Holy Shit

This interview was just dandy. And by dandy, I mean mind-numbingly hilarious. Where does he think he's at? Constantly interrupting and screaming only makes you right on Fox. The good stuff starts at 5:42.

OUT OF CONTEXT!!!!!!

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Franken: "This is a perversion of the filibuster"

This week Republicans have been blocking the debate about financial reform from happening. They haven't been blocking any actual bill or anything, they've been blocking any discussion from happening at all. Then as they always do when there are no rational reasons to justify their actions, they proceeded to lie to the American people. Again.

Well, they finally stopped filibustering. But it's too late. They've already shot themselves in the foot (feet?) with this. They have clearly displayed that they are on the side of Wall Street, and not on the side of the American people. If Democrats are smart, they're going to be reminding us of this over and over and over again as election season rolls closer. There is absolutely no reason they should have done this, other than to throw a wrench in the gears of the inevitable, and it only serves to further display their support for American plutocracy.

Al Franken gets it, and he's been showing that time and time again ever since he got to Washington. Here he is tearing apart the GOP for filibustering this. You almost have to feel sad for him, you can tell in his voice that he can't believe he has to say these things.

Obama Attempts to Rally Progressives for 2010 Elections

A lot can happen in seven months, November is still a long way away. We would like to think the Republicans actually have a powerful voice right now because of all the media coverage they're getting, but I saw a poll recently saying tea party support among Americans was only hovering around 33%. And Obama's poll numbers are higher than Reagan's at the same point in his presidency.



This however is what's scaring me.



If everyone in the country actually shows up to the voting booth, I really don't think the Democrats will do that bad. But polls don't mean shit if people don't care enough to vote. The republican base is rallied as shit, and they're going to be turning up in droves. Plus, Republican candidates are going to have a limitless amount of corporate cash, and a lot of that ensuing propaganda will undoubtedly sway a lot of the dumbass independents. It doesn't look very good.

Once Republicans take Congress, you can fully expect the U.S. government to stop functioning entirely. Republicans will prevent anything from being accomplished, and then they'll say it was because of Obama. Someone at Daily Kos actually predicts they'll go for impeachment. I doubt it'll actually go that far, but... he puts forward an interesting case.

When the Republicans took over congress in 1994, the first thing they did was start serious and official investigations into the shadowy conspiracy theories of the loony right. They appointed a Javert-like investigator to turn over every rock, look at every paper, search in every crevice, to find SOMETHING, ANYTHING to use to destroy Bill Clinton. And eventually, they found it in early 1998.

Their actions were considered cruel and cynical and it indeed cost them in the elections that year -- but they still maintained their control of the House, so impeachment moved forward. Even though it was clear that the Senate and the American people wanted nothing to do with it, they forged ahead. Why? Their real goal was the White House in 2000.

And their plan worked. The impeachment of Clinton took enough shine off that apple to hinder Al Gore just enough to allow a certifiable sociopath to get close enough to winning the election that they could then use their legal spin and rigged Supreme Court majority to put him the rest of the way into the White House. The party of ME ABOVE ALL ELSE. ME ABOVE COUNTRY. ME ABOVE CONSTITUTION. ME ME ME MINE.

I'm really not worried at all about Obama's 2012 run though. If George Bush can win twice, anybody can win twice. And we might see some third-party candidates run like Ron Paul or maybe Sarah Palin, who will hopefully split the vote and make the possibility of any conservative winning out of the question.

Sunday Youtube Post

Sinead O'Connor on Rachel Maddow Show

Just in case anyone forgot, Sinead O'Connor was the one who caused a huge controversy 18 years ago by ripping up a picture of the Pope live on SNL, in protest of church child abuse. Everyone flipped their shit. Guess who was right?

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The only thing that I think would make anyone happy, which would honor not only the victims but the Holy Spirit who these people claim to be representing, would be for him to actually admit that there was an orchestrated cover-up and get out of office, and let us have a church which is run by people who actually believe in God.

Here's the op-ed O'Connor wrote that was mentioned. Rachel Maddow is the classiest reporter on television, and if you don't agree with me, fuck off.

Napoleon

I bought Napoleon: Total War earlier, and it's been tearing me apart waiting for it to download. As I wait, I decided to pick up a book I've had for about a year, but I never really bothered to start because it seemed so intimidating.



