Fun with Christians II-A

You know, I've had a lot of arguments with christians over the years. I've used logic, insults, scholarly analysis; I've reduced them to tears and impotent rage. It's never worked. Little fuckers are too pigheaded. Plus, I have this suspicion that, once they start arguing with a heathen, they automatically discount any argument, regardless of how obvious or reasonable it seems, as coming from a poisoned well. So I decided to do a very bad thing.

I was going to lie, and pretend to be another christian, but one with a different slant on the scriptures.

There were challenges involved (for example, I was going to have to remember to capitalize "Christian" and "Scripture"). But I figured I was up to the challenge.

(Oh, by the way, if you didn't read the original post, now might be a good time. And feel free to borrow any of the following arguments that you like. Few of them are original to me, anyway.)

I'm not going to go over the entire argument. You can read it on your own if you want. What I explained seemed quite reasonable to me, and between years of arguing with Christians, and with the benefit of having the internet for research, I figured that I could throw down with the best of the theocrats.

But here's how it went. With our boy Bobby interjecting variations on "I don't understand what you're getting at," I wrote pretty much the following thesis. Feel free to use it, but give me credit. I'm relatively proud of it.

I mentioned the tired old "shellfish" argument, but only as one piece of a set of three. I’m fully aware of Matthew 15:11, where He cast off the kosher rules ("Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man."), but on that same subject, you should remember Matthew 5:17-19, where Jesus upheld the Jewish dietary laws:

"Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

However, let’s put aside that argument. There’s more to Leviticus than just chapters 18 and 20. Why are you demeaning gay people, but not the other abominators? Because seafood and gay sex aren’t the only abominations in the Bible.

Have you killed a teenager for yelling at their parents lately? Leviticus 20:9:

For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

(KJV, of course. I’m normally an NIV kind of guy, but you can’t beat King James for the beauty of the language.)

For that matter, all of Leviticus 20 is a killer. Literally in some cases; in others, the violator is left either childless or shunned: adultery or marrying your mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, are apparently capital offenses; weirdly, having sex with your sister just gets you shunned.

But, of course you know that, since that’s one of the chapters you quoted.

A lot of Leviticus 19 is pretty straight-forward, Ten-Commandments-like stuff, but there are a few exceptions: not planting your field with two different seeds won’t come up a lot for the average city-dweller, but have you worn a cotton-poly shirt? It's forbidden (Lev 19:19). Haircuts and shaving are right out (Lev 19:27), as are tattoos (Lev 19:28), astrology (Lev 19:26) and fortune tellers (Lev 19:31).

While you’re at Leviticus 19, please note that you are allowed to have sex with another man’s slave, but you have to sacrifice a ram to do it. (Lev 19:20-22).

And that’s just Leviticus. Why do you choose to selectively follow some parts of the Old Testament, but not others? The dietary laws were pulled (or not, depending on your reading of Matthew 5), and the daily animal sacrifices were stopped by the selective reading of Hebrews 10:2-11 (of course, it doesn’t say that you should stop, just that it can never “take away sins” – oddly, the purpose is not simply to take away sins, but because the Lord Thy God commanded it, so is that really a good argument?). But I’ll bet you still get haircuts, and I’ll bet that, even if you have a wool suit, the thread holding it together is cotton.

You can't just selectively decide which parts of the Old Testament to follow. Particularly not when (as I said before) you aren't even necessarily following an accurate translation.

Being straight myself, I don’t have any particular stake in the question, other than Christ’s exhortation to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Like I said, I may use NIV [New International Version of the Bible] simply for clarity, but I love the KJV [King James] language.)

But I’ve found that most arguments regarding homosexuality being a sin are simply mistranslations and phrases taken out of context.

One of the words mistranslated that way is arsenokoites. It’s a Greek word formed from the words for “male” and “bed.” It isn’t not found anywhere else in the Bible, and has not been found anywhere in the contemporary Greek of Paul’s time. We don’t know what it means. Although you can see where some translators might have decided on that meaning, it could also refer to male prostitutes with female customers (a common practice in the Roman world - look at Pompeii).

Furthermore, the word often translated as “effeminate” (1 Corinthians 6:9, for example; the Greek word malakoi) means “soft” or “vulnerable.” The same word is translated as “soft” in reference to clothing (Matthew 11:8, Luke 7:25) and as “illness” (Matthew 4:23 and 9:35). It is not used anywhere else in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 6:9, it probably refers those who are “soft,” “pliable,” “unreliable,” or “without courage or stability.” The translation of malakoi as “effeminate” is incorrect and impossible to justify based on ancient usage.

