Start a home business, get rich quick, win financial freedom! If you watch late-night TV, you've heard it all before. But what's the story behind these slick pitchmen and their dubious schemes? Enter The Salty Droid, your ornery metal guide to the corrupt underworld of scam-marketing scum. This charmingly acerbic bot (owned and operated by mild-mannered Chicago dog-lover Jason Michael Jones [inter-view, long talk + transcript]) is a valiant crusader against the vile con-men who bankrupt the elderly and the desperate with beautiful lies. Exposed so far: A shadowy "Syndicate" of frauduct-pushing personality cults polluting the media with blogspam and woo-woo talking points. Boiler rooms in the Utah desert where telemarketers farm credit from easy targets with cunning, probing scripts [PDF]. Powerful politicians bought wholesale. Believers left to die in fraudulent new-age vision quests. It's a soul-crushing beat, enough to make one feel like a regular catcher-bot in the digital rye. But somebody's got to do it -- preferably someone with plasma nunchucks and titanium skin.
posted by Rhaomi on Aug 31, 2011 - 47 comments

Marjoe Gortner, world's youngest preacher kicked off his religious career by performing a marriage at the age of four and a half. Although he eventually left the evangelism gig and became a hippie, lack of cash led him to take it up again part time as an adult. That is, until a crisis of conscience precipitated a documentary where he exposed the business of evangelical ministry. "Marjoe" won the 1972 Oscar for "Best Documentary" and has been recently re-released. An interview with Marjoe. You tubery inside.
posted by arcticwoman on Feb 18, 2007 - 19 comments

ATMs for Jesus. A Georgia pastor has created a business that brings churches further into the digital age- for a few grand and a $50 monthly fee, now your congregation can have the convenience of a debit kiosk inside your church. (via Pandagon)
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Sep 28, 2006 - 90 comments

Man Wants Church Donation Back
A man, in the midst of a serious bout of depression, gives away almost his entire life savings, $126,000, to a local church. He later realizes that this was not the smartest thing to do. He asks the church for the money back. The church, not surprisingly, says they've already spent it and so he can't have it back.
What's next?
Bust out the lawyers!
posted by fenriq on Jan 13, 2004 - 20 comments

God, politics and America's most notorious coin Teddy Roosevelt described the appearance of "In God We Trust" on U.S. money as "dangerously close to sacrilege." He ordered the motto kept off new $20 gold coins designed by famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Congress demanded the motto restored, making the earlier coins into collector's items. The motto didn't appear on paper money until 1957, just after "In God We Trust" replaced the secular "E Pluribus Unum" as the national motto and the words "So help me God" were added to the oaths of office for federal judges. Meanwhile, religious conservatives are using the motto to put "In God We Trust" posters in every classroom in America.
posted by mediareport on Jun 27, 2002 - 24 comments

Pay up or get out! ''Please be advised, that you are in default in the payment of tithes to the Holy Tabernacle Church of God in Christ Inc., for a period in excess of 90 days.'' ...If the money isn't paid... ''all privileges of membership in the Church will be immediately suspended....'' God loves you, but we won't if we don't get the cash, Now that's Religion!!!
posted by revbrian on Apr 17, 2001 - 21 comments