Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Damn, So Close

Listened to an NPR story this morning on the Catholic Church and health care reform.

Good news: The Catholic Church supports health care reform! Seems like they support a robust public option! The Catholic Church has been in favor of socialized medicine in the United States going back to Harry S. Truman. You know, with Catholic charities and Catholic hospitals, the Church provides around 1/6th of all the medical services in this country! And they would be totally on board with health care reform, but...

Bad news: Even though all the proposed health care bills strongly prohibit any federal funds being used for abortion, there is the remote possibility that one day, theoretically, after seismic shift in political belief on the issue, it's conceivably possible that maybe Congress could change the law, and so, the Catholic Church just cannot bring itself to support any law that might allow for the possibility that poor women might be able to exercise the same legal right that Catholic school girls enjoy every single day.

Let's let asshat Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sum it up it in the asshatiest way possible:
"We want health care reform very, very much, but we cannot do that over children's dead bodies, to put it most bluntly," he says. "There is a fundamental issue here about whether taking life should be treated the same way as supporting and healing life."
Indeed, as we all learned in catechism, Jesus prefers that thousands of people die today for lack of basic health care than to make it possible for even one fetus to be theoretically aborted maybe in the future.

Friday, December 21, 2007

It Figures

Although many on the right have tried to declare Mitt's Mormonism as a out-of-bounds topic, there has been some light discussion of the issue of racism in the Mormon church.

Mitt has countered this charge by arguing that his family has always been a supporter of civil rights for blacks, specifically citing the fact that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King. You can see that here, at 18 seconds. Elsewhere he expanded on that to say that his father marched with MLK when he was governor of Michigan.

It has recently come to light that King did not march when he was in Michigan in the only time frame that would fit Romney's recollection and there is no evidence that Romney pere met with King. Moreover, young Mitt was off converting the French to Mormonism (and not fighting in Vietnam) at the time.

So what does Mitt have to say about all of this?

On Wednesday, Romney’s campaign said his recollections of watching his father, an ardent civil rights supporter, march with King were meant to be figurative.

“He was speaking figuratively, not literally,” Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for the Romney campaign, said of the candidate.

Ah yes, figuratively marched with King. There are so many directions to go with this, I don't know what to say. Let's go with this:

My father played with Hendrix at Woodstock and my mom rioted with the French students in '68.

What did your parents do?

Friday, September 7, 2007

Finally, The Rock Has Come to Springfield

Apparently, we need to decide whether or not to jettison all of our social values in order to organize the Catholic Latinos. Maybe we could form something like the Working Families Union and put aside the petty issues that divide us.

California Catholic Daily
"Today's labor leaders risk alienating Latinos and jeopardizing Catholic support if they accept and promote abortion and take anti-family and anti-marriage positions aligned with the radical homosexual and feminist movements," writes Schultze, who, prior to becoming a Jesuit priest, worked for the National Labor Relations Board.

You know me, I say fuck 'em. Either Jesus is already with us, or it really doesn't fucking matter.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Not That Anyone Who Reads This Blog Does, But...

For those of you who cling to the last vestiges of your religion by buying into some half-assed new age notion of universal interconnectedness and the ability to affect the world through thought, could you do me a favor and send out some kind wishes for my friend Alyssa who is facing some quite unexpected gall bladder surgery?

Thanks.

Yes, Ash, that Alyssa.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Did I Cry Just a Little?

Well, maybe...

From Lance:
The idea that Democrats have a problem appealing to religious voters that they need to address if they are going to win elections depends...well, first, on pretending they don't win any elections, but then on believing that the religious vote is the Right Wing Christian vote, as if yahooism and know-nothingism and racism and homophobia and misognyny and a patriarchal authoritarianism are all there is to being religious.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

A Bedtime Story for the Wee Ones

”Mommy, Why Is That Man Skinning Our Cat?”

Once upon a time, in a city unlike our own, that did not have the Christian moral backbone or abundance of wealth as ours does, lived a little girl named Peggy. Aside from the fact that Peggy wasn’t blessed with a large home in a good neighborhood, she was a very happy little girl. She had good Christian parents who had taught her early on that if you are saved you will go to live with God in Heaven and if you aren’t then you will die a terrible death and burn in HELL. From the time she was four years old little Peggy knew that people who had sexual relations out of wedlock were going to have deformed babies; that all Catholics were not really saved; and homosexuals were just people who had chosen to live a wicked lifestyle but blame it on a genetic deformity.

Therefore, you see, she knew right from wrong much like all of you children do, she just wasn’t given the nice toys and clothes like you all have. Maybe, because her Daddy had done something bad in the past, and Father God was punishing him to work a blue-collar job and barely able to make ends meet. Nevertheless, she was a Christian (Republican Baptist) and that still made her a good little girl even though she looked and dressed like white trash. One day while Peggy’s daddy was at his menial job working on cars or selling shoes, or whatever it is that poor people do for money, Peggy was playing in her back yard with another little girl. I think that perhaps they were playing church with their dolls, because that is what nice girls do with their dolls whether they are playing with Madam Alexander® dolls or Barbie® dolls. I imagine that since Peggy was poor they were playing with cheap knock-off dolls made in China by Godless Orientals.

