Let's look at the news

As my two regular readers might have noticed (and I'm only married to one of them, to the best of my knowledge), I usually prefer longer blog entries with multiple links, occasionally comparing or contrasting news items that I consider related in some way.

It's simple. By concentrating on this "long-form blogging" rather than the brief blurbs most bloggers go for, I can feel better about my sheer laziness in only posting an entry roughly once per week.

Not this week though. I found two unrelated stories this weekend that I'm going to heckle. That's just the way it is, sometimes. First of all, the reason I have no plans to move to Utah any time soon.

You have to admire any story that starts with:

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants.

I mean, come on. For an opening line, you just can't beat that.

The group was unable to take official action because not enough members stuck around long enough to vote, despite the pleadings of party officials.

You kind of wonder if "embarrassment" had anything to do with that...

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people" and "are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won't do."

And he's right. They'll pick lettuce for pennies per day, they'll collect your garbage, and generally do jobs that nobody else wants for less money than any American would accept. Anybody who tries to claim that they're "stealing jobs from Americans" needs to show me a list of Americans who would accept those jobs, at those wages.

"Illegal aliens are in control of the media..."

Excuse me? Not even Univision... ah, never mind.

...and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said.

(Excuse me while I misquote an American doing a bad Spanish accent.) You know, you keep saying that word "fact." I do not think that word means what you think that word means.

While I realize that Larsen probably doesn't consider "Roman Catholic" (the religion of most Mexican immigrants) to be equal to "Christian" (they are, after all, godless idolators under the sway of the Antichrist in the Vatican), it does give a somewhat limited definition to his concept of "Christian America."

At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

"Self invasion"? They're invading themselves?

I suspect that he started to cry because he'd finally realized what an idiot he is.

One speaker, who was identified as "Joe," said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil.

"Marxist"? This just gets better and better, doesn't it?

Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald...

Again, "embarrassment," perhaps?

...said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because "they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. ... If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do."

So if their ship is taken by pirates, they won't be able to use the standard international symbol of distress?

Senator Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, spoke against the resolution, saying Larsen, whom he called a "true patriot and a close friend," was embarrassing the Republican Party.

Finally, somebody who makes a little sense.

"This only gives fodder to the liberal media to give negative attention to the Republican Party."

Too late.

Larsen was allowed to finish the debate with a one-minute speech.

"If the Democrats take over the country, we will be dead, and we will have abortion and partial-birth abortion and the Republican Party will go into extinction," he said.

OK, let me get this straight. We'll all be dead, right? So how will we be getting abortions at that point?

And isn't the "Republican Party will go into extinction" bit a little redundant at that point?

But these mental giants couldn't manage to not embarrass themselves even when they switched to other subjects.

(Enid) Greene (state Republican Party chair) said she was disappointed in BYU professors who protested Dick Cheney's visit to campus, calling them "self-appointed intellectuals."

OK, folks. Be real. These guys were hired as professors. Yes, they're "intellectuals." Isn't that what you want as a teacher?

But they definitely don't qualify as "self-appointed." If anyone, BYU and the Dean of Faculty appointed them to that position, right?

But while that was my favorite story this weekend, I've got to pass along this little gem.

Two police officers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid last fall. A third officer still faces charges... The charges followed a Nov. 21 “no-knock” drug raid on the home of Kathryn Johnston, 92. An informant had described buying drugs from a dealer there, police said. When the officers burst in without warning, Johnston fired at them, and they fired back, killing her.

Fulton County prosecutor Peter Johnson said that the officers involved in Johnston's death fired 39 shots, striking her five or six times, including a fatal blow to the chest.

He said Johnston fired only once through her door and didn't hit any of the officers. That means the officers who were wounded likely were hit by their own colleagues, he said...

When the plainclothes officers burst in without notice, police said, Johnston fired at them, and they fired back.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Yonette Sam-Buchanan said Thursday that although the officers found no drugs in Johnston's home, Smith planted three bags of marijuana in the home as part of a cover story.

So they're some real winners, right? Fine, upstanding knights in blue. (And really bad aims, too.)

But let's ignore the fact that a bunch of unidentified men broke into her house, and Ms. Johnston was only protecting her home. (Shouldn't the NRA be all over this story?) She was 92 years old! Let her get baked once in a while. At her age, she's earned it.

But that isn't the punchline. This is.

The case raised serious questions about no-knock warrants...

Well, duh! But it gets better.

...and whether the officers followed proper procedures.

Yup. That's would be the question, all right...

Well, I already talk about politics. Might as well include religion.

My son is now an ordained minister. I don't really know what to make of that.

When he was a kid, we asked him what he wanted to be. His answer? "A policeman, a fireman and Spiderman." So this seems like a step down, really.

Technically, there are probably people who might argue the point of whether he qualifies as a priest of any kind. He got ordained for free over the internet, by the Universal Life Church, because he wanted to perform the wedding for two of his friends.

This might possibly come as a surprise to my sisters: one's a Wiccan and might be OK with it, but the other is an ordained Episcopal minister. Somehow, I don't think she'll see the humor in all this, really.

But that isn't the most disturbing news on the religious front, though.

Studies are now coming to light that show that "abstinence-only" programs, Bush's biggest "faith-based agenda" effort, don't work. They're ineffective. Not only do these programs not have any effect on whether children will have sex, they don't even have any effect on whether the sexually-active children will use a condom. (At least a traditional sex-ed class can improve that statistic.)

That's $176 million dollars in federal money, and millions more in state and local grants, teaching a program with no effect at all. And they intend to waste more money starting this year, because they plan to push it on adults (as old as 29) despite the fact that it's a complete waste of our tax money.

However, we can take heart in the fact that this program was merely ineffective. Usually, the policies coming from the White House are disasterous and destructive - in effect, the "abstinence-only" program is actually an improvement in job performance for our Chief Executive.

And in other news, the latest hero of the Religious Right is Gordon James Klingenschmitt, a former chaplain for the Navy. He says that, in March 2005, he was released from the Navy as punishment "because he refused to practice a 'government-sanitized' faith that he calls 'Pluralism,' with a capital P." He claims that he was kicked out of the Navy because he wanted to "pray in Jesus' name." (The Religious Right calls him "Chaplain," or sometimes just shorten it to "Chaps." There are so many Village People jokes here, I don't know where to begin.)

You can trust me on one thing, by the way. Having gone to military chapels for my entire life, there is no shortage of prayers to Jesus or about Jesus, and the vast majority are in Jesus' name. And I've even met one or two chaplains who seemed to think that they might be Jesus (I'm pretty sure they were wrong).

After Klingenschmitt (or his handlers) convinced the Kentucky House of Representatives to honor him for his "service to God, country and the Commonwealth of Kentucky," his former commandant, Capt. Norm Holcomb, sent an email to the members of the Kentucky House, explaining what actually happened. The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State (who, admittedly, have their own agenda on the matter) printed part of Holcomb's letter.

I was the dishonored ex-chaplain's supervisor for the past 2 years... I found him to be totally untruthful, unethical and insubordinate. He was and is contemptuous of all authority. He was not court martialed for praying in Jesus' name. I sent him out in uniform every week to pray at various ceremonies and functions. He always prayed in uniform and in Jesus' name. He was never told that he could not pray in Jesus' name. In fact, the issue of prayer had nothing at all to do with his dismissal from the Navy. He disobeyed the lawful order of a senior officer. I am sure that you understand that Navy Regulations forbid any of us, regardless of rank or position, to appear in uniform in support of any political or partisan event.

