Bits

[rahne_everson]

• Ed Brayton, who blogs on Dispatches from the Culture Wars on ScienceBlogs, has a nice, in-depth post about the recent brouhaha regarding ACORN supposedly committing voter fraud by submitting thousands of fraudulent applications across the country. Fact is, ACORN and all other voter registration drives must, by law, submit all applications to the boards of elections, regardless of whether they're fraudulent or not. It's the board of elections that crosscheck applications with databases to see if they're real or not.
  
  Brayton says that these suits for voter fraud are filed by the GOP to suppress voter registration, and I'm not surprised by that. Indiana had a voter identification law that passed a week before the primaries (totally not timed at all) that explicitly stated that voters must present photo ID at the polls, particularly a driver's license. It was endorsed by Republicans as a way to guard against voter fraud, but in practice of course it would limit people who may be registered but don't have photo ID, like minorities who might be more inclined to vot Democrat. (The BMV passed out tens of thousands of free voter ID passes that week.) Even the Supreme Court got involved, ruling in favor of the law.
  
  It was pretty pointless as Indiana already had such laws in place that could offer other, legal forms of identification that weren't photo IDs. I'm sure it was politically motivated, as are these frivolous bullshit lawsuits against ACORN when they've just been doing their job.
  
  
• Pastor wants McCain to win -- to keep God in the "in crowd" with the other gods.
  
  “There are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that his [McCain’s] opponent wins, for a variety of reasons,” said Arnold Conrad, former pastor of Grave Evangelical Free Church.
  
  Hindu is a god? Wow, I thought it was the name of the RELIGION all this time.
  
  “And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.”
  
  On Election Day, when McCain loses,
  
  Vishnu: Hey, God! Your boy lost! Hahaha!
  God: S-S-SHUT UP!
  Loki: Man God, I thought you were cool.
  God: I'M STILL COOL! See?! My son can turn water into wine. C'mon, how cool is that?!
  Horus: Lame. Besides, we get enough of that through Dionysus.
  Amaterasu: C'mon guys, let's go to Asgard. Heaven's not "in" anymore.
  God: B-B-But wait, I can talk through a burning bush!
  Q: You've done that a thousand times!
  God: I'm really Allah!
  All: WE KNOW.
  
  
• Uh, what?
  
  Prince Charles has been invited to appear on the BBC's Doctor Who television series - and his office has not ruled it out.
  
  He better be playing a werewolf.
  
  Seriously though, if it does go through, I'm with Phil Plait here. They could do it really well and it'd be REALLY funny. If not, then it'll fall flat on it's face and it'll have made the shark jump.
  
  Oh well, I STILL CAN'T WAIT!!!