Dorkus Malorkus

Wow.  I’m not sure what to think about this.  These two people are clearly not right, but if they’re gonna pick something to blame for their craziness, I’d like to have seen them come up w/ something more original than religion.

The neighbor’s dog has already been used, but think of all of the great news we could’ve gotten out of this:

• “The internet told me to do it.”
• “Underpants gnomes made me do it.”
• “DRM made me do it.”
• “Watching American Idol drove me into doing it.”
• “Open Source Software forced me… ”

Ah well.  Guess they’ve squandered their 15 minutes.  Dumbasses.

Mom blames Satan for burning baby in microwave | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle:
May 20, 2007, 1:10PM
Associated Press

GALVESTON — A woman blames the devil and not her husband for severely burning their infant daughter after the 2-month-old was put in a microwave, a Houston television station reported.

Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua’s efforts to become a preacher.

“Satan saw my husband as a threat. Satan attacked him because he saw (Joshua) as a threat,” Eva Mauldin told Houston television station KHOU-TV.

A Galveston County grand jury indicted Joshua Mauldin last week on child injury charges after hearing evidence that he placed his daughter in a motel microwave for 10 to 20 seconds.

The infant, Ana Marie, remains hospitalized. She suffered burns on the left side of her face and to her left hand, police said.

Eva Marie Mauldin, the girl’s 20-year-old mother, told the television station that her husband is “not the monster people are making him out to be.”

“That was not my husband; my husband is a wonderful father,” she said. “Satan was working through his weaknesses.”

Eva Maudlin described those weaknesses as an undisclosed mental disability, and that her efforts to get help for him have failed.

Police said Joshua Mauldin told them he put Ana Marie in the microwave because he was under stress. The family had arrived in Galveston the day before.

Eva Maudlin, who met her husband in an Arkansas church, denied those claims by police.

“He would never do anything to hurt her. He loves her,” she said. “When she cries he is the one who comforts her. When she is sick, he is the one that takes her to the doctor.”

Joshua Mauldin, of Warren, Ark., came to Galveston with his wife and mother because he was called to be a preacher, his wife said. While Joshua Mauldin’s mother has returned to Arkansas, Eva Mauldin remains in Galveston.

She is hoping to be reunited with her daughter, but Child Protective Services is working to have her and Joshua Mauldin’s parental rights severed. A custody hearing for the infant is scheduled for later this week in a Galveston district court.

Joshua Mauldin faces a charge of injury to a child causing serious bodily harm, which carries a possible prison term of five to 99 years, as well as a fine of up to $10,000.

Eva Mauldin has set up a MySpace page, “Joshua Mauldin is not a Monster,” in hopes of defending her husband and making pleas for people to help her.

I’m not surprised that the Army’s full of opinionated, religious men in high positions.

What surprises me is that an Army officer would resign his commission to prove such a trivial a point.

While I agree with him and think that there’s definite bias against atheists & agnostics in the senior leadership roles, the occasion that brought about this discussion was not a big deal. Some Army general said that there are no atheists in foxholes — a phrase that’s meant to relate the very serious possibility of death when you’re at war and simultaneously discredit the resolve of atheists.

What happened next? The lieutenant submitted a formal Equal Opportunities (EO) complaint against this general for having said this.

For starters: you’re a very junior officer tying up the schedules of a lot of senior officers over something really stupid. You HAVE to expect that they’re not going to appreciate your being so inconsiderate. This wasn’t a life or death situation. There wasn’t a great injustice. There’s really not a lot to be gained by doing this, apart from making a name for yourself, or just being a pain in the ass. There’s more to this story than the lieutenant’s letting on — he had an axe to grind.

Next: the Army’s response is completely ridiculous. They wasted MY FUCKING TAX DOLLARS to tell all of their EO trainers that it’s okay to discriminate against atheists since atheism’s not a religion.

As a former military officer, I know that atheists aren’t singled out and actively discriminated against. I’ve never seen anyone FORCED to go to worship services. I’ve experienced a great deal of religious tolerance in the military.

If this asshole had left well enough alone, things would’ve been fine the way they were.

Read more »

By now, most people have heard about the radio talk show host who got himself in trouble for using some racially-charged words to describe a woman’s basketball team.  I’ll avoid using his name — I don’t think he deserves any more press.

As i watched some of the coverage on this morning’s news shows, the discussion focused on the double standard of why blacks* can use the “n-word”, while whites can’t.  Out of a panel of news hosts, prominent black activists and representatives of the offended basketball team, everyone agreed that it existed, but no-one seemed to be able to crystalize why.  Let me help you guys out.

White slave owners used it as a term of horrific racial hatred and intolerance.

It was used for so long that it became part of the black-american vernacular.  Used among peers, there’s no chance that one black guy is using it in the same context as the white slave owners of days past.

Why’s this so hard to understand?  White people — you can’t use it.  Get over it.  The fact that blacks use it doesn’t make it okay for you to use it. 

You may not have been a slave owner, but you are automatically lumped in w/ the idiots that share your skin color. 

Isn’t the irony delicious?

* Note:  I use the term “blacks” since “African American” is inaccurate.  Not all Africans are black, and not all black Americans are African.