Real Amuricans don't need no fancy book learnin'
Some people are born ignorant and some have ignorance thrust upon them. Across the U.S. it seems there is a movement to get rid of the International Baccalaurate - check this article in the Guardian about a school board of ignorant conservatards that are out to give Kansas a run for its money.

At the high school level the program is usually a two year, highly academic program for juniors and seniors which is recognized as a first year course credit at many universities and colleges. As it is internationally recognized, the program is especially popular in international schools here in Japan. It's aim is to provide students with a comprehensive background in English, a foreign language, social studies, mathematics, and science. Also required are three other components: study of a Theory of Knowledge course—an interdisciplinary course which encourages critical thinking; Participation in 3 - 4 hours of extra-curricular activities per week with emphasis on volunteer community service; completion of a 4,000 word essay written independently, with guidance from a faculty adviser

Read the Guardian article to get the exact statements, the gist of the objections to the IB are that it is anti-Christian, anti-military and anti-American, promotes disarmament, multiculturalism, evironmentalism, a more even distribution of wealth (read "Marxism") and the importance of international institutions such as the United Nations (read "One World Government" and is just plain "too foreign" -- it was, after all, developed in France and the organization that administers and coordinates the program is still headquartered there.

Even the President has embraced the IB program and called for its expansion in the U.S., but I guess that's not enough for those who think that Sunday School is all you need.

Oscar winning rabbits
A short animated feature that is just like Brokeback Mountain, but with bunnies. (warning: contains scenes of bunny love that dare not speak its name that may amuse )

Ponies!
Ride Holden, ride! Karma is a bitch, isn't it?

Don't worry about Dubya's lack of experience or ability, he'll be surrounded by top people. Top people I tell you!
Yes, top people like horse show producer-turned-emergency-nonresponse manager Michael Brown, patriotic tunesmith-turned-Attorney General John Ashcroft, Lawyer-shooter and oil industry bagman Bwana Dick Cheney, Republican party gofer-turned-NASA manager (at least in his own mind) George Deutsch and last but not least this goniff (Slate link via Atrios' Eschaton) who truly was almost as good a pick to head Health and Human Services as Brownie was to head up FEMA. Personally, I think you can tell a lot about a person by the company he keeps and the choices he makes.

Cheaper by the quarter dozen?
1 man, 3 wives: HBO comes to Utah -- Newsday.com reports on the new HBO program "Big Love" which focus on a man played by Bill Paxton living in Salt Lake City with his three wives. He's just trying to live up to the principles of the original Mormon church, apparently, and trying to get away from the creepy fundementalist compound he grew up in led by Harry Dean Stanton. Bruce Dern plays his father. Sounds like great casting, but the review in Newsday says its a bit scattered. Sounds like the Sopranos with Tony married to three Carmellas or Six Feet Under with Nate married to Brenda, his younger sister and his mother. I wonder if they will get into the old LDS doctrines about non-white races? Or how the First Nations peoples of North America are actually one of the lost tribes of Israel? Or the Osmonds?
Go out and read "Under the Banner of Heaven" by John Krakauer before watching.

"Dogs and Cats living together -- mass hysteria!" part two
Did I wake up in another dimension sometime in early February and just not notice? First Steven "I am not a zombie!" Harper gets elected over Paul "I balanced the budget" Martin. Then Canada loses to hockey powerhouse Switzerland in the Olympics and fails to get even a bronze medal in our national sport. Now this .

I mean, seriously, what in the hell is going on?

I'm starting to expect to open a history book and read about how British President Neville Chamberlin's doctrine of lightning war solved by the Sudatenland crisis by carpetbombing Berlin and killing German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Am I going to hear that long serving Canadian Prime Minister Robert Stanfield's government finally fell to Stephen Lewis and the Canadian Socialist Party after Stanfield introduced the War Measures act to put troops in the streets of Calgary and stamp out Preston Manning's separatist terrorist group, the Western Alberta New Constitutional Empire Regiment or that Mick Jagger, former leader of the Beatles, has been in prison since 1980 for gunning down some creepy autograph hound from Hawaii?

This new poll about Bwana Dick Cheney being more popular than wealthy skank Paris Hilton, but less popular than mass murderer Joesf Stalin makes sense - After all, Stalin did win World War Two - but Canada beating the US of A in baseball? Who put what in my kool-aid?

Bush jokes thread
Okay, it's been a slow day down at the Ministry of Truth , so I've been blogging a lot today, but I wanted to share these stories with you:

• George W. Bush is talking with his military advisers and they tell him that three Brazilians were killed in Iraq the previous day. He looks chastened and sad and slowly shakes his head, tears in his eyes. "That's terrible!" says the president and dismisses his advisors. He immediately calls the VP. "Dick" he says, panic in his voice, "How many is a Brazillion?"

• Asked his opinion about the ongoing controversy over Roe vs. Wade, George W. Bush said he "didn't care how people got out of New Orleans, as long as they left town."

• 15,000 atheists demonstrated in London today after a piece of blank paper was found on a cartoonists desk.

leave your joke in the comments

Big Brother loves you!

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is strength

God is sitting across the street from your house right now, drinking bad coffee and fingering his pistol
because apparently the Supreme Being, the King of Kings, the big sky-daddy hisself, is a bounty hunter. Which could explain a few things - what exactly I'm not sure, but it sure puts a different spin on the Lord's prayer.

