Stuff worth writing about
I found an interesting chart.
The top bar is the party that controlled Congress. It seems like the best situation for the American economy is a Democratic president with a Republican Congress.
And as long as the Democrats nominate anyone other than Hillary Clinton, that’s how I’m gonna vote.
Just in time for the November elections, I found this hilarious article ranking the top ten stupidest Congressmen. It’s not political–there are both Democrats and Republicans represented, and the stupidity is usually not policy related. One of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.
An excerpt:
10. Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Bunning is a Hall of Fame pitcher who, during his eight years in office, has shown “little interest in legislation that doesn’t concern baseball,” writes Time magazine. And Kentucky doesn’t even have a major-league baseball team. His campaign style is so completely unhinged that political observers openly speculated in 2004 that the then-73-year-old was suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s. “His is a tragic case of descent into senility,” says one Hill staffer, “except without the ‘descent’ bit.” To scotch the rumors, Bunning was forced to hold a press conference and offer up doctor’s reports.Among his antics that year: Telling a group of GOP fundraisers that his Italian-American opponent, Daniel Mongiardo, physically resembled Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay; referring on the stump to the tragic terror attacks of November 11, 2001; and adding a federal security detail to his campaign in the firm conviction that members of Al Qaeda—the masterminds of November 11—had targeted him for elimination. (”There may be strangers among us,” he darkly informed a Paducah TV crew.)
Behold the awesome power of gerrymandering!
The Senate and the House both passed identical bills that eliminate the right to fair trial, also known as habeas corpus for “enemy combatants.” Enemy combatants, it turns out means “whomever Bush wants to call an enemy combatant.”
I could write an extended rant about how our democracy has finally bitten the dust. I could write about how 219 out of the 233 Republicans in the house voted to stab us–all of us–in the back for short term political gain. I could mention that only 1 Republican in the Senate voted against this atrocity. I could lament the fact that I voted for the party that has turned against an 800 year tradition of freedom.
I could point out that while today’s “enemy combatants” are Muslim fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists might not be all that far behind.
I could do all that, but it would really depress me. So, instead, here’s a funny picture I found on Flickr.
Just how much are you going to pay for those mangos?
EDIT: Added link to Flickr page for the photo that I found. Welcome Reddit readers!
So, a friend stuck in the dorms at BJU tells me that blogjones.com, my old blog, is blocked at BJU under the classification of personal pages.
I really hate censorware. It’s the primary reason I didn’t want to stay in the dorms at BJU. I wouldn’t mind if they only blocked obviously offensive material. But they block “personal pages” and humor sites like Homestar Runner. They even block some sites under a category of “anime.”
They block every free blogging service, they block Flickr, and they block all the images hosted by yahoo.com.
They have a tremendously fast connection, but you can’t get to half of the internet.
Fortunately, BJU users can still get here to read this. For now.
If you are going to attempt to blow up an abortion clinic, at least ensure that the clinic you are attempting to blow up actually performs abortions.
(Via reddit)
There’s an insightful article on the Guardian entitled “The weekend’s 9/11 horror-fest will do Osama bin Laden’s work for him.” I call this insightful largely because I had had the same thought myself. Here is an excerpt:
I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power. Americans are more afraid of jihadists this year than last. In a Transatlantic Trends survey, the number of them describing international terrorism as an “extremely important threat” went up from 72% to 79%. As for European support for America’s world leadership, that has plummeted from 64% in 2002 to 37% this year.
Bin Laden might boast that he had achieved terrorism’s equivalent of an atomic chain reaction: a self-regenerating cycle of outrage and foreign-policy overkill, aided by anniversary journalism and fuelled by the grim scenarios of security lobbyists. He now had only to drop an occasional CD into the offices of al-Jazeera, and Washington and London quaked with fear. The authorities could be reduced to million-dollar hysterics by a phial of nail varnish, a copy of the Qur’an, or a dark-skinned person displaying a watch and a mobile phone.
I encourage you to read the whole thing.
It is the business of terrorists to incite terror. A terrified populace is an easily controlled populace. As the failed “liquid explosive” bombing attempt in London demonstrates, terrorists don’t even have to kill anyone to incite panic and sweeping, ill-thought-out changes in policy.
