Goddless Liberals Invade Minister's Conference

Church author Delivers a Survey on American Politics Instead of Keeping to Bible

DES MOINES, IOWA - Nationally known author Tex Sample today delivered a devastating critique of American Politics to a packed room of United Methodist pastors at the downtown Marriott this afternoon.

The ministers afterward went to their afternoon break in differing emotional states. Many looked smug, several were muttering under their breath, and at least a dozen had the look of half-concussed puppies. Many were outraged - tradition holds that the after lunch speaker is usually prosaic if not dull, and always soft-spoken. Dozens of pastors were forced to listen instead of slipping off to slumber. Many of them also cited their different politics and the annoyance to listening to an, "old hippie who has no clue," according to Bob Rivers, pastor of Dinkville United Methodist Church.

"Sample has some nerve. What do the economic lies he's making up on the screen have anything to do with preaching from the Bible or for the monthly Pro-Life meeting we host every month? Those are our Christian priorities - along with lower taxes and the right to bear arms."

Sample, citing several dozen statistics and graphs from prominent economists, political science theorists, and historians, argued that, "These issues are not only relevant to our congregations, but also to the increasingly skewed political opinion spectrum that we're exposed to."

Sample, a retired sociologist for the Saint Paul School of Theology in Minnesota, even asserted that the culture of America represents a totalitarian system of societal control and justice that appears almost an inverse of fascism. "Instead of a unitary government that strongly influences and enriches a capitalist class, our duopoly government is enriched and controlled by a capitalist class."

Marriott management had no comment, other than noting that such an inflammatory lecture hadn't produced the expected unrest; the United Methodist ministers did not march out on the street chanting, nor did masked protesters trash the snack buffet tables.

The Des Moines City Council pledged vigilance and promised to bring up a motion condemmning the conference's language for being , "unproductive".

Read more!

Who's really abusing the children here?

I found this crazy story via Kate at Shakesville:

A couple have been given three months to get three of their six overweight kids slimmer - or have ALL of them taken into care.

The warning centres on their fattest children - a 12-year-old son who is 16 stone, his 12st sister, 11, and a girl who weighs four stone aged just three.

And social workers have threatened that unless the tough weight loss ultimatum is met through diet and the children taking football and dance lessons, they will seize them and their three siblings to safeguard their welfare.

So, the best way to get kids to lose weight is to traumatize them by taking them away from their parents? Is it abuse, do you think, to enable children to get morbidly obese? It's not like they get to do the shopping, so the kids are dependent upon the parents to feed them nutrional foods and ensure they exercise... Hmmm. Kate's post poses some questions, and I agree, but it's not as black and white as it first appears, is it?

Read more!

Let's Hear it for Some Unity!

Damn you Bill, that's asking a lot!! Bill Richardson urges unity among Democrats. Damn you Bill, that's asking a lot!! We have to destroy our party first before we can face lame, McSame!

“We need to bring the two campaigns together. I think the two campaigns should take a deep breath and stop talking for a while. Just reflect and start talking about the issues affecting the country like the war, like the economy, subprime lending, housing, the enormous problems of gas prices, and stop this internal, personal bickering that is right now hurting us enormously"... ...‘We cannot afford to continue fighting’... ...the two candidates and the party need to agree on who the candidate will be and not take the battle into Denver. “We cannot afford to continue fighting and being so negative,” he said. A measure of the bitterness the campaign has created in the party is a recent poll in which 37 percent of Clinton supporters said they will not vote for Obama if he is the candidate, and 26 percent of his supporters said they will not vote for Clinton.

Read more!

4,000 Dead Americans in Iraq!

While most folks went about their daily Easter activities: U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 4,000.

BAGHDAD - Four U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad late Sunday, raising the death toll for American forces since start of the war to 4,000, according to the Pentagon...

Was this the cause of my nightmares last night?
It's not OK that I was irritable as hell with my family all day and I lashed out at them! Time for me to regroup, apologize and try again for a better day. That's all I can really do when I get into one of these funks!

h/t MSNBC for stolen photo

Read more!

So, there's a holiday today?

Good thing I mowed yesterday, it's pouring down rain this morning. We stopped doing Easter a while back - my kids and I are indifferent to religion, but we do love our jelly beans. I used to love the sunrise services when I was a kid, though; we had masses in Latin and they did the whole stations of the cross thing, then the big egg hunt afterwards. It was an event, not just Sunday service. When my kids were little, I would go crazy with the baskets and egg hunt (then treasure hunts when they learned to read). They can buy their own candy now, so they're not willing to hunt up marshmallow peeps anymore.

We're going to have a lazy day here today, what're you all up to?

hanks to watertiger for the pic!

Read more!

Meanwhile...

Anyone else hear about this? Rachel Maddow covered it Friday, and this is from dday at hullabaloo:

At issue are the Concerned Local Citizens groups (CLCs) that we have been paying for over a year not to kill us and instead to defend their territories and drive out Al Qaeda in Iraq. You could not set up a more potentially unstable situation if you tried. The CLCs have no fealty to the national government; in fact they are if anything oppositional to it. The Shiites in power are afraid of incorporating the CLCs into the Iraqi security forces. It has been alleged that the CLCs include former insurgents and rogues, and they are primarily interested in 1) receiving money, and 2) defending their corner of Iraq from all invaders, foreign and domestic. This is not a path to national reconciliation but balkanization.

And then the military and the Administration went and did the worst thing possible - they forgot to pay everyone on time. That's right - the incompetents that still reign throughout the Bush Administration aren't paying the bills. And so we may see a general strike.

I'm guessing this is probably not a good thing.

Read more!

bu$h Was Ahead of His Time

We all know bu$h is part of a "Human - Animal Hybrid" experiment gone wrong. However, I really thought he was talking out his ass when he made the following comments in one of his State of the Union speeches.

"Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator -- and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale."

I guess this is how the Easter Bunny was made!

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland has urged Mr Brown to let MPs vote with their conscience on laws allowing human-animal embryo research... ...The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is designed to bring the 1990 regulatory framework for fertility treatment and embryo research in line with scientific advances. Among its many clauses, the bill would allow scientists to create hybrid human-animal embryos for research.

Please... no more Human - Easter Bunny Hybrids! The rest of the world is watching.

Let's be especially careful of the Human - Chimpanzee Hybrid, they grow up to pResident and kill millions of innocent people!

Happy Easter all!

Read more!