Jim, over at Thinking Right, posted this article by Mark Morford from SFGate.com berating a family who consists of 16 children.

Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that’s right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Dugger is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?

And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband — whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he’s hankerin’ to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in socio-political pain when you say that — isn’t more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by “touching” and races right past “disturbing” and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into “Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?”

But that would be, you know, mean. Mean and callous to suggest that this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarre Dugger family of 18 spotless white hyper-religious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child as they suck the skin from each other’s Scientological faces and even worse than that huge 13-foot python which ate that six-foot alligator and then exploded.

It’s wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that’s making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it

Is it wrong to notice how all the Dugger kids’ names start with the letter J (Jeremiah and Josiah and Jedediah and Jesus, someone please stop them), and that if you study the above photo (or the even more disturbing family Web site) too closely you will become rashy and depressed and you will crave large quantities of alcohol and loud aggressive music to deflect the creeping feeling that this planet is devolving faster than you can suck the contents from a large bong? But I’m not judging.

Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyper-breeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words — assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right — where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?

Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Dugger’s squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain’t lookin’ good.

Perhaps this the scariest aspect of our squishy birthin’ tale: Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation. Is that an oversimplification?

Why does this sort of thoughtfulness seem so far from the norm? Why is having a stadiumful of offspring still seen as some sort of happy joyous thing?

You already know why. It is the Biggest Reason of All. Children are, after all, God’s little gifts. Kids are little blessings from the Lord, the Almighty’s own screaming spitballs of joy. Hell, Jim Bob said so himself, when asked if the couple would soon be going for a 17th rug rat: “We both just love children and we consider each a blessing from the Lord. I have asked Michelle if she wants more and she said yes, if the Lord wants to give us some she will accept them.” This is what he actually said. And God did not strike him dead on the spot.

Ok, now that you have gotten through that, I’ll respond.

You mention several times in the article, “who are you to judge”, yet more times than I can count, you judge these people based on your outside perception of their belief system. The DEFINITION of a hypocrite.

I’ll start out my criticism of this idiot’s article by mentioning that this family is better off financially than most of American’s with one or two kids. They are debt free, are free of any public assistance, and every child in the family is home schooled.

In typical left wing intellectual style, Mark puts down anyone he deems to be of lesser intelligence. Notice the use of “more than slightly creepy”, and “her equally troubling husband” to describe these people. I may not think anyone needs 16 children, but I have always thought, never have more children than you can support… obviously these people can support 16 kids, so why the heck do you care how many they have.

“whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he’s hankerin’ to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in socio-political pain when you say that” Of COURSE his name is Jim Bob, Mark! Why wouldn’t it be, he’s just another one of us droolin’ dumber than deer crap, inbreeding, shot-gun totin’ redneck freaks who doesn’t deserve the right to vote. Here’s a tip for you, if you know NOTHING of what you’re talking about, shut up. I’ve flown on planes with people that, upon discovering I am from Texas, ask me if I ride a horse to school, or live on a ranch. AND THEY’RE SERIOUS! The world is not how Hollywood portrays it, pull your butt away from the idiot box for 10 minutes and educate yourself.

“It’s wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that’s making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it”

So we see that the REAL problem that Mark has with these people, isn’t that they happen to be fortunate enough to be able to bear this many children and remain healthy and debt free, it’s because they are CHRISTIANS. These children will not have gone through the public school system, are not on ANY public assistance and somehow these people are a threat. I’ll tell you why they’re a threat, because more than likely they vote Republican, and Mark despises them for this.

“Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Dugger’s squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain’t lookin’ good.”

Why has our country gotten to the point where we have to cancel each other out? I used to hear that we tried our best to elect Politician A, or Politician B… now we resort to “Oh, so you’re voting for HIM, I guess I’ll just have to go cancel out your vote!” Just because someone is happy having such a large family, doesn’t mean that we have to find a way to counter-balance their influence on society just because they may believe something different than you do!

“Why is having a stadiumful of offspring still seen as some sort of happy joyous thing?

You already know why. It is the Biggest Reason of All. Children are, after all, God’s little gifts. Kids are little blessings from the Lord, the Almighty’s own screaming spitballs of joy. Hell, Jim Bob said so himself, when asked if the couple would soon be going for a 17th rug rat: “We both just love children and we consider each a blessing from the Lord. I have asked Michelle if she wants more and she said yes, if the Lord wants to give us some she will accept them.” This is what he actually said. And God did not strike him dead on the spot.”

God forbid someone LOVE children and ACTUALLY be able to care for them! To think that any other human being would be thought of the way Mark does of these people, is down right nauseating. Who does this man think he is, the last time I checked, it was considered a no-no in journalism, to write such a scathing piece about a private citizen. Of course, judging by the local of the paper he is writing for, he probably got a big fat raise.