I am tired of this. Enough! Enough of the media constantly replaying those same terrible hours over and over again. Enough of the herd of the Western World quivering in terror of the Jihadist wolves. Enough of politicians using 9/11 to justify further and further attacks on liberty and human decency.
So, I for my part choose not to wallow in the horror and terror of those attacks five years ago. I do not plan to watch the movies. I will not listen to CNN’s non-stop coverage. I will not engage in the 9/11 Festival of Horror.
Enough!
Y’all know that I’m not a huge fan of our current aviation security measures, right? Well, here’s an interesting idea on how to solve that problem:
I think someone should try to blow up a plane with a piece of ID, just to watch the TSA’s mind implode.
Quoting Cory Doctorow: “Could the TSA muster the will to fight a war on identification?”
I wonder what they would do…. Perhaps require air travellers to be implanted with an RFID chip? Hmm…
Rev. Gregory A. Boyd, an evangelical pastor of a church in Maplewood, Minnesota, preached a series of messages entitled “The Cross and the Sword” in which he stated that the church should stay out of politics.
According to the New York Times, the pastor is not a liberal; he opposes both abortion and gay marriage. His message, although presented for his conservative church, is intended for all politically-motivated churches, whether Republican or Democrat.
From the article, Boyd in his own words:
“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.
“I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”
I have long maintained that separation of church and state is not the great evil that my Christian school teachers and pastors have made it out to be. In fact, separation of church and state is one of the things that makes this country great.
Think about it: Should you have to be a member of a certain church to vote? Should the government be collecting tithes in the same way they do the income tax? Should the government publish Bibles? What about Korans? Which church should the government promote?
Likewise, from the church’s side: Should your church promote the candidate that opposes abortion and gay marriage, or the one that supports feeding the poor and giving medicine to the sick?
Here is the primary reason that evangelical churches should not push politics from either side of the aisle: The goal of the church is to get as many people saved as possible and to get those people to follow Christ’s teachings to the best of their ability. But when the preacher starts, say, praising the war in Iraq, people who oppose the war are instantly turned off from the whole message. At best, it’s a distraction from the gospel. At worst, the people who oppose the war reject the gospel along with your politics. In other words, people are going to hell because you wouldn’t stop promoting your politics from the pulpit.
By all means, promote your politics with rallys, advertising, protests, and petitions. But for God’s sake–and I mean that literally–don’t try to affililate Christ with your political views. Stick to preaching about Christ and his teachings from the pulpits of your churches.
(Thanks to The Sycamore Tree for the link.)
Today, I discovered a far more accurate term for what has traditionally been called Gun Control: Victim Disarmament.
Since the current restrictions on guns tend to prevent law-abiding citizens from having guns while failing to stop criminals from acquring them, the current policies effectively prevent victims from defending themselves. This term draws attention to that defect in our current policy.
Thanks to Tom W. Bell of Agoraphilia for pointing the term out on his blog.
Over the past few days, terrorists have done immense damage to the air travel industry without even blowing up a single plane.
By creating fear (or, “terror,” if you will), they have caused the airline industry and the government-owned Transportation Security Administration to overreact against all the normal citizens of western countries. Before, flying was a mild inconvenience: you’d have to go through security, take off your shoes, and go through. Now, they’re taking away iPods, books, bottles of water, cell phones, laptops. Basically, you will sit on the plane, staring forward with hands in your lap, hungry, thirsty, and unable to do anything about it.
So, who’s up for a trip to Europe?! Anybody…?
It’s even gotten to the point that people can’t fly because they wear those gel insoles on their shoes.
What makes this all worse is that the TSA is making exceptions for baby formula and medication. Now, if I’m a terrorist, I’m pretty sure that I can get a bottle of medication to hide my “liquid explosives” in. Essentially, the TSA is inconveniencing millions of Americans for no reason at all. If you make exceptions for any reason, then the whole system is worthless.
Here’s what I think they should do: Go back to the system we had a week ago. These ineffective security measures will kill the air travel industry, because no normal customer is going to willingly put up with it. You can’t stop a determined person from bringing liquids onto the airplane, because drug runners have been doing it for years by swallowing them in little plastic bags.
What’s next? Everyone has to get their stomachs pumped at the airport and endure a full body cavity search?
You can’t stop it, so quit hurting the millions of innocent air travelers by trying.