Café Philos: an internet café

Many thanks to Webs for discovering the above photo which is from here. If you have trouble reading the girl's sign, click on the picture to see it full size.

Brent Rasmussen at Unscrewing the Inscrutable has dug up a site calling itself "Baptists For Brownback 2008" and posted about it here. Sam Brownback, for those who don't follow the political news, is one of several fine village idiots running for a presidential nomination this year. He's also in the Religious Right camp, which makes it plausible that many Baptists would support him.

Now here's the challenge. It's a little hard to tell whether Baptists For Brownback is a sincere site or satire. And even if the site is satire (as I strongly suspect) some pretty wild comments left on the site appear to be quite sincere. Here is an excerpt from the site:

At this time, we would like you to join us in praying for the empty souls of those who are blinded by their own ignorance and hatred. Their shame of their own actions and lifestyle choices has made them petty, biased, and cruel towards others who do not share their own distorted view of life. May the Lord replace the vitriol and poison in their hearts with love, compassion, and grace. May He also open their eyes that they may see the error of their ways and never succumb again to the deeds of their master, Satan, that they serve.

There's nothing in those lines you couldn't hear from a sincere member of the Religious Right, which is the beauty of Baptists For Brownback -- it artfully mixes the standard rhetoric of the extremists with lines like these:

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most famous book is The Scarlet Letter, a frightening and righteous tale of a rare case of perversion in Massachusetts in the 17th century, when that state was not yet under liberal control (this was before the Kennedys arrived on our shores).

The villain of the story is Hester Prynne, who commits the sin of adultery. As a result she receives God’s fitting and inevitable punishment in the form of a baby, which she must bear, since the murder of womb-babies was illegal at the time. She is also punished by man, by way of a bright red letter “A”, which she is forced to wear on her dress so that everyone can know her for what she is.

I remember how the brilliant letter “A” idea was seared into my consciousness when I first read The Scarlet Letter in my college days. It led me to wonder why such a device is not used in today’s society. Would it not be a wonderful thing to be able to recognize sinners and unbelievers of every stripe by merely noting the colorful badges sewn onto their clothing?

Today, in an America filled with adulterers and baby-killers, an even worse sinner casts a shadow over them all—the atheist. Yet atheists are difficult to spot. They hide their sinister cult behind masks of smiles, science and soft, pleasant voices. Your next door neighbor might be an atheist. You just can’t tell.

Imagine if it was simple to identify atheists and their tainted works. Would it not be grand? Think how much easier it would be to protect your children’s eyes, ears and souls from atheists’ influences if their websites, books, movies and yes, even their very clothes, were clearly labeled with a bright scarlet “A”.

The site is entirely enjoyable -- a real treat -- but you should be forewarned the site appears to have taken in people from both the right and the left. That's to say, some of the comments look to all the world to be sincere. And -- perhaps surprisingly -- it's not just right wingers who are apparently taken in by the site, but some left wingers too.

Until Tuesday, former Senator Fred Thompson was feeling out his chances of gaining the Republican nomination for president.

That was before Pope James excommunicated him from Christianity, thus considerably diminishing the conservative Thompson's chances of being nominated.

Pope James -- who was known by the name of James Dobson before ascending to the Evangelical Papacy at the behest of God -- excommunicated Thompson in an unsolicited phone call to U.S. News senior editor Dan Gilgoff, rather than through a formal papal bull, thus demonstrating how confidently he takes his new powers as pope of the evangelicals.

According to Gilgoff's article on the excommunication, Pope James said during the phone call:

"Everyone knows he's conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for," Dobson said of Thompson. "[But] I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression," Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party's conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

This didn't sit well with Thompson, whose spokesman, Mark Corallo, took issue with the Pope's excommunication of the former Senator: "Thompson is indeed a Christian," he said. "He was baptized into the Church of Christ."

Nevertheless, Pope James is sticking with the excommunication for now.

In a follow up phone call to his Vatican (Formerly known as the "Focus on the Family" headquarters), Pope James' spokesman, Gary Schneeberger, said to senior editor Gilgoff, "...that, while Dobson didn't believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless 'has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.' "

Schneeberger then added, "We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians".

Pope James' actions raise the question of whether he now intends to excommunicate all non-evangelical Christians from the Christian faith, or just those non-evangelicals who run for high public office. Whatever the case, the Pope's actions should make wary any non-evangelicals who still feel they have a natural ally in the new Pope.

From The Independent:

Sir Elton John's appearance at a jazz festival on Tobago next month is expected to attract tourists from across the Caribbean, the US and Europe to the island.

But one man not looking forward to the performance is the Archdeacon of Trinidad and Tobago, the Venerable Philip Isaac.

The Archdeacon has suggested the singer and anti-Aids activist should be banned from the Plymouth Jazz Festival, because his presence may tempt islanders into homosexuality.

In what is believed to be the first campaign to stop the singer performing because of his sexuality, the Archdeacon said Sir Elton's lifestyle did not conform the biblical teaching that a "man should not lie with a man".

"The artiste is one of God's children and while his lifestyle is questionable he needs to be ministered unto. His visit to the island can open the country to be tempted towards pursuing his lifestyle," the Archdeacon told the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper

According to the island's immigration law, self-confessed prostitutes and homosexuals can be barred from entering the country. But it is thought that no one has ever been turned away at immigration.

It is truly fortunate for the youth and citizens of Tobago that the Archdeacon is on the ball. If John slips into the country, one can only imagine the horrors that will follow. At the very least one can expect rampant homosexual acts occuring on the streets, and the utter collapse of the traditional family in Tobago.

Mouth frothing homosexual activists, such as Anne, are likely to point out there is no science to support the notion homosexuality can be transmitted by buying tickets to an Elton John concert, but simpler minds have long known science is highly unreliable on such issues as homosexuality, evolution, and anything else that might in some way contradict the Bible.


.

I've been studying a 1974 silver George.
His famous words were, "In God We Trust",
And he doesn't wear clothes.

What I can't understand
Is a two hundred year old man
Who doesn't wear clothes.

And this used to be
Such a nice country.

("The World Trade Organization proposes to privatize all the world's water...[to]...promote trade." --- news article)

Me, I want to own Lake Michigan
And sell its tears to Chicago,
Or ship it to replenish the Oglala
And make the American desert bloom

Or maybe by aqueducts
Drain it into Texas
Where the world's six billion will come
Invited by Rush Limbaugh, host,
To live on a half-acre each
(Or is it a quarter now?)
In Tex-Utopia:
A suburb of Dallas
With splendid bluegrass lawns.

I know where to get
The concrete for the channels
But I haven't figured out
What to do with the Michigan fish:
They stink without water, you see.
And the problem is,
When I get to Texas
Will I still smell them?

Were you a gift?
Were you bought?
Did I steal?

Love should last a lifetime,
Don't you think?

That's what we shopped for.

Was not your virginity our warranty?


We do not much talk, you and I;
I think it would be crazy to struggle through...
Through a decision twice.


You are some very fine thing
That came from the store.

Be good. Don't break.
I'll love you 4-ever:
Through temptations, beyond betrayal;

Even through to leasing storage
In my heart
Beyond the interstate.


But were you a gift?
Were you bought?
Did I steal?

The way my day
Is going
I just know
The next thing
That'll happen --

I'll stumble across
Some damn conclusive proof

That this messed up world
Really was created by a
Petty
Codependent
Deity

Who gets pissed off

When He's not
Worshipped.