The Sunday liquor sales question

I'm going to play devil's advocate here a little but first, the question....

From ajc -- The latest attempt at Sunday alcohol sales legislation in the state Senate appears to be in trouble.

Opposition, especially from Christian conservatives, could prevent a Senate vote this year on a bill that would give Georgia communities a vote whether to allow Sunday beer, wine and liquor sales at stores.

As a libertarian, I agree with letting each town, county, whatever vote on Sunday sales and if the Baptists don't like it, then don't buy booze on Sunday. The question to me is, why is it ok for Baptists et. al., to impose their religious observations on the rest of the world, but they reject the notion of Islam imposing it's religious principles on everybody?

"But Ed" you smugly point out, "Christianity is the primary religion of the US, not Islam. We can do what we want in our own country."

Hey self-righteous reader, are you completely unfamiliar with the Constitution? There is no state religion of the US. What gives you the right to prevent by law, on religious principles, any citizen from buying alcohol on Sunday just because it offends you on moral grounds?

As self-described conservatives, is it not hypocritical of Christians to impose their religions beliefs on those who may not practice their religion? How are they different from jihadists?

Great, another governor/preacher

This is just perfect. Another Alabama governor who's a preacher first and governor some other time.....

From FoxNews -- Alabama Republican Governor Robert Bentley said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day message Monday that he does not consider Americans who do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior to be his brothers and sisters.

''Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters," he continued. "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

I don't care if a governor is a Christian. That's a good thing, but being a Christian has very little if anything to do with managing a state, making economic decisions, recruiting business, lowering taxes and spending, and improving in general, the lives of ALL Alabama citizens. There was plenty of talk of the corruption of Robert Bentley during the election. I doubt seriously if he's the choir boy he's trying to portray himself as. I'm sorry, but I'm just not comfortable with a politician who wears his religion on his sleeve like he's trying to show everybody how pious and correct he is. The national media are already making fun of how stupid and backwards we are in Alabama based on these comments. Sadly, they may be right because this kind of transparent pandering to the bible-belters seems to work for politicians down here.

As stupid as claims about the violation of the establishment clause usually are, this is the closest thing I've seen to it actually being violated. Essentially Bentley's saying the if you don't believe as he does, you're a second class citizen in his eyes. In his mind, there is an established acceptable religion. Good grief.....I thought Judge Roy Moore's quixotic tilt to get the ten commandments posted everywhere was stupid.

Lower my taxes, improve the jobless numbers, and recruit industry to the state.....then I"ll be impressed.

Catholicism.....I just don't get it

I am in no way anti-Catholic but, I just don't get some things about Catholicism. Things that don't exactly jive with my sense of universal truths.....

From Yahoo -- Reporting from London — The late Pope John Paul II will be beatified this spring, the Vatican announced Friday after the current pontiff, Benedict XVI, certified that his predecessor had met the requirements.

The move puts the former pope a step closer to sainthood on what is already an unusually accelerated timetable that Benedict launched within weeks of John Paul's death almost six years ago.

The Vatican said Benedict had approved findings by the church that John Paul had performed a miracle after his death, a prerequisite for beatification. A nun who suffered from Parkinson's disease, as did the late pope, said she was healed of her affliction after praying to John Paul shortly after he died.

First, and this may be a semantic bone I'm picking but, how is Pope John Paul II himself performing a miracle, rather than the miracle being performed by God through him, consistent with the idea of God being God and men being men? I mean it's a tad presumptuous to deify a mere man, isn't it? Do Catholics really believe that men can perform miracles because God is never mentioned in relation to these so-called "miracles".
Second, who approves the current Pope to be the final arbiter of who deserves beatification and then sainthood? Just because a hyper-politicized college of Cardinals elects him Pope, how does that bestow special God-like powers upon him?
Last, is it true that the church believes that JP-II actually performed a miracle after he died? You must be kidding? I don't recall anywhere in the Bible it being suggested that your soul can perform miracles on Earth from beyond the grave.
Third(I put it last because it doesn't go with the other three), what is the significance and purpose to God of stigmata and stigmata-like occurrences? What possible reason would God or Mary have of revealing themselves in ways like this?

Again, I'm not knocking Catholicism. I'm just wondering how these ideas and practices register with normal human beliefs about God, Jesus Christ, the afterlife, etc.?

Since when does Pat Robertson speak for God?

I don't know about you but I've been on the edge of my seat waiting for Pat Robertson to give me God's forecast regarding the apocalypse, nuclear war, and the economy *dramatically rolls eyes*.....