At the time that it happened, incidentally, even the Associated Baptist Press (speaking of people with their own agenda) reported it this way:

But the commanding officer at Klingenschmitt's base, Capt. Lloyd Pyle of the Norfolk Naval Station, had earlier ordered him, in writing, "not to wear your uniform for this or for any other media appearance without my express prior permission." Pyle's order came shortly after Klingenschmitt spent 18 days last December on a hunger strike in front of the White House to protest the policy on sectarian prayers.

Of the conviction, Klingenschmitt said he was only "guilty of praying in Jesus' name," according to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. His attorneys claimed that he had the right to appear in uniform at the event because he was conducting a bona fide religious service.

But the jury agreed with prosecutors, who argued that the evangelical Episcopalian's uniformed presence at the press conference alone was sufficient to determine he had violated Pyle's order and military policy.

But that isn't the way you're going to hear it from his supporters these days.

And finally, the most important news story about the things we worship would have to be this:

The federal Food and Drug Administration is proposing to redefine the very essence of chocolate and to allow big manufacturers such as Hershey to sell a bar devoid of a key ingredient — cocoa butter. The butter's natural texture could be replaced with inferior alternatives, such as vegetable fats. And consumers would never know.

There's even a website which will tell you how to defend your constitutional right to good chocolate. Those of us who've lived in Germany, and eaten chocolate made in Europe for European consumption know that Hershey's is a waxy, paraffin-filled bar of faux-chocolate already. Don't let them make it worse.

They can have my chocolate when they pry it from my cold, dead, chubby fingers.

Honesty. It's such a lonely word.

I took a month or so off, so this one's a long one, even for me.

We continue to be plagued by a distinct lack of honesty in our government. And although the Democrats are probably making a few lies here and there, it's the overwhelming, snowballing dishonesty of the Republican party that's coming to the surface lately. Lying and hypocrisy seem to be the only two family values left to the Republicans.

George Bush gave a speech to an American Legion post in Virginia earlier this month. Which, by itself, is fascinating. Considering how he allows veterans to be treated at Walter Reed, you'd think that he'd have second thoughts about standing in front of a crowd of them.

(Of course, his first thoughts aren't usually particularly impressive, so I doubt that the second ones would be much better...)

He even had the unbelievable cojones to bring up the fact that he belonged to an American Legion post in Houston. Does the Legion allow other people to join when the very few records that they can find show that they didn't even manage to fulfill the minimal requirements of Vietnam-era National Guard service? As opposed to the current National Guard requirements, where the "surge" that was supposed to only involve 21,500 troops (if you ignore the extra 8,100 support troops, anyway) has recently been further swelled by adding Iraq and Afghanistan tours for another 12,000 National Guard and Reserve troops.

And as Bush stood there in front of his American Legion audience, he even trotted out one of his oldest catch-phrases. He said to them that "We want to defeat them there, so we don't have to face them here." Which is fascinating, since only 4 days earlier, we learned that military and diplomatic experts all agreed that the "over there" argument is a fairly feeble-minded thing to say.

"The president is using a primitive, inarticulate argument that leaves him open to criticism and caricature," said James Jay Carafano, a homeland security and counterterrorism expert for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization...

Daniel Benjamin, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at The Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, agreed.

"There are very few foreign fighters who are going to be leaving the area because they don't have the skills or languages that would give them access to the United States," said (Daniel Benjamin, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at The Brookings Institution), who served as the National Security Council's director for transnational threats from 1998 to 1999. "I'm not saying events in Iraq aren't going to embolden jihadists. But I think the president's formulations call for a leap of faith."

"The war in Iraq isn't preventing terrorist attacks on America," said one U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he's contradicting the president and other top officials. "If anything, that - along with the way we've been treating terrorist suspects - may be inspiring more Muslims to think of us as the enemy."

In fact, if anything, the Middle East situation is making us less safe. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate was just released, and it explains that the Iraqi conflict is only making jihadist fundamentalism in the Middle East stronger.

Thank God that Bush won't be reading that report either. It might depress him.

John McCain has been pushing Bush's little war for some time, and tried to tell America that there were parts of Baghdad where you could walk down the street in safety. And he was called on that lie by a reporter who was, in fact, in Baghdad at the time, who said that he didn't know what Never-never Land McCain was talking about.

Because John McCain is never willing to admit that his "Straight Talk Express" has left the tracks, he went to Baghdad and took a walk in a market to show how safe it was. Safe, at least, if you have a hundred armed soldiers, two Blackhawk helicopters, body armor and up-armored Humvees. Sucks to be the locals, though, who told anyone who'd listen that it was all a PR stunt, and who went back to being shot at and blown up right after McCain left.

Pope Benedict XVI came out and criticized evolution, saying it can’t be proved. Which is ironic, since he’s a pretty strong supporter of that whole "God" thing.

(I am so going to Hell.)

Of course, this is, after all, his job, so you can't really call that a lie, or even hypocrisy – you would kind of hope that he actually believed in his own religion (especially if you're Catholic). But I've been hoping to make that joke ever since I saw the story. So there you go.

On the subject of hypocrisy, though, Bob Barr was once a hard-line GOP senator from Georgia. In 1998, he single-handedly prevented the voters of the District of Columbia from enacting a medical marijuana measure which they'd approved, by creating what is known as the "Barr Amendment" (the city is stripped of all funding if they attempted to "enact or carry out" any such initiative). But now that he's left the Senate, he became (as so many do) a lobbyist. Ironically, he's lobbying for the Marijuana Policy Project. And his first job will be to try to tear down the Barr Amendment.

Don Imus received some publicity that he didn’t want recently when he referred to a primarily black women's basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's." That, in itself, is not a lie, if that's the way Imus felt about it. He's allowed to be a racist, after all. And at least he's open about it. But SilentPatriot on CrooksAndLiars.com makes a valid point.

"Human Events" editor Terry Jeffrey said that Don Imus "represents a general decline in standards in American broadcasting" and that politicians should avoid his show because they would then have to "take a stand on the various outrageous things he says." During his high and mighty sermon of decency, Jeffrey conveniently ignores the far more toxic venom spewed on a daily basis on conservative talk radio.

(Here’s where they put the link to download or watch – you’ll have to go there to see it, though. I’m not going to eat their bandwidth. That’s rude, and I’m not John McCain.)

Imus' statements past and present — documented here by MediaMatters — are deplorable and should be condemned. That goes without saying. The point, however, is the blatant double standard. Did Dick Cheney have to "take a stand" on Rush Limbaugh's myriad racist/sexist/insensitive remarks before going on his show last week? Did Secretary Gates have to condemn Laura Ingraham for advocating that her listeners jam the Democratic voter assistance lines in November before chatting it up last week?

So, technically, I’m not sure if you can call Mr. Jeffrey's statement a lie, or simple hypocrisy (SilentPatriot goes with the latter), but I think it's worth inclusion here.

(And having mentioned John McCain again, I should point out that I have no problem with gay marriage. Particularly marriage between passionate females.)

(I would like to apologize for that last joke; the persons responsible have been sacked. Along with their llama.)

A lawyer with the Justice Department is invoking the Fifth Amendment in the investigation of the politically-motivated firings of US Attorneys. Which, if you think about it, tells you something. The applicable part of the Fifth Amendment, in this case, reads "No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..." (At least, I'm pretty sure that's the important part. This counts as a grand jury, and part of the "due process of law." Of course, maybe they teach these things differently at the Pat Robertson School of Law.)

So, exactly what crime is it that she committed? Because, after all, that's the whole purpose of the Fifth Amendment. You can't use it to avoid telling the truth about other people, can you? (But again, maybe they teach these things differently at Pat Robertson U.)

However, to get ready for that same Senate testimony, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has cleared off his desk, and is devoting all his resources to preparing to testify. But it’s not going well.

Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added. "He's not ready," Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales's public-affairs chief, told the A.G.'s top aides after the session was over, said the source.

But, as Kevin Drum points out in Washington Monthly,

If Gonzales was planning to simply tell the truth, he wouldn't "keep contradicting himself" in practice sessions and he wouldn't need to bring his schedule to a standstill in order to figure out what he's planning to say. He'd just review the appropriate documents to make sure he had his dates straight and then tell Congress what happened.

You know, you'd hope that people elected to the highest offices in the country would think that it was their duty to be honest and forthright with the American people.

But of course, if you believe that, then you must also be living in Never-never Land. Right next door to John McCain.
~~~~~

You Don't Know Dick, part II

It's fascinating. We have Darth Cheney half a world away, saying that Nancy Pelosi's plan would embolden the terrorists, and when Pelosi gets a little miffed, saying that Cheney is questioning her patriotism, he refuses to back down from his statement, saying that "I didn't question her patriotism. I questioned her judgment."

Well, gee. That makes it all better, doesn't it?

It also showed that he wasn't listening to what she said.

"You cannot say as the president of the United States, 'I welcome disagreement in a time of war,' and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country," the speaker said.

By the way, the President wasn't willing to talk to her. She only managed to talk to Josh Bolton, Bush's chief of staff.

And Frank Rich raised some interesting points about the "War on Terra."

Who is losing the war on terrorism?

The record so far suggests that this White House has done so twice. The first defeat, of course, began in early December 2001, when we lost Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. The public would not learn about that failure until April 2002 (when it was uncovered by The Washington Post), but it's revealing that the administration started its bait-and-switch trick to relocate the enemy in Iraq just as bin Laden slipped away. It was on Dec. 9, 2001, that Dick Cheney first floated the idea on "Meet the Press" that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. It was "pretty well confirmed," he said (though it was not), that bin Laden's operative Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague months before Atta flew a hijacked plane into the World Trade Center...

The president now says his government never hyped any 9/11-Iraq links. "Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq," he said last August after finally conceding that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact everyone in the administration insinuated it constantly, including him. Mr. Bush told of "high-level" Iraq-Qaeda contacts "that go back a decade" in the same notorious October 2002 speech that gave us Saddam's imminent mushroom clouds. So effective was this propaganda that by 2003 some 44 percent of Americans believed (incorrectly) that the 9/11 hijackers had been Iraqis; only 3 percent had seen an Iraq link right after 9/11.

Though the nonexistent connection was even more specious than the nonexistent nuclear W.M.D., Mr. Bush still leans on it today even while denying that he does so. He has to. His litanies that we are "on the offense" by pursuing the war in Iraq and "fighting terrorists over there, so that we don't have to fight them here" depend on the premise that we went into that country in the first place to vanquish Al Qaeda and that it is still the "central front" in the war on terror. In January's State of the Union address hawking the so-called surge, Mr. Bush did it again, warning that to leave Iraq "would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and invite tragedy."

But now more than ever, the opposite is true. It is precisely by pouring still more of our finite military and intelligence resources down the drain in Iraq that we are tragically ignoring the lessons of 9/11. Instead of showing resolve, as Mr. Bush supposes, his botch of the Iraq war has revealed American weakness. Our catastrophic occupation spawned terrorists in a country where they didn't used to be, and to pretend that Iraq is now their central front only adds to the disaster. As Mr. Scheuer, the former C.I.A. official, reiterated last week: "Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to address the threat to America, that's where it is." It's typical of Mr. Bush's self-righteousness, however, that he would rather punt on that threat than own up to a mistake.

That mistake - dropping the ball on Al Qaeda - was compounded last fall when Mr. Bush committed his second major blunder in the war on terror. The occasion was the September revelation that our supposed ally, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan, had negotiated a "truce" with the Taliban in North Waziristan, a tribal region in his country at the Afghanistan border. This truce was actually a retreat by Pakistan, which even released Qaeda prisoners in its custody. Yet the Bush White House denied any of this was happening. "This deal is not at all with the Taliban," the president said, claiming that "this is against the Taliban, actually."

(OK, if you want to read the source article and really don't want to deal with TimesSelect and their "14-day free trial," read most of the column here, here or here.)

(In the course of his flip-flopping on Osama, Bush swung to both extremes: from completely ignoring him one moment, to telling the late Ariel Sharon, prime minister of Israel, that if he ever caught bin Laden, "I will screw him in the ass!" Isn't that a lovely visual? Our boy Bush is always such a cultured, well-spoken representative of the United States, isn't he?)

During his interview in Australia, Cheney also said something kind of startling.

In the interview, Cheney also said Britain's plans to withdraw about 1,600 troops from Iraq — while the United States adds more troops — was a positive step. "I look at it and see it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well," the vice president said.

As Jay Leno put it, "The British announced they were pulling their troops out of the Iraq. Dick Cheney immediately called it good news. He said, 'It's a sign that we're winning.' How come when our allies pick up and leave, that's a victory for us? But when we leave, it's a victory for al Qaeda? How does that work?"

So let me just come right out and say it. I don't believe that George Bush, the inarticulate C-student, would be as destructive as he has been, if he didn't have Cheney leading him around on a leash. Dick Cheney has consistently lied to the American people about Iraq, about the Al Qaeda, and now about Iran. While he was second-in-command in America, Halliburton was enriched to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, which consequently made Dick Cheney massive amounts of money. American actions in the Middle East under his watch have destroyed the international respect for our country, beggared our treasury, and has spawned a massive groundswell of terrorists in the Middle East who did not exist before.

More American citizens have now died in Iraq than were killed in the World Trade Center. Who, then, is the bigger threat to America? Al Qaeda, or Dick Cheney?

I definitely question Dick Cheney's judgement. And I also question his patriotism.

Is this the kind of winner we want to see in office?

Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani III was born May 28, 1944. He first rose to prominence in the US Attorney's office, successfully prosecuting Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for insider trading, and indicting eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York's "Five Families," under the RICO Act. He also was the first prosecutor to successfully use the RICO act against non-organized crime, indicting Marc Rich and Pincus Green for tax evasion and making illegal oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis (which, oddly, led to presidential pardons for both of them).

As Mayor of New York City, he reduced crime in the city, continued his fight against organized crime, and agressively attempted a program of urban renewal (including his work to turn Times Square into more of a tourist destination).

On September 11, 2001, it was Rudy's actions leading the response to the World Trade Center attack that seemed to cement his position as "America's Mayor" (and Time Magazine's 2001 "Person of the Year).

And now, Rudy Giuliani™(© 2006) has declared his candidacy for President of the United States (although most people already knew it was coming).

Oddly, though, not everybody seems to appreciate this paragon on virtue and leadership. Jonathen Alter explains in Newsweek why Rudy's temperament might make him a risky pick for president. Ezra Klein suggested that Rudy might be a bit autocratic for the job. And over on Blah3, they expand on that point to highlight evidence that the man is thin-skinned, autocratic, and prone to using the power of his office to pummel his opponents. Even the lower-profile blogs are digging up fascinating information on the man, like his role as a George Bush cheerleader ever since 2001.

And during the 2004 election, Jimmy Breslin, whose name is practically synonymous with New York City, had this to say about Rudy.

He was a nobody as a mayor and in one day he became a hero. This sudden career, this door opening to a room of gold, all started for Rudolph Giuliani when his indestructible bunker in World Trade Center building blew up. He had personally selected it, high in the sky, and with tons of diesel fuel to give emergency power.

