Richard Dawkins was recently issued a challenge --disprove creation in one sentence. I can do that myself. Here it is: If we can see Andromeda --some 2.5 MILLION years distant from earth --then creationism is false!

One of the greatest 'suck asses' of all time --Rush Limbaugh wants to acquire an NFL franchise. Trouble is: he's a BIGOT. Professional sports has always served to unite Americans across class, creed and race. Now Rush Limbaugh, whose career is driven by dividing Americans precisely along those lines, wants to buy an NFL football team.

The GOP 'leadership' has either allied themselves with the bigot-based 'tea bagger' movement or it is the instigator of it. The GOP --apres Bush --is a deluge, a jack-booted army of right wing hate mongers. This is worse than the McCarthy era.

This is the paradox of the tea-party movement and other right-wing protests fueled by genuine citizen anger and fear. It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that "someone else benefits." But so obviously, that "someone else" who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes -- who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The "someone else" that is benefiting from Washington policies are -- as usual -- the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government. The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting.

More children from the Dove World Outreach Center arrived Tuesday at area public schools with shirts bearing the message "Islam is of the Devil" and were sent home for violation of the school district's dress code when they declined to change clothes or cover the anti-Muslim statement on their clothing.

Sessions, as you may know, was rejected for a federal court seat after calling the NAACP "un-American" because it "forced civil rights down the throats of people." He also called a white attorney a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases on behalf of African Americans. And during a murder investigation of the Ku Klux Klan, he joked, as black former assistant US Attorney Thomas Figures testified in Sessions's original hearings, about how he had no problems with the Klan until he discovered they were pot smokers. He also warned Figures to "be careful what you say to white folks." It's ugly stuff, and consistent with his racially charged questioning of Judge Sotomayor: He said she should have voted with a fellow Puerto Rican judge whose opinions he endorsed, asking, "Is there any instance in which you'd let your prejudice impact your decisions?"

Taking anti-immigration rhetoric to a new xenophobic low, the so-called Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has released a report finding, essentially, that illegal immigrants playing their radios are the reason for high energy consumption and carbon emissions that threaten the planet. The report – referencing the fertility rates of Hispanic women – magnanimously notes "it is not the fault of immigrants for requiring energy resources," but the fault of U.S. policymakers for "failing to correct immigration policies" that undermine our energy goals.

Stupidity Speaks:Steele said he used the argument weeks ago while chatting on a flight with a college student who described herself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal on issues like gay marriage. "Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for," Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. "So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money."

The RNC is still looking for a new Chair, and until Donald Wildmon weighed in on behalf of the side of the whack job wing of the party, it looked like they might name fiscal conservative Michael Steele. Wildmon endorsed a South Carolinian instead, signaling a potential shift to a regional party wishing to renew its wedge issue strategies.

Carrying signs reading "Love not H8" and "Did you cast a ballot or a stone?", a large crowd of gay-marriage supporters gathered outside a Mormon temple to protest the church's endorsement of a same-sex marriage ban in California. Demonstrators chanted "Shame on you!" outside the temple [for several hours]. "I'm fed up and disgusted with religious institutions taking political stances and calling them moral when it's nothing but politics," said Dennis Williams, 36. "Meanwhile they enjoy tax-free status while trying to deny me rights that should be mine at the state and federal level." Organizers of the rally estimated at least 10,000 people participated. Gay-marriage advocates said they were planning nationwide demonstrations this weekend in more than 175 cities and outside the U.S. Capitol.

ON the morning after a black man won the White House, America’s tears of catharsis gave way to unadulterated joy. We had breached a racial barrier as old as the Republic and were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders. For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened, [a mantra] picked up by the sad McCain campaign. Almost every assumption about America was proved wrong by Tuesday night. While there are still bigots in America, they are in unambiguous retreat. The success of the four state initiatives banning either same-sex marriage or same-sex adoptions was the sole retro trend on Tuesday. [We are now] a centrist country tilting center-left, [due to] a majority voting for Obama, who said in February, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” [On Wednesday morning, our wait was over, as we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected Obama -- our America.]

