Say Anything Blog

Since the Episcopalian / Anglican church ordained its openly-gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, in 2003, those churches have faced internal division—or schism—between the Conservatives and the pro-homosexual leadership.  No doubt, a major reason the Conservative minority has not completely split off from the pro-homosexual leadership long before this is that they would lose their churches and any money the congregations might have accumulated over years of worship.

The Washington Times released today a headline from back in May (????) about the fight taking place in Virginia, which has a unique law, allowing congregations to split off and keep their churches. 

The pro-homosexual leadership is fighting this tooth-and-nail.  For if they lose, they lose not only the money and property, but the single cudgel they have keeping those congregations wanting to actually follow the word of the Bible under their control.

Episcopalians want law voided
Julia Duin THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Wednesday, May 28, 2008

A Civil War-era law being used to allow a group of conservative Episcopalians to desert the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia with millions of dollars worth of property is on trial today at the Fairfax County courthouse.

Attorneys for the diocese and the national Episcopal Church, along with representatives of other mainline denominations, will argue that Virginia’s 1867 “division statute” is unconstitutional.

The statute was enacted to allow congregations that dissented with their denominations over slavery and secession to leave with their property. It is being contested by the diocese and the national Episcopal Church. Protestant denominations such as Methodist, Lutheran, African Methodist Episcopal, Worldwide Church of God, Presbyterian and Church of the Brethren have filed friend-of-the-court briefs.

William E. Thro, the state solicitor general, will defend the statute in front of Circuit Judge Randy I. Bellows.

Today’s hearing is part of a multi-trial battle pitting the diocese against 11 conservative churches who broke away from the denomination 18 months ago over issues of biblical authority and the 2003 election of the openly gay Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. Most of Virginia’s bishops and delegates to the 2003 Episcopal General Convention in Minneapolis voted for his election.

A conservative minority of Episcopalians, centered in Northern Virginia, coalesced in opposing the election and announced in late 2006 they were leaving the diocese and taking $30 million to $40 million worth of property with them. The churches now belong to the Anglican District of Virginia.

The Episcopal Diocese sued to keep the dissenters from using the division statute to keep the property. But when Judge Bellows ruled April 3 that the division statute applied, the diocese challenged the statute’s constitutionality.

The diocese says the statute discriminates against hierarchical churches, which answer to denominational headquarters, in favor of congregational ones, in which local churches make decisions about their leaders, finances and property.

“Matters of faith, governance and doctrine are to be free from government interference,” the diocese said in its May 15 statement, adding that the division statute is “hostile to the concept of religious freedom.”

Jim Oakes, vice chairman for the Anglican District of Virginia, said the division statute, which is unique to Virginia, protects church property for those members who have a stake in it.

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I ... ask for your trust that when I say, I remain committed to fair, practical and comprehensive immigration reform, I mean it.

I think I have earned that trust.

Yes he has.

I don’t want to fail again to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.

“I don’t think [McCain] can appease the hard-core xenophobes and convince the Latinos he is standing up for them at the same time,” said Cecilia Munoz, senior vice president of NCLR, who has been in the middle of immigration bill negotiations. “I think he has to pick a side and make it clear. Is he going after the votes of the xenophobes?”

McCain, the Arizona senator, dismayed Latinos last year when he stepped back from his immigration bill that would have tightened the borders and legalized undocumented immigrants. As boos and hisses from angry Republican conservatives grew louder at campaign events, he switched course and vowed to “first” secure the borders. Were his failed bill to come up again, he would not vote for it, he said.

Now, as the likely GOP nominee, McCain is talking again about the urgent need for comprehensive immigration reform, though he still mentions border security first. Confusion over his position has been compounded by pundits who wrongly suggest that McCain and Obama share the same views on immigration.

Truth is, McCain’s position on immigration is not a flip-flop but a zigzag.

And of course…

McCain said he wanted to correct the record. He said he had supported the immigration legislation even though his critics said it would be “political suicide.”

“I took my lumps for it without complaint. My campaign was written off as a lost cause. I did so not just because I believed it was the right thing to do for Hispanic Americans. It was the right thing to do for all Americans.

