Scientologists
Circle I Limbo
Hipsters
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind
Bill Gates
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow
Osama bin Laden
Circle IV Rolling Weights
Libertarians
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled
River Styx
Objectivists
Circle VI Buried for Eternity
River Phlegyas
Riceboys
Circle VII Burning Sands
Barack Obama
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement
Nancy Pelosi
Circle IX Frozen in Ice
In local Jeffersonville, IN news a Democratic congressman has taken a brave stand to support his constituent's right to live :
LETTERS: Reader thanks Baron Hill for his stand on health care
I want to say how much I appreciate Congressman Baron Hill courageously standing up for Indiana's middle class families right to affordable healthcare.
We have seen medical insurance/health care cost skyrocket, and the worst thing we could do for our grandchildren would be to saddle them with the expense of leaving things as they have been. We know it doesn't work.
It would have been so easy to "play it safe" and just do nothing. Instead of voting no, as every Indiana Republican voted, Congressman Hill got us a bill that provides a public option to provide money saving competition, and improves the exemption for small businesses.
No one claims perfection, but at least we may not have to wait another 30 years to get the special interest groups under control, so our companies can compete in the world economy, and we can get healthcare for most of our citizens. We need a representative strong enough to act to resolve our problems and this is just what Congressman Baron Hill has done for Southern Indiana.
Thank you, Baron, and keep up the good work.
— Joanna Bayer, New Albany
This is the Palin farewell speech. Read this seriously..
What an absolutely beautiful day it is, and it is my honor to speak to all Alaskans, to our Alaskan family this last time as your governor. And it is always great to be in Fairbanks. The rugged rugged hardy people that live up here and some of the most patriotic people whom you will ever know live here, and one thing that you are known for is your steadfast support of our military community up here and I thank you for that and thank you United States military for protecting the greatest nation on Earth. Together we stand.
And getting up here I say it is the best road trip in America soaring through nature's finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins. It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future. That is what we get to see every day. Now what the rest of America gets to see along with us is in this last frontier there is hope and opportunity and there is country pride....read the rest here
I LUV HURRRRRR I LUV HUR SO GOOD!
Baseball.
TheSmokebomb sucks! 
As we all know, black people in
God, after all, is nothing if not resourceful.
But now the blacks have gone and mucked it up by being huge racists, which was not what God and MLK had in mind.
Recently, a white man arrested a black man for breaking into his home. Last I checked, breaking and entering is illegal, regardless of who’s home it is. And on top of that, the white man was a cop!
Unfortunately, this black was real famous, not like Denzel famous, more like Michael Steele famous.
TOKYO -- The crows are back in town, swooping in from the suburbs, feasting on garbage in Ginza, cawing with impunity.
"Yes, they have returned," admitted Naoki Satou, the chagrined point man for the city's eight-year-old war on crows.
The conflict had gone Tokyo's way until 2006, when the formidably beaked carrion-eaters launched a counterattack. The crow count has since risen about 30 percent.
Besides indulging in their usual high jinks -- ripping open plastic garbage bags, scaring children in parks, pooping on passersby -- crows have been sabotaging the city's high-speed Internet network. Hundreds of fiber-optic cables have been slashed open by crows scrounging high-tech stuffing for their nests. The birds are also blamed for periodic blackouts. At least one has been implicated in shutting off power to a bullet train in northern Japan.
These are jungle crows (Corvus macrorhynchos), and they are bigger, badder and uglier than their kin in North America. They weigh in at about 1 1/2 pounds and have a yard-wide wingspan. They can clench their claws into fists and punch people in the head, local bird experts say. They sometimes dive-bomb Tokyoites from the rear, with an unnerving whoosh that has been known to cause people to crash their bicycles or fall down stairwells.
Like drill sergeants from hell, they wake up city dwellers at dawn with their deep, hoarse, astonishingly loud caws. Conversations about the birds inevitably allude to Alfred Hitchcock.
But one crow picked on the wrong guy in 2001. It whooshed near Shintaro Ishihara, the often irascible, exceedingly powerful governor of Tokyo, while he was playing golf.
"I intend to make crow-meat pies Tokyo's special dish," Ishihara announced.
And the crow war commenced, with broad public support and not much carping from animal rights groups. Everyone agreed that the in-town population of the mischievous creatures had gotten out of hand. Their numbers had more than quintupled between 1985 and 2001, increasing from 7,000 to 36,400.
