Category Archives: God

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Searching For the Meaning of “Good” Friday

Good-Friday-11I’ve never been quite sure what the “good” in Good Friday meant. Perhaps we see beyond the pain, torture and death of Christ to the event of Easter. We live in those awful moments not in the moment itself, but in the promise of Sunday.

That seems to trivialize it a bit for me, and it doesn’t satisfy. I know that the Passover, celebrated as the Last Supper by Christians is that wonderful celebration by Jews of the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. It celebrates freedom. And no doubt as the Synoptic Gospels relate, this date for the Last Supper of Jesus (the first night of Passover) serves to symbolize our liberation from sin.

John changes the mix a bit by placing the Last Supper not on the first night of Passover, but the day before, when the lambs are slain for the meal. He likens Jesus to the lamb slain. The general symbolism remains the same.

I am not a believer of substitutionary sin–the theory that Jesus took upon himself our sins and died for them– a demand of a God who requires payment for a sinful world. Such a God, to me at least, is both harsh and ugly–sending his own son to die in the most horrible of ways.

Rather I see, (note that these ideas are surely not my own, but are the theology of many a learned scholar and teacher as well as believers) that Jesus by his willingness to die for his beliefs, shows us the perfect way to engage with this creator we call God. Jesus, in dying, pays the ultimate price for principle, the foundational principle of life–love, no matter what the cost.

For this is the essence of the God that Jesus points us towards. A God who is unimpressed by formulaic ritual and a God saddened by our tendencies to divide ourselves into groups of “saved” “faithful” or “pious” and all others who somehow by human standards fail to reach the mark. So saddened is God by our divisiveness that Jesus shows through his willingness to endure scorn, beating and tortuous death, that even the least among us is worthy of dying for.

As we struggle in our daily lives to come to grips with the deep agonies that divide us as a people and as a world, Jesus on the Cross, stands as testament to the strength that we too can express if we are willing to take up that Cross ourselves and stand for love at all costs.

Jesus stands against those whose primary goal is to protect “number one”. He stands against those who are motivated by greed, self-preservation, and egotistical individual ruggedness. He points the way to a God of grace and love, who calls us daily to be bigger than our selves in our love of brother and sister. This God, so real, so in love with His creation that He becomes one of us, in an effort to show us, by his teaching, suffering and death, what He is really all about.

I speak not of Jesus as the son of God, but as the Son of Man, for the reality or fantasy of Jesus as the incarnate God is beside the point really. If Jesus is so infused with the Spirit of the Transcendent One, then it matters not the creeds we dutifully recite each Sunday. Jesus moved aside as human, and allowed the Spirit of God to envelop him so completely that God really was among us.

All the more important that we be especially careful to separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of the Church. More and more I find them quite different beings, with quite different agendas. After having read much, I am still in love with Paul and his exuberance for the Gospel, but I recognize that Paul molded the ensuing Church and molded Jesus into that Church. I’m not so sure that it is the Jesus of history whom he never met in the flesh.

We must comb the Gospels carefully I think to find that Jesus–that gentle yet firebrand individual who sought to bring all into the house of God, as true and perfect children. He tenderly attended to the needs of the most broken and rejected in society without asking of them anything in return, other than to put God first in their lives. His anger was invoked by those whom he saw as impeding the people in their attempt to know their God. He pointed the finger and accused them of having lost all sense of why they were doing what they did. It had all become for show, for power, and for accolades.

True piety rested with the many Marys who lived with the Master, the self-less women who sat at his feet, absorbing his wisdom, who anointed his head, washed his feet, and knelt at the foot of the cross, and ultimately went to dress his broken and dead body, and found to their amazement that his real presence washed over them.

If we learn anything from the Friday, called Good, it is that we too can approach God in these simple acts of service–not by asking questions about who deserves and who doesn’t deserve our acts, but in simply being willing to give in love, knowing that the Spirit of God inhabits each and every one of God’s created beings.

