Merry frakkin’ Christmas

h/t Driftglass and

Nowell.

Nowell

h/t Monkeyfister.

Let’s kick this off right

What kind of Christian are you (if you claim to be one)?

Ellroon @ Rants from the Rookery:

Look carefully at what you have become. You are endangering the life of a 12 year old boy.

You say you are good Christians? What Christian would support and encourage torture? What Christian celebrates war? Mocks injured children, soldiers and worse yet, belittles the wounded? What Christian declares intolerance to other beliefs a Christian ideal? What Bible are you reading from? This is not the Christianity I recognize.

And what kind of patriot are you?

You say you are patriots? What patriot hates his fellow citizens and demands the country change to fit his specific ideals? What patriot declares that this nation built on the dreams of immigrants should deny all other immigrants the chance to come here? What patriot states that diversity is a weakness not a strength?

Much more, read on…

Mary-Kate Olsen is all grown up

I’m happy.

Related post:

• Because women don’t smoke pot, part 2

Women are not lesser beings to men.

BBC News (hat-tip Lindsay Beyerstein @ Majikthise, via William K. Wolfrum @ Shakesville):

The decision in April by Amnesty’s executive committee to support access to abortion for women in cases of rape, incest or violence, or where the pregnancy jeopardises a mother’s life or health was greeted with an outcry by churches.

Roman Catholic leaders in particular accused Amnesty of betraying its commitment to human rights, and a senior Vatican official called on Catholics to stop funding it.

Related posts:

• Medical procedures save lives.
• a few days late

Who did you say was the supreme authority of the Christian faith?

Hat-tip Blue Gal.

Show the girl some respect.

Click the pic.

Still the best writer on these internet tubes

driftglass.

Saturday night movie

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?

ABC News (hat-tip Monkeyfister):

As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked, “I’ve got confidence in Al Gonzales doin’ the job.”

Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President’s sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off.

Here’s video (hat-tip Melissa McEwan):

Well, it doesn’t quite match ABC’s telling.

That’s inappropriate

Hat-tip Renee in Ohio.

Related posts:

• Wherein Dick Cheney styles himself a sovereign;
• Tell congress to investigate the vice president:
• Dick Cheney writes incriminating note blaming “the Pres.“
• Richard Bruce Cheney admits water torture.

WWJD?

Which Jesus?

Hat-tip Multi Medium, with thanks to Charley.

Related posts:

• Y’all come back, hear?
• This video is totally boring and dumb.

Alberto Gonzales, going with the “just following orders” defense?

Cernig writes,

A manager as awful as Gonzales admits himself to be should be fired if he won’t resign – his only possible plus point being that this managerial awfullness appears to be exactly what Rove was counting on.

STRANGE WOMAN: It is a most elusive fish!
STRANGE MAN: And it went wherever I did go.
STRANGE WOMAN: Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!
STRANGE MAN: A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, ooooh.
STRANGE WOMAN: Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!
STRANGE MAN: That went wherever I did go.
MAN IN AUDIENCE: Look up his trunk!
MAN IN AUDIENCE: Yeah, it’s hidden in his trousers!

Well isn’t that special?

Related posts:

• Nothing improper?
• I’m reassured, are you?
• — There you go. —

Ten things I hate about commandments

Hat-tip Skippy.

Related posts:

• Do you prefer plagues of locusts?
• Beautiful vision.

Do you prefer plagues of locusts?

Do you follow this one?

Ibex fight one another; my wife is watching on Discovery channel. They have evolved horns, and this is the natural tendency of all warlike species.

Here is your scapegoat. Habeas corpus.

Here is proof.

Here is another picture.

We all have one father and he does not want us to kill one another.

Look it up!

The preacher on that page reinterprets things in his own dark image, to invert plain meanings with deft commentary. Read with care. Judge every tree by the fruit thereof.

Take. Eat. This is my body.

Related post:

• Habeas corpus

See also some reaction.

This film is a highly distasteful one.

Related post:

• Global warming a reality

All life is intelligent

Consider a simple plant, which knows at a deep cellular level how to find and transform water, air, sunlight and a few minerals into complex forms of great beauty and practical utility. You may not know how to communicate with all life, but all life communicates in its own way. Herbs put forth scents and spices, which give us pleasure and medicine at once, and we think it an evolutionary accident only if we presuppose no intelligence prior to our emergence as humans.

Related post:

• Here.

4:20 of Woodstock ’99

Revelation

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?

Watching my recent visitors compared to those who have been reading this blog for awhile, we are becoming more of a musical tribe and less of a political one. Unfortunately for my desire to abstain from national politics, I cannot put out of my mind the pictures of torture that have been committed. And it is not the actual photographs, which I would not care to see more than I must, but the knowledge that it is going on even now and worse.

This is still a political blog, until the administration and those who continue to dehumanize the world with such foulness are removed from power. We must restore civilization now.

Do not watch this video. It is evil.

Recommended listening:

• Twelve

Nine years old.

Related post:

• What kind of shameful regime puts an innocent 9-year old child in a prison for two years?

Judge the tree by the fruit thereof

You do not have to eat poison, and you can be sure that if you consume enough of some things you will die.

Some things are so benign you can eat them without limitation and become healthier.

Recognize the difference.

What kind of shameful regime puts an innocent 9-year old child in a prison for two years?

Ask yourself.

