Headline of the Week

Jesse Walker | November 30, 2005

The clear winner is this press release from the Christian Communication Network: "Bible Curriculum Demonstrates Public Schools Are End Time Battleground." (That oughta liven up those pep rallies.) But I'll give a special honorable mention to GovExec.com for "Dems seeking retroactive coverage for hurricane victims." Yes, they mean retroactive "insurance" coverage. Maybe they could retroactively evacuate the city while they're at it.

Comments

|11.30.05 @ 1:53PM|#

Can I place a retroactive bet in Atlantic Cty?

|11.30.05 @ 2:00PM|#

matthew, you beat me to it. i've got a couple of retroactive bets to place - let's start with the "under" instead of the "over" from Sunday's NY Giants game. Oh, and I'd like to place a maximum bet on the Colts (-8) from Monday night. The $8.70 payout on $10 wasn't bad, but $870.00 would have been much, much better.

Incidentally, I have a friend who bought a car a couple of years ago and then got into an accident a couple days later before he got it insured. I wonder if he could get retroactive insurance and get the fine he paid to the Boulder police for driving without insurance back.

|11.30.05 @ 2:14PM|#

Retroactive evacuation. That's funny, I like that. Or we could just "rewrite history" and pretend none of this ever happened.

|11.30.05 @ 2:16PM|#

Man, that's one easy actuarial table.

|11.30.05 @ 2:24PM|#

Hey people expect their health insurance to cover some pre-existing conditions, that washed away house is just a pre-existing condition.

|11.30.05 @ 2:24PM|#

If this happens, the idea of personal responsibility won't just be an antiquated concept in this country...it will be a symbol of stupidity.

|11.30.05 @ 2:27PM|#

....I probably should have said "badge of stupidity".

|11.30.05 @ 2:27PM|#

Avert the end times!

End public school funding NOW!

Do it for the children.

|11.30.05 @ 2:29PM|#

Public Schools Are End Time Battleground

Well, duh. Everyone who's been to high-school knows that.

|11.30.05 @ 2:31PM|#

My favorite headline yesterday was from CNN.com:

"Vatican issues gay policy document"

|11.30.05 @ 2:33PM|#

Can Brownie have his job back?

|11.30.05 @ 2:35PM|#

Mike, if there's one guy who could take a disaster of biblical proportions and make it even worse, it's got to be Brownie.

|11.30.05 @ 2:39PM|#

It's too bad space travel is still in its infancy. It would be so awesome to dump all the religious fanatics on another planet and then seal it off. Deploy some orbital cameras and it would make a kick-ass reality TV show, though I imagine it would be short-lived.

Mike|11.30.05 @ 2:43PM|#

You gotta love the retroactive flood insurance. Not only are us taxpayers who don't live in floodzones paying for all the idiots who live in them that got cheap insurance from the government, but we're paying for the uber-idiots who didn't take advantage of the cheap insurance. Can't we just use the Powerball proceeds to pay for all this, after all, it is a dumb tax...

Mike|11.30.05 @ 2:43PM|#

You gotta love the retroactive flood insurance. Not only are us taxpayers who don't live in floodzones paying for all the idiots who live in them that got cheap insurance from the government, but we're paying for the uber-idiots who didn't take advantage of the cheap insurance. Can't we just use the Powerball proceeds to pay for all this, after all, it is a dumb tax...

Mike|11.30.05 @ 2:43PM|#

You gotta love the retroactive flood insurance. Not only are us taxpayers who don't live in floodzones paying for all the idiots who live in them that got cheap insurance from the government, but we're paying for the uber-idiots who didn't take advantage of the cheap insurance. Can't we just use the Powerball proceeds to pay for all this, after all, it is a dumb tax...

|11.30.05 @ 2:47PM|#

Apparently, the time distortions are getting worse.

|11.30.05 @ 2:47PM|#

"Bible Curriculum Demonstrates Public Schools Are End Time Battleground."

We take you live to Armagedon High School where our sports reporter, Chuck Smelt, is interviewing the archangel and football coach, Michael.

|11.30.05 @ 2:48PM|#

I like the idea of offworld colonies for the fundies. Europe wisely sent most of theirs to America back in the day. Until we have reliable space travel we could put them all in Kansas, put up roadblocks, and cut off the power.

|11.30.05 @ 3:00PM|#

The power's already out in Kansas, but the roadblocks aren't a bad idea.

|11.30.05 @ 3:16PM|#

I ran into this "insurance" problem repeatedly last spring arguing with several of the authors of the (since quiescent and no longer accepting comments) blog, Left2Right. "Insurance" simply doesn't mean insurance to liberals who blithely use the term to describe any government operated social welfare or transfer payment program.

|11.30.05 @ 3:21PM|#

[i]It would be so awesome to dump all the religious fanatics on another planet and then seal it off. ...though I imagine it would be short-lived.[/i]

Yeah, well when Europe did it it seemed to turn out ok for the fanatics and their descendents, not so good for the people that were already there though.

|11.30.05 @ 3:23PM|#

"It would be so awesome to dump all the religious fanatics on another planet and then seal it off."

True, until the retroactive radiation insurance payoff kicked in.

Larry A|11.30.05 @ 3:29PM|#

The power's already out in Kansas, but the roadblocks aren't a bad idea.

It would be easier to dump them in Pennsylvania. They only have one road worth blocking.

Rich Ard|11.30.05 @ 3:34PM|#

...but you have to pay someone twenty bucks an hour to block it.

|11.30.05 @ 3:49PM|#

Here in Pennsylvania the fundies block themselves off and turn off their own power.

|11.30.05 @ 4:12PM|#

This is some classic horseshit:

"The flood program is funded by premiums and does not use taxpayer funds to pay claims or operating expenses. But FEMA is allowed to borrow funds from Treasury -- which it later repays with interest -- to pay catastrophic NFIP claims that exceed the flood program's budget."

So, the flood program is funded by premiums, until there is an actual flood. Or, a "catastrophic" one - which seems to be defined as any flood that exceeds the ability of NFIP's premiums to cover. How convenient.

Then FEMA spends more money to cover the cost of the flood, but promises to pay it back one day. Sha, right.

|11.30.05 @ 4:26PM|#

I advocate retroactive abortions for the people advocating this retroactive insurace.

|11.30.05 @ 6:21PM|#

My favorite headline yesterday was from CNN.com: "Vatican issues gay policy document"

I don't know if this is on-topic, plus it's cruelly insensitive to boot, but what the hell. In my local city paper, a part of one page had this little "round-up of happenings around town" section that was basically a potpourri of very short (one paragraph) and very miscellaneous news items all tossed in together. My favorite was seeing these two headlines juxtaposed side-by-side:

Enjoy Getting Back to Nature!
(Fluff blurb about some group nature walk.)

Mauled Girl Recovers From Bear Attack

|11.30.05 @ 6:54PM|#

Enjoy Getting Back to Nature!
Mauled Girl Recovers From Bear Attack

Heh.

|12.1.05 @ 12:50AM|#

I love eschatology. It does so much to encourage insanity, among individuals and groups, that anyone who appreciates the entertainment value of public religious insanity just has to be grateful to all those religious scholars laboring to discover things they couldn't possibly ever know.

|12.1.05 @ 9:23AM|#

Doug, have you ever watched Jack Van Impe? I love when you goes through the headlines.

"Earthquake in Turkey. Revelations 37:93 says there will be earthquakes..."

|12.1.05 @ 11:15AM|#

Yeah, I've seen him -- that relationship he has going with Rexella is a little strange, if you ask me. It's like they're playing 'doctor', except with Bible verses.