Well it's Christmas, and this IS the Immoral Minority, so let's stick a pin in the virgin birth story shall we?

Now I am sure that I have already covered this in the past, but I recently stumbled across an interview on Raw Story of Dr. Tony Nugent, scholar of world religions, and a symbologist.

Oh, and he is also an ordained  Presbyterian minister.

And I really liked his no BS explanation for why so many ignoramuses stick giant Nativity scenes on their lawns at Christmas.

On why we think Mary was a virgin:

The familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus’s parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They act surprised by his odd behavior. There is never any other mention in the New Testament of these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that contain them. To make matters more interesting, the stories themselves have inconsistencies and ambiguities – contradictory genealogies, for example. Our Christmas story (singular) is actually a composite. 

Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: “a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child.” The Hebrew word in Isaiah is “almah,” which means simply “young woman.” But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as “virgin.” Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.

You know for the "inerrant word of God" this book is certainly full of historical inaccuracies, and mistranslations. 

So did early Christians believe in the virgin birth?

Jewish Christians, the first Christians, didn’t believe in the virgin birth. They believed that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Part of their Christology was “adoptionism”–they thought Jesus was adopted as the unique son of God at some time later in life. There were disagreements about when – Mark suggests the baptism, Paul suggests the resurrection. 

Over time, gentile Christianity replaced Jewish Christianity. There were Jewish-Roman Wars. The Jewish Christians were marginalized and oppressed. The Gentile branch became dominant. Eventually we get the gospel of John which pushes the sonship of Jesus back to the beginning of time. This writer is at the other end of the spectrum from the Jewish Christians.

So apparently all of the relatively rational early Christians were told to shut up, and that left the less than rational ones to interpret the story of Jesus. Well that figures.

So just how should we view stories in the Bible? 

We need to be able to appreciate these stories as myths, rather than literal histories. When you understand where they come from, then you can understand their spiritual significance for the writers and for us.

Well good then I have been doing it right since I was just a boy.

I apologize if this interferes with your ability to enjoy the holidays. But take heart!

I mean sure the Biblical stories about Jesus are complete horse pucky, but at least we know Santa Claus is real. Right?

Right?

So this just happened.

It's perfectly fine of course, as well as a good way to track what I write since I usually tweet all of my posts.

However I certainly hope that Ms. French has all of her anti-anxiety medications filled.

Because she's definitely going to need them.

Bringing everybody up to speed.

I have often in my life felt unsure of myself. Especially when I took on a new job or task that was outside of my comfort zone or required a skill set that I was not sure I possessed.

I can remember starting jobs and worrying that my employers would soon discover I was a fraud and that I could not accomplish what was being asked of me.

In all of those cases I did in fact manage to rise to the challenge despite my misgivings or insecurities. And in fact often the jobs evolved to fit my personality so well that finding a replacement for me when I left was a real challenge.

When I started The Immoral Minority I felt much the same way. After all who cared what some dude in Alaska thought about politics, religion, and world affairs? But then I discovered that quite a lot of people did.

And when this job evolved into one that required actual reporting, and conducting interviews, all of those insecurities came right back.

In many ways I lack the essential component that makes a good reporter. I am not all that nosy.

Part of that is undoubtedly from living in Alaska where we tend to have a live and let live philosophy, and part of it is that I am kind of shy and not very aggressive when it comes to talking to people I don't know.

However I have discovered that I am in somewhat of a unique position so I have attempted to put my insecurities and self doubts aside in the interest of getting the story.

All of the above may seem a little off topic, but in fact it is background to help explain why I have not posted the stories that I talked about starting way back in September.

You see at that time I was quite confident that we would be getting all of the information out before Halloween. And besides that I was pretty sure that Korey Klingenmeyer was about to press charges.

Obviously things did not work out quite that way.



To be honest I don't know what happened with Klingenmeyer, but I can explain what happened with my source and the story we were working on.

Essentially I lost contact with her.

The first thing that happened was that work responsibilities for both of us kept making it hard to get together, and then she had a training to attend out of state, and then, to be honest, I simply lost track of her.

Suddenly my e-mails and text messages were not being returned, and phone calls went to voice mail. This started at the end of October, and I did not hear from her again until the beginning of this month and only had a real conversation with her just last night.