Issa

Global warming a reality

We might as well make the best of it, and this will probably be good for Finland’s tourism and immigration, if they wanted such things. The downside to tourism (and for that matter, the general warming trend) is that we lose our traditional winter cultures. We need to preserve them, however, for future generations to survive a time when the world might again return to the past or present day temperatures. We as a human species need to be prepared to live in changing environments and teach our descendents how we have fashioned ways of surviving.

That, you see, is the purpose of religion.

It is a survival trait of the human race, and of all species of animal and plant. We alter ourselves by our choices of what we value and pass along to the next generation. In our choices of how and who we conceive with, on a physical plane but also on an intellectual or emotional plane, because these teach others and ourselves to make good or bad choices as we and others have made.

Here’s some pictures of Finland.

I pass along my understanding of the world as I gain it, and sometimes my understanding changes. I am willing to admit that I make mistakes. We all do, but not everyone will say so.

All of the mythologies are history. None of them are false, in the sense that they aren’t talking about real things, but they are metaphors to some extent, due to the limitations of human language. When and as we overcome our communication barriers, our language becomes stronger and our stories become better.

Not every story is a good example to follow. You need to be discerning. Consider whether the source is trustworthy. Test for yourself. What do you want to be when you evolve?

Whose example do you follow? Do you evolve beyond that?

What will humanity be like in the future? What do you think we can do right now?

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

— Mohandas Gandhi

Is it A.D. yet?

“Please don’t sue me. I’m just a fan.”

How to make a starter

My tinctures of vert, azure, or. Knit together to form a unity.

No more bread nor wine from these

It is done, and a New Year.

Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Last day!

Seven trumpets blowing.

Related posts:

• Six days of creation
• Five cups of wine
• Four forced confessions,  three henchmen, two purple gloves, and a US body count higher than 9/11

World Contact Day

Hat-tip.

Update: Boing Boing links to video.

Here

Let me show you a miracle.

Six days of creation

Related post:

• Five cups of wine

Fine herbs for bread making

As any decent person knows, hops had nothing whatsoever to do with sinful chemistry; they just kept bad company. They did not prevent, sustain, catalyze, or effect in any way the process of alcohol formation from various sugars, cellulose, starch, taters, beans, seaweed, or from whatever else human folk have attempted its secretion. Except that when hops are included in a bread recipe, the dough is, for some reason, the more ecstatic. Hop cones ground to a fine grayish powder, rendered then to a tea, this in turn stirred into bread yeast, caused the carbon dioxide that spewed forth from asexual torment to come off in the most exquisite bubbles. Not belching, gargantuan bubbles that lift the crust of the bread so horribly that the result is bread with gopher holes. Hops do for white bread what only an extra half hour of intensive hand-to-hand combat with the bread board could equally bestow. A fine-stranded gluten that gives farm bread an unblemished texture, almost silken smooth was the flesh of this oven varmint. Hops in my grandmother’s bread recipe brought about the same result as three rounds on the wrestling mat.

Excerpted from The Hop Pole, by Justin Isherwood. The whole story is well worth reading.

I haven’t yet tried adding hops to my starter.

A poem that shows

The rose is a rose
and was always a rose;
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose,
but were always a rose.

– Robert Frost, “The Rose Family”.

No more war between the roses, I say.

Taken from Wikipedia’s entry on Rosaceae, the order of which is called Rosales, of which it is said within,

In the APG classification, well-known members of Rosales include: roses; strawberries, blackberries and raspberries; apples and pears; plums, peaches and apricots; almonds; rowan and hawthorn; elms; figs; nettles; and hops and cannabis.

So there you have it, and enjoy them all.

From someone who goes, but comes in repose.

It’s log, it’s log, it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.

Everyone loves a log.

For Christmas.

Hat-tip Buck Batard.

We got ourselves a DVR for Christmas

My wife is having a great time watching her show and being able to pause and skip commercials. The nicest thing that I noticed right off is that it effectively upgraded our cable service to digital, because all the program listings are nicely organized into categories and can be selected with the remote control. So unlike having to manually channel surf we can find what we want to watch when we had nothing in particular we were looking for.

More cooking and eating today

The pancakes were made with starter, bananas and hemp protein, oil and honey, and added salt.

The wine is very fine and a portion was blended with some organic strawberry lemonade. Christmas punch indeed.

Bananas are a kind of herb. Who knew?

Water into wine

The starter which is used to make bread, may separate while refrigerated. The top layer is a liquid, in my case a mixture of water and oil with some suspended herbs, because I always feed my starter with flour, water, oil, honey, salt and fine herbs.

This is mead, a kind of beer.

Do not martyr prisoners

Saddam Hussein is no threat to anyone in the world now. Do not kill him.

This is my first commandment.

What’s next?

Four forced confessions,  three henchmen, two purple gloves, and a US body count higher than 9/11.

For the third day of Christmas

Three hench men, two purple gloves, and a US body count higher than 9/11.

Two purple gloves

and a US body count higher than 9/11.

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?

US deaths in Iraq exceeded 9/11 body count today. Isn’t that special?

Hat-tip BradBlog.

I don’t even want to give him a name.

Blue Texan (guest posting at Unclaimed Territory) has assembled some quotes to put in context this surge idea, of sending more troops, escalating the conflict in Iraq — against the combined and unanimous judgment of the joint chiefs of staff, the senior American commander in Iraq, George Casey, Jr., and the senior American commander in the Middle East, John Abizaid.

The good judgment of the commanders being what that man said he would follow above all political considerations.

“Here’s a lump of coal for your stocking, kids. We’re bringing back the draft, too.”

Happy holidays, and anyone who thinks I’m at war with Christmas for saying so is insane.

Fresh bread and smoked salmon