Left Behind...Yearly Kos and God

Sunday again and I've been lost in the depths of the Yearly Kos panels all weekend. Man, that is my kind of convention. I may have to go next year if I can pull it off. The columnists who wrote from there, and the bloggers who blogged it live, along with those on the panels and asking the questions...All of it streamed online...were just great and gave me a little bit of hope for things and the changing tide of the dissemination of information.Its so great to hear smart people talking from alot of different angles and points of view, and the feeling was that its OK to have differences of opinion as long as we all pull together to try to take back the government. It gave me a little hope and I was wishing that there was more of it and that the stream was better. Dean gave a fantastic speech that reminded me why I was a Deaniac in the first place and voted for him in the primary, even knowing that Kerry would win. And again, under the heading of how fantastic the internet is, alot of the convention panels and speeches are available thanks to Link TV.

Yes, its Sunday again, as I said, which is as good a time as any to think about religion in America. Why? Well, there is alot of nonsense going round in my mind so I thought I might just dump it here and maybe get a good night's sleep for once.
Reports are coming in that the international box office totals of The DaVinci Code Movie has surpassed The Passion of the Christ with $642 million, as opposed to Christ's $623 Million. The fact that domestically Mel Gibson's ode to Catholic punishment far outearned the Code, is probably another piece of this country's troubling slide into religious fundamentalism. Are even the extreme fundamentalists so numb that they have to flock to screenings of what amounts to an S&M whip-fest in order to be able to really feel the metaphorical pain of Jesus' last day?...and haven't they ever heard of metaphor?

Its been raining for something like 40 days and 40 nights here and though I like the rain most of the time and am happy that its cool out, I'm a little tired of the mud and flooding basement, and certain little dogs who don’t like to pee with wet feet, much less get their fur even a little wet. The whole Gore movie thing (which I haven't seen yet,) adds a feeling of biblical revenge of some sort, and the promise that this thing is happening alot quicker than we ever could have imagined.

In times like this I have always turned to Air America Radio for some sort of sanity and to remind me that I'm not crazy and that the world is still turning. There is something comforting in the voices of a few of those people, and it sort of centers me.
Janeane Garafolo, who in her now part time position at Air America Radio's Majority Report, has been fighting rabidly with co-host Sam Seder about a third return visit to the show of the 9-11 firemen, who feel that the cleansing technology that scientology has provided to them has been helpful. These guys have been on 3 times already and the money that they raise with these appearances goes to Scientology, not 9-11 firemen in general. At first I was very disappointed to hear thaJaneanene was "doing some strange Scientology thing…Maybe her new boyfriend is a Scientologist, or she was becoming one…"”( as the gossip went.)
I really dislike cults and all that they stand for. I also dislike all organized religion, so I'mybe Im not the person to jump into this. But it seems like in the endless search for what the point is, organized religion is a little too easy of an answer. To me its more like a a sociological study in human fear and frailty,and I don't like the idea that people want to give up responsibility for choosing what is right and ethical. But I always have to hand it to anyone who has a belief in a God-like figure besides nature, because its something that I don’t understand and probably am incapable of, especially when it involves the paranormal, like Scientology… oh and Christianity too. The harder row is over here with the non-believers who have to look at the stark worms and dirt oI'mit, so Im not going to deny anyone anything that provides comfort in this hard world or that which might make anyone happy.
But, I really thoughtJaneane Jeaneane than Scientology, because it's such an aggressively horrible money drainer on the backs of publicists like these 9-11 fire fighters who get it for free. Just like all treatments that purport to make black tar ooze out of your feet (or where a shaman pulls a chicken gizzard from your belly button,) to me it'’s a bunch of crapola. And her ongoing fight with Sam about it has been a little upsetting because though she is one of the smartest people on radio when she lets herself just be, and doesn’t turn into a grating hag out of anger and frustration, (and oh, I can imagine that she must be a mean drunk and able to tear any opponent limb from limb in an argument. Stay in AA or whatever is keeping you sober, Jeaneane!) her argument on this issue doesn'’t hold water.
She says that these firemen deserve to be on the show to raise money because they are no different that the Fighting Dems series that they have on over and over. Sam'’s point is that they have different candidates on in the Dems series, and it is a political issue, so makes more sense in the context of the show. Jeaneane feels that there is no difference between giving money to Scientology if it benefits the 9-11 firemen, than giving to a Mormon children'’s charity if it benefits children, as opposed to Scientology or the Mormons.
That'’s where I was brought up short. See, I would NEVER give to a Mormon charity because, the money, of course, runs through the church. Unless it's the charity that helps the displaced blackballed young men who get thrown from the compounds in their early teens when the older men feel that there is too much competition for the younger girls.
I don’t fund any religious based charity unless 100% of the funds goes to the exact charitable piece that is beinJaneaneed.
Would Jeaneane give to a factory farming child care charity, even though the kids were being raised to be butchers? No, I doubt she would.
Ive started to feel like she has grabbed hold of this in her stubborn way just to win a fight with Sam, because Sam just doesn’t like scientology and Jeaneane may not like it or organized religion either, but she likes these firemen and she wants to have them on, even if it may end up promoting a cult that drains the financial resources of everyone who joins unless they are rich; then they will take a percentage.
The real story here is that the city and government have failed the first responders to 9-11 and a whole group of New Yorkers in downtown Manhattan (my Mom included,) who were lied to about the air quality and the danger, even as strange dust is still collecting all over Manhattan and numbers of respiratory ailments and cancers are skyrocketing.
Why are these two most brilliant liberal radio hosts fighting like cats and dogs about Scientologist 9-11 Firemen when the problem is that no one is helping many of the responders and the government lied about the dangers posed to the people of the city and rescuers in the pit?

Then, besides the second-coming-like, lil' Brangelineita's soft landing into this world, and onto the multi million dollars to charity, exclusive, cover of People Magazine, (and I must say that, though cute, and the spawn of the most fantastically beautiful Mom in the world, little Shiloh cant hold a candle to how beautiful my William was. Im not saying that as a Mom, honest, he was and is a fantastically handsome guy,)


And speaking of handsome, the muscular, shining, supposedly virgin, Jesus of the Left Behind series, is a real killer, and you can do his dirty work for him on your own home PC. Apparently the father(s) of the books and ministry of the Left Behind books have decided to create an authorized computer game where children 13 and over can, after the rapture has sucked all the chosen ones (the usual crowd, you know: Bush, Rummy, Cheney, Condi, Joe Lieberman, Pat Robertson…..) and the babies off the earth, mass murder the infidels with an array of weapons so violent as to make Mortal Combat look tame. The fact that the story takes place in Manhattan implies that all that’s left are the fags and abortionists anyway, but they look like normal people with families walking down the street, and there is something so wrong about a “church” that allows its teens, as in (“Rated T for Teen,)” to strap on a submachine gun and head out to the streets of Manhattan to do the lord'’s work!
Where in the bible or any other religious text did this image of Jesus or God come from? I understand that God is painted as a wrathful being in places, but one would have to extrapolate pretty far to fit into the stoI'm line of this series. Again Im back to metaphor and all that is read into scriptures and used by different groups in different ways.

Rapture watch: A meteorite hit Norway a couple of days ago, and the impact was the size of Hiroshima. Luckily it was not in a populated area.