The incredible shrinking god of Harold Camping

Flannery O'Connor -- Southerner, literary great and faithful Catholic -- once wrote to a friend that "these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn’t be worth understanding. A God you understood would be less than yourself."

That would reduce the deity of Family Radio's president, Harold Camping, to something on a subatomic level. You have to go pretty low to be understood by the 0-fer king of apocalyptic prognostication.

Monday was a day for irrationalizing in the Camping camp as the 89-year-old demonstrably false prophet explained that May 21 was a "spiritual" Judgment Day, and that we'll still all be Krispy Kritters come Oct. 21, just as he originally forecast.

Huh? As The Associated Press reporter no doubt discovered, a Camping you understand may well be a cause for alarm:

The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21.

"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven ... if God has saved them they're going to be caught up."

It's not the first time the 89-year-old retired civil engineer has been dismissed by the Christian mainstream and has been forced to explain when his prediction didn't come to pass. Camping also prophesized the Apocalypse would come in 1994, but said later that didn't happen then because of a mathematical error.

Camping's hands shook slightly as he pinned his microphone to his lapel, and as he clutched a worn Bible he spoke in a quivery monotone about listeners' earthly concerns after giving away their possessions in expectation of the Rapture.

Family Radio would never tell anyone what they should do with their possessions, and those who did would cope, Camping said.

"We're not in the business of financial advice," he said. "We're in the business of telling people there's someone who you can maybe talk to, maybe pray to, and that's God."

But he said he wouldn't give away all his possessions ahead of Oct 21.

"I still have to live in a house, I still have to drive a car," he said. "What would be the value of that? If it is Judgment Day why would I give it away?"

WHILE THE GOD of Harold Camping might be infinitesimal, so as to be understood by your average loony, my God is as big as the universe. (And I don't claim to understand Him. At all.)

And this little piss-ant of a false prophet -- he who has wasted big money and caused such widespread grief for those foolish enough to heed his mad teachings -- is going to have a lot of explaining to do upon his End of Days.

Half past the Apocalypse

It's half past the Apocalypse, Omaha time, and apparently we're all still here.

Omaha is strangely intact, and the awful, massive earthquake strangely absent . . . and I'm strangely unraptured. Don't they know it's the end of the world?

It ended in Family Radio's bank account.

How great this is

If you're a Southerner of a certain age (say mine and up) there are a few things that hit you where you live. And it doesn't matter whether you're Catholic, Protestant, heathen . . . whatever.

One of them is "How Great Thou Art." Every person not born a sociopath has -- somewhere -- a button that can be pressed, one that bypasses the brain and everything else and makes a direct connection to the soul.

"How Great Thou Art" presses that button for those of us born and raised in the South. Well, let's just say it does for me, and I'd wager that I'm a pretty typical specimen of the species.

CARRIE UNDERWOOD nails the church classic above, but if you're like me -- 50ish and born Southern -- this is the version you hear in your mind's ear:


AND LET ME say this while I'm at it:

A million Marty Haugens sitting at a million keyboards and scribbling on a million notation sheets couldn't come up with one "How Great Thou Art." Not in a million years.

It's oy veh, oy veh. . . .

Kill me now. No . . . wait. No need to. Just let this here video play out, and that should do the trick.

Is it just me, or did Christianity start to lose its savor (if not its Savior) when it stopped leading the culture -- embracing and creating art for beauty's sake, because beauty itself is a manifestation of the divine in this world -- and started following a false gospel of crass utilitarianism?

I wonder what went first, the church's mind or its heart?

You remember how, in "American Pie," Don McLean sang "the Father, Son and Holy Ghost caught the last train for the coast"? I now know why the Holy Trinity might have done that.

Sorry, guys, there's no escaping sanctified diarrhea like "Sunday," which merely rebrands the secular diarrhea of Rebecca Black's "Friday." And sadly, the fact remains that crap like this is about the best American Christianity can muster anymore.


I'D CALL crap-evangetastic mush such as this liturgical lounge lizardry if the mere association weren't totally unfair to Nick the Lounge Singer.

It ain't rocket science, brothers and sisters.

If you spend four or five decades bombarding the wretched masses with superficial garbage and calling it Christian, don't be shocked that the world isn't beating a path to the church house door. Even heathens (well, some of them, at least) have standards.

And eventually, they come to think that God is as full of crap as His people.

Terror by proxy, fulfilled

When moronic "Christian" asshats in the bowels of central Florida do senseless things like this . . .


. . . moronic "Muslim" asshats in the bowels of another failed state -- this one, Afghanistan -- do senseless things like this.

To be clear, the enraged mob in Afghanistan is a terrorist one. People whose descent into madness comes amid the wreckage of a country that long ago descended into madness.

But what we also have to realize is that the terrorist mob in southwestern Asia is nothing more than the proxy of a lunatic pastor in Florida. The unwitting tool of a little band of lunatic, Bible-believin' bumpkins who think unleashing the fires of hell is a fine idea just so long as it's done in the name of Jesus Christ.

