From today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, a video of the southern sky.
Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.
From today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, a video of the southern sky.
Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.
Sometime next year I’ll get around to blogging about our wonderful recent vacation to the Olympic Peninsula and Seattle – one of the most fun things was dropping in on my friend Seattle Tammy at her store, Books on 7th, in Hoquiam Washington.
You can even BUY BOOKS FROM THEIR ONLINE STORE, and I happen to know they just got in a big consignment of old cookery books…
Turns out Hoquiam is now famous after a recent incident with a deceased member of the Family Mustelidae put them on the international news wires, and LOLmarten images went viral.
“We’re not all running around here with weasels,†the mayor of Hoquiam, Jack Durney, insists.
His tone is genial, but he admits to a level of frustration as today the Google alerts for “Hoquiam†pile up from national sources, most containing an explanation of the distinction between a marten and a weasel.
“A marten is a member of the weasel family,†helpfully concludes the ur-AP story on the assault by a man also carrying a dead marten.
What Durney wishes national media would ask him about is Governor Gregoire awarding Hoquiam a Smart Communities Award for the third year in a row. Hoquiam’s downtown revitalization campaign won under the “Development Project to Implement a Plan†category. Radio station KBKW reports:
The ongoing project has focused on public improvements to downtown including new ADA accessible sidewalks, street trees, decorative lamp posts and a new riverfront walkway. Hoquiam has seen a burst in new business activity and business improvements through the opening of Tully’s, Levee Feed and Pet Supply, Books on 7th, Pure Clothing, and the 8th Street Ale House to name a few.
via Beyond Dead Weasels, a New Hoquiam Emerges From the Trees | The SunBreak.
HEY YA!!! I was wondering why all the FUCK YOU!!! I’M A MARTEN! shirts suddenly appeared in Second Life (Tammy made some to give away to mutual friends), and I’d seen a few LOLmarten macros in my feed, too.
Only the other day I was commiserating with Tammy about business being slow and recommended she find herself some free publicity, and here she is in the news, sorta kinda, with dead martens asserting their martenhood all over town. Or possibly minkness, as Tammy notes:
The Dave Barry rule applies here: You just can’t make this stuff up. Hoquiam Police Chief Jeff Myers was contacted by the Game Department, as martens hadn’t been seen on the Harbor for 50 years. After seeing a photo, they replied “Never mind, it’s a mink.”
If you love books, Tammy’s shop in Hoquiam is a fun place to stop by – small enough to be cozy, big enough to have an interesting and eclectic selection. We also patronized the 8th Street Ale house for lunch, where she and I enjoyed our Hoppy Bitch Ales very much, thank you.
With all this world-wide attention focused on Hoquiam, it seems poised to make great strides as the center of all your marten-based small predator needs. It’s a cute town, aiming to get cuter with the planned walkway along the waterfront. Drop by sometime soon! If it turns out it really was a mink, that’s okay, too.
My friend Pfalz Prophets has been blogging a bit lately on human rights issues for GLTB persons, and this post does not deserve to be notoriously ignored.
Disclaimer: I have sung in church with PP, and attest to his musicianship and scholarly chops.
I discovered a new hate group the other day, the National Organization for Marriage, thanks to my signing up with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Maggie Gallagher, the chairman of the group, issued a standard press release, to which I responded with this e-mail:”It has come to my attention that you are conducting a nationwide campaign opposing laws that grant same-gender couples the rights traditionally given only to hetero couples. Your most recent statements charge that those of us who support such laws are actually engaged in a campaign of hatred, attempting to silence your supporters by labeling them as bigots.”I have quite a great deal to say on this matter, because there are several issues here that need to be disentangled in order to be addressed:
via Beware of Pfalz Prophets: A National Organization for Marriage?.
It’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit here and snowing. We were going to go out with the cameras but so far it’s a coffee-in-bed day. The new heated mattress pad has been getting heavy use; David leaves it on all day during the week so Riley can stay cozy under the covers while the automatic thermostat lowers the temp til we get home.
Here’s a wonderful blog I found following Chris’ recent kind comment; it’s a collection of wartime love letters.
