Expect rightwing batshit crazies to spin this.

A very strange event, one with a potential tragic and fatal outcome, currently holds the US in thrall.

A 6-year-old boy climbed into a small homemade aircraft — a balloon resembling a flying saucer — and floated thousands of metres into the air in Colorado on Thursday, local media said. But when the balloon came to earth, there was no sign of the passenger.

The Denver Post newspaper reported that the boy got into the aircraft, which it described as a "home-made flying saucer" at his family's home in Fort Collins and that it then came loose from its tether.

The father of the boy, Richard Heene, said he had been experimenting with the balloon with his sons, floating it just above the ground while it was tethered by ropes. His son, six-year-old Falcon Heene, is said to have climbed into the basket and the ropes came undone. Another brother ran into the house and alerted the parents, according to police.

A National Guard chopper was trailing the balloon which was at one time estimated to be traveling at an altitude of 8,000 feet when it began to lose helium and come back to earth.

It will be interesting to watch the contortions that the usual US rightwing religious batshit crazies, birthers and assorted haters will execute in order to blame this on their president.

UPDATE (by fh): The boy is fine. He was hiding at home the whole time.

One of these things is not like the others.

Ah yes, redemption when it takes a creative form, it is so ... aah, redemptive. So Harper crapped all over artists during the last federal campaign? There you go, here's Stevie tickling the keys and bleating at the National Arts Centre. But, as CC points out in Canadian Cynic: And here's where we juxtapose ... - admiration is context specific.

President Obama has started mending, not fixin', US relations with the rest of the world living on this small planet. It's going to tame some time: the 'Murricans have done a lot of harm. For the rightwing Republicans, the Birthers and the assorted fundamentalist religious zealots and racists of all stripes, this is NOT a good thing.

However, some clever person at the State Dept used that context specific thing judiciously.

"Certainly from our standpoint, this gives us a sense of momentum — when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes."

That's the take of Hillary Clinton's State Department on President Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, according to her spokesman, Assistant Secretary PJ Crowley.

Crowley was referring to the incident last December when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during his final visit to Iraq of his presidency.

Oh. Does W. know how to play the piano? Perhaps Stevie can teach him everything he knows about how to wow an audience.

Hoax, prank or whatever.

The plot gets thicker.

Any minute now, the Birthers and their leader "Doctor" Orly Taitz, also known as the worst straight drag act on YouTube, are going to be shrieeeking that they were set up to take a fall by an "obot" who demonstrated how simple it is to forge fake a birth certificate.

Fireworks

Memories. JJ tweaks a few chords as she recaps the pomp and fury generated by The Fetus©™ fetishists' MASSIVE melt-down around this time last year.

It's been a month now since Dr Tiller was publicly executed during Sunday worship at his church by a rabid anti-abortion fanatic.

The pro-lies crusaders soldier on, a range of christian denominations loosely connected by their misogyny, their homophobia, their persecution complex and their adherence to fundamentalist religious ideology.

The testerical bloggers at SoWrongOrNuts have declared War against everyone who believes in / follows a moral compass that's not been enshrined by the Vatican Taliban. In other news, US president Obama is scheduled to meet the Pope on July 10 after a G-8 meeting in Europe. Carol Marin, a respected career journalist and recipient of numerous prestigious awards wrote about this meeting for the Chicago Sun-Times:

Pro-choice President Obama goes to the Vatican next month to meet pro-life Pope Benedict. "The Vatican has been seeking common ground with Obama, although some American Catholic bishops have been hostile to his administration," the AP reported.

Let's pray that the spirit of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin fills the room ... Bernardin and Obama, despite a deep difference on abortion, shared much: Chicago. A commitment to dialogue. And a belief that common ground can be found even across the most fractured fault lines of faith and belief.

But it's treacherous territory.

A vivid demonstration of why that territory is so fractured and treacherous can be read in Tom Roeser's response to Marin's column.