THE LUNATIC PASTOR, the Rev. Terry Jones, knew exactly what would happen in parts of the Muslim world when word got out that he torched a Koran. He especially knew what would happen in Afghanistan -- where 100,000 American troops are already in the line of fire -- when word got out that he and his Bible-thumpin', Jesus-jumpin' gaggle of grotesque humanity had torched an Islamic holy book March 20.

And Friday, it happened. In Masar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan's Islamic answer to America's lunatic fringe of evangelicalism killed seven United Nations workers in the name of Allah.

They were the business end of the metaphorical, geopolitical gun. Thousands of miles away, in a crappy little church full of crappy little people, Terry Jones pulled the trigger.

The tragedy of Islam is that too many of its adherents believe God is so small that He needs an enraged mob to defend His honor. The tragedy of America is that the constitutional guarantees that safeguard Americans' freedom of conscience render the republic largely defenseless against those whose consciences have been freely deformed into grotesque spectacles demanding mayhem much as a vampire demands blood.

Jones hates Islam because he is convinced it's of the devil. You have to give the devil his due for using such a committed "enemy of Satan" to ensure there will be hell to pay.

A revolution on hold

Martin Luther King Jr. was looking to lead a revolution in 1968, a "poor people's campaign."

He never got the chance. To paraphrase Facebook, "Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and millions of other Americans like this."

The trouble is, what the great civil-rights leader said on March 31, 1968, at New York's Riverside Church probably is even more relevant now than it was then. Change the name of a place here and there, change the name of la guerre du jour . . . and there you go.

Back in 1968, despite the war in Indochina, despite the spate of political assassination that was to begin with King's martyrdom, we still kind of believed in hope. We still kind of trusted in "progress."

NOW, AFTER a decade of grinding war and a few years of a Great Recession, mass unemployment, foreclosures by the millions and empty state and municipal coffers . . . now, not so much.

In today's America, we find much of the middle class being systematically turned into potential candidates for a Martin Luther King-style poor-people's campaign.

Here, as we wrap up another commemoration of his birth, 82 years ago now, are some excerpts from an important address -- one which happened to be King's last Sunday sermon. It happens to be the declaration of a nonviolent revolution . . . a revolution interrupted.

Viva la revolución.

There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution: that is, a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a revolution in weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of warfare; then there is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world. Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place. And there is still the voice crying through the vista of time saying, "Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away."

Now whenever anything new comes into history it brings with it new challenges and new opportunities. And I would like to deal with the challenges that we face today as a result of this triple revolution that is taking place in the world today.

First, we are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

Now it is true that the geographical oneness of this age has come into being to a large extent through modern man’s scientific ingenuity. Modern man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. And our jet planes have compressed into minutes distances that once took weeks and even months. All of this tells us that our world is a neighborhood.

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.

John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." And he goes on toward the end to say, "Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution.

Secondly, we are challenged to eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation. I must say this morning that racial injustice is still the black man’s burden and the white man’s shame.

It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly—to get rid of the disease of racism.

Something positive must be done. Everyone must share in the guilt as individuals and as institutions. The government must certainly share the guilt; individuals must share the guilt; even the church must share the guilt.

We must face the sad fact that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing "In Christ there is no East or West," we stand in the most segregated hour of America.

(snip)

Not only do we see poverty abroad, I would remind you that in our own nation there are about forty million people who are poverty-stricken. I have seen them here and there. I have seen them in the ghettos of the North; I have seen them in the rural areas of the South; I have seen them in Appalachia. I have just been in the process of touring many areas of our country and I must confess that in some situations I have literally found myself crying.

I was in Marks, Mississippi, the other day, which is in Whitman County, the poorest county in the United States. I tell you, I saw hundreds of little black boys and black girls walking the streets with no shoes to wear. I saw their mothers and fathers trying to carry on a little Head Start program, but they had no money. The federal government hadn’t funded them, but they were trying to carry on. They raised a little money here and there; trying to get a little food to feed the children; trying to teach them a little something.

And I saw mothers and fathers who said to me not only were they unemployed, they didn’t get any kind of income—no old-age pension, no welfare check, no anything. I said, "How do you live?" And they say, "Well, we go around, go around to the neighbors and ask them for a little something. When the berry season comes, we pick berries. When the rabbit season comes, we hunt and catch a few rabbits. And that’s about it."

And I was in Newark and Harlem just this week. And I walked into the homes of welfare mothers. I saw them in conditions—no, not with wall-to-wall carpet, but wall-to-wall rats and roaches. I stood in an apartment and this welfare mother said to me, "The landlord will not repair this place. I’ve been here two years and he hasn’t made a single repair." She pointed out the walls with all the ceiling falling through. She showed me the holes where the rats came in. She said night after night we have to stay awake to keep the rats and roaches from getting to the children. I said, "How much do you pay for this apartment?" She said, "a hundred and twenty-five dollars." I looked, and I thought, and said to myself, "It isn’t worth sixty dollars." Poor people are forced to pay more for less. Living in conditions day in and day out where the whole area is constantly drained without being replenished. It becomes a kind of domestic colony. And the tragedy is, so often these forty million people are invisible because America is so affluent, so rich. Because our expressways carry us from the ghetto, we don’t see the poor.

