Oh, Louisville: you are so loved! You have horse races. Fine theater. A birthplace for baseball bats. And now: a church where the pastor is inviting his parishioners and the public to bring their guns inside the sanctuary, today.

It can't be that often that priests have a chance to do some good for the world, can it? Well Father Alberto Cutié, the Miami celebripriest and admitted woman-liker, does. And he's shirking his duty.

The Mormons posthumously baptized Barack Obama's mom! Isn't that sweet of them? Sweet and creepy? Well, these things happen. This particular thing happens a lot, in fact.

Oh look, a new study perfect for supporting any old opinion! Pew researchers found that half of American adults switch religion at least once—Catholics, out of conviction, and Protestants, out of laziness. Theory!

Oh man, Hillary made another GAFFE. She's just a gaffe machine! Bring back Condi! She got along with everyone! See, she didn't know that this image on this cloak was painted magically by God.

Martha Stewart's show today was all about pot! Pot pot pot! Jimmy Fallon was there, and he talked about pot! But right in the middle of the winky-drug jokes GOD INTERVENED.

Joseph Ratzinger's settled in as pope now, and he's really getting down to business with the crazy this year. What's he been up to and how will affect you?

Here is a wonderful sentence drunk crank Christopher Hitchens wrote about huckster pop-pastor Rick Warren:

Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor who's made himself palatable to liberals grossed out by most idiot bible-thumpers, will give the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration, proving that the President-elect is not the anti-christ, probably.

Christians are not taking the Atheist War on Christmas lying down. Heathens ran quirky, anti-god ads in DC recently, so Christians are striking back with a novel strategy—quirky, pro-god ads!

Not long after Poltergeist's late young star Heather O'Rourke lodged an official protest with God about MGM's forthcoming remake, we heard terrible rumors from Heaven that she was filing a follow-up about her likeness being used in a "stupid goddamn TV commercial from fucking Hell" (her words, not ours) whose makers she'd like to see Him smite even more swiftly and violently than new MGM hatchet man Vadim Perelman. Today we finally got a look at that commercial, which we really imagined couldn't be more just dirty celestial gossip made up by an ad man still bitter about OD-ing at his friend's birthday party a few weeks ago. But no — it was for real, right down to little Heather's starring role. A digital cameo in the remake is inevitably next, with her screen mother's enticements to "come to the light" met with O'Rourke's cleverly edited, product-placement-friendly resistance to approach anything that isn't Verizon's own "20db hot, true quam." Sometimes a girl just has to help herself. [DirectTV]

Remember those risque Gossip Girl posters that promoted the teen soap by using quotes from objectionable reviews, like the Boston Herald calling it "every parents nightmare"? They were fun! And dangerous. And now we have a new quote from the marketing folks to slap up on the ads. It comes from Stephen Baldwin, the bloated born-again brother of superior actor Alec, who delivered a "20 minute rant" at the Family Research Council Action's Values Voter Summit, calling the show "trash" and saying that those OMFG posters were "mocking God." Great line! Our Photoshop guy, Steven Dressler, has put that quote up on our favorite poster, for your and Mr. Baldwin's enjoyment. Click for larger.

So what if Hurricane Gustav displaces thousands, destroys their homes, and further devastates an already devastated region of these United States? Filmmaker Michael Moore sees a silver lining around the eerily quiet eye of the disastrous storm: It will screw-up the Republican National Convention. Already, John McCain is saying his party might have to postpone the Convention. And Moore couldn't be more tickled. He told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, "I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven. To just have it planned at the same time, that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for Day One of the Republican convention, up in the Twin Cities, at the top of the Mississippi River."

