Hobby Lobby forced to return illegally obtained "Biblical" artifacts and pay 5 million dollar fine.

Courtesy of NPR:

Hobby Lobby, the Oklahoma-based chain of arts and crafts retail stores, has agreed to pay a $3 million fine and forfeit thousands of ancient clay tablets and clay bullae that were smuggled into the United States with improper labels. 

The announcement by the Justice Department says Hobby Lobby bought over 5,500 artifacts, such as clay tablets and blocks with cuneiform writing, and cylinder seals for $1.6 million. The artifacts, originally from Iraq, were shipped to the company from the United Arab Emirates and Israel with labels that described them as "ceramic tiles" or "clay tiles (sample)." 

In a statement, Hobby Lobby President Steve Green said the company "was new to the world of acquiring these items, and did not fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process. This resulted in some regrettable mistakes." 

"We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled," he said. 

But the Justice Department prosecutors say the company should have realized that its acquisition of the artifacts "was fraught with red flags."

As it turns out Hobby Lobby was warned about these "red flags" by their own expert.

Courtesy of CNN: 

"In October 2010, an expert on cultural property law retained by Hobby Lobby warned the company that the acquisition of cultural property likely from Iraq, including cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, carries a risk that such objects may have been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq," the DOJ said. 

"The expert also advised Hobby Lobby to review its collection of antiquities for any objects of Iraqi origin and to verify that their country of origin was properly declared at the time of importation into the United States. "

But hey, why listen to THAT guy?

As if all of this were not embarrassing enough to Hobby Lobby, there is also the fact that they may inadvertently be funding ISIS.

Courtesy of Newsweek:

Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq are netting between $150 million and $200 million a year from illicit trade in plundered antiquities, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations said in a letter released on Wednesday. 

"Around 100,000 cultural objects of global importance, including 4,500 archaeological sites, nine of which are included in the World Heritage List of ... UNESCO, are under the control of the Islamic State ... in Syria and Iraq," Ambassador Vitaly Churkin wrote in a letter to the U.N. Security Council. 

"The profit derived by the Islamists from the illicit trade in antiquities and archaeological treasures is estimated at U.S. $150-200 million per year," he said.

These artifacts were scheduled to be displayed at the Hobby Lobby's Museum of the Bible.

But here's the thing, MOST so called "biblical artifacts" turn out to be bullshit, and are either actual ancient artifacts unrelated to events in the Bible or outright fabrications of pottery and cuneiform tablets that sell like hot cakes to Christians desperate to prove that the Bible is accurate.

In fact Archeological finds rarely support events occurring in the Bible, though that often does not stop charlatans from offering them up as proof.

I think the only thing that one could learn by visiting this "Museum of the Bible" is that the folks who own Hobby Lobby have money to burn, and that it would undoubtedly be better spent helping the poor, building a REAL museum, or at the very least not wasted fighting against having to provide access to contraception in their employee's health care plan.

NRA employee shoots himself during a firearms training course. So that's an "F" right?

Courtesy of NBC: 

A National Rifle Association employee accidentally shot himself while doing firearms training at the organization's headquarters, according to police. 

The 46-year-old man's pistol accidentally discharged Thursday afternoon as he holstered the gun in Fairfax County, Virginia, police said.

The accidental shooting happened at the NRA's National Firearms Museum at 11250 Waples Mill Road in Fairfax. 

The employee suffered a minor wound to his lower body and was taken to a hospital for treatment, police said.

Of course no charges will be filed because what is he going to do, charge himself with attempted manslaughter?

Remember kids, guns don't shoot people.

NRA employees WITH guns shoot people.

Or in this case, themselves.

Kentucky Coal Museum installs solar panels. I think there's a joke here somewhere.

Courtesy of the AP:

Don't look to the Kentucky Coal Museum to bring coal back. 

The museum is installing solar panels on its roof, part of a project aimed at lowering the energy costs of one of the city's largest electric customers. It's also a symbol of the state's efforts to move away from coal as its primary energy source as more coal-fired power plants are replaced by natural gas. The state legislature recently lifted its decades-old ban on nuclear power. 

"It's a little ironic or coincidental that you are putting solar green energy on a coal museum," said Roger Noe, a former state representative who sponsored the legislation that created the coal museum. "Coal comes from nature, the sun rays come from nature so it all works out to be a positive thing."

Yeah good luck with bringing those coal jobs back Donald Trump.

If this is not an indication that the coal industry is all but dead I don't know what would be.

Well this certainly hits the nail on the head a little too squarely.