Jesus told a parable one day, and he reminded us that a man went to hell because he didn’t see the poor. His name was Dives. He was a rich man. And there was a man by the name of Lazarus who was a poor man, but not only was he poor, he was sick. Sores were all over his body, and he was so weak that he could hardly move. But he managed to get to the gate of Dives every day, wanting just to have the crumbs that would fall from his table. And Dives did nothing about it. And the parable ends saying, "Dives went to hell, and there were a fixed gulf now between Lazarus and Dives."

There is nothing in that parable that said Dives went to hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. It is true that one day a rich young ruler came to him, and he advised him to sell all, but in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery and not setting forth a universal diagnosis. And if you will look at that parable with all of its symbolism, you will remember that a conversation took place between heaven and hell, and on the other end of that long-distance call between heaven and hell was Abraham in heaven talking to Dives in hell.

Now Abraham was a very rich man. If you go back to the Old Testament, you see that he was the richest man of his day, so it was not a rich man in hell talking with a poor man in heaven; it was a little millionaire in hell talking with a multimillionaire in heaven. Dives didn’t go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn’t realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he was passed by Lazarus every day and he never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum. Indeed, Dives went to hell because he sought to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty.

And this can happen to America, the richest nation in the world—and nothing’s wrong with that—this is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.

(snip)

One day a newsman came to me and said, "Dr. King, don’t you think you’re going to have to stop, now, opposing the war and move more in line with the administration’s policy? As I understand it, it has hurt the budget of your organization, and people who once respected you have lost respect for you. Don’t you feel that you’ve really got to change your position?" I looked at him and I had to say, "Sir, I’m sorry you don’t know me. I’m not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I’ve not taken a sort of Gallup Poll of the majority opinion." Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?

I couldn't have said it better myself

Do you think the National Organization for Marriage just might have been reading this blog?

Reading this MSNBC story and watching the above video, I would have thought that I couldn't have said it better myself . . . if I hadn't remembered that I already did.

I don't care what you think on the gay-marriage issue (obviously, as an observant Catholic, I'm against it), and I don't care what you think about "big government." But I do think that before people get all paranoid about the power of big government and its potential to sow tyranny, they need to realize that big business is just as capable of reducing us to serfdom . . . and perhaps far more likely to try.

Christianity gets Jobs-ed

Forget Julian Assange.

The most dangerous man in the world just might be Steve Jobs.

Why? Because knowledge is power, communications is the conduit, and Jobs is trying to position Apple -- via the iPhone, iPad and ITunes marketplace -- to be the premier gatekeeper in what he envisions as a "walled garden" of information technology, one micromanaged by himself (Himself?) and his techno-nerd corporate minions.

AND APPARENTLY, Apple just has declared mainstream, orthodox Christianity offensive and banished it from the iTunes app store. From the Catholic News Agency:

After Apple Inc. removed the Manhattan Declaration application from iTunes over complaints that it had offensive material, signers are urging the corporation to make it available again.

The Manhattan Declaration application for iPhones and iPads was dropped last month when the activist group Change.org gathered 7,000 signatures for a petition claiming that the application promoted “bigotry” and “homophobia.”

The Declaration – a Christian statement drafted in 2009 that supports religious liberty, traditional marriage and right to life issues – has nearly 500,000 supporters.

The iPhone application, which was previously available for purchase on iTunes, was removed around Thanksgiving.

CNA contacted Apple Dec. 2 for the reason behind the pull. Spokesperson Trudy Muller said via phone that the company “removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”

When asked if Apple plans to release additional statements on the matter, Muller said she had no further comment.

CHRISTIANITY has its truth. Apple, and all the mau-mauers yelling "Hate!" in a crowded app store have theirs. And in a world where truth is relative, and often mutually exclusive, the only currency we have left is power and the ability to subjugate the competition.

It seems I was talking about that just yesterday.

In this kind of an environment, that makes Jobs a really cool Big Brother. It pains me to say this, but "Give me Windows, or give me death!"

Dying for sex

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No matter how we try and try, and then try again, to make ourselves into figurative tubs of Chiffon -- remember Chiffon? -- we crash and burn upon the rock-hard realities of "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

Oftentimes, this principle is demonstrated most starkly and tragically when it comes into conflict with the modern-day dogma of universal autonomy, which holds that "f***ing is an entitlement." NBC News unveiled the latest chapter of an interminable tale of hubris and woe this morning on Today (above) and on MSNBC:

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson may have known years ago about the deadly risks of its birth control patch Ortho Evra, according to internal documents obtained by NBC News.