(Defamer today obtained this memo currently making the rounds in Heaven's Third District, Cloud Unit G — better known as "Sesame Heaven," or the Late Child Stars Dept. Reliable afterlife sources have confirmed its authenticity; we pass it along to you without further comment.) Dear God, Hi, God, it's me, Heather O'Rourke — the little girl from Poltergeist. How's tricks? I know how busy you must be dealing with the whole Isaac Hayes thing right now (my vote: let him in!), but when you get a second, I was hoping I might ask you for just one tiny little favor. It would really mean a lot, and I've been really good all these years and haven't requested anything except for that pony, but that was, like, 20 years ago when I first got here, and you never got back to me. No probs, though, God — I'm kinda glad it didn't work out, because now I need you to do me a much more important solid: Can you please smite the people responsible for this planned remake of Poltergeist?I don't quite know how these things work; Brad Renfro told me you helped out with his dealer not too long ago, and that depending on my grievance I could get some "real fucking payback" (his words not mine, LOL). And I think I've got a pretty strong case. I'm sure you've heard about all these movies MGM is recycling — Red Dawn, RoboCop, etc. — which is all pretty tacky, if you ask me. Like, really, God, aren't there any new ideas? Then I heard this morning that they hired some writers to remake my movie Poltergeist. I couldn't believe it! We had such a good thing going back in 1982, and now they're just gonna go and unimaginatively squeeze another few dollars out of the property. I'm practically spinning in my grave! Now listen, God: I have always minded my manners and been nice to everyone, as per Your dictates. But this really ticks me off, and if everyone else down on Earth gets to bomb, rape and kill each other with impunity, I don't see why I can't just this once ask you to strike someone with lightning or cast them opposite Billy Bob Thornton or at least scare some honest-to-You sense into them. Have you seen Poltergeist, God? I mean, I know you probably anticipated a lot of the twists, but didn't we do a good job overall — good enough to be left alone, anyway? It's not like we made Short Circuit (another forthcoming remake, but that's not my problem) or anything. And frankly, God, You've already made enough trouble with the whole curse that brought me and my on-screen sister Dominique Dunne here prematurely. I think teaching these heathens a lesson would be a healthy first step in rehabilitating Your image among us. Anyway, the people at MGM are named Harry Sloan, Mary Parent and Cale Boyter. The writers' names are Stiles White and Juliet Snowden, but I guess technically it's not their fault that this is happening, so please go easy on them — maybe an extended power outage, or an erased hard drive if they dare to revive my signature line, "They're heeeeeere." I trust You to determine the punishment for the studio people, though, especially with those other perversions they've wreaked of late. In fact, if You could get Tom Cruise himself to kill this project, I promise to clean my room and make my bed and eat my vegetables as long as I... well, You know. So how about it, God? I'm really a sweet girl, but isn't enough enough? Let me know... xo, Heather PS Leroi Moore, God? Really? That's just mean.

The only news that actually happened during that unprecedented Saturday debate at the Saddleback Church is that John McCain spent the Obama-questioning portion of the evening in his bus instead of the "cone of silence." Then, when Andrea Mitchell mentioned this on TV the next morning, his campaign sent out one of those furious letters that NBC News head Steve Corpus keeps getting from various outraged candidates. Of course the story was confirmed by CNN and Rick Warren and Kit Seelye but no matter. The entire debate was already a pointless exercise with a predetermined winner, designed to help McCain appeal to the wary nut vote and make Obama look good just for showing up. What's funny about this "debate" before cartoonish Stuart Smalley-esque touchy-feely evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren and his million followers is that we know Obama's gone to church every week for years and the closest we've seen McCain to worshiping Yahweh is when that North Vietnamese prison guard he borrowed from the Solzhenitsyn anecdote scratched that cross in the sand. (Amusingly, this plagiarism was first noted by the right-wingers of Free Republic back when Conservatives hated McCain for being a MAVERICK.) But what matters, obviously, is not actual religion conviction-or even the facade of conviction that actual church-attendance lends-but kowtowing to morons. McCain, who first bit his tongue to appeal to his party's idiots about five years ago and has not yet let up on it since, won the debate by proudly announcing that he has the moral authority to recognize and personally wipe out evil in all its forms, while Obama foolishly went for the "humble and meek" vote. The pundits will probably call it his "complexity" problem but he actually erred in sounding like a real Christian. McCain, not even sure which denomination he is supposed to pretend to be, only had to assuage these politically exhausted evangelicals that, like Republican presidents before him, he would ban abortion forever and shut down the ACLU and make it a crime for newsreaders to not wear flag pins. And, while everyone rightly says Obama "lost" the debate, it also happened on a Saturday night during the damn Olympics, and as we already said, just showing up for the photo-op was more or less the entire point of his attendance. Hooray for Michael Phelps! Click to view

