As gasoline, food and health care costs continue to rise, Americans are looking for solutions to the ever-growing financial challenges being faced today and in the future. I.O.U.S.A.: Live with Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson & Dave Walker addresses these challenges while offering solutions in a one-night-only, exclusive in-theatre event on Thursday, August 21st. Theatres across America will become community town halls as five of the nation’s most notable financial leaders and policy experts engage in a 45-minute LIVE panel discussion following the viewing of the acclaimed documentary “I.O.U.S.A.”
If you missed it previously on this blog, here’s the trailer for the documentary.
This just plain irritates me. Jesus is not a Republican (or a Democrat). I believe with all my heart that He cares about more than just the abortion issue and the gay marriage issue.
Indeed, Jesus is pro-life, but pro-life is more than just about pregnancy and birth; pro-life extends beyond the womb and encompasses all the life issues each and every individual all around the world faces, including extreme poverty and obscene disparity of wealth, famine and hunger, genocide and war.
Jesus certainly cares about the sanctity of marriage, but that extends beyond the issue of a union between homosexual couples and encompasses the union and marriages of heterosexual couples, including fidelity and marriage “until death do us part.” Why do the divorce rates within the Christian Church so closely mirror that of divorce rates outside the Church? If fundamentalist Christians, like the gentleman in the video, care so much about the sanctity of marriage, why doesn’t he focus on the truest threat to the “traditional marriage” — rampant divorce rates among heterosexual couples who even occupy our church pews?
Do I condemn those who have been divorced? Absolutely not. I simply want the same standard of “sanctity” to apply to heterosexual couples as these Christianists want it to apply to non-heterosexual couples. I do not oppose civil unions between two adults, heterosexual or homosexual. Marriage is an institution that should remain within the religious context, and it can be defined by the respective religious institution.
What irritates and frustrates me most are that Christianists like this gentleman continue to reduce every election down to these two issues. And how successful has that proven to be. They’ve had eight years of a pro-Christianist presidency with control of at least two branches of government for the first six years. Look at where it has gotten us.
Has there been significant improvement in our nation and in the world with these two issues? Has the Christianist agenda really worked?
There are more issues than just these two that devoted followers of Christ should consider when voting this November. Failing to consider the other bigger issues — poverty, hunger, war, the Gospel message of faith, hope and agape love — is ignoring the larger messages of Jesus and the Bible.
This Feb. 2005 picture shows the Lake City, Ga. home which was the subject of the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” television show. More than 1,800 people helped demolish the Harper family’s decrepit home and replace it with this sparkling four-bedroom mini-mansion that towered over ranch and split-level homes in their Clayton County neighborhood. But three years later, the home has become the latest victim of the foreclosure crisis after the family used it as collateral for a $450,000 loan. The two-level home is set to go to auction on Aug. 5.
Materials and labor to build the home were donated, the story reports, and $250,000 was raised for the family, including scholarships for the three children as well as for a home maintenance fund. As you might expected, upon hearing the news, volunteers who helped build the home were “less than thrilled about the family’s financial decisions.”
“It’s aggravating. It just makes you mad. You do that much work, and they just squander it,” Lake City Mayor Willie Oswalt, who helped vault a massive beam into place in the Harper’s living room, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
I saw this headline on MSNBC: “Obama defends his overseas trip.” My simple question is, “Why?” Why should he have to defend it?
Obama’s opponents have, prior to this trip, criticized Obama for not having visited Iraq or Afghanistan recently and for being weak on foreign policy. Obama answer the challenge and his opponents are not criticizing for visiting Iraq and Afghanistan and Europe.
This election season is literally making me sick to my stomach. I’m just plain tired of it.
I’m now actively avoiding news programs and any shows that might cover the candidates. I’ve stopped reading blogs and websites that are consumed by the daily grind of the campaign. I’ve restricted myself to culling my news from online news sources, but find myself having to dig through all the oversaturation of election coverage to find out what else is happening in the world outside of politics.
This is the last post about politics that you’ll read for the foreseeable future — or at least until the VP picks are in and I weigh in on that. Seriously, I am beyond my tolerance of the political coverage, and I have a pretty high tolerance (and appetite) for this type of stuff. This election cycle has been as exhausting and absurdly extreme as I’ve ever experienced. And I’m disconnecting for a while… for my sanity.
“Are we there yet?” is the question that keeps running through my mind. Election Day couldn’t come fast enough.
I’m no prude — by any stretch of the imagination. But there are some commercials that make even me uncomfortable…
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The commercial taps into the deep-seeded fantasy land inside the minds of most men and it introduces this fantasy to a whole new generation of pre-pubescent and pubescent boys. Sure there’s worse stuff on television, but this commercial seems to me to be a little more insidiously seductive, especially given its more mainstreamed exposure.
