Month: April 2009

A horrible day in Iraq – and a signal that Odierno wants to stay longer in Mosul and Baquba because of the insurgency. Why am I not surprised?

Ross highlights this:

The true Resurrection is based not on the mythical lie of the guilty victim who deserves to die, but on the rectification of that lie, which comes from the true God and which reopens channels of communication mankind itself had closed through self-imprisonment in its own violent cultures. Divine grace alone can explain why, after the Resurrection, the disciples could become a dissenting minority in an ocean of victimization–could understand then what they had misunderstood earlier: the innocence not of Jesus alone but of all victims of all Passion-like murders since the foundation of the world.

(Painting: the Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt.)

The latest Beck: he compares Obama's first three months to dousing Americans in gasoline and setting fire to them.

PETA goes there. Neil and Chris politely demur.

Packer reports on his roofer:

Customers called him all the time, expecting him to hear every little complaint even while he was wrestling with a roof hatch. Meanwhile, they were more and more unreliable, not answering their phones, missing scheduled appointments. Even worse: they had no common sense any more…

“It’s the technology,” the roofer said. “They don’t know how to deal with a human being. They stand there with that text shrug”—he hunched his shoulders, bent his head down, moved from side to side, looking anywhere but at me—“and they go, ‘Ah, ah, um, um,’ and they just mumble. They can’t talk any more.” This inadequacy with physical space and direct interaction was an affliction of the educated, he said—“the more educated, the worse.” His poorer black customers in Bedford-Stuyvesant had no such problem, and he was much happier working on their roofs, but the recession had slowed things down there and these days he was forced to deal almost entirely with the cognitively damaged educated and professional classes.

A reader writes:

So Gallagher and her followers are afraid of a 'coming storm.'  Well, I would love to tell her about the many storms which my partner of 25 years and I have already weathered.  There was the time 11 years ago when she was doubled over in pain and unable to speak. I had to carry her to the ER, but was denied entrance into her room and not consulted on medical decisions because I was not her 'legal next of kin.'  Then there was the time a year ago when I changed jobs and could no longer cover Mary or our 10 year old child Emily under my health insurance because I am not 'related' to either of them by biology, adoption, or marriage. Or how about the time when I feared losing my job because a man, accused and found guilty of sexual harassment of women, accused me of favoritism to the women on my staff. 

Oh, yeah, what about all the questions we have to answer to verify that we are eligible for a joint or family membership every time we fill out a health form for camp for our daughter, or join a gym, pool, or other community services center.  Finally, what about the rudeness that our daughter endures from the kids of her followers asking about her "GAY" parents.  Should we really have to live through those storms?

The reality is that those who stand against gay marriage have no logical, legal, or societal arguments against the simple acknowledgment of fairness, equality, and liberty so they have to resort to lies.  It is the beginning of the end for them.  If only we didn't have to wait so long to taste the fairness we deserve.

A passover spat.

Hitch destroyed Blackwell the other day. But don't take my or Ta-Nehisi's word about it:

Their debate was sparked by Jon Meacham's Newsweek cover story, "The End of Christian America," which has been all the buzz on the theist blogs.

It's been quite a throwback this week, hasn't it? Pirates in the Middle East; debates about a "Christian nation"; and a president finding a new way to speak to the Muslim world. So it's well worth reiterating the truths that the Senate proclaimed in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796 – 1797:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Jason Zengerle responds. To explain my own interest: yes, I suspect that, in the absence of a press corps capable of asking awkward questions and getting substantive answers, a little family tension might help unravel some of the remaining mysteries of 2008.