Sadly, No!

This is for my Mom, who had a tough day. And for L’il Dashiell, who has many great ones to come.

First, some housekeeping — my latest article on Glenn Beck and “rich guy populism” is posted over at the Commonweal Institute’s website. Please give it some lurve by clicking on the link 🙂

Now onto business:

Y’know, whenever the Anchoress gives us a post title such as this…

Yes, Every Sperm is Sacred!

…she’s begging for a response. So let’s get to it.

The teaching, first off, is not – specifically – “every sperm is sacred,” although, it must be said, when you’re talking sperm and ova you are talking about essences – our essential selves, which are derived from the deepest parts of our beings, and you are talking about the material which was designed specifically for the purpose of assisting God in the creation of humanity.

Question: If you have a wet dream, then, does that technically count as some sort of subconscious sin? If you wake up in the middle of the night and find that you’ve ejaculated, do you have to perform 30 Hail Marys to stop the angel Gabriel from flying into your room and smiting you on site? Also, does this mean that when your dog starts humping the couch that he’s flaunting flouting God’s will? These are important questions.

God loves us into being – we are begotten. Our creation is no accident, but the Love of God made manifest, and the “tools” or “materials” that He uses for that creation – committed love and the mysterious and miraculous products of that love – do, simply by their designation as “tools of God” demand a certain respect and recognition, because they are a great deal more than the equivalent of nasal mucous or earwax.

Which is funny, because to me semen is no less or more appealing than nasal mucous. You would think that if God had intended to make semen a Divine Excretion that He would have done more to hype it up. Say, by making it more sparkly and rainbow colored. Or if every time someone gets off, they hear the sound of a righteous trumpet blasting from their nether-regions.

As to the teaching that every sex act must “hit the target,” (that’s a rather, errr, colorful way to put it), it simply means that every sex act, if it is truly to be respectful of God’s design and creation, must be opened to the possibility of new life, to God and to His will as to whether or not new life will be created.

Subconsciously pulling out at the last minute will lead to an instantaneous smiting, I might add.

How many people do you know who used the pill, used a condom, were diligent in their birth control and STILL got pregnant? It happens all the time. Because the products of our human sexuality contain enormous power – power too many of us simply do not appreciate. And God will do what He will, sometimes, whether you’re open to it or not, in hopes that you WILL become open, and more open, to his loving gifts.

This is flat-out awesome. I never imagined that God Himself was responsible for condoms breaking or for people forgetting to take the pill. He really does have His hands in everything.

In roughly four month’s time:

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, March 7, 2010, Academy President Sid Ganis announced today.

There is always a collective wingnut freakout over teh Hollywood left’s big event, but next year’s could be particularly hilarious. Especially if Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It’ wins an Oscar.

At the very least, his name will get a standing O when they do the dead people roll call … add in a possible shout out to Ted Kennedy and the almost inevitable spontaneous tribute to Roman Polanski by some presenter or award-winner …

The gang at Big Hollywood must already be squirreling away extra portions of seething rage in anticipation.

MDMcArdle:

Then there’s business travel–most places I go, if I lose my ATM card, there’s a Citibank branch that can help e out in the area.

Bancoke of America is pretty good too … (grinds teeth)

Jean-David Ruisseau, Self Portrait with Pretty Hat
(c. 1776) (crayola on white drywall)

David Brooks, The New York Times
The Fatal Conceit

• As a rule, people think that they are much smarter than they really are. This rule is particularly true for Obama and the people in his administration. I am, however, the exception to that rule.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

“But I never eat the bun!”

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Torkel Torkelson the Red wields his atgeir against Alan Grayson but only manages to impale himself on it:

Alan Grayson is the corpulent congressman from Florida.

Yes, that’s right. Erick just called someone else corpulent. The only reason for this apparent total lack of self-awareness is either that Erick has no full-length mirror at home or he thinks that corpulent is an erudite term for Jewish.

This post would be worthy of note if only for Erickson calling someone else fat, but it deserves a place in the Red State hall of fame for yet another reason:

Today comes word of an even more damning story. A gay couple down in Florida was facing foreclosure. ACORN and Alan Grayson rallied to their cause.

Cheyenne Bowers and his partner David Paxton thought they had gained a valuable ally.

They were in a fight to save their home. He thought a pledge from an eager incoming freshman congressman to help them out through numerous programs might do the trick.

“Expansion of existing federal programs like the FHA loans and the VA loans be more readily available at better terms than we’ve seen up to this point,” said Grayson in December 2008.

The non-profit ACORN along with Grayson invited the media into Bowers and Paxton’s home to talk about fighting the foreclosure crisis, particularly fighting Bowers and Paxton’s foreclosure nightmare.

When the cameras went away, so did Alan Grayson. The foreclosure went through. The couple, in seriously bad health, were put out on the street.

Leaving aside the absurdity of Erickson’s new-found sympathy for a gay couple, which is somewhat akin to Michael Vicks joining the ASPCA and getting all weepy about sled dogs in the Iditarod, the most ridiculous thing here is that the rest of the article that Erick cites completely contradicts his characterization of the incident.

Grayson says he referred Bowers and Paxton to housing counselors, found him an attorney and attempted to get him disability benefits.

But despite all the programs and promises from politicians, it all came down to Household Financial who simply would not budge. …

But at the end of the day Bowers and his partner Paxton were high risk. They had no income. They were disabled, both facing life-threatening illnesses. Bowers needed a liver transplant … .

