It's not the zombie apocalypse...

...but it's close enough:

Going out on the night of the holiday when we give thanks for what we've been blessed with, and then to stomp and trample on others to get things we don't have and don't need, with money we can't really afford to spend.

It's worse than anything George Romero envisioned.

Thanks to Drew McOmber for finding that graphic.

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Somebody help me out here...

I was horribly occupied all this past week with an assignment and am really out of touch on things.

What's this about Miley Cyrus being the next Batman?

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Danny de Gracia: more laws do not equal greater morality

Friend, fellow writer and fighter-in-the-good-fight Danny de Gracia has published some well-recommended thoughts this week about the correlation between the quantity of legislation and the resulting amount of public morality.  It has been the conventional wisdom throughout history that more laws equals a more perfect society.

But does it really?  De Gracia doesn't think so.  In fact, as he writes in separate pieces for The Washington Times as well as his own blog, the ever-growing volumes of law being produced have made things worse.  They are, in truth, a symptom of a far worse problem: the spiritual condition of the human heart, which no act of government can change.

From de Gracia's essay in The Washington Times:

When first-time candidates run for office, most pitch a platform promising “change” in the form of new laws. Incumbent legislators are often attacked by challengers not for the number of bad bills canned in committee, but for the number of introduced measures that actually made it into law.

At the Hawaii State Legislature, a newly-hired Senate analyst was once given the assignment of reading the 2011 Session Laws of Hawaii (SLH) and complained when her boss was away that she faced reading thousands of pages packed with dense legalese. A veteran House staffer simply smiled and replied, “The SLH covers a couple of months of lawmaking and is more than a foot thick. Yet the Bible contains thousands of years of God’s commands to man and is only three inches thick on average. What does that say about how many laws they’re making here?”

As that incident perfectly illustrates, legislators are lawmaking mass-producers. (Prior to going paperless, in years past whenever the Hawaii State Legislature was in session, the cost of printer paper in Honolulu would rise by a few cents.) It also underlines the more important fact that even God, who is infinitely powerful and wise, could not by the means of law alone make humans righteous or the Earth more verdant.

Laws do not make good citizens nor do they prosper the environment. As is evident by thousands of years of human civilization, the only thing laws really accomplish is condemnation for those who engage in banned behaviors.

 And from his blog piece:

Our 21st century America has become an extremely legalistic society. Chances are if you can think of something, there's a public law that taxes, regulates or bans it. Most legislators who introduce laws do so based on a belief that law somehow makes for a better society or more responsible citizenry. Yet as we have seen in recent years, the increase of laws has only meant more incarceration, more law enforcement (and tougher police tactics) and more surveillance. People need to consult a lawyer for almost everything these days because the slightest screw up could result in government fines, imprisonment or civil action.

In my article I discuss how law at its very core is flawed with respect to humanity because laws do not change the human heart, they only punish. A law can forbid perjury or fraud, but it can never make a liar honest. Another law can prohibit littering, but it cannot make a messy person neat. The human heart -whether it inclines towards evil or good - is the true driving force. A society without morals can have laws forbidding everything but without citizens who have the soul (and by this I mean heart, mind and spirit) to live right, will be marked by chaos, violence and mayhem.

(snip)

You cannot legislate righteousness. It didn't work for God (nor was it His intent to justify by the law) and it certainly won't work for humans either. This is where so-called "social conservatives" miss the mark: they think that by banning behaviors they will somehow "instruct" souls in the way of righteousness or "preserve" the character of the nation. Jesus - speaking of a man's internal heart condition - said that a good tree does not bear bad fruit, neither does a bad tree bear good fruit. Bad deeds do not spontaneously generate, they are the fruit of a bad heart. "Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit" (Matthew 12:33).

It reminds me of something that Cicero observed: the more the laws there were, the more numerous the lawbreakers.

Metaphorically, it's the political equivalent of grasping at straws: our leaders, we ourselves even, have been convinced that if we pass just one, more, law, that somehow it will magically make everything better.  And that kind of thinking is in defiance of the reality that Man, on his own, is a fallen and corrupt creature.  Nothing he can do according to his own wisdom is going to succeed... or at least survive the test of time.

