They’d Blame the Gays for Global Warming Too — If Only They Believed In It

Our friends Down Under bring us this news dispatch:

An outbreak of deadly bird flu in Israel is God’s punishment for calls in election ads to legalise gay marriages, according to Rabbi David Basri, a prominent sage preaching Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism.

“The Bible says that God punishes depravity first through plagues against animals and then in people,” Rabbi Basri said in a religious edict quoted by his son.

Madonna was unavailable for comment (but her back-up dancers were plenty pissed).

Why Not? [Where the Dolphins Play]
Bird Flu God’s Wrath: Rabbi [News.com.au]

READ MORE: avian flu, bird flu, conspiracy theories, crazy as hell, gay, gays, kabbalah, madonna

The Week In Wonkette

• Su Lin? Straight up OWNED. Butterstick? Currently keeping scientists busy recalibrating all known measures of cuteness.

• Michael Lenehan proposes a Year Without Journalism after dissing pioneering web-based content efforts. Big words for a guy who only gets read on slow-loading PDFs.

• If you thought that Abramoffukkah didn’t have a cream-filled center of sex gone wrong in the corridors of power, think again.

• The selective stupidity of public servants on full display.

• Ticking time-bombs make for compelling television, idiotic public policy.

• Michael Scanlon’s ultra-weird adolescence, REVEALED. And how.

• But the most important moment of the week: After a few days of dawdling, you learned that your beloved Ana Marie Cox would be elevating to Editor Emeritus. It may feel like a hole has been torn in the Blogosphere, but remember: OG Ana built this domain on the premise that the leaders of Washington DC’s main industry roll into town on the wings of high ideals and then proceed to behave as if they were participants in some kind of Feyian slambook cliqueria, with the aesthetically pleasing likes of LiLo and Rachael McAdams replaced by grizzle-haired overexcitable coots and shrill, claws-out harridans. The premise is unimpeachable—no matter how many Sensenbrenners you throw at it. And while change is coming to Wonkette, there’s always one thing you can be certain of: those fuckers NEVER learn. Godspeed you, Ms. Cox. Long live Wonkette.— DCEIVER

READ MORE: Announcements, abramoffukkah, ana marie cox, bloggers, blogging, butterstick, crazy as hell, cries for help, domestic espionage scandal, michael scanlon, tom delay, torture, wonkette

The Week In Wonkette

• Kathleen Parker recalls a high school book report and undergoes a severe mental paroxysm during which she realizes that if it weren’t for narcissists like her, bloggers would have piloted the planet into the sun by now.

• Dick Cheney: he’s in, he’s out, he’s in, he’s out…why can’t he be more like his daughter?

• Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei look back on 2005 with selective remembrances and rose-colored glasses.

• All dogs go to heaven, you know.

• Maureen Dowd infuses inscrutability with epochal melodrama.

• Hate to say I told you so, but we’re not getting the government we wanted to get in Iraq.

• George Bush ain’t gonna take no more shit from tsunamis.

• The Intelligent Designer doesn’t have to be God, you know. Alien overlords who travel through time, why not?

• The only losers in the stupid War On Christmas are the stupid people who ruined their own stupid Christmas by stupidly insisting that such a stupid war existed in the first place.— DCEIVER

READ MORE: Kathleen Parker, blogging, blogs, crazy as hell, dick cheney, dogs, george bush, hannity and colmes, intelligent design, iraq elections, maureen dowd, pointless circumlocutions of journalistic diarrhea, pots harping on the blackness of kettles, times select, town hall, war on christmas, washington post, washington times, weathertainment

Remainders: Fresh Fruit from Crazy Schemes Edition

• In defending the sexually explicit posters recently stricken from hundreds of billboards throughout Austria, artist Carlos Aires says he had no desire to offend anyone, “I suddenly had this image of three decision makers who are having an orgy while everything around them collapses.” Hey, we’re only offended we weren’t invited to the orgy. [CNN]

• Amazon.com as a meta-platform for brilliant cultural satire. [Amazon, via Alt.Hippo]

• Is it wrong for us, on some level, to totally love the hell out of this kid? When you combine Farris Hassan’s indefatigable initiative with his youthful way he commits himself to never thinking anything through, it’s frankly amazing that he didn’t launch Radar. [AP]— DCEIVER

READ MORE: Remainders, crazy as hell, european union, funny, gawker media, iraq, porn

What “Fair and Balanced” Gets You

Anytime you get a die-hard advocate of intelligent design on camera, you’re bound to hear something that makes your brain so deeply upset that it practically cries out for a bubble bath and a long nap. But the length and breadth and depth of the weirdness could not be guessed at until author Michael Behe appeared on the Hannity and Colmes show for a “special report” on ID last week. Late in the interview, America heard this startling exchange:

COLMES: Who’s the designer?

