THE BAPTIST PREACHER & THE TEXAS COWBOY

A Baptist preacher was seated next to a cowboy on a flight to Texas. After the plane took off, the cowboy asked for a whiskey and soda, which was brought and placed before him.

The flight attendant then asked the preacher if he would like a drink.

Appalled, the preacher replied, "I'd rather be tied up and taken advantage of by women of ill-repute, than let liquor touch my lips."

The cowboy then handed his drink back to the attendant and said, "Me too, I didn't know we had a choice."

Don't blame me.  Blame Doug.

STORY OF THE DAY - GARAGE SALE

After she had that last big garage sale she floated off 

into the sky & I heard her say there was nothing 

keeping her here anymore & I was much more 

cautious about the stuff I got rid of after that.

From StoryPeople.

BOTH WAYS

SMBC Comics.

Thanks to Paul (A.)

REASONING BACKWARD

The right wing of the Republican Party (increasingly all that exists of the Republican Party) has a general problem of starting with its platform and reasoning back from it to a premise from which it would follow, no matter how absurd and fantastical the premise.

So, the GOP knows it supports Big Oil. Since burning petroleum puts carbon dioxide in the air, which causes global climate change and potentially great harm, Republicans should rethink their partisanship for oil, coal and natural gas. Instead, they deny that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect and climate change.

Likewise, Akin started from a premise that a fertilized egg is a legal person, and that abortion is always forbidden. Presented with the conundrum of whether a woman should be made to bear the child of her rapist, he tried to deny that women can get pregnant from rape. Actually, on the order of 32,000 American women get pregnant that way every year. Akin’s position, and his reasoning, are common among Republican representatives and senators today.
 ....

Many politicized evangelicals in the United States have led a bizarre charge against Muslim law (sharia) being recognized by the courts here.

They are shameless, however, in wanting to impose on all Americans the Christian version of sharia. If they don’t believe in abortion, why don’t they just not have one? Why are they busybodies, wanting to make laws for the rest of us?

Excellent commentary from Juan Cole at Informed Sources.   The Republicans come together to decide on a desired conclusion and then offer twisted truth and outright lies as evidence for arriving at their conclusion.

Akin is not alone.

Rep. Steve King, one of the most staunchly conservative members of the House, was one of the few Republicans who did not strongly condemn Rep. Todd Akin Monday for his remarks regarding pregnancy and rape. King also signaled why — he might agree with parts of Akin’s assertion.

King told an Iowa reporter he’s never heard of a child getting pregnant from statutory rape or incest.

“Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way,” King told KMEG- TV Monday, “and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter.”

Someone needs to tell King the story which remains tattooed in my brain - that of the nine year old Brazilian girl who conceived twins as a result of being raped by her step-father.   Because of her size, her own life was at risk, and she could not have carried the twins to viability.  What would King recommend in such a situation?

Oh, and the girl's mother and the medical staff who performed the abortion were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church.  The step-father was not, because repeatedly raping a nine year old girl is not an excommunicable offense. 

A LETTER FOR YOU, REP TODD AKIN

Dear Rep. Akin,

My name is Shauna Prewitt. You do not know me, but you should. I am one of the approximately 25,000 women who every year become pregnant as a result of rape, and I would like to help you better “empathize” with my story.

During my final year of college, I experienced an event that was so absolute in its effects that, since it occurred, it has figured as the point of reference from which all understandings and meanings of my life now stem: I was raped.

I do not know if, in your terms, it was “legitimate rape.” Yes, I cried hysterically. Yes, I fought until my body ached. And, yes, I changed afterward in ways I could not ever imagine.

As I read Shauna's letter, my anger at Akin and his ilk grew and grew with each word, each paragraph.  I have to wonder if those men (and probably a few women out there, too) believe that women who are raped are real human beings.  Rep Todd Akin, how dare you?  How can you speak, how can you think so heartlessly, so soullessly?  Have you no shame?  I suppose not.  You should resign...NOW.

UPDATE: One of my Facebook friends thought it might be best if Akin hangs in as a Representative and as a candidate for the Senate, and he may just be right.  Drip, drip, drip...  

QUESTION OF THE DAY

Is "legitimate rape" an oxymoron?

Rep Todd Akin:

"It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," Akin said of a rape victim's chances of becoming pregnant.

I don't need to ask if Akin's statement is other than ignorant garbage.  I'd like to know the names of the doctors who spew the garbage. Actually, my question of the day is, as some of you may have already suspected, rhetorical.

RAIN, RAIN...

How I wish I could send some of the rain that fell all day yesterday and, so far, all day today to the places that suffer from drought.  Donning the waterproof parka and gathering up the wet umbrella to walk Diana in the rain is getting old.  She doesn't mind a walk on the lead in the rain, but when she's off the lead, she's not content on her bed on the patio and wants to be inside.  I do mind the walk in the rain.  On the first walk of the day, I made the mistake of using only the umbrella, and I got soaked.

The photo above was not taken in the worst of the weather, which was yesterday, with rain, wind, lightning, and thunder, but you can see the puddles under the trees from the heavier rainfall.  Earlier today, we had a downpour, and I decided to pass on church.  With age come privileges of avoiding the drive in the rain and sloshing through puddles.  The picture below shows the puddle around the flower bed near the front porch.

And just for fun, the dinosaurs in the neighborhood are pictured below.   Who says humans and dinosaurs do not inhabit the earth together?

PAUL RYAN'S FELLOW ROMAN CATHOLICS ON RYAN'S BUDGET

Mitt Romney expects his running mate to help deliver the Catholic vote and smooth over any discomfort among Catholics about Mormonism. (This is the first major-party ticket to go Protestant-less.) Yet after Ryan claimed his budget was shaped by his faith, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops deemed it immoral.

