Vegas Cohort

Vegas Cohort (Emergent)

1. Sen. Ensign denies benefits to home state with highest unemployment, chuckles.
   
   As the vote to extend unemployment benefits comes up this week, Nevada Senator John Ensign notified his constituents that even though his state leads in unemployment, home foreclosures, and bankruptcies, he will not be supporting the bill to ensure the continued income of brow-beaten Nevadans.
   
   
   "I recognize", said the Senator in a press conference Monday, "that folks in Nevada have been crushed under the weight of a recession they didn't cause. Homelessness, dire poverty, and the worst education system in America have all conspired to leave the people of my state hopeless and broken. Our fragile economy is on the brink of disaster, and many families are living on credit and payday loans just to stay in their homes and keep food on their tables. The people of Nevada are working class folks, the sort that have paid into the unemployment system for years and now when they need help the most, I am pleased to announce that I will be voting against the extension of that support."
   
   
   A bewildered press corp asked the Senator to clarify, noting that it seemed preposterous to deny Nevadans the benefits they need to survive in the wake of such crippling circumstances. Mr. Ensign acknowledged the confusion and was happy to explain-
   
   
   "A few years back I sold my soul to Satan and consequently owe my allegiance to the Dark Lord and whatever request he may make of me. As it turns out it serves his purposes to stabilize the national debt at the expense of American families, especially Nevadans who will soon be homeless in the 110 degree inferno that surrounds their under-valued houses outlying the vacuous, job absent city centers." Mr. Ensign added with a wink and a nod, "I'm just remembering who sent me to Washington to begin with."
   
   
   Administration officials in Hell were unavailable for comment, but Mr. Satan's Twitter account said after the announcement, "H8 2 C Sen. Ensign blaming me 4 block on benefits vote, I do not assoC8 w him, and he has no soul to my knwldge. #JohnEnsighIsADouche"
   
2. Space Aliens make contact, apologize for spill of dark-matter that will soon destroy Earth
   
   

   NASA astronauts confirmed Tuesday what earn bound scientists have been saying for decades, we are not alone. Aliens made contact with the international space station early this week and then spoke directly to the assembly of world leaders in the U.N.

   Utilizing advanced translation software, the glowing tentacled humanoids delivered a memorable first address: “Greetings people of Earth. You have not been aware of existence, but we have known of you for generations and considered your primitive lives our responsibility. Unfortunately, one of our energy producing inter-stellar drilling ships has pierced a whole in the space-time continuum which is now unstoppably leaking crude dark-matter, our civilization's major energy source, into your part of the galaxy. Your entire habitat will soon be destroyed, and all life on Earth along with it.”

   Amidst screams of horror from world leaders the aliens were kind enough to explain that it was in their economic self interest to mine for the destructive energy source, and while they were taking the responsibility of the clean up very seriously, their best efforts would not be enough to prevent the forth-coming Armageddon.

   “But we are deeply sorry for this quite preventable tragedy” added the alien's spokeperson, “we just needed to get that dark-matter to refinement mills so we can power our society. You wouldn't expect us to stall our progress, even for your sake. We have to mill, baby, mill.”

   
3. Mother of Exiles
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
   With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
   Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
   A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
   Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
   Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
   Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
   The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
   "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
   ' With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
   Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
   The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
   Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
   I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
   
   So reads the full inscription on our Statue of Liberty, which has waved its welcoming torch to countless immigrants for over 100 years. She declares that America is unique among the world's nations. That we eagerly greet those who are unwanted, homeless, and downtrodden. That we refuse the mentality of an ancient homeland where we belong and others do not. She declares that we, unlike other countries, see the value in a human being.
   
   Recently Arizona's state legislature passed an immigration bill that rejects this noble past. Through the eyes of this new law police officers are required to pursue illegal immigrants as never before. To hunt them down at any cost, even racial discrimination and illegal profiling, whatever it takes to rid the state of their presence. Casting out the tired, poor, huddled masses of wretched refuse into the cold uncaring world, Arizona's new law shines a light on a national truth that has gone unaddressed for far too long: that we are no longer the Mother of Exiles as our statue commemorates. Her torch takes on new meaning, a warning. We should tear down our historic inscription and replace it instead with another: "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here".
   
   Hell as it turns out is not so distant a destination in these times. In the Christian New Testament Jesus warns the world that failing to care for those in need was the same as failing to care for him personally, something that came with the most dire of costs. "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. For I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." In Jesus' teaching, a follower was duty bound to serve whoever was the "least" in a society, failing to do so was a damning gesture.
   
