I watched the documentary “Jesus Camp”, about an evangelical summer camp for Christian kids and was struck by two scenes, one after another.
The first has a male staffer pulling out his, wait for it, HOLY GHOST HAMMER. He exhorts the kids to break cups that have “GOVERNMENT” written on them. The video clip shows several kids doing just that, praying that the government and its evil will be destroyed, just as they are destroying the cups.
This seems like something the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State should look into. These kids, and the counselors, should have their names on the US Government’s list of possible threats to the government. Right?
This is the same crazy brainwashing that Christians feel Islamists are doing to their children. In Israel, extremists push their militant beliefs on their kids, in Palestine, in the Congo, in Bosnia, all over the planet adults are shoving this down their kids’ throats.
Then there is the boss-lady screaming for WAR, WAR, WAR. Are they all forgetting that Jesus’ message was about LOVE? He never stood and yelled WAR, WAR, WAR.
She’s a bad example for kids and should not be allowed to incite this kind of terrorism in children. Its unholy…
We don’t torture, according to White House Press Secretary Dana Perino in a press conference today. For the umpteenth time, she states:
Hmmm: we only ‘interrogate terrorists to protect the country from imminent terrorist attack’. That’s why you see these soldiers SMILING as they taunt their captives.
Bush says ‘this government does not torture people’:
I read 50 blogs a day, financial, political, international, environmental, technological, cultural. I am a single mom raising 3 kids. I have a brain and I intuit a huge culture shift. I believe we are in for a big, global slowdown of epic proportions. Here’s today’s online frontpage of Financial Times:
I believe that the American Way of Life that George H.W. Bush insisted was not negotiable, the one where you can make all the money you want to, unfettered by regulation or common decency, is gone.
I believe that we are offered a new opportunity. The reason I say this is that I’ve had huge life changes: divorce, selling my house, moving my kids, renting then moving to a second rental home, and finally, losing my mom. I bought in to the whole US lifestyle, have the credit cards to prove it. But I sold my home, paid off the million dollar mortgage and tons of joint marital debt and am living within my means (mostly), re-evaluating my future. And I see that we as a country need to do the same gut-check and change course drastically and quickly.
Our corporations can’t operate unless they calculate in ’social costs’ and ‘environmental costs’ and ‘global citizenship’ costs. They can’t keep marketing to us that we ‘need’ things that we don’t. They can’t then blame us for getting addicted to their credit, their loans, their cars, and then ask us to also clean up their mess when they dissipate their profits into the hands of a few of their deal-makers.
You know the American Dream? Sales people are rewarded in the American Dream. They make the millions we glorify. But sales people aren’t responsible for the appropriateness of their product. They get paid to sell. And they walk away with their sales commission when their products, credit cards, home equity or car loans implode on us, the buying public.
We must feed and provide healthy upbringing for all of our children. We have to provide them with neighborhood centers where they can get nutritious food and before and after school mentoring and tutoring. If some kids do not need this help, great! But many kids do need this support and we are destroying our culture by not ensuring we have a smart, challenged next generation of taxpayers, let alone country builders. The George Lucas Educational Foundation knows what kind of education all of our kids deserve, and need. We will overhaul our educational system so that kids learn their own talents and are taught to those talents.
We have a moral obligation, I believe, to also feed and care for our sick and elderly. Before my mother passed away, she lived in a beautiful assisted living place, Alma Via (The Way of the Soul). She was provided 3 meals a day that met with her specific health needs: near kidney failure and rheumatoid arthritis. She felt a happy sense of community there, and my sisters and I were able to visit her frequently and take her out for medical appointments and family time. Knowing that her basic needs were met, we felt that her life was full. Every elder deserves this care.
Communities need to rebuild. Gas prices skyrocketed, now the shipping industry is faltering because of the world financial crises, trucking industries are going thru shakeups. We do not need to put our heads in the sand, but it is prudent to get your food from as close to your home as you can, to do business with local vendors.
All of these huge global stumblings, they are our sign to re-invest in our local communities. To reach out thru the global brain of the internet, but also to nestle in to our smaller environments. Its a paradox: going smaller, while going bigger. Be global citizens, but also be tribal in your county. Have a large vision about your carbon or water use footprint, but also know who your neighbors are, and offer help or accept help. Get out of debt, lay low, do not buy into the consumption mania of advertising.
So when you see the Financial Times talking about a SEVERE GLOBAL SLOWDOWN, don’t fret. Its a chance to remake things in the image of the 21st century. We’re global, we’re wired, we give a damn. Lets draw a new world, instead of continually trying to buoy up the old paradigms that we have outgrown.
Oh my god. This is Olberman’s most moving video ever. No anger, no screaming, just from the heart, in defense of the true sanctity of marriage, the marriage of two people in love and committed to a future together, be they boy/girl, boy/boy or girl/girl.
This video should be showed in schools, homes, churches.
“You want to honor your god and the universal love you think he represents? Then spread happiness.” “You are asked now to stand on a question of love… Let the tiny ember of love meets its own fate… That love is in fact the ember of your love for your fellow person.”
“Redefining marriage”. We’ve already ‘redefined marriage’. 30 years ago, the parents of the President of the United States could not have married in 1/3 the states of this country.
Our own government, using trillions of our hard earned tax dollars, is not willing to tell us what the ‘toxic waste’ assets are that we are getting for loaning the banking industry, the insurance industry, perhaps the auto industry and others, our money.