Baaaaad behaviour
Remember after 9/11 how we were constantly told that all policemen and firefighters everywhere were the greatest heroes since WWII. I'm thinking that reputation may be fading somewhat in part of Arizona. The photo really does look like the kind of guy you'd expect to be molesting sheep. And then there are these Illinois cops who like to party with drunk underage girls, while locking the boys up for two weeks for underage drinking. Yes, you read that right, two weeks in jail for underage drinking - Thank God I didn't grow up in Monmouth Ill. - I'd have gotten the chair. Ahhh, Bobo's World (tm)

Mellowing out
Clearly someone needs to relax, perhaps with some soothing New Age "music" - I'm not making light of domestic violence so please don't sic the International Sisterhood of Outraged Womyn on me, but shouldn't this guy have been arrested years ago for crimes against humanity and fraud for passing off pablum as art?

The Koufaxes
The polls are open - vote early and don't vote often, this is just the opening round to narrow the field so strategic voting is recommended. The Woodshed endorses the following:

Best Blog -- I'll be voting for Jane at Firedoglake this year in the final, but so will everyone else, so you may want to spread the love around to ensure some other these deserving blogs--Eschaton, Orcinus, Jesus' General and Rude Pundit -- make the finals.

Best Professional/Sponsored Blog -- Orcinus (Dave is one of the most consistent, thorough and thoughtful blogger - journalists out there and doing the most important work.)

Best Community Blog -- TPM Cafe, what the wingnuts at open robe media and townhall think they are for the right, which is a nursery school comparing itself to Oxford postgrad programs.

Best Writing -- Michael Berube

Best New Blog -- Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory

Deserving of wider recognition -- A tough choice, but I'm going with Galloping Beaver, with apologies to Dave Noon at Axis of Evel Knievel. But if you want good reading just go to list and pick one at random

Single issue blog -- Orcinus swatting fascist knuckleheads or PZ Myers swatting antiscience knuckleheads at Pharnygula

Best Post -- I can't vote, I haven't read most of the entries (yet) but hitting them at random is supplying some inspiring reads. Go check them out and to thine ownself be true.

Best Series -- tough to pick from the serious look by Orcinus at Michelle Malkin being unhinged to Jesus General's hilarious Yellow Elephant crusade and everything in between but I think I'll have to go with Americablog's Gannon/Guckert series.

Best Expert Blog -- PZ Myers at Pharnygula

Best Group Blog -- essentially best community blog, only smaller - Lawyers Guns and Money for sharing the postings so well, and for hockey and battleship blogging

Most Humourous Blog -- Dependable Renegade, Rising Hegemon, Happy Furry Puppy Storytime, Rude Pundit are all brilliant, but I have to go with Jesus' General

the others - Most Humourous Post, Best Commentor,?Best State or Local Blog - I don't really feel qualified to comment on these, so I won't.

A heckuva job done by all
Photographic proof of a sort from the BBC that Mike Brown wasn't the only one on staff that was there as a result of a "hire the handicapped" program

"Now, y'all just listen here. You let the Dubainians buy our ports or I'll not only veto everything, I'll spank y'all, jest like I'ma gonna do to Hussien - he tried teh kill mah daddy, the least I kin do is paddle his bottom like we used do to frat pledges. Alberto said I couldn't brand him the way we did with new members at Skull and Bones, said them yoomin raghts types would git all upset, but there ain't nothing in the Geneva convention about a good paddlin"

"Gee, they sure do play tennis with funny racquets over here"

Was Gomer Pyle USMC a documentary?
The latest Zogby Poll has some very disturbing numbers in it. Apparently 90% of U.S. troops serving in Iraq think the invasion was in retaliation for Saddam Hussien's role in the 9/11 attacks. Given that even the White House has admitted there was no link between Saddam and 9/11, one must ask what the hell is going on in the U.S. armed forces? Are they hitting people in the head with ball peen hammers as part of basic training now? Are all recruits forced to watch FOX News for extended periods ala Clockwork Orange? If this were some half-assed blogosphere based poll of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders over at Free Rethuglic or Little Green Noballs, I would understand the results, but this is a poll by a reputable major polling firm.

But can they get me sharks with frickin' laser beams?

Man Descending (see the links) shows us the way to an engineering company that specializes in hidden passages, trap doors, concealed compartments et al. I know who is gonna get a chunk of money when I win the lottery.

Tweedum and Tweedumber
First we had ill-informed right wing dingbats in the the United States running around renaming chips "Freedom Fries" and pouring perfectly good wine down the gutter in retaliation for France not blinding following them to war (and who seems to have made the right call there?). Now Iran is getting in on the action - no more Danish pastries, they are now "Roses of the Prophet."
Two countries - one is a borderline fascist police state obsessed with threats from the outside world and run by a bunch of ignorant, fundementalist theocrats who think they have been chosen by God to run roughshod over international law and world opinion - the other one is Iran.

Jebus, we hardly knew ye
For the most religious nation in the western world and the proud home of muscular evangelical protestentism, the United States and its people apparently know diddlysquat about Christianity, at least according to Harper's Bill McKibbon. Go read what he has to say at:
The Christian Paradox (Harpers.org)

here's the lede:

"Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten
Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels.
Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the
specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s
educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual
or political terms.

Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture.

The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up. "

And a shout out to the Canadian Cynic (see blogroll) for pointing me to this.

Not to get all tin-foil hatted on you, but...
Bartholomew's notes on religion has an interesting tale of covert Christians In Action at work in Uganda. Apparently someone made a booboo and a former GOP operative and Christian activist who claims to be a former spook has landed in jail for running guns.