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POPSControversial New Video of Obama's Pastor The intertwining of these people is frightening. Others mentioned in the article are influencing and helping to set the White House's policies regarding our press, free speech and the control of the internet.
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POPSA Maoist in the White House FTA: "Mao Tse-Tung...engineered the mass murder of anywhere from 50 to over 100 million people. Estimates vary so widely because murder on that wholesale scale is difficult to tabulate, especially in a country as backwards as China was under Mao’s long reign. But there is little doubt that Mao has the grisly distinction of being the greatest mass murderer in history." Very frightening people populate the halls of our government now. To announce to *high school* students that this is your model for how to get things done speaks of lunacy.
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POPSThe evolution of religion "Religion arose out of a hodgepodge of genetically based mental mechanisms designed by natural selection for thoroughly mundane purposes," he writes. Those mechanisms include conformist bias (believing what your peers believe, in order to get along), a tendency to explain events in terms of personal agency (since our mental machinery for thinking about causality evolved in the context of social interaction), and interest in remote control (a bias toward beliefs that promise influence over predators, diseases, and bad weather). Given these biases, we're prone to believe in powerful, jealous, tempestuous personal deities.
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POPSRobert Wright: God Robert Wright suggests our view of God shifts. Seems very Western, ignoring Hindu, Buddhist stasis
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POPSNo Smiting But God still has some growing up to do. Wright argues that much of the problem isn’t with the religious texts or teachings themselves, but with the social conditions — the “facts on the ground” — that shape the sort of God we choose to create. Change the world, and you change the God. “If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe — conceivably — the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.”
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POPSTime To Move On I’ll give a shout out here to one of our favorites, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but I’m not giving him any more mention than this one sentence. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the House of Representatives apology for slavery was passed 2008, and the Senate apology for slavery was passed last week. Isn’t it about time to move on?
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POPSMore Czars Than There are in the Russian Section of Hell The Obama Administration is not the first administration to appoint someone with broad powers to oversee a function. You know. A “czar.” So, why stop at 25-30 czars? Why not appoint a bunch more: * Gaffe Czar: Joe Biden. Sure, he’s vice-president, but he’s already doing the job of Gaffe Czar; why not make it official? * News Czar: Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf. You knew him as “Baghdad Bob.” He’d fit right in with this Administration. And it would give Robert Gibbs a break from having to make up explanations for things all by himself. * Anti-semitism Czar: Jeremiah Wright. He’s already promoting anti-semitism as much as anyone is this country. This would give him a larger platform. * Fashion Czar: Michelle Obama. Remember Jackie Kennedy? Michelle Obama is equally qualified. Except for having poor taste in clothes. And men. Previously, we’ve had Drug Czars, Energy Czars, and so on. But, Barack Obama has gone Czar crazy.
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POPSTexas will Execute 10 Men in 30 days This is the worst place of the free world for execution, this is not just the worst place for America," he said of Texas. Before the state revised such laws in 2001, a defendant could be represented by a divorce lawyer with no experience in criminal prosecutions, and judges were not required to instruct juries of alternative punishments such as life in prison without parole, he said. Nine of the 10 to die this month were sentenced before 2001. Mr Halperin claimed "judges are very happy to get rid of these people as quickly as possible." He described a sort of year-end catch-up
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POPSHannity on Think Progress This is hilarious. It really points to the low opinion that Think Progress has of it's reader's objective ability. Hannity was clearly mocking this leftwing propagandist after being called a "fool".
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POPSObama Is A Phony And A Socialist! 
his adviser Professor Cornell West, who calls himself a "progressive socialist" and is a close associate and admirer of tyrant Hugo Chavez; his "moral compass" and campaign adviser, Father Michael "hate whitey" Pfleger; adviser Robert Malley who resigned after it was reporting he was meeting with the terrorist group Hamas; and fundraiser Jodie Evans, another admirer of Chavez, who asked, "Why is being a communist anti-American?" Sen. Obama was greatly influenced by radical community organizer, Saul Alinsky, for whom "change" met radical socialism and the redistribution of wealth, and who preached the end justifies the means and ethics shouldn't get in the way of effective community organization. Obama early on went for Marxist professors when in college and even before that one of his mentors was a communist poet and journalist, Frank Marshall Davis. Remember if Obama gets the White House he will have a rubber-stamping Congress headed by Sen. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. With a veto
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POPSFamous Home Schoolers funny how so many of the people from the past that we admire were at least partially educated outside of the public school system
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POPSObama And Alinskyism
The Los Angeles Times, persuaded a Democrat-appointed judge in California to open the sealed divorce records of Obama's Republican opponent to a press fishing expedition. The resulting sex scandal cleared... With a $10 million campaign war chest from contributors, and with no Republican opponent who could garner much support, Obama had an open road to become the next U.S. Senator from Illinois. In April 2007, Obama addressed the National Action Network, a civil rights group founded by Al Sharpton. In 2007, then-presidential candidate Obama named Robert Malley, the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the International Crisis Group, as a foreign policy advisor to his (Obama's) campaign. In March 2008, Al Sharpton, a strong supporter of Obama's presidential candidacy, stated that he spoke to Obama on a regular basis -- "two or three times a week." Sharpton also said that he had told Obama four months earlier, "I won't either endorse you or not endorse you.