One of my very good friends was kicked out of the Air Force because of her beliefs and her lifestyle. The mealy-mouthed phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin” makes very little sense when you consider that the “sin” in question is an important part (possibly the most important part) of someone’s personality and emotional life.

I can’t change anyone’s beliefs. But I can point out some logical inconsistencies in your arguments.

First of all, marriage in biblical times was not based on romantic love but on a legal contract usually entered by parents on behalf of their children. The Biblical view held that the role of women was property belonging to their father or husband. Women were members of the people of God only because of their relationship to their father, brother or husband; women could not carry circumcision (the “sign of the covenant”) in their bodies, and were therefore less important, except as breeding stock. (Women were listed in there among the “do not covets,” right next to the house, the servants and the animals - Exodus 20:17.)

People had children specifically to continue the family; the only way a man could live on after his death was through his children, and should never remain unmarried (one of the many words that ancient Hebrew did not contain was any term for “bachelor”). And if you want to see a blatant demonstration of male dominance over women, check out Genesis 38.

The Greek word for romantic love (eros) is never used in the New Testament, though it was the most common word for love in the Greek-speaking world. In fact, the Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek do not have a word for “homosexual.” Old Testament Hebrew is a primitive language, the first step above picture writing (some historians think that it might be the first alphabetic language). Like Egyptian, it originally had only consonants (no vowels). It had about a 30,000-word vocabulary (modern English has over 300,000 words). One Hebrew word could be used in dozens of different ways, with the meaning determined by the context. Each word was made up of 3 letters of the alphabet and usually expressed some form of activity or action. It is impossible to translate most Hebrew words exactly into modern English. Linguists and translators end up having to guess a lot.

The Greek of the New Testament was more complex than Hebrew, with a 250,000-word vocabulary and several words for “soft” concepts (feelings, philosophical concepts, and so on) which were somewhat beyond the Hebrew language. For example, Greek had four different words for “love.” The Greek used in the New Testament is different from classical or modern Greek. For many years, some scholars thought that New Testament Greek was a special language created by the Holy Spirit. Then, in the late nineteenth century, documents from the time of the New Testament (letters, bills of sale, and news reports) were discovered written in exactly the same kind of Greek (called koine) that the Bible used. The King James Version of the Bible, on the other hand, was translated in 1611, long before these manuscripts were discovered.

The reason that there are so many different Bible translations (about 30 major ones) today is because the exact meaning of many words is still in question, and even what should be included as original material is hotly debated by Biblical scholars. To read bits and pieces of biblical material into present-day culture is to misrepresent the Bible and to distort its message of God’s love in Christ for all people in today’s world.

For example, “sodomy” is a modern word, and its origin is taken out of context. A “Sodomite” in the Bible is simply a person who lives in Sodom (which includes, by the way, Lot and his family). The term “Sodomite” in the King James version of Deuteronomy 23:17 and I Kings 14:24 is an incorrect translation of the Hebrew word for “temple prostitute.” (See “The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology” by Mark D. Jordan, University of Chicago Press, 1997.)

No Jewish scholars before the first Christian century taught that the sin of Sodom was sexual. None of the biblical references to Sodom mention sexual sins, but view Sodom as an example of injustice, lack of hospitality to strangers, idolatry and as a symbol for desolation and destruction (see Deuteronomy 29:22-28 and 32:32; Ezekiel 16:49-50; Jeremiah 49:18; 50:41; Isaiah 13:19-22 and Matthew 10:14-15).

And not only are you misunderstanding both the language or culture of the time, many aspects of the Bible are completely ignored.

Leviticus 12:1-8 declares that a woman is unclean for 33 days after giving birth to a boy and for 66 days after giving birth to a girl. It goes on to demand that certain animals must be offered as a burnt offering. Read Leviticus 23 to see the detailed regulations concerning “complete rest” on the Sabbath day, and the demands of animal sacrifice. Leviticus 18:19 forbids a husband from having sex with his wife during her menstrual period. Leviticus 19:19 forbids mixed breeding of various kinds of cattle, sowing various kinds of seeds in your field or wearing “a garment made from two kinds of material mixed together.”

For that matter, Leviticus 25:44 says that you may own slaves, as long as they’re from neighboring nations (which would be, for Americans, Mexico and Canada). On the other hand, Leviticus 21:20 says that you can’t approach the altar of God if you have a defect in your sight. I’m pretty sure that would include glasses.

Exodus tells us some interesting facts. For example, 21:7 tells you how to sell your daughter into slavery, while 35:2 tells you to kill someone who works on the Sabbath.