Not too bad, anyone wanna place a bid? I’ll gladly sell it for that

I just received this email, marked in the subject line in bold was “**URGENT** Radical Groups Are Trying To Destroy Marriage“.

Now without reading the content of the email, I already know this is going to be loaded with assumptions and more mindless “Gays are EVIL” drivel, but I’ll read on.

It’s just common sense that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Is it? I always thought that marriage is a ceremonial bond between two individuals, who vow to be together until they part this world. To me, this means that no matter WHO you love, you should be able to at LEAST seal that bond legally to obtain the legal rights and privileges of a married couple.

We need to send a positive message to our kids about marriage, family and their future.

Hmmm, by sending them a bigoted, anti-gay message, we will send our kids such a cuddly warm message about our world. I teach my kids that while people may behave or look differently than they do, that does not mean they are worse or less of a person than they are. That’s a positive message.

Americans are free to live the way they choose, but no one has the right to redefine marriage for the rest of society.

Hypocrisy in a single sentence! So we’re free to live life as we choose… as long as we stay within the confines of YOUR message… but I thought you said no one had the right to… oh NOW I get it!

Powerful and well-financed groups are trying to “redefine” marriage based on their own individual lifestyle choices. And the consequences of radical activists redefining marriage will have truly devastating effects on American society and our children.

I’m sorry, being married myself, if Jim and Bob down the street want to legally join together as a couple, I do NOT see how in the world, this could have a devastating effect on my future, or my kids future. As long as they don’t come over to copulate in my living room, I’m perfectly fine with whatever they want to do with their own lives.

As an example, once the definition of marriage is changed to something other than a man and a woman, your children’s school will be required by law to make this teaching part of their standard curriculum.

Never, in the many years I was in school, including college was I EVER taught about marriage, this was left up to my parents. I do not feel that I need a teacher telling my children what or who they need to marry, and how they need to go about it. There are certain aspect of a child’s development that I feel are best left to a responsible parent to teach, and morals and religious concepts are good examples. I do not want the public school system pressuring my child into marriage, and I sure as heck don’t want them putting pressure on them to look down on anyone because of the way they live their life.

Any way you slice it, these ‘defenders of decency’ are doing MORE harm to society than these ‘evil’ gay people are. Keep your nose and your law books out of our bedrooms, and our family values.

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What in the world is Flock…

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I encourage everyone interested in browsing the internet the way it was MEANT to be, to try out Flock!

I’m sure by now; everyone has seen and heard about these riots going on in Toledo. Regardless of who started what, these events bring to light the truth about the American public; we don’t understand the basics behind our rights and freedoms.

The situation that they are using as an excuse for the riots is that a group of White Supremacists decided to march down the streets in a Toledo neighborhood. A large group of gang members and militant individuals, disagreed with this march (which I agree, is just ASKING for trouble), so they started to attack. The only problem is that they weren’t attacking the mass of bigots walking in their street; they were attacking busses, businesses, cops, ambulances… virtually anything that moved.

The local and national press is all over this story, but for the wrong reason.
They were very quick to interview the citizens of Toledo and even some of the people participating in the riots. Every single person that has been interviewed is upset at local law enforcement and local government for allowing these people to march. Ladies and Gentlemen, and anyone who went to a public school, welcome to the First Amendment of our constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

From every account I have come across, everyone agrees that the march itself was non-violent and, aside from the message, peaceful. So there was no reason for the police to break up the march. Had these knuckle draggers been throwing rocks, burning buildings and attacking cars etc. then they would have stepped out of the protection of the first amendment, and would have been open for arrest.

People in this Toledo neighborhood are furious at the police for not arresting the demonstrators, and for arresting the opposition. The demonstrators were not arrested because they are protected by the constitution, the opposing rioters were arrested because they could not resist the message of these people, and decided the best way to deal with it, was to go primal on their surroundings.

Now, ironically enough, the exact same thing in terms of a racist march, was happening in the forms of the “millions more march”, otherwise known as “black power hate fest”. The Race Pimps were out in force to blame every negative bit of news recently, on the ‘white man’ and his evil racist ways. They were gloating under the cloak of the first amendment, as they should, because it is what allows this sort of activity to take place in our country.

What gets me worked up is that you will hear nothing but praise for the Millions More March and its creators and participants, yet there is nothing but condemnation for the white supremacists who were engaging in the SAME activity. Neither was more ‘right’ than the other, in fact both activities were rooted in ignorance and hatred. So why one gets a pass and the other gets condemned is beyond me. I guess it goes to show, if you’re white, you should hide your opinions, because we’re not allowed to raise our voice in this country unless we’re a minorty of some sort.