McCain has clearly signaled, again and again, that he means to enact Amnesty for Illegals if elected.  Any sops he feeds to Americans that he has gotten the message are election-time lies.

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Oh yeah.

Like the Founders envisioned the Courts being used this way.

Bible Publishers Sued for Anti-Gay References

A Michigan man is seeking $70 million from two Christian publishers for emotional distress and mental instability he received during the past 20 years from versions of the Bible that refer to homosexuality as a sin.

Bradley LaShawn Fowler, a gay man, claims his constitutional rights were infringed upon by Zondervan Publishing Co. and Thomas Nelson Publishing, both of which, he claims, deliberately caused homosexuals to suffer by misinterpretation of the Bible.

Fowler, 39, is seeking $60 million from Zondervan and another $10 million from Thomas Nelson.

According to a USA Today report, Fowler’s two separate suits against the publishers claim the intent of the Bible revisions that refer to homosexuals as sinners reflect an individual opinion or a group’s conclusion.

Fowler says the deliberate changes made to first Corinthians, chapter six, verse nine caused him “or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder.”

Fowler, who is representing himself in both lawsuits, claims the publishers are misinterpreting the Bible by specifically using the word homosexuals, which made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of demoralization, chaos and bewilderment.

“These are opinions based on the publishers and they are being embedded in the religious structure as a way of life,” he tells a local NBC TV station affiliate in Grand Rapids.

Fowler admits that every Bible printed is a translation that can be interpreted in many ways, but he says specifically using the word “homosexual” is not a translation but a change.

Fowler says Zondervan Bibles published in the ‘80s used the word homosexuals among a list of those who are “wicked’ or unrighteous and won’t inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

Zondervan, for its part, issued a statement to the Grand Rapids press stating it does not translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations it publishes

“We rely on the scholarly judgment of the highly respected and credible translation committees behind each translation and never alter the text of the translations we are licensed to publish,” the statement reads.

“We only publish credible translations produced by credible Biblical scholars.”

U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr., who will hear Fowler’s case against Thomas Nelson, says the court “has some very genuine concerns about the nature and efficacy of [Fowler’s] claims.”

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Sometime back Whistler opined on the problem of a politicized NASA using its good name to weigh in on so-called Global Warming, in his thread The Problem with NASA, saying among other things, that:

… not to mention the embarrassing number of times they’ve been caught relocating their thermometers on black top parking lots and above air conditioners.

with the implication being that through negligence or design, they are skewing their results.

Yet this gem that came out recently piqued my curiosity:

NASA Chief’s Global Warming Remarks Called ‘Naive’

NASA sought today to deflect criticism its chief received following skeptical comments he made on the topic of the agency’s role in global warming research.

During an interview Wednesday with NPR, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin expressed doubts that global warming was an issue that humans could or should address.

In a telephone interview today, NASA spokesman David Mould told LiveScience that climate is an important issue about which the agency provides a significant quantity of data, and that it will continue to provide that data, but that NASA’s job is not to make policies or advise on policies.

Along the same lines, NASA clarified Griffin’s remarks (corrected him, politically) in a press release issued late Wednesday:

NASA is the world’s preeminent organization in the study of Earth and the conditions that contribute to climate change and global warming. The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet’s evolving systems. It is NASA’s responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA’s mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies. As I stated in the NPR interview, we are proud of our role and I believe we do it well.

Griffin’s comments to NPR’s Morning Edition included: I have no doubt that global—that a trend of global warming exists. I’m not sure it’s fair to say that is a problem we must wrestle with.

He further stated that it is wrong for mankind to say what climate conditions are best for the planet.

To assume that [global warming] is a problem is to assume that the state of the Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure it doesn’t change, he said. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown.

Second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings—where and when—are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we might have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

Evidently, Griffin inadvertently let the truth slip out and committed heresy in departing from the adopted party line. The rest of the statements from NASA were attempts to get the toothpaste back into the tube.

But is this simply a matter of differences? If the French were investigating the matter, they would gravely intone cherchez les femmes However, my old FBI mentor, had a different view: follow the money. (more...)

What does it mean to be a Republican?  What does it mean to be a Conservative?  The two used to be pretty much synonymous, but with McCain at the helm, the Party’s tiller is soon to be jammed hard a-port.