And Guiliani walks on. He walks from his bunker, up Barclay Street and went on television. Went on and announced his heroism and then came back every hour or so until he became a star, a great figure, a national hero, the mayor who saved New York.

Most of this comes from these dazed Pekingese of the Press. As this was being written on Friday night, the television announcers kept saying that Martha Stewart would go to a country club federal prison. The fools. Try any jail on any day. At five o'clock, you can't go home. Giuliani was a hero with these news people. He did not pick up a piece of steel or help carry one of the injured off.

Can America's Mayor become America's President? (Or might he make a better First Lady?)

John McCain - Weathervane

You know, there was a time when I respected John McCain. That time is long gone.

He seemed like that rarity, an honest politician. A Vietnam vet and former POW, he stood up to the Religious Right for their intolerance, and to the Swift Boat Veterans for their lies. He seemed like one of the few Republicans I could vote for.

But the more I learn about him, the more I discover that it's all a front.

In 2000, when we listened to Candidate McCain, we heard things like this:

McCain said he hoped his February comments about the "agents of intolerance" of the Christian Right did not "alienate the voters of so-called Christian Right...I value their commitment to moral values and family standards but I as a person want our party to be an inclusive party."

"I don't believe the leadership of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson is healthy for my party...I want a party that says we care about everyone, a party of addition not division."

Almost a year ago, on Meet the Press, Tim Russert called him on his spin.

MR. RUSSERT: You came out and said we should teach intelligent design in classes as well as evolution. Jerry Falwell... you’re now giving the commencement address at Liberty University in May. This is what you said about Jerry Falwell in February of 2000. Let’s watch.

(Videotape, February 28, 2000):

SEN. McCAIN: Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: "Agents of intolerance." And you were asked about that speech and you said this: "I must not and will not retract anything that I said in that speech at Virginia Beach. It was carefully crafted. It was carefully thought out." Based on that, do you believe that Jerry Falwell is still an agent of intolerance?

...

SEN. McCAIN: I met with Reverend Falwell, he came to see me in Washington. We, we agreed to disagree on certain issues and we agreed to move forward. I believe that speaking at Liberty University is no different from speaking at the New College or Ohio State University...

MR. RUSSERT: But Senator, when you were on here in 2000, I asked you about Jerry Falwell, and this is what you said.

(Videotape, March 5, 2000):

SEN. McCAIN: Governor Bush swung far to the right and sought out the base support of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. That’s—those aren’t the ideas that I think are good for the Republican Party.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think that Jerry Falwell’s ideas are now good for the Republican Party?

SEN. McCAIN: I believe that the... "Christian right" has a major role to play in the Republican Party. One reason is, is because they’re so active, and their... followers are. And I believe they have a right to be a part of our party. I don’t have to agree with everything they stand for, nor do I have to agree with everything that’s on the liberal side of the Republican Party...

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that Jerry Falwell is still an agent of intolerance?

SEN. McCAIN: No, I don’t. I think that Jerry Falwell can explain to you his views on this program when you have him on.

MR. RUSSERT: After September 11th... Reverend Falwell had [this] to say. "What we saw on [September 11th ], as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve. ... I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle... I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' " ...Are you embracing that?

SEN. McCAIN: I am speaking at the, at the graduation of his, his university. I’m not embracing all of the tenets that are expressed at the New College in New York City, nor other liberal universities and institutions that I have spoke at.

So what happened to the "Straight Talk Express"? Did it run off the rails?

The Arizona Republican told The Dallas Morning News that he has "established a very good relationship" with the Rev. Jerry Falwell and has reached out to Richard Land, a one-time Criswell College professor who heads the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In Texas, Mr. McCain said, he has met with San Antonio evangelist John Hagee to express a shared "commitment to the state of Israel."

Let's go over those names again.

Jerry Falwell: Well, I think enough was said about him during the Meet the Press transcript up above. An egotistical hypocrite, but one who's managed to make himself rich off the donations of his flock (which, incidentally, is true of the next two guys, too).

Richard Land: One of Bush's closest advisors, Richard Land is also outspokenly homophobic and violently opposed to abortion. He called the FDA's approval of the Plan B pill a "sad day for America;" however, Plan B prevents the release or fertilization of an egg, which means that Land is opposed to an option that would prevent the abortion of fetuses. Go figure.

John Hagee: One of the highest-paid evangelists in America, Hagee blames the sinful people of New Orleans for Hurricane Rita, he supports the idea of a nuclear war in the Middle East, because he's an ardent believer in the coming Rapture.

These sanctimonious Dominionists are the people John McCain is sucking up to? That's bad enough to lose my respect for the man. And I didn't even touch on McCain's flip-flops on other issues. Like backing off of a torture ban after initially proposing it. Or hiring the company that produced the "Swift Boat Veterans" ads, who he once called "dishonest and dishonorable."

(Russert mentions several of McCain's sudden reversals in the MTP interview above. Go read it.)

I don't have time for McCain. He points whichever way the wind is blowing. Let's elect people willing to stand up for what's right this time around.

It's not "Global Warming"! It's just "Climate Change"!

In his State of the Union speech, Bush said something that must have hurt, just to feel it in his mouth. "America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change."

We have top scientists telling us that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is the highest it's been in two-thirds of a million years! Let's be clear on that. The scientists are telling us that the carbon dioxide is higher than it's been in longer than the biblical scholars believe that the earth has existed!

I'm thinking that this tells us that God doesn't want the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to be this high. Somebody else might have other ideas what this means, but they just make the baby Jesus cry.

Anyway, since the President is now willing to admit that global warming... oh, sorry, "climate change" exists, his chief advisors are suddenly willing to tell the truth.

The human role in climate change is no longer debatable, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today...

"Human activity is contributing to changes in the Earth's climate," Bodman said at a press conference in Washington. "That issue is no longer up for debate."

Yeah, but meanwhile, despite the fact that it's not debatable, apparently the debate rages on.

Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world's top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition today to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.

I'd say that the record profits posted by the gas companies might have something to do with this non-policy change, but that would be rude, wouldn't it?

I mean, let's consider the spectacular record that Bush has on the environment. I mean, after all, he...

No, really, he...

OK, so he kind of sucks on environmental issues. Consider mercury poisoning.

In March of 2005, the agency set limits on the amounts of mercury that could be emitted by power plants. At the time, the EPA said that they couldn't make the limits more "aggressive" because the cost to the industry was already more than the public health benefit.

Which would have been true, if they weren't ignoring a study by Harvard University that said that slightly greater limits would have health benefits worth more than five billion dollars per year, but would cost the industry three quarters of a billion dollars.

This was a study that the EPA had paid for, that was co-authored by an EPA scientist, and that was peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists. In common language, the EPA wasted our tax dollars to ignore a study that might have made Americans healthier.

At first, the EPA claimed that the study results didn't get to them in time for their deadline. When interviews and documents proved that to be a lie, they switched their stories, and claimed that the Harvard study was using "flawed" data about the heart problems caused by mercury contamination. They did manage to stick by their original claim that the health benefits would only be around fifty million dollars, though.

The government's action lends an interesting light to the fact that the EPA dismantled a previous working group on mercury, just as they were about to require much more stringent regulations from all coal-burning power plants in America.

With their new ruling, the EPA completely ignored previous studies that showed that mercury contamination in seafood caused irreversible damage not only to the hearts of adults, but to brain functions in infants.

