More on the police state

Even a broken clock...

Until today there has been absolutely nothing that Glenn Beck has said that I did not wish I had never heard in the first place. His rhetoric is usually so inflammatory and stupid that it is impossible to escape it from either the reverent right or the lampooning left.

Surely you've heard about the plan hatched by Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center church in Gainesville, Florida to hold a good old-fashioned down home book-burning of exclusively the Islamic holy book the Quran on September 11th.

Apparently so has Mr. Beck, and he weighed in with his opinion in this blog post.

What is wrong with us? It’s just like the Ground Zero mosque plan. Does this church have the right? Yes. Should they? No. And not because of the potential backlash or violence.

Update: Okay, no. The mosque is not being planned to be built on Ground Zero, for one thing. If it was, that might be a little weird. Calling it the "Ground Zero mosque" is just a straight up lie.

And besides, burning the Quran, and building a mosque two-blocks north of Ground Zero are not the same things at all.

But go on...

We must be the better person. We must be bigger than our problems. Bigger than the times in which we live. Burning the Koran is like burning the flag or the Bible. You can do it, but whose heart will you change by doing it? You will only harden the hearts of those who could be moved. None of those who are thinking about killing us will be affected, but our good Muslim friends and neighbors will be saddened. It makes the battle that they face inside their own communities even harder.

What?

This sounds measured and calm. It sounds well-reasoned. It actually sounds rather Christian in the idealistic turn-the-other-cheek sense of the word.

Well (almost) good for you Mr. Beck. You (almost) got one right this time.

Resonance

Silently ignoring is passive aggressive. Sometimes what you want is outright aggression, demanding something more to the effect of 'Your thoughts and ideas are inconsequential and completely unimportant. I'm just going to ignore you from now on.'

”

-- Mike Nerone, 2009

[ #coredevs ]

Are you ready for the Rapture?

Did you know that the global climate is warming?

Well, today's Rapture index (166 and rising) is really high. So in terms of a spiritual global climate our planet is practically boiling!

The Rapture Index is a useful and extraordinarily accurate aggregation of all the factors that prophetically contribute to the likelihood that the Rapture will occur today (or pretty soon).

Hosted at RaptureReady.com, the Rapture Index is apparently put together by Todd Strandberg, the website's creator.

There are 45 categories used to calculate the Rapture Index. My favorite category that is considered to be directly contributing to the Rapture is probably "Liberalism". The site defines this category this way:

29. Liberalism
It's not just a part of the Democrat Party. liberalism is what could be called the "true conspiracy." Liberal media are 100 percent controlled by the forces that bow to humanistic ideology. [sic]

Liberalism is currently at a 4. I guess that's sort of like condition orange.

My analogy isn't very original though. Mollie Ziegler over at GetReligion.org used Department of Homeland Security's chart to illustrate her Rapture article way back in 2007.

Just in case you aren't paying attention to the index and you find that you have forgotten your Rapture Umbrella when it arrives, here's what to do:

• What to do AFTER the rapture has taken place and you realize that you were left behind

If you're a wussy unbeliever, and you don't think you'll be able to control your bowel movements during the impending Rapture, you can stop worrying. The folks over at Tribulation Central have got you covered -- with Rapture Adult Diapers as well as other Rapture preparedness items.

Infant gangster clothing line

Do you want your brat to look like a little hood rat gangster from LA? Here ya go.

[Aw ain't he cute?]
Why anybody would put so much Adobe Macromedia Flash behind a store for a toddler clothing line to make your kid look like a Yakuza is beyond me.