Patient reports between 2002 and 2004 show that Ortho Evra was 12 times more likely to cause strokes and 18 times more likely to cause blood clots than the conventional birth control pill, NBC News' TODAY show revealed Wednesday.

When Ortho Evra first hit the market in 2002, it was a big hit. "Time" magazine called it one of the best inventions of the year and doctors have written nearly 40 million prescriptions for it. But as sales surged, so did claims of injury and even death.

Some experts say the patch is problematic because it delivers a continuous and high level of estrogen — 60 percent more estrogen than the pill. When a birth control pill is swallowed, it quickly dissolves into the system. But with the patch, estrogen keeps flowing into the bloodstream for an entire week.

"With the patch… there's no relief of the body of the woman from getting estrogen," Dr. Sidney Wolfe, Medical Director of watchdog group Public Citizen, told NBC.

Concern over the patch has led to high-level resignations at Johnson & Johnson.

In 2005, Johnson & Johnson Vice President Dr. Patrick Caubel suddenly quit, saying in his resignation letter, "I have been involved in the safety evaluation of Ortho Evra since its introduction on the market. … The estrogenic exposure [of the patch] was unusually high, as was the rate of fatalities."

His letter, which was obtained by NBC, said the research was "compelling evidence" that the company ignored. Therefore, he wrote, "it became impossible for me to stay in my position as VP."

NBC's investigation also found a lawsuit by another Johnson & Johnson vice president, Dr. Joel Lippman, who is suing the company for unlawful termination after he says he blew the whistle on the patch's dangerously high levels of estrogen, even before it came to market.

The company, he says, "disregarded his concerns and launched the product anyway."

"The company knew about much of it, if not all of it," said Dr. Wolfe. "They thought correctly that it wouldn't sell as well if you told people how dangerous it was."

NATURAL LAW isn't a popular concept in the postmodern West, but that doesn't make it any less valid. Everything has a purpose. Natural systems, and this includes Homo sapiens, have a certain economy.

Certain plants grow best within a certain environment, and humans thrive only within certain parameters -- physiologically, sociologically and morally. We don't want to hear this, however, because being fallen creatures, we want to do what we want to do.

(For that matter, we don't want to hear that we're fallen, either.)

And we'll find ways to deny the consequences of our doing exactly what we want to do. Which brings us into direct conflict with the one immutable reality of earthly existence -- "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."


THERE WILL be consequences when you violate the law -- moral and physical. Most of them will be ugly.

In every instance, though, we're going to keep trying our damnedest (in every sense of "damnedest") to do just that. You see, in this sad case, we find that the corollary to "f***ing is an entitlement" is more important than the main point itself:

"Making billions of dollars off 'f***ing is an entitlement' is far greater entitlement than f***ing. And we'll kill you to do it."

Götterdämmerung, reconsidered

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Oops.

Looks like the "Ground Zero Muslims" can't be threatened, extorted or mau-maued.

And now it seems that Nuts for Jesus down in Florida may be reverting to Plan A in their "terror by proxy" scheme -- provoke overseas Islamic radicals into full-blown Götterdämmerung. What a no-lose scheme this constitutionally protected terror by proxy be!

HERE IS the latest, from MSNBC:

The Florida pastor whose plan to burn Qurans on Sept. 11 generated worldwide outrage among Muslims and pressure by the U.S. government to relent said late Thursday that he might not call off the protest after all.

Pastor Terry Jones told NBC News that "we are a little back to square one" after a supposed deal involving a proposed Islamic cultural center in New York evaporated.

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Jones had said he was canceling the Quran burning because a Muslim imam had assured him that the proposed Islamic center could be moved away from the World Trade Center site in return.

But the imam proposing to build the Islamic center near the World Trade Center denied that a deal had been struck to move the project.

"I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Qurans," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said in a statement. "However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones or Imam Musri (of Florida). I am surprised by their announcement. We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony."

After that statement, Jones said the Quran burning had only been suspended.

"Given what we are now hearing, we are forced to rethink our decision," Jones said. "So as of right now, we are not canceling the event, but we are suspending it."

Jones wouldn't say if the church would burn Qurans but said "I'm praying" to decide what to do next.

At Jones' first press conference, he appeared with Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida and said that Musri had told him that the mosque would be moved.

MARK MY WORDS, the whole world -- particularly nuts all across these formerly-United States -- are watching this play out . . . and many of them are way smarter than a bunch of self-important, hateful bumpkins down in the swamps of Florida.

When they take the concept of terror by proxy and run with it, it will end with concrete strictures placed on our rights as Americans if, of course, by that time there are any Americans left to crack down upon.

As I said before, John Adams was right:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

WHAT THE late president didn't see coming was it being the "religious" who'd help so much in bringing the whole thing down. The 9/11 hijackers were "religious." Fred Phelps' "God Hates Fags" cultists from Kansas are "religious," as are the asshats in Gainesville.