Have a blessed Easter Time.

(I know that many of you who read this are not religious, and at best agnostic if not actually atheistic in your outlook. But I think that whatever you believe, you are beloved and understood and accepted by God as you are, and I hope the sentiments I express, resonate in that “human” way that knows no faith.)

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The World Is Just Plain Weird

laf-stats-grafI had gotten, finally to that happy place. The place where I no longer obsessed about how many people were visiting my blog every day. I was content, having found my place.

Yeah, well that good time feeling didn’t last for long. There has been a significant drop in the last two or three months which is startling and inexplicable. It’s dropped by half at least, and that while subscriptions to this blog have steadily increased.

I have no idea what it means. Did I say something offensive? I surely meant to, but gosh, you don’t have to be so harsh. Wait, I’m talking to people who are still reading so that won’t do any good. How do I reach out to all the unknowns who have found a happier place to tuck into the news and explain that I’m only trying to offend nearly everyone and no one singularly?

To top this off, if you have Google reader you were met with the announcement out of the clear blue sky they are not shutting down their reader. Now I live by mine. I do. I mean dang, can’t you leave shit alone? I have enough on my plate most days without now having to do all that transfery stuff of which I am not all that good. Is there no God?

Speaking of which, God chose his earthly successor yesterday in the guise of one Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. now known as Pope Francis I. Lots of nice things are being said about him, and I’m sure he is a fine fellow. He has lived out the preferential preference for the poor that the liberation theologists have called as the Church’s primary mission, while at the same time decrying the Marxist influence that permeates some of the that same rhetoric. He is a Jesuit, while at the same time decrying their more liberal and progressive leanings. He is a traditionalist when it comes to the Church’s teachings on social issues relating to sexual matters. He is a prayerful humble individual who decries the pomp and ceremony and trappings of office, preferring a small apartment and taking public transportation back and forth to work.

It is of course utterly unclear how all this will play out in the coming months and years. I remain realistic but hopeful that  something new is afoot, and trust that the Holy Spirit, may have rushed in once again to save this wonderful institution from itself. It usually does.

If there was any doubt that the bought-and-paid for jackasses called the GOP in Congress cares not one whit about the public sentiments no matter how overwhelming they are, one need only look at the bill that passed in Congress the other day relating to background checks for gun purchasers.

While a healthy 91% of all citizens across the land, and 76% of all NRA members favor such minimum legislation, the Senate GOP could not manage to screw up the most minimum of guts to vote yes. Not a SINGLE GOP member of the Senate voted yes. I mean even Susan Collins voted no. I mean have you people NO SHAME AT ALL? I really do think we would be better off; if at a minimum, Senate chairs in the chamber were required to carry the logos of those corporate interests who have bought these people and OWN them.

If you are worried that our political system is in danger of being subverted by corporate interests to the point of being the actual POLITICAL POWER in American, now would be the time to decide what you are going to do about it. Time is short I fear before “we the people” is nothing more than a quaint historical blip on the books. Since they already write all the “regulatory laws” that apply to them as it is, and own the SCOTUS by a vote of nearly 5 on most any issue, what the hell left is there for them to grab?

Stay tuned for the inevitable change in the national anthem.

Oh, say can you see, by the dawns early light,
what so proudly we hailed at the twilights last gleaming.
Whose bright office buildings, and nifty logos, through the perilous fight,
O’er the fences we watched were so neoned gleaming,
And the stock market’s big bull, profits shot through the roof,
gave proof through the night, that our CEO’s were still there.
Oh say does that mega corporation yet stand,
O’er the land of the poor and the home of the privileged.
 

Get your copy, no doubt you will soon be forced to sing it every morning before the work bell rings. That goes for retirees, because there will be no rest for the weary in the poor house, just a faint, “can I have more please, sir” in the soup line.

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Somebody Needs a Bifocal Adjustment

It always starts out the same way. The way? I was minding my own business.

