Ah, life in a Zen center. I spent much of the morning cleaning incense bowls. And yesterday I failed to note the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Five Forks, but Professor Krugman remembered.
A small family-owned pizzeria in Walkerton, Indiana, gained national attention when its owners announced they would not be delivering pizzas to gay weddings. This led to a blizzard of tweets and other commentary wondering what self-respecting gay couple would serve pizza at a wedding. See also Religious Freedom and Political Lies in Indiana and Want Some Cheese With That Whine, Conservatives?
For something a little meatier, see Thomas Edsall, Has American Business Lost Its Mojo? Since the financial disaster of 2008 more businesses have closed in the U.S. than have opened. Before 2008, there had consistently been far more start-ups than closures. The gap is closing but has not closed all the way. Edsall explores several reasons why this has been so.
Update: Here’s another one —  “Kansas continues to bleed revenueâ€: News keeps getting worse in conservatives’ anti-tax utopia
Two weeks after the utterly delusional Gov. Sam Brownback proclaimed in a radio interview that Kansas’ experiment in supply-side economics was “working,†the latest batch of numbers from the Sunflower State further put the lie to the utterly delusional governor’s assertion.
State figures released Tuesday showed that tax revenue came in $11.2 million below expectations in March, the latest in a string of lower-than-expected tax receipts.
Lawmakers must fill a $344 million revenue shortfall by June, and Brownback has moved to plug Kansas’ fiscal hole by slashing education funding, gutting the state’s pension fund, and cutting infrastructure. Additionally, the governor has proposed new sales taxes, which disproportionately impact the poor, in order to proceed full steam ahead with his income tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.
Brownback has moved to plug Kansas’ fiscal hole by slashing education funding, gutting the state’s pension fund, and cutting infrastructure.
A moment of silence, please, for my poor sister-in-law, who is a public school teacher in Kansas.
Well, at least she’s not a lesbian driving around Walkerton, Indiana, hungry for pizza. I’ll remind her of the bright side….
Ah, life in a Zen center.
Totally off topic, but I always pegged you as Vajrayana, not Mahayana. It amazes that you do what you do. I know a few zennies living where I live. Baker Roshi’s center is right down the road. So glad I don’t live in Indiana, and an almost infinite number of other locales.
Governor Bronwback,
You and your cabal of conservative crazies aren’t clapping hard enough.
Your conservative Tinkerbell economy won’t fly, if you don’t clap hard enough!!!!
Holy pepperoni, Batman!
Nothing says wedding feast like pizza.
“Crystal O’Connor, whose family owns Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Ind…” is the one who’ll be denying pizza’s to gay weddings.
In theatre, and in business, I met and know many gay men and women.
Many were, and still are, friends.
I’ve partied with them.
We’ve even gone out for pizza together.
What self-respecting gay person and their partner would:
a). Order pizza for their wedding?
b). Order pizza for their wedding from some backwater Indiana pizza joint, owned by a
someone with the last name, “O’Conner?”
If a pizza joint ain’t owned by a person with an Italian heritage, RUN!!!
That pizza will be about as good as a bagel made by the Priest’s staff and served after a Catholic Mass, or one served in a Halal bakery.
“Memories Pizza” – uh… why name it that?
When you order their pizza, and have memories of how crappy the last one was – and how expensive having your stomach-pumped, was?
Hey, I make-a nice-a pizza, my momma, she’s italiano !
OT:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/robert-schuller-crystal-cathedral-dies
One of the most bigoted Jesus-grifting douche-canoe’s has just died.
It’s not always true that ‘only the good die young’ – but, if you look at this intolerant assclown, Pat Robertson, and Kissinger, too many of the truly evil “people” live a long, long, time!
Imagine his surprise when Jesus joined St. Peter at “The Pearly Gates” just now, and Christ said, “He knows nothing of my work!” – and told Peter to show this assclown the express down- elevator, where Satan joyously greeted him! *
*Oh, sometimes even an Agnostic like me sometimes wishes that there was a Hell for intolerant people.
I am sorry. I know that there is an important discussion here. I just can’t read beyond the “pizza at a wedding” part. I know that dreams go to die in Indiana, but I would think that they would have a better spread at wedding than some thin crust and Schlitz.
More brilliance on Indiana from Huck-a-duck:
“It’s like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.”
I read that over on CNN, and my head kinda sploded a little bit. I needed to come straight over here, where the readers have actual brains, to rant.
First: the food one chooses to “serve” in an eating establishment is not the same as the customers one is NOT allowed to pick-and-choose to “serve” in that establishment. Woolworth’s lunch counter in Birmingham doesn’t have to serve organic nothin’ if it don’t wanna. It DOES have to serve African-Americans. Got it, Mike? A lot of people suffered mightily to make that latter thing happen.
(Everyone else: “Whoa! ‘TO SERVE MAN’!! It’s a play on words!!!” Huck-a-duck: “Huuuuhhh?”)
Second: WTF is it with Righties comparing gays (women, the disabled, the poor, people of other races) to inanimate objects in their arguments? So far I’ve heard conservatives make analogies that equate gay people with animals… and furniture… and now food. Arguments dead on arrival, actually.
(How unsurprising that Huck-a-duck would use food.)
Finally: NPR ran a piece this morning that quoted a religious-Rightie website which admitted the ultimate goal of “Religious Freedom” legislation is to provide legal cover for (their example) landlords to deny (their example) housing to people they disapprove of, such as (their example) unmarried couples and single mothers.
So that’s the real end game here: denying housing to single mothers. Jonah the Whale actually is correct when he states that Indiana’s law never specifically mentions gay people. It’s not meant to. It’s meant to open the door for much broader harm than “wedding cakes for Adam and Steve.” Not that that isn’t nasty enough.
Friends, thanks for listening. I feel much better now.
Joan,
GREAT RANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Btw – as I’m sure you all know, the same part of the Bible – the OLD Testament – that gave one sentence to gay sex, also warned followers that eating pork products like bacon, and shellfish is an abomination.
So, will our uber-Christian Reich-Wingers boycott Oscar Meyer and Red Lobster next?
I doubt it.
Hokey Smokes, Bullwinkle
We have the framework for an Iran nuclear deal!
Expect Reich-Wingers heads to explode like the nuclear weapons they don’t want Iran to develop.
How do stop our American conservative idiots from using their empty weaponized heads?
Yeah, Joan.. It’s not only the sodomites who they want to discriminate against. It’s also the fornicators, the winebibers, the idolaters, the blasphemers, the effeminate, and the unclean. Basically anyone of us who are of the “great unwashed”.
You know.. Liberals, Atheists, free thinkers, secular humanists, or any of us who aren’t going to inherit the Kingdom of God … it’s name your poison!
Swami, I’m a notorious PBS-watcher, so maybe my landlord is just itchin’ for a reason to boot me to the curb.
Gulag, sometimes history remembers even Nixon kindly, at least for that Red China dealie. I guess it will depend on who writes the history of 2015, how this deal (in the end, just a brave attempt?) will be remembered.
Missouri now has a “religious freedom” (to discriminate) law in the works. I have GOT to find a way out of here!! I am now SURE I have lived too long in this incarnation. This country is going to hell way too fast for my taste.