Well, Wonkers, we defeated one meritless lawsuit threat with the power of laughter. (At least we assume we did, since we never heard from Bradlee Dean again.) But now there is another! Our old pal M. Joseph Sheppard, to whom we tried to offer the gift of friendship, and who was so eloquently addressed here, has a new website, “M. Joseph Sheppard Legal Defense Fund – Support Me In Defending Sarah Palin And Smashing Her Enemies!” It is a website whose sole purpose is asking for money to start a “legal defense fund” to smash us! :(

Here, let us read it, together!

I am M. Joseph Sheppard, a warrior for Sarah Palin and a warrior for the Lord.

My enemies formed a firing squad and their weapons are aimed at me.

I am fighting for Sarah Palin. My blogs are “palin4president2016″ and “Recovering Liberal.”

Now I need your help. I have to take legal action against my enemies who are using libel and slander to destroy me.

The communists at Wonkette and Daily Kos have started a war. They are also at war with Sarah Palin’s son Trig. They are evil.

Their false smears will prevent them from going to heaven and meeting our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Sarah Palin needs my help, and she needs your help!

You know, when we grift our readers — or in M. Joseph Sheppard’s words, “milk” them — it is for good reasons, like to buy bloggers (or in M. Joseph Sheppard’s words, “non-union muff-divers”) and web servers and really nice booze!

ONE of us is doin it rong. But which?

[MJosephSheppardLegalDefenseFund]

Christine Daniel is a minister and doctor (although, not, to our knowledge, a realtor, dentist, or vampire hunter) who just wanted to help the world beat cancer! She did this by going on Trinity Broadcast Network and selling a mixture of suntan oil and beef flavoring.

To people with cancer.

As a cure.

For cancer.

Man, she may have outgrifted the Crouches! (For the lord, of course.)

Now she is going to jail for 14 years, and having to give back $1.2 million (SADFACE!), just for murdering people! STOP INFRINGING CHRISTINE DANIEL’S RELIGIOUS FREEDOM TO KILL PEOPLE, NOBAMA!!!!

Tell us more about it, our much-missed colleagues at OC Weekly!

Besides cancer, Daniel claimed C-Extract cured multiple sclerosis, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and hepatitis, boasting a 60-80 percent success rate for the most advanced forms of cancer. Victims from around the country told Judge Timlin that Daniel instructed them to stop their chemotherapy and other traditional cancer treatments and pay her $5,000 instead for “C-Extract.” One patient who paid $13,000 died a few months later.

Many reportedly said they trusted Daniel because she was a minister. She reportedly played on that faith, according to her jaw-dropping court testimony related by City News Service: “In faith-based churches, there are a lot of people who won’t go to doctors. They know in their hearts that what they are saying is not correct. They know the truth, and the Lord’s going to deal with this.”

Well she seems great. Very Christian, we are sure!

[OCW]

You know what’s compelling about creationists? They are awfully good at making incredulity seem like science: “Evolution is like believing that a tornado in a junkyard could build a 747″ and so on. Which means that we’re in for one last look at our tenth-grade science textbook, Biology for Christian Schools, by William S. “Stop Calling Me Pinkie Pie” Pinkston. Last time, we looked at the totally convincing scientific evidence for Noah’s Flood (review: God said it did), so now, let’s take a brief look at why most biologists are lying (it is because they hate God).

To start with, let’s just reject the notion of common origins, because all life was created by God, after all:

there is no history of evolution recorded either by man or by fossils. This lack of evolutionary records does not disturb most evolutionists because they believe they have a model of how evolution took place. This model is often illustrated by a phylogenetic tree — a line-up of organisms based on how they are supposedly related in an attempt to show the path that evolution has taken.

It is quite natural to notice similar facial features in different members of one family. But people who look very much alike may be entirely unrelated. One organism may have characteristics similar to another organism’s but not be related to it at all.

Haha, why would anyone think that people from different families are all related, unless they read the part of Biology For Christian Schools that says “The eight people on the ark are the ancestors of all people alive today”?

The sheer absurdity of evolutionists’ dumb guesswork is illustrated by this hilarious cartoon:

Silly evolutionists, whales cannot sit in trees! Pinkston then explains that all of evolutionary theory is based on wild speculation:

Evolutionists claim that organisms which are alike in some ways must have had a common ancestor. When a limb of a phylogenetic tree branches, a common ancestor is implied. A phylogenetic tree that contains many organisms and is relatively detailed usually has the known organisms (those alive today and those extinct organisms that left fossils) on the ends of the branches. The common ancestors at the forks of the branches are usually guesses. Many phylogenetic trees, for example, assume/that the birds and the mammals both came from a common reptilelike ancestor. In one line of development, the scales became feathers and the animals became birds. The mammal-bird ancestor may be imaginatively drawn and described, but examples of this common ancestor do not exist among animals alive today or in the fossil record.