As is usual, in the early morning, MSNBC was on. I was busy with house stuff (I spend all the day cleaning and cooking as a good housewife should).

The Contrarian was sitting and watching Chuck Todd. Well, more to the point, he was reading the “crawl”.  Suddenly this:

“My God has California lost its collective mind?” he shouted.

I set down my pail and mop, wiped my weary brow with the back of my hand, dried my hands on my apron, and tucked a loose curl back under my kerchief.

“What has California done now?” I asked in the usual innocence I maintain, hoping against hope that the response will be sane.

“Why, they’ve banned miners from using tanning beds! Can you believe that?” he screeched.

My brain went into overdrive as I tried to fathom what, why and, well, how this impacted my life, and where was the sense in all this.  “Huh?” I managed.

“My God woman, those people spend the vast majority of their existence underground! To prohibit them from getting the vitamin D they need, in a relaxed environment seems draconian at best and downright evil. The TeaBaggers are right, we are turning into a nanny state!”

I hoisted myself up off my knees, shaking my head, and making my way to the living room, where his Highness sat in regal glory with remote control in hand. “What in the world are you talking about? This makes no sense.” I sighed.

“Here it comes again, read the crawl. See?” he smartly pointed.

I looked at the bottom of the screen. Sure enough I saw it. “California bans minors from using tanning beds.”

“You damn fool, it says MINORS, M-I-N-O-R-S, not MINERS! I should have known. Only you could misread it. Now let me get back to dinner. It’s Chateaubriand tonight, you lucky dog.”

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Ya gotta laugh. All the GOP candidates pretty much say the same thing. God called them to run for President. They resisted, they were noble in recognizing their own unworthiness. But God persisted, God will have his choices against all odds. Just ask Moses, or David, or any of the other poor Israelites who protested, “Not me Lord, you can’t mean me?”

Herman Cain is but the last to “answer the call.

I said all the candidates. I was wrong. One has never claimed God called him. Mitt, he still just wants it. He wants it so bad that it really makes you feel a little sick to your stomach watching him pander and plead. “Will ya like me now?” he asks as he wanders about the land, changing positions on everything, looking for “clear reception.”

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Aww, dang it. Can’t they let our heroes be?

Alexander the Great? Well, yes, he didn’t get the appellation “Great” for being a pizza delivery boy ya know.

Silly historians, always doing stupid things like research and changing what I thought I knew about something and somebody. Geesh.

I mean Alex was tutored by Aristotle for goodness sake.

Anyway, a delightful review of the books recently out on the Macedonian wonder. Or was he?

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The Grio jumps in with a good piece on Herman Cain, who is doing the bidding of the GOP, by adopting their racist rhetoric. Cain now claims that there is really no racism in America, sufficient to inhibit anyone of color who works hard.

There is a certain type of black American who actually believes this crap, they need to believe in their “self-made” status. Herm may be one of them, though it’s mighty hard to believe he can believe his own garbage.

Wearerespectablenegroes continues to probe the psyche of Herm. Not a pretty thing no matter what your conclusion.

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Slogans are fine things. They are usually easy to remember, and make fine rallying-round points. But when slick, easy to remember slogans are used to address serious and massive problems, like the economy, you can almost be sure they mask a lot of really bad thinking.

Take Herm’s 9-9-9 plan for the economy. Please take it! Oops, sorry, I was channelling Henny Youngman for a moment.  Anyway, Think Progress lays out the real real downside of Herm’s simplistic panacea for our economic woes.

Hint: flat taxes almost always hit the poor the hardest. This one is no exception.

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Talk about Occupy Wall Street. We got our own Occupation here in Iowa. That Woman won’t leave! Who? Michele (falling like a rock) Bachmann is desperately trying to remind everyone that SHE won the straw poll a few weeks ago.

