Matt Damon Defends Teachers Against a Shitty Cameraman!
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Daily Archives: 08.25.2011
Homophobic Rabbi Thinks Gay Marriage Causes Earthquakes
A Spiritually Transformed Military with Ambassadors for Christ in Uniform
Throughout the U.S. military, with chapters on virtually every military installation worldwide, lurks an organization of over 15,500 fundamentalist Christian military officers who think their real duty is not to protect and defend the Constitution, but to raise up “a spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit.” These officers belong to an organization called the Officers’ Christian Fellowship (OCF), and range in rank from future officers in ROTC and at the U.S. military’s service academies to generals and admirals. Read more . . .
Robertson: “What In Heaven’s Name Is A Dominionist?”
Christian conservatives in America are not more militant than ever. Pat Robertson, a Christian minister, ran for president in 1988. Robertson was, actually, a dominionist. “There will never be world peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world,” he wrote. Read more . . .
Eight Ways Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Show More Leadership Than Our “Leaders”
It might sound absurd to think it, but when Congressional sessions sometimes feel more like a joke than Comedy Central programming (c.f. debt ceiling debate), the world’s gone just backward enough for it to work. Besides, as vaunted journo Keith Olbermann pointed out in his pre-Current Rolling Stone interview, “Comedians are the only ones paid to tell the truth in public discourse. Everybody else—politicians, news broadcasters, religious figures—we’re all paid to be oracles, when in fact we are like a good public-relations man. Read more . . .
Sam Harris, “How to Lose Readers (Without Even Trying)”
There is simply no question that an obsession with limited government produces impressive failures of wisdom and compassion in otherwise intelligent people . . . And lurking at the bottom of this morass one finds flagrantly irrational ideas about the human condition. Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse. Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky—and we did not earn it. Many good people have been extraordinarily unlucky—and they did not deserve it . Read more . . .
Rick Perry To Spend The Weekend With A Pseudo-Historian, A Christocrat, And God’s Sugar Daddy
David Barton is already well-known to readers of this blog – he’s the Religious Right’s favorite pseudo-historian. . . Rick Scarborough is a self-proclaimed “Christocrat . . . ” [Jim] Leininger has been called “God’s Sugar Daddy . . . ” We can now add these activists to the ever-growing list of extremist Religious Right activists with whom Rick Perry is associating himself. Read more . . .
Quote: Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Lord Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892)
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria’s reign
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
From: The Charge Of The Light Brigade (1854)
Missouri School District Reconsiders Vonnegut Book Ban
You may recall that back on July 25, board members ceded to a complaint from a town resident (who didn’t even have children in the district!) that Vonnegut’s book and a second volume, Twenty Boy Summerby Sarah Ockler, were contrary to the Bible’s teaching and should be removed . . . Perhaps now the board will see that making decisions based on one resident’s interpretation of the Bible is simply not the way a public school should handle things. Read more . . .
9/11 Memorial Service to be Secular, Bloomberg Announces
Mayor Bloomberg has made a wise choice in keeping this government-sponsored event secular. A time of healing is not enhanced by introducing division . . . This isn’t new, it’s a continuation of a multi-year policy of focusing the memorial on the families, not on providing a soapbox for clergy to pontificate . They each already have a place where they can do that . . . [Tea Party Nation] want[s] to destroy America and turn it into a Christian theocracy, populated only by Christians — you know, “real” Americans. Read more . . .
Always Question Authority 