Those wacky evolutionists! They use illustrations to lie! And even with their crazy speculation, Pinkston says, “there is little agreement among evolutionists about which organisms are the ancestors.” The thing is just a silly matching game, because for some strange reason, there are a lot of similar features among species, but they are also very different from each other, because God made them that way:

Although putting pictures in sequence is easy, when considering the thousands of characteristics of different organisms, it is not always easy to create a logical sequence for them. What characteristic should be used to arrange the organisms? The use of eye development will give one phylogenetic tree, and the use of leg form or another characteristic will give a different phylogenetic tree.

The really excellent news, however, is that good Christian boys and girls do not have to worry about such folderol:

Creationists have no difficulty with similarities and differences between organisms. God designed each organism for a particular purpose. If four long legs are the right design for movement in one animal, it is likely that four long legs will be the best design for a similar movement in a similar animal. Similarities and differences come from God’s design, not from a common ancestor.

On the other hand, instead of using real science, which starts with the plain truth of the Bible and then finds evidence in nature to support it (and ignores anything inconvenient), evolutionists have been forced to make up all sorts of outlandish just-so stories, without even accounting for miraculous intervention by God:

Using the fossil record and phylogenetic trees has not given adequate support to evolutionary beliefs. Evolutionists have thus resorted to trying to figure out how it could have happened, rather than showing how it did happen. This tactic takes evolution out of the realm of science and puts it into the realm of guesswork.

One of our favorite parts of this section is a text box on the evolution of horses. (It doesn’t use the illustration at the top of today’s blog, but it might as well). Pinkston states that the supposed evolutionary history of the horse is just evolutionists making unsupportable guesses, and that the fossil record really illustrates “some of the problems involved in lining up animals for a phylogenetic tree” (click illustration to embiggen):

The Eohippus was an organism about the size of a terrier dog, with four toes on each front foot and
three toes on each hind foot. Other extinct animals have been lined up with progressively larger bodies and with foot structures more like that of the horse to form an evolutionary “path.”

The evolution seems plausible until one realizes that much of the progression is art work, and much information has been omitted. The fossils of these organisms are not found in sequence in the fossil record. In fact, the fossil record gives evidence that these organisms were alive at the same time. Having the horse and the Eohippus alive together at an early date defeats the evolutionary purpose of the Eohippus, though, so that evidence has been ignored.

Wow, pretty compelling! Except for the teensy detail that, sorry, Eohippus and Equus didn’t live at the same time, although that discredited assertion has been around since the 1930s. And then, with a collection of evolutionary steps between Eohippus and Equus sitting right at the top of the page, the text pretty much holds out for Zeno’s paradox:

The supposed evolution of the horse is like a series of piers with the connecting bridges missing. In other words, this line—up of organisms, as with all such line-ups, is without in-between organisms, the missing links (common ancestors). According to evolutionary theory, these missing organisms must have existed. Research in the fossil record has not revealed any of the missing links in horse evolution. Nor does the fossil record show a clear progression between any two different kinds of organisms.

Of course, any time a new transitional fossil is found, our creationist says that there is no evidence of a transitional form between that fossil and the species it bridged. Fortunately, Christians are not burdened by any curiosity about the similarities between various fossil horses, because evolution is a fairy tale:

A creationist looking at the fossils of the Eohippus or the Mesohippus or any others in an evolutionary line-up simply observes that they are interesting animals that must have become extinct during the Flood or shortly thereafter.

Meh, bunch of dead animals. They mean nothing other than that God was finished with them, and with that, we are finished with this textbook. There’s a lot of other idiocy in Biology For Christian Schools — for instance, the mathematical improbability of getting a dictionary by just throwing millions of letters into a pile, or why scientists are increasingly rejecting the fuzzy idea of classifying life into “species” and adopting the much more useful Biblical term “kinds” (because that way, Noah’s ark is less obviously absurd) — but frankly, we’ve had about enough of this book, and since it merely repeats creationist nonsense you can find all over the intertubeses, we are going to move on to something different.

