Reagan would loose 2008 primary

Most people do not know that Reagan was not a regular church goer. While he was president it was never an issue. But if he were running today I have a feeling he would not even clear the primaries. So does Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan

In a column last week in the Wall Street Journal, former Reagan adviser and speechwriter Peggy Noonan speculates that if Reagan were running for president today, he would lose in the Republican primary. He would be hurt by not being a regular churchgoer and being too relaxed about the faiths of his friends and aides, or about its absence. He was divorced, to boot.

Source: Religion, politics must stay apart. The Mercury News.

The Mercury News editorial got me thinking about how things have changed. In particular about  how religion has gained center stage in our 2008 presidential race. I cannot recall religion being a big issue in any election I have voted in. Now we have Huckabee as the official Christian candidate and Romney as the as the anti-secular candidate. I think we should throw both of the bums out. The only issue that is important with regard to religion is the separation of church and state. These men cannot be our next president. They do not even understand what it means to be an American.

Technorati tags: 2008 Election, Ronald Reagan, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Politics, Religion

HBO: Hard as Nails

HBO has a religious documentary scheduled for release Monday, December 17th at 8:00 pm. The film Hard as Nails explores the life of Justin Fatica and the catholic youth movement he inspires.

Directed by David Holbrooke, HARD AS NAILS captures the dynamic 29-year-old unordained Catholic minister Justin Fatica as he preaches to a wide variety of young adults. Drawn by Fatica's magnetic aura, his teenage listeners pour their hearts out to him, offering their brutally honest accounts of drug addiction, sexual abuse, self-mutilation and suicidal thoughts, as well as confessing to more common teen insecurities, such as not fitting in.

Read More... HBO: Hard as Nails - Synopsis

The trailer alone is enough to make me watch this documentary. Fatica is the type of religious leader who speaks to the young and disenfranchised. His onstage antics inspire a fanatical following. Chapters of his Hard as Nails Ministry are sprouting every place he visits. Fatica is at the helm of a growing religious phenomenon. This could be good or bad, depending on his message.

I'd point you to his blog, but to date there is little in it.

So, set your Tivo's for Monday night. I'll post a review some time next week.

Technorati tags: Religion, HBO, Documentaries, Justin Fatica, David Holbrooke, Catholics

Huckabee caught in a lie

Mike Huckabee claimed to have a theology degree in an interview in a CBN Interview.

"I'm as strong on terror as anybody. In fact I think I'm stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war that we are in with Islamofascism. These are people that want to kill us. It's a theocratic war. And I don't know if anybody fully understands that. I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well."

Theology degree, it kind of rolls off the tongue. His response was a  less clear.

"I have a bachelor of arts in religion and a minor in communications in my undergraduate work. And then I have 46 hours on a master's degree at Southwestern Theology Seminary. So, my degree as a theological degree is at the college level and then 46 hours toward a masters -- three years of study of New Testament Greek, and then the rest of it, all in Seminary was theological studies, but my degree was actually in religion."

I think that means he does not have a degree. And, I think that qualifies Huckabee as a liar and a braggart. It may be par for the course for a Christian, but it is not what we need in a president.

Powerline broke the story.

Technorati tags: Mike Huckabee, 2008 Elections, politics, Republicans, Christians

Seven Random and Weird Things Meme

I was tagged by Frank at Salad is Slaughter.

Rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.
   Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
3. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

My 7 Random facts:

1. I can throw a playing card 100 feet, even sticking them in walls (or my little sisters forehead). I win free drinks with this trick all the time. I can throw a beer coaster even farther.
2. I moonwalk out of my socks after a long hard day.
3. I am a sleepwalker. I wake up in my backyard staring at the stars during the summer months. When it is cold I stare at the refrigerator.
4. I have had two near death experiences. I drowned when I was 18, and later that same year I was knocked out by 70 pounds of metal to the back of my head. I dream about drowning all the time. It was a horrible experience.
5. I cannot sleep with the closet door open. I've had lucid dreams about people coming out of my closet since I was a child.
6. I have a morbid fear of railway level crossing. I will never ever cross against a lighted level crossing.
7. I go out of my way to help needy people., especially when they are homeless and hungry.

