Yeah. What Wayne said. What if you don’t like how “activists” have changed the “original intent” of the Pledge? Why should Bellamy be treated with more disrespect than the Founding Fathers, especially as the Founders offered a provision for future generations to change the Constitution as circumstances merited—something that Bellamy didn’t?

Greg, how DARE you insult Bizarro World by comparing it to FoxNoise?

*But Kilmeade was bound and determined to delegitimize the Syria effort and the heck with whether or not he knew what he was talking about. Kilmeade played footage of someone in the Syrian opposition shooting a government fighter jet down and exclaiming, “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

Kilmeade said, “I have a problem helping those people out if they’re screaming that after a hit.”*

Anyone happen to know what Kilmeade’s opinion was of “Tebowing?” Tebow’s little performance was WIDELY understood to be an on-field prayer of thanks.

And I suppose Kilmeade isn’t aware that the Syrian Constitution (even if it is routinely ignored by the current President of Syria) requires that the President be a Muslim, so I imagine that Assad has exclaimed “Allahu akbar” more than once.

So, Aaron, let me ask you another question that might explain why this baker was wrong: Would you (and I mean, YOU personally) support her decision if she publicly announced an opposition to an INTERFAITH or INTERRACIAL marriage because of her “religious beliefs?” Churches are currently FREE to “discriminate” against marrying interfaith couples (the Catholic Church, for instance, has had a long-standing prohibition on its priests participating in an interfaith marriage ceremony—that’s one reason Southern Baptist, and multiple-married, Newt Gingrich had to convert to Catholicism when his wife wanted a Roman Catholic ceremony). And there have been several stories floating around over the last couple of years where interracial couples have been denied from marrying at the very churches they’d been attending as couples.

As for that “liberal tolerance,” ask yourself where the hell was this baker’s CHRISTIAN love? And, more importantly, why did that sinner fail to abide by one of Christ’s own commands—“Judge not lest ye be judged?” This hellbitch didn’t have any problem with taking money from her LGBT customers in the past and there’s really no telling what was done with those baked goods. And unless the woman was catering the wedding, I really doubt that she was going to be invited to the wedding that precipitated this fight so what effin’ business was it of hers to pull this “religious values” bullcrap?

If you conservatard homophobes had to deal with even 1 milligram of the kind of discrimination that LGBTs have to endure on a regular basis, you’d be suing at every turn. Oh, wait a minute. That’s why FoxNoise exists. To point out every minuscule and trivial time that right-wingers suffer an “injustice” that right-wingers don’t have a problem with when others suffer greater, repeated injustices.

Here’s a fun fact. When Francis Bellamy wrote the original Pledge, there was NO reference to God anywhere in sight—and Bellamy was, by all accounts, a good Baptist minister.

Here’s the original: “I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” And as Wiki notes on the Pledge’s history, Bellamy originally wanted to include the words “equality” and “fraternity” in the Pledge but knew the school superintendents who would ultimately approve its use in schools were opposed to equality of women and blacks.

Then, in 1923, the Pledge was modified to change “to my flag” to “to the flag of the United States” as a way of imposing a “loyalty” reminder to recent immigrants with “of America” being added in 1924. It was this form that was formally recognized by Congress in 1942 (you might want to recall America’s state of affairs that year for a bit of background why Congress so readily took up what we would now describe as “feel-good legislation”).

But here’s where things REALLY get good. When Bellamy introduced the Pledge, he felt that, as the Pledge was a formal vow of allegiance, it should be accompanied by a formal salute. And his choice of salutes was a very traditional salute, one that was readily associated with ancient Rome—extending the hand and arm, slightly elevated, forward from the chest, with the palm down. Unfortunately for this salute, it had another meaning by the time Congress got into the act. Congress felt this salute too closely resembled the Nazi salute so the more simplistic hand-over-the-heart form was instituted.