That’s why I prefer to take my faith from the New Testament. (For example, Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”) After all, it says right in Colossians 2:14, “He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” (This of course, ignores the “jot and tittle” argument, but I have no problem reconciling that.)

Jesus and Paul both spoke against the misuse of Leviticus, both in Mark 7 and Colossians 2. In fact, I kind of like part of that last bit from Mark. “And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”

Of course, on the subject of Paul, let’s remember that he only came around after Jesus was crucified, and like many people who end up “born again,” he went a little overboard. He wrote more than any other author of the Bible. Paul’s writings have been taken out of context and twisted to punish and oppress every identifiable minority in the world: Jews, children, women, blacks, slaves, politicians, divorced people, convicts, pro choice people, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, religious reformers, the mentally ill… the list goes on and on.

Paul is often difficult and confusing to understand. Since most of his letters were written in response to news from other people, reading Paul can be like listening to one side of a telephone conversation. We know, or think we know, what Paul is saying, but we have to guess what the other side has said. As 2 Peter 3:16-18 pointed out, we have to be on guard against using Paul’s writings in unhealthy and destructive ways.

A few final verses, and I guess I’ll be done (and it’s about time, isn’t it?). Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” It doesn’t specify where they find love, but merely that they love God and His Son. That is the path to deliverance.

Romans 2:1: “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.” That must be an important message - it’s repeated several times.

Actually, I’ve quoted enough. For further reading, you can look up the following (in no particular order). John 12:47; 13:34-35; all of Acts 10 (but specifically verses 28 and 34); I Corinthians 13 (yes, the whole thing); all of Galatians (especially 3:1-5 and 23-28; 5:14-15 and 22-23); all of Ephesians (especially chapter 2); Philippians 2:1-13; I John 3:13-21; 4:7-19; and, most of all, Romans 15:1-7.
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(Final update, if anyone cares.)

Fun With Christians II

OK, so awesome inauguration today. Great speech. Tears. The world is suddenly a better place. I'm... what is this feeling? Is it "happy"? I've heard that word. I know that there are people who think it means something...

Ah, to hell with them. I've got bigger fish to fry.

As anyone who knows me (which includes the three people who regularly follow this blog) can tell you, I love a good argument. The ebb and flow of intellectual discourse, or simply devastating a particularly unthinking opponent with simple logic - I can't help myself.

So when I find a blog calling itself Go Share Your Faith!, obviously, I had to check it out, and... well, you know, share my faith.

Specifically, let's look at this entry, amusingly entitled Uh…Being Gay is NOT a gift; it’s a sin…period. Which, right off, shows you that they're open to divergent viewpoints, right? But it starts like this.

Yes, you read that right. Being Gay Homosexual is an abomination…not a “Gift from God.”

I’m not sure which bible this “Pastor” is reading but he evidently doesn’t read very closely. How does one discount, or totally miss the following scriptures?

Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.

Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

He also quoted two other Bible verses (1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:8 - feel free to look those up on your own if you want to. They aren't really germane to this discussion.)

Now, lest you think that I’m picking unfairly on you…Mr. Homosexual, notice that others are condemned by God also; murderers, sexually immoral, liars, perjurers, etc.

None of these actions are acceptable to God.

So what to do?

Repent of your wicked ways.

Believe the Gospel you currently mock.

And then, only at the end of this entry, do we get the Youtube video that this guy objects to. Which is pretty much the definition of "putting the cart before the horse."
Basically (if you have video issues), it's a little less than 2 minutes long, and it's a bit from the Oprah show where a minister is telling a gay man that it's OK, and "being gay is a gift from God."

I'm not sure that would have been my message, but I'm no minister. But you know me (OK, statistically, you probably don't - let's just move on), I had to post a comment.

You know, if you're going to quote the Old Testament, you should live up to all of its requirements, like not eating shellfish, shaving or wearing clothing made from two different threads (you know, like a cotton-poly blend). And, incidentally, you should probably study it a little closer.

Both quotes from Leviticus, for example, in the ancient Hebrew, are mistranslations - they refer to homosexual rape, not homosexuality itself.

The author applied the Hebrew term shakab to the "thou shalt not lie with" sequence and mishkab to the "as with" woman sequence. Mishkab occurs 46 times in 44 verses, all in the books of Moses. Mishkab generally means "bed," as in Leviticus 15:4 when the scripture states if a man lies in a bed [mishkab] and a woman has bled on the sheets, he is unclean, or as in Numbers 31:17 where God commands that every woman who has been to "bed" [mishkab] with a man (and therefore might be carrying an "unborn baby") should be slain. Yada, yada, yada: all pretty self-explanatory.

