Looting or Lunch?

Remember those values clarification exercises from 6th grade? Is it ok to steal to feed your kids?

MSNBC says, "Looters take advantage of New Orleans mess"

People in New Orleans who were too poor to be able to get out of town, who had to live at the Superdome, who don't have cars, looted (an AP story on MSNBC and CNN).

At a Walgreen’s drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.

No electricity, the food in their fridges rotted.
And it's not like there were any stores open to sell them diapers and food.

Looting is wrong, and lots of the looting was just plain stealing stuff, but please, there's no food for sale in New Orleans!

In 1983 I got caught out in a Monsoon in the Philippines with a couple of friend. We were trapped by water, and slept on a porch of a store, and ate a pineapple that'd been left in the corner of the porch. We were ready to break in for water and food when the rain stopped and the water started receeding. It could have been called looting, but I would have called it lunch.

The most unfortunate thing Howard Dean's said since the Scream

"I have three words for the Democratic Party...
We
can
Do
Better."

I saw this as I was falling asleep, on Letterman, I think. Can anyone confirm?

Lesbians, Terrorists, Judges, and Assassins

Pat Robertson.

That's all I need to say.

McDonald's French Fried redux

Why McDonald's Fries
Taste So Good

By Eric Schlosser

Excerpt From

'Fast Food Nation' (Houghton-Mifflin, 2001)

From The Atlantic Monthly

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/01/schlosser.htm

1-17-01

http://www.rense.com/general7/whyy.htm

Twisty Turny of craziness. Fred Phelps as Gay Plant

I published a sermon I gave recently in Plattsburgh NY (Fred Phelps, Tom Cruise, and Me) on my other blog. Here's an interesting follow up.

The Religous/Theocratic Right has enjoyed the useful existence of Fred Phelps for years now, for they can claim that they're not as bad as he is-- that they love people, just hate their sin, whereas Rev. Phelps hates the people and the sin. Here's a good example, from what might be called generic evangelical conservative Christians, by that I mean people who are Christian first and whose politics follow what they believe is clear and fairly consistent biblical teaching... and here's one put out by one of the more vehement anti-gay organizations of the Theocratic Right, where politics is cloaked in the rhetoric of religion.

In an incredible twisty turny, Peter LaBarbera, (who once attended a Leather Party in D.C. just so he could count how many acts of sodomy he witnessed,) has, in the same essay, condemned Fred Phelps for not supporting the idea that gays can change, and simultaneously hypothesized that that Phelps is a gay plant, not really a homophobe.

silly rabbit.

Justice Sunday II

Where have I been all summer? There's been lots going on, but crankycindy wasn't cranky.

Especially surprising is the silence on Justice Sunday, the Theocratic Right's assault on judicial independance. Normally, I'd have watched the Justice Sunday event on tv, while taping it and taking notes about who said what where on the tape, fussing a little, thinking about excerpts to use when teaching, and maybe even a little of this new blogging thing.

The basic origin of the Justice Sunday was in opposition to the idea of "activist judges," which has been discussed at length elsewhere. In particular, this right wing rhetoric of anti-independent judiciary went from bristling and posturing to outright public fits when gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts.

They said things like this: (thanks to the PFAW coverage)

James Dobson said “Consider this: In the next few months, and certainly in the next few years, the Supreme Court is going to be issuing rulings on a variety of extremely important issues, including the very definition of marriage. The family itself is at stake here. . . .

Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly [said] “The biggest threat facing America today is the out-of-control judges who are banning our acknowledgement of God in schools and public places, overturning marriage and morality, and imposing their social views on us.” ... “I call these judges supremacists,” while others call them “liberal activist judges” or practitioners of “judicial autocracy.”

Tony Perkins [said] “The Court has expanded the Constitution to include the right to kill unborn children. They've expanded the plate so that they can find this right to homosexual sodomy. . . . "

Former Democratic Senator Zell Miller (GA) stated wildly, “[The court] has removed prayer and the Bible from schools. Each Christmas it kidnaps the baby Jesus, halo, manger, and all, from the city square. It has legalized the barbaric killing of unborn babies, and is ready to discard like an outdated hula hoop the universal institution of marriage between a man and a woman.

I didn't see the Justice Sunday event. Didn't even remember to videotape it.

I got married instead.

To my female partner.

In a church, with a license and officiant, parents, family and friends.

Happy details on happycindy.blogspot.com