Tag: Culture

Lord, please tell him to just shut up: Pat Robertson’s callous assertion that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s massive cerebral hemorrhage was retribution from God because Sharon was “dividing God’s land” probably wrecked a deal to put a Christian theme park on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Avi Hartuv, spokesman for Tourism Minister Avraham Hirschson, said Israeli officials were furious with Robertson:”We can’t accept this kind of statement,” Hartuv said.

Robertson’s comments seem to lend credence to the fears of Israeli Jews who see the proposed $50 million Christian Heritage Center as a kind of beach-head from which rabid evangelicals would mount a crusade to convert or destroy all Jews to prep Israel for the Rapture. The Bible-thumpers believe that God will only return to earth when Israel is whole and free of Jews.

The Israelis have not totally put the kibosh on the project and say they would consider working with another Jesus freak, just not Robertson.

The real political capital: According to a new study released today by American Demographics, Americans are the world’s biggest spenders. Indeed, collectively, what we spend in a week is equivalent to Finland’s gross national product. It’s kind of hard to say what’s good news and what’s bad news in the report, but here are some excerpted highlights for your consideration:

• The average American household’s economic outlays for all goods
  and services reached $1,500 a week in 2005.
• Real—after inflation—consumer spending in the U.S. rose 23% in the past 10 years, while the number of households was up only 14%.
• The Census Bureau recently reported that 37 million people in the U.S. lived in poverty in 2004. That’s 5.4 million more than in 2000—a 17% increase in a period when the number of people who weren’t living in poverty edged up 2.5%.
• A record 45.8 million people in the U.S. had no health insurance in 2004, 6 million more than in 2000. That’s a 15% increase compared with a tiny 2% increase for people with health insurance.
• The highest-income 20% of U.S. households has an average annual income of $151,600. But the majority—60%—of U.S. households lives on a little more than one-fourth of all consumer income, an average of about $27,000 each.
• Baby boomers have created more wealth than any preceding generation in part because of their cohort size (78 million Americans born 1946-64; 26% of the population), but in large part because so many of them went to college.
• The U.S. population is predicted to hit 300 million on Sept. 15, 2006.

Lord, please smite ’em: A consortium of U.S. evangelical Christians and the Israeli goverment are negotiating a deal for an evangelical theme park near where, legend has it, Jesus fed the multitudes on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The leader of the Bible-thumpers is Hugo-hatin’ nutcake tee-vangelist Pat Robertson.

The Israelis are planning to lease the land — about 125 acres — for free and the Jesus freaks will spend about $48 million to create what is tentatively called the Galilee World Heritage Park. It would be located northeast of the Mount of the Beatitudes, where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and Capernaum, Jesus’ hometown. Plans call for a garden and nature park, auditorium, Holy Land exhibition, outdoor amphitheaters, information center and a media studio (Heeeeere’s Pat — Live from the Holy Land!).

Despite the million additional visitors the park is projected to bring to Israel, some Israeli Jews are suspicious of the evangelicals’ motives. The Guardian describes it this way:

The primary reason [the American Christian right has been among the strongest supporters of Israel in the U.S.] is that according to the Old Testament, Israel was given to the Jews by God. Fundamentalist Christians believe that in order for Jesus to return, two preconditions are Jewish control of the land of Israel and the conversion of the Jews to Christianity.

And that Rapture Plan doesn’t sit well with some Israeli Jews:

Yossi Sarid, a former government minister and member of the Knesset, said he was wary of the friendship of the American Christian right and projects such as the Galilee centre. He said: “I am not enthusiastic about this cooperation because I have no desire to be cannon fodder for the evangelists.

“As a Jew, they believe I have to vanish before Jesus can make his second appearance. As I have no plans to convert, as an Israeli and a Jew, I find this a provocation. There is something sinister about their embrace.”

But in the end, Israel seems willing to trade the souls of the Jews for the tourism dollars of fundamentalist Christians:

Avraham Hirschson, the Israeli tourism minister, said: “I’m not a theologian, I’m the minister of tourism, and I’m not interested in the politics of our tourists as long as they come here. They come here as tourists, and they’re friends of Israel.”

