Great Stories of the Bible 3

It’s time for another inspiring episode of Great Stories of the Bible, and this one is a totally epic double header! You will be so fucking religious by the time you finish reading this that you just might want to cut off your own dick. Unless you’re a woman. If you’re a woman, you might feel so religious that you want to grow a dick. Because, as you will see throughout the bible (and as you saw in Great Stories of the Bible 1 and Great Stories of the Bible 2 in particular) God loves nicely cut dicks and sort of hates women.

Most of you have already heard of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s a touching and rousing story of two of the most pious men ever to walk the earth: Abraham and his nephew, Lot. I invite you to read this story and try to walk in the mighty shoes of these noble men that God finds so righteous.

You might notice that one of the scenes here is a lot like the story in Great Stories of the Bible 1. That might seem a little crazy since the scene seems wildly fucking unlikely to repeat itself. Yeah. God plagiarizes his own shit a lot. But he can do that. He’s God.

Anyways, here is the brand stinking new Great Stories of the Bible Double Feature. Enjoy or whatever.

Yo, that had to be safe for work, right? I mean, it’s straight from the fucking bible.

Okay, so that’s all I have to say about the bible right now. Go make God a sandwich.

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Waterboarding Camp

You don’t have to look too far around the blogosphere to find people who love torture. According to some, torture is just awesome. Pretty much, conservatives love torture and liberals hate it. This difference of opinion baffled me for a while. I mean, conservatives believe that the government needs to be greatly limited and that government is full of corrupt, self-serving politicians as evidenced by the more than 11,000 pork barrel projects. The government we installed in Iraq is corrupt. The government we installed in Afghanistan is corrupt. Meanwhile, here at home, corruption is so widespread it can’t even be calculated: in Illinois alone, the cost of government corruption to taxpayers is estimated at $500 million a year. I mean, the government can’t even order the president a goddamn helicopter without fucking it up.

That’s why so many conservatives are so dead set against nationalized healthcare. Yeah, it’s true that here in the US we spend more than twice as much as other industrialized nations and yet we suck ass compared to them when you look at major health indicators like life expectancy, infant mortality, and immunization rates. But the mega-corporations now providing us with insurance and medications who care so very much about our well-being are making healthy profits. I mean, consider the fact that former UnitedHealth CEO William McGuire got $1.4 billion in stock options while the company made $30 billion in after-tax profits and spent $32 billion in insurance underwriting and marketing costs. Healthy! Oh, and, by the way, you have a preexisting condition so your claim has been denied. Sorry. Please pay the 87% increase in your premiums over the last six years, though, or you’ll be among the uninsured in less time than it takes to say, “not covered: elective,” loser. Do you know why we didn’t have a bigger outbreak of swine flu? Because we couldn’t afford it. Yeah, it’s true that Obama’s plan would merely be competitive with existing plans, so your health coverage would not change. It’s also true that businesses would benefit because they would no longer have to pay high insurance premiums or carry the administrative overhead for employees that opted into the single-payer program. But still, government is bad! And politicians cannot be trusted!

That’s why I’m kind of surprised by the conservative reaction to torture. I mean, if you don’t trust the government to pay for your fucking prescription, how can you trust it to secretly subject people to torture? I mean, okay, the government has awesome power all the time, but why would you give a government you don’t trust tyrannical power?

I think that, for moral guidance, conservatives often ask themselves what Jesus would do. Regarding torture, many apparently already have. And it turns out that Jesus loves torture! According to a poll taken by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe that “the use of torture against suspected terrorists to gain important information” is often or sometimes justified. Only sixteen percent of that group believed that torture is never justified. That number was lower than any other group polled. There was also just as strong a correlation between regular church attendance and support for torture. A similar poll last year offered pretty similar results, finding that 57 percent of white Southern evangelicals believed that torture was often or sometimes justified. Other polls give similar results. And note that the Pew Forum didn’t ask about “Harsh Interrogation Techniques” or any other euphemism for torture. It asked about plain old “torture.” So, Jesus is all over torture. Jesus hearts torture!