Right up until last night I was beginning to worry that I had been left hanging. (Something which has happened more than once in my blogging career.) And due to my reticence to badger this person or pursue her more aggressively, as a trained journalist might do, I sort of let things slide.

Ultimately I came to believe that I had somehow blown it and that I might not get the really gritty stuff that I had been promised.

In response I started to construct a post of the information that she had already shared with me over lunch that day at The Outback, and in text messages and e-mails afterward.

So I wrote up most of that, picking through it carefully so that it would not reveal her identity (The one journalistic trait that IS firmly part of my DNA is that I NEVER burn a source.), only to realize that there was no way to trim it down to the point where the Palins themselves would not be able to figure out who I must be talking to. Or at least narrow it down to a handful of suspects.

So I decided that I simply could not write the post without letting her know that she might be outed, even if I didn't mention her by name.

After I sent that e-mail I received this one back in response:

Not opposed at all to working with you- just got busy it's the crazy time of year for me! What do you need? I'm Not focused on them right now- work has my undivided attention.

After that we had several e-mail conversations back and forth, and last night we talked on the phone for forty plus minutes where she assured me that she is still gung-ho to get her story out there and is also committed to coming out publicly so that the Palins cannot simply dismiss it as based on anonymous sources. (Which by the way is great news, as she was not sure about that earlier.)

There is one hitch however, and that is that though she is determined to reveal her identity, she wants to wait until after a certain legal issue has been sorted out.

She also explained some of the things that she has been dealing with and by comparison the blog post is simply not as important as the other real life things that she currently has on her plate. (As it turned out I was only one of several people who she was not responding to while dealing with her difficulties.)

So what we agreed to is for me to go ahead and publish that post that I was working on before (The one with the information from our previous conversations.), and keep her identity secret enough so that Palin supporters cannot track her down and start harassing her (Though as I said the Palins will still likely have a pretty fair idea who is talking to me.), and then continue to post new information based on conversations we will have moving forward, as well as photos and documents that she will share, until finally she is in a place where she feels comfortable in stepping completely out of the shadows.

That first post, as somebody already guessed earlier, will show up Monday.

And what can you expect from that post, and the ones that will follow?

Drinking, drug use, family fights, dark secrets, and "I don't know whose baby that is, but it is NOT Sarah's."

Just a reminder that you can pause a video to make anybody look stupid.

I sometimes get angry feedback due to my propensity for finding really terrible pictures of Sarah Palin and using them on this blog. Many of them are ones I create myself by taking screenshots and posting them here.

You know like this one.

And this one.

And this one.

Okay fair enough.

However in my defense I would like to point out that when you hear Professor Tyson speak it immediately dissuades you from believing that he is intellectually impaired in any way.

Yet when you hear Sarah Palin speak people instead think, "That screen capture really failed to fully grasp the stupidity of this woman."

And the defense rests.

Writing Sarah Palin satire is an exercise in futility, since she is essentially a walking talking parody of herself already.

Okay I feel like I need to address this since it is now getting a little out of hand.

The Daily Currant wrote a piece in which they attribute these words to Sarah Palin: 

“If I were Obama I’d put all 11 million of these folks on boats and send them back to Mexico,” she opined. “The liberal media says it’s impossible to deport that many people. But I say we can do it if we have enough ships. 

“Let’s commandeer all the cruise ships, all the fishing vessels and all the yachts those fat cat Obama donors own. And then let’s pack ‘em full of illegals and send these people on a one-way cruise to Mexico City. 

“The long voyage back across the Mexican Ocean should give them plenty of time to think about how they shouldn’t be coming here to America and jeopardizing our freedom and prosperity by breaking our laws.”

Now the Daily Currant suggests that she said this during a Fox interview, so  right off the bat most of you should know that is impossible since we tend to cover those interviews here at IM. And let's face it, we would have been all over that if it were true.

Secondly you should always be a little skeptical when you think "You know that's even too crazy for her." Because chances are that yes it is probably too crazy for her.

And third by now you should all know that there are sites like the Daily Currant and the Onion out there that brilliantly make up these stories for our entertainment, and that they should NOT be taken seriously.

