irst, a quick site announcement: If I may, I direct your attention to the new and improved CHP Gift Shop. Mostly, it’s new and improved because I paid for it. Coming soon to a CHP Gift Shop near you — new designs! Well, soonish, anyways.
     And now, a toast to The Golden Compass, now playing in a theater near you. Apparently, some dirty evil atheist named Philip Pullman wrote some dirty evil atheist books, with the express purpose of turning our children into dirty, evil atheists.

• Will the Controversy Hurt the Film?
• Is The Golden Compass Pointing Away From God?
• More Schools to Pull The Golden Compass
• “Golden Compass” Debate Continues
• The list goes on . . .

     All I can imagine is that the folks who are throwing a hissy fit about these books have not actually read these books, because they aren’t exactly what I would call “anti-Christian”. They’re anti-dogma, and anti-autocracy, and they encourage the reader to think for themselves. In fact, the books are, more than anything, against allowing the beaurocratic edifice to take the place of the actual religion. At least, that’s what I took away from the books. I guess that means that in order to be a true Christian, you have to believe in dogma and beaurocracy above your god, and not do your own thinking. Okay, then.
     To the CIA, for destroying interrogation tapes!

     Angry congressional Democrats demanded Friday that the Justice Department investigate why the CIA destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two terrorism suspects.
     The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to find out “whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law.”

     To Ebola virus, which is rearing its ugly head in Uganda. It has infected at least 93 people, killing 22 of them thus far.
     To our Government, which wants us to continue suckling at the foreign oil teat and choking on pollution for as long as possible: Senate Blocks Energy Bill.

     Brushing aside a veto threat from the White House, the House passed a package of energy measures on Thursday that includes a 40 percent increase in fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks sold in the United States. But the measure stalled today in the Senate, as expected.
     The bill’s supporters say it will reduce the nation’s dependence on imported oil, jump-start development of clean-energy technologies and sharply reduce the nation’s production of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.
     But the complex and costly bill faces the prospect of a radical rewrite in the Senate because of opposition there to two provisions: $21 billion in new taxes, mostly on the oil industry, and a mandate that electric utilities must generate 15 percent of their power from alternative sources, like wind or solar. The White House threatened to veto the bill if the final version contains those or several other provisions passed by the House.

     How low have we fallen, politically speaking? This low: First Stop on Oprah-Bama Tour: Iowa. So, a toast to our political arena, where the American public can be convinced to vote for a candidate not based on their political leadership, but based on which stars the candidate can talk into stumping for them. Good fuck, people.
     To the continuing writers’ strike. Knock it off, guys. You’re holding up new episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I know you want your money and all, but I need me some Colbert and Stewart, already.

     (Photo credit: TheCinemaSource.com.)

Playing the Popularity Game:

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Controversies, Medicine, Politics, Religion, Toasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.