A friend’s wife joined a good Christian church where they believe in beating the children in order to save their souls. Seems like a reasonable enough trade. But then, we’re talking beating with sticks and belts. We’re talking bruises, welts and blood. I suppose it will make the little tykes righteous.

The friend was unable to get custody of the children and take them out of that house because the courts said it was a freedom of religion issue. Like stoning adulterers? Why won’t the corrupt secular courts let good Christians practice their biblically guaranteed right to stone adulterers to death? I am suggesting that they assert this as a freedom of religion issue. It’s too late to get to Jim Bakker and Strom Thurmond, but they could still get Bill Clinton and they seem to have a thousand reasons to want to do that.

Apart from adultery, there is an enormous problem with pornography in the Christian community. According to one survey , “37% of pastors said porn was a struggle for them.” Over half said it was a temptation. Other surveys indicate that over 50% of men attending a Promise Keepers stadium event had viewed porn in the previous week. One Christian, sure that it couldn’t be that 50% of the men in his parish were into porn, suggested a survey. He was right: in his parish it was 61% and he suspects underreporting. It’s a serious issue.

It’s so serious, in fact, that as part of my modest plea for biblical literalism, I would suggest that the biblical literalists among that 61%, please go pluck your eyes out (Mathew18:9). And if you don’t feel like plucking your eye out just right now, please consider being more tolerant of those who don’t fit in with those few areas of Old Testament morality that you choose to enforce (fear of gays seems to be tops on the list these days) and, dare I say it, just a little less tolerant of some of those areas where we all come up short of a New Testament morality (like helping the poor and turning the other cheek)?

By the way, yes this is a sarcastic article, but the Crosswalk article I link to is really interesting (that’s the one about the 61%). I’m certainly not meaning to attack people like that author.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I keep hearing that the Obama candidacy is a test of whether or not America is ready to elect a black man. The first presidential candidate I ever supported was Shirley Chisolm, both black and female and not very successful, so I’ve been ready in one way or another to support a black or a woman since 1972. I must say that Obama excites me less than Chisolm did and Clinton is not even in the same league (suffice it to say that it is virtually inconceivable that Chisolm would accept at face value administration pronouncements on weapons of mass destruction and then turn around and give a right-wing president carte blanche to make war at his whim and pleasure). Thirty-five years later, I find the whole “electability of a black man” canard laughable, especially when people say “The South will never vote for a black man.” Wake up people! It makes no difference in the general election what the South thinks of Obama’s race. If Obama wins the nomination, the only thing that will matter with respect to race is whether or not Northern racism will keep Obama from the White House; Southern racism, real or imagined, is irrelevant. The reasons for that are today’s history lesson:

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Popularity: 11% [?]

And in today’s major news headline, there was a plane crash at Heathrow airport in which eight people were “slightly injured” according to NPR news. How would I get by if the major news outlets didn’t update me on this breaking story about eight people being slightly injured eight time zones away. That’s almost one injury per time zone!

More news on this breaking story. According to the Telegraph, the injury toll has now risen to 13 persons with “minor injuries.”

And in other news, according to The Hunger Project’s best estimates, 24,000 children died today of hunger and malnutrition, which is a significant decline from the 41,000/day in 1977 when The Hunger Project started.

Popularity: 8% [?]

1. Yes vote on Public law 107-40 authorizing the use of military force anywhere and against anyone closely or remotely associated with the September 11 terrorists. The text says that this law does not supercede any requirement of the War Powers Resolution, limiting the president’s ability to use military force, but it effectively gave a blank check to the president, allowing him to attack anywhere he pleased. This is an unforgiveable breach of the public trust in the legislative branch to maintain a system of checks and balances and no less so because not a single senator had the backbone to stand up and say that the resolution was too broad and too vague.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

I do not need a politician to stand up for civil rights, the rule of law, international treaties signed by the US and the US Constitution when it’s popular. I need them to stand up for those things when it’s difficult.
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Popularity: 11% [?]

