The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Former Justice Department official Monica Goodling raises her hand before Congress in May 2007. Today, the NYT reported on the findings of the inspector general for the Justice Department’s investigation that found that Ms. Goodling’s hiring process violated civil law and Justice Department internal policies:

In her position as White House liaison for the Justice Department, Ms. Goodling was involved in hiring lawyers for both political appointments and non-political, career positions. Regardless of the type of position, the report said, Ms. Goodling would run through the same batch of questions, asking candidates about their political philosophies, why they wanted to serve President Bush, and who, aside from Mr. Bush, they admired as public servants. Sometimes, Ms. Goodling would ask: “Why are you a Republican?”

Such questioning was allowed for candidates to political appointments, but was clearly banned under both civil service law and the Justice Department’s own internal policies, the inspector general said. Ms. Goodling’s questioning also generated complaints from one senior official who believed it was improper, long before the issue became a public controversy following the firings of nine United States attorneys. The inspector general concluded that Ms. Goodling knew that questioning applicants to career positions about their political beliefs was improper.

In one case, for instance, Ms. Goodling slowed the hiring of a prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for a vacancy because she said she was concerned that he was a “liberal Democrat.” After the United States attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, complained to her supervisors, he was allowed to hire the candidate anyway.

And in another case, colleagues said that Ms. Goodling refused to extend the appointment of a female prosecutor because she believed the lawyer was involved in a lesbian relationship with her supervisor, according to the report.

And in another case cited by the inspector general, Ms. Goodling blocked the hiring of an experienced prosecutor for a senior counter-terrorism position because his wife was active in Democratic politics. The candidate was regarded as “head and shoulders above the other candidates” in the view of officials in the executive office of United States attorneys, but they were forced to take a candidate with much less experience because he was deemed acceptable to Ms. Goodling.

In a move that will surely be feverishly condemned by the Dominionism sect, the Catholic Church has released the New Community Bible, a bible that is meant to spread religious propaganda throughout India through the subversion of Indian traditions. Jeremy Page covers:

“I am sure this Bible, made in India and for Indians, will bring the word of God closer to millions of our people, not only Christians,” Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop of Bombay, said at a ceremony on the Bible’s release.

Produced by the Society of St Paul, the Bible is the first in this nation of 1.1 billion to be written in simplified English. It features 27 sketches of typical Indian scenes: one shows a family in a slum beneath skyscrapers. Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa also feature in lengthy notes interpreting the text for Indian readers.

The notes even quote Hindu scriptures, such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, to help to explain Christianity to prospective converts. “We wanted to show the parallels between the themes in the Bible and in Indian religions,” Father Tony Charanghat, a spokesman for the Archbishop, said. “We’ve put the sacred text in a local context.”

Fallows prays for civility:

I know that some people outside China have a kind of schadenfreude wish that the pollution, or the mishandling of protests, or the logistics, or something else will backfire on the organizers of the Olympics and stand as a protest for whatever is objectionable in government policy. This is related to the previous idea that it would make sense to boycott the opening ceremonies or the Games themselves.

Unt-uh. As my correspondent points out, the only thing that will happen if these Olympics somehow go bad is a concerted focusing of blame, inside China, on the foreigners who want to “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people” and hold China down. Outsiders who think that a pollution emergency or a spiraling protest would focus domestic blame on the Chinese government are dreaming. No kidding, everyone should want these games to work well, including with the air.

Homeslice, you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.

Kevin Bryant is a Senator. Kevin Bryant posted this in order to “stimulate an examination of Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign policy.” (In case he takes it down, the following is a large screenshot of his original post.)

Kevin Bryant failed miserably to stimulate anything that can be deemed an “examination”. Understandably, most who commented fell into either the “Libruls can’t take jokes! Obama’s a Muslim! Hail Jesus!” category or the “That’s a fairly bigoted comparison” category.

