotta stop,” pleads Thomas Lennon.

“These great business men are American heroes,” says Linda Cardellini.

“So why is Obama trying to reform health care when insurance companies are doing just fine making billions of dollars in profit?” Will Ferrell asks.

The project was produced by Moveon.org.

Thanks for Lunch, Drew Carey

Jon Ponder

photo-drprew-caprey-portOne of the perks of living in Los Angeles is that famous people whom you have never met will occasionally pick up your tab for your lunch. No kidding. It happens all the time.

Okay, not all the time. But it happened to me last Thursday when Drew Carey bought lunch for me and Judy Rozzelle, my friend and the author of Shuffletown USA, at Swingers, a diner on Beverly Blvd., in the Fairfax District. It was a special occasion for us because it was the first day Judy was able to drive after having surgery six weeks earlier. She’d had a birdcage contraption installed around her spine in order to alleviate what we call in the South, “miseries” in her back.

Swingers is a great place for lunch, especially if you like classic 90s’ punk pumped at “11.” The style is Googie diner-retro. The vibe is knowingly tragically hip. The servers are all beautiful and smarter than you. They dress like they came straight to work from clubbing all night. Nearly everyone has a tattoo, a piercing or both.

Given all that, the food is great and surprising healthy. It’s vegan-friendly. You can order a quinoa salad on the side, for example.

I missed seeing our host even though he was standing right behind me at the cash register. I mean, I was aware there was someone behind me, but I was mildly desperately in need of quarters for the parking meter. We’d only found a dime or two in the car, which had bought us about eight minutes. The meter, which was a block away in front of the DWR at Sweetzer, was ticking away and 40 bucks in parking fines were at stake.

Problem was the cash register was broken and couldn’t be opened. A repairman fiddled with it as three of us hovered — the restaurant manager, the big guy behind me later identified as Drew Carey and me.

When I glanced at Judy, who was already seated at our table about five feet from the cash register, she signaled — using the hand signals every Angeleno knows to mean “there’s a celebrity standing right behind you,” but I was distracted and oblivious to such trivialities. Later she told me Drew was wearing cargo shorts and purple crocs.

The cash drawer was opened finally, and I hustled out to the meter and bought us an hour. We had a nice lunch, talked about writing and discussed our stop earlier at Tree People up on the ridge at Mulholland and Coldwater, where Judy was considering volunteering. (Looks like she’s going to work with parrots in the Valley instead.)

When it was time to go, the waitress told us that Drew Carey had put out a Tweet earlier in the day announcing that he was picking up the tab for lunch for the house at Swingers until 2 p.m. We all know Drew Carey, of course, from his eponymous 1990s’ sitcom and as the current host of “The Price Is Right.” He’s also a political oddball — a libertarian in a town that is synonymous with “liberal,” but we won’t hold that against him, especially while he’s buying us lunch.

Naturally, the question arose: why was Drew Carey buying us lunch? Our server did not know, but she said that there was a precedent. Carey had done the same thing during the writer’s strike.

Later, I check the Intertubes to see if I could find a motive for Carey’s generosity. All I found was this on his Twitter page:

I’m at Swinger’s at 8020 Beverly Blvd in LA. Anybody who gets here by 2pm and is prepared to leave a good tip, your meal is on me.

No particular cause other than a generous gesture in tough times. (And, yes, we left a bodacious tip.)

So, thanks, Drew Carey. We had a lovely day on Thursday, and lunch was terrific.

And to any other film or TV stars, recording artists, high-profile entertainment journalists — and, yes, even reality show stars — for the record, I’ll be having lunch at Hugo’s in West Hollywood on Wednesday at noon. Straight up.