Well, look whose popped back up in the news. Yup it’s mister God Damn America himself. Sounding perhaps a bit bitter and maybe even a little religion-clinging Rev. Wright had this to say on Thursday:

On Thursday, Wright was addressing more than 700 people at a mass meeting that kicked off the 44th anniversary celebration of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march.

The event was held at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, site of the first mass meeting that led to the watershed voting rights movement in Selma.

During his address, Wright cautioned against putting too much faith in Obama.

“Barack’s name ain’t Jesus. Barack ain’t gonna improve your child’s reading score. There are things we’ve got to do on our own,” he said.

The odd thing is that his statement is actually relatively coherient. I suppose I am actually forced to agree with the nutbag for once… ewww that sends a cold shiver down my spine.

I guess that bus Obama threw him under must have knocked a very small amount of sense into him. or maybe it’s the taxes Obama wants to pub on his mansion that is changing Wright’s mind?

In a move that has the potential to be the most egregious story of this entire massive bailout madness the porn industry will ask for a 5 billion dollar bailout.

CNN reports:

Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

So, this request has created the potential for the government to not only prop up a dying industry and one of the most dispicable and disgusting industries to ever grace the face of our fair planet. If this passes, and anything seems possible in this climate, it will represent just how far we have fallen and just how hard conservatives will have to fight to gain back any ground.

But wait, is the porn industry dying at all? Does it even need free money to stay profitable? Well, according to the reject making the request for money, no:

Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger — DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow.

I guess it takes the audacity of a pornographer to ask for 5 billion in money you don’t even need. Lets hope that the dems don’t have the audacity to do what the pornographers suggest:

“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It’s time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.”

Bailouts for worthwhile and respectable industries that actually need them are irresponsible enough. We certainly don’t any for deplorable industries that just want free money to spread their filth.

In a first ever public display, Baghdad residents are celebrating Christmas:

From a distance, it looks like an apparition: a huge multi-colored hot-air balloon floating in the Baghdad sky, bearing a large poster of Jesus Christ. Below it, an Iraqi flag.

Welcome to the first-ever public Christmas celebration in Baghdad, held Saturday and sponsored by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Once thought to be infiltrated by death squads, the Ministry now is trying to root out sectarian violence

The story of an Iraqi priest crystallizes the importance of this celebration:

Father Saad Sirop Hanna, a Chaldean Christian priest, is here too. He was kidnapped by militants in 2006 and held for 28 days. He knows firsthand how difficult the lot of Christians in Iraq is but, he tells me, “We are just attesting that things are changing in Baghdad, slowly, but we hope that this change actually is real. We will wait for the future to tell us the truth about this.”

He just returned from Rome. “I came back to Iraq because I believe that we can live here,” he says. “I have so many [Muslim] friends and we are so happy they started to think about things from another point of view and we want to help them.”

During this time of celebration and joy I am heartened to see that our brothers and sisters in Christ living in Iraq can join in along with their neighbors. Let’s keep praying for peace and prosperity to continue to spread in Iraq and that celebrations like this will increasingly become the norm there.