In this poll from April, SurveyUSA found that over 6% of Americans - that's 18 million people - have been Rickrolled.

Labels: Fun

One of the major issues differences in this campaign has been the two candidates' positions on the immoral and irresponsible war in Iraq. Barack Obama, who was right in opposing the war from the very beginning, has proposed a 16-month timetable for getting our soldiers out of there; George W. Bush and his buddy John McCain, who were responsible for starting the war, have said that while it would be nice to withdraw soldiers, they're comfortable leaving them there for years, decades or even, say, a century.

Now Bush/McCain are coming around to Barack Obama's position on the issue, agreeing to a "time horizon," which is not to be confused with a timetable - after all, a table is furniture, and a horizon is a geographic entity. (In every other way, a time horizon and a timetable are indistinguishable from one another.) The only difference now between the Obama position (held by Barack Obama) and the Obama Lite position (held by Bush/McCain) is the length of this timetable - err, time horizon: Obama says by the end of 2010, Obama Lite say by the end of 2012.

Well, today is the moment of truth - because Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (the democratically elected leader of the sovereign nation of Iraq) says he agrees with Obama in wanting American soldiers out by the end of 2010.

In fact, he explicitly said he agreed with Barack Obama.

So now we see exactly how sovereign this new sovereign nation is: Will Bush/McCain do as the government of the sovereign nation of Iraq asks and start planning for a 2010 withdrawal, or will they ignore the request of the sovereign nation of Iraq and keep American soldiers there even after the sovereign nation's government has asked us to leave?

Ball's in your court, Mr. President. Will you do the right thing, or will you ignore the will of the sovereign nation your soldiers are occupying as well as that of your own people?

Labels: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Iraq, John McCain, Politics

They just launched a new website - complete with a letter of invitation from Brian McLaren.

Sign up! Donate! Tell your friends... we're taking back Christianity from the charlatans and demagogues who have hijacked it.

Labels: Barack Obama, Matthew 25 Network, Politics, Religion

Let me state at the outset that I don't like the idea of state initiatives determining marriage equality. This is a matter of civil rights; to my mind, antigay laws are the same as the anti-miscegenation laws of the last century. Civil rights shouldn't be up to majority rule; they should be guaranteed at all levels of government and protected through the court system. Despite the braying of the "Christian" Right, we live in a constitutional democracy - with the Constitution (both state and federal) protecting the rights of all even against the majority.

Nevertheless, it's encouraging to read that the unequal-marriage initiative put forward by antigay bigots in California is losing by nine points, 51%-42%. People are finally figuring out that equal marriage does not cause (a) earthquakes, (b) economic disaster, (c) the collapse of marriage everywhere, or (d) fireballs from the sky. And they're figuring out that gays and lesbians deserve the same right to marry the person they love as straight people do.

Perhaps there is hope for us after all...

Labels: California, GLBT Rights, Politics

Labels: John McCain, Politics

Editor's Note: This is the first post in a series I'm starting, where I find people who claim to be Christian acting in extremely un-Christian ways and, rather than resort to the usual namby-pamby language used by Christians on the left side of the spectrum, actually call them out for heresy.

I'm actually a bit surprised I haven't written about Bill Donohue, president of the ultra-right-wing Catholic League, in the past. It's not like he hasn't taken every opportunity available to act like a horse's ass and offend - well, really, anyone who isn't also a right-wing Catholic.

But if he wasn't guilty of the deep heresy and sacrilege of misrepresenting Christ before, he most certainly is now. Here's the story:

Recently, a student at the University of Central Florida - a public school - removed the Eucharist from the campus Roman Catholic church instead of eating it as he was supposed to. Now, I know what the Eucharist means to Catholics, and I understand why the church would get a bit upset about this, but at this point it's a local issue - church calls up kid, kid says "okay," returns Eucharist, problem solved. Right?