Oh. One other little-known fact about the Pledge. It was a part of a marketing scheme. The magazine in which the Pledge first appeared had been selling flags to public schools and, in 1892, the whole country was getting prepared to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s little commercial venture and the magazine’s owner (who wasn’t selling nearly enough flags by this point) decided to capitalize on the event and tying the celebrations with selling flags to public schools—so basically it was a marketing scheme to celebrate venture capitalism, despite the author’s strongly Christian Socialist tendencies. (By all accounts, Bellamy—as an older man—was far less “social” than he had been. He wrote a few tracts that would play well with FoxNoise’s current anti-immigration players.)

Hey, let’s not forget that the Church went so far as to have protestors ARRESTED (and, if memory serves, the protestors were INSIDE the Church at the time). Bill needs to remember that a Church is NOT “public property”—not even to practicing Catholics. It is WHOLLY private property and people who disrupt a mass or homily (or whatever the term for a service is) can expect to be arrested for disturbing the peace.

Of course, this is Bill. He’s more blather than action.

What the first e-mailer is forgetting is that “fifty years” that the “whites have done for blacks in this country” came after roughly three HUNDRED years of forced enslavement (by whites) and denial of basic rights (by whites). And the last “fifty years” have been somewhat undercut by the attitudes of many “whites” towards blacks in the past 4 years (it started with Obama’s election in 2008 and was amplified by the Trayvon Martin case).

Sorry. Not accepting his apology. How many other “mistakes” has he made over the years for which he’s NOT apologized? And, as Aria notes, there was NO reason for the “mistake” in the first place. And how long do you think it’s going to be before he ignores his own “tip of the day” and “forget” to “check out the facts before you make a definitive statement?”

I know it would never happen but the FoxNoise folkkks could’ve asked all these “snubbed” conservatives (especially their African-American tokens) what they did do to honor the event. It’d be interesting to learn how many of them did nothing at all.

“Coulter has no experience in foreign policy nor has she ever served in the military.”

Well, there are two reasons why Seannie-poo likes Coulter. Seannie has no foreign policy experience nor has he served in the military. When Seannie looks at Ann, he sees his other self, his separated conjoined twin.

Truman, I’m not really sure but I think, in most cases, confidentiality agreements only last when BOTH parties agree to part company. When a person’s been fired (and seemingly with little real cause), that’s enough reason to render the agreement null and void—especially on the part of the person who was fired.

You know. You’d think that “conservatives” would be more outraged at the apparent ease by which these phones are able to be obtained—especially as a National Review right-winger managed (somehow) to get three—rather than either the program or the recipients. Of course we all know that “conservatives” are only outraged when their programs are affected. I’d actually love to see a chart that detailed some facts about who all are getting the phones. You know, like age and income levels and, dare I say it, race. Of course, the Fokkks folks would take any numbers and then skew them—much the way they already do with food stamps, which are used by more whites than blacks or Latinos, when looking at sheer numbers; but to serve the Fokkks agenda, they’ll simply look at percentage of recipients vs percentage of total people to create their “outrage” (the old “30% of food stamp recipients are Black but only 15% of the whole country is Black” routine—while ignoring the old reality of “30% of the people in poverty are Black but only 15% of the whole country is Black”).

You’d think these jackalopes would ask the other side of the question: Where IS God when all these bad things are happening? I mean, the Book of Job was added as a “morality” tale to explain “why bad things happen to good people” but the problem with that is that, if you read the “unwritten” story, God is NOT there for you (unless He’s turned you into part of a bet with Satan).

These “Christians” need to realize that God is not there for you now, and He hasn’t been there for you for a long, LONG time. There’s a philosophy (that’s actually based on religious theory) in which God wants us to be GROWN-UPS. Call Him from time to time when you want to talk and catch up—maybe invite Him over for supper once or twice a month. IOW, treat Him like you would your own MORTAL parents—because, if we’re all His “children,” it only stands to reason that He expects us to grow up and move out of the house and live our OWN lives as fully-functioning adults and not expect Him to bail us out of every piddly little situation (“I’m tired of bailing you out for every DUI so you’re on your own; if they get you for manslaughter or rape, call Me and I’ll see what I can do”).