In polling today, Crazy-Eyes is coming in a distant four or five. It’s creepy. She won’t leave. I can feel the state dumbing down by the minute. Somebody pry her cold dead hands from a microphone and send her back to Mina-SOTA.

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It’s Saturday, So It’s Philosophy 101

I just love it when I’m proven to be right. Or should I say that someone who has some real intellectual creds agrees with me.

Jonathan Rée, writing for The New Humanist, has a really lovely article on atheism. Writing as one, he points out a lot of the misconceptions of what the word means and has meant over the centuries.

Moreover, he chastises the “new, new Atheists” as he terms them, for not knowing the history of atheism, and engaging in a petulant and childish game with believers.

He points to the philosopher William James and says of him:

He hated the belligerent secularism that treats religion as a childish superstition which we will all put behind us once we reach the age of reason.

Much could be said of the new new atheists of today, he argues.

James spoke of faith in this manner:

Becoming religious was like falling in love, he said: not a process of intellectual persuasion, but not a delusion either, and it lent new aspects to the world, “an enchantment which is not logically deducible from anything else.”

I don’t think it can be better said or explained frankly.

While Rée certainly comes down in favor of atheism as being the more reasoned choice, he certainly does so in a gentle and non-judgmental way.

This is the stuff of real discussion. Read it and see if you don’t learn a thing or two.

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The chicken enchiladas? Pretty much of a bust. The recipe sounded good, but it failed on a number of levels. I’ve been pondering for some time, and think I may have a solution. I can’t tell you why I want a “perfect enchilada” but I do. So I’ll try my own hand in a week or so. You never know, the Pulitzer may be on the horizon. Surely they have one for cooking?

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I snatched this directly and entirely from Joe.My.God. simply because it needs to be said, and it’s said succinctly and with passion:

If you’re a Christian who believes that being gay is a morally reprehensible offense against God, then you share a mindset, worldview, and moral structure with the kids who hounded Jamey Rodemeyer, literally, to death. It is your ethos, your convictions, and your theology that informed, supported, and encouraged their cruelty. We Christians who believe that God created gay people as much in His own image as he did straight people are begging you to reconsider your theology — to do nothing more than be open to an alternative, fully credible, scholastically sound interpretation of one or two lines from Paul. How can you be unwilling to do something so simple, when you see the horrible ultimate cost of that refusal?” – Christian author John Shore.

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And this seemed to say it perfectly well too:

When the rich rain economic bombs on upon ordinary folks, that’s just capitalism. When ordinary folks point out the bombs, that’s Class Warfare ~Roshi Bob

And the beat goes on.

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I picked this up on Roger Ebert’s blog today, and thought it apropos.

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Brendan Beery is one very thoughtful guy. Please go read his latest post called, The Inelegance of Republicanism.  He writes a gentle but firm rebuke that could not fail to shame a rational person, but of course, for just that reason, it probably won’t.

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Humor is a necessity every day

. So get your daily dose from Political Irony and the best nuggets from the late night circuit. Actually he got all his stuff from Bill Maher today.

Frankly one of the funniest things I read yesterday was Billy Kristol’s remarks in his article about the latest GOP “debate”. Seems he got an e-mail from a “young and bright” Republican who was watching his first debate of the season.

“Why they ( meaning the field of GOP candidates) make us look stupid!”

Well, yes they do. Take a look at the House and Senate GOP, and you can add insane to the mix.

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From LOL God

Now go out and have one fine weekend!

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In the Name of God

The atheists have a powerful argument when they suggest that millions have died in the name of religion. They are right. From the beginning, humans fought over land each claimed was theirs by right, given to them by God.

It’s never ended. Down through all these millenia. We have continued to fight over land and control of populations, all the while upholding our efforts as the “will of God.”

It continues today in a war being waged between Jews, Muslims and Christians. All claim they are doing God’s bidding.

There is always a good argument that mankind would have been better off not listening to the small voice within that urges us to believe that we are destined for more than just a brief sojourn upon this planet only to return to dust.