But wait - here's Bill Donohue! He wouldn't let any opportunity pass to make some (mostly) innocent kid's life a living hell! He and his "Catholic" League (real Catholicism, while problematically sexist and homophobic, still shouldn't be characterized by Donohue's asshattishness) decided that this kid hadn't been punished enough and made a big case out of it.

“We don’t know 100% what Mr. Cooks motivation was,” said Susan Fani a spokesperson with the local Catholic diocese. “However, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.”

A hate crime? I mean, I know you're all trying to play the victim here because that's what you pathetic people do, but a frakkin' hate crime?

The kid is receiving death threats now! Bill Donohue's "Christians" are trying to get him kicked out of school (and Fox News, true to asshat-enabling form, tells people in the article exactly how to file a complaint against this kid, no matter whether they have any connection to UCF or not) for taking a wafer out of church. Seriously, I know Roman Catholics believe that it's the actual body, but I think the "Catholic" League has forgotten exactly whose body it is - the body of a man who preached forgiveness, reconciliation, and love, not vengefulness, bitterness, and hate.

So that's it, right? Wrong. A University of Minnesota professor named PZ Myers blogged about this - very irreverently and offensively, I'll admit - on his personal website, as is his right as a human being with the right to free speech. Bill Donohue, who can't let an opportunity pass to (a) make another person's life a living hell, and (b) convince even more people that he's a flaming asshole who has no earthly clue who Jesus Christ actually is, decided that he has to go, too.

Now Prof. Myers is receiving death threats and hate mail as well - most of which are, typical of the kind of mouth-breathing Neanderthals who send death threats to people for writing on the Internet, characterized by poor spelling, grammar, and no evidence of rational thought - and, what's worse, his university president is receiving demands that he be fired. For posting on his personal website.

So I'm going to do two things here:

A. I'm going to ask my readership - all three of you - to please send an email to UMN president Robert Bruininks supporting Prof. Myers's right to free speech (even if you disagree with what he said, which I do, at least with the offensive part in question). Please be respectful, use your full name, and do all those spelling and grammar things that death-threat-sending Neanderthals haven't quite mastered yet.

B. I'm going to call out Donohue and his merry band of haters for what they are - heretics and blasphemers. If it is heresy and blasphemy to add an iota to a single word in a creed, then surely it is heresy and blasphemy to represent the Christ of love and reconciliation with words and actions of hate and vengefulness. It's time to be bold and say that Bill Donohue and the "Catholic" League are, in fact, acting against Christ, and need to repent of their hatefulness.

Okay... Seminary hat off now.

Labels: Bill Donohue, Catholic League, Politics, Religion

Are you having trouble making the mortgage payment now that your adjustable rate has gone up?

Are prices at the pump making it tougher for you to get by?

Are your stagnant wages not keeping up with your expenses?

Good news! McCain adviser Phil Gramm says it's all in your head!

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession [...] We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

Talk about out-of-touch. Tell the family whose house is being foreclosed on that we haven't had a recession yet. Tell the people who are getting laid off, or who are going back to work at jobs with longer hours for less pay and no benefits, that we haven't had a recession yet. Months of growth are fine and dandy - but when that growth only affects the portfolios of the top 1%, let's not pretend that the other 99% aren't feeling the pinch.

But that isn't even the best part:

We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

A nation of whiners? Does that make John McCain - who said in a recent ad that our economy is "in shambles" - the greatest whiner of all? And how can Phil Gramm continue to have a role in the campaign of a big whiner like John McCain?

John McCain needs to not only denounce these words but also ensure that Phil Gramm no longer serves in his campaign. For a candidate whose economic elitism - multiple houses (at least one of which he hasn't paid taxes on), hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit-card debt, the penchant for high-stakes craps games in Vegas - is a major storm on the horizon, a connection to someone who calls the very real struggles of everyday Americans "whining" will only add to the trouble.

Labels: John McCain, Phil Gramm, Politics, Republicans