Obviously, the first letterwriter’s math skills are seriously lacking. I’m not sure where the lunk went to school, but if I say that I’m going to “double” someone else’s charitable donation (let’s say, the donation’s $100), that doesn’t mean I’m going to give the same amount, but I’m going to take that original donation—in this case, $100—and DOUBLE it, or give TWICE as much (IOW, $200). If I only give the same amount, that’s known as matching the donation. (I’m guessing this lunk doesn’t do much in the way of charitable donation, either.)

As to the whole “DoubleStuf” story, it turns out that Nabisco (which makes Oreos) is NOT actually “doubling” the “stuff” (ie, the cream center glop). Now, it’s true that “doubling” can be accomplished in several ways. First would be by measuring the thickness of the “stuff.” If a regular Oreo contains a “cream” layer that’s 5mm thick, a DoubleStuf should have a layer that’s 10mm thick (for the metrically-impaired, that’s about 13/64 of an inch and about 25/64 of an inch—note that the English measure isn’t actually double but that’s because the fractions are NOT precise; 13/64 of an inch is actually a bit larger than 5mm while 25/64 of an inch is just a touch smaller than 10mm but that’s one reason why scientists tend to use metric). Now assuming that the cookie parts are the same size (diametrically and thickness), the visual probably wouldn’t look to be twice as thick but, then again, that’s NOT what Oreo is selling—it’s selling the “stuff” as “double.” The second way would be by measuring volume of “stuff.” If a regular Oreo “stuffing” is 5mL or 5cc (just a little bit over 1 tsp—both essentially describe the same volume; the mL is typically liquid while cc tends to describe solids or viscous substances), then a DoubleStuf should have 10mL or 10cc (or just a bit over 2 tsp). Now, because the “cream” would spread out as it’s applied to the cookie, it is entirely possible that a 10mL volume of cream might not produce double the thickness in terms of height (this is easy to replicate on your own—take a cup of milk and put it in a 12" pie pan and take another cup of milk and put it a 16oz glass; you’ve got the same volume in both but because the pan has more surface area than the glass and the glass will typically have a greater height than the pan, you’d think—from just looking at the two containers—that each container has a different amount of milk).

But the story (found at Time.com) shows that Nabisco is only putting 1.86 times as much “cream” in the DoubleStuf’s as it does in the regular Oreos. (Now, in all fairness, when Nabisco first started making the cookies, they probably did use “double” the “stuff,” but, as we all know, companies are cutting back everywhere.)

I don’t really feel like checking but I just have to wonder if any important athletes were ever invited to the White House by Dubya and turned down the invitation because they “didn’t really agree with hardly anything that [the] administration has done?” Then, I have to wonder what FoxNoise’s reaction to such a snub of Dubya would’ve been (or was)?

Somehow I don’t think FoxNoise would’ve been as willing to invite such an athlete to be interviewed but would’ve, instead, spent several days questioning the person’s patriotism and pressing for any sponsors to be boycotted until they dropped the “traitor.”

So, just how does this a-hole deal with all the “bean counters and bureaucrats and government regulators” that he’s had to work with for however long he’s been a pediatrician? Or is this guy basically saying he doesn’t see patients who have insurance and his office works on a “cash-only” basis? Of course, that’s not always a great solution either since, if he’s charging what he considers is a “fair” rate, unless his patients (or, more accurately, their parents) are pretty well-off, they’re going to have to set up payment plans—which means his office is basically going to have its own set of “bean counters and bureaucrats” since someone’s going to have to make sure those bills get collected.

To the latest troll, please remind me of the Biblical passage (or Vatican doctrine) that permits priests to indulge in such luxurious trips. Even a “fishing” trip to Colorado is NOT cheap. And Father Sparky is NOT one of the Church’s higher echelon guys (who could conceivably get away with spending the big bucks without coming under any criticism from church higher-ups). No, Father Sparky is a fairly low-level priest (and, if he really needs to engage in some “fishing,” there’s more than plenty that he could enjoy MUCH closer to home).

The fact that he’s doing this while essentially being a gigolo (I have to wonder if he’s LICENSED to perform weddings in Colorado—you know, there is that little part about “by the power invested in me by the State of _________” in most ceremonies) just shows how completely out-of-touch FoxNoise’s favorite little priest is with regular people.

I think I know how our latest troll developed its moniker. FoxNoise blathers, and John swallow.