"Not only is the Sun-Times’ Carol Marin a whimpering, simpering ultra-lefty, she is a hard-eyed propagandist calling herself Catholic who adroitly suffocates the truth. 'Pro-choice President Obama goes to the Vatican next month to meet pro-life Pope Benedict.' Wrong. Obama is not pro-choice. He is the most pro-abort president we have ever had ..."

More in the same loathsome vein follows. Vile pro-lies malevolence festers on in the US. According to the scribes of the shrieeeking hordes however, it's "law-abiding" - let's pause for a moment to let the irony of that sink in - abortion criminalizers who are being victimized, being as their tactics, weapons and intentions are as pure and innocent as The Fetus©™ they fetishize.

Top photo from pollywog.

Frum misrepresents Obama's words

... about what he said in his Cairo speech regarding women's equality.

Oh David. For awhile there, we had such hopes. We saw you recoil from the vile rhetoric of the fundamentalist religious rightwing zealots.

But I guess your Republican friends were beginning to worry about you. So you had to join the fray and do the expected slamming of the US president, in spite of the fact he's nowhere near the socialist you and the other neocon pundits say he is. But I digress. Here's Frum:

The president addressed – surprisingly briefly – the issue of the rights of women in the Islamic world. This is not a small issue, now that the Islamic world extends into Europe and America. Women in cities like London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Oslo face mounting threats not only to their freedom, but even to their physical safety, from men who deploy violence in the name of Islam. Nor is it only Muslim-born women at risk. Now listen to the president:

"I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal."

But it is not only “some in the West” who take this view! It is many Muslim-born women themselves, some of whom live in the West – but others of whom live in Muslim-majority countries.

What?!?!? Is that all that Obama said about women's rights? Ah, no. There's also this, which Frum didn't rip to shreds because ..., well you figure it out.

"I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well educated are far more likely to be prosperous."Now, let me be clear: Issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, we've seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.

I am convinced that our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons. Our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity -- men and women -- to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. And that is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams."

Because the whole question of whether a woman chooses to wear a head covering is so much more significant than whether she's allowed to go to school? Tsk, tsk, David. There you go again.

Conspiracy uncovered! Shrieeek!!!

Today is the day that Notre Dame University, that US bastion of Catholic higher learning, bestows a honorary degree upon President Obama who will then deliver the commencement address.

Conservative Catholics have opposed the university's awarding of a degree to the President, whose views on abortion and stem cell research conflict with the teachings of the church. Their intolerance has provoked a backlash and made this cohort even more Catholic than the pope!

As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne pointed out, "To the dismay of many conservatives, the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, offered what one antiabortion Catholic blog called 'a surprisingly positive assessment of the new President's approach to life issues'." The reaction was so positive that a spokesman for the National Right to Life Commitee criticized Pope Benedict XVI's newspaper! Furthermore, two-thirds of Catholics approve of Obama's performance in office and, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 50 percent of Catholics think Notre Dame was right to invite the President.

Thus it's no surprise that fundamentalist Catholics claim to have uncovered a 'secret' conspiracy or connection that explains why Notre Dame is being led down the road to damnation.

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, sits on the board of Millennium Promise, an anti-poverty organization which reportedly supports the distribution of condoms and encourages the establishment of abortion services where legal.

“Any Catholic university that supports a program to reduce poverty by eliminating poor children has a serious problem. No Catholic should be taking a leadership role in an effort that distributes contraception or promotes abortion," said Patrick Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. ...

Millennium Promise works to raise funds from the private sector for “Millennium Villages,” a group working with under-privileged African villages. While these “villages” seem to have laudable goals, a Millennium Villages handbook explains that "family planning and contraception services are critical to allow women to choose family size and birth spacing, to combat sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection, and contribute to the reduction of maternal morbidity and mortality."

ShriEEEKKK!!!

No wonder those fundamentalist Catholic zygote zealots are going into shrieking paroxysms. It is a well-documented fact that the Vatican Taliban would rather uphold medieval ideology than save the lives of African women and children. In their rabid religious fanatical view, only embryos and fetus are worth saving.