But, still, while this explains that some Jesus-loving people love torture, it doesn’t explain why. Then I saw a survey of the best and worst things liberals and conservatives could imagine. It explains a lot.

Source: Frank G. Musket & Harvey H. Temple, The Douchebaggery of the Masses: Political America from Ignoramississippi to Dumbfucklahoma, 122 Harv. L. Rev. 1191, 1207 (2009).

Many who are in favor of waterboarding argue that it works. But, really, who gives a shit whether it works or not? I mean, it’s not torture, right? Listen, the so-called “torture” memos released by Obama give all the US law that matters. They all agree about the definition of torture. The most important US law, 18 USCA §§ 2340-2340A, defines torture as an act that inflicts “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Another important US law, 28 USCA § 1350, also discussed in the memos, governs civil suits for torture and its definition is pretty identical: “severe pain or suffering ... whether physical or mental….” That’s a fine definition of torture in my book.

The memos go on to find that waterboarding “inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever.” And, since it’s a “controlled acute episode,” it can’t be said to cause any suffering either. In addition, though “waterboarding constitutes a threat of imminent death,” it causes no “prolonged mental harm.” That’s all from the “Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative” torture memo of August 1, 2002, written by Jay Bybee, by the way. But all the other memos agree.

So, waterboarding is kind of like riding a roller coaster or something: no physical or mental pain or suffering whatsoever. Just thrills and chills. That’s why it’s not torture and that’s what makes it so awesome. Okay, when the CIA tried waterboarding on their own operatives, the operatives lasted only an average of fourteen seconds. And conservative shockjock Erich Muller only lasted six seconds and afterward he said it was “absolutely torture.” But we all know how sensitive these rightwing radio dudes can be. I mean, the memos — written by lawyers — tell us it’s not even painful! And since when do any of us, conservative or liberal, have any reason to not trust lawyers? It must be as they say, a kind of awesome amusement park ride where you feel panic during it but afterward you laugh and laugh. In fact, I’m sort of surprised that we don’t have detainees begging us to waterboard them. At the very least, if we just explained to the detainees how much fun waterboarding is, we could probably get their consent to waterboard them and then none of this would be an issue.

Jay Bybee, who wrote that waterboarding “inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever,” was then Assistant Attorney General under Bush but he is now a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, one step below the Supreme Court. That means that, in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington State, waterboarding is perfectly legal as long as Jay Bybee is your judge. It’s also legal in Hawaii, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands, wherever the fuck that is. Oh, and Alaska, too, but you already knew torture was legal there.

And here is the truly awesome thing: I looked up the definition of child abuse in California. And child abuse occurs when someone “causes or permits any child to suffer, or inflicts thereon, unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering” according to California Penal Code 11165.3. So, instead of “severe,” child abuse is “unjustifiable” physical pain or mental suffering. But that doesn’t matter because, according to the Jay Bybee memo, waterboarding “inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever!” So, you don’t even need to justify waterboarding your kids! In fact, waterboarding is more appealing than spanking as a way to discipline your children. After all, spanking hurts! Even Bybee agrees: he writes that a facial slap “may hurt.” But waterboarding doesn’t hurt at all! No pain and no suffering!

So, I was thinking about this, and about how conservatives and Jesus are all loving torture almost but not quite to death (usually), and I decided that there is a money-making opportunity here. So I’m going to open a summer camp for kids in California. Judge Bybee’s got my back and it looks like Obama won’t prosecute anybody for any of this shit, either. Here is the brochure for stoogepie’s Waterboarding Camp. Please pass it along. And don’t let this opportunity pass you by. Sign your kids up today.

Or you can just click on this link to download the brochure. Hurry. Water won’t be around forever.

That’s all I have to say about torture for right now.

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A Crissy and stoogepie Fairytale

I haven’t been around much lately so I haven’t been posting much. Crissy over at crissyspage.com was nice enough to offer to help out by working with me on a comic. We even got a subtle product placement deal worked out. See whether you can spot it.

You probably already figured it out but, yes, here is our sponsor.

Thank you Bag O’ Dicks!

And thank you, Crissy! Swing by Crissy’s and leave her a comment or squeeze her tits or something.