I really wish I would've started it sooner. I sort of got into a Napoleon podcast a few months ago, which releases episodes explaining the era in chronological order. The host's enthusiasm bordered a little on 'batshit,' so it didn't really keep my attention.

The preface of this book explains how historians debate on whether or not Napoleon was a 'good guy' or a 'bad guy.' This author puts him in the 'bad guy' camp, saying that Napoleon supported all the ideals of revolutionary France, but for all the wrong reasons. More freedoms for the people was simply a byproduct of his climb to power. And he actually backs it up too (Napoleon was constantly picked on growing up and always overcompensated and developed a skill for lying, he was a history buff and strongly admired the tyrant Julius Caesar, etc).

The podcast guy on the other hand practically orgasmed every time he mentioned Napoleon's name. Napoleon could do no wrong, he was simply carrying out the wars because every other country in Europe hated democracy, Napoleon was defending it. Author guy actually brings that point up, and says it's greatly exaggerated. They both seem pretty biased, but the author actually puts evidence forward, so I'm probably going to stick with him for now. I really want to know why all my history classes skipped over this. It was basically the real World War I. Hitler was quite literally a bumbling retard, and the power of Nazi Germany could probably be considered a fluke. Napoleon Bonaparte was practically the resurrection of Julis Caesar on steroids. He was utterly brilliant. It gives me shivers, thinking about about what he could've done if he had modern weapons.

I don't even know why I made this post. I just really want this fucking game to download.



"Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me."

Obama Will Ban Fishing

New Left Media visits the tax day protests in Washington D.C.



Propaganda and angry mobs have always come and gone throughout American history, but I'm not sure if there's ever been a time when such a steady stream of corporate money has fueled the misinformation so efficiently. These people are only going to be pushed further and further away as my generation grows older and the country keeps changing, and the thought of their reaction really scares me.

Olbermann Destroys Palin on Church and State

An appeal to authority argument is when someone thinks a statement is correct simply because it was said by an authoritative figure.

Source A says p is true.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.

This argument is fallacious. It is always wrong. Simply being in a position of authority doesn't mean you know everything. People who use this argument don't know how to form opinions, and they depend on daddy to tell them what they're supposed to think.

I truly, honestly believe that a lot of Republicans confuse how they view God with how they view the Founding Fathers. As in, they think the founders are God. They know absolutely nothing about the founders, and they know absolutely nothing about God. But that's not going to stop them from pretending to. They project their own opinions onto both. They take both of their quotes out of context. They've completely forgotten the messages they originally stood for. They believe the founder's 'word' (or, their own projected opinion) is infallible, and anyone who disagrees is going to hell and/or a communist. They have completely made up their own authority to appeal to.

Anyone who's read even a little bit about the Revolutionary War era should know that the founders were products of the Enlightenment. They were very much secular. The vast majority of the founders were Christian, but they typically held a strong distrust against organized religion in general, specifically when it mixes in with government. That's monarchistic European thinking. That is one of the key principles Revolutionary America fought against, and any fucktard should know it.

Sarah Palin was caught projecting her opinions onto the founders. Keith Olbermann calls her out on it, and shits down her neck.

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I don't know why Olbermann only quoted Jefferson. Thomas Paine and James Madison hated religion even more than he did. Jefferson actually warmed up to Christianity a bit later in his life, believing Jesus was one of the greatest moral philosophers who had ever lived (just not in his divinity). Keep in mind, most of the founders disagreed with them (we can't make the same mistake Republicans are making and assume that every founder universally agreed on everything; they were just as divided as we are). Most everyone was undoubtedly secular, but in terms of personal belief, Jefferson, Paine, and Madison were the extremists of their age.

Jefferson and his best friend John Adams eventually agreed to just stop discussing religion altogether, since their debates would always grow so heated, and threaten their friendship. The Federalists viciously attacked Jefferson in the 1800 election for being a "deist" and an "infidel." Most of the founders cut off relations with Paine entirely during his later years when most of his stronger criticisms against Christianity came out in The Age of Reason. Jefferson was the only friend who stuck by him, and the Federalists attacked him for doing that too. Paine and Jefferson were both deists. James Madison, who was Jefferson's protege and principle author of the Constitution is considered by many to have been an atheist.