Let's repeat the most important word there: "irreversible." As in "can't be fixed."

The EPA had accepted those studies at the time, and as a result, had already suggested that pregnant women limit their intake of seafood to no more than twelve ounces per week.

Of course, that was then. This is now. The Bush administration now seems to be quite happy with the idea of a brain-damaged electorate. I wonder why that is?

They'll probably be telling us to eat more seafood next.

How's the view from that cross?

Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?
~~ Jules Feiffer

Last week, James Kopp, who was convicted to 25-to-life last month for the sniper killing of a doctor in 1998, was also convicted on federal charges for the same crime. Kopp had killed Dr. Barnett Slepian in the doctor's Amherst, NY home, and tried to claim in both federal and state trials that he only wanted to wound the doctor, to prevent him from performing abortions.

Incidentally, Kopp has also been charged by Canadian authorities for the 1995 killing of Ontario Dr Hugh Short, and wanted for questioning in other Rememberance Day assassinations of abortionists.

OK, let's be clear here. The Federal government didn't really have a choice in the matter. Although you will never hear George W. Bush admit it in public, Kopp was a domestic terrorist, part of a collection of lunatics who believe that the killing of abortionists is justified.

(In fact, Kopp tried to use that very defense: what he did was justified to "save the lives of the preborn." But the judge made a very simple ruling: abortion is legal. Murder isn't.)

And although the government doesn't have a very good record of hunting down right-wing terrorists, every once in a while, they do try to do their jobs. (Or, to look at it another way, even a broken clock is right twice a day.)

Now, I don't think I've covered this aspect of my personality much (and I'm too lazy to go back and look), but I'm an agnostic. Despite what a number of people have tried to tell me about myself, I'm not an athiest. Denying the possibility of some godlike force is just as much of a leap of faith as saying that there is some huge old guy in the sky who gets cranky if you don't kneel a lot. I don't know which point of view is true (although I lean more toward the athiest end of things, admittedly), but to be honest, it makes no real difference in my life.

In fact, the last set of dog tags I wore in the military proclaimed me to be a Zen Agnostic, which, if you think about it, translates loosely to "I don't know, and I don't care."

But I strongly believe that the interference of Christians in our day-to-day life only leads to a tragedy of Biblical proportions. Dogs and cats living together! (And Rag-time, shameless music, that'll grab your son and your daughter with the arms of a jungle animal instinct! Mass-staria!)

When you let our Christian friends take charge of things, you get ugliness on a monumental order. You get parents suing to keep Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth from being shown in a classroom. Care to guess why?

The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

And the madness doesn't stop there. You end up with crap science: for example, Bush's choice as head of the FDA's advisory council on reproductive health is trying to tell America that premarital sex interferes with the ability to fall in love. OK, more accurately, the ability to form healthy, lasting, loving relationships. And it all revolves around the nanopeptide Oxytocin. But what it means is that he's claiming to now have scientific evidence that people must practice abstinence before marriage.

You end up with the ugliness that was the Terri Schiavo case - a brain-dead girl whose undead body is kept alive by machines, because the Religious Right said that it must be so.

You end up with Park Rangers at the Grand Canyon who aren't allowed to mention the geologic age of the rocks around them, for fear of annoying the creationists. (Oh, yeah, plus, the park bookstores sell a book that tells us that the Grand Canyon was formed by Noah's flood, not geologic forces.)

And you end up with vitriolic arguments about evolution, and people trying to tell you that soy protein makes you gay. And, for that matter, ignorant arguments about gays, both in general and specifically in the military. (Man, I am starting to quote myself entirely too often. This is probably bad...)

And it isn't just science. They like to try rewriting history, too. And the whole religious thing leads to a bunch of really, really dangerous ideas.

We also end up with other, random bits of humor, though. Like the Virgin Mary in a grocery store freezer (and, incidentally, Jesus in a doggie door). And christianity being used as a marketing ploy on some really questionable items.

So overall, as I said, I really don't have a problem with religious people. (Did I say that? I probably should have said that somewhere. Well, hell, at least I have now, right?) But I very strongly suspect that it isn't a good idea to put them in charge.

Update: One benefit (if that’s the right word) of going to a military chapel is that you get to rub up against peoples of various faiths. So I've had opportunity to see the various flavors of evangelical service in action. And I've noticed something.

There's a word that the "contemporary" services have usurped as their own, and they like to base entire songs around it. That word is "worthy." In fact, I've heard a song where the verse (or possibly chorus) was made up of repetitions of the phrase "He is worthy," over and over. I realize that the phrase is a truncated version of "He is worthy of praise" or something similar, but the following argument still applies.

The evangelical community needs to consider their word choice a little harder. Let's break this down into the most simple form.

1. "Worthy" is the adjectival form of "worth."
2. "Worth" is a value judgement, indicating that one thing is compared to another.
3. It's awfully generous of them to decide that God, creator of the universe and all things in it, compares favorably against Brand X. And it's nice that they feel authorized to make this decision.

It's not a game, George

President Bush went on television last night to explain his "new way forward" to America. But his "new way" is strangely similar to the "old way." We stay in Iraq for the conceivable future, and more troops are sent into the line of fire.

See, if you're an Iraqi insurgent, then this "new way forward" is just leading you into a "target-rich environment."

You know, it's strange. Bush feels that he can ignore the American people, 64% of whom disagree with his handling of the war. He feels that he can ignore the military (a traditionally hawkish bunch): in a Military Times poll of active-duty servicepeople, a majority of the troops who responded disapproved of how Bush is handling Iraq.

It was just last month that George W. Bush said "it's important to trust the judgment of the military when they're making military plans… I'm a strict adherer to the command structure." But now, with his plan to put more troops into Iraq, he's even ignoring the advice of his generals.

But this is nothing new. Bush doesn't feel that he needs to consult Congress when he attacks somebody. He's proven this twice in the last week, both in Somalia and with the troops he's planning on deploying into Iraq. He doesn't act like a military commander - he's more like a kid with an army of plastic soldiers - you can almost see him pushing them around the carpet of the Oval Office, making "blam… rat-a-tat-tat" noises.

He's proven over and over that nobody in the Bush White House is a constitutional scholar. I'm not sure that anybody working at 1600 Pennsylvania Boulevard has ever actually read that document. Because the Constitution is pretty clear on the subject.

Way back in 1781, having just broken away from a King, the Constitutional Congress didn't support the idea that one person could unilaterally declare war on another country. The President may be Commander-in-Chief of the military, but if you actually look at the document they created, you find out that in Article 1, Section 8, it says that

"The Congress shall have Power...
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress..."

But Bush isn't just ignoring the will of the people and the law. He's ignoring common sense. General Petraeus, who Bush just placed in charge of the forces in Iraq, drew up a strategy to defeat the insurgents in that country. Unfortunately, according to that report, the best ratio of troops to population, in a counter-insurgency operation like this one, is 20 per 1,000 civilians. But since Iraq has a population of 26 million people, that would mean that the United States would need to add at least 250,000 troops to the current 140,000 military personnel already in Iraq.

It's been a few years since I took a math class, but that seems like a few more than the twenty thousand troops Bush wants to send.

In fact, as Terry Jones (the ex-Monty Python member) pointed out, America has spent one million dollars per dead Iraqi. Strangely enough, it might have been more cost-effective to actually drop bales of money from planes to squash the insurgents.

But Congress has the power. Unlike what the nay-sayers want you to believe, Teddy Kennedy is correct. Congress has every right to tell Bush how to spend the money that they give him. In fact, they've done it over and over again.

It's time for Congress to start treating Bush like a two-year-old. If he won't pay attention to the rules, they need to take his toys away.

Traditional Christmas Post

It's Christmas, boys and girls. Let's not be political today.

OK, one thing. There is no "War on Christmas." And anyone who says so is not, themselves, a good Christian. Know why?

Matthew 22:37 Jesus said unto him "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

