Blogosphere: December 2006 Archives

Congratulations to a couple of long-distance blogpals whom I've met in real life and who are getting some well-deserved recognition:

Steve Patterson writes the excellent Urban Review STL, which covers local politics and urban planning in and around St. Louis. In the December issue of St. Louis magazine, he made their list of "50 Most Powerful in 2006." Here's what they had to say about Steve:

He’s the Jedi master of sunshine laws, the seeker of clandestine city meetings, the guy who can suss out the minutiae of St. Louis politics and explain it in a way anyone can understand. Some call him strong medicine: Jennifer Florida described him to us earlier this year as a “zealot,” and the RFT just crowned him Best Gadfly. But his knack for digging up information that makes those in power squirm—for example, a site plan for the proposed South Grand McDonald’s that Florida claimed did not exist—has been throwing a wrench into local machine politics.

NYC radio talk show host and syndicated columnist Kevin McCullough had the thrill of hearing his latest column, "Why it will be 'President Obama' in 2009," read by Rush Limbaugh today on the flagship program of conservative talk radio. You can read Kevin's reaction and find a link to audio of Rush's comments here. In his column, Kevin lists five political trends and shows how Obama fits each one. Note the last one in particular: "gullible evangelicals."

Thursday morning my car was too iced over to get the door open, so I took our garaged minivan to work. On Thursday night the 10-year-old and I had to dig out the driveway to get the minivan up the hill into the garage. We lit the gas fire, and I read Dickens' abridged version (the version he used for public readings) of A Christmas Carol.

This morning we had about nine inches of snow at our house on top of half an inch of ice. I stayed home and late morning we all got out into the snow. The wee one had his first encounter with the icy white stuff and was interested, but it did not induce his happy bounce. (The birds at the feeder did, however.) The two big kids went across the street to play with a neighbor kid. The six-year-old came home in tears -- she took a snowball in the face. A couple of good movies on TV -- The Polar Express and The Princess Bride -- were part of the day.

I remember a lot of ice storms in my childhood, and snowfalls of two to three inches. I don't recall the big dumps of snow -- six inches to a foot -- that happen at least a couple of times every winter nowadays.

I hope to catch up on some reading. Some of my fellow bloggers have been tracking some important stories in depth. Here are just a few:

At JunkYardBlog, SeeDubya has been covering the stories of the six imams who were removed from a US Airways flight after some worrisome behavior, the "realists" of the Iraq Study Group (actually defeatists who will lead us into disaster), the evidently fake Iraqi police captain who is a frequent source of information for the Associated Press -- heck, just start at the top and work your way down.

All right, one more, back a bit further -- the suicide bomber grandma gets immortalized with a parody of an Elmo and Patsy tune -- "Grandma detonated in a rage, dear"

Kevin McCullough has been all over bestselling author-pastor Rick Warren's decision to invite Sen. Barack Obama to address a global AIDS conference hosted by his Saddleback Church. McCullough detailed Obama's legislative record and religious views and cautioned Warren against giving Obama what amounts to an evangelical seal of approval. Today, Kevin reports that Obama said what he was expected to say:

In other words, Barack Obama views the people of the African continent as smart enough to change their behavior so as to apply microbicides and condoms before engaging in otherwise risky intercourse, yet he doesn't believe that the people of the African continent are smart enough to be presented with the fact that it is the risky sexual behavior that is endangering their lives. Nor does he trust them enough to be able to decide for themselves that they would rather LIVE than have sex.

And Kevin notes that while retailers generally saw post-Thanksgiving sales go up, Wal-Mart's numbers were down, perhaps due to the efforts of groups who are publicizing Wal-Mart's new ties to homosexual-rights groups.

Tom Gray has a couple of updates on the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery of the PCUSA's legal efforts to seize to the property of Kirk of the Hills, which left the PCUSA earlier this year. Part of the PCUSA's strategy when evangelical congregations leave is to find a few disgruntled members of the congregation, declare that they are the "true church," and sue to give them control of the church property. In a similar situation in North Carolina, the PCUSA presbytery found a member who had moved to the west coast but whose name was still on the rolls. When he declared his opposition to the congregation's departure from the denomination, the prodigal member became one of the chosen remnant entitled, in the PCUSA's view, to the church property.