“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make half the world fools and half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the world.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.”
-Thomas Jefferson



"My own mind is my own church."
-Thomas Paine

“The world is my country, to do good is my religion.”
-Thomas Paine

"Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility and this contempt for human reason, he [the Christian] ventures into the boldest presumptions; he finds fault with everything; his selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the government of the universe; he prays dictatorially; when it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine; he follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say: Thou knowest not so well as I.”
-Thomas Paine



"The civil government ... functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State."
-James Madison

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."
-James Madison

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect."
-James Madison

"Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure and perpetuate it needs them not."
-James Madison

"That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages among some, and to their eternal infamy the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such a business."
-James Madison

"Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect ... Equal laws, protecting equal rights, are found, as they ought to be presumed, the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country; as well as best calculated to cherish that mutual respect and good will among citizens of every religious denomination which are necessary to social harmony, and most favorable to the advancement of truth."
-James Madison

Religiosity Plummets Among Younger People

From Pew, which breaks it down even more.

• 27% of millennials (born 1981 or later) say the Bible is the literal word of God
• 53% believe without a doubt that God exists
• 18% regularly attend church
• 40% say religion is very important in their lives

I'm a little surprised that only a little more than half of our generation believe in God with certainty, I thought it was a bit higher than that. And it's very reassuring that only 27% say the Bible is literally God's word, which is exactly how it's been taught for 2,000 years.

I really think the internet has a lot to do with this. Atheists and agnostics are very often scared to 'come out' if they live in a particularly religious community, and the internet has made it possible for them to communicate with each other and understand that there isn't anything wrong with it. And the atheist community on the internet is pretty big. The Problem of Evil might've also swayed a lot of people after 9/11. And the way the Catholic Church is treating the child abuse scandal certainly isn't helping, especially when they're saying the kids were asking for it. I can't wait til we're running the country.



FUCK YOU, SCIENTISTS

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This just in: Republicans are corrupt pieces of shit

Deregulation gained a little steam in the 70s, but it really took off once Reagan took office. Over the last thirty years, Congress has been slowly deconstructing all the rules FDR put into place to prevent another Great Depression from occurring. When the economy crashed again a couple years ago, you'd think it would be a good idea to maybe put some of those rules back into place, right?

WRONG, FUCKER.



Obama has been on a fucking role. In a matter of weeks, he got health care passed, got all 47 countries at that nuclear summit to sign a deal to decrease the number of nuclear weapons across the planet, he proposed a bold new plan for NASA, and he extended gay rights by actually allowing them to visit their loved ones in the hospital. Now he's proposing financial reform. This seems like a completely reasonable and sane thing to do. Guess what? Republicans are unanimously against it.

And the president explained why in his Weekly Address this morning.

"Now, unsurprisingly, these reforms have not exactly been welcomed by the people who profit from the status quo – as well their allies in Washington. This is probably why the special interests have spent a lot of time and money lobbying to kill or weaken the bill. Just the other day, in fact, the Leader of the Senate Republicans and the Chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee met with two dozen top Wall Street executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue.

Lo and behold, when he returned to Washington, the Senate Republican Leader came out against the common-sense reforms we’ve proposed. In doing so, he made the cynical and deceptive assertion that reform would somehow enable future bailouts – when he knows that it would do just the opposite. Every day we don’t act, the same system that led to bailouts remains in place – with the exact same loopholes and the exact same liabilities. And if we don’t change what led to the crisis, we’ll doom ourselves to repeat it. That’s the truth. Opposing reform will leave taxpayers on the hook if a crisis like this ever happens again."

Obama plans Mars trip in two decades

This is possibly the most vital time in humanity's entire history. If our species wants to have any hope of surviving for the long haul, we have to get off earth. That is not up for debate, it is a fact. We have already surpassed earth's population cap, and if we don't do something soon, we're going to run out of food and resources very quickly. In the coming years, newer technology is very likely going to slow down our stubborn death when the cloning of food becomes more acceptable and widespread, but that can't last us forever. We need space. We're almost at 7 billion people now, and as population increases, the rate of birth obviously does as well, because there's more people fucking. At the moment, the colonization of Mars is our best hope.