It is still most stringently cold here. Last night we had a heavy fall of snow; today the temperature is very low with alternating showers of snow and glimpses of anaemic sunlight. I seem to be getting used to the cold however and we have learned how to make the stove in our billet burn most of the night so that getting up in the morning is no longer completely petrifying as Jean [his youngest sister-in-law] would say. I am rejoicing in the hirsute warmth of the heavy underwear I have been carrying around for so long, and am using my new scarf constantly.
via Letters from the past: Tuesday 9 January, 1944.
At this very moment there sits on my desk a shoebox full of the letters between Mom and Pop from when they were engaged but living in different towns in Colorado, separated by mountain passes and winding, two-lane highways.
I wanted to blog them before, but it was a little too soon after Mom passed, so they’ve been sitting there. Maybe soon… In the meantime, enjoy reading Chris’ project, “Letters From The Past.”
http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com/whiskey_fire/2011/01/try-to-be-nice-and-look-what-it-gets-you.HTML
Yes, wingnut rhetoric is dangerous and irresponsible and loony.
But worrying about whether or not wingnut rhetoric is responsible for the Tucson nutjob, well, that’s like worrying about shutting the barn door after the horse has been shot and fucked and sold for glue.
Surely: this shooting was horrific.
But then, wingnut rhetoric has directly led to mind-boggling numbers of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan; it’s ruined the American economy; it’s made torture routine; it has succeeded in preventing the nation from taking effective action to prevent environmental catastrophe.
Confusion at Daily Kos today in the swirling aftermath of the Giffords shooting – the right-wing commenters at Palin’s Facebook page, on Twitter, and on many, many blogs have pounced on the curious case of a Daily Kos diary that criticized Rep Giffords was deleted earlier today. They were quick to howl that the diarist, a low-level member named BlueBoy whose diary didn’t get very many comments or “recs,” must be the same person as Jared Lee Loughner, the accused shooter.
Well, it appears he’s not, as he’s been posting in comments threads on Daily Kos tonight. He took the diary down out of respect for the Giffords family, but also because… it’s his diary and he has the right to delete it. It would have been better if he’d UPDATED it with an apology and an explanation, as this way, the moderators and indeed @Markos himself had no way to know who deleted it, or why.
No such respect from La Palin; she’s posted a rather stilted “hold her in our prayers” post on Facebook but made no apology for the now-infamous graphic showing crosshairs over Gifford’s district that was also taken down today. It’s likely it was removed out of respect, but more likely, it was removed because it had become an embarassing liability. In related news today, FOXNews covered a vigil for Giffords on the state capitol steps in Phoenix, but cut away suddenly when the young man on camera said “And I say to you, Sarah Palin…”
Yes, they cut away, the cowards, to that creepy scary clown commercial from the US Postal Service.
I checked in with friends online, where we sat around a virtual campfire and sang Kum-Bah-Yah… okay, yes, we did, but it was a punk version and then there was a lot of other great music while people talked quietly about the events of the day. It was a lot less accusatory than you might think; the general agreement there and at Daily Kos was that we needed to get away from constantly assigning a right/left stance to every crazy person that flips out and shoots someone. We were just decompressing from the day’s events and trying to relax together with music.
Sometimes a nut is just a nut — but it’s likely to be a right-wing nut most of the time (at least since the 70’s).
Daily Kos is a very active, very big group blog/diary site, and it’s characterized by a system of “tipping” and “reccing” to get posts (known as diaries) promoted to the front page so that they remain visible longer rather than scrolling off with every refresh. This Boy Blue’s post, in which he declared Rep. Giffords was “dead to me” was deleted, but not before screenshots made their way onto every social media site where conservatives gather on the Internet.
Twitter exploded earlier; not long after the shooter was identified, someone claiming to be a former high school classmate of his insisted that he was gay, “left-wing, quite liberal,” you name it. Meanwhile, the kid’s own reading list is kind of a mixed bag – but two of his favorite authors are Hitler and Ayn Rand, along with Karl Marx and some other more conventional “AP Senior English” reading list writers.
The fans of Sarah Palin on Facebook are flagging critics as fast as they post, and also making the same claims that the shooter, Loughlin, is the “radical leftist,” Boy Blue. So’s the UK’s Daily Telegraph, calling it an “unseemly rush” to blame Palin and the Tea Party.
