* Perhaps taking a cue from her most rogueish guest, Oprah Winfrey has decided she will no longer be shackled behind her talk show.

* The Senate takes up its version of the health care bill tomorrow morning. Harry Reid needs 60 votes just to proceed with debate, because the Republicans do not want to deal with this thing at all. If they filibuster, let us hope they forgo the phonebooks and pledge allegiance to the flag for twelve hours straight. (Eat your heart out, Todd Akin!)

* Said health care bill is 2,074 pages long. Tony Perkins and his fightin' evangelicals have released something called "The Manhattan Declaration," which manages to cover "the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty" in just 4,700 words.

* President Obama will make a decision about Afghanistan troop levels after Thanksgiving, assuming he's not in a food coma.

This guy knows what I'm talking about…

(via Pharyngula)

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) vice presidential running mate, signals in her new book Going Rogue that she doesn't believe in evolution, panning it as theory that human beings "originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea."

Yes, and…?

Hang on. Did anybody — anybody! — actually think that Sarah Palin — the lady who attended the church with the witch hunter guy — might believe in evolution?

I'd be amazed if she believed in chemistry. Or math. (I mean, does it ever once mention algebra in the Bible? Shouldn't we be teaching the controversy about this?)

"If God doesn't exist, then why does the Constitution say 'In God We Trust'?"

Check and mate.

Choke on that unbeatable logic, you Devil-worshipping atheists!

You beat the shit out of him with a tire iron before he gets a chance to slam himself into whatever World Trade Center happens to be nearby…

The Rev. Alexios Marakis, visiting from Greece, had performed a blessing of a retired Greek priest in the West Shore area before accidentally exiting I-275 into downtown Monday evening, police said. Marakis followed cars into the Seaport Channelside Apartments on Twiggs Street and got out to ask for help…

[U.S. Marines reservist Jasen] Bruce grabbed a tire iron from the trunk, hit Marakis four times over the head and chased him about three blocks before pinning the priest, police said…

When officers arrived, police say, Bruce told them he heard the man say "Allahu Akbar" – Arabic for "God is great." "That's what they say before they blow you up," Bruce said, according to police.

What lesson are we, as a nation, to take away from this sad and disturbing story. Well, I think there's only one lesson we can take away from it.

The terrorists are infiltrating our Greek Orthodox Churches!

Update: As I'm sure you're all aware by now, no situation is content with simply being ridiculous nowadays. Nope. It all has to be super-idiotic-ridiculous on WTF steroids. All of it!

With that in mind, this American Hero who beat up the priest — Jasen Bruce (of the wrongly spelled first name) — appears to be some kind of erotic model [NSFW?].

Why is this relevant? It's not. But this is how the world works now. And — let's face facts — if you're going get beaten to within an inch of your life by some xenophobic maniac, it might as well be a super-hunky xenophobic maniac.

(Thanks for the tip, bose.)

A chief spokesman for the pro-life, far-right organization, American Family Association, has called for the purging of Muslim soldiers from military ranks in the wake of the tragic killings at Fort Hood.

Really? Really?! This comes as a huge shock to me, given how much these Christian right groups have time and time again shown how much respect they have for equality, civil liberties and Constitutional ideals.

But, hey hey hey hey! Don't walk away under the impression that the AFA or its Director of Issues Analysis Bryan Fischer thinks that every single Muslim (technical) citizen of the United States is just bursting at the chance to kill a real (white) American…

"Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine."

See? Totally open-minded.

"As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve."

Thanks, Christians! How Christ-like you are.

"You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll welcome you back with open arms."

"This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism."

I can't even Islamo-bring myself to Islamo-give an Islamo-real response to Islamo-this.

It's just way too Christ-arded.

On a completely unrelated note…

"We went up against tremendous odds," Marc Mutty, public affairs director for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland who has been on loan to the campaign, said from Portland.

"We all know we were the little guy going up against the big guy, but we prevailed. We prevailed because the people of Maine — the silent majority — the folks back home spoke with their votes."

Those plucky underdogs on loan from the Catholic Church really pulled it off, didn't they? Yay, Catholics! I can't believe they somehow managed to do it with only the worldwide multi-billion dollar religious organization behind them. It's always nice when the little guy wins, isn't it? Real Revenge of the Nerds situation going on there.

And this time, Big Gay didn't know what hit it! Haha! Those stuffed shirt homosexuals wanting to protect their families and keep their basic human rights really took one on the chin for the first time ever.

(via Dan Savage)

Isn't there any way that I can be a small-minded bigot and sleep soundly in a cocoon of self-deluded rationalization?

Yes (on 1) there is, as a matter of fact (according to this group of Conservative Christians)!

Oh, so what you're saying is I can do or think whatever horrible thing I like, just so long as I pretend like I'm doing it in the service of some vague, imaginary ideal? It's what Jesus died on the cross at Normandy for.

Yay, whatever this thing is that I've decided is not bigotry!

This video comes from some smartypants called RescueMarriage.org who think their pants are so smart that they introduced the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act — which not-completely-genuinely aims to protect marriage from the evils of divorce — in response to last year's Proposition 8 — which genuinely genuinely genuinely aimed to protect marriage from the evils of marriage.

And it looks like they'll be assembling next month…

On November 14, 2009, thousands of Californians will be united in a common cause as we march on the state capitol building to demand a return to traditional values as part of our petition kick-off event.

Participate in democracy the American way, by shouting angrily, using inflammatory rhetoric and memorizing jingoistic slogans to chant or misspell on signs.

I'm curious to see what their protest march looks like. No way that those people will be funnier than these people.

So, do you know what I was thinking about a lot during my time away from the blog? Yep, you guessed it: Jesus. And also America. And how lucky we all are that a Bedouin carpenter who was born two millenia ago founded this great nation for us all and presented us with His Holy Constitution of the Lamb's Blood (or whatever it's called).

And that got me wondering if there were maybe any hyper-didactic artworks showcasing that great moment of creation that I could hang above the alter I keep above my desk. And wouldn't you know it, but this dropped just last week…

Jon McNaughton — the creator of this masterpiece, which, as of press time, has not yet replaced the Mona Lisa in Louvre — obviously went to great trouble to cram every single square-inch of this painting with symbolism that's even more deep than the poetry my sister used to write in junior high.

For example, you see that guy on the bottom-left, holding the cell phone? That's a "Politician," and he "has his patriotic tie and American flag lapel pin, but he's more concerned about his own political ambitions than what is in the best interest of the country." Because obviously, that politician guy should really spend less time talking on his cell phone and more time groveling in self-pity like the Supreme Court Justice right near him. (I mean, what do we even elect these clowns for? Am I right?)

And, by the way, I know what you're thinking: This invented-out-of-whole-cloth image of America is all well and good for all the decent Christians out there who are looking forward to the impending American theocracy. But what about the dozen or so people who think that maybe there's something to this whole "seperation of church and state" thing?

Don't worry. The Internet's got you covered…

So, whether you're a patriotic Christian or the lowly slave of an intergalactic demon-god, your views have been rendered immaculately.

YOU WILL BLEED!!!

(via Pharyngula)