The world is filled with "religious" people. Everybody thinks God is on his side.

What's in much shorter supply are those who humbly seek to be on God's side. There's a difference, one that John Adams seemingly didn't take into account.

And that's what's going to be the end of us all.


UPDATE: Nuts of a feather burn sacred texts together.

Yes, the "God Hates Fags" contingent has weighed in. And they're stocking up on matches, reports the Ocala Star-Banner:

Westboro Baptist Church, the small Topeka, Kan., church that pickets funerals of American soldiers to spread its message that God is punishing the country for being tolerant of homosexuals, has vowed to hold a Quran burning if Gainesville's Dove World Outreach Center calls its off."

WBC burned the Koran once – and if you sissy brats of Doomed america bully Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center until they change their plans to burn that blasphemous tripe called the Koran, then WBC will burn it (again), to clearly show you some things," the church announced in a news release this week.

Terror by proxy

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The terrorists may have won today.

And I'm not talking about al Qaida, Hamas or the Taliban.

This terrorist group is a small one -- a band of fewer than half a hundred Pentecostal (or evangelical . . . or whatever they consider themselves) extremists in Gainesville, Fla., hell-bent on propagating an ideology of hatred and mayhem. Yet, the Dove World Outreach Center has shown itself adept at using a novel tactic, terror by proxy, to bring a superpower to its knees and -- perhaps -- force the "Ground Zero Mosque" far away from Ground Zero in New York City.

MSNBC has some breaking details:

The pastor planning to burn Qurans on the Sept. 11 anniversary said Thursday that he had called off the event after being given assurances that the Muslim group seeking to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site would move the project.

"We would consider that a sign from God," the Rev. Terry Jones told reporters.

But sources close to the imam behind the New York mosque denied any deal had been struck.

And Sharif Al-Gamal, owner of the building where the mosque and cultural center would be housed, told NBC News that there had had no discussions with Jones.

Jones insisted, however, that he had spoken to the imam, and "I have his word that he will move the mosque to a different location."

Jones also said he would travel to New York on Saturday to meet with officials of the mosque project.

President Barack Obama earlier implored Jones to call off his Quran-burning "stunt," saying it would jeopardize U.S. troops abroad.

Obama told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview aired Thursday that he hopes the Jones listens to "those better angels."

"If he's listening, I hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans," the president said. "That this country has been built on the notion of freedom and religious tolerance."

"And as a very practical matter, I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women who are in uniform," Obama said.

Jones, leader of a small church with about 30 members in Gainesville, is planning to burn copies of the Islamic holy book on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Look, this is a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida," Obama said of the planned burning. "You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan." The president also said Jones' plan, if carried out, could serve as an incentive for terrorist-minded individuals "to blow themselves up" to kill others.

Jones had said that a call from the Pentagon, State Department or White House might make him reconsider his plan.

On Thursday, Jones said Pentagon chief Robert Gates had called him to urge he back off.

Obama has gotten caught up in the burgeoning controversy surrounding the practice of Islam in America, saying at one point that he believed that Muslims had a right to build a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York City.

Earlier, several members of his administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had denounced the Quran-burning plan.

IT REALLY doesn't matter now whether the New York mosque moves, as Jones contends it will, or whether nothing happens, as the mosque sources insist. The die has been cast, and the strange bedfellows of Christian extremism and Muslim extremism have been united in a symbiotic relationship that serves to get each what it wants -- at the expense of us all.

And it's all perfectly legal and, in the Gainesville case, apparently protected by the First Amendment. As John Adams said more than two centuries ago, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Little did Adams know that -- at least in this case -- the immoral and irreligious people who threaten to extort the rest of us to Kingdom Come would do so in the name of God, in a "terror by proxy" arrangement.

Here's how it works: You threaten to do something as outlandish -- and constitutionally protected -- as burning a bunch of Qurans, knowing full well how egregious and offensive the act is and what it will provoke extremists on the Muslim side to do to Americans. And you think, "Well, that's good. The homo-loving, socialist, Godless liberals deserve whatever happens to them."

And being something of a death-dealer and death-lover yourself, you figure that if you get martyred in the process . . . you're a martyr! That's worth at least 7,500 bonus points in the heavenly sweepstakes.

On the other hand, if the heat gets a little too hot in the run-up to Götterdämmerung, you still holding lots of high cards. You still have the ability to extort something pretty good out of everybody.

You can crack the "Ground Zero mosque" more thoroughly than Humpty Dumpty after he fell off that wall. And all Glenn Beck's horses' asses and all Fox News' men . . . will be eating your dust.

If that doesn't work out, there's always Plan A. And we know it.

And every nutwagon in America is copying down the winning game plan.

No more waterboarding, but fire next time

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The problem with a democratic republic such as ours is that it too often has damned little ability to defend itself from its baser instincts -- or its baser idiots.

Enter the Rev. Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., noted hater of "homos" and Allah alike.