Here's the story. The problem with getting to Mars is fuel. It takes a fuckton of fuel to fly up into space from Earth. After that's used up, there simply would not be enough fuel to get to Mars and back with the current spacecraft we're using. NASA found a solution to this. It's called the Constellation Program. They planned to have a permanent lunar outpost set up on the moon by 2024. This outpost, not Earth, would be the launchpad to Mars. The Moon's gravity isn't nearly as strong as Earth's, so much less fuel would be used. Voila!



And this launchpad wouldn't go away. Settlers from earth would slowly migrate, and it would grow. People would live there.



Last month, Obama canceled this plan, citing cost concerns. It's not without reason, because it would really cost a-fucking-lot. But the people at NASA (and me) were fucking devastated. An open letter decrying the decision was sent to the White House, signed by 27 astronauts, including Armstrong and Lovell. This should be pretty significant, because Armstrong, who's usually a really shy person and very rarely gives interviews, has been going around speaking out about it.

President Obama spoke at the Kennedy Space Center today about NASA's future. Here's the entire thing if you have half an hour to spare.



Here's a transcript.

"And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.

[...]

I understand that some believe we should attempt to return to the surface of the moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here, we've been there before. Buzz has been there. There's a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do."

Buzz Aldrin supports the new plan. There's a lot of outrage about it, and I have to admit, I was pretty pissed off at first too, but I'm cautiously optimistic now. As cool as the moon is, Obama really does have a point, there's not much there for us if the goal is ultimately Mars. But you also have to keep in mind that there are other countries that already have plans in the works to go back to the moon, and Obama's decision is basically giving it to them. I'm talking about that moon colony. China's gonna be scdattling around on the moon searching for helium-3 deposits, while America's gonna be scrambling to find a decent plan to get to Mars. This is all-or-nothing, if we can't come up with a fuel-efficient way to get off Earth, then America's prospects in space are finished.

The good thing is that we have a fuel-efficient way to get off earth. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume Obama has the Mars Direct plan in mind. This was dreamt up in the 90s by David Baker and Robert Zubrin, and it's pretty brilliant. It won't send just one craft, it will send one after the other, in two year intervals. Each crew will spend a year and a half there. The purpose of each landing would basically be to help prepare the landing site for the next crew, so that the colony will slowly grow and grow over the decades. Here's an awesome video that sums it up pretty well.



And good ol' Fox News is opposing it with flatout lies, which probably means it's a good idea. They said Buzz Aldrin is "blasting Obama" when he actually supports the plan. They said Obama is "slashing" NASA's budget, when he's actually increasing it by $6 billion dollars. And blonde-with-tits asked "Are we even going to have a NASA program anymore?" We'll probably need a space program if we're sending people to Mars, so my guess is yes.



Envisage - Contemplate or conceive of as a possibility or a desirable future event.

Politico confirms what sane people have known for a year: The Tea Party Movement is a complete fraud

Here's the article and here's Olbermann talking about it.

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Yesterday, Congresswoman Betty McCollum addressed the House about a resolution commemorating the victims who died in the Oklahoma City bombing. It was pretty amazing. Here's a transcript, and here's the video.



I was eight years old when the bombing happened. I couldn't fully grasp what was going on, but the images are still burned into my head. On Monday, Rachel Maddow is going to do a special about unreleased Timothy McVeigh tapes, and everybody should watch it. Here's Stewart interviewing her about it.

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Bugle Asks an American

The Bugle is the best podcast ever. John Oliver from The Daily Show and British comedian Andy Zaltzman sit around for an hour and make fun of world events. In essence, it's The Daily Show as a podcast.

There's a recurring character on the show called "The American," and he's basically everything there is to hate about America embodied into a single person. It's fantastic. I listened to John and Andy interview The American about health care earlier, and I thought I'd share. It's split into two parts.

BUUUUURRRRN

Sunday Youtube Post

Alan Grayson storms in on GOP meeting to confront them about their spying on a Democratic meeting

From Huffington post.

Conservative media spent much of Friday attacking Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) for breaking up a GOP meeting Thursday evening in his Orlando district. Rush Limbaugh talked about the confrontation for good chunks of his show and Fox News hit the story several times, as did Michelle Malkin.

