I see the person with the world’s lowest merit to fame ratio is out and about. I wonder what he has to say?

“A new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God’s gift of life is welcomed, respected, and cherished — not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed,” the pope told a congregation estimated by the organizers at 400,000 gathered at a Sydney racecourse and nearby park.

Yes, they’ll build a world where God’s “gifts” are welcome and denial of such things will be rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed. I look forward to it.

“In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair,” he warned.

The Pope knows this because of his extensive interaction with your average member of such societies, which is done via telepathy from the Vatican. I guess.

He said that in the absence of God, “what was ostensibly promoted as human ingenuity soon manifests itself as folly, greed and selfish exploitation.”

Well, it’s nice that he’s admitting there’s an absence of God in the Catholic church.

“Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division,” the pope said, “of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises.”

And now he’s explaining to us why we shouldn’t be Catholics. I’m sold!

Despite the presence of hundreds of thousands of young visitors, 125,000 of them from overseas, there was almost no trouble. The police reported only one arrest, of a young Australian Catholic who punched a demonstrator who was throwing condoms into a crowd of pilgrims to protest the church’s stand on birth control and its opposition to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Really? Throwing condoms at people gets you decked? Presumably they weren’t used condoms…

But wait, that wasn’t the dumbest religious babbling of late. This might be worse:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called on followers of the world’s main religions to turn away from extremism and embrace a spirit of reconciliation.

…

He said the great conflicts of history were not caused by religion, but by the misinterpretation of religion.

Yes, that’s the leader of Saudi Arabia promoting religious tolerance.

Man, he sounds just like those fluffy, moderate religious apologists, doesn’t he? It’s almost like those are just empty platitudes.

Regardless of the ridiculous controversy over the cover, this New Yorker article on Obama is worth reading.

It’s not flattering, but it’s by no means a negative article. The man is smart and he figured out how to work Chicago’s political landscape and propel himself into the U.S. Senate. He learned from mistakes and made it to the top. A bit ruthlessly, maybe, but politics isn’t for timid folks like myself. The story also does a good job showing just how absurd the allegations that he’s some kind of left wing radical are, as well.

It does cut against his idealistic message of hope change a little, though. He used Chicago’s political machine when he needed it, he didn’t try to change it. He didn’t push sweeping changes at any level. I’m tempted to say that’s really what the controversy over the cover is for - to redirect attention from this article - but it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the trouble.

UPDATE: Jesus, I should read these more carefully before I post them.

Seriously, is it November yet?

I’m trying and failing to not care about this election for at least a few more months. There’s pretty clearly nothing I can do to change anything about the way things are going (which seems ok, so far, but not where it should be, in my opinion), especially now. So I have to just sit back and watch the fake media scandals and awkward campaign responses. It’s not fun. I can barely muster enough energy to mock McCain’s failure at the Internets. Or even the unrelated matter of Bill Donahue’s claim that it’s hard to come up with a more vile act than desecrating a communion wafer. Mr. Donahue, meet Cardinal Law. I’m sure you’ll be fast friends.

On another subject, this song is awesome.

You know that McCain web ad that asks if you think we should meet unconditionally with anti-American foreign leaders? There’s a yes and a no box. I clicked on the yes box and I was taken to a McCain page asking for my email or my money. It’s surprising that McCain endorses that kind of thing, isn’t it?

Warning: This is a pretty trivial post in the finest traditions of blogging navel-gazing. You may want to skip it if you don’t like that sort of thing.

So Craig just shut off comments on his blog. Obviously, it’s his blog and he can do what he wants. It’s an interesting subject, though.

I’m always a little wary of blogs that don’t allow comments. For a while, it seemed rare for top tier right-wing blogs to have comments. I understand Craig’s comment about them being tedious. There’s definitely value in having a place just to vent, and if you constantly have to defend yourself, well, it’s annoying. I’m pretty sure I’d find comments a lot more tiresome than I do if every serious post I made had a comment disagreeing and demanding a response from me. On the other hand, there’s also some value in allowing someone to put up a counterpoint to your thoughts. Maybe it’s tedious, but it also keeps you honest. If you know you’ll get ripped for saying something dumb, you’re going to think twice before put up half-assed commentary. You will if you’re honest, anyway. Then again, maybe we’re so set in our ideologies that it doesn’t matter.

So I won’t say it’s “stifling dissent” or anything so overwrought, but closing comments is removing a check on your opinions, even if it’s a very noisy and tedious check. That’s a little disappointing.

C’est la vie, I suppose.

This is great. McCain put out an economic plan (in the loosest sense of the word) that was purportedly signed by 300 economists. The catch being that some of them don’t even agree with that plan, but signed a short, vague statement about McCain’s broader economic perspective.

It seems the McCain camp is getting tips from creationists and global warming denialists. Fake surveys are their stock and trade. The party of the backwards and ignorant marches on.

I’ve been ignoring this for some reason. The initial outrage was based on an inaccurate AP story, but there’s still a lot to think about.

On the second day of a weeklong tour intended to highlight his values, Mr. Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio on Tuesday to present his proposal to get religious charities more involved in government programs. He is scheduled to give an afternoon speech here outside of the Eastside Community Ministry, a program providing food, clothes and youth ministry.

“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.”

Presumably I’m one of those people bristling. What role faith has in the “public square” isn’t really the issue for me. It’s whether we should be giving religious groups money.