Jones hates Allah, and Islam, so much that he intends -- the consequences be damned -- to burn a whole heapin' helpin' of Qurans outside his flaky Church of Who We Hatin' Now, otherwise known as the Dove World Outreach Center. And because God, to Whom he has an exclusive communications line, has "told" him to flick his Bic, the good bad reverend will not be dissuaded.

Not by the president. Not by the attorney general. Not by the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, whose men stand to pay the price for an idiot Elmer Gantry's "freedom of speech."

NO . . . the redneck revile-alist is hellbent on throwing the "word of the devil" into the inferno, reports MSNBC. What's wrong with that notion?

Religious leaders who met with Holder for nearly an hour Tuesday to discuss recent attacks on Muslims and mosques around the United States said those were his words on the plan by the Rev. Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla.

The meeting was closed to reporters, but a Justice Department official who was present confirmed that Holder said that the plan to burn copies of the Quran was idiotic.

Holder also told the group no one should have to live and pray in fear and that he planned to address the issue publicly soon, the meeting participants said. He also reiterated a commitment to aggressively prosecute hate crimes, they said.

The Justice official, who requested anonymity because the meeting was private, also said Holder was quoting Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, when he used the word dangerous.

Petraeus warned Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence." It was a rare example of a military commander taking a position on a domestic political matter.

But Jones insisted he would go ahead with his plans, despite the criticism Petraeus, the White House and the State Department, as well as a host of religious leaders.

Jones, known for posting signs proclaiming that Islam is the devil's religion, says the Constitution gives him the right to publicly set fire to the book that Muslims consider the word of God.

Jones said he is also concerned but is "wondering, 'When do we stop?'" He refused to cancel the protest set for Saturday at his Dove World Outreach Center, which espouses an anti-Islam philosophy.

"How much do we back down? How many times do we back down?" Jones told the AP. "Instead of us backing down, maybe it's to time to stand up. Maybe it's time to send a message to radical Islam that we will not tolerate their behavior."

OF COURSE, it's a free country, and a madman minister can preach what he wants about Islam. He can call the mayor of Gainesville a "homo," as does a sign outside his church.

It's all due to this little thing we have called the First Amendment.

The First Amendment, however, does not speak to what happens to folks who build bonfires without a city burn permit. The constitution does not cover, as far as I know, the aggressive fighting of illegal -- and potentially catastrophic . . . look what happened in Detroit on Tuesday -- open fires within city limits.

That people do think the First Amendment gives you the right to burn whatever the hell you want whenever the hell you want wherever the hell you want is due to milquetoasty fops like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In the MSNBC story, Bloomberg goes all wobbly on us:

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the minister's plan to burn the Muslim holy book on Sept. 11 is "distasteful" but added the minister has a right to do it. "We can't say that we're going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement," he said.

BULL. Let's see what the NYPD would do to some evangelical nutcase who lit a great big bonfire of Qurans in the middle of Times Square. I could be underestimating the open-mindedness, civility and tolerance of public disorder on the part of New York's finest, but I'm guessing that ass would be kicked, fire would be extinguished . . . and no one would be mentioning anything about the Bill of Rights.

Besides, I find it hard to believe that in the Deep South -- where half a century ago authorities demonstrated to the world their mastery of the fire hose in quenching peaceful, non-permitted civil-rights protests -- officials are suddenly stymied in figuring out the best use of municipal fire departments in response to blatantly illegal bonfires set by dementoids.

Particularly ones that threaten to set the whole world alight.

It's quite simple. This is America. We don't burn books.

Mortification

Chicken-and-andouille gumbo. Good stuff.

Can't have it today. No meat, fasting.

Die to yourself, you gravy-sucking pig, the church tells us this Ash Wednesday. Or, put more artfully as we receive ashes on our foreheads today, "Remember, O man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

And hold the gumbo.

Issa X

It occurs to me that if Christian churches -- and I point big-time at my own -- believed as much in Jesus as even the Muslims believe in Jesus and were as open about that fact, we just might get somewhere in this country.

I mean, what if the Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha put as much energy into flooding the 'hood with some of that ol' time religion as it does into promoting the annual appeal? Is what I'm saying.

(Yes, of course the Catholics have lots of ministries and Catholic Charities, etc., and so on, but it's hardly "flooding the zone." What about the big high-profile push . . . like the annual appeal?)

So here we have a little story from my hometown about yet another "Stop the Violence" rally trying to convince people with nothing to live for to stop dying for nothing, too.

AND IN The Advocate's dispatch from Baton Rouge, there's this toward the end:

Children from Muhammad University of Islam on Plank Road visited the rally to share messages of faith and peace.

“Our religion teaches us that we should always be for each other because we are family,” said Tynetta Muhammad, 13.

Leslie X, of the Nation of Islam, said the solution to violence is simple: “Jesus told his apostles to love ye one another as I have loved you. If we do that, we will see our condition around us turn around.”