But here in America, we have people trying to start fights based on preventing their neighbor from celebrating Hanukkah, Ramadan, the Hindu festival Makar Sankranti, Shakyamuni Buddha Day, or a day to meditate on the Tantric Bodhisattva Goddess Red Tara, or basically any holiday other than Christmas.

That's not "loving," that’s "discriminating." It's a subtle difference, but I'm pretty sure that it's one that Christ would have made, too.

Anyway, let's talk about movies.

I was watching the kids of some friends of ours, and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" came on. The real one, not the Jim Carrey bastardization.

I'm willing to say that two out of three Jim Carrey movies are worth watching. His Grinch is a nice homage to the original, but it isn't as good as watching Chuck Jones' animation, and listening to Boris Karloff reading the story and Tony the Tiger (Thurl Ravenscroft) singing. It just doesn't get any better than that.

But, as I said, the real Grinch came on, and I told the boys that "this is the best Christmas movie ever made." There was a little fussing at first (Spongebob Squarepants was coming on, after all), but within seconds, they were hooked.

Grinch, however, was followed by A Christmas Story. And, you know something? I've never seen that movie. I know dozens of people who can quote lines by heart, and who see it every year. So I tried to watch it.

You know something? I think that I'm too old to watch it. You had to be a certain age, and interested in a certain type of humor, to see it the first time (or maybe to be old enough to remember when life in America was like that), and apparently I don't fall into the right era or something. I was bored.

I tried to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas this year, too. Again, I was bored. Maybe I've seen it too many times. It was cute, but it didn't do much for me.

On the other hand, some of the Christmas specials I watched as a child probably wouldn't do much for me anymore, either. And in that category, I count pretty much all of the Rankin/Bass collection ("The Little Drummer Boy" disappeared many years ago from the major networks - did you know that José Ferrer was one of the featured voices in that? - but I'm willing to bet that it's available on one of the religious cable channels).

Every few years, I watch It's a Wonderful Life again. If you don't watch it too often, it's good - it holds up a lot better than most movies from 1946. I'm pretty sure that it would get old if I watched it every year, but I know people who do just that.

I mean, if you're seriously looking for a new holiday movie, let me just give you a few choices. Try The Nightmare Before Christmas (which Disney wouldn't release under their own imprint because Michael Eisner felt it was "too dark for children" - it ended up being released under Touchstone).

There's always the obviously-named Christmas Vacation - definitely the best of a played-out series. Chevy Chase does the slapstick and deadpan acting that would have made him rich (if it wasn't for the drugs, anyway). This movie actually can (and probably should) be watched without ever seeing any of the other movies in the Vacation series. (This movie, by the way, includes the last screen appearance of Mae Questal, the voice of the original Betty Boop).

If you're in the mood for an action film, you can't really beat Die Hard (although God knows they tried to beat it to death with the sequels).

However, for the most recent "Christmas Classic," I'd say that my money would have to be on Denis Leary's The Ref, an amazingly funny movie about dysfunctional people running full-speed into each other.

There. That pretty much covers it. Except, of course, for the movies I completely ignored. Maybe I'll talk about them some other time. Maybe not.

Deal with it.

Well, if it isn't Christ, then it must be...

Let's look at the latest bit of insanity being propagated by our friends on the Far Right.

For a long time, there has been a war against science by the Religious Right. It started back before it was even considered a Right/Left issue. The early Catholic church kept their services in Latin, and ensured that there were no copies of the Bible translated out of Latin, in order to keep power over the uneducated.

It's a simple rule: if the people can't understand it, then they can't argue against it. And looking around, we find that same philosophy cropping up in politics again.

You would think that evolution is a dead argument (so to speak). It isn't really a "theory" (in the sense that it might be the way things happened, but there's an equal chance that it didn't). It's called the "theory of evolution" in the sense that we haven't been alive and sentient for 5 billion years, and so there are parts of it that we can't explain fully.

On the other hand, evolution is the structure that far too much of science is built around. We can point to massive amounts of evidence that shows that evolution is at work in the world today. We can prove that evolution is continuing (OK, everywhere except in Kansas and the Crystal Cathedral).

We can even show that evolution is perfectly in line with Christian belief - the book of Genesis says that God built the world in seven days. We'll ignore that whole "no sun, no days" argument here, and accept that "day" was a metaphor for an uncounted period of time (they covered that in Inherit the Wind, didn't they?). We'll just ask one simple question. Where does Genesis state that evolution wasn't the mechanism that God used to create life? Are you saying that God has to stick to some human timetable?

And my wife pointed out an interesting argument. If you really want to get picky, go back to the King James version of the Bible. God gets all the time He needs to get the job done right.

"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens." Genesis 2:4

They screwed that up in other translations - "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created" (NIV) - but old Jamie Rex has the answer for you right there: time isn't a fixed concept for God. Just for Man. (It's the only thing my wife remembers from Sunday School. Her teacher must have been so proud.)

And oddly enough, there are a large number of people who can accept the fact that evolution and God can be in the same room without starting a fight.

Meanwhile, though, if you wander through the South (and particularly in Baptist churches), you keep hearing about "Eee-evil-utionists," and how they're trying to keep God out of our children's lives.

It's the same old story. If there's something complicated (like evolution), and you can keep people in the dark about how it works, then you can lie to them about it, and twist the truth to fit your agenda.

The same can be said about homosexuality. It's the one issue that people refuse to agree on. You've got people who find it disgusting (and people who find it enticing but have been trained to believe that it's disgusting), who cannot accept that there are some people who are attracted to people of the same sex.

OK, let's rephrase that last sentence. It should read like this: "You've got people who cannot accept that there are men who are attracted to other men."

Because, for the most part, lesbians aren't disgusting - it's more like "Yeah, women should like other women, until they get a real man like me, in there between 'em..." And then the whole fantasy breaks down into a lot of sweaty, steamy panting.

Let's be real for a minute. Guys, listen up.

They aren't called "lesbians" because they like guys! They're lesbians because they don't want you in the room with them!

And most of the time, they can beat you up if you try to join in, too!

Sorry, that's kind of off the topic. What we're supposed to be talking about is the War on Science.

This is one of those places where the Religious Right coincides with the Political Right. Both sides want to keep science as one of those Big, Scary Things That Nobody Understands. Because it helps them. On the religious side, people are more accepting of the Bible as "the unaltered Word of God" if they haven't read it.

On the political side, people won't believe in "global warming" if they don't have a high school education, and can't understand how pollutants in the atmosphere might alter how the sunlight affects the earth.

Ignorance helps both groups, so they work together to keep people ignorant. Which brings us to today's topic.

Our friends at the World News Daily have a new theory they'd like to bounce off of you. Soy makes you gay.

Feel free to read the article. It's fascinating. It contains enough crap per paragraph to poison an entire crop of spinach. The author, Jim Rutz (who is not a doctor, by the way - he's a minister) wants you to know that not only does soy "feminize" men, it makes everybody fat! (The McDonalds' "Dollar Menu" has nothing to do with that, right?) And it causes leukemia, too! (No, really. It does. Trust us.)

Oh, by the way, you don't need to worry about soy sauce. "Unlike soy milk, it's perfectly safe because it's fermented, which changes its molecular structure. Miso, natto and tempeh are also OK, but avoid tofu." (Have you ever seen natto? Nasty stuff - let's not even get into it.) This is a simple correction, but it means that the soy product that most people have in their cupboards, soy sauce, is nothing they need to worry about. It makes the masses feel better about ordering Chinese food, I guess.

Now, why do we find this particular line of crap in a far right, religious website? It's simple. See, the "perfect" televangelist is, himself, perfect. Like the Pope, he can't be questioned, because God talks through him.

But just lately, too many evangelical leaders are showing themselves to be gay. Ted Haggard, for example, was not only seeing a gay prostitute, but tweaking on crystal meth at the time. (This is nothing new, by the way. Look up the story of Jim Bakker sometime.)