Some Conservatives intend to try to minimize the damage.

Conservatives to battle McCain over platform
Activists don’t want his views on warming, stem cells, other issues adopted

Conservative activists are preparing to do battle with allies of Sen. John McCain in advance of September’s Republican National Convention, hoping to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined in the party’s official declaration of principles.

McCain has not yet signaled the changes he plans to make in the GOP platform, but many conservatives say they fear wholesale revisions could emerge as candidate McCain seeks to put his stamp on a document that currently reflects the policies and principles of President Bush.

”There is just no way that you can avoid anticipating what is going to come. Everyone is aware that McCain is different on these issues,” said Jessica Echard, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum. “We’re all kind of waiting with anticipation because we just don’t know how he’s going to thread this needle.”

....

One main concern is immigration. The current plank on that issue calls for a temporary-worker program, something that both Bush and McCain have supported but that many conservatives view as unwarranted amnesty for people who arrived in the country illegally. She would like a much tougher position and is wary of McCain on the issue.

“Our job is to make sure that the grass roots continue to have a say,” she said.

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DocDave posted this a little while back under the heading of The Cosmological Effects On Climate Change and it was received with a collective yawn, the readership evidently preferring to bicker over smaller things.

What was lost in that shuffle was very good ammo to smite any Global Warming Gore-oid about the head and shoulders for being such a knave.

Not only is the Earth greatly affected by changes taking place within its own molten core and in the composition of the Sun itself other planets in this system are being greatly affected as well.

Long story short: our galaxy, really a small one as far as galaxies go, is being gobbled up by a much, much larger galaxy and we are coming abreast of the galactic gravitational disk.

What does it all mean?

We of the overarching Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy have finally come down next to, and even with the massively powerful spiral armed equatorial plane of the Milky Way Galaxy.

In our movement through space, our Earth has now fully begun to respond to the more powerful galactic energies and electro-gravitational bias of the massive Milky Way. We have reached the higher energy equatorial disc region of the massive spiral arm. We have now been “adopted” by a new system, a stronger and more powerful system, and we can expect changes on almost every level of energy.

Whatever these changes are, they are all part of the natural birth, death, rebirth and transformation of the cosmos. As our knowledge of the universe grows, we cannot but understand how much we do not understand. Such is life.

What it also means is that it doesn’t make a lick of a difference to our ability to change the climate if you use light bulb A or light bulb B, whether you have the carbon footprint of a poor, pensioned spinster or of the jet-setting AlGore.

It also means that if the Global Warming types know all this stuff it would be the equivalent of an old wizard scaring the peasantry into doing his bidding after he threatens to take away the Sun, even though he knows it’s just a regularly-scheduled eclipse.

If they don’t know, then they should be schooled.

Either way, if Obama or McCain allowed to go forward with their asinine and incredibly destructive Cap-and-Trade policies, we will all be reduced to penniless serfs and for no good reason.

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Those Global Warming folks have their eyes directed completely inwards, from the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface and have been ignoring all the far more massive influences that affect Earth and Earth’s climate from within and without.

Let’s start with the Earth’s Magnetic Core

Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth’s liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet’s surface, a new study says.

“What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth’s magnetic field,” said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.

The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said.

The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth’s solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the planet’s magnetic field.

(more...)

Yes, in the raucous blowback from the McCain-Bush Comprehensive Immigration Reform a.k.a. Amnesty for Si se puede! Illegals, McCain first told Americans to just calm down. Then, after getting an earful at each Townhall meeting he attended, he told us he gotten the message.

Apparently not.

McCain, Obama court Hispanic voters

“It will be my top priority yesterday, today and tomorrow,” McCain said. “We have to secure our borders ... but we also must proceed with a temporary worker program that is verifiable and truly temporary. We must also understand that 12 million people are here, and they are here illegally, and they are God’s children.” He promised to address the issue in “a humane and compassionate fashion.”

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that the corpse of Amnesty for Illegals will be revived by a President McCain and there won’t be a damn thing the rest of America has to say about it… because ... don’t ya know… he’s Republican.

These emotional outbursts ... are just what male chauvinists say about woman’s incapacity to coolly assess a situation.