Everybody’s making false equivalencies while simultaneously removing pages and graphics that either implicate their “side,” or would hurt the Giffords family by remaining visible, or both. Meanwhile, the right-wing partisan hordes are screaming: “They’re both from Arizona! They’re both gay! They either shot Giffords, or said she was “dead to me.” They must be the same guy! The shooter can’t be a good real American conservative, he MUST THEREFORE be a BAD UNREAL unAmerican LIBERAL.”
Well, no, not if this “Blue Boy” you identify as “Jared Lee Loughner” is actively posting at Daily Kos tonight while the shooter is most definitely in custody – unless you want to holler “Conspiracy!” and wank-merrily-ho to your heart’s content.
A later diarist at dKos posted quickly, before all the facts started to sort themselves out, and updated as below after being given better info (some from Blue Boy himself) in the comments. It was pointed out that the diary wasn’t all that popular, got very little attention when it was posted, and even that the cliche “dead to me” is kind of how you say you’re going to ignore someone forever, rather than threaten them with murder.
UPDATED Thanks to all for their information about what really happened. It seems that a diary was posted in the past week by someone who was upset at Rep. Giffords for voting for Rep. Lewis for Speaker of the House. The person entitled their diary: My Congresswoman voted against Nancy Pelosi! And is Now Dead to Me! The diary contained no threats of violence, no gun sites, no Sarah Palin-like ‘reload’ language. Other than the title, the harshest remarks were something to the effect of no longer being a volunteer for Rep. Giffords. Hardly the stuff of rousing vitriol. When Rep. Giffords was shot today, the diarist out of respect for Rep. Giffords and after apologizing for causing any distress, deleted the diary of his/her own free will. There is no equivalency between what the diarist wrote in the title and what Sarah Palin posted on her web page or wrote in her twitter remarks about reloading. There is no equivalence between what the diarist wrote and what so many extreme right wing politicians, TV commentators or radio hosts say each and every day. Bai’s brand of journalism is dishonest and shoddy. Shame on him.
via Daily Kos: UPDATED! NYT’s Matt Bai accuse Dkos of scrubbing comment about Rep. Giffords..
Wow, I actually got a comment that isn’t spam, a request for a washing machine part, or looking for Fry Sauce. It’s from a recent post called “My God is the God of the Poor,” which was just a link to a awesome recent post by Pastor Dan that ***Dave passed along.
In it, I said as I quoted pastordan
Something else I believe as a liberal Episcopalian, put a little more aggressively:
My God is the God of the poor. You can be for the poor or you can go to hell.
A month later, I get this rather condescending comment from someone named Dan Kegley, and since this is my blog, I get to be not only condescending right back, but also slightly snotty and obnoxious. But hey, it’s my blog. I suddenly got inspired to respond with important, well-thought out arguments, but those darn LOLcats got in my Bible and messed with my sin tax again.
How sad that one would relate a man’s wealth, or lack thereof, with how God, in His wisdom, will judge us all at His time and place. How can you speak of liberalism, with its oddities and corruption of heart, being obviously at war with morality and values of any kind, as having a “leg upâ€, so to speak, in God’s eye? I have never heard that God wishes for us to take from producers and give to the lazy or unproductive. I am not referring to those on hard times, or those whose hardships have them in a bad place currently. Liberals, though, actually see a calling to punish hard working men and women, as if that elevates those who do nothing to help themselves. The Lord Himself, on many occasions, spoke of the need for man to strive and produce for his own family, as no one other than the head of the family can lay claim to the prosperity or destitution by which the family comes. I believe your words will never be taken seriously by progressives who cannot understand the good hearts of men, and who by their political nature want for destruction and chaos to reign, as in this they prosper in wealth, control over men, and unquestioned power. How sad.
— commenter Dan Kegley, who has a sad
How sad indeed that you seem to inhabit a completely different version of reality, because it will be very difficult for us to communicate across the divide. Since I know what state you probably hail from, I’d love to introduce you to some lovely liberal Christians there who might give you a whole new perspective on Jesus and His mission to the poor (and also the proper raising of cows, chickens, and dogs). I’m a pretty rotten liberal Christian by comparison to them, but I mean well, give as much as I can, and hope to do better.