Though the media outlets didn't make it clear, Grayson had a specific objective in attending the meeting. Grayson had obtained an email from Ron Janssen, the District One Republican Chairman, telling fellow Republicans that at the next meeting there would be a guest speaker who had "snuck behind enemy lines into an Organizing For America Meeting." He wanted to know if the Orange County Republicans approved of the tactic.

Organizing for America (OFA) is the outgrowth of Obama's campaign machine, comprised of millions of activists.

"Diana Evans is a staunch fellow Conservative Republican, who snuck behind enemy lines into an Organizing For America Meeting and learned what they are up to, and she learned a lot. She will share that with us, and how we can counteract their efforts. You will not want to miss this. It is so simple, you all will wonder how we could have missed it," wrote Janssen.

Janssen, reached by HuffPost in Orlando, said that it was Grayson who's guilty of spying, for getting a copy of the email he wrote. The OFA spy, he said, came to them with information and wasn't sent by the party.

"If we had orchestrated it I might be able to say that that was the case," Janssen said of Grayson's charge of untoward tactics. "But somebody came to me, and it was just a couple gals who decided to go do this on their own. His was concentrated; he has obviously somehow gotten into the Orange County Republican Executive Committee database, and he has gotten that email, somehow, that I sent out, and he then acted on it. So if there's any spying, I would say, that's underway, it's actually more by him."

Nonsense, said Grayson. "I got several copies of his email. This is not because I send people there operating through deception, it's because I have a lot of Republican support," Grayson told HuffPost. "It's very revealing he thinks there's no difference between what they did and what I did."

Grayson said he went to the meeting to ask the Republicans there if they approved of the stealth tactics. "I just thought that was really cheap. It seems that the Republican Party is returning to its Nixonian roots - corruption, lying and spying -- and I wanted to know what the people there thought of that," he said.

[...]

Fucking shit, I love this guy. There's more if you want to keep reading, but that's the gist of it. Here's the GOP-edited video.



You know what this reminds me of? Brief history lesson, but it's relevant, maybe. In 1772, a few years before the revolution would break out, Benjamin Franklin was living in England. He was negotiating fragile compromises between England and the colonies. An anonymous source leaked some letters to him, written by the governor of Massachusetts. In the letters, Governor Hutchinson listed recommendations on how to quell growing dissent in the colonies, even suggesting that they start taking away rights. This pissed Franklin off. He passed the letters on to his friends back in America, who went on to publish them against his wishes.

The British government was outraged that someone would leak these letters. Franklin eventually came forward after three others were falsely accused. The British were fucking pissed. They accused him of attempting to incite riots. This is treason, and punishable by death. In the entire hour-long spectacle that was his treason hearing, Franklin refused to say a single word. If he had not fled back to the colonies, he would've been arrested and hanged. Balls of fucking steel.


Now what's the point of this? Franklin, along with every other patriot in America, was confused as hell, because this whole time the British government completely ignored the contents of the letters. It didn't fucking matter to them. All that mattered is that someone leaked them for the purpose of making THEM look bad. Nobody cared that they were going to start taking away rights, which lo and behold, they began doing shortly afterward.

The moral of the story? No matter how damning the mounting evidence against shitheads get, they will always try to find ways to ignore what they did entirely, and make it all the other guy's fault. I'm sure it was Obama's fascist and communist tactics that forced the GOP into resorting to tactics used by communists and fascists. Obama's fault once again, check and mate librulz.

Michael Steele as Muppet

I think it's funny how conservative commentators always seem to tag on Stewart's name whenever they're mentioning librul voices in the news. It's almost as if the think he's actual news.

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Melissa Harris-Lacewell Discusses 'The War of Northern Aggression'

Skip to about 4:30

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[Day of the Week] Music Post - Murder By Death

Murder By Death is my favorite band. I know I have a lot of 'favorite bands' on here, but Murder By Death is easily the best band of the last twenty years. They're something like mix between Johnny Cash and Nick Cave, but they're known to dabble in other genres as well. And that's part of why they're so amazing, they can jump between styles so easily across their albums, and they always pull it off brilliantly.

They all met in college. Then they dropped out to pursue the band after realizing they were fucking awesome. Frontman Adam Turla was a religious studies major, and that subject matter repeats itself quite often in their music. They are not a religious band, and Turla actually stresses that. "It's meant to entertain, bring the feeling of sitting around telling ghost stories or something . . . This is just a story, there's no religious affiliation on our parts. So there's my disclaimer." Turla is also currently engaged to the cellist Sarah Balliet, which I am insanely jealous about because jesus shitfuck.