But if the leaders of the evangelical movement are gay, and they've been preaching against gay sex, then what are the people to believe?

Well, if you listen to Jim Rutz and his soy theory, it isn't their fault! They aren't gay! They just had too much soy!

Sadly for him, people are gradually starting to realize that maybe the Word being preached doesn't necessarily come from the Lord. Jesus Christ preached about helping the poor, feeding the hungry, and not screwing up the world the God created.

Maybe, if more people read the New Testament (and actually thought about what those words in red were trying to say), they'd start to wonder whose word Jerry Falwell was actually preaching.

I've been rude this week

Apparently, I stopped being polite to people at some point. (Not that politeness have ever been a hallmark of my attitude, but... well, you know, we try to do better...)

First, I saw this story in the Washington Post, and decided to email Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA). Admittedly, he isn't my Representative (by all appearances, she is still going to be Heather Wilson, sadly), but he pissed me off anyway. I gave it the subject line "Congratulations on the publicity."

Dear Representative Kingston,

I just read the story in the December 6 Washington Post where you complain about the unreasonable strain working five days a week would put on your homelife.

"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

I’m fortunate, in that I can make it (barely) on a job working eight hours a day, five days a week. I know far too many people who work long hours, or two jobs (didn’t Bush call a lady working three jobs “uniquely American” two years ago?). I was in the military for 21 years, and while there, I was most often working 14-hour days, sometimes seven days per week (when we weren’t on call and essentially working 24-hour days).

And you have the unmitigated gall to complain about working more than three days per week? You worked all of 103 days this session. This tells me that you have absolutely no work ethic.

On top of which, you’re earning a six-figure income for this minimal effort. You might as well be stealing directly from your constituent’s wallets – you definitely aren’t doing enough work for the salary you’re pocketing.

If you’re going to complain about the unfairness of your overpaid job, it’s time to quit and return to the private sector. We need government representatives willing to work for us.

I’ll sign off now. I have more to say on this subject, but I don’t have time to write it out for you.

I have work to do.

I can't say that I'm surprised that Jackie didn't write me back. But he did post a blog entry where (imagine my shock) this whole mess was the fault of the Democrats and the liberal Washington Post. (OK, admittedly, it's entitled "Jack's Blog," but I'm going to hope that it's written by an aide. Because otherwise, Jack talks about himself in the third person, and that's just weird.)

Jackie-boy, that argument doesn't hold water, since what you said was "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

You didn't say "I have important work to do at home." You basically said "I wanna be with my wife a lot more than I wanna be in Washington."

But then, last night, my father emailed me. Now, understand that my father is a life-long Republican. And, knowing the political affiliations of my sister and I, he likes to occasionally send us Rush Limbaugh-style jokes and rants that he's found somewhere. Usually, I scan them to make sure that they aren't anything original to him, and delete them. Not this time.

It wasn't even something particularly insulting. Usually, I might read it for the irony, and then move on. Not this time - he hit me in just the wrong mood, I guess.

For My Democrat Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting these greetings, you are accepting the aforementioned terms as stated. This greeting is not subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the wishes for herself/himself/others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor.

For My Republican Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Yeah. High humor, there. So anyway, I sent the following reply.

For my (strangely, despite the pride I once had in his ethics and good sense) Republican father, try to stay comfortable despite all evidence that the world is insane.

Remember, ignore all science. Global warming is a lie. Stem cells hold no promise. Evolution is a myth.

Ignore history. Invasions of other countries can work. Diplomacy is a stupid idea - you can't negotiate with your enemies. And a government composed entirely of people who dodged the draft can plan a war. (Except Rumsfeld - he trained fighters for a while, four or five decades ago. Of course, he quit, didn't he? Or was he fired? It's hard to tell.) And it's not a civil war.

Ignore common sense. Staying in Iraq is good. We can't win if we quit. And they're only attacking our troops because they want to affect the outcome of the election... oh, wait...

And ignore personalities. Pretend that your son has frequently filled his language with useless, empty syllables, for any reason other than humorous effect.
________

For my Democrat sister:
Peace out

And, you know, I think I showed great restraint. His new wife is a Catholic, so I didn't say anything about having to ignore the fact that the Pope was once a member of the Hitler Youth (and then a member of the German infantry). That might have been over the top.

If you think that, you don't know Dick...

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, November gave us a victory for freedom and the American Way, right? The Democrats were swept into office by a wave of people who finally got tired of being lied to, and for the next two years, Bush and his cronies are going to find their hands tied, right? They won't be able to launch any bizarre neocon plots, and butterflies and puppies will rain down on the people of this once-great land, right?

Don't be too sure.

Yes, Democrats now have a majority in both houses of Congress, but don't think that's going to change anything. The next two years are probably going to be one fight after another, with George Bush trying to do something, Congress shooting him down, and Bush going ahead and doing it anyway. And why?

Two words: Dick Cheney.

Cheney has been a big supporter of the President-as-King theory of democracy (or, in the more graceful Republican-talk, the "unitary executive") for much of his career. Or, at least, that part of his career where he served under Republicans, anyway.

You see, that's the rough part about being a politician. Your life becomes public record. And people like Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe can turn up all kinds of fun facts about you. Like the time in July 1987, when Cheney was talking about the Boland Amendment, which banned aide to anti-Marxist militants in Nicaragua. To be exact, Cheney said "I personally do not believe the Boland Amendment applied to the president, nor to his immediate staff."

You remember that point in the Reagan administration? It was called "Iran-Contra" - a bunch of the president's aides were selling arms to one group of terrorists in Iran, so that they could funnel money to another group of terrorists in Nicaragua. And Cheney said to the committee investigating Iran-Contra that the president didn't have to follow the laws passed by Congress.

Before that, in December 1974, during the Ford administration (with Cheney as Deputy Chief of Staff), Seymour Hersh, writing for the New York Times, disclosed that the CIA was tapping phones, opening mail, and breaking into the homes of anti-war protesters. (Sound familiar? That's what Bush keeps trying to do.) And when Democrat Frank Church of Idaho headed up a Senate committee that started investigating the CIA's role in all of this, Cheney wrote that they needed to head off "congressional efforts to further encroach on the executive branch."

A few months later, when Hersh wrote an article about US subs spying on the Soviet Union, Cheney wanted to have Hersh arrested.

Making an example out of Hersh, Cheney wrote, would "create an environment" that might intimidate both the press and Congress. "Can we take advantage of it to bolster our position on the Church Committee investigation? To point out the need for limits on the scope of the investigations?" Cheney wrote. The idea, however, was scrapped to avoid attracting the Soviets' attention to Hersh's article.

And later, as Bush 41's defense secretary, Cheney didn't like the idea of telling Congress that troops were about to attack Iraqi's in Kuwait. In the 1996 PBS Frontline documentary, Cheney explained "I was not enthusiastic about going to Congress for an additional grant of authority. I was concerned that they might well vote 'no' and that would make life more difficult for us... From a constitutional standpoint, we had all the authority we needed. If we'd lost the vote in Congress, I would certainly have recommended to the president that we go forward anyway."

That's the way Cheney thinks. He honestly believes, just like Nixon, that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal." Cheney said on ABC This Week in January 2002, "in 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job." And he wants to do all he can to make the president all-powerful. (Do you really think that a C-student and frat-boy came up with the idea of the "signing statement" on his own?)

And he's doing it again. In the November 27 issue of the New Yorker, Hersh reported that, a month before the midterm elections, Cheney was in a national security roundtable.

"If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran," Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.