Why has our country become so corrupted politically and socially?  Because her people have placed their trust and confidence in government, in political parties, in cheapened religion which makes them "feel good" but does nothing to convict and bring personal accountability.  Unfortunately, I look around and see too many people, preachers and politicians who still insist that "things will be right", if only they were in power.

Anyway, de Gracia has some eloquent elucidation in these two essays and they're well worth passing along.

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This is why we can't have nice things...

In case you missed it the first time, tonight at 7 p.m. EST the SyFy channel will be re-broadcasting its natural disaster epic Sharknado.  Last week's premiere of the movie - about a freak hurricane spawning off the coast of California and hitting Los Angeles, dropping shark-spewing tornadoes all over the place - became one of the biggest television hits of the summer.

(No, I did not watch this movie thing last week.  But the "#sharknado" hashtag on Twitter was sure a hella fun to behold!)

And then there's this, which is certainly destined to become the centerpiece of every home entertainment library it finds itself ensconced upon: The Power Rangers Legacy: The First 20 Years DVD collection.  Just in time for the twentieth anniversary of the Mighty Moron... errrr, I mean Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers show which first unleashed this plague upon the land, Saban and Shout! Media are unleashing "this limited edition home entertainment collection comes packed with every Power Rangers episode, from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to Power Rangers Megaforce, boasting over 270 hours of action-packed entertainment across 98 DVDs".

(I can't believe this franchise lasted 27 episodes, much less more than 270 hours...)

Tip o' the hat to good friend of this blog Drew Robert McOmber for alerting us to this... whatever.

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Government-supplied consumers now outnumber private producers in America

Jobs are evaporating.  Manufacturing is disappearing from our shores.  Millions upon millions of undocumented immigrants are flooding across our borders.

And now, at long last, the population of Americans on government food assistance outnumbers that of private sector employees.

This is not sustainable.

From the story at CNS News...

The number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the federal government has risen to 101 million, representing roughly a third of the U.S. population.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012.

That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of full-time private sector workers in the U.S.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 97,180,000 full-time private sector workers in 2012.

The population of the U.S. is 316.2 million people, meaning nearly a third of Americans receive food aid from the government.

  And where is a lot of that taxpayer-funded "food aid" going to?

Hairstyling and cosmetics

Booze and smokes

Lottery tickets, money orders,
cell phones, more booze, more
cigarettes

Lots of lobster and premium steak

Maybe it's finally time for the producers, the people who strive for personal achievement, the men and women of the mind, to declare a general strike.  To stop giving the products of our labors to those who take and give nothing in return.

It might be the only peaceful way to avert this:

The Course of Empire: Destruction, by Thomas Cole, 1836

Not the first time I've posted that image.  But with each passing day, it seems increasingly appropriate.

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Kermit Gosnell has chosen life

And by that I mean, Kermit Gosnell has chosen life in prison.

He could have chosen death.  Gosnell dropped his appeals in exchange for life, not death.

I'm not the first to note the irony that given a choice, Gosnell chose life.

If only his victims had been given the same choice...

Kermit Gosnell: He chose life for himself, death for babies.

Kermit Gosnell, abortion "doctor", found guilty yesterday of murdering three babies (he had been charged with killing four) during botched abortions at his "clinic". Gosnell was quoted as remarking that Baby A was "big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop."

You may not have heard much about Kermit Gosnell. In fact, you might not have heard anything at all about him. The mainstream media was curiously quiet about his case. I don't know whether it was because the details about went on in Gosnell's slaughterhouse were so gory and horrific, or because it was a story that exposed abortion for the obscenity that it is.

(You can click here to read more about the case. Much of which is about how Gosnell's primary M.O. was jabbing the babies' necks with scissors and snipping and twisting the spinal cords.)

Last week I wrote about how Ariel Castro is facing "aggravated murder" from allegedly causing the deaths of at least one unborn baby during the ten years that he and his two brothers held three women hostage in Cleveland.  The only person who was killed in that case was an unborn baby.  Not a "fetus".  Not an "unviable tissue mass".  A human being.