And they wonder why we’re not feeling it. I keep hearing pundits talk about how great the economy is, then lament that us little people aren’t smart enough to realize it.

There is no doubt that Bush’s economic policies have done just what he intended: shifted more wealth into the top income demographics, while exhausting the middle and working classes.

Reuters reports today’s cheery economic findings:

Factories across the U.S. cranked out goods at a much slower pace than expected in December, while spending in the construction sector edged up to a new record in November…

Yes, the housing market is red-hot, especially where your Pensito Review editors live – Florida and California. But since fewer people each day can afford those McMansions sprouting up like weeds in the sprawl that is America, where is this going?

The Palm Beach Post on the experience of one firefighter, who can’t afford to buy one of those homes she protects, and so lives with her parents.

The starting salary for a probationary firefighter in Boynton Beach…is $36,771.

…her salary doesn’t come close to the $71,000 annual income needed to qualify to buy a $225,000 home based on a down payment of 10 percent. Adding to her dilemma: the median price of an existing single-family home in Palm Beach County was $421,500 in November, according to a report from the Florida Association of Realtors. That was up 23 percent from a year ago and up 1 percent from October.

A recent study found that the median price of a home in the United States rose 20 percent in just 18 months, to $225,000. During the same period, wages for firefighters, teachers and nurses in most cities remained flat or increased slightly, but still fell far short of the salary needed to buy a home…

[…]

It was New Year’s Eve 2005. There I was, hunkered down in my little bungalow, scotch in hand, trying to keep the dogs from freaking out over the fireworks and occasional gunfire that characterize my neighborhood on the last night of the year. We don’t go out on New Year’s in Miami — too dangerous.

So there I was, anticipating watching the ball drop and seeing Dick Clark’s holographic projection “live” from Times Square or watching Anderson Cooper being kissed by a drag queen in Key West, when all of a sudden, the TV went blue. Flicking through the channels, I was greated by blue, blue, blue screens. So I poured another scotch and listened to the firecrackers, bottle rockets and occasional semi-automatic gunfire until the old year rolled over.

Come to find out today that one of those gun-totin’ cowboys killed my cable. Apparently, Comcast had a devil of a time tracking down the source of the problem — a bullet hole in one of its main fiber-optic lines. So me and about 50,000 of my neighbors were forced to have a television-less New Year’s, which gave us time to reflect on a monumentally crappy old year and list our resolutions for the hopefully less-crappy new one.

Resolution #1: Stay home and helmeted and flak-jacketed next New Year’s Eve.

On this day in 1831, Charles Darwin set out on his only trip away from England, aboard the HMS Beagle and eventually to the Galapagos Islands off South America. Little did he realize he could have just stayed home and read the Bible and known everything anyone would ever need to about how life works. Silly Darwin. We’re so much smarter than that now.

Not enough haters: Several California groups are working hard to overturn the state’s marriage-like civil unions laws for gay people. They have been talking up plans to put draconian initiatves on the ballot that would make it illegal for same-sex couples to receive any of the benefits granted to mixed-gender relationships.

But now the first of these propositions has failed to meet its first test. Its proponents were unable to collect enough signatures to get it on the June ballot, according to 365gay.com, via Pam’s House Blend:

A group trying to get a proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage put to voters in California has failed to collect enough names to put the issue on the June 2006 ballot and may not make it in November.

The amendment would not only prevent gay marriages but also void the state’s landmark domestic partner registry and all benefits for same-sex couples.

Randy Thomasson, the president of Campaign for Children and Families said he is not giving up. “Whether it be November 2006 or sometime in 2008, it doesn’t matter,” he said Wednesday. In the meantime, he said, the organization will continue to fight in the courts.

Another group collecting names for a second ballot measure also says it has not collected as many signatures as it had hoped. ProtectMarriage says it is now aiming for an April 13 deadline to make on November’s ballot.

Both groups say they are far behind LGBT rights group Equality California in fundraising and organization.

This would seem like a good time for the California Legislature to pass another the gay marriage law. I’ll bet Gov. Schwarzenegger would be a lot less inclined to veto it this time.