BUT CHRISTIANS by and large don't put stock in Jesus beyond Him being a celestial sugar daddy, and the Muslims are outnumbered, so we have the need for all these "Stop the Violence" rallies. Because in America today, you either have status and stuff or you have squat.

Not even a God who understands.

Pyromaniac morons for Jesus

Reason No. 234,876,129 why I'm Catholic (a grumpy Catholic, but Catholic nevertheless). We pretty much got this kind of nonsense out of our system once Savonarola got his just deserts.

EVEN SO, you have to admit that a bonfire of the Bibles (and everything else) trumps a mere Bonfire of the Vanities every day of the week -- and twice on Sunday.

I'd better stop now, because I feel some Junior Samples jokes coming on. . . .

The lake . . . of . . . FIIIRRRRRRRRE!

I have been reliably informed there's been a Brother Jed and Sister Cindy sighting at the the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And memories from three decades ago come flooding back. . . .

You know, I don't hold with their theology and methodology (about a step above the Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps), but you have to give the street-preaching couple props for sheer longevity and ability to take abuse from college kids.

Back in the day, Brother Jed Smock and Sister Cindy Lassiter (this was before she married Jed) told me and a bunch of Louisiana State "whores" and "whoremongers" that we were all going to hell. And then Cindy hit me in the head with a Bible.

OK, so I had ever-so-slightly lifted the hem of her granny skirt to see whether she was wearing granny boots, but still. . . .

IT WAS ALL great street theater, and everybody seemed to have a good time (except for the Catholic nun Cindy assaulted one day for being . . . Catholic) but I don't think anyone was particularly edified.

Or converted to any faith that showed poor sinners Christ as He might wish to be understood.

As a matter of fact, the one-two punch of religious buffoonery gave a lot of us two more excuses to stay the hell away from this Jesus nut and His nutty-ass spokespersons. I wonder how many of us gave the Galilean another chance once Sister Cindy had bellowed "the lake . . . of . . . FIIRRRRRRRE!" one last time and moved on to the next campus on the itinerary.

For me, it was the better part of a decade -- as I neared the end of a rope called "My Own Devices."

Nevertheless, I don't think Jed and Cindy would be pleased in any way, shape or form about my encounter with the living God. In fact, I'm pretty sure they think I'm still aiming to do some napalm wakeboarding.

You see, I became a Catholic.

And if Cindy lays hands on another nun. . . .

Christ Channel

If Clear Channel and all its radio-consolidating, automating and homogenizing brethren are the death of American radio, what does it say about us when the Christians are worse?

Love it or (more likely) hate it, at least Clear Channel has tiny local staffs of local people at some of its allegedly local radio stations. But what of K-Love, which seems to be K-swallowing the K-dial K-whole?

Radio veterans like Jerry Del Colliano refer to Clear Channel and its corporate wannabes as "repeater radio." And that's true, as far as it goes.

BUT IF Clear Channel, Citadel, Cumulus, Entercom and the other megaliths that control the radio dial fairly can be called "repeater radio," that must make the non-profit, non-commercial K-Love (and a heavenly host of national operators just like it) something akin to a North Korean radio set -- it can tune in but a single station programmed from a central location by the central committee.

No local voices.

No local programming.

No local people.

No local focus.

RIGHT NOW, the Educational Media Foundation runs K-Love on 412 stations and translators in 44 states. It runs the younger-skewing Air 1 service on 200 stations and translators in 40 states. All told, that's 612 stations and translators for EMF.

In the world of secular, commercial radio, Clear Channel still is the Big-Though-Shrunken Kahuna, with 900 stations from coast to coast. Cumulus has 310, by way of comparison, while Citadel has 223, Entercom 110 and Cox 86.

The difference between these big commercial players and the non-commercial, religious "Christ Channel" is that -- though most of their stations have been comparatively gutted over the last decade or so -- the commercial operators still have some local on-air staff. EMF stations don't.

As a matter of fact, because EMF is non-profit and, based on that, the Federal Communications Commission granted it a waiver, not one of the K-Love or Air 1 stations is required to have actual studios in the community it serves.

Not that anyone would be there if they did, however. All programming originates from the EMF studios in Rocklin, Calif. -- a Sacramento suburb.

Of course, you could level the same charge at any number of radio ministry-operated Christian stations around the country, which consist mainly of a computer, an audio interface, a satellite dish and receiver . . . and a transmitter and antenna.

APPARENTLY, when these Christian radio folk asked themselves "What Would Jesus Do?" the came up with the answer "Hold the people at arm's length." Or continent's length . . . whatever.

Right about now, you may be wondering "So what?" After all, the local has been disappearing from "local radio" ever since deregulation came in 1996. Not surprisingly, listeners have been disappearing since 1996 as well.

But some remain, and what Christ Channel has to do with anything is Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh?

Pittsburgh. From the Post-Gazette earlier this month:

There's satellite radio and commercial radio. There's secular radio and religious radio. The latter may not be a ratings giant, but Christian radio is growing -- at least in terms of sheer volume.