Murder By Death has never made a bad CD. I can't choose a favorite CD, or even settle with a tie. They are all equally amazing, but in different ways. The best part? They put all of them up online. For free. (Except one...) I'll give links after each of the CD descriptions.

Like The Exorcist, But More Breakdancing
2002


This first CD is nothing like any of their other albums. It's very dark, ambient, and post-rock. I wish I knew what this was about. My brother says the songs are simply about their favorite movies, but when I try to do research on it myself, I'm unable to find anything about it at all.



Listen to it here.


Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?
2003


Okay I lied, I do hold this album a little bit higher than their other ones. This was when they mastered their sound. This is the groundwork for everything to come in the future. Like all MBD albums (excluding the new one) it is a concept album. It's about the devil terrorizing an old western town. The best part is that it ends on a cliffhanger. The remaining townspeople are holed up in hiding waiting to die, and the song just builds up and builds up and builds up, and finally it ends right when they're about to storm out and try to take on the devil themselves. Oh, and there's zombies in it. Zombie children actually.



Listen to it here, and Adam Turla wrote a synopsis detailing what each of the songs mean.

In Bocca al Lupo
2006

In Italian, the title means "Into the Mouth of the Wolf," which is a common phrase for 'good luck.' Each song tells a different story with a different character. The connecting theme is sin and punishment. From Turla's synopsis,

"While the last record is one long story, the new record is 12 different stories, all about sin, redemption, and guilt. Think of them like short stories in one anthology, each about a different character who has either committed acts that have harmed other people or are part of a bigger story where something like that has happened. There were several books that were influential in writing this album. Some of them were Dante's Inferno, Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, and Edgar Allan Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. Basically all these stories had issues that seemed relevant to the record and helped the creation of these songs."



This one isn't online.

Red of Tooth and Claw
2008


The fans are a little mixed on this one. I personally love it, and I think it rivals Who Will Survive. The criticism people have is that MBD decided to embrace their Johnny Cash side fully. Turla himself explains that he finally took some singing lessons, and his teacher told him that he has a very powerful deep voice, and he should try to sing lower. So he typically sang lower, and it's a bit more fast paced. That's it.

It's kinda-sorta a sequel to Who Will Survive. People started asking Turla if it was a sequel after it had been written, because the protagonists are pretty similar. From what I've gathered, it seems like he wasn't intending it that way at first, but then he just sort of went along with it once he saw what they meant. Personally, I think both stories are well enough on their own, so I don't view them as directly connected. Besides, Red of Tooth and Claw takes place in the 50s or something, so that would ruin everything Old West about its predecessor.

Turla says it's "Homer's Odyssey of revenge, only without the honorable character at the center." The protagonist is basically trying to get home to his woman. At the end, he discovers that she's been unfaithful to him. He nearly kills her, but then decides "the kid deserves a chance." Then her lover comes up and stabs him.



Listen to it here

Instrumental Soundtrack to the book "Finch"
2009

This was kind of released on the hush-hush, and I can't understand why. It's so fucking good, but it wasn't promoted at all. It's not really considered one of their main albums. Jeff Vandermeer wrote a book called Finch. I guess it's about some steampunk sci-fi junk or something, I don't really know, I haven't read it and I haven't read anything about it. He approached Murder By Death and asked them to make the book a soundtrack. And that's what they did. Pianist Vincent Edwards left after Who Will Survive to go back to school, but he returned temporarily to record this with them.



Listen to it here

Good Morning, Magpie
2010


Good Morning, Magpie was released today. I honestly felt a bit iffy about it at first, until I realized what they were trying to do. Instead of embracing their Johnny Cash side, now they're sort of leaning towards Nick Cave. It's a little different from what they've done previously, but that's okay. They're trying new things, and Murder By Death is very good at trying new things.

Adam Turla spent two weeks camping in the wilderness completely alone. He did nothing but sit around all day writing songs, and this CD is the result. It's the first time they've released a non-concept album, the songs are entirely their own. It's a bit happier than their previous CDs.