The truth is, all these wars instituted to protect, promote, or to destroy a religion, are done in the name of religion. There is no objective proof that any of this is called for by God. The deeper you look, the more you see human motivation driving the crusade to install “our” God.

Any fair reading of the Old Testament raises a very obvious question. Isn’t it awfully convenient that God has been on the “side” of the Israelites, thus allowing them to then justify their genocide of whole towns and settlements? How convenient to declare that God has said, “why this land I give to you, so go and subjugate all those who oppose you taking their land.”

Muslims feel utterly justified in controlling the Holy Land, as do Jews, as do Christians. Over time, each has held sway for a time, and been more than willing to kill to retain power. All in the name of God. All in the name of an interpretation, that just might be a bit self-serving.

Religion versus religion, and religion versus secularism erupts in mostly non-violent war in this country today. It has been growing steadily, or resurging I should say. We can be sure that the US expansion into the West and our suppression of indigenous people, either red or brown, was done in some sense in the name of God. We are the City upon the Hill, and as such, God’s new chosen.

This convenient “American Exceptionalism” poisoned with religious righteousness, has justified in the eyes of its perpetrators all kinds of injustice, from genocide to land grabbing, and slavery.

For periods of time, we placed religion in mostly its rightful place–as a facet of each person’s life as they chose or not. Government stayed out of faith, and faith stayed out of government. Religion was a good place to develop ethical, moral, and just responses to issues of the day. It was not the only place however. Government did it’s best to cull the best of the just response and act upon it for the greater good of all, and so that minorities were not walked upon.

I was thinking of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, whatever his personal beliefs about God were, certainly believed that it was a personal issue, not one for the public square. Washington was so loathe to be seen as promoting a particular tradition that he didn’t go to church at all as president.

What must they think of the goings on today? One can only imagine. I suspect they would see it for what it is, shameless religiosity to justify what people want to do anyway. A serious segment of the religion right who intone  “marching in lockstep with Israel” do so only because they believe they are promoting their version of the end times. This of course is not lost on the Israelis, but they accept their friends where they can get them.

Herman, Step-’n-fetch-it, Cain argues that in his uninformed mind, most Muslims are Sharia law followers, and as president he wouldn’t have time to ferret out the few who aren’t, so don’t blame him for not putting any Muslims in his prospective administration.

A segment of the religious right rejects Mitt Romney only because he is “not the right kind of Christian”. Warren Cole Smith, associate editor of the World, a right-wing magazine, argues:

Placing a Mormon in that pulpit would be a source of pride and a shot of adrenaline for the LDS church. It would serve to normalize the false teachings of Mormonism the world over. It would also provide an opening to Mormon missionaries around the world, who could start every conversation: “Let me tell you about the American president.” To elect a Mormon President is to advance the cause of the Mormon Church.

Non-Christians likely don’t care much about this point one way or the other. But for the Christian, this is a vital issue. One of the strongest warnings Jesus issues is to those who “lead little ones astray.” He said it would be better for that person if a millstone were put around his neck and he were cast into the sea. The validation of the false religion of Mormonism would almost certainly have the effect of leading many astray. Evangelical Christians should have no part of that effort.

This is no different from back in 1960 when a goodly sum of Protestants were pretty darn sure that electing a Catholic to the presidency would be tantamount to installing the pope in the White House, and for some, that was Satan himself.

The UCCB, the official spokesman for the American Catholic Church, has written a letter to Speaker John Boehner, basically condemning the Ryan plan and other GOP plans to gut Medicare as unfairly burdening the least able, while gifting the rich with more riches. Arguments go back and forth within the Catholic world as to whether or not voting for this person or that can be justified under definitions of intrinsic evil.

Exactly what Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers feared, has come to fruition. The public forum is now embroiled in an increasingly vitriolic war of words over whose interpretation of sacred scripture is controlling.