From CBSNews -- (AP) VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him that the U.S. is bankrupt and heading into economic turmoil, but there won't be a global nuclear holocaust.

On Monday's broadcast of CBN News' "The 700 Club," Robertson said he's "not a psychic," but he asks God for direction at the beginning of each year, and sometimes God gives it to him.

Robertson said God told him that America's lenders will demand repayment - not this year, but in 2012 - and the U.S. won't be able to pay, resulting in currency collapse, rampant unemployment and riots.

But he quoted God as saying "I will protect my people," and "I am not going to let men destroy the world with nuclear bombs."

Just how dumb does old Pat think people are that we believe that he receives direct quotes from God himself? I guess as long as morons tune in to his stupid TV show and keep sending him money, he'll keep blathering about the apocalypse and the end of the world and how only he is privy to the mind of God.

Pat Robertson is a snake-oil salesman and if you give him one dollar of your hard-earned money, you are a bigger idiot than he is.

Media creates a story, then reports on it

This idiot who runs this stupid little cult of 50 other idiots is just trying to get some publicity for his cult and the media stupidly oblige him....

From MyWayNews -- GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said Wednesday he was determined to go through with his plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, despite pressure from the White House, religious leaders and others to call it off.

"We are still determined to it, yes," the Rev. Terry Jones told the CBS Early Show.

How can 51 morons threaten the Religion of Peace which has hundreds of millions of practitioners? It can't, except when the main-stream media pick up the story and breathlessly report about how these people are indicative of conservative hatred of Islam in general. If the media want to protect the delicate Muslims around the world, just ignore this cretin and his retarded flock of inbreds.

Good grief people! This stuff isn't hard to figure out.

Dumb Africans slaughtering vultures in hopes of hitting a trifecta or covering the spread

For all you pantie-waste whiners who have criticized me for pointing out that a continent as backward as most of Africa is, cannot be transformed into a productive, functioning civilization by merely pouring money and pretend democracy onto it, this story is one of the reasons most of Africa, like a lot of the mid-east, is a God-forsaken wasteland of backward savages....

From Guardian via Belchspeak....

It's a tiny organ that, the superstition goes, holds the secrets of the future. When smoked and inhaled, the brain of a vulture is said to confer the gift of premonition. To put it bluntly, most users hope to sneak a look at next week's national lottery numbers.

Such is the demand for vulture brains to use in muti – traditional medicine – that wildlife experts fear the birds could be driven to extinction within two or three decades. They also warn that hunting could intensify as gamblers seek an advantage when betting on the football World Cup in South Africa.

How can a continent of people who are dumb and primitive enough to think that smoking vulture-brain doobies can confer premonitions, lottery numbers, and soccer-match outcomes, be entrusted with billions in aid money to develop their economies and drag their civilizations out of the Precambrian Era and into the the 17th century? I mean, forget about the 21st century. The 17th would be an improvement.

And the frog-god said, "Ribbet".

If you want to know why the human race has been a disappointing, miserable failure of an experiment to God, look no further than this story....

A FROG that constantly changes colour is being worshipped as a GOD in India.
Hundreds of curious followers flock to Reji Kumar’s home every day to pray and ask for miracles.

Now one of the country’s top zoologists plans to study the rainbow frog. But Reji, 35, who keeps the creature in a glass bottle after finding it while out watering plants, is afraid it might CROAK first.

He said: “My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it.”

We're worshipping stupid frogs now? Is that what the human race has devolved into? Frog-worshipping idolaters? What is it with Indians? I swear, they'll worship anything that is out of the ordinary. And this idiot, Reji Kumar can't get the frog to eat and wonders why, when he keeps it in a jar. What kind of way is that to treat a god for heaven's sake? If the apocalypse is upon us, this is why.

Worshipping a frog....good grief!

The Holy Grail for evolutionists

One single fossil does not the missing link make...

Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution.

The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years - but it was presented to the world today at a special news conference in New York.

The discovery of the 95%-complete 'lemur monkey' - dubbed Ida - is described by experts as the "eighth wonder of the world".

These guys naming this fossil the eighth wonder and breathlessly revealing it to the world in a silly news conference is as stupid as Al Gore showing the famous "hockey stick", CO2/global warming graph and exclaiming, "The science is in and the debate is over".

A 50 million year old fossil that shares a couple of bones with humans, while interesting, doesn't exactly "prove" Darwin's theory of the evolution of species, and certainly not the origin of man. Certainly the process of evolution exists and I believe it accounts for much diversity on Earth. But we share gill slits with fish, embryologically, we have a vestigal tailbone, and share countless traits with thousands of species. If this discovery "proves" the evolution of man from ape, why don't our embryonic gill slits prove that we're closely related to the carp?