He thus embraced the heart of a program, established early in the Bush administration, that critics say blurs the constitutional separation of church and state. Mr. Obama made clear, however, that he would work to ensure that charitable groups receiving government funds be carefully monitored to prevent them from using the money to proselytize and to prevent any religion-based discrimination against potential recipients or employees.

This seems awkward. Say you’re considering giving money to a charity run by the Church of the FSM. As part of their mission, this group proselytizes to those receiving aid and hires only those who agree to a statement affirming their faith in the FSM. So, the group has to change its hiring practices. Would a religious charity want to do this? Some would, some wouldn’t, presumably. What about proselytizing? I suppose the lowest impact change they’d have to make would be to stop proselytizing as part of whatever program was receiving aid. The government wouldn’t be directly funding proselytizing. But aren’t you indirectly, at that point? Unless you’re forcing the group to cease any proselytizing, at which point it would seem that you’ve made it into a secular charity, isn’t that group just going to reroute money from the program the government is funding to other programs which do proselytize? Is that really much different than funding them directly? Granted, you can take that logic and make a case that funding any group is indirectly giving money to those whom your new aid dissuades contributions from. Still, it seems possibly reasonable if applied only to money routed within a group.

My questions become:

1. If the groups receiving aid have to cease all proselytizing and discriminatory hiring, why is this program different from one that allocates money to secular charities?
2. If a group doesn’t have to cease all proselytizing, just that which occurred as part of the program the aid is earmarked for, aren’t you indirectly funding exactly what you’re trying to avoid? The caveat to that question is that I have my doubts that that logic is generally accepted for other restrictions on government aid.

Let’s take a quick look at a possible application of the Lemon test, which is always a fun exercise:

1. The program has a pretty clear secular purpose: increasing charity work.
2. Its primary effect is a little more tricky. If government isn’t allowed to fund religious charities in general (presumably because they do advance religion) and if the program directs more non-government money to the normal work of religious charities, isn’t one of its primary effects to advance religion?
3. My sense is that safeguards are going to be tricky to define and difficult to enforce. Maybe it’s more trouble than its worth.

I think Obama’s on dangerous ground, but it’s not surprising. It seems like his governing philosophy is one that wants to include faith as much as possible, so it isn’t inconsistent for him to advocate this. Of course, you’d have to pretty naive to assume that the prospect of evangelical votes isn’t behind this to some extent. I guess we’ll see once Obama is elected.

Music’s always good for a filler post or two, right?

In all honesty, there’s only one album and one EP I really see as a standouts so far this year. Those would be Opeth’s Watershed and Agalloch’s The White EP. I always think this about Opeth albums, especially when they first come out, but this one seems to really be standing the test of repeated listens. Ghost Reveries has some great moments, but I just never listen to it. Watershed doesn’t seem to be that kind of album. I immediately liked what I find to be the best moments on that CD. Aside from Coil, I didn’t like anything on Watershed right away. It has its faults, of course. The first third of The Lotus Eater is the best few minutes on the CD and the rest is the worst six minutes on it. There’s too much quiet acoustic then loud distorted guitar - no buildup or working into it (see Porcelain Heart). Still, it’s Opeth (despite some major lineup shuffling), with more silly prog moments and the dynamics and beauty to which we’re accustomed.

Agalloch’s White EP is only a disappointment in that it’s not a full album. Ashes Against The Grain was noticeably lacking in folk-y acoustic parts, despite being a good album. That’s all this EP is and it’s stellar. Now they need to give us a new album.

There are other good releases, but nothing I’m that excited about. A Silver Mt. Zion (this is me not caring what their name really is) has a new one, 13 Blues for 13 Moons, which is good, despite the ever increasing pretentiousness (12 tracks of noise at the beginning of the album? No.). Russian Circles released Station, which is solid, but it’s no Enter. Martriden, a good metal band from Montana (who knew?), released The Unsettling Dark, which is a well-executed melodic blackened death metal album. Fun to listen to, but nothing new (I mean, other than being from Montana and sounding Scandinavian). The Mars Volta released The Bedlam in Goliath, which is an improvement on their last album, but I’m at the point where I really don’t care what they do.

So, in conclusion, I need more new music. I should really grab Portishead’s new one, after being introduced to them just this year. Listening to Orphaned Land reminds me that they really need to release a new album. I’m really hoping the new Dredg album later this year is good (I can’t imagine it won’t be). I very nearly mentioned the new Death Cab for Cutie album up there, but I Will Possess Your Heart can’t make up for their general blandness.

How precious. And the Right was always worried about the ideological kinship of communists and liberals. Apparently, we need to be worried about the inhumanity shared between communists and Republicans.

I’m proposing this as an explanation for why conservatives are supposedly happier than liberals. Clearly, if you’re the kind of person who supports torture, despiting knowing its purpose is to punish and elicit false confessions, you’re obviously deriving pleasure from others’ pain and suffering. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of pain and suffering in the world for conservatives to get off on.

Sending an email with the subject “A video just for you” is a bad idea. That sounds a lot like the porn spam I get. When the sender says Sen. Chuck Schumer, my amusement becomes abject horror because a) Chuck Schumer and porn should never be juxtaposed and b) I can almost believe he’d do something like that if he got enough attention for it.

Please stop sending me emails like this immediately.

Sincerely,
Jeff