The Daily Show pops Beck's gold bubble.

I wrote about this last month; opportunistic gold brokers simultaneously advertising to buy and sell gold during programs that hype economic collapse and social unrest. It turns out Glenn Beck is up to his eyeballs in this scam; while he is probably the most outlandish prophet of doom and gloom on television, he's also a paid spokesperson for Goldline.com:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Beck - Not So Mellow Gold
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

An obvious conflict of interest, but this is one of the career perks for professional bamboozlers like Beck. If he can dupe people into sinking their nest egg into a commodity that is close to it's highest price in history, that's only morally reprehensible, not illegal. The only blow back on him would be a hit to his credibility, something Beck parted with long ago.

War on Christmas officially kicks off.

Looks like my heathen brethren are mounting an early offensive this year, by predictably infiltrating mass transit systems:



This bus add is courtesy of AmericanHumanist.org and can be found in and around the D.C. area.



And this one, from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, I've seen personally right here in Seattle. Here's a detailed shot:



Sure, our sports teams suck, but our atheists pick up the slack.

Rachel Maddow confronts a gay-cure hawking quack.

Another example of why Rachel Maddow is one of the most important journalists in America, here she mops the floor with Richard Cohen, a pseudo-psychological shyster who makes a living "curing" people of homosexuality.

As vile and exploitative as he is in this country, he's managing to do even more damage in Uganda, where one of his books is being used as evidence to support new laws making homosexuality punishable by death. Cohen is quick to condemn his Ugandan counterparts, but still manages to absolve himself of any responsibility for the pain and suffering his fraudulent career has caused. Maddow does a good job of cutting through his smiling, affable facade by reading passages from his book that reduce homosexuals to psychologically disturbed victims who need "curing":

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Climategate feeding frenzy!

It didn't take long for scientists and journalists to sink their twin fangs of sarcasm into the doughy flesh of the latest climate change denier phony scandal known as "Climategate":



And if that wasn't flippant enough for you:



Who knew nerds could be such dicks?

Meanwhile, the who and why of hacked email story is slowly being fleshed out, and it's looking more and more like this could be international espionage:

The news that a leaked set of emails appeared to show senior climate scientists had manipulated data was shocking enough. Now the story has become more remarkable still.

The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.

The leaked emails, which claimed to provide evidence that the unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, colluded with colleagues to manipulate data and hide "unhelpful" research from critics of climate change science, were originally posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk, at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business.

The FSB security services, descendants of the KGB, are believed to invest significant resources in hackers, and the Tomsk office has a record of issuing statements congratulating local students on hacks aimed at anti-Russian voices, deeming them "an expression of their position as citizens, and one worthy of respect". The Kremlin has also been accused of running co-ordinated cyber attacks against websites in neighbouring countries such as Estonia, with which the Kremlin has frosty relations, although the allegations were never proved.

"It's very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services," Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, said in Copenhagen at the weekend. "It's a carefully made selection of emails and documents that's not random. This is 13 years of data, and it's not a job of amateurs."

There is a real potential that this story could be very revealing as to the methods by which nonsensical denier anecdotes are dispensed to the public, as well as to powers that generate them.

Climate change rap be blowin up!

Here's a remarkably informative and entertaining rap on the climate change debate from Australian comedian Robert Foster:



It's worth noting that though the production quality is pretty low, Foster's "Flight of the Concords" style aussi/qiwi rap is far more humorous and insightful than his conservative counterparts I posted about last week.

Of course, mocking sanctimonious gasbags like Al Gore and Lord Christopher Monkton will always score points with me. It takes some real stones to hold leaders on both sides of the debate up as opportunists cashing in on their respective believer/skeptic markets.

Arseholegate.

BBC guest Profesor Andrew Watson provides an appropriate response to the typical American cable news shout-fest routine: "Will you shut up just a second? What an arsehole!"

Obama ponders legalizing drugs, loses train of thought.

Obama gets a surprisingly rational question from what can only be described as a snot nosed punk:



While it looks like legalization isn't going to be part of any government stimulus program in the near future, that hasn't stopped the black market from cashing in on Obama's brand.



Obama E.



Obama LSD.




And Obama heroin. Really? I suppose these are more useful products than worthless coins or collectors plates.