On the other hand, this guy does sort of remind me of regular reader David.

A fool and his money....

You just had to know some enterprising athiest would find a way to make some money off the second coming of Christ....

There are those who believe in the Rapture prophesied in the Bible.

And there is Joshua Witter, avowed atheist. They need each other.

At least some people think so -- those willing to pay Witter to be their post-apocalyptic postman, delivering cards and letters to their non-believing friends, relatives and neighbors who will be left behind when the Day of Reckoning arrives.

So far, 70 people have each paid Witter $5 to get the last word in to the people who doubted them, and I'll bet every one of the cards reads, "See idiots? I told you! Who's laughing now, and who's facing the misery and despair of plagues, pestilence, famine, and darkness? So long suckers!"

Does God control literally every single thing?

Over at Secular Right, Heather Mac Donald has a very good point to make about the different outcomes and subsequent interpretations of two recent airline disasters....

Will Bill O’Reilly or anyone else who saw the hand of God in the safe landing of US Airways Flight 1549 this January please explain why God chose not to save Continental Connection Flight 3407, which plunged into a house outside of Buffalo last night, killing all 49 people on board and a resident on the ground?

Among the explanations which will not be accepted: “humans cannot possibly fathom God’s mysterious ways.” Oh yes they can, apparently—when something good happens. Having found proof of God’s love in the safe conclusion of US Airways Flight 1549, believers cannot now turn around and claim that God’s ways are veiled just because something disastrous happens. If it’s legitimate to infer beneficence from a happy outcome, it is equally plausible to infer malice or at least indifference from a negative outcome. You can’t pick and choose the actions in which you find God’s will transparent.

I don't know if Heather's an atheist or not and it doesn't matter. She's not arguing from an atheists perspective, she's arguing from a perspective of reason. I've made this point myself, everytime I hear some poor parent on the news who lost a child to a horrible disease or murder, explaining that it must have been God's will. I refuse to believe that God has a direct hand in every horrible, and for that matter every wonderful, thing that happens to us. How does that make any sense at all? What kind of a loving God would have somebody's 3 year old kidnapped, raped, and murdered? The answer, obvious to any thinking person, is God wouldn't do that to somebody. Since Adam and Eve were granted free will, we humans have manufactured all manner of ways, intentional or not, to bring harm to ourselves, either directly or through pure chance. God can use these disasters for the ones who're left but, I don't believe for an instant that he causes these disasters any more than I believe his hand guided flight 1549 gently and safely into the Hudson. That flight had a very experienced pilot, daylight, and a convenient body of water with boats all around to ditch into. Flight 3407 was over ground, in icy weather, at night. Did that arrangement of environments somehow fit into God's master plan to kill 50 people on one plane and rescue 150 from the other? Do you hear how preposterous that sounds?

Rev. Joseph Lowry underwhelms with his "poem"

Nutty, far-left liberals were upset when Rick Warren was tapped to pray over The One. What about Joseph Lowry and this bizarre, idiotic poem of sorts?

Benediction at Obama 's inauguration, Rev. Joseph Lowery:

'Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when

black will not be asked to get in back,
when brown can stick around...
when the red man can get ahead, man...
when yellow will be mellow...
and when white will embrace what is right.

That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen. Say Amen'...

That sounded like that Paul Simon song, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Think of the hubris you have to have in order to take the most serious, somber, and dignified moment in your career, a President's inaugural benediction, and offer up a Johnny Cochran/Jesse Jackson, clown-like, cartoon mockery of a prayer. Unbelievable! These race hustlers just can't help grandstanding when somebody puts a mic and camera in front of them. In fact, the bigger the stage, the more outrageous the grandstand.

Even Obama had to be rolling his eyes at that.

The cowards at Playboy

Dr. Melissa Clouthier nails Playboy for pretending to do something controversial with this cover of a naked Virgin Mary, but really, how controversial is it? Making fun of Christianity is like taking candy from a baby. If Playboy wants to be cotnroversial and cutting-edge and sell lots of magazines, show a cover of a half naked Muslim girl. Somehow I don't think Hugh and Christy Hefner have the stones to take on throngs of outraged Muslims....they'd rather attack the easy, Catholic target that won't put a bounty on their head for doing so.

Political correctness hits the quickie-oil-change industry

The question is, does a company have the right to define the appearance of it's employees who come in contact with customers?