“A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons,” the bishops wrote in a letter to Congress.

The Jesuits were even more tart, with one group writing to Ryan that “Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” (My emphasis)

The nuns-on-the-bus also rapped the knuckles of the former altar boy who now takes his three kids to Mass. As Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the Catholic social justice group Network, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, it’s sad that a Catholic doesn’t understand that “we need to have each other’s backs. Only wealthy people can ever begin to pretend that they can live in a gated community all by themselves.”

Even Ryan’s former parish priest in Janesville weighed in. Father Stephen Umhoefer told the Center for Media and Democracy, “You can’t tell somebody that in 10 years your economic situation is going to be just wonderful because meanwhile your kids may starve to death.”

Ouch!  So much for Ryan's adherence to the social justice teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.  Thanks to Maureen Dowd for putting it all together.  And do read the entire column.  There's other good stuff there like Ryan's votes in favor of Bush's break-the-bank budgets, including two off-budget wars.

Paul Ryan then:

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said in a speech in 2005.

Paul Ryan now:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview."

Has the leopard changed his spots?  I report; you decide.  It's the budget, stupid.  Focus, focus, focus on the budget.

AYN RAND'S "THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS"

Because a reader suggested I read at least the title essay in Ayn Rand's book, The Virtue of Selfishness, I did so.  What follows is my unedited, brief commentary as I picked out selected quotes.  Toward the end of the essay, I may have stopped my notes.  I'm not saying that my responses are in any way worthwhile, but they are mine.  The beginning of the essay was tedious, nearly beyond what I could bear, and, although it became more interesting further along, I was not at all taken with the ideas nor with the style of writing, and I remain perplexed about the appeal of Rand's philosophy, except to those who wish to justify their own egotism and selfishness.  The text of the book may be found here in pdf format.
    
Rand: "The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value."

Me: Bullshit.  Just because you say so does not mean that my rational selfishness will not conflict with your rational selfishness?

Rand: "The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material.  It is the principle of justice.  A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange—an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others."

Me: What of inherited wealth?

Rand: "Nothing is given to man on earth except a potential and the material on which to actualize it. The potential is a superlative machine: his consciousness; but it is a machine without a spark plug, a machine of which his own will has to be the spark plug, the self-starter and the driver; he has to discover how to use it and he has to keep it in constant action. The material is the whole of the universe, with no limits set to the knowledge he can acquire and to the enjoyment of life he can achieve. But everything he needs or desires has to be learned, discovered and produced by him—by his own choice, by his own effort, by his own mind."

Me: What about education in childhood and youth?

Rand: "In spiritual issues—(by “spiritual” I mean: “pertaining to man’s consciousness”)—the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues."

Me: Love as conditional; love as long as the beloved gives you pleasure; love as a commodity to be traded.  Not love at all.

Rand: "But these very benefits indicate, delimit and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society: only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society.  Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes and thugs can be of no value to a human being—nor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to their needs, demands and protection, a society that treats him as a sacrificial animal and penalizes him for his virtues in order to reward them for their vices, which means: a society based on the ethics of altruism."

Me: Is illness a vice?

-------------

As I've already said, I read The Fountainhead when I was in college, but I thought it weird and boring, and, in hindsight, I believe I didn't "get" it. I'm not the only one who "missed the point".

Journalist Nora Ephron wrote that she had loved the novel when she was 18 but admitted that she "missed the point," which she suggested is largely subliminal sexual metaphor. Ephron wrote that she decided upon re-reading that "it is better read when one is young enough to miss the point. Otherwise, one cannot help thinking it is a very silly book."

As I read the information about the book at Wikipedia, I remembered that I saw the 1949 movie with Gary Cooper, and I have a vague sense that I thought it dull and dreary and found Cooper's Roark to be a lackluster character.  Thus, I saw no reason to follow up and read Atlas Shrugged, Rand's pièce de résistance.

Ayn Rand's given name is pronounced to rhyme with "mine ".

Paul Ryan then:

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said in a speech in 2005.

Paul Ryan now:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview." 

GILES FRASER ON "REPUTATIONAL RISK"

"Reputational risk" was a phrase often used at St Paul'sCathedral, and in the City generally, and one that a number of us especially disliked. What would the man who was attacked for hanging out with prostitutes and tax-collectors have made of "reputational risk"?

Surely he would have had no place for it. Indeed, he was the stone that the builders rejected, and yet became the cornerstone. So how is it that the Church built in his name has become so concerned with its own reputation? In a sense, if the Church does not have a bad reputation - or, perhaps better still, if it were indifferent to the fact that it might - it would not be doing its job properly.

The thought that the church is too respectable has crossed my mind more than once.  Jesus seemed unconcerned about risking his reputation, as he did not hesitate to speak and act in ways that outraged the respectable people of his day.  A good many of the saints cared nothing for their reputations.  In fact, a number of the saints would likely be labeled mentally ill today.  I remember reading the first biography of St Francis of Assisi as an adult in Butler's Lives of the Saints, and I thought, "Francis was insane!"  (Butler's version of the saint's life would not be my first recommendation.  I liked Julian Green's God's Fool.)

 Giles recently visited the US to give a speech, and he says:

I was invited to preach in the United States recently, and I suddenly realised how difficult it must be to be a Christian in a culture that continually applauds you for being one. I guess it might be a bit like Pavlov's dog: soon you might begin to think that the applause and the Christianity were connected.

Giles didn't stay long enough to know what it's like for the "heretics" amongst us, who seldom hear applause from unbelievers, nor from certain of our Christian brothers and sisters, some of whom declare us not to be Christians at all.

Anyway, I urge you to read Giles' entire column in the Church Times.  It's not long, and it's good.