   While Hell may seem a heavy cost for the Christian who fails to "welcome the stranger", even the Jewish Old Testament warns the faithful of the folly when Moses' God tells the Hebrews "You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt." It seems that welcoming a foreigner into one's midst and giving them a home is a consistent thread in the Holy Writ that claims to shape most American's morality. Yet these lessons are abandoned when we are presented the opportunity to put them into action.
   
   Pragmatically, logically, and politically it makes sense to push immigration reform. But Americans embrace another paradigm that is seldom focused on: virtue. It is virtuous to have compassion on the strangers in our land. It is noble to welcome the homeless and make room for our neighbors to the South. And while most American's cannot internalize the calculus that proves immigration reform's value, they can empathize with the morality of never abandoning the lonely, or the desperate.
   
   This is why our iconic Statue of Liberty is emblazoned with poetry, sculpted in symbolism, and stands proudly as an emotional reminder to each generation. It does not summon our enlightened senses, but rather our hearts. We imagine how such an edifice must have greeted the oppressed, the hopeless, the bankrupt, as they drifted to this new land, desperate for a better life. Their tears streaming down dirty faces, as they read the words, and as they thanked God Almighty for such a place; a land where the poor and the broken are made whole, where the unskilled and ignorant and empowered, where the least of these is valued as if they were the very Son of God.
   
   Drawing on these reasons of the heart, and the conscious of our predominant faiths, we must call ourselves to return to this past. To welcome the sun worn face of the immigrant, to embrace his children into our schools and their illnesses in our hospitals, to invest in him dignity, wholeness, and value. Only then can we rightly claim the meaning of the Statue that was built to honor us, only then can we proclaim that we are a nation unlike any other, only then can we stare off into the distant twilight, a torch held high beckoning the hopeless to find strength, searching for those we might heal, that we might welcome, that we might restore. Only then can we become as we began, the Mother of Exiles.
   
4. Church and Life Cycle
   
   What if when a church planter laid out a vision for birthing a new church they also included an expiration date? So not only would the planter be planning for when the church is born, but then also when the church should die; 10, 15, 20 years in the future.
   
   What if the planter anticipated the irrelevance of the church in the future, and so set a date to declare the church dead and bury it? How would that impact the way people in the church view the mission? Would it discourage them, because they know the day is coming when the church is no more? Or, would it embolden them to know exactly how long they have to accomplish the church's goals? Would it cause them to stay and be apart of the story to see how it ends?
   
   Perhaps it would give the people a unique opportunity to celebrate the different stages in life that church might go through. Its infancy, its childhood, its adolescence, its adulthood, its senior years, and finally its death and burial. Imagine a congregation coming together to remember the journey of their fellowship, tears and nostalgia flooding the aisles as the founding pastor eulogizes the church that has accomplished so much. People who have been there since the beginning side by side with those who joined in only the last year. Appreciating together the shared experience of having been apart of a story, as the last page turns and "the end" is slowly and deliberately placed at the bottom.
   
   How would it make you feel to know your church has an end date? What about that would be good, what would be bad?
   
5. “Sarah Palin hired by Fox News in effort to regain its neutral position in politics”
   
   In a stunning announcement, Fox News and Sarah Palin have come to an agreement that puts Palin on staff at Fox as a conservative commentator to their usually liberal news shows. “We needed something” admits Fox owner Rupurt Murdoch, “to counter-balance the tendency of our channel to be left leaning and progressive. Sarah Palin is the cure.”
   
   The move is applauded by journalists the world round as being reactionary to the now obvious liberal bias observed at Fox. “We just need to keep things balanced”, said popular news anchor Glen Beck in a statement about the decision, “I expect she and I will knock heads often, but because I value journalistic integrity and despise propaganda, I have to affirm her place here.”
   
   Bill O’Reilly agrees. “If Fox News is a boat in the ocean it is tilted toward the port-side. We have needed a serious weight to counterbalance that tilt and bring us back to center. Had we been any less left her presence would have capsized us on the right, we’d have gone right off the deep end if you know what I mean. Luckily we lean left.”
   
   Few are critical of the deal since most acknowledge that recruiting Palin was counter-intuitive for both she and the network, but some have voiced concern. Alan Colmes, one of the many outward liberals on Fox, observed that Palin “is a failed Vice Presidential candidate, a failed Governor, a failed blogger, an inauthentic author, and an insane fringer who’s views are universally known to be brain poison and word vomit. And Fox is a conspiracy toting fraudulent news organization that only poses as legitimate. ” Pausing to breathe and wipe the sweat from his upper lip Colmes added, “This is fucking crazy.”
   
   In the wake of his comment Fox has announced that Alan Colmes will no longer be employed at its network, replacing him with noted journalist and obsessively balanced thinker Dick Cheney.