Considering that Wall Street stupidity and greed got us into this mess, we should be knowledgeable about how the toxic waste is now spreading into our own pocketbooks.
What is the United State worth? Its value is now tainted by trillions of dollars of assets that STINK so much that they have been removed from the balance sheet of the private industries that created it and they have been put in the public’s hands.
We are now responsible for cleaning up the toxic waste. But none of us got the $4000 bottles of wine at company dinners, the remodeled kitchens, the Hampton getaway homes that were bought with the cash that flowed as these assets were bought and sold by private industry.
Here is a great reminder of the billions the Dr. Frankensteins rewarded themselves with, less than two short years ago:
Now, two years later, like spoiled brats, they want to be rescued. Like youngsters who open all the family cupboards, eat and drink all the good stuff, run around partying and putting their dirty little fingers all over the walls and furniture, then drunkenly pee in the corners of the kitchen and let poo leak out of their diapers, they sit clasping their hands together, begging for relief from their own actions. Parental tough love is called for here. Why are we now picking up their poo?
Thank goodness for Bloomberg, for suing our government for what should be PUBLIC information.
Schizophrenic: Californians voted to allow chickens to have enough room to move around,
but they won’t let private citizens make marital commitments unless you are boy-girl.
I voted No on 8. A few years ago, one of my favorite bloggers, www.WilliamSledd.com, put out a youtube video asking people to speak out about gay rights. My daughter and I turned on the iSight Camera and make a quick video, here:
It was touching to get comments from young people around the world, thanking us for our kindness. I’m raising my kids to believe that everyone is here for a reason, everyone has gifts to bear and your one challenge in your lifetime is to live as fully, as completely as you can, as YOU.
So, its a big day when as many voters voted to allow civil rights as voted to refuse civil rights. The pendulum has swung FAR since the days when Ronald Reagan would not treat men dying of AIDS with dignity by acknowledging them (and look at his karma, he ended up with Alzheimers, unable to acknowledge his own wife). I’m going to keep up the fight, will you? Some day, very soon, we’ll overturn Prop 8.
Obama-Biden’s victory showed that there is power in the grass roots, and one day soon the grassroots will defeat Broekhuizen and Ahmanson, sending them back into their mansions.
When Bush took office 8 years ago, I said that America had not yet awakened enough to its own laziness. We didn’t want any more ‘Old Boy’ networking, but it was all we knew and we didn’t collectively have the guts to HOPE for something more. When Bush used fear to get elected 4 years later, I saw a deep, deep melancholy. Chagrin. Head shaking. Last gasps of hope slipping away. Such a huge, gaping difference between what we said we want, freedom and justice for all, and who we were willing to be.
Ah, so this is how we, as a country, want to be: the bully in the sandbox. Can’t speak to foreign leaders we don’t agree with. That would show ‘weakness’. Can’t ask Americans to sacrifice after the death of 4,000 citizens. Instead they should ’shop’. It broke my heart to see the US step out in the world, but in a for-the-rich, profit-driven way with weapons blazing, trillions of dollars going to death instead of life.
Now, 8 years later, I wonder if the pendulum has swung far enough in the other direction for us to step out for HOPE? Will we have the courage to get back to our ideals?
Can my kids grow up in a world within which they are asked to be global citizens, to show empathy for those that need help or are injured or dying unjustly? Can we stop locking up our young people and instead give them jobs? Can we stop the money hemorraghing to East Hampton mega-mansions (or Rush Limbaugh’s Florida estate, where drugs just might be delivered, without prescriptions but with no attendant jail-time?) Can we stop giving bailouts to those who’ve destroyed us? Can we break our co-dependence with the cowboy politics championed by Ronald Reagan and badly mimicked by GWB?
I believe that the internet is the new ‘global brain’. Every single time we connect in this new way, we create neuron connections and dendrites that are setting up an alternate neural network.
So many of our old paradigm systems are breaking down.
I compare our clogged, overly complex financial, social and governmental systems with clogged arteries. After my dad had open heart surgery, he walked an hour a day and, over time, an alternate set of arteries arose that helped his limited circulation, keeping him alive for years beyond doctor expectations.
I believe that the rise of the internet and its easy inter-connectedness is our best hope for a global family of man that can work together to move beyond our stagnation.
So when a successful blogger reaches out to create a progressive ‘visiting subscriber’ group, to help small blogs take the next step, I applaud his thoughtfulness and hope for the best, a new way to naturally interact and bond.
Treasure Secretary Henry Paulson is handing out $160 billion to banks in the hopes that they will stabilize and the financial markets will calm. But he won’t tell you which banks are in trouble. Instead, he’s giving cash to a range of banks, so that NO ONE CAN POINT A FINGER AT THE WEAKENED BANK.
Its like the lice patrol at my kids’ school: they notify parents that lice is present but don’t name kids, so the innocent kid doesn’t get stigmatized. Problem is, banks aren’t elementry school kids. Banks intentionally lent out lots and lots of money on the fractional reserve system, and bought and sold dangerously valued subprime mortgage and credit derivative products.
I think more banks should fail. The weak or badly damaged banks should close. The banks that do get government support (purchased by the government in the biggest Socialist grab ever in the US) should not lend out the money they’re given. The stronger banks should recapitalize, but not MERGE into bigger, more dangerous weapons of money destruction.
Someone needs to explain to the American people that the bank bailout does not mean money will be immediately be lent out again. Because its the excess lending that got us in this mess.
Then we should get on with it. There are other dominos falling.