In the US Holocaust Museum. -SR pic.twitter.com/OJTPI7PhZj

— AltDOJ (@alt_doj) January 30, 2017

I swear at any minute I expect the people standing behind Trump during those executive signings to clap their heels together and thrust their arms out straight, with the palms facing down.

You just know they're already doing it in private, don't you?

Civil Rights Museum turns Donald Trump away. Essentially because he is a belligerent rude asshole.

Courtesy of WFMY: 

The International Civil Rights Center and Museum was contacted by the Donald Trump campaign last weekend. Earl Jones, co-founder of the museum, says the campaign demanded certain things to make a visit by the GOP nominee possible. 

Jones says Trump's people were trying to plan a visit for Tuesday, the same day he spoke at High Point University. "We did not honor the request of the Donald Trump team because we thought they demonstrated, in their approach was disrespectful, so therefore we did not grant that request," said Jones. 

Jones says the Trump campaign was aggressive and rude to museum staff in making their request. 

He says Trump's people wanted the museum to be closed for at least 5 hours to accommodate Trump. 

Jones says the museum does not provide special treatment to anyone and says that is the main reason they denied the request. 

He said he also didn't feel like the request was sincere. 

"The approach, the type of disrespect, pretty much a demand and bullying us to use the museum in their manner and their way in their time, it was inappropriate and I think it's probably reflective of the type of insensitivity of civil rights and human rights that's reflective from Trump over the years," said Jones.

Oh damn! I think Mr. Earl Jones has Donald Trump's number.

Of course Trump's campaign thought they could bully their way into the museum, they're white!

And Mr. Jones is also right that Trump was not being sincere.

He was almost certainly doing it as some clumsy way to offset President Obama opening the Black History Museum in Washington, D.C..

Such an arrogant ass.

Hey, but here is a more lighthearted moment featuring that arrogant ass attempting to play beach volleyball.

According to the source this was back sometime before 1999.

Gee what an athlete.

Good thing he has money to convince women to look at him naked.

And yet it is still not enough to get him into the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

Go figure.

The Hobby Lobby's "Museum of the Bible" a monument to misinformation currently being built within walking distance of the Smithsonian Institute.

Courtesy of TPM:

The museum will be a living, breathing testament to how American evangelicalism can at once claim it is under siege from secularists, the LGBT rights movement, or feminism—yet also boast of acquiring a prime private perch, strategically located at the nation’s epicenter of law and politics, and nestled among its iconic public monuments. If you ask its creators, it’s meant to protect American Christianity from persecution. But it may be the most strident example yet of how that expression of religion, which in many ways is running counter to trends in American public opinion, continues to flex its political—and financial—muscle.

The building is being built by the Green family, owners of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts stores, and it is supposedly being built to educate people about the "facts" of the Bible and the history of its creation, so the building will of course be awash in misinformation, much like Ken Ham's Creation Museum in Kentucky.

Oh but folks will not have to actually visit the museum in order to be confronted with religious propaganda: 

“The subway stops in Washington are ugly, so we will put on there an electronic billboard talking about the museum,” he (The museum director.) said recently at an event for donors. “So when people are just coming to Washington, they’re going to hear about the Bible even if they’re just coming to see Congress.”

I can see the brochures now: "Come to Washington DC for the history and the politics, stay for the Christian indoctrination."

It just must be terrible to be so persecuted in this country that you are able to build a giant museum to celebrate your holy book.  

How do these people get through their days?

Wanna bet?

These billboards are still visible in Kentucky despite the fact that project has hit an insurmountable hurdle.

Of course it wasn't really wasn't the liberals who sank the ship, it was Ken Ham's own intolerance.

Christian women's group opposes building of women's history museum. Wait, what?

"Christian women's group opposes building of women's history museum." Yep you read that right.

Here is the story: 

The Christian group Concerned Women for America (CWA) has been trying to stop the construction of the National Women’s History Museum in Washington D.C. 

The House approved the museum in a 383-33 vote earlier this year, but a similar bill has been blocked in the Senate by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), noted the New York Daily News. 

“Whose view of history is this going to be?” Penny Nance, CEO of CWA, told The Daily Caller earlier this year. 
 

Concerned Women of America CEO Penny Nance.

Nance claimed that the museum would espouse pro-choice, anti-marriage and anti-family positions.

Incredibly enough the museum sponsors even offered Nance a chance to participate in the museum's direction. Guess how that went:  

However, conservative Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), who sponsored the museum bill in the House, denied Nance's claims were true and even offered Nance a seat on the museum commission. 

Nance called the offer an "exercise in futility and frustration" because it wasn't the chairman position. 

“I am happy to either serve or find someone else to serve as chairman,” stated Nance.

