January 6, 2011
January 5, 2011
November 26, 2010
December 25, 2009
Quotes with a Holiday Punch
“How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few his precepts!
O! ’tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1757.
“Jesus wasn’t a Christian, and he never preached in a church. He was also a drinker, and liked to hang out with sinners. We think of him very highly in the Church of Stop Shopping. We put him right up there with Lenny Bruce.”
– Reverend Billy
“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”
– Lenny Bruce
“To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals.”
– Don Schrader
“Christian fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.”
– Andrew Lias
“The problem with fundamentalists insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible is that the meaning of words change. A prime example is ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child.’ A rod was a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep to go in the desired direction. Shepherds did not use it to beat their sheep. The proper translation of the saying is ‘Give your child guidance, or they will go astray.’ It does not mean ‘Beat the sh*t out of your child or he will become rotten’ as many fundamentalist parents seem to believe.”
– Author Unknown
“I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘not if you did not know.’ ‘Then why,’ asked the Eskimo earnestly, ‘did you tell me?’”
– Annie Dillard
“Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish.”
– Author Unknown
“Christianity is not a religion; it’s an industry.”
– Author Unknown
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
– Anne Lamott
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March 13, 2008
Maureen Dowd: Ways of the Wayward
Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, March 12, 2008
FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa.– Just when I thought my head would explode from trying to figure out delegate math, I’m hit with call-girl math.
The arithmetic of procuring a prostitute who is both experienced and inspirational is even more complicated than the arithmetic of procuring a president who is both experienced and inspirational.
If you’re a frugal governor who doesn’t even like paying his political consultant bills, as opposed to an Arab sheik or a Vegas high roller, do you really need to shell out $4,300, plus minibar expenses, to a shell company for two hours with a shady lady? Aren’t there cheaper hooker hook-ups on Craigslist? It makes you wonder how sharp Eliot Spitzer’s pencil was on the state’s fiscal discipline.
And how does it add up that Steamroller No. 1 suddenly morphs into Client No. 9, a nom d’amour with the ring of an overpriced Gucci cologne for men, giving untold thousands for untold years to a prostitution ring that has hourly rates based on rating its girls on a diamond scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being $3,100, and above 7 in a special club for $5,500 and up?
March 12, 2008
Robert Scheer: Spitzer’s Shame Is Wall Street’s Gain
Robert Scheer, TruthDig, March 12, 2008
Tell me again: Why should we get all worked up over the revelation that the New York governor paid for sex? Will it bring back to life the eight U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq that same day in a war that makes no sense and has cost this nation trillions in future debt? Will it save those millions of homes that hardworking folks all over the country are losing because of financial industry shenanigans that Eliot Spitzer, as much as anyone, attempted to halt? Perhaps it provides some insight into why oil has risen to $108 a barrel, benefiting most of all the oil sheiks whom our taxpayer-supported military has kept in power?
Sure, the guy, by his own admission, is quite pathetic in all those small, squirrelly ways that have messed up the lives of other grand public figures before him, but why is an all-too-human sin, amply predicted in early Scripture, getting all this incredible media play as some sort of shocking event? The answer is that, while having precious little to do with serious corruption in public life, it does have a great deal to do with stoking flagging newspaper sales and television ratings.
The sad truth is that reporting on major corruption, say, the rationalizations of a president who has authorized torture, doesn’t cut it as a marketing bonanza. Just days before this grand exposé, the president vetoed a bill banning torture, and instead of being greeted with horrified disgust, the president’s deep denigration of this nation’s presumed ideals was met with a vast public yawn. Torture, unlike paid sex, doesn’t have legs as a news story.
Sex sells, and frankly it would seem far more exploitative for the news media to pimp this tale to the public than anything that VIP escort service did with the pitiable governor. His behavior was not really any more wretched than messing around with a young and vulnerable White House intern who didn’t even get paid for her efforts, yet Bill Clinton survived that one, whereas Spitzer was presumed dead on the arrival of this “news.” The New York Times, which editorially has supported the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, whose vast White House experience clearly did not include corralling her husband, now editorializes contemptuously about Spitzer’s betrayal of the public trust as well as about his exploitation of his “ashen-faced” wife, who, like Hillary, stood by her man.
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The Tattlesnake – Thank God They’re a Small Minority Edition
“It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em. It’s an old political trick.”
– Harry S Truman
Your Tattlesnake has had running arguments with various Teabaggers and Tea Party sympathizers for many months now and they all share the same tactic: Should you ask a question they can’t answer or make a point they can’t refute, they start screaming at you or rudely talking over you, as if the volume of their voice can eradicate reality and reason. This leads not to debate, but confrontation, and that seems to be what they want.
Beyond that, exactly how do you ‘debate’ people who insist:
– There are no racists in the Tea Party movement;
– It’s Obama and not George W. Bush who started the TARP bailouts of the banks and Wall Street;
– The terrible economy is exclusively the fault of Obama and his liberal social programs;
– All of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s social programs were complete failures;
– Social Security, Medicare, the VA and the GI Bill were/are not liberal social programs;
– Obama has raised taxes for the poor and middle-class;
– Obama is a Muslim/socialist/communist (take your pick) plotting the downfall of the US backed by George Soros’ money (and Soros was a teenage Nazi, too, incidentally);
– Rupert Murdoch is completely different from Soros, since he’s a loyal, patriotic American (Murdoch is, of course, from Australia);
– Obama was not born in this country and the ‘liberal media’ is hiding the truth;
– Sarah Palin has been shunned by the ‘lamestream’ media, despite the millions she’s made from doting MSM coverage of her;
– God has personally chosen the Tea Party candidates and opposition candidates are all the pawns of Satan;
– The only economic system God approves of is free market capitalism (you can look it up — it’s in the Bible somewhere);
– Jesus endorsed the death penalty; it’s obvious because he – duh – allowed himself to die on the cross;
– Liberals, not big corporations, are sending American jobs overseas to Communist countries like China in a conspiracy to position China to take over the U.S.;
(more…)