I tag: (the last seven bloggers to join The Atheist Blogroll)

1. I Never Shut Up
2. The Passionate Skeptic
3. Dragged from the Bottom
4. Tarradiddle
5. Life According to Mike White
6. Breaking Spells
7. Oliver Benen

Technorati tags: Memes, lists

Ex-Lubbock pastor convicted

Pastor James Clark had his day in court. Guilty!

LUBBOCK, Texas — A federal jury has convicted a former Lubbock pastor accused of demanding sex from an African woman he sponsored with the promise of a college education.

James Cornell Clark was found guilty Wednesday of importation of an alien for immoral purposes.

Investigators say Clark met the woman in August 2005 while on a trip to Kenya.

Prosecutors say Clark, after the woman arrived and was enrolled at South Plains College in Levelland, demanded she repay him by performing sexual favors.

Defense attorney Helen Liggett challenged the woman's testimony, saying she had sexually exploited herself to get a better life.

Sentencing is pending for Clark, who faces up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Source: Ex-Lubbock pastor convicted in sex demand case | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

I posted on Clark three times.

Evil Lurks in Lubbock

Lubbock Pastor May Not Stand Trial

Another sexual predator posing as a pastor in Lubbock

The parade of guilty pastor continues. There are at least four more cases due to be resolved in the next week. It has been a bad year for these perverts. I think there is more to come.

Technorati tags: James Clark, Lubbock, Texas, clergy sexual abuse, rape

Laces 4 Love

I have never understood the whole Christian foot washing fetish. Even when I was a Christian I would shy away from my friends "going down" on my grubby nasty feet.  When I read that schools in South Caroline are participating is a program that allows Christians to wash the feet of poor children in exchange for shoes - I shuttered in revulsion. Why would people allow this to happen?

COLUMBIA, SC (AP) - A church-state separation group has asked schools in Aiken and Edgefield counties to stop a church-run program that gives needy students new shoes and socks because the youths engage in ritual foot-washing.

On its Web site, Laces4Love says children who need shoes are brought to the lunchroom where volunteers remove their old shoes and socks and wash their feet with warm towelettes before putting the on the new socks and shoes.

Aiken County school officials say children decide whether they want to have their feet washed before getting new shoes. Americans United for Separation of Church and State says regardless of the nature of the foot washing, the fact the shoes come from a church group carries with it some level of religious influence.

Source: WIStv.com Columbia, SC: SC district: No religious ritual involved in church shoe giveaway

There have been times in my life when I was poor enough to gladly sit through a foot washing in exchange for a pair of shoes. The thing is, when a child needs something this desperately, it feels like giving them shoes in exchange for an opportunity to proselytize is subjecting them to exploitation.  Why not just donate the shoes? And I hate to say this, but think about the pervert factor here. How many of these good (Baptists) Christians do this because the like touching kid's feet? What are these people thinking?

Americans United are on it. This program is doomed.

Technorati tags: Laces4Love, Foot Fetish, Christians, Proselytizing

Blogroll Update: Tidbits for Atheists

The Devout Atheist writes Tidbits for Atheists. He joined the The Atheist Blogroll in October and has been kind enough to provide an introduction.

In his own words:

We atheists devote much time, energy, and words to two themes: 1. disputing the existence of a god(s); 2. expressing our anger and dismay that in our ultra-religious country, reason is so often supplanted by a blind self-righteous miasma of belief in the supernatural. I plan to offer occasional tidbits to help us persevere as an often beleaguered minority. Most of my entries will be short, and some hopefully also sweet. Most will concern atheism, but some will be meditations on various themes.

Drop in and say hi.

Technorati tags: The Atheist Blogroll, Atheism, Blogging

Top Ten Suggestions For Performing Better Miracles:

I was pursuing the Atheist blogroll at lunch the other day when I found the Top Ten Suggestions for Performing Better Miracles. 

