It started with Brit Hume’s initial statement on Fox News about Tiger Woods and his recent sexual troubles:

The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

Of course, as Ann says, any public mention of Christianity gets the usual liberal media elites into a crazed frenzy. Brit was wrongfully attacked… and Ann’s article not only points out the sheer idiocy of the many liberal responses to Brit, but does it while presenting the gospel (ah yes, presenting the gospel… something else Christo-leftists have a hard time doing)!!!

I agree 1,000 times with her. Feast your logical Christ-following senses on her piece, partially quoted below:

Someone mentioned Christianity on television recently and liberals reacted with their usual howls of rage and blinking incomprehension.

On a Fox News panel discussing Tiger Woods, Brit Hume said, perfectly accurately:

“The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”

Hume’s words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals’ copious ignorance of Christianity. (Also illustrating the words of the Bible: “How is it you do not understand me when I speak? It is because you cannot bear to listen to my words.” John 8:43.)

[...]

On MSNBC, David Shuster invoked the “separation of church and television” (a phrase that also doesn’t appear in the Constitution), bitterly complaining that Hume had brought up Christianity “out-of-the-blue” on “a political talk show.”

Why on earth would Hume mention religion while discussing a public figure who had fallen from grace and was in need of redemption and forgiveness? Boy, talk about coming out of left field!

What religion — what topic — induces this sort of babbling idiocy? (If liberals really want to keep people from hearing about God, they should give Him his own show on MSNBC.)

Most perplexing was columnist Dan Savage’s indignant accusation that Hume was claiming that Christianity “offers the best deal — it gives you the get-out-of-adultery-free card that other religions just can’t.”

In fact, that’s exactly what Christianity does. It’s the best deal in the universe. (I know it seems strange that a self-described atheist and “radical sex advice columnist ——” like Savage would miss the central point of Christianity, but there it is.)

God sent his only son to get the crap beaten out of him, die for our sins and rise from the dead. If you believe that, you’re in. Your sins are washed away from you — sins even worse than adultery! — because of the cross.

“He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.” Colossians 2:14.

Surely you remember the cross, liberals — the symbol banned by ACLU lawsuits from public property throughout the land?

Christianity is simultaneously the easiest religion in the world and the hardest religion in the world.

Okay, I don’t want anyone to get in trouble… and the library just contacted me to politely remind me that anyone sharing their card number with me is violating their user agreement.

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

From the article [full link]:

When Zabel and Williams released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use a cap and trade program to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked as lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in its San Francisco office for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.

Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade — a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade — as a means to fight climate change.

[...]

“Cap-and-trade with offsets provides a false sense of progress and puts money in the pockets of investors,” Zabel said in the video. “We think that these restrictions might not be constitutional,” he said.

Rush Limbaugh was recently pushed out of a bid to purchase stake in the pathetic St. Louis Rams professional football team. This was the accomplished mission of liars, hate-mongers and racists like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the usual cast of brainless clowns who succeeded in attributing racists quotes to Limbaugh, all of which are widely known to be pure fabrication.

If there was any “social justice” in this world, then everyone who attributed a false quote to Rush Limbaugh during October of 2009 would be sent to a work camp where they will be forced to take sensitivity and tolerance seminars during the evenings, and during the day put in several hours of landscaping at the houses of Haliburton exec.

Our free society is becoming a precarious place for dissenting viewpoints. God help us all.

From Rush’s Wall Street Journal piece on this whole tragedy:

…It didn’t take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.

Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.’s murderer, James Earl Ray.

[...]

…Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.

I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.

The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?

The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.

[...]

As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. “Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.

These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.

Congressman Fleming is encouraging people to go to his Website and sign his
petition: http://fleming.house.gov

The laughable farce-of-an-award-committee that brought us the debacle of Al Gore, alarmist hypocrite extraordinaire, as a Nobel Prize winner… has set a bold, new standard of incompetence and political pandering. They awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace prize!? But for what?! He’s a young, first-term leader who has only served nine months and has spent those nine months losing support in the wake of his controversial, debt-laden government bailouts and his otherwise inaction and lack of change (or change for the worse, if you will).

The piece de resistance for me is the fact that the nomination cutoff for the Nobel was just 12 days after Obama took office!?! Are you frakkin’ kidding me?

From the Times Online UK:

The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.

[full article]

From Yahoo: He won, but for what?

From Reuters: Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize to mixed reviews

Another one from Reuters: Obama Peace Prize win has some Americans asking why?

You’ve heard me decry this idiocy before… and you’ll hear it again and again. I can’t stand the lack of rational thought that permeates nearly every half-arsed notion coming from the religious left (who are the perverted people-of-faith of the political left… same smell, different clothes). Taking money from citizens in order to turn around and “solve” societal problems in the name of “social justice” (read secular humanism) is about as far from Christ-following as prime rib is from motor oil.

I know Christians… even pastors… who have written off politics as a vehicle for positive, Scriptural change. They criticize previous generations of Christians who put their trust in certain leaders… and they have retreated into their own circles of influence at their community level (or even into their own small exclusive church circles – although they won’t admit that). How cute that the same emerging voices critical of previous churches who didn’t “engage the culture” are actually doing the same thing themselves. And how cute that they would actually CALL others to do the same with politics… although what they are really doing is trying to dissuade traditionally GOP-supporting Christians from supporting conservative candidates while supporting left-leaning pols out the other side of their mouth.

