An employee of a Burger King in Xenia, Ohio, decided to take a bath in the kitchen sink at Burger King while other employees laughed and the manager let it go on. He wasn’t completely naked as he had on a pair of Speedos.

Needless to say, all employees involved, including the manager were terminated.

Think I’ll pass on the Whopper for awhile.

That’s what usually happens when all you care about is the bottom line. I could be wrong but what else could explain it. Companies just don’t like to be regulated. I wonder who funds the political careers of people in Washington? Better yet, I wonder who they go to work for after leaving political office?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission could soon shrink to the point where it can’t effectively protect the public, veteran Commissioner Thomas Moore says.
Many employees at the agency responsible for overseeing the safety of many thousands of consumer products are looking for other jobs because “they have no confidence the agency will continue to exist — or will exist in any meaningful form,” Moore said in a statement Thursday.

“The commission can either continue to decline in staff, resources and stature to the point where it is no longer an effective force in consumer protection,” said Moore, “or with the support of Congress it can regain the important place in American society it was originally designed to have.”

The number of full-time staffers has shrunk to about 400, less than half the size of the staff in 1980. Complaints from business leadership about the agency created in the early 1970s resulted in the staff being sharply cut during the Reagan administration, and staff size has continued to shrink. The Consumer Product Safety Act was amended to prohibit mandatory safety standards if a voluntary standard would eliminate or significantly reduce the risk of injury.

The safety commission usually negotiates voluntary recalls of unsafe products because a voluntary agreement is considered a faster way to get a product off the shelves. If a company refuses to recall a product, the agency’s commission has the authority to order a recall.

But such actions can be lengthy as they work their way through the legal system. The commission can also assess civil penalties on companies for failure to report possible problems and can set product standards.

Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to increase funding and staffing for the agency as well as enhance its powers.

Moore, who was appointed to the commission by President Clinton more than 12 years ago, said he was pleased that Acting Commission Chairwoman Nancy Nord, an appointee of President Bush, is also in favor of modernizing the laws relating to the commission.

“This should send a really positive message to the public and to the safety community that this is a commission that can work together,” said commission spokeswoman Julie Vallese.

Story

As I was growing up I remember reading Bible stories from the Bible and discussing them in Sunday School or Bible School, but I don’t ever remember reading of gore in there at a young age.

Yes, I read about the parting of the Red Sea and the Pharaoh and his army all being drowned, along with their horses. Yes I read about the walls of Jericho tumbling down but I never thought of it at the time as having a big death toll.

I read of Noah’s Ark and knew all but 8 people and pairs of animals perished. I read about Isaac taking his only son Jacob up to the mountains, gathering wood and getting ready to slay him on God’s command until the angel of God stopped him.

I read all those stories and more. I read of the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of the Only God. It did not make me happy, but no one went into deep detail as to what happened and it was only until I saw Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” that I fully realized the suffering our Lord did for me and for you.

I was never traumatized by it and I’ll wager I was just as normal a kid as any other and my teaching was just as normal as the teachings of today are.

That’s why this story is so disturbing to me.

The Good Book isn’t clean enough for Hong Kong.

At least 838 complaints had been registered Wednesday with the city’s Television and Entertainment Licensing authority after an anonymous Web site, truthbible.net, said the Bible “made one tremble” with its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest, the news agency reports.

[...]
If the Bible is labeled indecent in Hong Kong, people over the age of 18 will be the only ones able to purchase the book, and it would have to be sold with a warning label wrapped around the book.

The Web site truthbible.net already includes an English-language warning: “Legal Disclaimer Warning: This Web site contains Bible material which may offend and may not be distributed, circulated, sold, hired, given, lent, shown, played or projected to a person under the age of 18 years.”

[...]
“If there is rape mentioned in the Bible, it doesn’t mean it encourages those activities,” Reuters quoted Reverend Wu Chi-wai, Protestant minister, as saying. “It’s just common sense … I don’t think that criticism will have strong support from the public.”

Those things are in the Bible for a purpose, and that purpose is to show us how not to live in some instances and how to live in others.