What are liberalism’s “oddities?” What “corruption of heart?” Are we talking religion or politics? If religion, best not raise the spectre of corruption lest we have to go into the many and varied kinds of priest/clergy sex scandals plaguing the conservative churches, not to mention embezzlement or financial fraud cases by either clergy or lay leaders (all too common in Utah, for example, as the sheep are very easily clipped there).
I’m not at war with morality, and I have values. This doesn’t give me a “leg up.” This puts me on a path that may be different from yours that is no better, and no worse. I think war is immoral, I think capital punishment is immoral. I also think Han shot first, which is both a moral position and a value judgement.
Let’s talk about taking from the producers and giving to the unproductive next. You really need to stop reading Ayn Rand, and start reading your Bible – it seems that at least one reading in church each week mentions the poor in some context (I go to church every week, unlike many Americans who claim church attendance but don’t actually go). Strangely, I do not think Ayn Rand thought much of this Bible thing. She seems very selfish and unpleasant and her characters are cardboard cutouts. Seriously, producers? Do you grow your own wheat? Weave your own linen, unmixed with wool? Live in a gulch? Of course not.
Here are a few mentions of the word “poor” in the Bible. Several of them are very familiar even to non-religious Americans – the ones that keep buying the Bible, but not reading it, apparently. As it happens, the ones in the beginning are what Jesus said about the poor.
Multi-Version Concordance
Poor (276 Occurrences)
Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Matthew 6:2 When then you give money to the poor, do not make a noise about it, as the false-hearted men do in the Synagogues and in the streets, so that they may have glory from men. Truly, I say to you, They have their reward. (BBE NAS)
Matthew 6:3 But when you do merciful deeds, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand does, (See NAS)
Matthew 11:5 the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Matthew 19:21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Matthew 26:9 For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.” (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Matthew 26:11 For you always have the poor with you; but you don’t always have me. (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Mark 10:21 Jesus looking at him loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack. Go, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me, taking up the cross.” (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Mark 12:42 A poor widow came, and she cast in two small brass coins, which equal a quadrans coin. (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Mark 12:43 He called his disciples to himself, and said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, this poor widow gave more than all those who are giving into the treasury, (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Mark 14:5 For this might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and given to the poor.” They grumbled against her. (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Mark 14:7 For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want to, you can do them good; but you will not always have me. (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Luke 1:48 For he has had pity on his servant, though she is poor and lowly placed: and from this hour will all generations give witness to the blessing which has come to me. (BBE)
Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Luke 6:20 He lifted up his eyes to his disciples, and said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Luke 7:22 Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John the things which you have seen and heard: that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Luke 11:41 But if you give to the poor such things as you are able, then all things are clean to you. (BBE NIV)
Luke 12:33 Give what property you have in exchange for money, and give the money to the poor; make for yourselves money-bags which will not get old, wealth stored up in heaven which will be yours for ever, where thieves will not come nor worms put it to destruction. (BBE NIV)
Luke 14:13 But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Luke 14:21 “That servant came, and told his lord these things. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant,’Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor, maimed, blind, and lame.’ (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Luke 16:20 And a certain poor man, named Lazarus, was stretched out at his door, full of wounds, (BBE DBY YLT NAS RSV)
Luke 16:22 And in time the poor man came to his end, and angels took him to Abraham’s breast. And the man of wealth came to his end, and was put in the earth. (BBE DBY YLT NAS RSV)
Luke 18:22 When Jesus heard these things, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have, and distribute it to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven. Come, follow me.” (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
Luke 19:8 Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much.” (WEB KJV WEY ASV BBE DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV NIV)
What Jesus said, world without end, amen. Pray silence for reflection…
Okay, pause over. And as it happens, it turns out Jesus’ Mom the God-Bearer was poor! No wonder he’s always harping about them…
That’s only about a third of the quotes – some of them are repetitive because of the multiple versions of the Gospel. But Luke is my favorite of the Evangelists, because his language is poetic and full of interesting detail. There are a bunch more quotes on that web page of course, these are just the Gospel ones to illustrate what has become an increasingly tiresome and over-argued point. Jesus loved him some poors.
So how is it that the unproductive are different from those fallen on hard times? Poverty is poverty. Or are you quietly saying “the undeserving poor?” Kind of like the sort of people who show up on Hoarders screaming and yelling and arguing over piles of garbage and dead animals? The “those people” that live in urban blight and rural squalor, far from where sight of their hovels would disturb us?