So… about politics… guess what boys and girls — politics is part of our culture. So guess what? We are called to be engaged in politics.

I’m not saying don’t be involved in your tighter circles of influence (I oculd say community but it’s been such a tortured, tired word lately devoid of real meaning). I’m not saying put your faith in political leaders rather than Jesus. What I’m saying is obey your calling to be engaged… and participate in the political process because that it obedient and ultimately effects us, our children, our culture and our ministries we support. This is common sense that most children know so I shouldn’t have to say it again. Even if it means that all you’re doing is being educated on the major political issues, reading your Bible (both red AND BLACK letters) to see where God stands on the issues, and then voting appropriately based on Scripture (which means you didn’t vote for Obama) then do that. At the VERY LEAST do that… because as a Christian it is your duty. It could be as simple as 1st Peter’s call to respect government, but there’s plenty of Scriptural support for intelligent political involvement as part of a Christ-followers holistic engagement in culture.

Apologetics.com is a great, great site that if I had my way I would force people to listen to (like an Obama speech to schoolchildren). They just had a wonderful podcast on this topic: Apologetics.com – Christianity, the Church, and Government

Why is it that many Christians who decry Christian political involvement (read Tony Campolo types) because power and politics are tools of Satan, then go on to argue for government solutions to global warming and health care? Do they really want Satan and his tools cooling our planet and running our health care? Perhaps a more balanced approach is needed.

Should Christians be involved in government? Isn’t Christ our hope not politics? Is any influence of Christian thought on the state a violation of the separation of church and state? In this episode of Apologetics.com radio, Dean Donald McConnell of Trinity Law School, Doug Eaton, and Lane Chaplin discuss several questions that pertain to the Christian’s role in government and the governments role in Christianity.

Facebook, for better or worse, is like being at a big party with all your friends, family, acquaintances and co-workers.
Facebook can be a great tool, and an occasional annoyance. What kind of Facebooker are you?

Facebook can be a great tool, and an occasional annoyance. What kind of Facebooker are you?

There are lots of fun, interesting people you’re happy to talk to when they stroll up. Then there are the other people, the ones who make you cringe when you see them coming. This article is about those people.

Sure, Facebook can be a great tool for keeping up with folks who are important to you. Take the status update, the 160-character message that users post in response to the question, “What’s on your mind?” An artful, witty or newsy status update is a pleasure — a real-time, tiny window into a friend’s life.

But far more posts read like navel-gazing diary entries, or worse, spam. A recent study categorized 40 percent of Twitter tweets as “pointless babble,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if updates on Facebook, still a fast-growing social network, break down in a similar way. Take a CNN quiz: What kind of Facebooker are you? »

Combine dull status updates with shameless self-promoters, “friend-padders” and that friend of a friend who sends you quizzes every day, and Facebook becomes a daily reminder of why some people can get on your nerves.

Here are 12 of the most annoying types of Facebook users:

The Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-of-My-Day Bore. “I’m waking up.” “I had Wheaties for breakfast.” “I’m bored at work.” “I’m stuck in traffic.” You’re kidding! How fascinating! No moment is too mundane for some people to broadcast unsolicited to the world. Just because you have 432 Facebook friends doesn’t mean we all want to know when you’re waiting for the bus.

The Self-Promoter. OK, so we’ve probably all posted at least once about some achievement. And sure, maybe your friends really do want to read the fascinating article you wrote about beet farming. But when almost EVERY update is a link to your blog, your poetry reading, your 10k results or your art show, you sound like a bragger or a self-centered careerist.

The Friend-Padder. The average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site. Schmoozers and social butterflies — you know, the ones who make lifelong pals on the subway — might reasonably have 300 or 400. But 1,000 “friends?” Unless you’re George Clooney or just won the lottery, no one has that many. That’s just showing off.

The Town Crier. “Michael Jackson is dead!!!” You heard it from me first! Me, and the 213,000 other people who all saw it on TMZ. These Matt Drudge wannabes are the reason many of us learn of breaking news not from TV or news sites but from online social networks. In their rush to trumpet the news, these people also spread rumors, half-truths and innuendo. No, Jeff Goldblum did not plunge to his death from a New Zealand cliff.

The TMIer. “Brad is heading to Walgreens to buy something for these pesky hemorrhoids.” Boundaries of privacy and decorum don’t seem to exist for these too-much-information updaters, who unabashedly offer up details about their sex lives, marital troubles and bodily functions. Thanks for sharing.

The Bad Grammarian. “So sad about Fara Fauset but Im so gladd its friday yippe”. Yes, I know the punctuation rules are different in the digital world. And, no, no one likes a spelling-Nazi schoolmarm. But you sound like a moron.

The Sympathy-Baiter. “Barbara is feeling sad today.” “Man, am I glad that’s over.” “Jim could really use some good news about now.” Like anglers hunting for fish, these sad sacks cast out their hooks — baited with vague tales of woe — in the hopes of landing concerned responses. Genuine bad news is one thing, but these manipulative posts are just pleas for attention.