Listen to it here and here's Adam and Sarah breaking it down track by track.

Tan Tax = Racist

Sunday Youtube Post

Rachel Maddow calls out Fox's bullshit on ACORN and Climategate

Church Sex Abuse

Shit.

''Last century we tried godlessness on a grand scale and the effects were devastating,'' [Archbishop Anthony Fisher] said.

''Nazism, Stalinism, Pol-Pottery, mass murder and broken relationships: all promoted by state-imposed atheism or culture-insinuated secularism.''

First of all,

“I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work. We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.”
-Adolf Hitler

And second, it doesn't matter what religion these people were/weren't. Countless political factors were responsible for what these men did, and dumbing it down into "they just hated god" makes us forget why these atrocities actually happened, and increases the risk of us repeating them. Why does he assume these men did these things in the name of atheism? Nobody thinks Catholic priests have been raping children in the name of Jesus.

Before World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008, Bishop Fisher was castigated for remarks he made about the case of a priest who raped two girls. He told a news conference he wished people would focus on the positivity of World Youth Day ''rather than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds''.

poor catholic church, why is everybody picking on them :*(

I like how these fucktards are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing, in regards to the sexual abuse scandal. Is the media being responsible by reporting what has happened? Nope. Actually, the media is literally Satan.

Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was “prompted by the devil.”

Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist noted that the devil is behind “the recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI regarding some pedophilia cases.”

“There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.”

And of course, all this criticism is just like anti-semitism.

Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher is likening accusations against the pope and the church in the sex abuse scandal to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.

[. . .]

The “coincidence” that Passover falls in the same week as Easter celebrations, said Cantalamessa, a Franciscan who offers reflections at Vatican Easter and Advent services, prompted him to think about Jews.

“They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” the preacher said.

Poor Vatican :*(

Thank God the Pope has immunity in all this, because the Pope says so. It's good to see the Pope looking out for the Pope for a change. If he had to answer questions about anything, people might think he did something wrong! Continuing the deafening silence that led to this in the first place is the way to go.

Pope Benedict, accused by victims' lawyers of being ultimately responsible for an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a head of state, a top Vatican legal official said on Thursday.

[. . .]

"The pope is certainly a head of state, who has the same juridical status as all heads of state," he said, arguing he therefore had immunity from foreign courts.
Lawyers representing victims of sexual abuse by priests in several cases in the United States have said they would want the pope to testify in an attempt to try to prove the Vatican was negligent.

But the pope is protected by diplomatic immunity because more than 170 countries, including the United States, have diplomatic relations with the Vatican. They recognize it as a sovereign state and the pope as its sovereign head.

This will be extremely difficult to read, but every person should be required to do so just to get an idea of how horrifyingly evil these people are. A man who was brutally raped as a child, repeatedly over a period of six months, speaks out about what happened to him.

After it was done, the priest made the Sign of the Cross and recited a blessing of forgiveness for the student—as if it was the child who was guilty of sin.

Monthly Drudge Dump

Drudge Report is a conservative news site. I try not to use the word 'propaganda' lightly, but ever since Barack Obama came into office, it's basically propaganda. For every story that involves a Democrat in any way, they try to find the most embarrassing and/or out of context picture available. One out of four of Republicans think Barack Obama is literally the antichrist, and 'news' outlets like Drudge is why.

For a little over a month, I've been taking screenshots of the most laughably terrible stories highlighted on this site. Keep in mind, Drudge Report doesn't belong to some sort of insignificant blogger. It's as influential to conservatives as Fox News. These are in chronological order, dating from 2/22 to 3/29. Yes, this will be a monthly thing. If anything, this is an anthropological study.

Evil face + Wine = Obama

OH MY GOD RED IS SCARY

How dare the liberals claim republicans are inciting violence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t3JajSfpnk

He must be an alcoholic then.

OH NO DON'T VOTE FOR THE SCARY FACE

What an idiot.

No, the article never explained what this meant.

RED TEXT? PEARL HARBOR COMPARISON? HEALTH CARE BAAAAAAAAD

Fucking cunt should've just stayed in the kitchen.

I like how the bottom three stories then try to support why.

REVOLUTION: TERRORISTS OPPOSE OBAMACARE!


So here's a 'Big Brother' comparison to show we support terrorists.