Do not open any e-mail you receive from Fred Clark. Someone or something, or something set loose by someone, has wormed its/their way into my hotmail e-mail account and is sending [No subject] messages to everyone in my contact list and to readers of this blog. I am not sending these and I do not know what they say, but they likely contain a virus so please, again, do not open them. I really don't understand why anyone would waste... Read more
I'll have a bit more to say about this after my home computer gets off the disabled list. For now, though, let me just note that you shouldn't be allowed to be a book-burning bigot while going by the name Terry Jones. Or Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle or Michael Palin. Or Carol Cleveland or Neil Innes either, for that matter. And since the print in the second poster may be too small, here's what it... Read more
The end of last week brought two depressing online phenomena. The first was the "mosk" business on Facebook and the second was my Google news alert for "evangelical," which turned up a few dozen variations of the same story/column/post about Glenn Beck. If you missed the "mosk" thing, it turns out that there's a high correlation between atrocious spelling and atrocious religious bigotry. Searching for "mosk" in Youropenbook.org turns up an almost endless stream of vile chauvinist posturing against Muslims... Read more
In 2037, the oldest baby boomers will be 92 years old. They will have been collecting Social Security benefits in full for 27 years. Those benefit payments will have added $0 to the federal budget deficit. In 2037, the youngest baby boomers will be 72 years old. They will have been collecting Social Security benefits in full for seven years. Those benefit payments will have added $0 to the federal budget deficit. In 2037, the 3.2 million American workers born... Read more
Mike Castle does not lose elections in Delaware. I don't claim to be an expert on politics in the First State, but I read the paper there every day and the pattern is obvious. Castle won his first election in 1966 and he hasn't lost since then. He won the governor's seat easily in 1984 and was re-elected easily in 1988, after which he began serving in the House of Representatives, winning re-election every two years. Easily. Seriously, the guy's... Read more
JB: Let the one who has two tunics share with the one who has none. RWT: That's what I'm talking about! That's the politics of envy. JB: I don't see what envy has — RWT: I've got two tunics and you've just got one and now you envy me! JB: I used to have two tunics — RWT: And you lost one and now you're envious! JB: No, actually I gave one to a man who had none. RWT: Aha!... Read more
"Blessed is anyone who takes no offense" — Luke 7:23 Here is a story from Sunday's paper that will make some people happy and some people unhappy. That's not quite it. What I mean to say is that it will be a source of happiness for happy people and a source of further unhappiness for those who have chosen to be unhappy. Neither category of readers is directly affected by this story, so these opposite responses are a matter of... Read more
Look, I understand the suspicion. Glenn Beck's support for "states' rights" raises some red flags. That phrase has, for centuries here in America, been the shorthand euphemism of choice for racists seeking to restrict the rights of minorities in this country — from Calhoun to the Klan to George Wallace to David Duke. But maybe Beck and his followers are trying to change that heinous history. Maybe they're trying to redefine and redeem this phrase that has, for 200 years,... Read more
I don't like proverb cookies. When I open a fortune cookie, I want exactly that — a fortune cookie. I want to be told my fortune. I don't want to be told that "He who is rich in friends is rich indeed." I want something more like, "If you lend that $50 to Eddie you're never going to get it back." So, because it's Friday and it's been a long week, here are a bunch more suggestions for the sort... Read more
The day of the big vote came and, as an intern, I was assigned the task of checking off delegates' names after they had voted. This was a Baptist gathering — the biennial convention of the convention — so the vote was largely symbolic. Baptists don't have a formal hierarchy. We don't really even have "denominations" per se. But Baptist churches are loosely organized in conventions where we work out the ways we cooperate on collective efforts like the commissioning... Read more
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