God, the internet has really proven to be detrimental to our collective national psyche. It's gotten to the point that we won't even consider thinking about any organization that hasn't produced some god damn "viral video." And some porn! Must we impose these outlandish standards even on the gentle nature-lovers at Greenpeace? Yes, we demand they cater to our short attention spans and stunted penchant for sex jokes. So they have obliged with this "tree porn" video clip. Sexy stumps! Sultry openings in bark! And some guy standing just off camera moving leaves up and down over a forked branch like a giggling 12-year-old! Ha, "wood." Watch it below in order to save the earth or something!

Godless Gothamites, meet GodTube, which according to the Times was the Web's fastest-growing site when unveiled in August and which just garnered a $30 million hedge fund investment. It's sort of like YouTube, except all videos are pre-screened by site operators in Plano, Texas; you can't promote religions other than Christianity and you can't mock Christianity, which makes sense since "God" is obviously synonymous with "Christian God" (*cough*). The whole operation is of course destined to implode when the new hedge fund investors push for less censorship to goose traffic and ads for items a bit more risque than "Bible software and degrees from online universities," but in the meantime enjoy this GodTube clip of a man "caught" looking at porn by Jesus. (In the interest of religous plurality I did run a seach for "porn" on JewTube and the only hits remotely responsive included one titled "Neil Diamond And Carol Burnett", which I refuse to watch, and this video of two Jewish supermodels in bikinis backed by a Biggie Smalls song.)

The Pope is coming! The Pope is coming! Pope Benedict Ratzinger and His All-Starr Band are on their way to the States for Ratzi's first American tour! It's the Apostolic Journey to the United States '08! Helllllloooo, Baltimore—are you ready to ruminate on the relationship between reason and faith??? Yes, America is thrilled to finally mean Pope Ratzi, the first pope of the Internet Age, according to noted papacy and information technology expert Peggy Noonan, whose column on the visit is a seriously backhanded compliment about how she knew cuddly teddy bear pope John Paul II, and Ratzi, who looks like a breeding experiment between Pat Robertson and a raccoon that somehow became a zombie Sith Lord, is no John Paul II.

Click to viewIn journalist/blogger Daniel Radosh's upcoming Rapture Ready, he investigates the parallel universe of Christian Pop Culture. It's kinda like regular pop culture, except holier and with slightly worse production values. He says the music's not as bad as you think, but from the looks of this EXCLUSIVE VIDEO, the TV is sublimely ridiculous, if a bit, uh, totally offensive. It's from a TV show called Bibleman, which airs on Trinity Broadcasting Network. In this installment, Bibleman takes on a smarmy talk show host named Sammy Davey, who happens to be an embarrassingly exaggerated Jewish stereotype. Sammy Davey—played by a man in a ridiculous Jewfro wig doing an impression of Martin Short doing an impression of Jerry Lewis—totally ambushes Bibleman, the Christian superhero who apparently doesn't fight evil so much as appear on talk shows to explain why bad things happen to good people. (Hint: because New Yorkers are Jews who don't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.) The whole thing is basically Randy Newman's "Rednecks" come to life, with Bibleman in the Lester Maddox role. Click through to read an explanatory excerpt from Rapture Ready and to watch the the astounding clip.

[Socialite Hilton with some sort of "holy man" in Los Angeles yesterday; image via Bauer-Griffin]