Lakewood church and Pastor Joel Osteen got ripped off on Sunday night for the approximately $600,000 in the church’s safe that was taken in on Sunday.  I dunno know if my math is correct, but that means they bring in about $32 million a year just on Sundays.  Tax free.

Bubba Jr calls Lakewood, which meets in Houston’s old basketball arena, “Six Flags Over Jesus.”

Osteen makes even more money with books, trinkets, and assorted whatnots.

Ain’t it time to tax churches?

Republicans.  Damn them.  They sit around at night and plot ways to make me crazy.  I know they do.  They say, “What totally insane thing can we do today to make the ladies at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon hair curl without a perm?”

It’s putting me out of business.

Remember me telling you about Texas Governor Wannabe Greg Abbott getting hit by a tree and collecting a $10 million tort settlement and then working hard to make sure nobody else in the history of Texas gets to get that much money for being hit by tree?

Well, he just got beat.  By a guy from Arkansas.

Josh Miller is in the Arkansas legislature and voted against the Medicaid expansion for his state.  Okay, so he’s a jerk.  But, it gets worse than jerk.  He moves straight to sumbitch in 60 seconds or less.

More than a decade ago, Arkansas Rep. Josh Miller (R) was in a catastrophic car accident that broke his neck and left him paralyzed. Medicare and Medicaid paid the $1 million bill for his hospitalization and rehabilitation. But this week, as the Arkansas legislature has debated continuing its privatized Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, Miller has remained steadfast in his opposition.

And why would he be opposed to something he’s still using?  I mean, why should everybody get what he gets?

The difference, he said, is that some of the 100,000 people who have gained coverage through Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion don’t work hard enough or just want access to the program so they can purchase and abuse prescription drugs.

Oh really?  Well, trot your hiney over to Wikipedia and take note.

Miller is disabled and uses a wheelchair because of an accident in young adulthood which damaged his spinal cord and involved the use of alcohol. Neither Miller nor the other occupant could recall who was the driver. Miller was uninsured at the time of the accident; Medicaid paid for the majority of the $1 million in hospitalization and rehabilitation costs.

You were so drunk that you didn’t know if you were driving?  You weren’t abusing drugs, though, right?  And you didn’t take any prescription painkillers after the accident, right?  And you’re working on paying the $1,000,000 back to the taxpayers who took care of you, right?

They make me crazy.  I think it’s on purpose.

Thanks to Brian for the heads up.

Yesterday was to have been the trial of United Methodist Church minister Dr. Thomas Ogletree for breaking church law when he performed the marriage of his son to another man.

The Rev Dr. Ogletree might be considered by some to have the proper qualifications to perform a marriage ceremony.

Before retiring, Dr. Ogletree, 79, was dean of both the Yale Divinity School and Drew Theological Seminary. He is currently professor Emeritus of Theological Ethics at Yale. From 1978-81 he was director of graduate studies in religion at Vanderbilt University. He’s the author of such books as The Use of the Bible in Christian Ethics and Hospitality to the Stranger: Dimensions of Moral Understanding. Since 1980, he has served on the editorial board of The Journal of Religious Ethics.

Phew!  Life well lived, dude.

So, he was prepared to go to trial when all of a sudden, it was over.

Yesterday morning, all charges were dropped by the bishop, and ….

And he didn’t just drop them, either. He turned them into a huge brass bell he used to ring what will likely be remembered as the death knell of the anti-gay policy of the largest mainline Christian denomination in the world.

From this day forward United Methodist Church will not discipline their ministers for performing gay marriages.

Whoa.  While you gotta admit that it took a cattle prod in their overalls to do it, they finally did it.

And then, because yesterday must have been Gay Day, the Pope – you heard me right – the damn Pope, is saying that maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on gay people in love.

Pope Francis has suggested that the Vatican could support gay civil unions in the future, according to one of the church’s most senior cardinals.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan said that the pontiff wants the Catholic Church to study same-sex unions, ‘rather than condemn them’.

So, all we have holding out is Texas, two ole boys over at the Texaco station who have their mouths filled with chewing tobacco, ignorant old people, and the Tea Party.  Okay, so the last two are the same.  That just leaves three.

Thanks to Johnnie for the heads up.

And to think we won’t have Steve Stockman to kick around any more.

There’s more pictures here.  I only give you this link because Stockman keeps his clothes on.  At least in the pictures.

Young Republicans party hardy.

Thanks to Carl for the heads up.

Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Governor, is once more not happy with President Obama.

Although he has no suggestions as to how to handle the situation in Ukraine, he feels sure that the whole thing would just go away if people would just stop saying that President Obama is smart.

Yep, that right there is the solution.

This president is often praised for his intelligence. The events in Crimea should spur us to revisit that notion, or at least to mark the difference between wisdom and intelligence.

But, Jindal has that wisdom.  He says …

… wise presidents have always understood that American weakness leads to violence, American strength to stability.

Oh yeah, that’s why we had stability under Bush and violence under Clinton.  No, wait.  The people at the WMDBS, Inc. corporate headquarters are telling me that I have that backwards.

I’m wondering about Jindal’s thought processes here, too.  He whimpers that, “our president is reducing the size of our military and boasting about the record number of Americans on food stamps.”  Oh, so Bobby wants to be North Korea.  Well hell, Bobby, if that’s your solution, see if Dennis Rodman will help you out.

Have I told y’all today that I hate these people?  “Be strong” is not a solution.  “Bring it on!” didn’t work, Bobby.  They brought it and our economy tanked and our soldiers died.

Cripes, offer a solution or sit down and shuddup.

Okay, so perfectly good frisky time got a little carried away in Tennessee.

Tammy Lynn Harris, 41, and her boyfriend, Jeff David Massey, 24, were in bed at 11:45 on Sunday morning when the police were dispatched.

Detective Joshua Fisher said Harris and Massey were lying in bed and Massey was about to clean the gun when it discharged, striking him in the left hand. The bullet then struck Harris in her right leg, Fisher said.

They say it’s accidental.  I’d say that Tammy Lynn has real bad taste in boyfriends.