Cheney said the White House would circumvent any legislative restrictions "and thus stop Congress from getting in its way," he said.

So, unless Congress is willing to take firm action and get oversight on everything that the president and vice president do, we could very well get into another endless war in the Middle East. And there are still people out there who'd support it, too.

There is one thing that we can do. It will never become law, because very few politicians are willing to have their names attached to it, but the first thing we need to do is institute a draft. Because Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has it right: the only way that a lot of the American public are going to oppose going to war is if their children are definitely going to be in the foxholes. War is good for business - look how much money companies like Halliburton (and, uh... former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney...) have made off this last one.

Deep Water in a Shallow "Fountain"

* * * Warning!! * * *
The following review doesn't even try to avoid spoilers. There's no way to talk about this film without revealing entirely too much. And I'm not even going to try. I recommend not reading any farther until you've seen the movie The Fountain.

I will say that it's worth seeing at least once, but not necessarily at full price, and definitely not if you're a single guy. For the average guy, this is a movie to take a girl to - preferably a girl who enjoys having long philosophical talks about the meaning of what you've just seen. If both of you watch Nascar and reruns of Beverly Hillbillies or the Munsters, just move on now.

Go. This is not the movie for you. Borat is playing at the other end of the Cineplex. Just go there. Trust me. You'll be much happier.

We have now stopped making "safe" comments about The Fountain. You have been warned.

Yesterday, we went to see The Fountain, a new film staring Wolverine and that lady from the Mummy movies. This is one of the few times I wished that I smoked pot - I suspect that the best way to see this movie is to be stoned out of your mind.

The ads say that it's "a love story that spans 3,000 years!" That may or may not be true. From my vantage point, though, what we had were two stories and a symbolic metaphor, all twisted together into an hour-and-a-half-long rope.

There's no real coherent, linear story line here, nor is there a standard "happy ending." I suppose that some people might leave the theater feeling that this was a life-changing movie. Those same people probably also get more out of the works of Deepak Chopra than I do.

It was a beautiful movie, a giant, throbbing romance novel of a movie. The modern-day love story between the dying woman and the research scientist is a real heart-render. Some people might even think that this movie was deep and meaningful. However, if you've already come to terms with the fact that everybody dies, you aren't likely to find your view of the universe altered by The Fountain - it's shallow, in the same way that a model earnestly explaining a self-help concept she'd read about: easy to watch, but in the end, you come away slightly confused by some of the concepts that had been washing over you.

Hugh Jackman was given the opportunity to emote like a champ. His character goes through the entire range of human emotion, and he did it with style. He might very well garner an Academy Award nomination for his work in this film. I'll be surprised if Ms. Weisz does the same, though.

Between The Fountain and his stints in the various X-Men movies (and the upcoming Wolverine, for that matter), did you notice that Hugh Jackman is apparently making a career out of potentially immortal characters?

It all ties together pretty well. In the future, the bald Wolverine is shepherding an ancient tree toward a nebula called Sebulba, he talks to the tree as if it were a dead lover, and he keeps seeing the present-day Mrs. Mummy as a hallucination. In the present, the dying Mummy-lady shows Dr. Wolverine the nebula Sebulba through her telescope, he's trying to cure cancer with the bark of a newly-discovered old-growth tree from Central America, and she has written a book about the Conquistador Wolverine. In the past (or in her book, or maybe both), Conquistador Wolverine (or would that be Carcayú?) is on a quest through the Mayan empire trying to find the Tree of Life.

I'm really not clear whether the last scene of the Conquistador storyline, where he flowers to death, was the abrupt end of a relatively abrupt man, or a hallucination caused by the Tree Sap of Life ripping through his body. I can go either way on that question. (My wife, by the way, leaned over at that point and whispered, "See? That's why you shouldn't swallow apple seeds.") Although the fact that Conquistador Wolverine turned into a shrub, and Bald Wolverine was pushing a tree through space in a snow-globe is an interesting coincidence. And Dr. Wolverine planted a seed on top of her grave when she died, which means that the tree he's trucking through the stars might just be the tree that she grew into from... oh, Christ, forget it. It's not worth the headache.

There were a number of recurring themes in The Fountain. A vaguely Moorish lattice-work, golden light, the cross, and (obviously) the Tree of Life all recur frequently. Interestingly, so do small hairs and gummy saliva.

In this film, we had an Australian man and a British woman starring in the main roles of a film shot in New York and Canada. Throughout the modern and futuristic portions of the film, they sounded generically Midwest-American. However, in the early part of the film (when they're both playing Spaniards), they used vaguely British accents.

Some hard-core Christians are going to be upset about the way this movie intertwines Christian, Buddhist and pagan imagery, and even a touch of Mayan and Muslim, if you look hard enough. But they'd have a hard time with the central concept of this movie: that this man either lived forever, or kept getting reincarnated, or was a symbol for eternal life.

I think that my son Luke had the best summation of the movie. He thought that the target demographic for this movie was potheads and people who don't understand movie trailers. Which seems close enough, but I think he left out New Agey types and people who read romance novels.

Having seen The Fountain, I have to say that I don't think it will make a great deal of money in the theaters. But I also won't be surprised if the first run of DVDs sells out within days.

Who was the Walrus again?

It was forty years ago today, when... OK, forty years ago yesterday... I've been busy, OK? Anyway, it was November 8, 1966, when Paul McCartney died in a car crash. At least, that's what some people believed in 1969, and some of them possibly still believe today. While most of the world has accepted that Paul McCartney survived to see his 64th birthday this year, there are always people who will continue to believe something else, against all evidence.

Wikipedia summarized the legend of Paul's death like this:

The most common belief is that late in the evening on Tuesday, November 8, 1966 (a "stupid, bloody Tuesday"), McCartney, while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, stormed out of a recording session after an argument with the other Beatles, and rode off in his Austin-Healey. "He didn't notice that the lights had changed" ("A Day in the Life") because he was busy watching the pretty girl on the sidewalk ("Lovely Rita") after narrowly missing her dressed in blue (she's the blur on the back of Abbey Road) jaywalking ("Blue Jay Way"). He then crashed into a light pole (a car crash sound is heard in "Revolution 9") and, dying from massive head injuries, his hair and face burned (having "lost (his) hair" according to "Don't Pass Me By"). He was pronounced dead on a "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins" (the day and time mentioned in "She's Leaving Home"). A funeral procession was held days later (as implied in the Abbey Road album cover), with John presiding over the service and gravedigger George burying the body.

According to believers, McCartney had been replaced with the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest. The name of this look-alike has been recorded as William Shears Campbell, Billy Shears (the name of the fictitious leader of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - a role actually played by Ringo Starr), William Sheppard (based on the inspiration for the Beatle song "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"), or some combination of the names. According to legend purists, William Shears was given plastic surgery, but they failed to repair a scar on his lip (or it was a result of the surgery), and that's how you can tell the difference between the two Pauls. According to some students of the bass guitar, the style of his playing changed after Sergeant Pepper.

Having died during post-production on Sergeant Pepper, the most clues to his death are said to be found there.

The reality is harder to pin down - was it a publicity stunt by the Beatles or their record company? Overzealous fans with both too much imagination and too much time on their hands? Or did Paul actually die, and these clues point to one of the greatest conspiracies in rock music?

A Detroit disc jockey named Russ Gibb was the first known kickstart of the rumor on a major-market outlet. Several books have been written on the subject (both on Paul's death, and on the hoax about Paul's death), and radio and TV shows have examined the controversy from both sides.

Overall, this can be considered to be one of the major conspiracy theories of the twentieth century. Perhaps without the world-changing implications of the death of, say, a world leader, but a self-propelled behemoth of urban mythology nonetheless.