Heh, badgerbag caught a whiff of decay and undigested fish off that movie long before the NYT article.

It was all about an annoying social agenda. And all I [could] think was how people will cite that movie and things like it as “scientific evidence” that “nature” is a certain way, to support their own social agendas or what they think about gender.

Remember folks, if you go looking for morality in nature, you’ll either become disappointed or someone’s dinner!

The authors envision a state designed to protect the “integrity” of the home — autonomous family units composed exclusively of one woman, one man, and as many children as possible. As incentive for the mother to stay home and fulfill her “aptness for motherhood,” fathers would be paid a “family wage.” “Home economies” would replace the “control of big government and vast corporations,” whose demands have eroded the sovereignty of marriage-based families. The tax code would be amended to favor large families and small businesses.

So Canute, how’s that eliminating the tides by sovereign fiat working out for you?

The lack of vision, imagination, and creativity by the Christian Right leaves me amazed. They think they’ll deal with outsourcing by creating Purdah-lite, and handing out baby subsidies? The rest of the world will treat you as damage, and you remember the rest of that line.

Laugh at these people. They may have the ear of the President, but they’re still fools.

Other folks engage the problems, and have fun. “The Natural Family Manifesto” crowd have no Kung Fu.

The message was that the parents have put together a site to help defend the school and the district against a lawsuit filed by one of the teachers and his wealthy conservative patrons after said teacher was told to stop using dubious materials in the classroom.

I relocated, via a comment on Panda’s Thumb, a 1997 article from Reason, a Libertarian magazine, on the Conservative movement’s endorsement of various creationist doctrines such as ID. The writer suggests that Kristol and company pray in public, snicker about the God of Genesis in private, but think that if the proles reject creationism, then they shall all run about and burn down Civilization.

Wait a minute. The Reason article’s going on about Conservatives venerating Leo Strauss and his arguments for elites, but this has taken a rather Lovecraftian turn. Joe Citizen’s darling little girl reads Steven Jay Gould in school and she’s suddenly lurching off to the South Pacific to raise Cthulhu from his watery tomb. Goodness. Rupert Giles should had kept the John Maynard Smith under the same lock and key that he put the copies of the Necronomicon in the Sunnydale High School library.

But there are folks out there fighting to keep knowledge, that only the initiates of the Heritage Foundation should know, out of the hands of us feeble-minded, and easily turned humans: Bruce Sterling mentioned them at his Long Now Foundation talk, they’re The President’s Council on Bioethics.

Of course, try as you may to keep knowledge hidden, these black arts tend to leak out, like the Teller-Ulam design for a hydrogen bomb.

Well, I guess the Conservatives should use some proscribed biotech to create some Hobbits, as that race are famous for doing as they are told, even if it means marching off to certain death in Mordor. Or at least put Charlie Stross on the case.

You’ll excuse me, I need to read up on Punctuated Equilibrium and invoke “He Who Shall Not be Named.”

[ The preceding post was found on a PowerBook, covered with ichor, open to the talk.origins archive. ]

From Florida, a new attempt by Governor Jeb Bush, brother of you-know-who, to exclude a great swathe of black voters from the electoral register in the State. He did it before and is trying to do it again, but this time many many more voters are involved : 47,000 to be precise. We are mulling over whether to lead with it. I think we should – let’s see what happens. [ emphasis added ]

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bush referred to as you-know-who.

By the way, the adults in the Harry Potter books say you-know-who to refer to Voldemort, the bad guy in the series. [ Just in case there's one reader out there who hasn't seen or read Potter. ]

Given a newspaper or a cable network, Cthulu’d be an American hero.

Yes, You Are

Part Two

Feminism has no dress code, special diet, or secret handshake. [ thanks to Laurel ]

On the du Toitification of the the American Conservative

Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The Philosopheraptor

After a comparison of du Toit’s screed to a wet diaper, an acquaintance observed that unlike Kim du Toit, a wet diaper actually served a purpose.

Susan Faludi already covered this topic, anyway.

Meanwhile, an honest comment on “Queer Eye”

Tom Coates has had enough of making gay culture safe for straights.

[ bonus round ] Do as I say, not as I do.

Apparently conservative women are allowed to have careers outside the home, as long as they involve the destruction of civil rights. [ via Crooked Timber ]

And it won’t surprise you that I’m voting against the recall, as well as both of the propositions on the ballot, and ask you to do the same.

He had a chance to win my support, when Warren Buffet, one of his advisors, pointed out how badly Proposition 13 has screwed California. Buffet was quickly hustled offstage, and Arnold muttered homilies about the sacredness of the law that ruined what were the best public schools in the nation, inflated the price of real estate, and made California a state of renters.

Arnold will not be working on fixing California’s problems. Arnold will be campaigning non-stop for George W. Bush as soon as he’s sworn in.

From the Metro, 50 reasons not to vote for him.

• Fear and aggression
• Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Need for cognitive closure
• Terror management

The researchers go on to say:

“For a variety of psychological reasons, then, right-wing populism may have more consistent appeal than left-wing populism, especially in times of potential crisis and instability,” he said.

Their genius plan: register multiple addresses and vote for Reverend Sharpton. Well, it says a great deal about Freepers if they think voting for a black man is embarassing.

The econony needs to to improve so all those unemployed reactionaries can engage in productive work instead of spending the day watching Fox, and posting trolls on liberal weblogs.

There’s a discussion in Nathan’s comments about how to prevent these sorts of hijinks on either side. After all, I’d expect someone from Democratic Underground to propose nominating Pinochet in an online Republican straw poll. Nathan thinks the solution is a nominal fee to join MoveOn. My gut reaction was “blah blah blah chomian identities blah blah crypto blah blah zero knowledge blah blah,” but Nathan pointed out that having people pay a fee to join a political club means that they’ve raised money, and that the club has a onus to follow the lead of them that brought them.