Insurance Company Rules
My only question is how come it's taken so long for someone to come with this?
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This just boggles the mind:
You may or may not have heard the story of Webster Cook, a University of Central Florida student who decided to be funny, and smuggle the Eucharist out of a Catholic mass, rather than eat it.
Cook's plan, which seems about average in terms of wacky college schemes, triggered horrible cries of outrage and indignation, for his horrible desecration of the Body of Christ... It also led to death threats against Cook. ( Shakesville )
I can't go anywhere near the doctrine of transubstantiation or the beliefs of the offended that Mr. Cook walked out of the church with the literal body of Christ. The doctrine itself relies on some philosophical deftness that I'm much to literal to work with. In my ignorance, I would have assumed that each wafer was "merely" a piece of the flesh of Christ, but for people to say that Cook was holding their god hostage the doctrine must be that each wafer becomes the whole and complete body of Christ.
There are so many things wrong with the way the faithful have responded to the situation. I'm pretty sure Jesus was down on murder. I'm also fairly certain he taught that mortals were supposed to be nice and forgiving and it was his father's job to be the heavy. So the appropriate Christian response would have been to nicely ask for the return of the wafer and then pray for the soul of the poor misguided fool who now lived in danger of hellfire and damnation. But that's just me, I guess, because that is so not what happened.
But this is what really burns my shorts:
...if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.
A hate crime? Are you @#$@(* kidding me? BAM! Down comes the victim card. K. Hate Crimes 101: a hate crime is a violent crime that targets a specific group of individuals and is intended to terrorize the entire community of individuals who belong to that group. So did Cook beat up the priest and take the wafer by force? No. Did Cook rush from the sanctuary elbowing and punching people as he went? No. Are Catholics everywhere, or even this specific congregation, going to thing twice before going to mass next week? I seriously doubt it. In other words not any@#$(@)*where close to being a hate crime.
Does this explain why these people are so against hate crimes legislation? Because they think a hate crime is merely a sacrilegious/derogatory act? What Cook did wasn't even intimidating. Have they considered that some people might feel equally offended they believe they are eating God? When someone is dragged from a worship service and beaten to within an inch of his or her life for believing that a wafer is the whole and complete body of Christ, we can talk about hate crimes.
Again?
This is getting cliche now.
There's been an explosion of chatter on Alabama-based blogs today that the state's Republican anti-gay Attorney General Troy King may be about to resign in the face of a sex scandal with a male assistant. According to multiple sources, King was caught in bed with the man by his wife and thrown out of his home. ( Joe. My. God. )
King. Honey. That is so six months ago. You guys really need to find some fresh, new way to self destruct.
I try and have sympathy for these guys, I really do, but come on. If you're conflicted about your sexuality go be a hermit or a monk or something. Just because your life is miserable that doesn't make it okay to drag the rest of us down with you. Or is there some Biblical justification for that I missed during Sunday School? See, I thought the whole, "remove the beam from your own eye before you go bitching about the mote in your brother's eye" thing applied here.
I hate it when I’m right.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democrats are not better than Republicans, they are merely the lesser of two evils. Now that Obama has cinched the nomination he sounding more and more like a run-of-the-mill politician.
The current FISA mess is a no-brainer. If the rule of law doesn't apply to the president, what's the point? Isn't that what we call a king? Everyone got their panties all in a knot because Bill Clinton got a blow job in the Oval Office, but people seem much less incensed that Bush actually broke the law. Nixon was kicked out of office for exactly the same thing. The only difference is the respective targets and that Nixon didn't have a war to hide behind. Spying on fellow politicians? Good God Almighty! We can't have that!. Spying on American citizens who we think might possibly have ties to terrorist organizations, but can't be bothered to present our proof to a court? Oh, well that's okay then. Asinine.
And yet Obama is waffling on this one.
Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program," Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.
This marks something of a reversal of Obama's position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the "Potomac Primaries," but issued a statement that day declaring "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty." ((Washington Post, 06-20-2008)
So much for the candidate of change.
Oh, I'll end up voting for him, only because McCain would be a catastrophic choice, not because I particularly like him or because I think he'll be the president I'd like to see in the Oval Office. And you know what? I think he knows that. His base is incensed, but what are they going to do to register their displeasure? Vote for McCain?