Defending himself, Kevin writes:

The posting, not surprisingly, only drew out the virulent and vulgar members of the liberal left whose immediate reaction to any criticism of their candidate includes charges of ignorance and bigotry…I have no regrets from this picture…I refuse to cower to the cultural police who evermore seek to censor our political discussion.

Let me just say this about that: Even from an anarchical perspective, this comparison is ignorant and bigoted. And, really, to compare someone who has yet to kill many people to someone who has already killed many people is to not facilitate any semblance of a dialogue. In fact, Kevin confused his red army constituents so badly that at least one thought he was trying to be funny:

idiots [sic] Says:
July 19th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

it’s a joke. Also, anyone not scared to death that someone as unqualified as Obama may be the next President is stupid. He is not qualified. If he is elected, we are in big trouble. God save our country.

Anyway, it’s always amusing to me when dunderheads find humor in what amounts to nothing more than bullying. So, I had some fun with this one and will now try to interject some real chuckle-worthy humor into the discussion. Behold:

There are hundreds of these ugly critters living under the sidewalk outside of my apartment. Flying bugs that are two or more inches long–this does not include pigeons–usually make my blood pressure sky rocket. Fortunately though, these chest-grabbingly wonderful creatures target cicadas and not humans:

While they may be frightfully large, female cicada killer wasps are not aggressive and rarely sting unless they are grasped roughly, stepped upon with bare feet, or caught in clothing, etc. One author who has been stung indicates that for them, the stings are not much more than a “pinprick”. Males aggressively defend their perching areas on nesting sites against rival males but they have no sting. Although they appear to attack anything which moves near their territories, male cicada killers are actually investigating anything which might be a female cicada killer ready to mate. Such close inspection appears to many people to be an attack, but the wasps rarely even land on people. If handled roughly females will sting, and males will jab with a sharp spine on the tip of their abdomen. Both sexes appear to be well equipped to bite, as they have large jaws; however, they are unable to grasp human skin and cannot bite. They are non-aggressive towards humans and fly away when swatted at, instead of attacking. Cicada killers exert a natural control on cicada populations and thus may directly benefit the deciduous trees upon which cicadas feed.

Laura Ingraham: “Don’t come in my ear.”

Kathleen Parker on Laura Ingraham: Laura, the Cucumber Queen

Definition of Cucumber Queen: In gay terminology, a person who enjoys having phallic-shaped vegetables or objects pushed up his ass.

Since I’m not willing to assume he did this out of malice, I have to conclude that he just let this slip. But if he were President, we would need to count on him not to let things like this slip.

Dear Hilzoy,

Well, when you have a history of quacking like malicious idiot…

Cheers,

Will

You know the person who paid for that billboard has got to be nuts. From his website:

For the love of my country, I later became interested in its direction. especially after 911. I became interested in news and wanting answers for a lot that wasn’t being told on the normal Liberal TV News stations. I started listening to talk radio stations and started reading a few books about politics, though I still appreciated the information from Fox New Network. It didn’t take too long after, I realized the danger of liberalism, and where it’s taking us today.

I’m with Larison:

Sullivan says that “the notion that most Americans are incapable of seeing that [it is satire] strikes me as excessively paranoid and a little condescending,” but it is not so much a question of capability as it is one of willingness.  Some people will see it as a confirmation of what they already believe or suspect, others will “get” it but still find it outrageous, and still others may understand that the intent was satire but will still come away with the impression that there could be some element of truth to the stereotyping.  The fairly small number who just laugh at it and think that it skewers smear artists will not begin to offset the number of people who will either take offense or take the image all together too seriously.

But, Larison misses an important segment: The rightwing AM yockels. They will be told that this cover is further evidence that it’s the “libruls” who have engaged in the most vile racism this election. And they will believe it.

So, there’s this mini-hoopla occurin’ in the blogosphere regarding blogger, terminal atheist, and biologist P.Z. Meyers and his declaration of war against Catholic communion wafers. This paragraph got him in trouble with the Catholic League and, Bill Donohue, its president:

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.

