Dude, its time for Sunday ruminations! Inhale deeply of the finest weed the web has to offer this week.

• From the “Things I Thought I Knew How to Do” Department: They say an expert is one who knows more and more about less and less, until he or she knows everything about nothing. So here’s a site or two written by such experts on the rather arcane topic of tying your shoes. Must say, I learned a thing or two — which speaks poorly of my basic life skills.

• From the Cultural Cuisinart: Michael Novak over at First Things has been doing a fascinating series on the relationship between capitalism and Christianity. In Part III, he addresses some of the hoary objections to U.S economic strength and its relationship to the rest of the world. I like my objections finely minced, thank you, and Michael’s got his food processor smokin’ here. (Part I here, and Part 2 here). Good stuff.

• From the “And I Thought My Dog Was Bad” Department: “BAD DOG, Charlie!!” Charlie may be smarter than the tow truck driver, though…

• From the Obama Watch Department: Obama’s got religion, all right — only question is, which one? In an effort to unify all us divisive Christians (no small feat, this), he starts out by — slamming Christians:

“Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in remarks prepared for delivery before the national meeting of the United Church of Christ.

“Part of it’s because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us,” the Illinois senator said.

Ya’ know, I think he’s on to something here — there is a vast divide between those who adhere to orthodox and historical Christian faith and teaching, and those who follow racial demagogues, wrapping the wolf of socialism in the sheep’s clothing of Christian-talk.

And ya’ know, that’s a good thing…

That’s all for now. God bless, and have a great week.