BOSTON — A Rastafarian man who refused to shave off his beard or cut his hair to comply with Jiffy Lube's employee grooming policy can take his religious discrimination case to trial, the state's highest court ruled Tuesday.

In 2002, after Jiffy Lube put a new grooming policy in place requiring employees who worked with customers to be clean-shaven, Brown told management that his religion does not permit him to shave or cut his hair. Managers then said Brown could work only in lower bays where he did not have contact with customers.

Brown filed a discrimination lawsuit in state court in 2006.

Since when does being a smelly, dope-addled hippie qualify as a religion? I guess as long as it's not "Christianity", literally any form of deviancy can be protected as "religious freedom" by the courts.


Would you trust this guy to change your oil?

The Scientologist's Afterlife

Singer, voice of South Park's Chef, and devout Scientologist Isaac Hayes passed away a few days ago prompting my inquisitive wife to wonder, "What happens to Scientologists when they die? Or, what do they believe happens to them when they die?" Well according to an article over in Slate, this.....[emphasis mine]

His soul will be "born again into the flesh of another body," as the Scientology Press Office's FAQ puts it. The actual details of how that rebirth occurs are not fully understood by church outsiders, but some core beliefs of Scientology are that every human being is really an immortal spiritual being known as a thetan and that the "meat bodies" we inhabit are merely vessels we shed upon death. (Members of the elite church cadre known as Sea Org, for example, sign contracts that pledge a billion years of service throughout successive lives.)
When a body dies, its thetan forgets the details of the former life, though painful and traumatic images known as engrams remain rooted in its unconscious. In order to move up the path of spiritual progression—known as the Bridge to Total Freedom—one must eradicate these psychic scars, which cause a person to act fearfully and irrationally. Once a Scientologist has purged them through the counseling process known as auditing, he or she is said to be "clear."

Well that explains Tom Cruise's career plunge....as well as Katie Holmes' dad's desperate attempt to kidnap and deprogram her. Reincarnation, a space-alien overlord named Xenu, and meat bodies. Man, that's some funky religion!

Generally, I don't like to mock the religious folks, at least not the ones who don't want to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. That said, this idea of asking God to intercede into, and alter, a process to which man willingly subjected himself, seems kind of trivial and silly.....

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Two prayer services will be held at St. Louis gas stations to thank God for lower fuel prices and to ask that they continue to drop. Darrell Alexander, Midwest co-chair of the Pray at the Pump movement, says prayer gatherings will be held Monday afternoon and evening at a Mobil station west of downtown St. Louis.
Participants say they plan to buy gas, pray and then sing "We Shall Overcome" with a new verse, "We'll have lower gas prices."

An activist from the Washington D.C. area, Rocky Twyman, started the effort, saying if politicians couldn't lower gas prices, it was time to ask God to intervene.

The group thinks the prayer is helping, saying prices are starting to fall below $4 a gallon.

That's the same logic the Indians used to explain when it rained at some point after their rain dance. They're also showing how ignorant they are in thinking politicians can directly control gas prices. God gave man the intelligence and means by which he can somewhat control his environment through his actions. I think we're supposed to try that first, then pray about it. Man invented the internal comubstion engine, the petroleum markets to fuel it, and the supply/demand/price structure that controls it. To ask God to relieve us from it's effects when we are unwilling to relieve ourselves is preposterous, and itself, makes a mockery of the serious practice of religion.

While they're at it, they may as well ask for the sun to burn a little cooler, rocks to not be so hard, and ratings for Keith Olberman's show to improve.

Dalai the Dhimmi

I might have been able to gin up some sympathy for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetians and their plight against the tyrannical Chinese, that is until I read this today.....

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - The Dalai Lama said Sunday that "it's totally wrong, unfair" to call Islam a violent religion.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, appearing at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, offered a defense of Islam in response to a question about the rise of violent religious fundamentalism. He added that he has made a point of reaching out to Muslims since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

If the Dalai Lama can show me a single moderate, peace-loving Muslim in the West that is willing to take sides and publically stand against the terrorist savages, then maybe I'll give his cause the benefit of the doubt in Tibet, and I'll stop calling Islam what I think it is....a backwards, violent cult. I think he's being submissive to Islam to keep the radicals in India from sawing off his head on TV.

Coming to an e-bay auction near you

This is the big local story around Birmingham this week....

Internationally known visionary Marija Lunetti announced that the Virgin Mary has appeared to her, offered a blessing and promised to return at 10 p.m. Thursday in a field in Shelby County.