Hard times is hard times. Sometimes poverty is a multi-generational weight crushing people down so far that they don’t know that there’s an up. Sometimes we’re only 4 or 5 decisions from shitting in a bucket.
Can you possibly see that liberals fight to support working class people? Fight for clean air and water and food? Fight for family leave legislation, fight for a fair wage? fight for worker’s compensation laws? Fight for universal, affordable health care (and don’t succeed because of conservative obstructionism)?
These are all things political and religious conservatives were AGAINST. Conservatives are AGAINST health care coverage for children, and against adult children who don’t yet have insurance staying on their parents’ plan for a few extra years.
Conservatives were AGAINST civil rights. They were AGAINST abolition of slavery. They were AGAINST the minimum wage, and AGAINST any increase in the minimum wage. They were AGAINST the 40-hour work week. They were AGAINST health and safety laws in the workplace. AGAINST. AGAINST. AGAINST.
Conservative means STOP. Progressive means GO. Liberal means GO FAST. Oh, and independent might therefore mean “Could go either way, stuck in neutral, may need a new clutch.”
Conservatives were FOR tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent in this country, whose deep pockets paid for their political campaigns and for their huge megachurches, and also paid FOR whisper campaigns and “funny business electioneering” to disenfranchise the poor and the brown. Wealthy Christian Reconstructionists like the Mellons and Howard Ahmanson Jr bankrolled “dissenters” and “orthodox believers” within mainline churches bent on splitting them apart from within. They did this because they claimed to be “for life, Jesus and morality,” but really they were in favor of regaining all the power, property, and prestige that they had lost as the mainline churches liberalized through the 60’s and 70’s. As the older churches lost membership – a lot of people stopped believing, stopped caring about religion – the newer churches that survived gained converts who were hardliners fleeing from the Lutherans or the Presbyterians or the Episcopalians, who weren’t real Christians in their eyes any more. I can’t tell you how irritating it is to be told by a fellow Christian that I am not Christiany enough, because I don’t make the Christianist cut by being more Christianish than thou.
People are supposed to be different. Conformity is boring to the Creator – we were created to be a beguiling and delightful array of allsorts. Anyway…
The moderate and liberal Christians stayed put, wondered where everyone else was, and got on with the work of the Church: serving the poor, and praising God in prayer and song. The conservative Christians preached the Prosperity Gospel and solicited donations from… yes, the poor, promising them riches on Earth as it would be in Heaven. And they had really, really crappy music (sorry, I’m a church music snob, I’m sure God is happy with whatever joyus ruckus His children make on any given Sunday).
What would Jesus think of that Prosperity Gospel, I wonder? I wonder.
The 80’s marked the time of the Republican Right’s resurgence – and also a time when the Reagan “Teflon Presidency” produced a remarkable amount of administration officials being convicted for corruption, which never touched Saint Ronnie himself. Strangely enough, Reagan was for emigration amnesty or reform, and raised taxes, and the Jim Brady law must have been galling to the NRA crowd. Reagan must have been a closet liberal, but then you can’t trust these faux-Republican Hollywood actors, can you?
There was more political corruption through the 90’s, mostly from the Right side of the aisle (yes, Clinton was a bad husband, but also a good statesman, and the country prospered). Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich went through a few wives, usually when they were seriously ill. Who’s the moral man? The man who asked his wife for forgiveness, or the man who did the unforgiveable?
And then there was Bush, and then… and we all grieved together, and then our grief was cynically used against us to frighten us into acquiescing when they curtailed our civil rights, because TERRA! A noun, a verb, and 9-1-1! And then Madrid and London, terra terra terra WAR WAR WAR.
Of course, the conservatives, who are always FOR the military-industrial complex were FOR WAR WITH afghanistan IRAQ (but whispered that IRAN was next and the fringe hoped that Armageddon was nigh).
And they were all FOR Halliburton getting the bidless contracts for services to the military, because duh, they were FOR OIL too.
And they were FOR the Supreme Court being just as hard-right conservative as possible, which came in deucedly handy when the Florida election almost got won by that creepy Al Gore guy.
