Darwin Was Right

Daniel Pearl, the Jewish-American Wall Street Journal reporter notoriously executed by terrorists in Pakistan in the months after 9/11, has been posthumously baptized by Mormons, reports the Boston Globe.

Helen Radkey, an excommunicated Mormon who combs through the church’s archives, said that records indicate Pearl, who was Jewish, was baptized by proxy on June 1, 2011 at a Mormon temple in Twin Falls, Idaho.

“It’s a lack of respect for Danny and a lack of respect for his parents,” Pearl’s widow Mariane told the Globe. “Danny would laugh…because it’s silly. It’s a bit surreal…But there is a more serious concern behind it, of respecting people’s identity and integrity.”

Mariane Pearl also called on Mitt Romney to use his sway with the Mormon church to publicly condemn the posthumous baptisms of Jews without the consent of their estates.

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Well, that didn’t take long. Only hours after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled California’s ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional, ProtectMarriage and other Prop 8 backers are already blaming Hollywood.

“We are not surprised that this Hollywood-orchestrated attack on marriage — tried in San Francisco — turned out this way,”  senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund Brian Raum told the LA Times. “But we are confident that the expressed will of the American people in favor of marriage will be upheld at the Supreme Court.”

Love it. Aside from the fact that the notion of Hollywood money affecting a court decision is ridiculous, what exactly does Prop 8 have to do with the “expressed will of the American people?” Yes, the 9th Circuit is a U.S. court, but Prop 8 is a California issue. Love how Raum suggests the will of the two biggest population centers in the state of California should have no legitimate bearing on the affairs of California.

Harold Camping‘s Family Radio is at it again. Doomsday is coming… for the third time in the past few decades. And it’s coming this Friday, five months after Camping’s previous prediction. Here’s what supposedly happened last time.

What really happened is that God accomplished exactly what He wanted to happen. That was to warn the whole world that on May 21 God’s salvation program would be finished on that day. For the next five months, except for the elect (the true believers), the whole world is under God’s final judgment. To accomplish this goal God withheld from the true believers the way in which two phrases were to be understood. Had He not done so, the world would never have been shaken in fear as it was.

Riiiiight.

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San Diego County GOP chairman/apparatchik Tony Krvaric is making noise in the blogosphere today for getting himself booted from Twitter. Krvaric registered the unused names of several of his Democratic opponents on Twitter–and used those accounts to tweet ridiculous things. Included among his targets was his Democratic chairman counterpart Jess Durfee.

Twitter made Krvaric ditch his fake accounts, and erased his personal feed. Krvaric was unapologetic about his actions.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

“Basically, they are pissed off that they didn’t register them first,” Krvaric said. “For them not to register their own … It just shows how far behind they are …

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San Diego Republicans are livid over a recent tweet by San Diego CityBeat’s political columnist John Lamb–calling the remark above, against San Diego Republican apparatchik Tony Kravic, a Twitter “death wish.”

The conservative blog San Diego Rostra was the first to pick up on the tweet:

While [Lamb] will no doubt say that he was joking, and may at some point feign an apology, this provides an illuminating insight as to the mindset of San Diego CityBeat.

CityBeat is nothing short of a Democratic and labor union press release machine intent on pushing a liberal agenda and slamming conservatives. The effort to remain objective has long ago been abandoned and goes well beyond simply leaning left. Lamb’s latest public comment with a death wish to the chair of the Republican Party is just a string of attacks and biased reporting that Republican candidates and officials have had to endure.

CityBeat editor Dave Rolland told SD Rostra, “[D]on’t confuse alt-weekly writers with politicians. We don’t apologize every time panties are twisted.”

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Sorry if you’re burned out on the topic, faithful Fishbowl readers, but we can’t get enough Harold Camping. We’re so fascinated by the success of this 19th century snake-oil salesman, that we’ve even taken to reading the evangelical press to get their take on things. There’s been plenty of dull opining going on, but this piece in the Christian Post is the best reported work we’ve seen–trying to reconcile Camping’s false prophecies with Christian ethics.

The Christian Post learned that Harold Camping spent around $100 million to advertise his May 21 end times prediction, according to Matt Tuter, Family Radio’s international projects manager.

Tuter told the Post that most of the money did not come from donations, but from the sale of property – more specifically, KFTL television and an FM station.

“My understanding is that they were soliciting money to help people understand the word of God,” commented Miniutti. “They spent it on what they intended to spend it on.”

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Man, is this guy shameless or what? Three days after he falsely predicted the end of the world for the second time, Harold Camping now says he was off–again–but this time by only five months. October 21st will be the real judgment day.

The AP reports on this hot mess:

Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, it dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a “spiritual” Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ’s judgment, he said.

The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God’s judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there’s no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21.

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This past Sunday–the day after the rapture was supposed to hit and God would destroy the universe–Family Radio fraudster Harold Camping gave an interview to the San Francisco Chronicle, claiming he was “flabbergasted” by the lack of end times.

“It has been a really tough weekend,” he told the reporter.

Yeah, really tough we’re sure. His Family Radio network was worth $22 million in 2002. It was worth $117 mil in 2008. God knows how much Camping cashed in for in the days leading up to the fake rapture. Camping has been the source of a lot of mockery in the press for his poor apocalyptic prediction skills. Reporters seem to be missing the point. Camping has been laughing all the way to the bank for the better part of two decades, since his first doomsday prediction back in 1994.

We think this rage comic puts it better than most of the writing we’ve seen on the topic.

Family Radio attention whore Harold Camping must be pretty happy right now. His prediction that the world will end tomorrow is the most trending topic in the universe right now. And he’s using all that attention to…blame gay people for the end of the world. The growing global gay civil rights movement, you see, is actually a sign of the apocalypse.

Naturally then, when Sunday rolls around and God isn’t in the midst of destroying the universe and torturing the sinners, that’s His way of telling us gay people are alright after all. Right, Harold Camping?

Can’t wait to tune in to Family Radio to find out.

As we’ve told you about before on this site, the end of days is coming. This Saturday to be precise. At least according to Family Radio media media mogul/cult guru Harold Camping. Jesus will come to take the true-believers to heaven, while the rest of us will be left to die a horrible, fiery death on Earth.

So, for all you Jews, Muslims, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists animists, Scientologists…and general sinners out there, how about some post-rapture looting? You won’t be alone. According to the “Post rapture looting” Facebook page that sprang up a couple of days ago, it looks like nearly 400,000 folks plan to hit up their local grocery and high-end stereo stores with their shotguns in tow.

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