However, they pretended that their little dolls were Christians and that is all that matters in this story. Well, the girls were just about to play Sunday School Class Meeting when they heard a terrible noise from the small asbestos covered house next door to hers. “What was that!?” the girls cried out dropping their cheap dolls to run over to the fence. “Maybe it’s a sinner we can pray for!” (I told you Peggy was a Christian even if she was poor) and off they ran.

Well, imagine the horror that they must have felt when they reached the chain link fence and could see the next-door neighbor man shaking one of her cat’s little kittens as hard as he could by its feet. (All poor people opt for chain link verses a wooden privacy fence. It’s a known fact and you can see for yourself by driving through a distressed neighborhood sometime) The poor thing was making a dreadful noise and Peggy knew from the sound it made that death was right around the corner for the poor little thing.

You see, poor people are too cheap to have their cats spayed or neutered and usually have about ten running around at any given time. Therefore, she had heard her share of cats being backed over by a car in her neighborhood; chopped to bits for sleeping in the engine; or shot for keeping the neighbors awake with their mating calls in the wee hours of the morn. However, this was something different; this man was purposefully killing this kitten. Scared, the girls took off running to the house and in a flash were inside the screened door (something else that all poor people have to keep a breeze running through their homes because they cannot afford to run the air conditioning) and into the kitchen.

“Mommy, come quick!” she cried, “that man who doesn’t go to church and drinks beer all day is killing one of them kittens!” Now even though Peggy’s mother was poor she did not promote animal cruelty, so she threw down her mop and went running outside with the girls in tow to see just what was happening. Well, by the time, they got back around the house the noise the air was filled with silence. Peggy’s mommy was just about to chastise the girls for making her leave her chores because of their alarmist reactions to nothing, when she saw something that would nearly take the curl out of her home perm: it was the next-door neighbor man and his beer-drinking friends & they were wearing black robes and each holding a dead kitten. One of the men was even a Negro!

“Oh my God!” she cried out. “What are you doing to those poor cats?” It was as if they were in a trance. (A trance is exactly the way a welfare recipient acts when they are told they will have to get a job — they pretend not to hear or see you — it is a state of utter shock) Peggy’s mother tried again to call out to the men but her words fell onto deaf ears (much like a shiftless welfare recipient). She was just about to grab the girls and run inside to call the law on them when the chanting began: “Ahyaiiieee Master Satan in the darkness of below. We worship and follow you for eternity. In the black hooded cloak of sin, we follow you wherever you go. Iyeiiblafiyuru we love you Satan, our Atheist Father of Evil. There is no God. For this, we know. For as Agnostics and Atheists its Hell we’ll want to go.”

The eerily frightening Satanic chants and the hums of nervous atheist sin were just about to lure Peggy’s mother and her little playmate into oblivion when suddenly Peggy shouted, “Mommy! Why is that man skinning our cat?” It was right then that her mother grabbed the two girls by their little arms and ran with them as fast as she could back into the safety of their Christian home.“Honey come here”, her mother said as soon as they were back inside the cheaply appointed but clean kitchen, “Those men are Atheists, and, as you know, Honey, all Atheists will try and tell you that they are not Satanists but they are. Every single one of them kill small animals, and sometimes even little children too, as part of their glorification of the Devil” As the tears began to flow down little Peggy’s cheeks her mother clutched her daughter to her and cried into her hair, “We mustn’t cry now. God doesn’t like weak people. He wants us to big and strong so when He comes down from Heaven to take us home we will have lots of energy saved up to laugh at those Devil worshipping Atheists as he drags them off to Hell.”

Her Christian (Republican Baptist) mother continued, “Remember when Daddy and Pastor Royce told us about how God was going to set fire from the inside out anyone who hated Him and was an Agnostic? Well, that’s what’s going to happen to all of those cat-murdering men. When they least expect it their guts are going to explode and they will suffer eternally until they die. Then, Honey, they will go live in Hell with the rotten, maggot infested flesh-eating sinners that God hated enough to send there. And we can just laugh and laugh!” She then patted her daughter on the rear end and sent her and her playmate into the living room to read Bible stories and have cookies & milk.

Little Peggy and her friend stayed in the living room until Peggy’s daddy came home from his low paying but honest work. (Remember children, even though he made very little money he did work, and, that is a lot more than we can say about those who mooch off the Government) Anyway, Peggy and her little playmate didn’t even notice as her Daddy walked right past them to the gun cabinet and took out a clip and his favorite gun. “Girls, he said, “Poppa God and me want you to see a miracle. Come outside with me and stand on the porch.” Well, being the obedient little girls they were they stood silently as Peggy’s Daddy walked over to the mean Atheist/Satanist’s house and began shooting round after round into his front window.”

