"The important thing is to see your hands in a dream,...in the dream in which I saw my hands, I looked in the mirror and my face was black, I'd turned into a nigger,..."

 

"War-weary Americans and their distracted political leaders are less interested in responsibilities overseas, creating a vacuum of international leadership. But for better and for worse, neither China nor anyone else appears ready and able to fill America’s superpower shoes."

New Wave artists aging gracefully. An 80′s world gone by…

Even quacks must have free speech

Study: Casual Sex Might Be Making Teenagers Sad

9 Reasons 'Hookup Culture' Hurts Boys Too

Women are 'hard-wired' to regret casual flings - but men only regret NOT having them, study reveals

70% now think it is wrong for married people to stray

Michele Bachmann: ‘If God Wanted Everyone To Have Insurance, Why Did He Invent Miracles?’

“150 years after Frederick Douglas' mane, black people are still getting in trouble with whites over our hair. That's the limits of our  freedom.”

- The Crack Emcee, Monday, November 25, 2013

“Christian school to bullied African-American girl: Straighten your natural hair or get out”

- The Raw Story, Tuesday, November 26, 2013

 

 

 I'd be all "Jesus this" or "The Buddha said that":

It'd be brutal,...

 

The things believers find confusing are, themselves, confusing:

  “Costco has Bibles for sale under the genre of FICTION. Hmmmm." 

 Meanwhile, Whole Foods has homeopathy for sale under the guise of MEDICINE. Hmmmm,...

 

Now, I ask you, serious business:

 "Is Gluten the Cause of Your Health Problems?" 

Or is it something else?

"Your choices are limited by who you are."

I love the ring of that phrase - and it's ring of truth - like a kick in the gut. So, since that seems to be the case (and since I'm *kinda safe* for the moment) excuse me as I jump in the fray, because culture is wailing on politics with a vengeance:

McAllister, running as an outsider, lined up an endorsement from "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson, the patriarch in the popular reality show, and cast member Willie Robertson appeared in a commercial for the candidate. The program is shot in the northeast part of Louisiana that McAllister will represent.

Unlike McAllister, Riser had the backing of a number of prominent Republicans including U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Riser agreed with the governor's stance to reject the Medicaid expansion.

…The funeral home owner was the contest's early favorite with backing from the conservative Tea Party of Louisiana and the national group FreedomWorks, which is aligned with the Tea Party movement.

The Right is so out of sync now, it's pitiful. Everyday is the day before the last election - and then the "unexpected" happens. Again. GlennBoy's even already back to warning Republicans not to get cocky. Why? What are they going to do? Keep coming on like The Party That Doesn't Give A Shit? We've seen that. "Maybe get a black point-man."

"Man Has Magnetic Powers, Can Make Objects Stick To Body"

New Headline:

You Are A Fucking Idiot, Go Back To School - Retake Science

Unoriginal second thought - do we even need another metal attracting guy? Bending spoons? Wow.

Do something useful.

 Now here's a something that gets my attention:

"Since Christianity has produced a lot of dysfunctional people, suicides will more than likely increase among Christians in the very near future."

So it's a self-correcting system - cool. Kinda like this:

"Lady Gaga's 'ARTPOP' Flop Expected to Lose Label Reported $25M in Marketing Costs"

Word is people will be fired - at Christmas. Perfect. Contrast and compare with the netherworld:

 "Michael Jackson Tops List of Highest-Earning Dead Celebrities of 2013"

He's dead, and still a better entertainer than we've got now. What a wasteland. No, really, a wasteland. And nobody knows the difference, either, so far as I can tell. Everything just slips by.

"The Jamaican Maroons were runaway slaves who fought the British during the 18th century. When the British invaded Jamaica in 1655 the Spanish colonists fled leaving a large number of Africans who they had enslaved."

I'm beginning to think they're all a little insane. 

But probably not without good reason,...

“It’s a free country. If these people need to practice their holy rites of atheism, they can do so, as long as they are in clearly-marked encampments far away from the rest of us.

While they’re in their Heathen Zones, they’re free to dance naked around the fire, brand the mark of the Devil on their flesh or whatever else they want to do. Of course, if they step one foot outside the electrified fence we shoot them between the eyes. Two or three times, just to be sure.”

"While you may know that Mormons believe in wearing blessed undergarments and God living on the Planet Kolob– you may not know that some of them, at least, believe that Bigfoot is actually Cain and that Quetzalcoatl was Jesus. To be sure, this is definitely folklore and not official church doctrine, but it’s still damn interesting."

"Ark Encounter promises to be a heady combination of hands-on fun, perverse indoctrination, and apocalyptic terror."

“Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.”

“Ideally, the court would ... recognize that, in an America in which an increasing number of citizens identify with no religion, even nonsectarian, lowest-common-denominator prayers can exclude and marginalize nonbelievers. Obviously a Jew who goes to a town meeting to petition for a permit will be made uncomfortable when he is urged to join in a prayer to 'our Lord Jesus.' But an atheist in the same position will be equally offended by a request that he join in a prayer to a generic God.”

In comparison to North American and Caribbean slave narratives, the North African slave narratives were written by white Europeans and Americans captured and enslaved in North Africa in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They have a distinct form in that they highlight the otherness of their Islamic enslavers, whereas the African-American slave narratives call their fellow Christian enslavers to account.

Some captives used their experiences as a North African slave to criticize slavery in the United States, such as William Ray in his book Horrors of Slavery. Slaves in North African suffered from many of the same conditions as their African counterparts in the United States, including hard labor, poor diet, and demeaning treatment. But, unlike those in America, slaves in North Africa could often escape their condition by converting to Islam and adopting North Africa as their home. Converting to the dominant religion to attain freedom was not an option for American slaves.

"The Bible is one thing, but this is a little closer to the home."

This is always the first - and the dumbest - question a NewAge apologist will ask, because it reveals the massive ignorance they have, surrounding what they think they're defending:

  "If we allow people to perform so-called “faith healings” without having to include a legal disclaimer, then why should someone have to include one for a tarot reading?"

Please, Somebody - Anybody - you want to be fair?

Bring back feeding Christians to the lions, and witch burnings, so we can all get a good night's sleep again,...

 

Well, what is a Christian, after all? Can we say that most of us are defined by the belief that Jesus Christ made the most gracious gift of his life and death for our redemption? Then what does he deserve from us? He said we are to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek. Granted, these are difficult teachings. But does our most gracious Lord deserve to have his name associated with concealed weapons and stand-your-ground laws, things that fly in the face of his teaching and example? Does he say anywhere that we exist primarily to drive an economy and flourish in it? He says precisely the opposite. Surely we all know this. I suspect that the association of Christianity with positions that would not survive a glance at the Gospels or the Epistles is opportunistic, and that if the actual Christians raised these questions those whose real commitments are to money and hostility and potential violence would drop the pretense and walk away.

H/T - Ann Althouse