24-9 so I obviously have time to blog

I know it's the third quarter of the Vikings-Saints game - but I didn't catch the earlier part of the game either, so I'm not missing much - I thought it might be more fun to blog and have a Schell's Octoberfest. Sure, they always stall after the first quarter, but hopefully a 24 pt. lead will be enough to keep them alive through the end of the game. On a positive note, it could prove to be a windfall for me in CDFFL given my lazy failure to move Daunte off the QB spot.

• Garrison Keilor and the Porn Squad
• Lynching and Capital Punishment/Homicide
• Anti-war Rally/Pro-war Rally
• Dressing like a conservative woman

On to a few interesting posts I noticed - two of them on Norwegianity and in the same entry. First, and I think this one will really amuse Mean Mr. Mustard, a letter to the Strib that I'm sure is by the wife of a former co-worker who left for more Christian surroundings - I'm sure she's criticizing Garrison about that whole Praire Ho Companion t-shirt issue, right?

Still wondering why we have a new porn squad at the FBI? Letters to the editor like this typlify the audience Karl Rove is speaking to.

"Indecent or uptight? Like pornographers, Garrison Keillor tries to minimize the assaults on the moral fabric of our society, which has struggled to survive post-Kinsey, post-Hefner and post-Stern. Keillor’s Sept. 18 Op Ex column calls the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act a “high-water mark of official stupidity” and sarcastically writes, “I do not think you can ever do enough in behalf of our children.” We have failed our children miserably when it comes to protecting them from obscenity, profanity and indecency. You need only channel-surf on the radio or television for a minute or two to demonstrate this. Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment even though Keillor lamely laments that the money spent in litigation “is a lot to pay for freedom of speech.” Again, just like a pornographer, Keillor objects to moral standards and tries to fool the public into thinking laws to uphold a decent society are foolish. After decades of prurient broadcasting, citizens are not so easily deceived." Ann Redding, Minneapolis. [Star Tribune]

Secondly, dig down through the post to find the whole write up about this bit "Are today’s high murder rates the product of the culture of lynching?" which talks about how capital punishment and murder rates can be tied to historical trends in lynching. I just received the book about the history of lynching I ordered from Amazon - it'll be interesting to see how that information and the book seem to relate.

I just saw the pro-war rally on television (as much as I felt like watching), and I guess there could have been 400 attendees - I was noting to Pooteewheet that there seemed to be just over a hundred people visible in the audience shots. And yet approximately 100,000 turned out for the anti-war rally earlier? The pro-war rally sported signs like: "'Arrest the traitors'; it listed Sheehan's name first among several people who have spoken against the war." 100,000 to 400 and 46% of Americans with a strong disapproval rate about the course of the war...the Administration will never get a clue, but it's time other Americans did, and it's time that they realize 100,000 at an anti-war rally vs. 400 people at a pro-war rally is the difference between a popular consensus and a fringe movement of scared conservatives and concerned loved ones who can't choose to believe anything other than that their family members are risking their lives in the most noble of pursuits because to believe otherwise would be too painful.

Steve Gilliard has a very funny post up about conservative women and their dress code: Christian Femininity: Are We Resigned or Excited? where Elissa Kroeger worries that some people might perceive a tendency of certain Christian women to all dress in an identical way as similar to dressing "until they began to look more like Arab women than Christians. "

"What we have to ask ourselves is this: Are we dressing to glorify God, to please our husbands, and to make the world a more beautiful place; or are we trying to make a political statement with our clothing? Is there anything wrong with making a statement with our clothing?"