How strangely similar to Leftist thought process.

Except I think this is more a function of being Leftist than having a uterus.

Take Ann Coulter, Jean Kirkpatrick and Maggie Thatcher, for instance…

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—Presidential campaigns use all sorts of sophisticated operations against their opponents, but Barack Obama is also relying on some good, old-fashioned lucky charms.

The presumptive Democratic nominee said Monday that he carries around a few trinkets supporters have handed him at campaign appearances along the way _ including a “lucky poker chip” and a Native American eagle.

“They’ll hand it to you and they’ll say, ‘I want you to be well, but I want you to fight for me,’” Obama said at a campaign stop here, where he pulled some of the items from a pocket. “And they’ll talk about not having health care for their family, or they’ll talk about being laid off.”

He said those are the moments when he knows the exhaustive campaign is worth it.

“If you’ve been talking to somebody like that, then you want to work harder if you’re asking them to vote for you,” he said.

CounterPunch Diary
“Hero" John McCain as Phony and Collaborator: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

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Sen. McCain stunned onlookers at the hearing when he moved forward to the witness table and warmly embraced Bui Tin as if he was a long, lost brother.

“Was that hug for Bui Tin, a Vietnamese official responsible for the torture of some American prisoners of war, a message ‘please don’t give them my records?’” one activist questioned at the time.

In any case, many of McCain’s fellow Vietnam War POWs were aghast, not to mention former POWs of World War II and Korea, who could, only in some instances after decades, forgive but never forget the inhumanity of their captors--certainly not to the point of embracing them.

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

John McCain’s been getting kid-glove treatment from the press for years, ever since he wriggled free of the Keating scandal and his profitable association – another collaboration, you might say—with the nation’s top bank swindler in the 1980s. But nothing equals the astounding tact with which his claque on the press bus avoids the topic of McCain’s collaborating with his Vietnamese captors after he’d been shot down.

How McCain behaved when he was a prisoner is key. McCain is probably the most unstable man ever to have got this close to the White House. He’s one election away from it. Republican senator Thad Cochrane has openly said he trembles at the thought of an unstable McCain in the Oval Office with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

What if a private memory of years of collaboration in his prison camp gnaws at McCain, and bursts out in his paroxysms of uncontrollable fury, his rantings about “gooks” and his terrifying commitment to a hundred years of war in Iraq. What if “the hero” knows he’s a phony?
Doug Valentine has written the definitive history of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He knows about the POW experience. His dad, an Army man, was captured by the Japanese and sent to a POW camp in the Philippines for forced labor. Many of his mates died. Doug wrote a marvelous book about it, The Hotel Tacloban.

Now Valentine has picked up the unexploded bomb lying on McCain’s campaign trail this year. As he points out, he’s not the first. Rumors and charges have long swirled around McCain’s conduct as a prisoner. Fellow prisoners have given the lie to McCain’s claims. But Valentine has assembled the dossier. It’s devastating. We’re running it in our current CounterPunch newsletter and we strongly urge you to subscribe.

Some excerpts from Valentine’s indictment.

“War is one thing, collaborating with the enemy is another; it is a legitimate campaign issue that strikes at the heart of McCain’s character. . .or lack thereof. In occupied countries like Iraq, or France in World War II, collaboration to that extent spells an automatic death sentence.. . .The question is: What kind of collaborator was John McCain, the admitted war criminal who will hate the Vietnamese for the rest of his life?

“Put it another way: how psychologically twisted is McCain? And what actually happened to him in his POW camp that twisted him? Was it abuse, as he claims, or was it the fact that he collaborated and has to cover up? Covering-up can take a lot of energy. The truth is lurking there in his subconscious, waiting to explode. ”

“McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated. By McCain’s own account, after three or four days he cracked. He promised his Vietnamese captors, “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital ...

“His Vietnamese captors soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III, came from a well-bred line in the American military elite. . .The Vietnamese realized, this poor stooge has propaganda value. The admiral’s boy was used to special treatment, and his captors knew that. They were working him.”

“. . .two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him. It was not ‘name rank and serial number, or kill me’. as specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based, the number of U.S. pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue ships.”

