I’ve watched Julia Nunes videos on YouTube for a good two years or more now, including most, or all, of the early shit. Glad to see that she is making headway on a national stage because she deserves it. I hope the nation eventually hears songs like, “Into the Sunshine, “The Debt” and “First Impressions.”

She performed recently on Conan with her new song, “Stay Awake:”

God and “his” church have had kind of a rough-and-tumble relationship, don’t you think, especially if we consider the Israelites’ disobedience and flirtations with rival gods through most of the Old Testament, and the god of the universe, almost comically, looking as if he is at his wits end and about to pull his proverbial hair out?

In any case, I found the following image via John Loftus’ blog:

Loftus makes the compelling case that

If a human husband said that to his wife, we would classify it as domestic violence. And rightly so. It reflects a view of the wife as property, and the husband as her lord and owner with sovereign rights to inflict punishment on one who has “stolen” from him his exclusive right to “sow his seed” in a “field” that is his property. …

And verbal abuse is considered domestic violence, so Loftus is dead-on.

His comments on the wife and property also hit center, for that is the very message of Christianity, that we are and should be happy serving as slaves to the big brother in the sky, and if we dare look at another slave driver (maybe a more benevolent one, if that’s possible) with a covetous eye, we will be smashed to bits. And yes, I am comfortable calling Christianity both spiritual and physical slavery because the New Testament itself admits it: in a right relationship to Christ, we are, and no doubt must be, totally void of self-thought or action. Thus, to be “sold out” for Christ, as I have heard the phrase turned so many times, is to be a slave to a guy for which there is not a single contemporary source that confirms his existence, much less his benevolence or grace. Not one. Nonsensically, then, evangelicals will openly admit that they are slaves to Christ, although they have somehow convinced themselves, with the false security of bliss waiting for them all the while, that this is actually a desirable thing.

Just … wow:

Stephen Colbert and Herman Cain, together at last:

All was going swimmingly until the former candidate took the stage.

Apparently the only person who missed the joke, Cain segued into a version of his stump speech, itself rehashed on Thursday for the South Carolina Republican leadership convention. The crowd shuffled awkwardly and wondered if it would be OK to leave before the encore. Satire threatened to fall apart in the face of grim reality as a candidate not famed for self-awareness appeared to be under the impression the crowd was there to hear about cainconnections.com

Thankfully, Cain remembered to make a point, perhaps the most genuine of the event, given the audience of the young and largely apolitical. Urging the collected to disobey Colbert and NOT to vote for him, he said, “I am going to ask you NOT to vote for Herman Cain because I don’t want you to waste your vote. Your vote matters.”

!facepalm.

This also shows how silly some suffrage laws are in South Carolina, since some people who have already withdrawn from the race (Bachmann, Cain) will be on the ballot in that state.

Lovely song:

So, take it for what it is.

I really get frustrated with reading posts on Facebook by believers who talk about how blessed they are when millions of believers in other countries are not so fortunate.

Witness a recent Facebook post by a former churchgoer of mine who’s car title was apparently paid in full. A car title? Really? Millions are suffering and dying in Africa and elsewhere in the world and this person is thankful that someone paid for a car title?

I can’t wrap my mind around that one.

Here is the final version of the book tower picture showing books read in 2011 from our office read-off. The photo on the right now includes “Tried By War.”

From a professional standpoint, I can’t sign any petitions or write my state Congressmen to express my concern about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act, but I can voice it here. I am a proponent of a free and open Internet, with the obvious exception of child pornography.

The federal government has already overstepped its bounds with regard to television and radio censorship, and it would be ill-fated if the government further trampled over free speech with regard to the Internet.

The current legislation requires U.S. sites to police links that may or may not point to infringing content. This would put a ridiculous workload on large sites such as Wikipedia and YouTube. As they have already been doing, I say it is up to the individual companies (recording companies, media outlets, etc.) to alert Wikepedia or YouTube of potential infringements on copyrights. To ask Wikipedia and YouTube to rummage through the recesses of its user-uploaded content in search of offending material is non-sustainable and non-sensical.

Here is the full debate.