I’ve been a reader of P.Z. Meyers for a year or so and I have a blog so I’m in a great position to judge him. P.Z. is a vastly intelligent and competent biologist. And, because he spends a majority of his posting hours picking on the religious and Republican, lunatic fringe, when it comes to the realities of religion and politics, he has the understanding and impulsiveness of a 2-year-old boy. When the two realities intersect, P.Z. loses all reason and accountability.

Not that I’m sympathetic to the Catholic Church. I’ve handled the communion wafer both before and after the transubstantiation is said to have occurred and there is neither a qualitative nor quantitative difference. At the church, there were older altar boys who would steal bags of unconsecrated wafers. This was a pointless endeavor on their part because the wafers contain no ingredient that provides physical sustenance and have no value outside of the church.

Inside of the church, the consecrated communion wafer is considered the most sacred object the can exist at any point in time. It is believed by some Catholics that the wafer literally becomes the flesh of Jesus Christ. Most who claim Catholic affiliation believe that this occurs in abstract terms. To those who believe in a literal transformation, obtaining and maintaining the privilege to ingest the wafer and participate in Eucharist–a spiritual communion with a god–is a cause worthy of a lifetime of mind, body, and soul devotion. It’s all called “Holy Communion” for a reason.

So, there’s some humor in P.Z.’s surprise at the ferocity with which the church directed its outrage. But, when your identity is fundamentally tied to rituals and esoteric doctrines that predate reason and were systematically copied from Pagan ideologies, your beliefs in what is real and what is unsafe behavior extend far beyond that which P.Z. has defined as being within normal cognitive and behavioral limits.

As such, P.Z. should really watch his back. If you think that the Muslims have a long history of violence against heretics, let me tell you about these things that occurred not long ago in a galaxy not so far away….

If you’ve never used last.fm, it’s a way of tracking the music that you play on your computer and/or iPod or other mp3 player. Out of boredom and/or curiosity, I ponied up $3 and became a subscriber. This allows me to access last.fm’s test areas. And it just so happens that they are in the midst of a major redesign.

You can access my normal account here. My beta account, which can be looked at via the thumbnails below, looks cleaner and seems to be more space efficient. Instead of a box containing cover art and band images that appear to be competing for space, the beta layout is less chaotic and the data is presented in squarer sections. Overall, last.fm appears to be headed in the right direction. But I do miss the gray background. White on white can be so boring

(Joan As Police Woman image courtesy of someone’s blog.)

So, I blew off May. June was a far better month for music. In this edition, I’ve mostly included rock music along with a few electronic lullabies. Also, beginning with this edition, I’m including links to each band or artist’s website (not their Myspace page because I dislike Myspace like a fat kid hates walking) and a link to download the single.

(Click the arrow after each track for Last.fm info)

• Aimee Mann - Freeway [MP3]
• Fleet Foxes - Ragged Wood [MP3]
• Head Like A Kite - Big FM Radio Hit [MP3]
• Hercules And Love Affair - Hercules Theme [MP3]
• Joan As Police Woman - Holiday [MP3]
• Ladytron - Black Cat [MP3]
• My Brightest Diamond - Inside A Boy [MP3]
• Shearwater - Century Eyes [MP3]
• Subtle - Exiting Arm [MP3]
• The Notwist - Where in this World [MP3]
• The Ting Tings - That’s Not My Name [MP3]
• The Watson Twins - Just Like Heaven [MP3]
• Tilly and the Wall - Pot Kettle Black [MP3]
• Wolf Parade - The Grey Estates [MP3]

Arnold Thompson commenting on Fox News’ “only someone who watches Fox News would find this funny” recent photo editing:

Scum bag Republicans. Someone needs to take legal action and make them accountable by busting their bank accounts and/or putting them in jail.

My Dream:
1. Pass a law that states all identified Republican go to jail as part of a ‘clean America up’ campaign.
2. Brand an elephant on their forehead for public humiliation.
3. And practice social Darwinism by enslaving them to a life time of work for my capitalistic benefit. Tit for tat as that is what they do to most of us poor working slobs.