Yes why wouldn't you put a person, who clearly has no concept of the struggles that women have undertaken to provide her the opportunity to participate in the the founding of a museum in their honor, the chairmanship?

Now you might find the idea of a women's group, ANY women's group, opposed to the building of a museum honoring women to be almost impossible to rationalize.

But that is because you do not yet realize that Concerned Women for America is not REALLY so much a women's group as it is a conservative group promoting Christianity, carefully hidden behind women's skirts. 

In fact on their list of top issues are :

Sanctity of Life
Defense of Family
Religious Liberty
National Soveregnty
And of course Defense of Israel.

Somehow I do not think that these issues were among the top priorities for the women who fought for the right to vote, or own property, or hold elected office in this country.

Here is CWA's Mission Statement:  

The mission of CWA is to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens — first through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society — thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation.

Oh yeah, SO pro-women don't you think?

In fact it seems to me that this is really just the same anti-women, Christian misogynistic group, railing against the feminists, that we have seen for years now.

Only this one wears lipstick and nail polish. 

Hey would you like to feel smart today? Well watching this homeschooling mother demonstrating stunning ignorance while visiting the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago should do the trick.

Now the above is just a sample from the original 30 minute video which I will embed below, but it gives you some idea of that vast which emanates from this Megan Fox woman. 

As you may have guessed she is a Fundamentalist Christian, who home schools her children to protect them from anything which might threaten their faith in what Mommy and Daddy believe.

Here is how Raw Story reported on this: 

In the description of the 30 minute video she uploaded to YouTube to document the visit, Fox wrote, “In November 2014, Megan Fox toured the Field Museum’s ‘Evolving Earth’ exhibit to audit it for bias. She found many examples of inconsistencies and the Field Museum’s insistence that people support opinion as fact without proof. The Field Museum pushes certain theories as if they are absolute proven law when that is not how the scientific method works.” 

In the video’s opening moments, Fox is reading a display regarding the evolution of eukaryotes — which she has to ask her camera operator how to pronounce — simple, microscopic animals that first evolved as single-cell life forms, but which became multicellular, beginning the diversification that would lead to complex life forms. 

“‘At first, many eukaryotes were single-celled, and many still are today,’” Fox reads from the display before scoffing. “What? If many still are today, then that would support the theory that they have never changed, that they have always been as they are today, not that they started someplace else and then are here, but they were always this and still are today.” 

Regarding what paleontologists have said about the first animals to make the transition from life in the water to life on land, Fox says this is impossible. God made the creatures of the water to live in the water and the creatures of the land to live in the land, which is why fish have fins and people have feet. 

“It’s not like their fins fell off and they grew feet,” she says. “That’s what they want you to believe, that their fins fell off and then they grew some feet and started walking on the land. This is the dumbest theory I’ve ever heard in my whole life. It’s not good, it’s really not good. It’s bad. It’s very bad. Do you know how complex feet are?”

Holy crap! This woman almost makes Sarah Palin seem like a Rhodes Scholar. 

What is even more troubling is that this lunatic has a YouTube channel where she reviews, and recommends, books for children.

Now as promised embedded below is the entire 30 plus minute video.

My advice is to watch in small segments however as the stupidity is actually overwhelming.

Hobby Lobby owners plan to open museum dedicated to the Bible in Washington D.C.. Oh goody, another museum dedicated to Christian mythology.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

The evangelical Christian family that owns Hobby Lobby, the chain of craft stores, made history two weeks ago when the Supreme Court overturned the Obama administration’s mandate that family-owned companies must provide contraceptive coverage to their employees. 

Now, the family is looking to build a permanent presence on the Washington landscape, by establishing a sprawling museum dedicated to the Bible — just two blocks south of the National Mall. 

The development of a Bible museum has long been a dream of the Oklahoma-based Green family, which has built Hobby Lobby into a $3 billion company in which its religious beliefs infuse every aspect of the business, from the music played in its stores to being closed on Sundays.

But on the heels of the company’s legal victory, the project is raising concern in some quarters that the Greens’ museum could blur the line between educating and evangelizing. Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby and the son of its founder, has referred to the Bible as “a reliable historical document,” and, as part of the museum project, he is developing a curriculum to “reintroduce this book to this nation.”

Just what we need, a powerful corporation dedicated to giving Creationsist Ken Ham a run for his money in dumbing down American schoolchildren.

You may remember that Steve Green, of the Hobby Lobby owning Green family, has also been working to introduce a Bible curriculum into public schools in Oklahoma. 

Apparently these people are determined to push their religious belief into every facet of our lives, and after their Supreme Court victory they may believe that there is nothing to stop them.