Kermit Gosnell is going to prison because he killed human beings.  They were humans at their most helpless and most in need of love and compassion.  Kermit Gosnell butchered them, laughed about it and made money from it.

Kermit Gosnell is not a doctor.  A doctor takes an oath to defend life.  Gosnell took innocent life.  Again and again and again.

So what's it going to be, ladies and gentlemen?  Either an unborn child is a human accorded all the rights as any other, including the right to live.  Or it is not, and Kermit Gosnell has not committed murder at all.

As I said last week: We can't have it both ways.

(By the way, that was Troy Newman of Operation Rescue who first noted the supreme irony of Gosnell choosing life in prison over the death penalty.)

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All I'm going to say about Jason "Look At Me I'm Gay" Collins

Jason Collins is no Jackie Robinson.

In 1947 there was an institutionalized discrimination against non-white athletes playing in major league sports.  Jackie Robinson broke through that barrier not because he happened to have been a black man but because he was very, very good at playing baseball.

In 2013 there is no institutionalized discrimination against gay athletes, lesbian athletes, bisexual athletes or transgender athletes.

So what does Jason Collins think he is proving by telling everyone "I'm gay"?

Does that make him a better basketball player?  I thought the whole point of sports as a multi-billion dollar commercial venture was to hire the best players possible, manage the team to the best of your ability and turn a profit by winning lots of games, selling lots of tickets and letting fans buy lots of over-priced beer.

So where does "I'm gay" figure into the scheme?

I've worked many jobs over the years.  Including alongside individuals who were gay or lesbian.  I respected them because of their talents and their abilities, and even sought to emulate their skills as professionals.  What they did on their own time wasn't my business and they had the maturity to not make it anyone's business either.

I used to work in a sandwich shop.  What would I have thought if one of my co-workers declared to everyone in the place "Look!  I'm gay!"?  Not much, truth be known.  Maybe it's just me but I've never been able to tell the difference between a straight sandwich and a gay sandwich.

Jason Collins however may have shot himself in the foot with this one.  He has put the emphasis on himself and his sexual orientation, not on his abilities as a player.  That has never been a good thing for the morale of a sports team.  If I were the owner of an NBA team, I would have to deem Collins a liability to my franchise.  If Collins goes no further with his career, he'll get lauded as a "sports pioneer".  If he decides he wants to keep playing professionally well... that's the thing, isn't it?  How many team owners are going to turn Collins down at the risk of being branded "homophobe" by the media?  Even if bringing him aboard solely because of his orientation means surrendering legitimately superior talent?

"Culturally progressive"?  Whatever.  But it sure as hell isn't good business.

It used to be that a person's merit and identity was base on his talents, his abilities, his beliefs and his virtues.  Today the notion of "identity" has become diminished to the point of meaningless.  Too many people want to feel significant and important because they feel entitled to it and not because they've earned it.  And there is no more cheap and gutteral way of demanding respect for that alleged identity than to say "I'm gay!  LOVE ME!"

Jason Collins and too many others want acceptance for their choice of lifestyle, not appreciation for their talents.  It's enough to make this writer wonder how much talent Mr. Collins must have, at all...

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Lovecraft the prophet

"That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."

-- from The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft

It was 1928 when Howard Phillips Lovecraft published The Call of Cthulhu: his seminal classic which forever altered the nature of horror fiction.

That passage has stuck with me from the first time that I read this short story in the fall of 1996.  And I've thought about it countlessly in the years since.  It has been difficult not to see mankind through the vision of those cultists waiting for when the stars are right: when the incomprehensible horror that is Cthulhu will arise at last from the cyclopean city of R'yleh far below the waters of the Pacific and lay waste to the Earth.  Until then dead Cthulhu waits, dreaming...

Mankind, "free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside."  Men "shouting and killing and revelling in joy."

It has been eighty-five years since Lovecraft wrote those words.  And with each passing year it seems as if humanity... or at least the civilized realm of it... is descending further and further into the barbaric, unrestrained frenzy of pleasure and pain that he described in his tale.

Slaying the innocent for sake of money and convenience.  Government gone lawless.  Men and women descending beneath their nature.  Wars without reason or end.  Conscience and ethics spurned utterly.  Good proclaimed to be evil, and evil to be good.