BEHE: Well, as I’ve said since 1996 when I published “Darwin’s Black Box,” I’m a Catholic. I think a good candidate for the designer is God. But that is not straight — that’s not a conclusion that you come from ,from the structure of the bacterial flagellum.

COLMES: What would be the other options if it’s not God?

BEHE: Well, you know, other things that would strike us as, you know, as pretty exotic, you know. Space aliens or time travelers or something strange.

Okay, memo to Alan Colmes: we know that you’re a sad, stretchy-faced clown with little to no cojones, but when someone comes into your studio looking for scientific recognition of little green men and Back To The Future Theory, you have them right where you want them, journalistically speaking. There are countless smart-ass high-school seniors taking AP Biology who, knowing they can sidetrack a discussion for a solid week discussing the theories of Fox Mulder, won’t make that mistake.— DCEIVER

Evolution of a Debate [Hannity and Colmes]

READ MORE: crazy as hell, hanntiy and colmes, intelligent design, top

Metro Section: Awash in Tackiness Edition

• Rumor has it: Blogger of Why.I.Hate.DC fame has had his Christmas wishes answered! Congratulations, dude. Oh, Seattle, we are so very, very sorry.

• Falls Church resident reimagines Christmas as post-Apocalyptic vomit launch: “It’s not hard to create an ugly display. All you have to do is get carried away. I look like Christmas regurgitated all over my balcony!” [Washington Post]

• Jeremy taught in class today. [WTOP]

• Garrett Graff takes out the trash today with a thinly-veiled complaint about the way Washingtonian’s Super Bestest With The Mostest Ever Journalist’s list has been received. Dude, I’m not saying that the list was safe, but kids who are learning to swim will be using it for waterwings. [FishbowlDC]— DCEIVER

READ MORE: crazy as hell, fishbowldc, garrett graff, metro section, war on christmas, washingtonian, why i hate dc

Oh, Shut Up and Eat a Cookie

As a public service, we bring you the latest mental bulimia from Ann Coulter:

I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo.

What a plum gig she’s got. Top dollar to basically keep typing the same thing over and over and over and over.

Would it make you depressed to be reminded of the fact that you can pick a greater quantity of decency and character out of Butterstick’s stool, and yet he’s the one that’s going to get tranquilized and shipped to China in a box?— DCEIVER

Coulter Wants ‘Torture As a Televised Spectator Sport’ [Editor and Publisher]

READ MORE: ann coulter, butterstick, cliches, clinical psychosis, crankosphere, crazy as hell, top

Also, Two Wrongs are the New Right

In the wake of revelations that the Bush administration conducted a campaign of illegal wiretaps pursuant to matters that are widely claimed to be vital to the national interest yet simultaneously devoid of any evidence that the legal avenues available to the President were insufficient to the pursuit thereof, it’s possible to imagine that dull-witted, tranked-up press corps failing to ask any number of questions. Like: Why, Mr. President, are you so angry about the Patriot Act filibuster when you seem jolly well disposed to conferring whatever powers you like upon yourself? Like: What part of “You have seventy-two hours to seek a warrant after the initiation of a wiretap” don’t you understand? Like: Why can’t you and the idea of separation of powers just hug it out, bitch?

Nevertheless, some hopeful and naive part of us still wonders why no one is questioning one of the central planks in the Administration’s defense of their actions, namely: “Hey, it’s totally okay that we are wiretapping American citizens without legal authority because we totally briefed some Democrats that we were going to be doing it.” That’s an extraordinarily bizarre justification! Since when does briefing members of the opposition party have boo-boo-poopy to do with something being legal or not?

You’d think that the Bush administration could more fully harness their crazy-ass “let’s brief the Democrats” power by gathering the gang of four and telling them you were going to save the taxpayers some scratch by knocking over a few jewelry stores. We wish we could avail ourselves of this executive privilege, unfortunately, down here in the real world where we common folk live, the po-po have a name for what Bush suggests gives him legal cover: criminal conspiracy.— DCEIVER

READ MORE: crazy as hell, domestic espionage scandal, national security agency, top

Remainders: General Zod Edition

• Over the next few days, a lot of Congressional allies are going to have the President’s back when it comes to this domestic spying stuff, as others argue in favor of a rule of law, the standards set by the Executive Branch, and who had the legal right to say and do what. It seems only fitting, then, to remember what the same people said once upon a time. [DU]

• To-be-built $26 billion city will be overseen by a denizen of the Phantom Zone. [AFP via Breitbart]

• “I am the antichrist! I am a Santarchist!” New Zealand: the central front in the War on Christmas. [Al-Jazeera]

• Condi Rice summons the power of her invisible sphere. [Princess Sparkle Pony]— DCEIVER

READ MORE: condoleezza rice, crazy as hell, hypocrites, saudi arabia, scandals, war on christmas