And underlying it all is the ugly raw truth. It still comes down to using God to justify why somebody’s vision of the world should be the one everyone else should be forced to live under. And it’s wrong, period.

End of rant.

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Thoughts Dripping From My Disheveled Mind

You may consider me either sin personified or a saint. I don’t believe I am truly the former, and I am certain I am not the latter.

I am to put it quite bluntly, caught between these two images. I have been for several years.

We were watching the usual Sunday night fare on the TV when suddenly it was interrupted with “breaking news”. We sat momentarily queasy as we wondered what terrible thing might have befallen the world.

We learned, as did everyone, that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a commando raid on a compound in Pakistan.

My first reaction was one of relief that nothing horrifying had occurred in the world.

But then, I didn’t know quite what to feel.

I have always been struck by the fact that my first reaction to a photograph of Bin Laden is that he reminds me of paintings of Christ. Especially those that are more Semitic in nature.

This is always quite a shock to me, since OBL is clearly a man who has guided other men to die and to kill innocents in large numbers while doing so. I thoroughly reject everything about his methodology, though in some very basic respects I can sympathize with his anger at the West.  For the West has much to answer for in its treatment of Middle Eastern peoples down through time.

I am reminded too, of Matthew 25, wherein Christ reminded a confused audience who were sure they had never failed to minister to him in his needs, that when they did not do it to the least of his children, they did not do it for him. In other words, as Mother Theresa reminded us often, we are to see the face of Christ in everyone we come upon.

I am reminded too that I am to believe that God loves every one of his creation as perfectly as I am loved. While I can note the “wrongness” of another’s actions, I cannot make claims of self-righteousness.

I am reminded that I am thoroughly and utterly opposed to the death penalty, and by all accounts this was a pure assassination.

I am reminded that a man I deeply admire, Barack H. Obama, gave the order with the intention that this man die. I can but image the awesomeness and awfulness of that moment to him. I am truly glad that he is our President.

I am reminded that OBL was separated from the day-to-day workings of al-Qaeda and that whatever plans are being made will continue.

I am reminded that it has long been thought that the death of OBL would bring forth an attack, planned for just this occasion.

I am reminded that the streets of America filled in many places spontaneously and people are joyous at this death. And I feel utterly utterly uncomfortable.

I am reminded that the stock market went up, and the oil futures went down.

I am reminded that the President will undoubtedly receive a huge bump in the polls.

Should I be happy at these political plusses?

I am deeply confused and pained by it all.

Ironically, or as I like to think in a fit of serendipity, this is the first thing I read this morning:

“We are living in the greatest revolution in history–a large spontaneous upheaval of the entire human race: not the revolution planned and carried out by any particular party, race, or nation, but a deep elemental boiling over of all the inner contradictions that have ever been in man, a revelation of the chaotic forces inside everybody. This is not something we have chosen, nor is it something we are free to avoid.

This revolution is a profound spiritual crisis of the whole world, manifested largely in desperation, cynicism, violence, conflict, self-contradiction, ambivalence, fear and hope, doubt and belief, creation and destructiveness, progress and regression, obsessive attachments to images, idols, slogans, programs that only dull the general anguish for a moment until it bursts out everywhere in a still more acute and terrifying form. We do not know if we are building a fabulously wonderful world or destroying all that we have ever had, all that we have achieved!

All the inner force of man is boiling and bursting out, the good together with the evil, the good poisoned by evil and fighting it, the evil pretending to be good and revealing itself in the most dreadful crimes, justified and rationalized by the purest and most innocent intentions. [Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander 54-55, reprinted in Seeds, 27, Thomas Merton]

I am angry because I don’t know what is appropriate to think or feel. Although people will talk of “closure” and of “justice” they are words only, and in the dark night as I sit pondering how we so seemingly give legitimacy to murder, I am not comforted in any way. I am the opposite.

I wonder at how no one questions any of this. How all is smiles. “We got him!”