What do you think, should we look next at an American History book? We have Bob Jones University Press’s high school text, or an 8th-grade text from the always-nutty A Beka house…or for that matter, we could tackle both at the same time, for hot compare-and-contrast action. Or would you prefer that we delve into BJU Press’s 12th-grade American Government text, which promises some novel thoughts about the Constitution? Discuss amongst yourselves, and don’t worry, regardless of what we hit first, we’ll eventually cover the whole awful mess.

[Illustration: "Natural History Tour" by "Moderately Deviant"]

Remember, Pacific Northwest Wonkers, Yr Doktor Zoom will be attending the reader-organized Seattle Drinky Thing on June 1; details at this here linky. Door prizes will include copies of at least one or two of these god-awful awful-God textbooks!

Sorry, Homosexual America, but Bryan Fischer is thinking about You People again. By golly, it’s almost as if Bryan Fischer can’t think of many things other than gay people.

This time, the mouthpiece for the American Patriarchy Association is having kittens over the possibility that the Boy Scouts of America may vote to allow sodomites to be Scouts. Never mind that the BSA already does and always has, of course; we’re talking about the really dangerous kind of sodomites, the ones who don’t quietly pretend to be straight, you know. We don’t have any particular fondness for this little paramilitary organization, which we dropped out of after being unable to say “Webelows” “Webelos” without breaking into fits of snickering, but if gay kids want to be Scouts, we say go for it.

The prospect that the BSA might stop all the discrimination leads Bryan Fissure to the obvious conclusion, which is that faggots will suddenly have a license to be all faggotty with little boys (we have not read the BSA proposal, but we are pretty certain that it will not allow Scouts to gaysex other Scouts). Thankfully for posterity, Twitter enabled him to spew a veritable torrent of thought-like follow-ups this morning, which we’ve screenshotted and arranged in order below:

So there you have it! There is NO WAY that homosexxers or their allies can possibly be good Scouts, despite the existence of such a thing as the Gay Eagle Scout Association or a campaign by Eagle Scouts to return their badges to the BSA until it reverses its discriminatory policies (229 Eagle Scouts have renounced their Eagle badges so far).

But let’s get back to Mr. Fischer’s notion that “Homosexuals violate BSA oath to be ‘physically strong,’” because AIDS.

We would like to take this opportunity to challenge Bryan Fischer to arm-wrestle a gay Wonkette reader. Who knows, if we get enough volunteers, maybe we’ll select a champion by adding a Big Gay Arm-Wrasslin’ Tournament to this summer’s Wonk Your Brains Out Tour of Orgies and Drunkenness. Let’s see if Bryan Fischer is willing to put his biceps where his mouth is.

[Twitter via a tweet from RightWingWatch]

Oh, well this is … what is the opposite of fun? It is that. Let us think of some words for that: Gross. It is gross. And sad. And icky. And yuck! Oh, at first we assumed it was just some Occupy kids calling us out for our undying love of the Droner in Chief, which: fair enough! We voted for Nader (twice!), and it appeared to have some consequences to it! So now we are pretty much “DON’T CARE” if the Dems are corporatist moneyslurpers or love to bomb people from very far away, we are reasonably okay with that! But, no, “unperson192″ had more to say, in a comment that he (he, right?) typed from the ether straight to our moderation panel, and it seemed to boil down to: if we claim to love the poor, we will help get rid of blacks and Mexicans. Huh.

anti-racism, affirmative action, and the rest of the fakeleftist, social leftism regime is strongly supported by the top of society, by govt, by corporate hollywood, by the corporate media, by huge corporations, by the educational industrial complex. Strongly supported by all these rich and powerful institutions. If anyone fails to toe the PC line, they are destroyed by those in power in society. The civil rights movement itself grew out of the elites and was never supported by the white working class majority bloc.

Doesn’t that, in and of itself, tell you something?

Whose side are you on?
You are on the side of the rich and powerful. Whatever else is true, that fact is undeniable.

Yes, the rich and powerful want lower taxes, fewer workers rights and all the rest of the economic treats for them. And you oppose the GOP in that respect.

But the rich and powerful also want cheap labor via racial integration, mass immigration of nonwhites, affirmative action etc. And you are firmly on their side there.

Whichever party wins, the elite win. The GOP and Dem base ensure that. And you are part of the elite army on the Dem side.

Sorry, dude. We are part of the elite Marine Corps on the Dem side. We thought we had established that.