Oh, how little Peggy and her friend enjoyed this. They loved watching Peggy’s father pump round after round of bullets into the hovel next door, the Godly and powerful sound of the gun and even more, they enjoyed when the Devil worshipper neighbor man stumbled out the picture window and his chest exploded from the gunfire. They clapped and they praised Jesus that the mean man was getting what he deserved for killing Miss Fluffy and her babies.

“Daddy?” she said when the gunfire had stopped, “I wish all Atheists would get what that man did.” Looking at his daughters glowing face, her father wiped at a tear that was forming in his eye and said to her, “Baby Girl, as long as we have faith in our Lord, so long as we have Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and the NRA running our country, and the Second amendment protected, anything can happen. Just keep on praying that our next president will have the guts to keep us Christians safe from those kind of people.”

The End

As a Pro-Life, Pro-Family, Pro-America, Christian-Republican, Sam Brownback would never kill a cat and neither should you.

Vote for Sam Brownback in 2008 and again in 2012 to protect America and our cats from Atheists!

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

In the Name of the Father

Because He and I love you:


And because I love you more:


And Goff, I want to see this referenced on Free Exchange soon. Maybe this is something you could run by the FED.

My Man Dennis

We all have our favorite right-wing-crazy blogger. Some are lucky enough to make their living making fun of them.

My current favorite is Dennis Prager. This guy is hilarious in his insanity. I only know of Dennis what I can learn from his blog--I like to take these people as they present themselves, without finding out too much of the "real facts." Dennis is very religious man. A Christian. But also a genius. All of his columns I have read feature Dennis pointing out how much smarter he is than other people and he invariably calls on people to emulate him as the way to solve the world's problems. His insanity coupled with his firm belief in his own intelligence is what makes me love him.

His most recent column tackles the question of why these anti-religion books are selling so well.
In just the last few months, three books attacking belief in God and making a case for atheism have been national best sellers: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens; and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. A fourth book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett also sold very well
Now just take a second and try to come up with three or four reasons that you might think these books are selling well. Go ahead, I'll wait (ha ha ha ha ha).

Did you come up with radical Muslims? That's right, those bombing sum-a-bitches are leading people to believe that religion can be the cause of evil, making people more likely to seek out books that argue that religion is not all that is cracked up to be.
First and most significant is the amount of evil coming from within Islam. Whether Islamists (or jihadists, Islamo-Fascists or whatever else Muslims who slaughter innocents in the name of Islam are called) represent a small sliver of Muslims or considerably more than that, they have brought religious faith into terrible disrepute.
You prolly came up with the secular schools, which Dennis cites, but did you also get Christians who are too mystical, irrational, and emotional? They undercut the intellectual Christianity that Prager endorses, so they do damage as well.

I love this crazy bastard.

UPDATE:

I just found this about the Duke rape case:
The rape of a name can be as vicious a crime and as destructive an act as the rape of a body. Sometimes the rape of a body is worse, sometimes the rape of a name is worse. But they are both rapes. And morally likening the two is in no way meant to lessen the horror of rape; it is meant only to heighten awareness of the horror of intentionally destroying the name of an innocent person.

Friday, June 8, 2007

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Nothing to See Here

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. Busy, busy, busy. I need to write the GTFF newsletter today and I've been in a sarcastic funk sense the weekend. A bender will do that to you.

Convention (that's were I was this weekend) was weird enough that I can't blog about it. I imagine that is a reason nephew has been largely silent since we got back (hold on a sec while I check his blog to make sure he hasn't posted a ton of shit since yesterday...fuck, nevermind). i do want to say this, mostly because it needs to be said, not because those currently pissed at me won't be after they read this, the GTFF might not always agree with each other and we may at times make questionable decisions, but we are the hardest working bunch of unionists in this fucking state and I dare any union to say that they are closer than we are. We may have internal disagreements, but once we face the outside world, we have one face and one voice. Makes me think that if we ever had to go out on strike we could do it.

Also, David Broder has a great column on why Harry Reid is increasingly beginning to suck. For those who want to argue that we are losing the war and somebody needed to say it, I say "yes,' but that somebody could have said it coherently, intelligently and without feeding into the "defeatist" mantra that the GOP likes to put forward.

Although I don't agree with much of what he says, and yes he's a booze-hound (an interesting reason to dismiss someone's arguments, especially with this crowd), and a Brit (imperialist swine!), but I really enjoyed this essay about why religion sucks by Christopher Hitchens in Slate. Don't read the comments though, I've heard more coherent arguments fromm Harry Reid.

And lastly, if you haven't purchased Police Squad on dvd yet, for christsake get off your ass and do it. Or stay on your ass and buy it from amazon.com, but for godssake overnight it.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Teetering Toward Crap

Those who were glued to C-SPAN today may remember House Speaker Pelosi rambling somewhat incoherently about the pledge of allegiance, one nation under God, and somehow trying to relate all of this to card check. Looking to quote her, I went to her website, but there her remarks contained no such gibberish.