Yesterday, a successful syndicated contemporary Christian music format called K-Love launched here at 98.3 FM. And when St. Joseph Mission, the new owner of Sheridan Broadcasting's three Pittsburgh stations takes over, it plans to debut Catholic religious programming in the market.

That would give Pittsburgh nine religious stations in a mid-size market of about 40 stations. It also brings in an infusion of new Catholic programming, mirroring growth in other cities.

"I've never seen a time in any market where the Christian format has become so highly sought after, and where the competition has been so fierce. I think it's going to heighten," said the Rev. Loran Mann, president and general manager of gospel station WGBN (1150).

"It's a very interesting time for Pittsburgh radio and for the gospel market in particular."

(snip)

In the current economic climate, selling smaller stations with lower frequencies and less market coverage has been a challenge. This has also proven to be a boon for religious broadcasters.

"Right now it's difficult to find a buyer for any radio station, really," said George Reed, managing director of Media Services Group in Jacksonville, Fla. Still, he says, "Christian operators are actively buying stations. Part of the reason is they can get them at a bargain."

"It's a buyer's market" for these kinds of stations, said Robert Unmacht, a consultant with IN3 Partners, a media and business consulting firm in Nashville, Tenn. "And they're buying."

And while they may not be ratings grabbers, Christian stations can still manage to succeed. "You can have a significant audience, and if it's a commercial station, do a fair amount of commercial business," Mr. Reed says. "Or if it's noncommercial, you can generate donations without being a major player in the ratings book."

Smaller operators can opt for syndicated religious programming and avoid competing directly against a secular music or talk format programmed by a Clear Channel or CBS station.

The popularity of contemporary Christian music is also driving the radio format, Mr. Reed says.

K-Love is a rapidly expanding contemporary Christian music format in radio markets in 44 states. It fills a void here in terms of giving Pittsburgh a full-time contemporary Christian music station.
Part of its appeal is that it follows the model of the traditional adult contemporary format -- a format aimed primarily at young women. "It doesn't get preachy. The music's good and it appeals to that group of women," Mr. Unmacht said.

IN THE CASE of Pittsburgh, K-Love only got one of three stations broadcasting "Froggy" country to the area. The Catholics, however, took out 61 years of Three Rivers history to broadcast, in all likelihood, satellite programming from EWTN. And the "local" studios won't even be in Pittsburgh, but 40 miles away in Latrobe.

St. Joseph Missions bought heritage black stations WAMO-AM and FM, as well as a third black gospel-formatted AM station, from Sheridan Broadcasting for $8.9 million.

WAMO-AM went on the air in 1948 and had served the city's African-American community since 1956, adding an FM signal on New Year's Day 1961. With the takeover by St. Joseph Missions -- which follows the failure of a previous Catholic format on another area AM station -- 35 employees lost their jobs.

Ironically, Joseph is the patron saint of workers.

I USED TO WORK in Catholic radio, so I can tell you how things likely will go. The vast majority of the stations' programming will come from EWTN Radio in Ironwood, Ala. -- near Birmingham -- via satellite. There may be some local programming, but probably not much.

The vast majority of Catholic radio puts the low in "low budget." And with St. Joseph Missions already shelling out $9 million, I can't see significant money going into facilities or programming -- the focus will be on fund raising, which will be directed toward keeping the stations on the air, covering administrative expenses and staging religious conferences.

It is not a good sign that the little-known ministry is located outside the Diocese of Pittsburgh. It is a worse sign that St. Joseph Missions also blindsided local diocesan officials with the purchase, which brought serious African-American heat upon clueless local clerics.

But the worst thing about all this is that three stations will be Catholic -- but not catholic -- and without any sense of real solidarity or engagement with its potential audience. It's really quite simple: Rich Catholics in Latrobe will be beaming traditionalist Catholics in Birmingham into the ether over Pittsburgh in an expensive exercise of preaching to the choir.

To which none of the "broadcasters" belong. Because they're in Latrobe and Alabama -- or, in K-Love's case, northern California.

AND THAT'S the story in Pittsburgh. It also is the story in communities all across the United States. It may well become the story on Long Island in New York, where the only public station is up for sale and no one knows whether you can outbid K-Love's (or some other religious broadcaster's) fat wallet.

Let me emphasize that I'm not against religious broadcasters -- I used to be one. I'm just saying religious broadcasters suffer from many of the same pathologies that afflict commercial, secular ones. And in some respects, those pathologies are even more pronounced.

As I said earlier, you haven't seen "repeater radio" until you've seen what passes for much of Christian radio nowadays. And I don't know how Christ Channel serves the public interest -- or that of the Almighty -- any better than Clear Channel.

The God we serve sent His only Son -- Who not only was from God but was God -- to live, teach, laugh and weep with His creation . . . and then ultimately to die for His creation.

Jesus never phoned it in when it came to the salvation biz. In this age of "economies of scale," He wouldn't have lasted a second at Christ Channel.