We’re heading to the mountains for a few days to a place with no TV or Internet (this is a feature, not a bug). I’ll be back Sunday evening — hoping to get home in time to catch the Eagles’ next fourth-quarter collapse.
So in the meantime, here, in no particular order, are some random links that I didn’t have time to put together any longer or more coherent response to/comment on.
Adrian Mack explores a treasure trove for “trash hounds.” With video. “A brief history of fundie Christian cinema.”
That photo to the right (via Phil Plait) is a picture of us. You, me, everyone — the 100 percent. That fuzzy blob on the left? That’s Earth. The one on the right is the moon.
“A Protestant Affirmation on the Control of Human Reproduction (1968)”
“Baptist Prophet Squares Off Against Baptist Governor in Alabama”
“Alabama Deli Owner, Businesses Stand Strong for Immigrant Rights”
More like this please: “Occupy Cleveland Helps a Single Mother Stay in Her Home.”
Jim Wallis: “A Church Sanctuary for the Occupy Movement” (Sanctuary! — I miss Howard Ashman.)
Rob Tish notes that sometimes Jesuits sound like stoners. (And on the subject of same-sex marriage, they really, really do.)
C. Peter Wagner believes that the emperor of Japan has sex with the Sun Goddess, who is really a demon. I’ve tried to phrase that in the least-ridiculous-sounding way, but I’m not sure that’s possible.
On the Prophet Hen of Leeds (and nine other failed doomsday predictions):
History has countless examples of people who have proclaimed that the return of Jesus Christ is imminent, but perhaps there has never been a stranger messenger than a hen in the English town of Leeds in 1806. It seems that a hen began laying eggs on which the phrase “Christ is coming” was written. …
Great sex! Flat abs! And Jesus!
The beloved Norman Rockwell painting to the right — part of his “Four Freedoms” series — is famously titled “Freedom to Worship.” According to the Liar Tony Perkins, that phrase “freedom of worship” was recently invented by the Obama administration as part of its ongoing persecution of real, true, heterosexual Christianity. We all knew that President Barack Obama loves Norman Rockwell. But until the Liar Tony Perkins told us about this, we hadn’t realized that Obama also had a time machine that enabled him to travel back to 1943 to conspire with Rockwell and President Franklin D. Roosevelt in their diabolical assault on Christian freedom.
Speaking of time travel, here’s a time capsule of former speakers of the House Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi discussing climate change. The difference between then and now is that Pelosi is still telling the truth about this.
Herman Cain: “We need a leader, not a reader.”
Ramesh Rao: “Now It Is the Turn of the Hindus”
The combination of ignorance and intolerance has not always been a losing formula in politics, for if it were, it would not be used so often.
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association reassures his listeners that Elton John will never sing at his wedding. (Fischer is criticizing Rush Limbaugh for having the pop star sing at his most recent wedding. In keeping with Fischer’s notion of “traditional values,” he doesn’t complain that this was Limbaugh’s fourth wedding — only that the more successful radio demagogue hired a gay icon to sing.)
Noahpinion: “Why conservatives can’t get people to work hard”
Nevada Attorney General announces indictment in robo-signing scheme
Wendell Berry on the EPA: “I have a lot of sympathy, actually, for you and your colleagues, because you are standing in a very difficult place, that is between the bandits and the loot.”
These “Nuns Who Won’t Stop Nudging” are standing in that same very difficult place. I worked with some of these formidable women through ICCR for a couple of years in the early 1990s. CEOs do not look forward to sitting across the table from these prophetic sisters.
Andrew Marin: “Toward a Better Future for Gays at Evangelical Seminaries”
“Mormon bishop says church responsible for gays’ emotional wounds”
Candace Chellew-Hodge: “New Southern Baptist Curriculum Bashes Gays”
Steve Benen: “When someone makes a claim, the claim is proven false, and the person makes it again anyway, they’re lying.” But lying about Obama is fair game, because it’s lying for Jesus.
“What if there were a god named Fred who hated lies?” asks Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin. Kincaid seems to think this is a hypothetical question.
Speaking of lying for Jesus, Rep. Michele Bachmann said that health care reform will require all doctors to get IRS approval for every procedure. The congresswoman voted on that law, so she ought to know it does no such thing, but she claims this must be true because a 7-foot-tall doctor told her.
When your relationship to reality is so seriously askew that you think Jesus wants you to bear false witness against your neighbor, then anything that reasserts or reaffirms reality becomes your enemy. If your political views require you to say that north is south and south is north, then you have no choice but to denounce and discredit every working compass. Even things like Snopes.com. Hence the delightful double-lindy right-wing conspiracy theory falsely accusing Snopes of being a Soros-funded puppet of international Jewish liberal bankers. I hadn’t heard that one until Victoria Jackson brought it up, but I suppose it was inevitable and, for people like Jackson, yet one more necessary fiction in the futile effort to cling to unreality. Lies are like potato chips — it’s hard to tell just one.
Michele Bachmann’s campaign site recently posted a video featuring an endorsement from George Grant. Then the video was taken down. After spending months saying that there’s no such thing as dominion theology, and that this nonexistent thing is a tiny fringe view with no influence, and that it has no ties to any national figures in the Republican Party — after working so hard to create that narrative, and enlisting the help of all those compliant columnists and pundits to spread that message — then it’s a bit awkward to tout the endorsement of old-school deconstructionist dominion theology cheerleader George Grant, the guy who wrote this:
It is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish.
Another Liar for Jesus: the Liar Tom Vineyard, senior pastor of Windsor Hills Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. (In some alternate universe, perhaps there’s an honest man named Tom Baptist who’s pastor of a Vineyard church in KO City.)
“We could replace coal power with geothermal—10 times over”
The Truth Is Out There: “White House formally denies connection with E.T.”
Kevin Drum: “Gog, Magog and George Bush“
Two posts influenced by the moral philosophy many of us learned from Gary Gygax:
1. “Presidential Candidates Explained Through Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheets”
2. Abi Sutherland: “Occupy Chaotic Good”
BlackTsunami shares a powerful anti-bullying video from The Netherlands. What struck me was that the ad was prepared by “de Kinderombudsman” or Children’s Ombudsman. That’s an official government office tasked with ensuring that “children in the Netherlands are respected by the government” and other organizations and with advising the Dutch parliament on behalf of children. Interesting.
Robert Reich: “The Corporate Pledge of Allegiance”
Diana E. Anderson: “Thou gleeking hell-hated malcontent!”
Our current sexual ethic in the American church does just as good of a job objectifying women as secular “porn” culture.
Gawker: “100,000 ‘Atlas Shrugged’ DVDs Recalled for Perfectly Hilarious Reason” (For Randians, “courage and self-sacrifice” is considered a Bad Thing.)
Josh Rosenau: “Evangelicals have lower science literacy, part 2”
“You Don’t Know Mitt: 99 Facts About Mitt Romney” All true. Oddly, so too is a list of 99 contradictory facts about Mitt Romney.
Eric Hague: “A Stripped-Down Compromised Draft of the American Jobs Act”
“Repealing the estate tax does not promote economic growth” (So much for the Kardashian-driven economic recovery.)
Here’s another recommendation for Gungor. I’m really going to have to check them out.
And finally, please don’t put a “Jesus” bumper sticker on your car and then park like a total douchebag. It causes people to associate Jesus with douchebaggery, and I think he deserves better than that.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In