At last count, the city has exterminated 105,392 crows, with an estimated 21,200 still at large. Most were caught in traps baited with mayonnaise or lard. They were gassed with carbon monoxide and cremated in one of the city's many high-efficiency garbage incinerators. The city won't say which one.
At the same time, ward governments in Tokyo distributed hundreds of thousands of blue mesh nylon tarps. Residents were instructed never to put plastic garbage bags outside unless they were covered with the supposedly crow-proof blankets.
Tokyo's metropolitan government has incurred $5.3 million in extermination costs -- about $50 per dead crow. The effort appears to have mollified residents, as crow complaints have fallen by 80 percent in the past six years.
Fatigue, however, began to set in three years ago. Crow traps got old and were not replaced. Because of budget cuts, bait portions in traps were reduced, the Asahi newspaper reported. The paper also alleged that the city skimped on mayonnaise to save money, but Tokyo officials insist that crows like lard just as much as they like mayonnaise.
"We were going through a transitional phase that year," said Satou, the city official responsible for crow control. "We couldn't catch as many, and therefore there were more crows."
He said Tokyo residents compounded the problem by becoming less conscientious about their garbage and their blue blankets.
Finally, Satou said, governments on the outskirts of Tokyo have not ridden herd on their crows. Suburban crows, he complained, are commuting into the city at mealtimes.
Many bird experts disagree with Satou's assessment. They say Tokyo is losing control of the crow situation because it underestimates the intelligence of the birds and overestimates its ability to control their numbers through extermination.
"The older, more clever crows never go near those traps," said Hiroshi Kawachi, an official with the Wild Bird Society of Japan. "They are catching only young, stupid crows, not the breeders."
Kawachi said smarter crows have figured out the blue tarps: They lift them up and then eat the garbage.
The only effective and humane way to limit crows in Tokyo is to get more serious about garbage, said Kawachi, who for a year counted crows eating trash in the upscale Ginza district.
He found that when Ginza restaurants agreed to have their garbage collected at night, rather than in the late morning, after crows eat breakfast, the birds' numbers declined by half.
"I am not saying crows are adorable," he said. "But we can quickly bring their numbers down to an appropriate level with smarter garbage collection."
Meanwhile, the city is not backing down from the fight. As well as encouraging residents to be more vigilant with their blue blankets, it is putting out more traps, well-baited with lard.
The man who plays "Jesus" cites a passage that says God is a jealous God, and Maher replies:
" ..that seems so ungodlike, that God would have such a petty human emotion. I know people who have gotten over jealousy."
My answer:
The word for "jealousy" in Joshua 24:19....is used less than half a dozen times in the OT, and always is used to describe God. Nowhere is this word described as a sin. A related word is used to describe a husband who worries that his wife is walking out on him (Numbers 5). Sarna (Exodus commentary, 110) notes that the root of the word means "to become intensely red" and that it can refer to ardor, zeal, rage, or jealousy. Paul knows of a godly jealousy (2 Cor. 11:2), so is this a sin as we understand it? Jealousy is part of God's nature because it is demanded by who He is -- He is the only being who can indeed say He has a right to be jealous, since He is the only one who truly deserves utter respect and devotion. Malina in The New Testament World [126-7] adds that in the context of an honor-based world, jealousy was "a form of protectiveness that would ward off the envious and their machinations." It is a behavior that an honorable person is expected to "exhibit towards that which he or she is perceived to possess exclusive access." Thus for God to be jealous here is not a vice in context, but a supreme virtue and demonstration of His concern for Israel.
I doubt if Maher is familiar with agonistic societies.
Maher also says later, "[God] spends the first five books of the Bible wiping out people."
Really? I must have missed that where it was in Leviticus; there was a death toll of just two there, not exactly a wipeout. This is merely argument by outrage."
So, faithful readers of the Smokebomb, today we learned that:
a. Jealousy is not a sin because God is a man (not only an man... but the man) and it is just 'in his nature/who he is'. Also, you're supposed to feel jealous of the things you own.... therefore making it ok to wiretap your wife
b. Since Maher lied (2 people smited by God does not a massive death toll make.... DUH!) he is just a dumb dumb. Everyone knows it was only the first 4 books of the bible that count. I mean.... just because he ordered people into misery for incorporating fruit into their diet, killed everything and everyone with a massive flood while PMSing, turned someone into a pillar of salt for having the dishonor to turn around, had his son die in a pretty horrific and messy way, convinced people to almost kill their sons and daughters, and sent a bunch of plagues and then is going to judge the whole world... well I mean come on! That is totally normal behavior!
For more insightful commentary please check out this gentleman's rants and ravings here