Shakab occurs 213 times in 194 verses, so we have plenty of context from which to draw a closer definition of the term. I looked through each of these verses and found that in 101 instances shakab meant to go to bed, or to sleep, in the most innocuous sense. In 51 instances shakab means to "sleep with the fathers," not in any perverse Christian sex fantasy sense, but meaning that they died, as in the "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes" sense.

...In 52 instances (virtually all of the sexual instances) the term shakab is used to describe a sexual encounter typified by deceit or force, in other words, some type of rape. Consider the following examples:

"Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie [shakab] with him, that we may preserve the seed of our father." (Genesis 19:32) Lot's daughters rape their father, at least that's his story, and he's sticking to it.

"And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien [shakab] with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us." (Genesis 26:10) Here Isaac tries to pass his wife, Rebekah, off as his sister. Rightly assuming that Rebekah would not have willingly had sex with any Philistine who offered, we can assume that among the Philistines it was considered a boys-will-be-boys type of issue to rape unmarried Jewish women. Even so the king, Abimelech, delivers an edict forbidding anyone to "molest" Isaac (again with the male rape thing), or his wife.

Previously, in Genesis 20, Abraham had practiced the same deceit with his wife, Sarah. Abimilech, thinking Sarah was Abraham's sister, kidnapped her, with the intention of raping her. He was forced by God to return her to Abraham, to whom he paid a fine.

..."And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay [shakab] with her, and defiled her." (Genesis 34:2)

"That she called unto the men of her house, and spake unto them, saying, See, he hath brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie [shakab] with me, and I cried with a loud voice:" (Genesis 39:14) In this story Joseph, living as a trusted slave in the house of Potifer, is sexually harassed by Potifer's wife. She's after him to have sex with her and he'll have none of it. One day he ends up alone with her and when he realizes this he rushes to get out of the house only escaping by shedding his coat which she has hold of. When Potifer comes home she cries rape, claiming as evidence the coat he "left behind." Joseph is sent to prison.

"Whosoever lieth [shakab] with a beast shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 22:19) Assuming that no ewe is "asking for it" we can assume that "lie with" in this instance refers to nonconsensual sex, or rape, albeit of an animal.

And everything else you quote is the same. But it takes more room to prove that than it does for you to (mis)quote it.

Perhaps you should worship the Word of God, not the Mistranslation of God.

I thought it was a good point. It covered a basic flaw in the argument. I was happy with it.

And it almost didn't get posted at first. I got an email from the blogger, Robert Pavich, who said

do some research before you bring this old tired one out will you?

I kid you not. That was the sum total of his response. No capitalization, limited punctuation.

Out of curiosity, I went back to the post, where I found that my name was used, followed by

Cynic,
Next time do your homework…the shellfish argument is a dead end.

Now, that annoyed me even more, because, aside from the fact that shrimp were a throwaway argument within the first two lines (specifically, one argument in a set of three), do you mean to tell me that that's the only point that he picked to dismiss? The Shrimp!?!!?

And further, without my response in there, a casual reader might think that I was telling a previous poster (who also mentioned the shellfish argument) that he was wrong. And since it's a very valid point (Leviticus does ban a lot of things that are being ignored here), you might be able to see where I was a little bit annoyed.

So, I hit "reply" on the email, and told our boy Bobby:

I find it fascinating that you would dismiss my comment out of hand, without arguing. Do you have a point?

I used a scholarly analysis of the translation of Leviticus in as an argument. And your response is "Do your research"? Do you even listen to what you say? I gather that you're too hypocritical to allow an argument that you can't refute.

It's sad that you are allowing your personal prejudices to blind you to the word of God. "But in vain do they worship me, Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men." (Matthew 15:9)

I really love throwing scripture quotes at them to refute their ignorant points. (Not, admittedly, that this guy had anything like a point...)

Apparently, throwing around words like “hypocrisy” makes Bobby cranky. Because, after a brief email exchange, I went back to his site, to find my post, preceded by:

Blog owner’s note: I didn’t approve this comment at first because it’s a rehash of an old argument but after some reflection, I thought that it would be useful to let it be posted. I say this for one reason. I’m going to assume that the commenter is trying to find the truth of what scripture actually says on the subject and is not just trying to “make his point.”

I think that it would be beneficial to play this out no matter how it goes.

So with that said, here is his comment:

And he then even responded.

Bill,

I’m going to ask what I already asked in the email that I sent to you just to get us started on an even keel so everyone reading can follow along….ok? bear with me.

I’m going to try and understand your arguments so I’m going to restate them and you tell me if I have it ok?

