WWJD? Certainly nothing that comes from the mouth of Rick Perry

Rick Perry both scares and infuriates me. He is always shoveling some fresh idiocy into the waiting mouths of his insane, right-wing supporters, but this time it's just too much. The latest word from the good governor is that the current economic downturn and joblessness is God's way of getting us to get back to living lives based on biblical principals. This coming from a man whose latest state budget kicks millions of Texans off of Medicare programs, cost 300,000 jobs, slash aid to the needy and services essential to the middle class and lay off 100,000 teachers. When people are hurting, you do not pull the rug out from under them - that goes against just plain, common human decency. Put in his pinheaded little brain it makes sense:

"I think in America from time to time we have to go through some difficult times — and I think we’re going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of you know, you don’t spend all the money. You work hard for those six years and you put up that seventh year in the warehouse to take you through the hard times. And not spending all of our money. Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it’s slavery. We become slaves to government."

Some people will swallow anything if you wrap it in enough biblical imagery or wrap it up in a nice analogy based on a passage of scripture. This is, of course, ludicrous. Tithing is not ludicrous; I am a firm believer in tithing. It is the only thing in the entirety of the Bible where God actually dares us to put him to the test: Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be meat in mine house, And prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, If I will not open you the windows of heaven, And pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Malachi 3:10

What is ludicrous is the idea that when times are bad, you cut off aid to the poor and the needy. That is not biblical; that is not humane; that is not from God. There are dozens of verses in the Bible that show us that when people are in need, you are to reach out and help them from Deuteronomy to 1st Timothy. In fact the portion of the bible where Perry references bringing the tithes into the storehouse? It's "so that the Levites (who have no allotment of inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless, and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied." You don't fill the storehouse by taking that food out of their mouth. That's not what Jesus would do. That's what Ayn Rand would do; but that is for another time...