Normally, I don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of policy.  Mostly, it just bores the shit out of me, but Senator Obama’s recent so-called flip-flops have been annoying me.  It was great to read his Times op-ed outlining in detail his plan for Iraq.  It made a lot of sense to me and I think it will go a long way in shutting some people up and pushing back at Republican/McCain attacks.

What is wrong with churches these days; specifically, what is wrong with Conservative, usually Baptist, churches and their embrace of guns and violence as part spreading the Good News?  Where in the Bible do they find the justification for this?  Sure, there’s a lot of smiting in the Old Testament, but no one in their right mind could say that is a reason to advocate violence; moreover, Jesus Christ certainly didn’t preach a ministry of violence.  That’s why I find it so frightening, no disgusting, that a church would use a semiautomatic rifle giveaway as a means to attract young people to their ministry.  Why in the world would they ever want to put such a dangerous weapon like that in the hands of young men or women?  WWJD?

Part of me gets what the The New Yorker was trying to do with their “satire” of Senator Obama and his wife, Michelle, but part of me also thinks it was a bad decision at this juncture in the election.  When right wingers are still portraying Senator Obama as a Muslim who’s secretly in league in terrorists and his wife as some American hating femi-nazi this was a bad choice on their part.  Sure, the right wingers will scream about the PC police, but at the same time a whole new slate of spam will go out using this cover to demean the Obamas and undermine the campaign.

I know, I know we live in a free society and sometimes you have to suck it up when some person or group says things that are insensitive or flat out wrong.  However, freedom comes with responsibility and I think it was irresponsible for The New Yorker to print this cover, no matter what their intentions might have been.