Headlines

There were a number of interesting articles in this past Monday’s USA TODAY (August 17, 2009). Here are three of them:

Lutherans Consider Same–Sex Clergy.

Aren’t all clergy same–sex? Do you know any clergy people who are more than one sex?

Mormons are Less Mans?

It is the responsibility of every Mormon male to go on a mission and bring the word of the Angel Maroni to the peoples of the earth. Good for them! But whether or not you think as Glenn Beck does that President Obama hates white people (which is only fair since Kanye West told us that President Bush hates black people), the Obama administration certainly has a Mormon problem.

It seems that they have decided not to count Mormons on missions outside the United States in the next US census. According to the Census Bureau there is no way to accurately count the reported (by me) two hundred million Mormon missionaries serving overseas. According to officials in Utah, not counting missionaries has and could again cost Utah its fair share of seats in the US House of Representatives.

Why would Obama do this to the Mormons? Could it have anything to do with the fact that until fairly recently taught that all black people were cursed? Or that it used to be easier for a dead Jew to be baptized as a Mormon (a practice the Mormon church insists it has ceased to perform, though my dead bubbe keeps knocking on my door with copies of the Book of Mormon in her hand) than for a live black man to join? Could it? Huh? It’s payback time, Joseph Smith! Deal with it!

Hello, My Name is Armageddon

I was watching GPS with Fareed Zakaria this past Sunday as he interviewed the Israeli Ambassador to the United States. When asked about Israel’s stockpile of nuclear weapons (shh, no one is supposed to know they have them, though the secret is revealed to every Jewish kid who becomes bat or bar mitzvah), he insisted that Israel would not be the first country to “introduce” nukes into the Middle East.

Asked what he meant given the fact that everyone knows Israel has a couple of hundred nukes (Fareed is a Muslim, but as a kid he attended lots of b’nai mitzvah parties and must have heard this from some loose-lipped Jewish kid), the ambassador kept repeating the word “introduce, introduce” as if Fareed didn’t understand the word.

Maybe he doesn’t. What the ambassador was saying that Israel has never introduced anyone to its missiles. Like, you know, “Mr. President this is our friend Nuke and his two hundred or so brothers and sisters.” No, Israel is one rude country, and its nukes just sit in a corner ignored by almost everyone. Except the Iranians. I think the Ayatollah went to a bar mitzvah or two himself.