In fact here is a list that you can refer to in the future to keep from being fooled again.

Now before any of you start to feel embarrassed that you were suckered let me assure you that it has happened to me before as well. And there are plenty of news outlets, like Fox and Breitbart, that still get punked with some frequency.

For this one in particular I received at least a dozen e-mails and comments excitedly pointing to the article. And that includes one from my daughter last night, which simply said "Did you hear what Sarah Palin said yesterday?"

Of course that could have been anything, but it turned out to be this article which all of her friends were buzzing about.

And that's really the point right? Getting buzz and fishing for clicks.

However it makes what I do all the more challenging. Because when I dig up an actual crazy fact about Sarah Palin it is immediately in competition for attention with all of these fake crazy "facts" about Sarah Palin.

So let's do us all a favor and try to double check sources before sharing some of this stuff on Facebook Twitter, or here at IM.

Let me end this by thanking you for your support, and the many legitimate links that you DO send my direction. It makes this job a whole lot easier as I certainly don't have enough time to scour the internet effectively on my own. 

The Immoral Minority goes talk radio.

Okay so in a few minutes I will be talking to Kenny Pick of Turn up the Night fame, and of course the creator of the brilliant "Thonghazi" which we have enjoyed so thoroughly here at IM.

I have not actually done any radio since way back in 2009, when I made a few appearances local progressive radio with the likes of CC and Shannyn Moore. Therefore I am probably a little rusty.

I do not know exactly what we will talk about, though it seems a fair guess that a certain half term governor's name will pop up a time or two.

If you want to listen just click here, and hopefully there will be no unexpected DDOS attack this time.

Let me know what you think in the comments and of course Kenny Pick has a comment section as well that you can access by clicking the link above.

Hopefully after the show Kenny will provide a Soundcloud link that I can embed so that all who missed it can listen to me hemming and hawing, and repeatedly clearing my throat, for themselves later.

George W. Bush says that he has "no regrets" about starting the Iraq War. Sadly there are thousands of American families who cannot say the same.

This morning former President George W. Bush went on Face the Nation to promote his book, and answered a few questions from Bob Schieffer. Including if he still thought going into Iraq was the right decision.

This courtesy of Mediaite:  

Bush was on to discuss his new book praising his father (and to honor Face The Nation’ss sixtieth anniversary). 43 insisted he did not invade Iraq to finish what his father started, and said he was surprised when Saddam Hussein called his bluff over the invasion, but didn’t regret the decision to go in. 

“I think it was the right decision,” Bush said. “My regret is that a violent group of people has risen up again. This is al Qaeda plus. I put in the book that they need to be defeated. And I hope they are. I hope the strategy works.”

After all of this time, all of those American and Iraqi deaths, and this asshole still gets to walk free among us as if he were not the biggest war criminal in American history. We can never call ourselves a "Nation of laws" so long as George W. Bush walks free.

Pisses me off every time I think about it.

During the Bush administration, especially after his reelection, I walked around in such a state of agitation that my family was on pins and needles in my presence.

All I could think was that when I was in the grocery store checkout line that I was surrounded by people who helped to elect this mass murderer, this war criminal, this traitor to his country, and it made me want to grab each and every one of them and shake them until they told me why.

That is why I started this blog. So that I could use my words to express the rage that ate me up inside.

I have to say that after ten years of doing this very little of that rage has dissipated.  And I'm not sure if I could respect myself if it ever did.

Just a reminder.

Our new friend Kenny Pick's Turn Up the Night radio show starts in a few minutes (7-10 PM Eastern time) and there was some talk of discussing not only more about Sarah Palin but also perhaps a mention or two of our favorite blog.

Anyhow if you are interested, and able, you can click here to listen to the show.

The political power of the religious Right is coming to an end, and we have the Millenials to thank for that.

Courtesy of The Guardian:

Even in the deep South, the Republican base of white evangelical Christians is shrinking – and in some traditional conservative redoubts like Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky, it’s declined as a percentage of the population by double digits. Even Alabama is becoming less Christian. Meanwhile, there’s been a corresponding increase in the religiously unaffiliated, who tend to vote more Democratic. 