In the end, no one could force the lender to stop the foreclosure process.

“I’m not some sort of super hero, I don’t have magical powers. I can’t keep people in their homes if they’re not paying their mortgages indefinitely,” Grayson said. …

The couple’s home went up for auction last Thursday, but they had no buyers so that bought them some more time. They are currently still in their home.

So let’s see. Grayson didn’t exactly leave with the cameras. The couple is still in their home. Erickson is too lazy to finish reading a 500-word article or, even more likely, he’s just a disingenuous hack who hoped that no one else would click through his link. But above all Erickson needs, among other things, a full-length mirror installed in his double-wide in Macon. Maybe we should set up a PayPal fund to get him one.

[h/t to commenter Ted the Slacker]

ABOVE: Jeannie Deangelis (left)

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You know that you really can’t go wrong in the easy ridicule department with a column titled “We want you to eat it! Just eat it!” at the amusingly titled “American Thinker.” Adding to the potential for hilarity, the column is penned by one Jeannie Deangelis who describes herself as “a vehemently pro-life, anti-liberal, Evangelical Judeo-Christian Grandmother of the Baptist denomination” and who apparently perfected her chops as a wingnut writing crank letters to the editor, which is what most of these whack jobs spent their time doing before they discovered the Internet.

Jeannie’s column is in the fine, if well-tilled, tradition of wingnut commentary seeking to establish that whatever the Obamas do, no matter how innocuous or otherwise praiseworthy, is a threat to the nation and a frightening harbinger of the day in the not-too-distant future where federal troops will show up at the door and make conservative Americans turn in their Bibles for Korans, participate in gay orgies, and defecate on Glenn Beck’s Christmas sweater.

So what’s gotten Jeannie all bug-eyed and desperate today? Vegetables and exercise. Seriously:

The word “fair” conjures up images of merry-go-rounds, fluffy, pink cones of spun sugar, candy apples and popcorn. Not if you are invited to the White House. Excited Washington DC school children, disembarking from yellow school buses on the South Lawn of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were in for a big shock! The Obamas’ idea of a kid’s fair included sermons extolling the benefits of replacing cake and French fries with vegetables.

Imagine finding out you have the afternoon off and are going to the White House for a “fair.” When you get there you realize the festivities include Michelle doing a hula-hoop demonstration followed by lectures about the advantages of eating foods you hate?

Leaving aside that none of these buffoons went into full meltdown mode when Laura Bush launched her initiative (with the commies at HHS no less) to fight childhood obesity, just how the fuck did telling children to finish their vegetables and get off the couch and get some exercise become a bad thing? Well, of course, when Michelle Obama said it. If Michelle were to deliver a message to teenage girls that they shouldn’t have sex, would these people all of a sudden complain about how the White House is trying to take away the God-given right of teenagers to fuck?

Shorter Msgr. Ross Xavier Pius Douthat, S.J., O.P., O.F.M., S.S.J., Th.D+, The New York Times Pope-Ed Page
Benedict’s Gambit

• Pope Benedict is so kicking that Muslim-loving Archbishop of Canterbury’s butt. And another thing: Elton John really sucks.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Franz Hals, Michael van Ledeenhoof
(c. 1660)(grease on polyester)

Michael Ledeen, Bunny Suit Media:
Obama and the Constitution; He Has His Doubts

• For all you libs who made up quotes from Rush Limbaugh, why don’t you suck on something Obama actually said?

Michael Ledeen, Bunny Suit Media:
The Obama “thesis” hoax

• Central to my point was that it’s believable that Obama could have said that the U.S. Constitution is a piece of shit even if he, uh, didn’t.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Bill “Pius LXIX” Donohue

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The WaPo has given the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue column space to scream, holler, froth and foam about teh gays and other social nemeses such as Democrats, film directors and atheists. Most of this old mitre and stuff we’ve heard before:

Sexual libertines, from the Marquis de Sade to radical gay activists, have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity.

And here I thought that what motivated me to have gay sex was — if I may make a multilingual show tunes pun — bittes and ass. Now I know that the real reason was to annoy the Pope.

And Donohue doesn’t want us to forget that the ACLU is chopping off the hands of children that draw pictures of the Baby Jesus and burglarizing Catholic homes in order to desecrate their nativity scenes on the sideboard:

From banning nativity scenes to punishing little kids for painting a picture of Jesus, the zealots give Fidel a good run for his money.

Read the column and you’ll discover that the Hollywood Jews have crucified Mel Gibson (there they go again!), that the gays run the Democratic Party (which explains why Congress just passed a law decreeing compulsory butt sex for all clergy and country-western music stars), and that art exhibits that show naughty bits threaten to bring the Church of Rome to its knees (insert altar boy joke here).

But there is a new social enemy right under your nose that you may have missed.

The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they’re too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.

Yes, every time you walk your dog instead of schtupping the missus to make more babies, you make the baby St. Thomas Aquinas cry. The pinnacle of secular terrorism has now become a gay man walking his dog back and forth between the bath house and the abortion clinic. Can I expect, the next time I take my pooch to the dog park at 17th and S, in the very heart of the D.C. ghey-tto, that I will find hordes of Catholic children bussed in from Wilkes Barre tearfully saying the rosary and holding up large photographs of small puppies munching on innocent embryos?