Here's McCain, that poor, corrupt and putrid man, during the last debate: "Let me just say categorically I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies... (but) you're going to have some fringe peoples. You know that. And I've... we've always said that that's not appropriate." Notice that last part -- "we've always said that that's not appropriate." If you're scratching your head and wondering why you've never heard McCain forcibly tell his supporters to stop shouting "Kill Obama" at rallies, it's because he never has. Never.

Political Byline, a conservative Blog, has just hit the lowest of lows in bigotry and hatred. You have to see the image MSOC at My Left Wing found on the conservative Blog. It takes a lot to offend me... This is not just offensive but vile and disgusting. McCain supporters have shown their true colors.

150 copies of the "Secrets of the City" guide, printed by The Rake, were ordered by the campaign for Virginia Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling to hand out to delegates as gifts on arrival at the convention, which starts on September 1. "I am so terribly sorry to do this," Bolling's political director Melissa Busse wrote to The Rake, "especially when the both of you have been so 'out of your way' helpful, generous and easy to work with. But, we need to cancel the order for 150 of the 'Secrets of the City' guidebooks...having a section dedicated solely to GLBT (sic) will be a BIG problem for many of our folks. We simply can't hand them out."

Well, Tyson Foods and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) have gone and done it now. They’ve agreed to a new labor contract at Tyson’s Shelbyville, Tennessee poultry processing plant that replaces Labor Day with the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, bringing the total of paid vacation days that cater specifically to the plant’s majority Muslim workforce to a staggering one in eight. Debbie Schlussel asks whether Tyson Foods — in making a financially neutral non-concession to a tiny portion of the bottom rung of economic society — may have ushered in “the beginning (or maybe the middle) of the end of America as we know it.” She also finds the whole affair ‘ironic,’ and concludes: “The United Dhimmi States of America. Tyson Foods is just a drop in the bucket compared to what we’re gonna see.”

By January 2007, the position of some prominent Christian Right leaders hardened considerably, with the launch of the “Families First in Immigration” campaign. This sought to take a “family values” approach to the issue while also adopting a militantly anti-immigrant position. Meanwhile, prominent Christian conservatives, including former House Majority Leader and Texas Republican Tom DeLay, Prison Ministries’ Chuck Colson, and 2008 presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, all began to argue that abortion creates a worker shortage that in turn produces an immigration problem as workers flow in from across the border to fill jobs.

Although Walid Shoebat is no longer on the agenda for John Hagee's up-coming CUFI "Israel Summit", Shoebat's latest book is going to be launched at the International Christian Retail Show in Orlando. Entitled God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy, and The Bible, it is co-written by Joel Richardson, author of Antichrist: Islam's Coming Messiah. Shoebat and Richardson, meanwhile, claim that the Antichrist will be a Muslim leader, and fundamentalist "prophecy experts" are increasingly willing to agree.

Of course Hagee doesn't hate Jews - and among Christian Zionists there is often a sense of admiration and even envy towards "God's Chosen People". However, if you believe that God sent Hitler to force Jews to move to Israel, then what does that say about Jews who are today quite happy to remain in the Diaspora? And what about Jews - including Israelis - who decline to play out the role which Hagee's interpretation of Biblical prophecy insists that they must follow? Hagee's support for Israel is not based on any long-term view of what's best for those living there: in Hagee's theology, the quest for peace is merely a delusion inspired by Satan, and peace will only come when God intervenes at the (rapidly approaching) end of time.

In a 20-page memo on GOP electoral woes, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) repeatedly misspells Barack Obama’s name – it’s one R, congressman, not two -- and then manages to use the racially charged term “tar baby” in a paragraph about Obama and immigration. Look at some of the commentary from the right wing nuts. "Oh, no, 'tar-baby' is not a racist expression......"

In the name of cutting off support for terrorist organisations, the government has adopted the "paradigm of prevention", Cole says. "That term, coined by former Attorney General John Ashcroft, describes an amalgam of tactics in which the government employs highly coercive and intrusive measures against groups and individuals based not on proof of past wrongdoing, but on necessarily speculative fears about what they might do in the future." OMB Watch told IPS, "A group could comply 100 percent and still be shut down 'pending an investigation'."