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POPSComedy Centrals 100 best Comedians 44. Joan Rivers 43. Dave Chappelle 42. Flip Wilson 41. Jon Stewart 40. Mort Sahl 39. Billy Crystal 38. Bill Maher 37. Martin Lawrence 36. Jim Carrey 35. Phyllis Diller 34. Buddy Hackett 33. Andy Kaufman 32. Albert Brooks 31. George Burns 30. Garry Shandling 29. Milton Berle 28. Jack Benny 27. Jay Leno 26. Ray Romano 25. Bob Hope 24. Redd Foxx 23. Steven Wright 22. Robert Klein 21. Dennis Miller 20. Sam Kinison 19. Bill Hicks 18. Jonathan Winters 17. Don Rickles 16. Ellen Degeneres 15. David Letterman 14. Bob Newhart 13. Robin Williams 12. Jerry Seinfeld 11. Johnny Carson 10. Eddie Murphy 9. Roseanne Barr 8. Bill Cosby 7. Rodney Dangerfield 6. Steve Martin 5. Chris Rock 4. Woody Allen 3. Lenny Bruce 2. George Carlin 1. Richard Pryor
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POPSRobert Wright on his interview with Dan Dennett I confess to having a problem with this. There is no reason to suppose that there is a 'higher' purpose just because something heads in a particular direction. It is fair to say that if something has a purpose it will head in one direction, as otherwise it probably isn't well designed. But if something is not designed, it can still have directionality. To ascribe the idea of design purely on the basis of directionality is the same as ascribing the quality of being a football to things just because they are more or less round. Heads up, people.
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POPSHow cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict Author Robert Wright explains "non-zero-sumness," a game-theory term describing how players with linked fortunes tend to cooperate for mutual benefit. This dynamic has guided our biological and cultural evolution, he says -- but our unwillingness to understand one another, as in the clash between the Muslim world and the West, will lead to all of us losing the "game." Once we recognize that life is a non-zero-sum game, in which we all must cooperate to succeed, it will force us to see that moral progress -- a move toward empathy -- is our only hope.
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POPSBeowulf - Digital Actors are Not Actors
"(...)it's got a big ol' epic scope all right, with lots of vistas and gorgeous design and some great huge set-pieces including one hell of a fight with a dragon (I mean that; it's a legitimately great battle scene, perfectly staged and edited). But it also has absolutely horrifying characters, and not just the ones that are supposed to be: time and again, we've seen that mo-cap isn't really up for the rigours of facial expression, but the characters in Beowulf, looking as they do exactly like CG versions of some very familiar actors, represent a new depth in the Uncanny Valley. Anthony Hopkins and Robin Wright Penn are particularly unpleasant to look at, almost photo-realistic in still frames but when they move, their flesh is revealed to be plasticine and eerily smooth, like watching Barbie dolls come alive without human souls." Really like epics and love the Beowulf poem, but really didnt like the film... The images and the actors are too artificial.
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POPSGreat Quotes Part 4 last few; "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." - Voltaire (1694 - 1778) "Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong." - Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) "I was reading the dictionary the other day. I thought it was a poem about everything." - Steven Wright
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POPSGeorge's Legacy: Broken Bodies, Broken Countries. pt1 Shocking but not the most shocking. More shocking is that their commander-in-chip is a coward and deserter. He was AWOL more than 30 days during war. Ironic that the warmonger president, never served but killed more Americans than any other since Vietnam.
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POPS An Easter Sermon on Viral Marketing By the inimitable Robert Wright. The ultimate in viral marketing was Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice. Deemed a threat to the social order, he was crucified under Roman auspices. But the Romans forgot one thing: If you face a small but growing movement that threatens the imperial order, you shouldn’t attack the men in ways that help the memes.
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POPSStargate Universe new Stargate series. "The working title of the third 'Stargate' television series is 'Stargate Universe',
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