Perhaps more than we have realized... maybe more than we would like to acknowledge... H.P. Lovecraft had a prescience of far greater clarity than any prophet or futurist of this age.

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And the band played on: Obama's House party at taxpayer expense

One of the classic signs of imminent collapse of a culture is the brazen decadence that its leaders and elites start to exhibit.  Nero and Commodus magnified lavishness to scales unprecedented even as the Roman Empire was rotting from the inside and slowly collapsing.  The nigh-invincible Babylonians were in a drunken stupor of self-edification until Cyrus invaded and Alexander after him.  Louis XVI wasn't a "bad" man per se but he was too busy partying and having fun while being horribly negligent about the affairs of the French people... and then he lost his head as bad as anyone could.

There are too many other examples that could be cited from the tale of years.  And you would think that we might have learned something from six millenia's worth of them...

But here was the scene last night at the White House.  In spite of the "sequester" that is halting performances by the Blue Angels and nearly derailed the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn and is now threatening to shut down air traffic control towers, Barack and Michelle Obama held a glitzy, vainglorious command performance in their own honor.

It was called the "Memphis Soul" concert.  Queen Latifah, Justin Timberlake, Booker T. Jones, Al Green, Cyndi Lauper and others performed for the President and First Lady and their closest friends and supporters.

But none of the peons got to attend.  We did get to foot the bill for this however.  The money for this and the nine other concerts the Obamas have "hosted" all came from the publick treasuries.  But if you feel bad about that, at least PBS let everyone watch it live last night...

If a group of musicians want to celebrate soul music, fine.  I don't see a problem with that.  But they should do it on their own dime, not mine or anybody else's.  I don't even have a problem with them using the White House for their celebration of an art form... but they should pay rent for the privilege.  Pay it to us.  Because that's our house, not Barack Obama's.  The President - whoever he or she might be - is only a temporary tenant.  We The People own it... or we're supposed to own it anyway.  It's funny: celebrities like Timberlake, Queen Latifah and others can get the red carpet treatment at the White House, but school children are completely shut out.

There's not enough money for you and I to visit the people's House but there's plenty of money for the Obamas to get down and boogie.  It's like grand theft squattery.

Let's drop the pretenses.  This was all about Barack and Michelle Obama feting themselves.  Unfortunately it is not a new occurrence.  I've watched shameful waste of our money at the White House for years now, irrespective of whether it's a Democrat or Republican in the Oval Office.  And this should be something to outrage everyone regardless of their political affiliations.  But it has to be said: Obama has taken it to a whole new level.  Between he and Vice President Biden, they've had eight vacations so far this year.  Also paid for by us (Biden's one-night stay at a hotel in Paris cost $585,000: that better have been the best mint on a pillow in the history of anything).

Eight vacations in just over three months?  In that same time I've been doing everything from writing to computer support to farm work to make ends meet.  I'm looking hard for employment... and I'd dare say that I've done more real work than Obama and Biden put together.  Where the hell is my vacation, huh?!

A lot of people are looking for good, honest work.  They want to support themselves, their families, make a better future for their children.  What little money they can scrape together, they want and deserve to use it for their own benefit.

It wasn't meant for Barack Obama or anyone else to squander on parties for themselves.

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U.S. Government spent $100,000 determining if Jesus died for the Klingons

Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma has been digging into the details of the federal budget. Among the things our government is spending our money upon: inventing roll-up beef jerky, the study of goldfish swimming patterns and an iPhone app for scheduling coffee breaks.

And then there's this: $100,000 of taxpayer money to look into the question of whether Jesus Christ died for the Klingon race. Yeah those ridge-headed alien warriors from the Star Trek franchise.

Incidentally, all of the above examples were found in the United States military's budget.

From the story by Heather Clark at Christian News Network...

An Oklahoma senator has released a report outlining what he believes is some of the Pentagon’s most wasteful spending. Among a number of odd items includes a workshop on how Christianity would be affected if aliens were proven to exist.

Senator Tom Coburn is known to be the “waste-watcher” on Capitol Hill, as he investigates unnecessary spending in various branches of the government. On Thursday, he issued what some consider to be a laughable list of Defense Department expenditures that have nothing to do with defense.