While the effect on evangelicals is new, the general pattern isn’t. The Catholic church, the largest single religious denomination in America, was the first to feel the pinch. Church leaders and Catholic apologists have been fretting for years over the problem of aging and shrinking congregations, declining attendance at Mass and fewer people signing up to become priests or nuns – although their proposals for how to solve the problem all consist of tinkering around the edges, or insisting that they need to try harder to convince people to believe as they do. 

America’s next-largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, held out a bit longer but has now come down with the same affliction. Membership has been declining for the last several years – to the point where half of SBC churches will close their doors by 2030 if current trends persist. And as with the Catholic church, the SBC defenders with the biggest platforms have insisted that they don’t need to change anything if they just double down on their existing policies and pray harder for revival. 

What’s driving the steady weakening of Christianity? The answer, it would seem, is demographic turnover. 

The so-called millennials (Americans born between 1982 and 2000) are far more diverse, educated and tolerant than their predecessors. They’re also the least religious generation in American history – they’re even getting less religious as they get older, which is unprecedented – and the majority of them identify Christianity as synonymous with harsh political conservatism. 

As older, more religious generations fade away and younger generations replace them, the societal midpoint shifts. And this trend is going to accelerate in coming years, because the millennial generation is big. They’re even bigger than the baby boomers.

You know the main focus of this blog has never been about Sarah Palin, she actually came along four years after I started it. It has always been about taking down the Religious Right and destroying their stranglehold on our politics.

Remember back in 2004, when The Immoral Minority came to be, George W. Bush had just won his second term in office, we were in the middle of two unnecessary wars, the Evangelicals had insinuated themselves into every facet of government and the military, and secularism was under assault from all directions.

As an Atheist it is no exaggeration to say that I was terrified about the direction we were headed, and what that meant for my daughter and the future of this country.

It is for that reason that I have worked so hard to reveal the ugly truth about the Evangelicals chosen star of 2008, and what she demonstrates about the hypocrisy of that politically powerful group.

In fact Sarah Palin has been incredibly helpful in revealing much of the sordid underbelly of politics and religion in America.  Her fake pregnancy to attract the pro-life folks, her fake Christianity to attract the Bible thumpers, her fake conservatism to attract the Reagan-ites, have all been revealed on this blog and many, many others.

And through those revelations we have also been able to get a look inside the true agenda of the Right Wing which is to use the easily deceived religious folks to amass great power and influence, and then use that to essentially line their own pockets at the expense of those who trusted them and bought into their line of bullshit.

That is why I am such a fan of the Millenials. THEY are the result of greater access to information on the internet. THEY are the result of the Religious Right's power grabs. And THEY are the what we need to break the grip of ignorance and superstition, and to move toward greater enlightenment and a better understanding of our place in the universe, and our responsibilities here on this planet.

And boy am I glad they are here, for it is not a moment too soon.

Conservatives 4 Palin might be a dying website in America, but the Kiwis LOVE them!

Okay for the record I actually NEVER visit C4P these days, as they stopped being relevant about four years ago.

However somebody recently sent me some links which I found kinda interesting.

As you all know there is a site called Alexa which analyzes website traffic and ranks them based on popularity.

I also never visit there myself because according to my therapist constantly seeking validation by checking a website ranking your blog is "A cry for help Jesse."

Anyhow based on an e-mail I received I went ahead and visited Alexa to check out the rankings for C4P. And what I found there was a little strange to say the least.

As you can see the vast majority of the internet traffic going to C4P comes from New Zealand of all places.

They are ranked only 175,754 in America but a rather incredible 1,521 in New Zealand.

By contrast the Sarah Palin Channel is ranked 162,949 in the US and 61.3% of their traffic comes from America. Which seems about right.

Soooo, what explains the fact that C4P has so many Kiwi visitors?

Is this fake internet traffic that was purchased by C4P? Is there a glitch in Alexa's algorithm? Or is it possible that Palin is wasting her time in North America and should take that 15 hour flight to the self proclaimed "God Zone" where she could apparently reign as queen?

I
But if they DID buy visitors off of the internet, why did they buy so few that they still only rank 306,239 globally? That's not going to impress anybody.

Yep, it's a mystery alright.

By the way for those who are curious this is how IM ranks over at Alexa.

Not bad, not bad at all.