My Crazy Times

By: Holden Jeerson

Ladies and gentlemen I present to you, those who help to run this great country of ours:

It has been a few days since the annual White House Correspondents dinner and this video has been viewed and posted on many times. I’ve been debating about whether or not I was going to write anything but I just can’t keep silent about this. This administration continues to embarrass the country with each passing day.

The Correspondents dinner has become a staple in D.C., coming off as a ridiculous publicity stunt where politicians attempt to show they have a sense of humor. It’s no wonder why most of the civilized world has no respect for America’s leaders. Our leaders wage unnecessary wars, refuse to listen to anyone who has a differing idea, help multi-millionaires become billionaires while innocent men and women continue to perish and then honor their mistakes with a special dinner where they joke about how they’ve fucked things up.

Many argue that by continuing to do the meaningless yet traditional events we show the terrorists that they haven’t disrupted our lives. How about this though; how about the Commander in Chief act with a little dignity when he has ordered troops into a war zone. It wouldn’t take much, just politely decline these asinine events out of respect to those who are away from their families.

But then again, this is America.

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By: Joel Henderson

A year ago today my father passed from this world into the next. I had hoped this day would come and go without giving it much thought, but it has been haunting me for the past month. Each day I thought about what I was doing last year at this time and how I might have acted differently if I’d known that in a few weeks I would lose my dad. This type of thinking isn’t too healthy because it eventually leads to a life of regret. I don’t want to live like that but I do want to grow through this experience.

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Four years ago today my wife and I were visiting Florida and had been invited to a friends house for dinner. We enjoyed a nice dinner and some wine, and then just as we were sitting down after the meal it was announced on the news that the U.S. military had begun to attack Iraq. I remember this so well because at the time my brother was stationed in Kuwait and obviously I was concerned for him.

There have been many debacles by the current administration throughout this war, but perhaps the most idiotic of them all was the President declaring “mission accomplished” from aboard that carrier. I can’t imagine that those involved just don’t cringe and hang their heads when they see this.

Further reading:

Christians Worship, March in Protest of Iraq War

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By: Joel Henderson

Have you ever read or heard something that really made you think, and then in the days that followed that same thing continued to come up in ever day life? A few months back I heard a teaching on forgiveness. The speaker wasn’t very spectacular and I wasn’t wild about his three point talk on why we should forgive, but it forced me to really contemplate this idea of forgiveness.

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I’ve been debating over the last couple of days to whether or not I was going to write an article concerning Ann Coulter.  My dilemma is that I’m not sure I could write without coming across as hypocritical, because my words would be of my flesh and my utter disdain for this woman.  I just can’t get around the whole idea of loving your neighbor as yourself…this is one person that is just so damn hard for me to love.

All that to say, read this article by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald…it says a lot of what I’ve been thinking.

The right-wing cult of contrived masculinity

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By: Joel Henderson

Twelve-years ago when I graduated high school I was given, as a graduation gift, the book Life on the Edge: A Young Adults Guide to a Meaningful Future by Dr. James Dobson. This was my first “adult” book and the first book I completely read because I wanted to and not because it was a school assignment. At that point in my journey it was relevant and caused me to think about issues I hadn’t given a second thought to before.

A few years after that I began to grow leery of Dobson after he went before the Republican leadership and threatened them with pulling the vote of the Christian right if they didn’t pay more attention to their issues. I felt this to be a grotesque display of power and feared that Dobson was slipping from atop his ministry of Focus on the Family into the power game of American politics. It’s one thing to be a concerned and active citizen, it’s quite another to seek out and exploit power in an attempt to push your issues.

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