Month: November 2008

Focus on the Family Cuts Jobs

Photo credit: Jeff Fusco (Getty Images)Businesses have surely felt the impact of the US economic crisis. This pain has also spread to the non-profit sector as well. While on the whole that is a bad thing, I cannot express dismay at news that Focus on the Family is cutting jobs and their entire operating budget.

While not a significant portion of their budget by any means, Focus spent half a million dollars campaigning against California’s Proposition 8, which, in case you have been without electricity for the last year, was the ballot initiative that passed defining marriage as strictly between one man and one woman. Perhaps that $500,000 could have been spent on better things? Hell, certificates of deposit are earning upwards of 3.5% depending on where you get them.

The majority of the Focus budget is used to spread “marriage and family advice” on the internet, in print magazines, and over the radio airwaves. How much is their 2009 budget? $138 million. That’s after the cuts. I know this is chump change for many organizations out there, but it still frightens me that there is a non-church organization whose sole purpose is to indoctrinate others and they have $138 million with which to do it.

Let’s hope the next job to be cut is Dobson’s.

War on Christmas: Back in Style!

I received the following email a few days ago. I do not know the person who sent it to me, and I can only assume that we were in contact years ago in an email that I have long since purged from my Gmail account. I get forwarded messages every once in a while; Gmail is pretty good about halting most of them. This one was a little different though. It almost seems that Gmail let this one through, so that I could deliver a retributive bitch slap. It was titled “The Grinch”.

Today, November 12th, 2008, I read in the news that the “American Humanist Association” has launched a “Why Believe in a God?” campaign, starting on buses in Washington DC next week. According to their spokesman, athiests, agnostics and non-theists “feel a little alone during the holidays, because of its association with traditional religion”.

REALLY? People who deny there is a God -they get bummed when other people celebrate God? Why is that? They are totally welcome to believe in God! Nothing stops them but themselves! I believe in God. I’m not sad, nor do I feel left out, when athiests sit around not believing!

We have become a nation of whiners…and apparently, a nation of Godless whiners! Will you please join me in making a phone call to the American Humanist Association? Assure them “Don’t be so sad! We’ll share our God with you!” Cheer them up! It will just take a moment, it will tie up their phone lines, and THEY pay for the toll free call!

They can be reached at (800) 837-3792. Call now!!! Call often!!! And send this email to EVERYONE you know. Maybe we can be the Grinch who stops their $40,000 ad campaign – by sending them a big phone bill!

How Christ-like.

“We don’t agree with you, so instead of responding with a logically-sound argument, we’ll prank call you a bunch of times and run up your phone bill!” What’s next? Having a bunch of pizzas delivered to their headquarters?

This email had 476 recipients, including myself, and they were listed alphabetically and cut off early into the D’s. I don’t even want to guess how many people got this email from this lady. Oh yeah, did I mention that she’s a lady. And that I have her name, address, and phone number? Thanks to my good friend, the internet, I do!

Her name is ***** ********, and she lives near Chicago. I won’t give her full address, but since I was able to find her information easily online I’m sure any interested parties could do the same. I was originally going to post her phone number, but again, I think I am better than that. But… for anyone who wants to do some internet digging, I’ll give you a hint: her area code is 630.

I’d love to say, “Call ***** up and harass her!”, but I’m not going to. In fact, I hope no one calls her. She leads a sheltered existence inside a set of medieval beliefs surrounded by a toddler’s maturity for debate. There is not a single thing any one of of us could offer ***** to change this.

That is the sad reality of the world in which we live. We are outnumbered by people who resort to an appeal to popularity all to often to justify their childish, strong arm techniques.

Edit: I was contacted by the person who was named in this post. They said that the mass email was the result of an email account hijacking, and they asked me to remove identifying information. I did so out of respect for their wishes.

God Sends Mixed Martial Artist on a Mission

Late this summer, UFC fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson was arrested and detained for felony reckless driving and hit and run after an exciting chase. His identity was difficult to ascertain at first, but police eventually identified Jackson as the driver when they noticed that he looked just like the guy painted on the outside of the vehicle.

Anyway, Jackson’s Wikipedia entry has testimony from friends and colleagues commenting on his mental instability and depression. Keep that first one in mind when you digest the following. The reason Jackson was driving like a maniac and destroying others’ property while do so was because he was en route to counsel a friend who had lost his faith. Mental instability? I think so!

From the Orange County Register:

Jackson, a former UFC champion who is one of the biggest names in one of the fastest-growing sports, said he also felt there was a spiritual war going on in his mind between God and the devil when he raced down Newport Boulevard on July 15, leaving a wake of rumpled cars, frightened pedestrians and angry police.

He said he thought he was on a mission to save a friend – who had recently lost his faith in God – and was unaware that he had hit any other cars or was being pursued by a phalanx of police cars.

“I thought I heard the voice of God telling me to go save Brian,” he said in an interview Thursday after his arraignment on two felony evading arrest charges. “I felt if I didn’t get to Brian, he would die.”

Now, he says, he believes he was irrational because of lack of sleep and nutrition.

It’s interesting that a lack of sleep and malnutrition can cause symptoms of insanity that are strikingly similar to what millions of rested and well-fed people believe every day. Jackson’s lawyer is exploiting his insanity stating that, “The law says you have to have criminal intent. He didn’t have it.” Seriously? A person starves and sleep deprives himself then gets into a vehicle and suddenly is not responsible for his actions because of what his intent wasn’t? What about what his intent actually was? That, to me, is a little more worrisome than his carbohydrate intake. The man believed that the God of Abraham and Satan were battling in his mind over the soul of his friend.

I wish I could say more, but it would just be repeating the same things I’ve thought scores of times, mostly “WTF?!?” People have been masquerading their heinous acts with appeals to religion and insanity (not mutually exclusive) for far too long.

I originally found a blurb about this story at jcnot4me.com, a terribly-designed, hard to navigate, and cluttered website despite its catchy domain.