Links for a fuzzy Tuesday

There may be a pattern here, but if there is, I don’t see it.

My first-hand experience with mega-churches is pretty slim, so I’ve never seen a Singing Tree Christmas Spectacular. Wow.

I’m watching this video —

— and as the singer in the angel costume is being lifted up above the choir on a wire rigging, all I can think is how awesome it would have been if she’d suddenly intoned, “Greetings, Prophet! The great work begins!”

The world only spins forward.

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“Christianity Sees Major Shifts in 100 Years, Percentage of Population Remains Constant”

In the last 100 years, the number of Christians around the world has more than tripled from historical estimates of approximately 600 million in 1910 to more than 2 billion today. But the world’s overall population has also risen rapidly, from an estimated 1.8 billion in 1910 to 6.9 billion in 2010. As a result, Christians make up about the same portion of the world’s population in 2010 (32 percent) as they did a century ago (35 percent).

Depending on your theological outlook, the headline there could be “Billions More Going to Hell Than Were Damned a Century Ago.”

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Phil Plait: “Top 24 Deep Space Images of 2011”

He keeps posting stuff like this so I’ll keep linking to it.

Blame Brian McLaren for drawing my attention to this: “The Worst Version of O Holy Night Ever Recorded.”

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“Too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations.”

Pew Research Center finds 77 percent of Americans agreeing with the description above.

Shave off 1 percent for the 1 percent, and perhaps another 5 percent for the toadies, enablers and Renfields hoping for crumbs from their table. Those folks all fight hard for the proposition that there is not enough power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations.

That still leaves 17 percent of Americans who don’t think there is “Too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations.” I suppose that’s the segment of the population that thinks “a few rich people and large corporations” have just the right amount of power.

Other findings: 61 percent of Americans think the country’s economic system “Unfairly favors the wealthy.” That includes 39 percent of Republicans. And 51 percent of Americans think “Wall Street hurts the economy more than it helps.”

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Bruce Springsteen on ‘Someplace Like America’

When you read about workers today, they are discussed mainly in terms of statistics (the unemployed), trade (the need to eliminate and offshore their jobs in the name of increased profit) and unions (usually depicted as a purely negative drag on the economy). In reality, the lives of American workers, as well as those of the unemployed and the homeless, make up a critically important cornerstone of our country’s story, past and pres­ent, and in that story, there is great honor.

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Imaginary problems:

• “Millionaires on Food Stamps and Jobless Pay? GOP Is on It“
• “Gingrich’s War on Shariah“
• “No point to House’s defense of farm dust“

Real problems:

“Europe’s austerity zeal risks killing the patient”

Europe’s “no pain no gain” attitude to solving its sovereign crisis risks exacerbating the bloc’s problems, choking off the very growth needed to raise the money to pay down the debt.

From Athens to Dublin, and almost everywhere in between, administrations are imposing wave after wave of spending cuts and tax increases to persuade investors they are serious about improving their public finances and persuade them to start buying euro zone sovereign debt again.

The austerity zeal risks tipping the continent back into recession and a downward spiral of austerity as pitiful growth prospects undermine budgetary targets and ramp up debt burdens, meaning further austerity is required.

“The expansionary fiscal contraction story says that you cut, you show you are serious about cutting and then the confidence fairy will come along and she will start pulling in private investment,” said Stephen Kinsella, professor of economics at the University of Limerick.

“The expansionary fiscal contraction story is a lie. You don’t cut your way to growth.”