1.) Shellfish. Because homosexuality is called an abomination in Leviticus then anything else that’s prohibited (like the eating of shellfish) should be outlawed also and I’m hypocritical to just pick on those that practice homosexuality.

2.) The word “lie” shakab in Leviticus is mistranslated and really should be “homosexual rape” due to it’s inclusion in passages where forced sex occurs.
OR
It just means “to lie down” as in “go to sleep.”

Have I understood your arguments correctly?

And since I figured we were off to the races, I got right into it.

Well, because I’m just a backwards sort of guy, I’ll take your arguments in reverse order. Tonight, we’ll talk about your second point.

2.)The word… shakab in Leviticus is mistranslated and really should be “homosexual rape”

Well, technically, we don’t speak ancient Hebrew, and so the translation gets tricky. For example, when two different words are used, is it possible that they mean different things?

Or, let’s put it another way. Let’s take the phrase “compare apples and oranges.” Only, just to make things interesting, let’s take two different words from another language, and replace them. What that means is, Leviticus 18:22 now reads, “Thou shalt not eat apples, as thou do oranges: it is abomination.”

See, the ancient Hebrew word shakab doesn’t translate directly. And neither does mishkab, if you want to be totally honest about it. They are (let’s be real) two totally different words.

Now, there are three distinct versions of Hebrew in the Bible, usually called “Archaic Biblical Hebrew” (10th to 6th century - Exodus 15 through Judges 5), Biblical Hebrew (most of the Old Testament), and “Late Biblical Hebrew” (Ezra, Nehemiah - mostly the same as Biblical Hebrew, with a few adapted words from other cultures). There’s other forms - Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew (from about 300 BC through about 100 AD) and Mishnaic Hebrew (from about 100 AD through 300 or 400 AD) come to mind, but we’ll ignore them.

Each of these versions of ancient Hebrew only had a few thousand words. In comparison, the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (pub. 1989) contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. This doesn’t count 10,000 sub-entries (derivative words), or medical and scientific terms, Latin words used in law and religion, French words used in cooking, German words used in academic writing, Japanese words used by martial artists and anime fans, or any slang or computer terms (like, say, iPod or email).

With that difference in the depth of the language, why would the Biblical writers use two different words for one thing? Why would you not eat apples, as you do oranges? Unless we were talking about two different acts.

If the Hebrew word shakab is used in the Old Testament to refer to the act of sex 53 times, and in 52 of those times, we’re talking a forcible act, what does that say? (And, to be honest, since the woman in ancient times was a piece of property, the one, single other instance could be a forcible sex act as well. Do you really want to get into the specifics of Old World sex in this forum?)

I listed a few specifics to show that shakab was the word for “forcible sex” in the Bible. Feel free to point out where I might have erred.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about Old Testament abominations.

We'll see where this gets us.
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Update: And, surprise! He didn't back down - he actually responded. Part 2

The Real Bush Legacy

On January 12, 2009, outgoing President George W. Bush gave the last press conference of his presidency. In it, he reminisced about his view of the last four years, joked with the press corps, and blatantly ignored the longest-serving member of the White House press corps, despite the fact that she was front row center with her hand raised the whole time.

He made some intersting statements. He never admitted responsibility for anything that happened: he claimed that the economy was tanking, for example, because he "inherited a recession."

When asked to revisit whether there were any mistakes he had made, he managed to come up with three this time around:

1. "putting a Mission Accomplished on a aircraft carrier"

2. "could I have done something differently (during Katrina), like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge."

3. "I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake."

So, one purely cosmetic thing he did, one purely cosmetic thing he didn't do, and one substansive issue, but one that he completely failed to do when he tried. But at least he's learned to prep for questions that he wasn't able to answer the first time around. (Unlike, say, Sarah Palin.)

Weirdly, in talking about his third mistake, he said "As an aside, one thing I proved is that you can actually campaign on the issue and get elected. In other words, I don't believe talking about Social Security is the third rail of American politics."

Yeah, George. Sure. Two things, though.

One - you didn't "campaign" on it, you started actually working on privatizing after the 2004 election. (You even mentioned that ten seconds earlier. Please don't spin around that fast any more - you'll make yourself dizzy.)

Two - George, they shut you down on this issue, even after your stage-managed "town hall" meetings. Do you know what "third rail" really means?

He followed that up with two "disappointments."

Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.

He wasn't responsible for Abu Ghraib, his policies or those of his cabinet didn't lead to the abuse of detainees: it was just "didn't go according to plan." And the non-existance of WMDs, despite having been briefed repeatedly that those weapons weren't there, wasn't really a "mistake" - just a "disappointment."