In addition to $1.5 billion being spent... was a workshop blending Christianity with the existence of aliens.

The event, entitled “Did Jesus Die for Klingons Too?,” focused on “the implications for Christianity if intelligent life were to be found on other planets.” According to the Global Post, actors such as LeVar Burton and Nichelle Nichols were present, and an “intergalactic gala celebration” was included, at which attendees were urged to don “starship cocktail attire.”

Klingons are are a group of aliens from the fictional sci-fi television and movie series Star Trek, which originated in 1966 and continues (at least in movie format) to present day. The series deals with a band of aliens and humans that seek to solve the problems of the universe, tackling topics such as imperialism, class warfare and racism. Some episodes are also said to have addressed sexism, feminism and religion.

And to think there are some who wonder why so many Americans lately want to secede from the federal government.

$100,000 to look into salvation for the Klingons. I don't care if it's only one dollar: that's our money which has been entrusted into the public treasury... and it is a sacred trust. Even a mere cent used on such a frivolous matter is inexcusable.

But just for humor's sake...

vaD joH'a' muSHa' qo'vetlh ghaH ngeHta'Daj neH puq vaj 'lv HartaH Daq ghaH dlchDaq yln reH

(Courtesy of MrKlingon.org)

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Stop Christmas, I want to get off

Let's dispense with the floridity and get to the point:

The holiday season has been damn near ruined by commercial madness.

I'm hearing that some families are having their Thanksgiving gatherings destroyed by Wal-Mart and other retailers mandating their employees be working on Thursday morning. Yeah you read that right: a number of stores are opening at noon on Thanksgiving when everyone else will be gorging on turkey and watching football.

I got a bad vibe when stores like Wal-Mart and Target began putting the Christmas stuff out before Halloween. That's two full months of holiday marketing. One-sixth of the entire year devoted to holiday spending.

Now the radio stations are following suit. 99.5 out of Greensboro - which has traditionally not begun playing Christmas songs until the day after Thanksgiving - is already blaring out 24 hours round the clock of holiday music.

Gad-dommit, STOP IT ALREADY!! I'm bipolar dammit! It's already hard enough for me to slow down my mind. I don't need the year to go by any faster! Neither do most other people. But that's what is happening as a result of the extended holiday season: the year is going by faster. Too fast. The holidays should come at us bursting with joy, not creeping upon us like so much unstoppable kudzu.

I'm this close to just calling off Christmas entirely this year. Not only not giving presents but demanding that I don't receive presents either. This ain't what Christmas is meant to be about. It's supposed to be about family, friends, good times, being thankful for what God has blessed us with...

Did we not learn anything from all those years of A Charlie Brown Christmas?

This is going to be the first Christmas that I spend without my mother. A few friends during the year also lost parents. For some, they know that this will be the last time they will have the holidays with a loved one.

Not all the money in the world, no amount of dollars spent, will ever fill the vacuum left by a beloved friend or family member.

Call me sentimental, but it seems like this is a time to be appreciative of what we have now, instead of accumulating mere material "things". I for one would certainly like to have Mom for another Thanksgiving and Christmas. For the rest of my life I will be haunted by old hurts between us that never really got resolved. It would have been nice to have the time to reconcile those and have just a little more time to share. That will never happen. But I refuse to let that be with anyone else that I care for.

This Thanksgiving, I choose to be thankful. This Christmas, if I don't receive anything at all, that's not going to keep me from enjoying the company of those that I love.

When I consider the madness that will no doubt ensue in a few days' time, it makes me almost wish that this country would have a hard crash. Perhaps then it would bring us to our senses. Compel us to get our priorities back in order. Don't get me wrong: I enjoy getting some Christmas presents: it just isn't perfect unless I get a new pair of sweatpants, some LEGOs and at least one Star Wars toy. But is any of that the focal point of my holidays? More like a nice cherry on top.

Anyhoo, Jennifer Waters at MarketWatch has a considerably recommendable story about retailers ruining Thanksgiving in their war for "Black Friday" bucks. You might have already read it 'cuz it's making the rounds quite a lot already. It's enough to make one pause, and forsake heading to the stores at all on Thanksgiving Day.