Via Atheism: Proving the negative

1) The claim that a violation of the laws of nature has occurred should not be evaluated or investigated by committed, zealous believers. Humans have an uncanny knack for finding what they are looking for. The virtue of double blind testing procedures in science is that they help us prevent undue influence by wishful thinking, conflicts of interest, hedging, confirmation bias, and sloppy thinking. Many people claim that there are miracles happening on a regular basis now. It would be a relatively easy matter to have an independent panel of objective evaluators, doctors in the case of a healing miracle, examine just the evidence before and after an alleged healing without any leading or suggestive information about what they are looking for. Just show them the X rays, or the diagnoses, or the CAT scans before and after someone is alleged to have been healed of a brain tumor, for example.

Read More...

Technorati tags: The Atheist Blogroll, Atheism, Miracles, Sarcasm

Baptist, pastor & incest - oh my!

Well here is a surprise, yet another Baptist pastor arrested on incest charges. I know incest is in the old testament and all, but our modern law forbid it.

Union Parish Sheriffs deputies arrested Kenneth Duchesne, the pastor at Beulah Baptist Church Tuesday afternoon, and charged him with two counts of aggravated incest.

Duchesne, 35, was arrested at approximately 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday in the parking lot of Wal-Mart after the Sheriffs Office received a complaint on Monday.

Dusty Burroughs, a deacon at the church, said the congregation was shocked by the arrest. "It's hurt the church pretty good", Burroughs said. "We're trying to deal with it and move on."

Duchesne had been the preacher at Beulah Baptist, located north of Farmerville between Farmerville and Spearsville, for less than a year, and according to Burroughs, was asked to resign on Sunday night on matters unrelated to the incest charges.

"The deacons asked him to resign on some other things that had come up but nothing rated with this", Burroughs said. We never figured on anything like this. Burroughs said Duchesne will be officially relieved of his duties on Wednesday. Duchesne is married and has two children a girl and a boy and lived in the parsonage of the church.

"We're all shocked and hurt", Burroughs said. "Of course were concerned about the family, his wife and children. All we can do is pray for them and pray for him."

Source: Pastor arrested on incest charge

Of course, his church fired him for an "unrelated issue". Something smells fishy on this one.

Technorati tags: Kenneth Duchesne, Baptist Pedophiles, clergy sexual abuse, child abuse, incest

Pastor is convicted in sex case

I posted on Pastor Bruce Alvin Curtis back in April. He was convicted of his crimes last week. So far the the 2007 pastor conviction rate is pretty damn high. Only one of the many pastors I have profiled here has been found innocent. Something tells me this trend will continue.

Technorati tags: Bruce Curtis, pedophiles, pedophilia, clergy sexual abuse, child abuse

More Huckabee spin

Huckabee continues to confuse and obfuscate. This time distancing himself from an actual call to have AIDS patients quarantined by spinning it as an observation.

Chris, I didn’t say that we should quarantine. I said it was the first time in public health protocols that when we had an infectious disease and we didn’t really know just how extensive and how dramatic it could be and the impact of it, that we didn’t isolate the carrier.

Source: Think Progress » Huckabee Denies He Ever Called For Quarantining AIDS Patients, Contradicts His Own Comments

Of course, he is on record as calling for the United States to take steps to isolate people with AIDS. We all know he was not just talking about AIDS victims too, he is a Gay basher from way back. 

If you want to see spin in action, checkout this youtube video. Huckabee cannot be our next president.

Technorati tags: Mike Muckabee, Mike Huckabee, 2008 election, politics

For my sister

I saw my sister yesterday, she wanted me to make a picture for her this Christmas. I told her my Nikon was broken again and that it would be hard to make a picture with my little Sony Cybershot. She laughed.

I screwed up a bunch of shots this morning while playing with the settings on my Cybershot. This is my favorite.

Technorati tags: Photography

God vs. Darwin

I stumbled upon this small article on AskMen.com this morning.

According to a poll released by Harris, out of 2, 455 American citizens, 82% believe in God. From believing in miracles to heaven and Jesus himself, U.S. citizens have once again proven their religious fervor. This number is relatively unchanged from the same poll taken two years earlier.

An age-old argument, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution versus The Big Bang has been a topic of discussion for centuries. And despite technological and scientific advances in modern society, it is still a much talked about topic today.