Remember that 1990s teevee show called The X Files, where that one good-looking cable soft-core star solved mysteries with that teensy skeptical ginger who always happened to look the other way when the crazy stuff happened, just like a pro-wrestling ref? And remember that man who smoked all the cigarettes and had all the big secrets and totally had the power to kill that cable soft-core star but never did because in his death that cable soft-core star would only become MORE POWERFUL and a MARTYR?

That cable soft-core star is exactly like Ghost Andrew Breitbart, who is also like Ghost Obi Wan Kenobi in that he always shows up in the minds of heroic young conservatives to tell them to turn off their targeting computers (“facts,” “science”) and just fire straight ahead hoping to score a one-in-a-million shot with their eyes closed (“BENGHAZI!”).

But even Ghost Andrew Breitbart sometimes does wrong. There’s a new documentary out, made by conservatives, that is supposed to just be about how good he was at the things he was good at: yelling, sweating, pretending videos that showed one thing actually showed something different.

But the only writer left at what used to be The Village Voice noticed something funny about the movie. (The Village Voice writer wrote in fussy second-person, pretending that *you* are Andrew Breitbart, because YOU WISH):

And maybe [in that documentary] you’ll be filmed puttering around a hotel room, singing “I’m So Excited” by the Pointer Sisters to yourself. And maybe that song won’t be listed in the closing credits because maybe your producers didn’t bother with licensing. And maybe some prick reviewer at some rag someplace will put that fact into some review, knowing that the copyright holders of pop songs search the Internet all day, every day, for any indication that someone someplace might owe them some royalties.

We asked the Village Voice writer if this all really happens in the movie and if Ghost Andrew Breitbart really sings The Pointer Sisters and if BMI really doesn’t get its credit at the end.

“Yes,” he said. (He sounded sad because “Village Voice.”) “He doesn’t do anything really crazy like sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ though, because that shit’s expensive.”

Ghost Andrew Breitbart, why is there video of you refusing to give black people what is their due? Why are you Reverse Shirley Sherrod?

[VillageVoice]

Guns! Can live without ‘em, and with ‘em, well, we can’t live! I tell ya! But however much Obama and the Kommunist Youth are trying to take your second amendment gun fondling rights, you will always be able to keep your semiautomatic lead sprinklers, no matter how much we sensible people might try to grab them. However, there is a new, unmotivated threat to your crazy demands perfectly reasonable second amendment requests. That is *cue dramatic Bum Bum Bum* REASONABLE TEENZ! That’s right, we’re loud, we’re proud, and just let us get back to playing Fallout New Vegas already, jeez.

First of all, violent videogames HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH TODAY’S TOPIC. Anybody that implies they do will be prosecuted. Anybody that directly says so will be banished. Anybody that tells me in Call of Duty will be shot and their avatar will be teabagged. Hold your damn horses, next weeks kolumn will be about that very topic. The VIDEOGAMES, not the teabagging, get your mind out of the virtual gutter.

Teenz, especially Teenz with a Y chromosome and the stoopid that it brings, like guns. Srsly, they are friggin cool! Just look at them! And they go bang and destroy shit! What’s not to like? I am one of the few teenz in Idaho that does not own a gun, and possibly the only one that has never fired one. Perhaps it is an Idaho thing. We watch shows about building guns, shows about firing guns, and even shows about comparing guns. If somebody made a show about watching a show about guns, we’d watch that, too. At a gun show.

However, we understand that there is a limit. Even for those of us whose idea of a good time is spending a day in Cabela’s (not kidding, I know multiple), the fact that NOBODY needs more than maybe a 9mm is pretty obvious. Even I can be heard talking at times about, say, the gun on an A-10 warthog, but I don’t want one. Teenz have come to the realization that some of their NRA-hole parents will never accept: we don’t need that shit.

What Teenz are having trouble with is why the hell anybody thinks they need an AR-15. No matter how many times you watched Red Dawn, a redneck with a rifle cannot take down a tank. Even WE can see that. It is something made to kill people, and only to kill people. No matter how many times you say zombies, or home defense, the only purposes for an AR-15 are fondling and mass murders. And, considering the recent trend of school shootings, we are the ones put in danger by this.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to shoot, stab, bash, ignite, and disintegrate as many virtual people as I possibly can.

Kid Zoom is a high school sophomore in the wilds of Idaho. He is Doktor Zoom’s spawn. He thinks that his Teen Korner column would be vastly improved if Dad would buy some thousand-dollar graphics card for his computer. Nice try.