I am proud to announce that Taken For Ranted will soon be branching out from t-shirts into a line of all-natural products. I am working hard on a line of soups made with all-natural ingredients. Details are still in the making, but all of our products will boast only the finest ingredients:

• Organic, pesticide-free castor bean.We have sourced our wild castor bean from a Texas location that uses no pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
• Organically-grown, genuine Greek hemlock. The same stuff recommended by Socrates! Never grown with anything but all-natural pesticides.
• Pure Missouri lead. Our products will contain only the finest all-nautral lead from the Missouri Lead Belt. This product is ultra-purified to get rid of any contaminants.
• Genuine, pure arsenic from the High Sierra. The Sierra contain some of the highest concentrations of arsenic. Our products are filtered to remove organic materials to leave us with only the purest, highest-grade, all-natural arsenic, straight from the idyllic hills of California’s High Sierra.
• Hormone-free, free-range rattlesnake venom. We harvest our venom from nothing but rattlers grown in the fresh air of the Sonoran Desert.

So remember, these products are pesticide-free and are completely natural! They must be good for you, right? Yum yum. Be healthy! Live natural!

Popularity: 11% [?]

It’s funny. I recently created a set of t-shirts, stickers and stuff with the theme “Warning: I’m Thinking“. I wanted it to be “Caution: I’m Thinking” but someone issued a cease and desist against Cafepress asserting trademark rights over the use of the word “Caution” in apparel. So that’s completely absurd, of course, but I digress. What reminded me of all this was that I was going through some pictures and saw the photo below, reminding you of the most important security device you can install, bar none. I wish I’d taken the picture in a “Warning: I’m Thinking” t-shirt!


Check it out!

Popularity: 9% [?]

Review of Michael Beschloss, Presidential Courage

I had high expectations of Michael Beschloss’ Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, but must say that I was disappointed. I had expected stirring narratives of cases where presidents stuck to their guns in the face of criticism and opposition. That’s more or less what’s here, but still, I found the book more like a snack than a meal. Beschloss is a commentator for the Lehrer News Hour on PBS and for NBC News. Now, those aren’t necessarily great credentials for a historian — the most famous news broadcast historians, like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose are best known in academic circles not for their ground-breaking research, but for their plagiarism. Outside of academia, though, they’re known for books that are fun to read. I expected more or less the same from Beschloss, but somehow he didn’t deliver.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

The last couple of days, I’ve been listening to the radio and there has been a lot of reporting on the space shuttle taking a module to the space station: the launch, the arrival of the astronauts, the mission. Every time I hear something like this, I feel cheated. In 1969, when I was six years old and Neil Armstrong made one small step for man, one giant step for mankind, it seemed pretty obvious that we would all be visiting the Moon for vacation by the year 2000. Arthur C. Clarke, the author of Space Odyssey: 2001, said a few years back when we landed the rover on Mars that, back in 1969, he would never have believed that in 2001 we would land a toaster-sized unmanned rover on Mars and consider it a technological and scientific triumph.
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Popularity: 9% [?]

This is an interesting one from Compete.com. They really know who liberals and conservatives like among the current crop of candidates. Compete.com have some sort of web tracking software and they are watching YOU. Okay, maybe not you, but they grab information from ISP, volunteer panelists and people who install their toolbar (and why would you do that?). They say their data is “normalized” which I’m guessing means that they use the ISP data to correct for the bias inherent in the other sources. Anyway, what they have been able to do, apparently, is find out what percentage of visitors to websites for candidates read liberal blogs and which ones read conservative blogs. Then they calculate a ration of liberal/conservative to see how liberal or conservative the visitors to a candidates website are.

The interesting thing here is not that Dennis Kucinich has the highest ratio (most liberal), or that Fred Thompson has the lowest ratio (i.e. most conservative). The telling stat is that Hilary Clinton has the lowest score (most conservative appeal) of any Democrat and, scores even lower than Ron Paul, the ultra-libertarian fringe candidate. What does this tell us? Probably not much that we couldn’t predict, but it is a fun chart to ponder. Have a look at it at:
Compete Candidate Analysis

I have to say, having heard Ron Paul interviewed, even when he’s spouting some ideas to which I am deeply opposed, he is the only candidate who seems to say what he really thinks. That will, of course, ultimately count him out (never say what you really think), but it’s nice to hear, agree or not.

Popularity: 8% [?]