Even those 'other' people

 

The United States is not a Christian nation.

Bibles, hypocrites, and venn diagrams

Sunday funnies

A young Dutch man may be the one to clean up our oceans.

Neoliberalism is at the root of our problems today:

After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised.”

To the old men’s fusty opinions about uteri:  shut up.

Twelve months of Donald Trump by Tom Tomorrow.

Tom Brokaw's take down of Donald Trump is making the rounds again.

Letter from a very tired Christian.

Decide to save humanity.

Mischievous writer takes on rumpus at a motel.

Russian mother, baby, officers, and bears.

So now there's an angry Christian pastor

Who is connected to Barack Obama.... does that finally shoot the moronic rumor about Obama's secret Muslim past in the foot?

Or will he now be called an angry Sorta-Christian Islamomuslim terrorist wannabe presidential candidate?

August Pollak has the answer.

Phony Christians and patriots

Look carefully at what you have become. You are endangering the life of a 12 year old boy.

You say you are good Christians? What Christian would support and encourage torture? What Christian celebrates war? Mocks injured children, soldiers and worse yet, belittles the wounded? What Christian declares intolerance to other beliefs a Christian ideal? What Bible are you reading from? This is not the Christianity I recognize.

You say you are patriots? What patriot hates his fellow citizens and demands the country change to fit his specific ideals? What patriot declares that this nation built on the dreams of immigrants should deny all other immigrants the chance to come here? What patriot states that diversity is a weakness not a strength?

You say you want government to deal with your important issues? Yet you elect officials who have repeatedly shown they despise government and have worked to break it. Why would you repeatedly vote in people who are incompetent? Why would you vote against your own self interests?

You say you support family values? What kind of family throws out their beloved children when they find they are gay yet supports elected officials who in increasing frequency are caught with their pants down?

And here you are mocking a 12 year old.

It truly is time to say, "Shame on you."

You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

(Idea via Eli at Multi Medium.)

Update: Ripley at Zen Cabin has a few comments on Rush Limbaugh's take on ... 12 year old boys.

Update 10/11: Bryan of Why Now? considers the financial and health care aspects.

Update: Chet Scoville of Vanity Press has an excellent overview of the polarized philosophies exposed by this event:

Moral philosophers tell us that one of the main ideas behind victim blaming is the "just world theory": the idea that justice is somehow morally encoded into the universe itself, rather than being a product of human culture and effort. Under one version of this theory, people tend to get what they deserve -- so, if you're poor, you get all the blame for being poor; if you're wealthy, you get all the credit of being wealthy, and if something bad happens to you, you brought it on yourself somehow. This version of the just world theory is, I think, one of the mainstays of modern conservatism, and the pushback against it -- the insistence that a victim is to be helped, not blamed -- is one of the mainstays of modern liberalism.

Pope declares world his

And you're either with him or against him.

Via Rook's Rant:

LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.

What if we really don't care what an old man who likes to wear dresses and very red shoes says?

Freedom brings a clash of cultures

As Central Asia has discovered:

MOSCOW. (Igor Rotar, a freelance journalist, for RIA Novosti) "Russians colonized us. Now, we are free at last-but European and American missionaries flooded my country as soon as we won independence.

They are out to make my nation a Western puppet," a Turkmen secret service officer hotly said to a friend of mine, a local Protestant.

Though his reasoning surely did not hold water, he was correct on one point. Protestant missionaries are really among the most effective disseminators of globalization. They openly say they want to turn this world into one big community resting on Christian values, democracy and the free market. They see South Korea as one of their greatest victories-a former Buddhist country where Christian converts presently make up a majority. South Korean missionaries working in Central Asia emphasize that the Protestant faith alone has made their land an affluent and inalienable part of the civilized Western world.

Obstacles to globalization are nowhere so formidable as in former Soviet countries, especially in Central Asia-a region that serves as practical proof of Samuel Huntington's warning. As the American political expert once said, attempts to turn the world into a single community would meet harsh resistance in Muslim countries.

"Democracy clashes with the Islamic canon. It's a godless system that gives an alcoholic atheist the same rights as a pious Muslim! True Believers have no use for Western individualism. We Muslims have lived in a community since time immemorial. We do everything together. Our concept of freedom of speech is also quite different from the European one," a Central Asian of radical convictions told me.

A beautiful act of contrition

By a Christian who realized that hating gays was not Christ-like:

Yet, can any student of the Bible say that the overall message - from beginning to end - is not one of forgiveness, love and redemption? God calls upon Christians to love as Christ did. God forbids us from judging or condemning people based on what we consider sin. That, I believe the Bible says, is God's job. As I pondered these questions, God began to slowly open my heart and mind to what I know as truth today - gay men and lesbians are not wicked and evil individuals and their sexual orientation is simply how God created them. They have jobs, homes, families and many desire a meaningful relationship with God just as I do. While I'm no theologian, I believe deeply that God grants us the ability to discern spiritual truths. One truth that God allowed me to discern is that judging a group of people as wicked and evil because of their sexual orientation - and deeming them as unworthy of my association and unworthy of a relationship with God - was wrong.