Who knows: if enough people stay home, maybe the retailers will come to figure out that it's not worth the money to open the doors earlier than sanity allows.

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No more Twinkies: Labor union destroys Hostess

I hope the idiots in the photo on the right are happy.  Those are some of the members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union who went on strike against their employer: Hostess Brands, Inc.

The union has about 5,000 people working at Hostess. As of this morning, their months-long strike has put themselves and thirteen thousand others out of work.

The big news at the time of this writing is Hostess going out of business and liquidating its assets. The company could no longer afford to be in business as a result of the strike. More than 18,500 people are now unemployed.

What a colossal committing of ass-hattery.

But hey, at least the employees responsible can rely on the union bosses to back them up. Not to mention getting government unemployment checks. All out of spite for a measly 2% decrease in pension that Hostess put on the bargaining table. Yeah, win the fight for a tiny amount of pension but put nearly 20,000 people out of work and destroy a favorite snack food for everyone.

Like they say on the basketball court: "Smooth move Ex-lax!"

Labor unions are worse than useless. If this doesn't demonstrate that, I don't know what possibly could.

Better stock up on your favorite Hostess-brand goodies, folks...

 

...'cuz they're about to be gone. Forever.

(I can't imagine any other company right now wanting to buy out Hostess and putting their goodies back into production: it'd cost too much to relocate factories to right-to-work states, and would anyone in their right mind in this economic environment want to go through the hassle anyway?)

It is the end of an era, my friends. A darn shame too, seeing as how Hostess snacks helped to end the reign of terror of so many supervillains back in the day.

Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Ho-Hos, Fruit Pies, Wonder Bread: get 'em now, friends and neighbors. Their value will be greater than gold as barter items on the underground market when the sh-t hits the fan. Probably sooner than later.

But if I were the CEO of Hostess, I wouldn't have put out a press release or called a news conference about what has been done to his company.

This is how I would have delivered the message...

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Bold prophecy about Election Day

You know what's going to happen to America after Tuesday?

Nothing. Not a damned frazzling thing.

We will still be taxed too much.

Abortion will still go on.

TSA will still be molesting children and elderly people.

We will continue to be over-extended militarily.

Companies will keep relocating their production overseas.

Children in our schools will continue to be taught to obey and not question instead of encouraged to think for themselves.

Government power over us will continue to increase instead of diminishing.

Our economy won't stop being based around fiat currency.

The Constitution will continue to be ignored by lawmakers and the judiciary and the White House.

NOTHING will change after Tuesday... except perhaps a different set of faces upon which we'll blame for the folly that we ourselves allowed to happen. Because we didn't want to buck the status quo.

Some call that "being comfortable". I call that "being enslaved".

All we'll be doing on Tuesday so far as higher offices go is choosing a new overseer for the plantation. The funny thing is: we can choose to walk off of it any damned time we want.

So why aren't we?

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Two small musings on politics

Voting in America has devolved into middle-school immaturity: dominated by petty cliques, peer pressure and lots of masturbation (figuratively, thank goodness...).

Allow me to remark that I know lots of real middle-schoolers, mostly from community theater... and they ALL act more mature than the voting adults are right now!

Then I have to observe that the vast majority of political news, indeed news that passes for "top stories" among the television/print/major online media, are polls. Nothing but polls. Polls, polls, polls...

That's what American politics has become: a popularity contest. We aren't even pretending that it's not anymore.

We're supposed to be better than this.

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And pray at the Republican convention too, right? Right? Hello...?

A few weeks from now, on the eve of the Democrat National Convention starts in Charlotte, an event called Charlotte714 will be held at the Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre.

Here is how it's being described by USNews.com...

On the night before the Democratic convention in Charlotte, at the tip of America's bible belt, more than 40 evangelical, Baptist and other Christian churches will host a massive church service in the 20,000 seat Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre.

"Charlotte714," as the Sept. 2 event is being called, was inspired by bible verse 2 Chronicles 7:14, which instructs that if people "turn from their wicked ways," God will forgive their sins. The group's website says that with the country's focus on Charlotte that week, in a "morally degenerating culture," it is an opportunity to organize a service that will help "[God's] church return to Him."

