The Telegraph blurbs Dr Tim Stanley:

Dr Tim Stanley is a historian of the United States. He is working on a biography of Pat Buchanan.

Well, if you say so, but reading his post, I find it hard to believe he’s a Real Historian™.

Anti-social displays of bad taste are becoming common in the United States of America. The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue reports the following outrages: “In a South Carolina cancer center, a 67-year-old volunteer Santa was evicted because of the “different cultures and beliefs of the patients we care for” … In an elementary school in Stockton, California, poinsettias were banned but somehow snowmen were permitted; they justified their censorship by saying there was a Sikh temple

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Minnesota has more than its share of wits and piss-takers. There’s its whole entire gay community for instance.

The gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued a letter of apology to recently resigned Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch for ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband and engage in an “inappropriate relationship.”

“On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to  wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to  threaten your traditional marriage,” reads the letter from John Medeiros. “We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you  to stray from your own

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s accommodationism day in the neighborhood…I guess it’s a Christmas thing. Baby Jesus is born, Tim Minchin got his (requested) song dropped from a tv show, Julian tries to square a circle, and to make it all complete, Chris Stedman writes yet another “mean atheists are doing it wrong and I am doing it right” article for the Huffington Post. I had been ignoring Stedman for months, but he does make it difficult.

…effective criticism of religious dogmatism accounts for the diverse spectrum of religious expression. It is balanced, it is rooted in compassion, and it responds to what people actually believe and practice, not just the most extreme forms of religious thought.

Well some people do actually believe … Read the rest

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Omigod omigod omigod Tim Minchin wrote a song about Jesus and it has jokes in it – jokes about Jesus! Would you believe it? He wrote it because some tv people asked him to for their pre-Christmas show.

It was the worst possible time to be writing a new song – I’ve been overworked and ill, was on tour, and was really feeling the stress. But I wasn’t going to say no… it’s Jonathan Ross!

…

It’s certainly not very contentious, but even so, compliance people and producers and lawyers all checked my lyrics long before the cameras rolled. As always with these bespoke writing jobs, I was really stressed for about 3 days, and almost chucked it in the

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Twenty-First Floor gives us a video by someone called SKEPTICSExposed, titled Rhys Morgan Harassing Burzynski Clinic. It is deeply absurd.

The video then goes on to try and link Rhys to the identity fraud of James Randis longtime partner in exactly the same way that Marc Stephens did in emails to Popehat and even using the same images. Which does make me wonder if SKEPTICSExposed might be down to the infamous Marc Stephens. Particularly as, like the red arrow letter before, these videos don’t attempt to address any of the arguments made by Rhys  and others.

Oh surely not. Surely Marc Stephens wouldn’t be so silly as to continue trying to bully Rhys Morgan even now … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)