Yes, but who are we?

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Can I Have an Extra Day Please, with Sugar?

Everybody has those kinda days. When you get up already behind. This is usually the result of “sleeping in”. I’m a 7 am kinda person. I find that a humane time to arise. Some days, I don’t quite make it. Thus, I’m behind.

Tomorrow, I’m shopping, so I’m not sure I’ll get to blogging.

The Contrarian, however, puts his time to good use. He’s a thinker. Remember his desire to hold a thinkathon? Much easier than having a walkathon he thought.

When he thinks too much, well, I usually get concerned. His latest “breakthrough” is a humdinger.

The Contrarian has long pondered the existence of the soul. That has led him to toil in the backyard of the differences between humans and other animals. That place, he contends is where one might locate the seat of our divine connection. With me so far?

The places tred by medical men and women, philosophers, and theologians. What of the soul?

And, as I said, he thinks he has had a breakthrough.

He asks this question:

Is there any other animal but humans who react with distaste to the fart?

I know, its blasphemous. It’s crazy. It’s absurd, illogical, and downright unpretty. It is the Contrarian. Don’t blame me. I’m just reporting the news.

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If’n you didn’t know, the right-wing religious are, as you know, against abortions. And they are very against Planned Parenthood, and they devise all manner of nasty things to “prove” that PPH should be shut down. One of their more ingenious methods is to claim that PPH is about the business of genocide of the African-American population. This because statistically more black women obtain abortions than white or Latino.

Now the fact that this has to do with poverty and lack of access to medical information and contraception at the same level as their more wealthy white counterparts is ignored. No, it’s so much easier to suggest that PPH has as an unstated goal, the destruction of an entire people.

I imagine that the NAACP and other African-American groups are so grateful to the white folk for being so concerned for them. Yes, I guess we can all be grateful to those benevolent white people.

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Roger Ebert talks about what he understands as the Universe and evolution. It’s a lovely piece. Makes ya feel all warm inside for reasons I cannot explain. Least it do for me.

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See, now we know that serendipity is real. I mean, after writing about the Contrarian and his “breakthrough” I come across this article: Natural History of the Soul. Nicholas Humphrey argues that spirituality is essential to consciousness. Read it in The New Humanist. Humphrey is an evolutionary psychologist, and he’s written a book called Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. Looks like a very interesting read.

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If there were any question about the agenda of Mikey Huckster, read on. It seems Mikey attended one of those uber right-wing  conferences, one that featured pseudo-historian David Barton and his revisionist history of the founding of this country. Why Mikey was just adoring of said Barton and said the following:

 “I almost wish that there would be, like, a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced–forced at gunpoint no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it.”

Of course, in the “official” video of the event, the “joke” was scrubbed. And of course, Mikey meant every word, until he realized it wouldn’t play well outside his crazy base.

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Good news to report. I don’t have a link, but I’ve heard or read it in so many places that it is obviously true. The teabagger phenom is beginning to wane. Their unfavorables are now above their favorables. Which is all the more amusing since the Prez wannabes are all still dancing like marionettes to the teabagger tune, afraid to pirouette too far from the dark force. 

This is causing all sorts of problems with the budget. Word is that Boehner wants desperately to make a deal rather than shut down the government, but he dare not piss off the wonkettes, who are picketing in Washington, even as we speak. Well, we all knew this would happen didn’t we?

And who might you ask is riding to the rescue? None other than boy wonder Eric Cantor. Cantor has introduced a bill that will be voted on in the House on Friday, entitled, “Government Shutdown Prevention Act.” What it does it tell the Senate to act on the budget bill before the deadline and if it doesn’t the House passed bill will become the law of the land.

Yes, you heard that right. Cantor is simply tearing the Constitution up and making up his own new one. Yes, that’s some pretty strict construction there Mr. Cantor. Uh…do you dance too?

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What’s on the Stove? Fajitahs!

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