“…McCain was held for five and half years. The first two weeks’ behavior might have been pragmatism, but McCain soon became North Vietnam’s go-to collaborator…..McCain cooperated with the North Vietnamese for a period of three years. His situation isn’t as innocuous as that of the French barber who cuts the hair of the German occupier. McCain was repaying his captors for their kindness and mercy.

“This is the lesson of McCain’s experience as a POW: a true politician, a hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain’s campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him, and, in return, he danced to their tune. . .”

(more...)

Author Peter Schweizer wanted to know if there could be a link between a person’s political leanings and illegal drug use. His eye-opening finding: Liberals are five times more likely than conservatives to use marijuana and cocaine.

Schweizer, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, writes in his new book “Makers and Takers”:

“Academic studies have found that those on the political left are five times more likely to use marijuana and cocaine … Another survey found that Democrats were five times more likely to use marijuana than Republicans…

“A study published in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse found that among heavy drug users, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was more than 8 to 1.”

Yet another survey found a “direct and linear relationship” between liberalism and the use of any illicit drug.

Naturally, I am shocked—shocked to read of such a wide disparity.

Then again, it would go far to explain the brain-dead policies of the Left and their being stuck on stupid so very often.

Didn’t your Daddy ever tell you never to argue with someone who was drunk or just plain stupid?

But one question remains: were they Liberal / Stupid before taking the drugs, or after?

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According to the blog entry below, this is the company’s explanation:

An Ohio blog, Plunderbund, was the first up with this and in this post, you can see the response from the creator of the item:

Dear Joseph,

Thank you for your email and your forthright feedback. No, this is not a joke, and our intention is not to offend.

Our objective is three fold:

1} Provide a cuddly toy for the millions of Obama fans to take a little piece of their favorite candidate home with them.

2} Have a means for children to become a part of the political process with a cuddly plush toy all their own.

3| Contribute a pivotal article of presidential election memoribilia.

After test marketing our product, we found a majority of our customer base finds our plush toy fun and loveable.

By virtue of our plush toy now temporarily out of stock, we’ve had to expedite a new order of inventory to meet the needs of our customers who want TheSockObama.

Joseph, again we thank you and appreciate your interest in the TheSockObama.

Regards,

Dave & Ellee
http://www.thesockobama.com

It’s going to be a long, dirty fight to November, and regardless of how it turns out, Americans are sooooooo screwed.

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With our political prospects in the next 4 years or so looking dim, whatever the outcome of the election, I thought I’d turn our thoughts to the past, when life was a little simpler and the concept of romantic love was sought after.  And the gal who gave us the soundtrack to love was none other than Edith Piaf, singing her wonderful ‘La vie en Rose’

Des yeux qui font baissers les miens.
Un rir’ qui se perd sur la bouch’,
Voilà ... Voilà…
Le portrait sans retouch’,
De l’homme auquel j’appartiens.
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose

- Those eyes, which make me lower mine.
-That laugh, which vanishes on the lips.
- The unretouched portrait
- Of the man to whom I belong.
- When he takes me in his arms
- He murmurs to me
- I see life in pink.

Il me dit des mots d’amour
Des mots de tous les jours
Et ça m’fait quelque chose.
Il est entré dans mon coeur,
Une part de bonheur,
Dont je connais la cause.

C’est lui par moi, Moi par lui dans la vie
Il me l’a dit, l’a juré, pour la vie.
Et, dès que je l’aperçois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat.
Des nuits d’amour à en mourir
Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place,
Les ennuies, les chagrins s’effacent,
Heureux, heureux pour mon plaisir.
Quand il me prend dans ses bras…
la vie..en rose.

- He speaks so lovingly.
- In everyday words .
- And that does things to me.
- He has opened my heart,
- To a share of happiness,
- Of which, I alone know the cause.
- He is for me, I am for him In this life.
- He tells me so, has sworn it, for life.
- And, as soon as I realise it
- Then inside myself. I feel..
- My heart beating.
- The nights of love to die for,

- A great happiness Which just happens.
- Erasing all sadness And tedium,
- Happy, happy at my own pleasure.
- When he takes me in his arms
- He speaks to me so softly...and I see,
- life in Pink