That’s it for me and fairytales for a while unless another sponsor forks over some cash.

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Great Stories of the Bible 2

This Great Bible Story is a lot different from Great Stories of the Bible 1. But I still think it’s a pretty great bible story

See, that last bible story was a good story for the whole family, but might have been more interesting to adults. But this Great Bible Story is one the kids can enjoy in particular.

You’ve all heard of David & Goliath. David kills this giant and saves the day. But what you might not know is the story right after that whole David and Goliath episode in the bible. It’s a magical story with kings and princesses and royal intrigue.

So, if you thought all these bible stories were going to be adult-oriented just because the bible is full of smut and pornography, you were wrong. Share this story with the little ones.

See! I told you! It’s like a fairy tale! And like all the happiest fairy tales, it ends with David marrying the princess. Teach your kids: never, ever underestimate the value of dickmeat!

I’m working on another fairy tale of sorts, too. I’ll have news about that in a few days if I can get off my ass and finish it. But for right now, that’s all I have to say about that.

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Stoogepie Bank: Open for Business

When I was just a wee stoogepie, my daddy used to say, “Son, every great crisis presents a great opportunity.” Then he would create a crisis of some kind.

So, I have given a lot of thought to this whole global financial crisis. Where is the great opportunity?

Yeah, the financial crisis gave the nation as a whole the balls to elect a black president, and that’s something to be proud of. And it may yet give the nation the hair on those balls to institute a truly massive national stimulus that, while it would be nearly impossible to beat Roosevelt’s New Deal, could come close. Trillions of dollars may go toward making this nation’s middle class prosper and once again control America’s vast wealth. We’ll have to wait and see on that one. The stimulus package already approved by Congress is only a drop in the bucket, though. It doesn’t even yet include a bailout of banks.

All this is fine. But meanwhile, I have been asking myself, how can I, stoogepie, make billions off of this world economic crisis?

American Express provided the answer. See, in November, American Express, which is a credit card company and not a bank, decided that it would declare itself a bank. It did. Then it applied for and received $3.39 billion in bailout money. The CIT Group, a commercial lender that offers no traditional bank services and no consumer services, did the same thing. It declared itself a bank and then got $2.33 billion in bailout money. Both companies became banks just to take advantage of the bailout.

And so it occurred to me, why not open a bank? I mean, the final bill for bailing out America’s banks is very likely to be a couple of trillion bucks. I want some of that. Don’t you want some of that?

So, welcome to stoogepie Bank. You can view the mockup of the full stoogepie Bank website here. None of it works yet and, hopefully, the bank will be belly up before I ever finish designing the website.

Here is how it works: you send stoogepie Bank your money and I lose it all making incredibly bad investments, just like a real financial mogul. I will even make shoddy investments such as lending your money back to you so that you can buy houses and fancy shoes. Need a student loan or a credit card? Well, stoogepie Bank will give you both. And, instead of asking you to pay back your loans with money, stoogepie Bank will accept sex. Until the bailout money comes. Then we’ll all head to our own luxury retreat.

See, it’s incredibly easy to start a bank. Here in New York, for instance, all you need is $7-10 million in start-up capital. Then you pay a $12,500 fee and you have a bank. Okay, you also need to fill out a 54-page application, but most of that application is composed of instructions, like a for-dummies guide to opening a bank. In California, it’s more complicated to figure out the fees because you have to pay an assessment of your bank’s total assets and, to start a bank, you must have a minimum of $6-10 million in start-up capital. With $10 million, your fee for starting a bank would be $14,417 this year. You pay that and fill out a one-page form, and you’ve got yourself a bank! All of a sudden, you are eligible for bailout money!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I want some bailout money. See, I’m all for helping out people in need, but I kind of have a problem with helping out people who are just stoopid or dishonest. Like the bankers who lost all that money and then got massive bonuses with the bailout money. Or the many people who lied on mortgage applications they knew they could never afford. Let’s face it: not only the lenders and appraisers and mortgage brokers were dishonest. Borrowers frequently lied on their applications, too. In fact, according to one survey, as many as 70% of the people defaulting on their mortgages lied on their mortgage applications, many lying about their income by multiplying it by as much five and others forging documents using their computers.