In response, Marketwatch published a column entitled Seven Most Horrible Things About Bush Presidency, subtitled "Commentary: An alternative to commander-in-chief's view of his time in office." It starts:

Contrary to the president's own assessment of his tenure earlier this week, it was an astonishing eight years - and not in a good way. The country suffered two recessions, and two shooting wars. The government botched its response to a brazen attack by terrorists on two cities, and then four years later utterly failed to react when another city was consumed by a natural disaster.

The president took on tyranny by embracing torture. He fought a war for freedom by trampling human rights. He enriched the already rich, excused their excesses, and then bailed them out of trouble and handed us the bill.

He politicized everything, promoted incompetents, and -- whenever things got tight -- appealed to our basest instincts of fear, greed, ignorance and hate.
Bush had all the luck of Jimmy Carter, the attention to detail of Ronald Reagan, the adaptability of Lyndon Johnson, the abiding respect for the Constitution of Richard Nixon, the humility of Teddy Roosevelt, the rhetorical skills of Calvin Coolidge, the fiscal restraint of Franklin Roosevelt, the cronyism of Warren Harding, and the overreaching idealism of Woodrow Wilson.

And his election had all the legitimacy of Rutherford Hayes'.

It's a blistering commentary - I recommend you read all of it. And since 2005, MarketWatch has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dow Jones, along with the Wall Street Journal and several other internet properties. So it would take a truly cynical mind and a blatant rewriting of history to say that MarketWatch is a "liberal bastion."

Despite the Bush Legacy Project struggling to spin the positive aspects of the 43rd president's time in office, I think it's pretty clear what Bush's actual legacy is going to be.

Vocabulary Worksheet

I've been thinking about language a little bit lately. Specifically profanity.

Let's start with the term (one, in fact, of the Seven Words George Carlin Couldn't Say On Television), "motherfucker." Think about that one for just a second. Consider that it could easily be a synonym for "father." Why is that so bad?

Further, why is that a negative, but "fatherfucker" isn't? This sounds sexist to me. And actually, it is, but the reason dates back centuries. "Motherfucker" is bad, because if somebody besides Dad is having sex with Mom, then the matter of who is going to inherit the property and titles comes into question. (And in the days when that mattered, men often had mistresses, so there's no negative definition attached to the "fatherfucker." You just didn't talk about it.)

For that matter, why is it, when somebody is trying to explain that your situation has gone downhill fast, do they tell you "You're screwed"? Why do they say that like it's a bad thing? Is there such a thing as a bad screw? I mean, outside of prison rape, I can't think of one, really.

I've had a reasonable amount of sex in my life, and, while not all of it was particularly memorable, I can't say that any of it was bad. So why is the word synonymous with everything going downhill?

For that matter, you'll notice that "pussy" is mostly used as a term for cowardice. There's definite sexism there, and I've got to say, it's also misleading. Some of the people with the biggest balls I've ever seen are women (another phrase that's not only sexist, but in this case, an anatomical impossibility - we definitely need to figure out a term for bravery that doesn't involve the sex organs).

For that matter, why is it that "having balls" is usually a good thing, but "being a dick" isn't? Aren't the two somewhat intimately connected? (Of course, if you think about it, it can take real balls to really be a dick, so there are times when it all comes together. So to speak.)

Pretty much anything involving "shit" is negative. Which is as it should be, in my opinion. On the other hand, while some people have very attractive asses, it's usually bad to be an ass. Not as bad as being a dick - slightly more playful. Less serious, let's say.

A real ass will frequently talk shit. Which is a metaphor that holds together beautifully - if, in fact, "beautifully" can be used in this particular context. However, you can also talk shit while you're being a dick, which doesn't work as well. And if you're being a pussy and you talk shit, wouldn't that lead to an infection that you really don't want?

Religion is frequently invoked as profanity - in fact, the original meaning of "profane" comes from the Latin term profanare (to desecrate), which stems in turn from pro fano (not allowed into the temple - pro, "out in front of" + fano, the ablative case of fanum, or "temple").

(Again, don't ever say I can't be educational.)

For the most part, though, religious terms are invoked as interjections ("Oh, God, here she comes again"), often more as emphasis ("Jesus Christ!") than as a descriptive - there is no profane form of "Christ-like." Two of the few religious terms that have adjectival or adverbial forms are "hell" (as in "hellish") or "God-damned" - and weirdly, some more spiritually-minded people take more offense to "Goddamned" in the adjectival than they do to "screwed" as a descriptive. (Which, I would guess, emphasizes more their belief in the Invisible Sky Person than their interest in sex - a sad state of affairs, in my opinion, but there it is. You get your pleasure where you can: mine doesn't tend to be found in a church, but I believe that a good bed should be venerated, at least a little bit...)

