Obama Gives Back All Money from Lobbyists

In an effort to change the system, Obama does the unthinkable:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign has returned more than $50,000 in political contributions after discovering the donors were lobbyists.

Obama, who has pledged to change the ways of Washington, has repeatedly said he will not accept money from lobbyists or from special interest political action committees.

"I am concerned about the role of lobbyists and campaign donations generally in our politics," Obama told The Associated Press while campaigning in Florence, S.C. "That's part of the reason I don't take PAC money and I'm not taking federal lobbyist money in this campaign."

What Does Being a Christian Mean Today?

CNN's Roland Martin writes a striking commentary on the current state of Christian affairs:

Ask the nonreligious what being a Christian today means, and based on what we see and read, it's a good bet they will say that followers of Jesus Christ are preoccupied with those two points.

Poverty? Whatever. Homelessness? An afterthought. A widening gap between the have and have-nots? Immaterial. Divorce? The divorce rate of Christians mirrors the national average, so that's no big deal.

The point is that being a Christian should be about more than abortion and homosexuality, and it's high time that those not considered a part of the religious right expose the hypocrisy of our brothers and sisters in Christianity and take back the faith. And those on the left who believe they have a "get out of sin free" card must not be allowed to justify their actions.

Many people believe we are engaged in a holy war. And we are. But it's not with Muslims. The real war -- ­ the silent war ­-- is being engaged among Christians, and that's what we must set our sights on.

As we celebrate Holy Week, our focus is on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But aren't we also to recommit ourselves to live more like Jesus? Did Jesus spend his time focusing on all that he didn't like, or did Jesus raise the consciousness of the people to understand love, compassion and teach them about following the will of God?

As a layman studying to receive a master's in Christian communications, and the husband of an ordained minister, it's troubling to listen to "Christian radio" and hear the kind of hate spewing out of the mouths of my brothers and sisters in the faith.

In fact, I've grown tired of people who pimp God. That's right; we have a litany of individuals today who are holy, holy, holy, sing hallelujah, talk about how they love the Lord, but when it's time to walk the walk, somehow the spirit evaporates.

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Tommy Thompson Declares Candidacy

Tommy Thompson today made official his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination.

Who is Tommy Thompson? The Washington Post offers this:

Thompson billed himself as a "reliable conservative, one who puts principles into practice." The former four-term governor of Wisconsin and ex-secretary of Health and Human Services in President Bush's administration pledged to apply his experience to help "get America and our party back on track."

But so wait. Who is Tommy Thompson?

Well, up to about three weeks ago, he was the chair of the VeriChip Corporation--a company he took HUGE, HUGE sums of money from during his stint as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

So I guess the better question is what is VeriChip and what is Tommy Thompson's relation to it?

In a nutshell, VeriChip is a company that evolved from those RFID chips they implanted into dogs so their owners could find them when they got lost. They extended this to its logical conclusion--let's put them in people! Obviously. Their tagline is "RFID for people!" You know, as if there is nothing wrong with this. Alright.

So this will be literally the first and only presidential candidate in American history to have a piece of corporate spyware embedded in his body.

Anyway the point is that this man has a lot of invested interest in the implantable microchip. He has it in his own body. He has 150,000 shares in the company. As a rational human being (and seeing as though his platform is health care reform), do you wonder what will happen in regards to these stupid little chips? Does it take a considerably strong imagination to conceive of mandatory injections--for the sake of, oh, I don't know, health record information? Sounds innocuous, right?

But think about it. You have HIV. You have cancer. Your employer gets hold of one of these RFID readers and knows your entire medical history.

But what if we put in criminal records in the chip? Educational records? Political party? A lot of shit can be stored on an RFID chip.

Grumble, grumble, of course, but I find Thompson's private investments to be considerably troubling given the amount of political influence a president would hold over the American people. It's worth thinking about.