But more and more, I wonder whether I am just the fool. Were all those cheats the smart ones? While I was busy just going to work every day and putting off buying a brand new stoogepen until the market softened, they were getting cheap loans and big bonuses and riding the wave of plenty. And, now, when the bailout comes, I wind up with fucking diddly. They all get bailed out, and I get passed by.

Well, no fucking way! Give me my fucking share of the bailout money. They are giving away trillions! Trillions!

And, since I know that people who read my blog are uncommonly responsible and honest, none of you are probably getting shit out of this bailout, either. So, put all your money in stoogepie Bank! Get StoogeBling® and borrow your money and more back! Then, when I get a fat check from the bailout, I’ll send you your share.

I did my taxes recently. They are not finished yet but I owe a bundle of money again, in part because 2008 was not all that bad a year for me in spite of all the doom and gloom. But some of my tax money is going to wind up in irresponsible people’s pockets. Oh, sure, some of it will go to people who lost their jobs for no reason at all and some will go to people who are losing their homes although they did everything responsible and sensibly. A lot of it is going to the good, honest, hardworking people of this country I admire so much because I am nothing like them and wonder sometimes whether they even exist.

But none of my tax money is coming back to me.

Well, that’s fucking bullshit.

So, please, send me your money. I promise that I can be wildly irresponsible and I will lose much, much more money than you send me. And then, when I get my $25 billion like Wells Fargo got, we can all split it. Well, maybe like Wells Fargo, I will buy up another bank with about half of that money to get myself a tax break.

We’ll split what’s left over after I buy a bank. Don’t get fucking greedy.

Of course, I will have to be compensated as president of the bank. Unfortunately, thanks to Obama, I won’t be able to get the kind of pay that Goldman Sachs executives got with their bailout money. Before Obama took office, as part of the Bush bailout, the top five executives at Goldman Sachs were paid $242 million altogether for their fine work bankrupting the company so it needed to be bailed out. Now, under Obama, I will only be able to get up to $500,000 per year plus stock options that can only be used after the bailout money is paid back. Since I never intend to pay my bailout money back, that means I can only make half a mil. That’s practically fucking charity, people, because I will lose money better and faster than any of those fucktards at Goldman Sachs or Citicorp or AIG or Capital One did.

There is the small chance that the US will nationalize all the banks, and that would completely destroy my plan to get bailout money. But Obama has tried to dispel those nationalization rumors—without actually ruling that option entirely out—by citing his administration’s preference for a sound privately owned banking system. Yeah, I want that, too. As long as I get some fucking bailout money. Now, give me my fucking money.

Anyways, all I’m saying is, send stoogepie Bank all your money. I will invest it unwisely and lose it all. I promise! I will lend it back to you to buy whatever the fuck you want with nothing but your lies and promises as collateral. And you can pay your loans back with blowjobs and rimjobs until the bailout money comes. And then you’ll get your share.

So, anyway, aside from my announcement of stoogepie Bank, I do need to tell you all that there have been not one but two deaths in the stoogepie family in the past week, including my grandma. So, that pretty much leaves just me and mum still alive in the United States. When people die, they leave a lot of baggage behind that has to be taken care of, including funeral arrangements and will readings and unpaid taxes and such that I now have the pleasure of keeping on top of, so I may appear even more out of touch than usual for the next week or so. But I’m fine, as usual.

So that I could deliver the sermons, stoogepie became an ordained minister at the Universal Life Church Monastery, which claims to have ordained over twenty million people since 1959. You can become an ordained minister online, too! It takes ten minutes! Then you can order your Ministry-in-a-Box like I did so you, too, can buy your friends and family members a ticket to Marble City in your own personal style.

For the low additional price of $29.99, you can also receive the honorary degree Doctor of Divinity or Doctor of Metaphysics. And for only $11.99 per title, you can be proclaimed a saint or even be proclaimed the pope. I paid for a lot of these, so please call me Dr. Saint Stoogepie from now on. I don’t want to be pope. I don’t do headgear.

That’s all I have to say about that. But don’t forget to send me all your money.

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