Congress Stumbles, and the Weird Westboro Baptists

I am 100% in support of our troops, and believe we should fund them and send a surge…into Afghanistan, and Pakistan if necessary, to find Bin Laden. I am also in favor of supporting the troops in Iraq… by bringing them home. So I am really pissed that the house and senate gave the president another blank check. $100,000,000,000. That much. Well, 95 billion anyway. 120 billion if you add all the other spending tacked on to the bill.

Are you listening, New Orleans? Are you listening, south Mississippi and Alabama? Are you listening, Kansas? Are you listening, 47 million uninsured Americans? Think of the ways that money could be used.

Is this what the electorate wanted when it voted last November and returned power in congress to the democrats? No. And now watch Bush’s ratings go up after congress caves in to his demand to leave out the timetable for withdrawal. At least Representative Artur Davis voted against the bill, saying earlier yesterday that he wanted a definite timetable for withdrawal of troops. But I have a question. If he was so sure he was going to vote against the bill, how come when I called his office before the vote, they wouldn’t tell me that, only saying they did not know how he felt about it? They say this every time I call, and I know other representative’s staff members will report whether they oppose or support a measure, but Artur's always seem to be in the dark.

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In other national news Shirley Phelps-Roper of Westboro Baptist Church says that Americans are doomed to eat their children. “You’ll eat your kids, you hateful people,” are the words the church members sing in their parody of “We Are the World.” “No, we are not being metaphorical,” she says, basing her beliefs on a verse in Deuteronomy which says “Thou shalt eat…the flesh of thy sons and daughters.” BhamNews

This is Just Bad

Remember how you felt the first time you heard about Fred Phelps? He was probably in the news protesting the funeral of a homosexual, parading around with signs with suggestive drawings of homosexual sex and slogans such as "Fags burn in Hell." If you are gay, you probably thought he was a nut, or disrespectful, or just another example of Baptist hypocrisy. If you are straight, you should have thought "This guy needs to shut up, he's going to give Christianity a bad name."



Then Phelps and his clan began to protest at the funerals of American service members killed in Iraq, because the U. S. is enabling homosexuals he says and Clinton and Bush allowed the service to be filled with "fags and dykes" by executive order. By that time people who previously ignored Phelps began to think he was being disrespectful. After all, who cared if he protested at the funerals of gays, but hey, these are our soldiers who died for our country.



Now this is unbelievable. It's enough to cause Tinky Winky to roll over in his grave (he's not really dead) and Sponge Bob to wet his Squarepants. Westboro Baptist Church is going to protest at the funeral of Jerry Falwell. This has been reported on alablawg and Birmingham Blues and other blogs, but I feel compelled to share it with my readers. I am not going to link to WBC's web site, I'm sure you know what it is, but this came off of it:

To save you time, from wikipedia, with all its links: Zeitgeist (help·info) is originally a German expression that means "the spirit (Geist) of the time (Zeit)." It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era.

So they think Falwell is responsible for the current cultural climate, and I can't totally disagree with them. He is somewhat responsible for the anti-gay, bigoted views of many evangelicals in our culture.

Also, from wiki: Arminianism is a school of soteriological thought in Protestant Christian theology founded by the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius. Its acceptance stretches through much of mainstream Protestantism. Due to the influence of John Wesley, Arminianism is perhaps most prominent in the Methodist movement.
Arminianism holds to the following tenets:
Humans are naturally unable to make any effort towards salvation
Salvation is possible by grace alone
Works of human effort cannot cause or contribute to salvation
God's election is conditional on faith in Jesus
Jesus' atonement was for all people
God allows his grace to be resisted by those unwilling to believe
Salvation can be lost, as continued salvation is conditional upon continued faith

If nothing else, this is educational. I am a Methodist by tradition and upbringing, so I guess Arminiansim is in my background. Who knew? This should not be confused with Armenian, being from Armenia, although, coincidentally enough, Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion.

Just so you know, I would not condone protesting at anyone's funeral. Not that Falwell and his family are not used to him being protested against, but during a funeral respect should be shown, and who is going to get a postive message from a protest like that anyway.

With that, I am off to Pensacola.