Sorry, that dog doesn't hunt.

Ross Douthat in the New York Times: A Time for Contrition.

Now that the Holy Father himself is ass-deep in the Catholic child-rape coverup nonsense, you'd expect the sackcloth and ashes to come out from the conservatives.

Nope. They're getting even more obnoxious in their buck passing.

Look, Douthat, you fucking asshat: Liberal attitudes on ADULT sexuality do not correspond to taking advantage of children. It's bad enough that the most recent evidence moves the bubble on the Magisterium's ethical level from "ethically incompetent" to "actually evil", but the fact that apologists like you don't see that removes the last shred of credibility you had as social critics.

And if you think this problem is NEW in the Church, THINK AGAIN. It's just now that no one is afraid of the Church's social power anymore, people are coming forward. Finally. And that's the crux of the problem here, isn't it? People like you are upset that the Church has little social power here in AD 2010, and that makes you WAY more sad than kids getting raped by people they're taught from birth to trust implicitly.

Any hope I had that this development would finally discredit the conservative Catholic apologists is destroyed. It's actually emboldened them to become more obnoxious. The madness inflicted upon the world in AD 324* will continue unabated, I guess.

Just remember what's in the Good Book, you morons:

Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Matthew xxv., 41-46 (NRSV)

And if Jesus is going to send you to hell for failing to stand up for those who have been lawfully imprisoned, what do you think he will do to you if you fail to stop priests from raping children, oh dear "Blessed One?"

[For those of you who don't speak Catholic, that's what Benedictus (Latin for "Benedict") means in English. I think we should change his name to Maledictus, myself.]

*And lest you think that I am a Catholic-basher, what I mean by this is that Constantine I's ascension marks the end of the transformation of the Church from an organic, socially conscious, life-affirming body to an imperalist, oppressive, life-destroying nightmare. And though I like the way Catholics do liturgy, I will never be able to stomach Catholicism until this changes. Looks like that will happen no time soon.

And trust me, Protestants are just as bad. Worse, really, because they tend to be better at making weapons.

[By the way, H/T to Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. I wanted to say my own piece about it, but I also agree with all of her remarks, so go read that, too.]

Pretending to be a teabagger.

Barack Obama is a Marxist fascist socialist Muslim Stalinist communist Nazi Jew.

How did I do?

[New York Times: Next Year in the White House: A Seder Tradition ]

[H/T: Dave]

Five reasons why it is awesome that Steve Jobs told Adobe to suck his balls.

Five reasons why it is great the iPhone OS (iPhone/iPod touch/iPad) doesn't support Flash:

(1) Flash is evil and needs to die right now. It is a massive security hole and is not accessible. Moving away from Flash will probably get rid of half the viruses out there. It was the worst proprietary adoption since the <BLINK> tag.

(2) The most obnoxious ads use Flash. No Flash support = no obnoxious ads. Ever. Until they port them to HTML5, anyway.

(3) I couldn't care less about stupid Facebook games.

(4) Media companies are already trying to support HTML 5 video, which works seamlessly on the next version of the iPhone OS.

(5) The ONLY things that ever crash on my Mac are Flash and Microsoft Entourage--and Flash crashing on the iPhone OS would probably crash the whole device.

Yeah, sure, Steve Jobs is a dick. But he's a dick that runs a company that makes good stuff. If you have to put up with a dick, make sure he's at least good at what he does. Adobe, on the other hand, is evil and their stuff is awful. Fortunately, Flash is a walking corpse.

Prefer deferring the solvable problems over the unsolvable ones.

In the news:

Financial Times: IPCC's AR4 actually understates effects of climate change.
China Daily: Oxygen levels declining.

While those in right-wing land are busy excoriating British climate scientists for perceived sins of 15 years ago that are completely irrelevant to modern issues of climate change and biosphere destruction, those of us in the reality-based community are presented with a building mountain of highly disturbing realizations.

Stories like this explain why I'm not terribly concerned about intergenerational fiscal and political threats. A balanced budget and strict adherence to the Constitution aren't of much use when you're suffocating or can't find food because most of the edible plant and animal species are now extinct.

I feel like humans can solve human-scale problems such as deficits or political chaos given enough time. But creating a runaway feedback loop in the climate or destroying the systems that create oxygen for us to breathe will be a far bigger and maybe even unsolvable problem.

Therefore, I'm thinking that you might as well universalize health care and target tons of government dollars developing sustainable forms of energy, even if you have to do it by running the printing presses nonstop. Yeah, sure, you might destroy the currency, but if you succeed, you will have a wealth basis to reboot the system and also have the luxury of debating what that replacement system might look like.

I don't think my grandchildren (or more to the point, the grandchildren of those I love, since I will never have biological children of my own) will be very fond of us if we give them a balanced budget but no breathable oxygen. And, conversely, if we wrecked the economy making sure they had air to breathe and food to eat and medicine to heal them, they might forgive us for our fiscal and constitutional sins.