So a bunch of evangelical Christians are going to show up at the Democratic convention and pray for people to "turn from their wicked ways".

And I'm assuming that this same group of evangelical Christians will also be having a similar event prior to the Republican convention in Tampa, right?

I mean, why should a group of churches be at one political party's gathering, apparently implying that said party is "wicked" and "evil", and not at the other party's gathering?

Are these evangelical Christians implying that because one political party is "wicked", that the other one must be "good"?

I wouldn't dare make a judgment about any person's condition of his or her soul. But all the same: these Christians, however well-meaning they may be...

...well, they just don't get it. About how corrupt and fallen and broken this world is. Including the United States of America. Especially the United States of America.

These people expect that this country will have a "miraculous turn-around", if only the right people get elected into office. Funny thing: I've seen firsthand "their people" get into office. And nothing happened. Nothing substantially good anyway.

These people perceive themselves as holy warriors in the "Culture War". They should take off the blinders and realize that the Culture War has been lost and it's their OWN fault as much as anyone else's.

If these evangelical types were at all consistent, they would be planning and staging an event no less as massive at the Republican convention also. But, we all know that's not going to happen. And I wouldn't want them to be at the Republican convention any more than I see how they will do any good at the Democrat one.

These people are trying to save the world with political power, and they have become so blinded by might - by their own - that they either can't or they won't acknowledge how they themselves have driven America away from God.

We can serve God, or we can serve power. But we cannot serve both.

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I'm NOT eating at Chick-fil-A today...

...and you wanna know why?

Because today I just don't feel like I want to eat chicken.

It has nothing to do at all with the recent statements by the company's president, Dan Cathy, regarding his beliefs on homosexuality and "gay marriage". It was a statement of his personal opinion and he's entitled to have them. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with him, but that's not the point of this post.

So today has been declared "Let's Go To Chick-fil-A And Buy Their Food And Show We Support Traditional Families For God And Country Day Hurrah For Us!" or something. It's in response to the boycott that some "gay rights" groups (I never understood the concept of "gay rights" either: what rights exactly do some homosexuals believe they're being deprived of? I've never seen a "Straights Only" lunch counter in all my years of living in the South of all places...) have called of the restaurant chain.

So of course, hundreds of thousands and perhaps even a million or so self-described conservatives are descending upon Chick-fil-A locations across the fruited plain to rally their support behind Cathy, anti-homosexuality, and whatever else that "conservative leadership" (whatever the hell that means) has decided.

But I'm not going to Chick-fil-A today. And I've been called conservative (and "closet conservative", whatever the hell that means too) a heap of times.

I just don't feel like eating chicken today.

I mean, I've had chicken two of the past three days. Why would I want to go anywhere today to eat more chicken... is that "eat mor chikin"?

Now, is that supposed to be at all indicative of where I stand on this particular issue?

I'm not hungry for chicken today. Any of my conservative friends and colleagues got a problem with that?

And if we have arrived at a place where we feel that we must be a component of collectivized thought in order to "matter", to have any sense of worth in this world, then we've a much bigger problem we should be addressing than one company president's personal beliefs.

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DC Comics is making WATCHMEN 2. No, really.

What. The. F-CK?!?!?

(I came waaaaaay too close to writing out that full word, folks. Only the better angels of my nature intervened, but not nearly enough.)

"It's a joke. It's all a joke."

Except it's not. This is actually happening.

Why? Well from the story at IGN's Comics News...

"It's our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant," said DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. "After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original."

DiDio and Lee don't have an effin' clue, do they? Makes me wonder if they've even read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel. Me, I've read Watchmen at least 200 times since first discovering it in the winter of 1990. And every time that I re-read it, I discover something new.

This new project isn't a sequel, and "Watchmen 2" isn't even its proper title. It's being called Before Watchmen: a series of prequels, each one focusing on a different character from Watchmen. And none of them are needed or even wanted at all. Looking around the Intertubes today, all I'm seeing is disgust that this is happening. Indeed, I'm seeing some raw hatred toward DC Comics right now over this.

Suffice it to say, Alan Moore is not happy either...