It wasn’t just the hanging chads, it was the shortage of voting machines in urban precincts in both Florida and Ohio – but the Supes stopped the recount and there we were, stuck with that idiot pretzel-gobbling Bush guy again and his evil puppet master, Darth Cheney. Talk about your high crimes and misdemeanors, you had ’em all along with that pack of robber barons in office.
The Republicans are FOR the right people having the right to vote and AGAINST the wrong people having the right to vote. And of course they are AGAINST any group that works to enfranchise the urban and suburban poor, who the Republicans don’t wish to represent anyway, because they are unproductive parasites who can’t give them more than a few dollars.
Liberal politicians and religious leaders have always fought FOR hard-working people, but the message isn’t getting out to the people who need to hear it. It’s been co-opted and turned around 180 degrees, so that the oppressors and the corporate plutocrats cry foul, play the victim and claim all the financial benefits for themselves and their cronies. How do they do it? They own the loudest, gaudiest, blaringest propaganda machine since 1940s Argentina: FOXNews. All lies, all the time. Unfair, and unbalanced. All the news we think you need to know. Meanwhile, a good bill or a great innovation for local communities goes unreported, because politics is boring unless somebody is getting beat up by the Republicans on their pet “news” channel. And local or national religious leaders can’t get any press UNLESS TEH GAY.
How can you possibly say that conservatives have ANYONE’s interests at heart unless it’s the corporations and lobbyists who take them to the Caribbean and Scotland, and the shadowy people in the background buying the media and Congress? Whether we’re talking religion or politics, no progress has ever come from going backwards.
The Lord himself, on many occasions and not just the ones quoted above, urged his followers to sell everything, give the money to the poor, and follow Him. He urged disciples to leave family behind, if necessary. Now, that sounds pretty radical and extreme to me, and I doubt many people would take Him up on it; but that’s what’s on the table. Not “get your hands off my stack, Jack” or “I’ve got mine.”
No, it’s “Possessions and wealth will not get you into heaven. It’s what you do here that counts. Put on your sandals, pull up yo’ pants, and go tell it on the mountain.”
Now you go on to this: “no one other than the head of the family can lay claim to the prosperity or destitution by which the family comes.”
What does that even MEAN? OH, right, it’s part of the doctrine of submission and the headship of the man in the family over the woman and children, his chattel. This is a disgusting tribal artifact inflicted on Western civilization by cranky old zealots with an axe to grind, who wanted to keep the uppity wimmenfolk (especially the purty-mouthed fertile ones) under their control. It’s one of the reasons I absolutely cannot stand much of what St Paul wrote regarding the role of women in the church. We’re not going to see eye to eye on this one, Daniel, because I am a very uppity woman indeed. The man as “head of the family” is an insulting, offensive concept to me personally.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
By the way, that whole SUBMIT thing is sekrit fundamentalist code for “you must have sex with me every time I want it, whether you want to or not! And wash my smelly socks! And you will like it! And now I will read aloud from the Bible, and after that we can pretend I am a slavemaster of Gor and you are my latest acquisition. Send the children and goats out into the fields, and assume the position.”
See? Disgusting tribal artifact.
Strange that Jesus spoke to unmarried and widowed women who were not his blood relatives, whose place in His society was so precarious. This was unheard of at the time, and it’s still unheard of in ultra-orthodox Jewish communities in Israel and the US. Imagine how RADICAL, then, this was 2 millennia ago. His actions and statements were not just radical, they were dangerous and possibly blasphemous according to the standards of the time. They threatened the status quo.
Jesus had radical compassion for women, because they worked so hard drawing water (the Syro-Phoenecian woman), were too busy cleaning house and cooking to hear the Gospel (Martha), because they were poor and still gave what they had to others (the widow and her mite), or they were so broken up with grief that they didn’t even recognize Him (Mary Magdalene).
Stranger still that He chose to appear first to women at the Resurrection, including the woman called “apostle to the Apostles.” Why do you think that might have been?