Lunetti has been staying in Shelby County at the home of Terry Colafrancesco, founder of Caritas of Birmingham, which promotes the visions that began in 1981 in Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia.

The visions have since drawn millions of pilgrims to Lunetti's home village of Medjugorje. Lunetti says the Virgin Mary has appeared to her every day since 1981, sometimes offering messages.

About 2,000 pilgrims have converged on Shelby County this week, parking alongside Shelby County 43 near the Caritas headquarters, about seven miles off U.S. 280.

10p.m. huh? How does one go about booking the Virgin Mary for an appearance? And why 10p.m.? She must have an apparition booked in Sheboygan at like 8, a haunting in Glasgow at 6, and a grilled-cheese sandwich impression in Bakersfield at 4.

And why a cow pasture in Shelby county, 7 miles off 280? As the mother of Christ, Mary should know how difficult it is to drive on 280? I mean once we build a monorail out there, it'll be more convenient. Moreover, it's July in the deep South. There are mosquitos the size of small bats down here. I wonder how much in donations Marija rakes in as she travels around the country pretending to see Mary.

Seriously though, there is actually some historical precedence to the grilled cheese apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Recently a fresco by Sergio Bonometti was discovered from the 12th century, believed to have been lost for hundreds of years, and which I've featured below. It's the Virgin Mary sharing a grilled cheese sandwich with the Baby Jesus.

Biting the hands that feed him

Here're two vastly different interpretations of the $15million that Trinity United Methodist Church recently fleeced from the American taxpayer....

DePaul University journalism professor Laura Washington, who specializes in race and politics, said Wright is a hypocrite for taking money from the government.

“On the one hand, he says, ‘God damn America’ and he says America is responsible for all the ills in the black community. On the other hand, he’s taking money from the same community he’s crucifying,” Washington said.

But another scholar who specializes in religion and politics says Wright never swore off government funding like ultra-nationalist Black Muslims have.

I never thought I'd say this but, at least the Black Muslims have the integrity to not ask for money from the object of their hatred. You can't say that about Trinity.

Andrew Walsh, associate director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life with Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., said Wright’s practices fall in line with his preaching.

“Wright believes things like the government-funded programs are a necessary compensation for the legacy of white racism, part of what’s necessary to heal the wounds inflicted over four centuries on blacks. His niche is even more specialized– he does this sort of work in the context of white denominational mainline Protestantism, which, on the whole has welcomed both him and his message.”

So in other words, our government is already in the business of paying reparations to militantly hateful blacks. I don't know about you but, when I hear the hysterical, racist, anti-white diatribes from that pulpit and see the congregation and choir stand and cheer when America is accused of being the greatest sin against God, I have to think, what a collection of hypocritical jack-asses to hate your own country so viscerally but then turn around and stick your hand out to it for grant money.......unbelievable!

When we stupidly elect the Obamessiah in November, look for lots more of your tax dollars flowing into the subversive hands of Black Liberation Theologist Churches like Trinity UM....money they'll use to perpetuate black hatred of white people.

Worst parents in the universe!

I'm generally not in favor of forced sterilization but I would make an exception in these peoples' case...

The parents of an 11-year-old Wisconsin girl, who prayed instead of seeking medical help for their diabetic child are facing homicide charges in connection with her death.

Are these two people too stupid to consider the possibility, just for a minute, that maybe God answers prayers through doctors and modern medicine? Clearly that question is rhetorical. I hope these retards contract a painful, lingering infection in prison....one that involves lower back pain and rectal bleeding.

No apple for the teacher

In what might be the only public school system in the world more dreadful than the US's, Saudi Arabia forces some of it's teachers to risk their lives daily just to go to work...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Roads in Saudi Arabia are among the most dangerous in the world, with a high rate of traffic accidents. But one type of victim stands out: female teachers, who are dying at alarming rates because of long commutes through the desert to reach schools in remote locations.

The Saudi government appoints teachers to work in small villages where local staff cannot fill all vacancies. But unlike their male counterparts, female teachers in this conservative Muslim country have difficulty living alone in the villages, forcing them to drive each day; they need permission from a male guardian to live alone and have to find a landlord willing to rent them an apartment.

Thanks to the wonderful and benevolent Religion of Peace, they cannot drive themselves to work and they cannot live without patriarchal supervision....not to mention wearing the hideous, black smocks for a 3 hour commute through the desert. It's no wonder these middle-eastern societies haven't progressed much past the 14th century when they still view women as sub-human possessions. Boy, that's some great world religion that Islam.