Source: AskMen.com - Daily Blog: God vs. Darwin

The article itself is innocuous, except that I really do not understand the Evolution versus The Big Bang reference. These theory's do not cover the same topic so how is there a conflict? It is the comments that made me laugh.

Andrew B (1 post) says:

Evolution is false to me. My brother isn't a gorilla

gcljlamb (3 posts) says:

The Bible describes the wisdom of man as being folly to God. It means the wisest man who has ever lived, lives today, or will ever live, his very best theories, etc. will be like 2+2=4 to God. Consider this: Man would like to believe he's becoming "all that" by the whole cloning thing, but what is that? It's copying. God formed Adam out of the dirt; He built and transformed dirt into blood, skin, bones, nerves, eyes, brain, etc. When man can take dirt and make out of it what God has made without God's "pattern", THEN and only then can we say we've "arrived", not before. Thoughts?

posche (1 post) says:

Well evolution guys plz ask the monkeys dat we see even to this day what are they waiting for?Why aren't they evolving? Perhaps they will sort this out for us after they have evolved and to think that I was once a monkey, God forbid He tells me that I am fearfully and wonderfully made and I'm sticking to that. O and you who said that if we don't believe in evolution we should not use computers, well u also stop using God's oxygen for your complex-wired brain dat even evolution cud not afford to design, in order to think crap. The big bang theory says that matter came from nothing, and the Bible also tells us that God made the unirvese out of nothing coincidence? You guys are just too proud to admit dat de big bang really is crap? Well in this world de is1 point of reference n dat is God!

Most of the comments are pro-Darwin. I had to mine for the religious nutballs.

Technorati tags: Science, Religion, Nutballs, Darwin, Evolution, Big Bang

Just say no to Huckabee

A friend mentioned he would be voting for Huckabee in the upcoming primary. I nearly choked. Huckabee is not the candidate we need. He is a fundamentalist Baptist preacher turned politician. He believes the bible is the literal word of God. He believes the bible over science. And more to the point, he has a long history of letting his religious ignorance guide his politics. Take his position on AIDS in the 90s.

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

In 1992, Huckabee wrote, "If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."

Source: Huckabee wanted to isolate AIDS patients - Yahoo! News. By Andrew DeMillo

This was the fundie view at the time dispit overwhelming scientific evidence that AIDS could not be spread by causal contact. Now he's singing another tune. My guess is that he is not being entirely honest.

My friend - he always gets it wrong too.

Technorati tags: Mike Muckabee, 2008 Elections, politics, Republicans, Baptists

Chocolate love

A friend of a friend opened an online chocolate shop last week. Xuan Patisserie is a speciality chocolate shop producing a small range of unique chocolates in the Los Angeles area. I had an opportunity to take a closer look when several boxes were dropped off as samples by my friend. (He happens to have made Xuan's website.) I cannot eat chocolates for health reasons, but my co-workers, especial a few of the females, could sample with abandon (and they did).

Xuan Patisserie has been established by chocolatier Xuan Ngo to fulfill the growing demand for artisan chocolates. Xuan currently serves as a pastry chef at the Peninsula Hotel Beverly Hills.

Ngo was born in Danang, Vietnam and grew up in Les Baux de Provence, France. There, he spent the summers of his childhood in the kitchen of Oustau de Baumaniére. Upon graduating high school, he went to work for Pâtisserie Lenôtre - a renowned Paris bakery.

I don't normally plug products, especially products I cannot enjoy, but these chocolates are special. Once my co-workers sampled a few, it created a minor chocolate feeding frenzy. I actually had people begging me to open a box I had set aside for my wife. It got ugly.

The box for my wife is another story. She swears it is the best taste experience ever. I have a feeling I will be making a regular purchase. Free samples.... its more like crack.

This gem is the best of the lot, white chocolate with pure passion fruit. apparently, those who have tried it experience a foodgasm.

I saw two people actually split one in half - its that good. Chocolatier Xuan Ngo is the real deal. He's worked at Spago, Baumaniere, Sona, Boule, and now works at the Peninsula restaurant in Hotel Beverly Hills.

Xuan Patisserie chocolates are not cheap, a box goes for $22. If you are looking for a special holiday gift, this might work.

Technorati tags: Chocolate