Of course if the millennials are any indication their days of spreading misinformation and lies may well be coming to an end in the very near future.
 

Thanks in part to the debate with Bill Nye, Ken Ham now has the money he needs to finish his 73 million dollar Noah's Ark display.

Courtesy of the AP:

Creation Museum founder Ken Ham announced Thursday that a municipal bond offering has raised enough money to begin construction on the Ark Encounter project, estimated to cost about $73 million. Groundbreaking is planned for May and the ark is expected to be finished by the summer of 2016. 

Ham said a high-profile evolution debate he had with "Science Guy" Bill Nye on Feb. 4 helped boost support for the project. 

Nye said he was "heartbroken and sickened for the Commonwealth of Kentucky" after learning that the project would move forward. He said the ark would eventually draw more attention to the beliefs of Ham's ministry, which preaches that the Bible's creation story is a true account, and as a result, "voters and taxpayers in Kentucky will eventually see that this is not in their best interest." 

Ham's Answers in Genesis ministry and the Creation Museum enjoyed an avalanche of news media attention during the debate, which focused on science and the Bible's explanations of the origins of the universe.

So even though Bill Nye clearly won the debate, in the end Ham gained access to his one true god.

Money.

This kind of thing sickens me beyond belief.

The story of Noah's Ark is so easily refuted that a child in elementary school could do so.

Unless of course he was educated by Creationists and taken to this aberration and told that it was a legitimate museum. Which it is NOT.

Time is not on the side of the Religious Right, but if they can keep dumbing down our children they can delay the spread of secularism and the end of Fundamentalism.

The Creation Museum's handy dandy tips for determining the geological age of a fossil. (Spoiler alert: It does NOT involve any science.)

That's right kids, who needs science in a museum?

After all everything you need to know about EVERYTHING is contained in book written thousands of years ago by a people who thought that sickness was the result of demon possession, that crops failed because the sacrifice to God was not pleasing enough, and that stars were embedded in an ocean which hung above the earth.

Oh, and good luck getting a job.

Lightning strikes worker at Creationist Museum. Is anybody else struck by the shocking irony?

Courtesy of WLWT:  

A staff member was injured Wednesday while clearing guests from a zip line at the Creation Museum. Staffers had cleared the lines before 1:20 p.m. as storms moved into Boone County. 

Museum officials said a male staffer touched an object that had been energized by lightning and was injured. 

He was taken to an area hospital as a precaution, but his injuries were not considered to be serious. 

The zip line attraction opened this spring to help the religion-themed museum attract a wider audience. 

So..many...puns.

I am a non-superstitious thinker so I am unable to equate this with God punishing these people for misinterpreting his book. However I would like to point out that if these idiots did not continue to reject science they would have realized that hanging off of a metal structure in a lightning storm might not be the smartest idea.

And by the way, what kind of "museum" has to install a zip line in order to increase attendance?

One that is losing money hand over fist, that's what kind.

A scientist visits the Creation Museum

I'm sorry but watching this Astrophysicist defend his support of the Biblical story of creation to Professor Blakemore almost gave me an aneurysm.

How much cognitive dissonance does it take for such a highly educated person to make that clumsy circular argument in defense of their support of their abandonment of reason?

I watched their exchange slack jawed.

Dinosaurs live!

Extinct, my ASS! from The Original Joe Fisher on Vimeo.

I understand this is an anatromic robot at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. Check out the reaction of the kids.

Creationist museum will have to close if they cannot find a buyer for their ancient mastodon skull. Ironic does not even begin to cover this.

A Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder.

"If it sells, well, then we can come another day," Joe Taylor said. "This is very important to our continuing."

Heritage Auction Galleries says the skull is estimated to be 40,000 years old, and projects it will fetch upward of $160,000. The artifact discovered in La Grange in 2004 is believed to be the largest of its kind, Heritage spokesman David Herskowitz said.

The auction will be held Sunday in Dallas, with bids accepted on the Internet until Saturday night.

"We're trying to reach out to someone who would buy it, then reach out to a museum in Texas," Herskowitz said.

Taylor said he would love to keep the skull of the elephant-like mammal as the centerpiece of his tiny museum just outside Lubbock, which includes creationist exhibits.

Claims on the museum's Web site include that Noah took dinosaurs aboard his ark. The prevailing scientific wisdom is that humans and dinosaurs missed each other by tens of millions of years.

It is still my contention that anybody who runs a museum like this is engaging in child abuse. Depriving a child of a real education in this country should be against the law.

I cannot help but wonder if this moron understands that if his mastodon skull was not so many thousands of years old nobody would give any money for it.

Actually I already know the answer to this question. He doesn't.