"I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago... I don't want money. What I want is for this not to happen. As far as I know, there weren't that many prequels or sequels to Moby Dick."

Mash here for more about this damnable sacrilege that sucks donkeys balls to no end.

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Department of Homeland Security issues turkey fryer safety warning

Janet "Big Sister" Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security (okay let's be fair, it was George W. Bush's "brilliant" idea first) has decided that turkey fryers are a dire threat to national security. "Make sure the turkey is completely thawed before placing in a fryer", the DHS is warning in a new video.

Hey, Janet Napolitano: I'm a hella lot safer with my turkey deep-fryer than anyone is with your X-ray body scanners! You know: the X-ran body scanners that YOU REFUSE TO PUT YOURSELF THROUGH.

Who do these people think they are?

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See BS: Tiffany Network caught discriminating against Paul, Bachmann

If CBS or any other "major media outlet" alleges that this is a matter of time constraint, then I'm gonna have to call it that I see B.S.

Look, five years ago I was one of sixteen candidates for school board in my home county, and in the final week before the election we all took part (well, one of us declined to participate, but that's another story) in a public candidates forum. A "debate", if you will. And each of us got ample time to state our beliefs and opinions on the various issues. For the very same questions, mind ya. Many people to this day still tell me that they got a kick out of my answer about whether school boards should have the power to tax: I told the audience "Look, if I get on that board and we have that power, there are good people on that board but I'm telling you now: DON'T TRUST US!! Don't trust us with that power to tax you!" But I digress...

The point is, even with a considerable number of individual candidates for office, there is PLENTY of equal time and opportunity to be afforded them by the organization sponsoring the debate... IF that organization is determined to be fair, balanced and impartial, that is.

Didn't Howard Stern once say that the term "Tiffany Network" reminded him too much of the name of a prostitute? If so, then last night CBS was certainly caught in the act of selling out its principles. What few it had left anyway...

During yesterday evening's televised debate of the Republican candidates for President, Ron Paul was given a scant 89 seconds of airtime to answer questions and lay out his claim for the Oval Office. Fellow candidate Michelle Bachmann received similarly reduced on-air exposure. The lion's share of the questions and time for answers went to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich.

It is now a clearly documented fact that CBS was practicing deliberate discrimination against those candidates that it believes the American citizenry would do just as well to ignore.

CBS political director John Dickerson inadvertently forwarded the Bachmann campaign an e-mail stating that Bachmann would not be given much show time because...

“Okay let’s keep it loose since she’s not going to get many questions and she’s nearly off the charts in the hopes that we can get someone else."

CBS later said that they were trying to be "realistic" since Bachmann is "polling" about 4% nationally.

And this blogger says: that don't don't hunt. A study released last month by University of Minnesota notes that Ron Paul, though polling a strong third or fourth nationally, has been given the least amount of debate time during every televised forum.

Now if this ain't intentional bias and discrimination on the part of a major television news outlet, then... what is it? How can anyone defend CBS - and indeed, most of the more corporate-run press in this country - as being an objective and impartial observer of this country and this world?

Some are probably reading this and no doubt determined to tell me "Chris, CBS is a multi-billion dollar corporation and you're just a guy with a blog: what the hell do you think you can do about it?"

True, I don't have CBS's viewing numbers.

But I can document that network's abuse of journalistic ethics. Which in my opinion, this is an example of.

And there are a lot of others out there in the ether of the Intertubes who are likewise documenting it.

Meanwhile, networks like CBS keep losing viewers, 'cuz there are a lot of folks out there who are getting sick and tired of seeing B.S. too.

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Les Misérables: Women steal 75 deodorant sticks, as pet cemeteries ordered to stop burying humans

In the state of New York a government agency is ordering pet cemeteries to cease and desist with interring the cremated remains of human pet owners with their beloved dogs and cats.

Meanwhile in Fort Pierce, Florida (I happen to have lots of family there) two women were taped by video surveillance at a Winn Dixie supermarket stealing seventy-five sticks of deodorant. Police figure the ladies will try to sell the deodorant to convenience stores.

Not the craziest stories that I've heard lately, but certainly worth passing along for your mirth and merriment :-P

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