What probably disturbs me most is how it portrays women — as (very attractive) subservient tools whose primary purpose is to service a man’s needs. As a father of two daughters, that bothers me. I don’t want them to be subjected to or even have emplanted in their minds such a chauvenistic, twisted concept.
What’s most galling of all is that Axe is made by Unilever, makers of Dove products. Dove has been widely praised for its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty that aims to improve the self image and self esteem of women of all ages beyond the definition of beauty that “had become limiting and unattainable, as if only thin, young and blond were beautiful.” It has been a noble campaign, if it were not undercut by the marketing of its sister brother product that clearly sexualizes and objectifies women.
Josh Golin, associate director of advocy group Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood, said:
“The hypocrisy is Dove positioning itself as a brand that cares and is trying to teach girls to resist this messaging. At the same time Unilever, in the form of Axe, is putting out some of the worst messaging there is.”[6]
Susan Linn, CCFC’s director, sums it up best:
“Unilever needs to have a consistent policy on how it treats women. Either treat them the Dove way or the Axe way. Unilever has dismissed it as just a joke. But, in fact, advertising images have a powerful effect, even if people don’t realize it. Especially if they don’t realize it.”[7]
It’s not surprising that a big corporation that makes products with competing interests is so blatantly duplicitous. It’s not surprising, but it’s disappointing. Shame on you, Unilever.
If you happened to watch my Twitter feed yesterday (that shows up under “What’s Brad doing?” at the top of the right sidebar), you would have seen that I ventured over to the Apple Store in Penn Square Mall yesterday over an early lunch over to see what was going on and if I might be able to get my hands on the new iPhone 3G. This video will give you some idea of what I found when I got there …
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Now, to be honest, I was generally expecting a long line, but (foolishly) optimistically hoping for the best. What I found was just about the opposite of “best.” The line stretched from the Apple store all the way to Dillards (in the same wing of the mall near the west exit) and back around again to around to the stores across from the Apple Store. And the line was hardly moving at all… more than three hours after the store had opened. I knew the wait would be longer than I was willing to tackle, so I quickly abandoned that idea (because I hate waiting in long lines) and met Karla for lunch.
When I got back to the office, I was glad I didn’t bother. There were cascading delays on launch day with people having to wait even longer — much longer — than expected as the Apple activiation servers crashed and burned several extended times throughout the day and the iPhones couldn’t be activated or took a very long time to complete the process. I later heard that some people waited 4 to 6 hours (after the store had opened and the line began moving) before it was all said and done. Even as a diehard Apple fan and iPhone lover, there’s no way I would tolerate that kind of wait, and I didn’t and chose to wait another day. Delayed gratification — for me, for Karla and for the girls, who are inheriting our hand-me-down first-generation iPhones.
Now, Apple just didn’t plan this out very well, in my humble opinion Continued
Unbelievable! Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse — that people just couldn’t be this hateful so out in the open — along comes this…
Michael James at DailyKos spotted several racist t-shirts targeting Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) being sold on the website Road Kill T-Shirts, which says that it sells “funny” shirts. Some of the designs featured a noose and Ku Klux Klan members chasing Obama:
After writing an e-mail to the company, James received a response that it has removed the offending items. “We recently hired a freelancer to create designs and post them on our site,” wrote Mike from Road Kill T-Shirts. “We have teams of them and, unfortunately, these were put up in the last couple of days without approval. While the site can be edgy…I can guarantee you this is not the type of stuff we approve of.”
I came across this video by the non-partisan Reject Torture campaign after reading this story regarding the U.S. being accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships. If we sacrifice our values in supposed defense of those values, what have we gained? And, if we are a Christian nation, as many proclaim us to be, what defense can a Christian make of such policies and practices?
reaffirming America’s commitment to existing federal laws and international treaties that ban torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under all circumstances.
renouncing all legal interpretations and executive orders that redefine torture and permit such acts as sensory and sleep deprivation, stress positions, sexual humiliation, and mock executions.
enforcing full transparency of information about how America treats any and all detainees held by our personnel and those in our employ anywhere in the world.
rejecting and abolishing the practice of rendering detainees abroad.
establishing a single standard of interrogation procedures to apply to all persons held in U.S. custody or by those under U.S. control, whether C.I.A., military, or civilian.
treating our detainees as we would have others treat detained Americans.
I have now joined the initiative this election year to press the presidential candidates to adopt a “no torture, no exceptions” policy if they should be elected president.