If you ask me, Jesus was very much a long-haired hippie radical. After he left, the literati got busy and did a re-write for the masses so he was a little more moderate, a little less rabble-rousy. And they made sure to put the women back down in the dust, even though the rich ones were financing the church and the poor ones were doing all the work looking after the priest’s house. It’s always the way…
It doesn’t matter to me if I’m not taken seriously by other progressives – most of whom aren’t interested in this churchy stuff. Meanwhile, I think that progressives DO understand “the good hearts of men;” I think that progressives and liberals are good men and women who are inherently generous in spirit, and community-minded. I think that conservatives and fundamentalists are like the Grinch, with hearts two sizes too small, never thinking of other peoples’ needs and certainly not giving any of their money away to those horrible parasites, and grumbling about the taxes they pay as the drive on federal highways and drink clean water.
Like I said, stop reading Ayn Rand and think for yourself. Because, dude: don’t you get who you’re really talking about? When you say “who by their political nature want for destruction and chaos to reign, as in this they prosper in wealth, control over men, and unquestioned power” you’re talking the Republicans, Wall Street, the US Chamber of Commerce, the TSA, the Bush Era FEMA, the Bush Era Federal Secrets Act, the AT&T deal for wireless wiretapping, Halliburton, BP, Xe, and the Koch Brothers, man!
These are the ones who:
Do you see it yet? Soylent Green is people. SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE.
No? Oh, right, you’re in that other reality where the black man in the White House isn’t American (psst, they’re lying to you) and the Founding Fathers wrote Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit into every paragraph of the Constitution (no, they didn’t) and that this is a deeply Christian country with deeply conservative values (actually, most people aren’t all that interested in religion or politics – NEWS FLASH). Also, they have your back (sorry, they’re lying again) and share your convictions (the only convictions they have will be for election fraud, financial chicanery, or sexual misconduct).
We are all so screwed, but the delusions of people who think as you do got us in this mess by electing Bush and his pack of merry military-financial plunderers. And then you and they believed all the lies they told you and elected even more of these geniuses to the Congress, and we are all so screwed double-plus-ungood.
So after years of obstructionism by the Republicans, the Democrats “failed” to pass a GOP bolus in the bowels of the Senate pass a budget. Yet they somehow managed to get a lot done in spite of the kicking and screaming from the GOP (and health care could have been so much better, but is watered down thanks to these same obstructionist goops).
And now, it’s up to the Boehner Congress. We get to sit back and watch the stupid unfold before us for the next few years, especially going into the 2012 elections. We’ll all have to watch them punish hardworking men and women, and send many more families into destitution without “laying claim” or taking the blame for it, just to prove to President Obama that they are the ones with unquestioned power.
How sad indeed.
The following may or may not be helpful if you know someone who’s struggling to stay positive or to stay on an even keel emotionally. I’m totally stealing it as a tactic, because the Midwestern Change-The-Subject Discomfort doesn’t really offer viable options for talking to someone about problems they may have, where Southern In-Your-Face Comfort does.
Not that we’re talking anything about anything specific here, just taking note of a useful tactic.
I don’t want to embarrass anyone, so I’m not going into specifics, but I also want to write about this, because I’m totally stealing it as a tactic. So, I’m out with friends, one of whom has been noticeably down and not in the “I’m going to write poetry and listen to the Cure†way but in the “One more thing and I’m going to start beating people with the people I beat just before them†way.
So, my Southern friend says “blah blah blah, we’ve noticed things aren’t okay and we’re concerned about you.â€
And the other friend says, “No, I’m fine, really.â€
Now, if we were all Midwestern, the Silence of You’re Totally Bullshitting Us would have descended. If you’re from the Midwest or related to Midwesterners, you’ve experienced this and you know the level of how much we think you’re bullshitting us is indicated by how long the Silence of You’re Totally Bullshitting Us goes on. Then, we all talk about you behind your back until word gets back to you and you realize we have concerns.
via Tiny Cat Pants
In other news, I recently moved to Bend, Oregon because it is quite possibly the best place on earth and just breathing the air here is like huffing joy and celebration. The bad news is that I’ve been busy using my shriveled, little t-rex arms in a mismatched battle with heavy boxes and furniture.
And her friend Colin made an incredibly manly video about shower products based on one of her old posts that must be seen in fully, gory Techno-color to be appreciated.
via Hyperbole and a Half: A News Update, a Dramatic Montage and a Video Animation.
Cathleen Falsani’s piece in Huffington Post on the recent kerfuffle concerning the religion of cartoon characters struck a chord with me.