Now, here's a question for you: if you have your head up your own ass, you're being stupid. But if you have your head up somebody else's ass, it can be good for your career. It seems to me that the results of the two situations should be pretty much the same: you can't see, you can't hear, and let's not even talk about what you smell and taste. And why would somebody reward you for making them uncomfortable? At least, I'm pretty sure that I'd be uncomfortable, especially with some of the bowling ball skulls I've seen on some people.

Plus, if you can get your head up your own ass, shouldn't you get applause for being flexible, at least? I mean, there's better things to do with your time, but at least you've been working out, right?

I like some of the more imaginative terms in the field of profanity: "ass-hat" brings you back to that "head up somewhere it doesn't belong" concept, in a reasonably original way. "Fucknozzle" for that matter, is both a great anatomical metaphor, and has the added advantage that nobody else uses it. So at least you get points for surprise.

I guess my point is that people need to consider what they're saying. There's too much freedom in the English language for you to restrict yourself to the same seven tired terms.

Fun with Christians

So, thanks to another blog with the fascinating name of Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes, I stumbled across a post by a guy named Ray Comfort. Now, Ray, in some kind of weird Christian version of cynicism (which is, after all, my job, not his), calls his blog "Athieist Central" (can he be sued for false advertising?).

Anyway, his was a Chistmas Day post wherein he tried to establish that you can't prove that Darwin existed, any more than you can prove that Jesus existed.

No, I'm serious. He did. I was stunned, too. And his "arguments" were just sad.

1. There’s no corpse, because it decayed away - just a skeleton.

2. Comparing the DNA of the corpse to the DNA of his descendants, and to the DNA of a hair sample from his desk wouldn't work, because Comfort wouldn't accept that it was Darwin's. "Also, how do you know that those who claim to be his descendents are actually his offspring, without having faith in genealogical records?"

3. Same problem with photographs, books, papers and other evidence. He'd just say you can't prove it was actually Darwin. Just somebody claiming to be Darwin.

And the sad part is, there are undoubtedly people who think that argument is effective. So, of course, I posted a reply. I can't help myself.

So your "evidence" consists of just saying "No, you're wrong" to every piece of evidence pulled up? What are you? Three years old? They have evidence to prove Darwin existed. You have only belief that Jesus did. So which is it, Ray? Are you an idiot, or a three-year-old?

Oh, and two things, Ray. Your first line and (almost) your last.

Watch how atheists avoid answering this--there's good reason for their silence.
As I write this, there's 103 responses. Oops.

But 2,000 years after His death and resurrection, I can introduce you to Him. There’s my empirical proof.
Really, Ray?

empirical adj derived from experiment and observation rather than theory.

When you have no idea what the word means, you probably shouldn't use it.

And then, just because I hadn't annoyed enough people yet, I hit some guy calling himself "Da Bomb," who wrote ".... it sounds like you've made up your mind already, you want evidence that prooves something or else you WON'T call it evidence. The Bible's account is evidence and the article I gave you before. To reject it entirely would be willfully ignorant."

So I thought I'd tick him off, too.By getting all fact-based on his ass.

Da Bomb:
You said: "The Bible's account is evidence and the article I gave you before. To reject it entirely would be willfully ignorant."

Well, there's your problem right there. In fact, it's the difference between science and religion. Science, taken as an overarching field (rather than the specific specialties), calls upon s specific, proven set of fact libraries. It has proven, evidence-based fact that it can call upon.

In contrast to that, Religion (again, taken as a large field, and not any of the specific denominations) draws upon a variety of texts, some of which conflict openly with others. For purposes of this discussion, let's restrict ourselves to Christianity, just because it narrows the playing field a bit.

Now, your first argument comes in with which version of the "Old Testament" you're using. Do you accept the Septuagint translation, or do you go with the more common Masoretic text? Let's assume that you're going with the Masoretic text. You then ignore the Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books?

Remember, the Roman Catholic Church recognizes Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and Greek additions to Esther and Daniel. The Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151.

Some other Eastern Orthodox Churches include a few others, like 2 Esdras and Odes. The Syriac Orthodox Church have The Apocalypse of Baruch and the Letter of Baruch. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a few of their own, too, such as Jubilees and Enoch.

The Anglican Church, having been established by Henry VIII to allow him to divorce his wives, uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically, but not as doctrine. So the Anglican Bible includes the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.

There's also 4 Maccabees, which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate (and in an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible), so it's sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.