The Lurker. The Peeping Toms of Facebook, these voyeurs are too cautious, or maybe too lazy, to update their status or write on your wall. But once in a while, you’ll be talking to them and they’ll mention something you posted, so you know they’re on your page, hiding in the shadows. It’s just a little creepy.

The Crank. These curmudgeons, like the trolls who spew hate in blog comments, never met something they couldn’t complain about. “Carl isn’t really that impressed with idiots who don’t realize how idiotic they are.” [Actual status update.] Keep spreading the love.

The Paparazzo. Ever visit your Facebook page and discover that someone’s posted a photo of you from last weekend’s party — a photo you didn’t authorize and haven’t even seen? You’d really rather not have to explain to your mom why you were leering like a drunken hyena and French-kissing a bottle of Jagermeister.

The Maddening Obscurist. “If not now then when?” “You’ll see…” “Grist for the mill.” “John is, small world.” “Dave thought he was immune, but no. No, he is not.” [Actual status updates, all.] Sorry, but you’re not being mysterious — just nonsensical.
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The Chronic Inviter. “Support my cause. Sign my petition. Play Mafia Wars with me. Which ‘Star Trek’ character are you? Here are the ‘Top 5 cars I have personally owned.’ Here are ’25 Things About Me.’ Here’s a drink. What drink are you? We’re related! I took the ‘What President Are You?’ quiz and found out I’m Millard Fillmore! What president are you?”

You probably mean well, but stop. Just stop. I don’t care what president I am — can’t we simply be friends? Now excuse me while I go post the link to this story on my Facebook page.

This is why I can so easily hate the religious left with a purely righteous-ish hate… because their pompous hypocrisy mirrors their political cohorts’ with such an accurate emulation that when squinting I can scarcely tell Brian McClaren and Rob Bell from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Their ilk salivate at the chance to point their pot-stained fingers at the least savory portions of fundamentalism and decry the Bible-thumping-ness of that fringy lot… and then in the NEXT BREATH proceed to emulate every behavior and prejudice they just condemned. *sigh*

Rather than go to Sojourners.com here are a few better ports-of-call for the masses out there: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/author/scrowder/ http://www.youtube.com/user/machosauceproduction http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/ http://loyaltoliberty.blogspot.com/ http://evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/category/politics/republicans

Without further delay here is the great article from APACNY:

Rev. Jim Wallis–the head of Sojourners, and an icon of the religious left–has verbally assaulted Sarah Palin today on the Sojourners blog known as “God’s Politics,” and has actually questioned the authenticity of her Christian faith.

The blog has a code of conduct for participants that includes the following rules:

I will express myself with civility, courtesy, and respect for every member of the Sojourners online community, especially toward those with whom I disagree—even if I feel disrespected by them. (Romans 12:17-21)

I will express my disagreements with other community members’ ideas without insulting, mocking, or slandering them personally. (Matthew 5:22)

I will not exaggerate others’ beliefs nor make unfounded prejudicial assumptions based on labels, categories, or stereotypes. I will always extend the benefit of the doubt. (Ephesians 4:29)

Apparently, this language does not apply to the blog’s founder–at least not when he is talking about Governor Palin. See http://blog.sojo.net/2009/08/11/palin-bad-for-dialogue/. Here is a telling excerpt from Rev. Wallis’ remarks:

Sarah, you’re the one who is acting in an ‘’evil” way. After listening to your policy pronouncements during the campaign, many Americans decided, generously, that you weren’t ready yet for high political office. Others thought you just weren’t very smart. But this statement last week really does clear up the question for me. You are speaking like a demagogue in the worst tradition of those who knowingly distort and deceive, for their own political purposes. You want to stoke people’s worst fears and then, hopefully, they will look to someone like you to be their leader. You’re not stupid after all.

Please don’t invoke your “Christian faith” anymore and embarrass the people of God even further. May your efforts to scare Americans during this important debate fail. May your political future also fail, and may your star fall as fast as it rose just a few months ago — because we now know who you really are.

What, you may ask, did Sarah Palin do to arouse the ire of Rev. Wallis and to cause him to question her Christian faith? She did something that appears, in leftist circles, to have become the unpardonable sin: Raising objections to President Obama’s nightmarish “health care reform” proposal. (See http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WU09H07&f=PG07J01 and http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA09H08#WA09H08.) Here is what Governor Palin said:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

To be fair, Govenor Palin’s comment about standing before a “death panel” is a bit hyperbolic. However, Governor Palin’s concern about the euthanasia-related implications of the President’s health care proposal is quite well-founded–especially in light of heartbreaking recent news from Oregon (see http://www.thecloakroomblog.com/2009/08/obam/). Her concern is also shared by various pro-life organizations, including the Family Research Council.

While I am tempted to “fire back” at Rev. Wallis, let’s instead pray that he would change his ways and reverse the errant path his organization has taken. Let’s pray for Sarah Palin, too, as she and her family have been treated viciously over the past several months. And finally, let’s continue to pray against the President’s “health care reform” proposal.