But then we have the New Testament. Most Christian sects accept pretty much the same 27 books, but there's little issues. Revelations, for example, is both accepted and disputed, depending on who you ask. (Which makes sense - it reads like it was written by some hippie dropping acid in the desert.)

Which leads us to the New Testament apocrypha. Only the Ethiopian Orthodox Church recognizes the Shepherd of Hermas, 1 Clement and the Acts of Paul. The Syriac Peshitta, used by all the various Syrian Churches, originally did not include 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelations; Western Syrians have added the remaining 5 books to their canon more recently, but the official lectionaries for the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church and the Chaldean Syrian Church still present lessons from only the original (22 book) Peshitta. The Armenian Apostolic church has occasionally included the Third Epistle to the Corinthians, but does not always list it with the other 27 books; they also didn't accept Revelations into its Bible until about 800 years ago. The New Testament of the Coptic Bible (which is used by the Egyptian Church) includes the two Epistles of Clement.

And that doesn't even deal with translation problems. Nor does it touch on the various infancy gospels, the Jewish Christian gospels (the Gospels of the Hebrews, of the Nazarenes, or the Ebionites, for example), the Gospel of Thomas, the Passion Gospels, or any of the Gnostic texts.

So, when you try to say that the Bible proves anything, first you have to establish which Bible you're chosing to use.

I don't know why I don't get invited to more parties...

Southern California, part 2

OK, so when I said "tomorrow" on that last post, I was taking for granted that you people understand that time is relative. So... yeah, that's what I meant.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Actually, I've been in negotiations with the wife to figure out what I should and shouldn't say about various parts of this trip (hey, I have to live with the woman - you don't! Don't judge me!!)

So, Luke had his little ceremony with 455 of his newest, closest friends, and we picked up his bag and loaded it in the trunk. Then, we did the one thing that is closest to a marine's heart - we went for a meal.

Specifically, we went to a little Italian place near the base which I won't name, for reasons that might just become apparent.

We went in, and were greeted by a relatively attractive Turkish woman who turned out to be our waitress (OK, technically, I thought she was relatively attractive; Luke, who'd been stuck in close quarters for twelve weeks with 76 other guys, thought she was gorgeous). Our waitress, upon hearing we were celebrating my son's release from Boot Camp, asked us if we wanted to celebrate with a bottle of wine. We settled on a modestly-priced bottle of red, which she promptly served us. Without checking ID's on anyone. We didn't feel that we should embarrass her when she poured a glass for my other, 18-year-old son, Christopher. (Admittedly, he's well over six feet and remarkably hairy, but still...)

We then wandered around the San Diego wharfs for a while, checking out some old sailing ships in the San Diego Maritime Museum, including the HMS Surprise, which was abused for the movie Master and Commander.

Then we did something remarkably foolish. We drove from San Diego to my sister's apartment in North Hollywood. On the freeway. During rush hour. This should have taken about 2 hours. It took five.

In my defense, I didn't know any way to get there that didn't take the freeway. Plus, living in Albuquerque, it's been a while since I was in a real traffic jam. On top of which, I'm a congenital idiot.

My sister lives in LA with a man who I like a lot, but we didn't get to see him this trip because she'd just sent him to New York for his health and general welfare (apparently, LA wasn't agreeing with him).

But we saw Lilli, and the next day headed back to Albuquerque. We took a more southerly route getting back, to avoid Flagstaff, where they were anticipating snow. (My wife lived in Flagstaff - she knows their snow.)

We used pretty much the same system as we did on the way up. I took over a little earlier, because Annette, for various reasons, didn't get as much sleep as she'd hoped. Luke and I (and then Luke and Chris) crashed in the back seat, leaning on Luke's duffel bag, which was too big to fit in the trunk.

On the way, we kept seeing billboards for "The Thing!" in Dragoon, Arizona. We saw these billboards roughly once every five miles, for about two to three hundred miles, as soon as we crossed into Arizona. (And, to be entirely honest, we had no idea that "the Thing!" was in Dragoon, since that thriving metropolis is about 4 miles further off the road. But "the Thing!" was right off the highway, at a good location to stretch our legs, and we pulled over.

It was an otherwise normal truckstop, with all the usual money-making opportunities: a cafe, with (if I remember right, a Dairy Queen attached), gas, T-shirts, 900 different types of souvenirs, and "the Thing!" (They wouldn't tell you what it was, and neither will I. Hey, the American entrepreneurial spirit lives on, right?)

So, anyway, the entry fee into "the Thing!" was a whole dollar (seventy-five cents for kids). And as I was stretching my legs, Chris asked if we were going in. So I handed him a dollar and said "Tell me about it when you're done."

And then a miracle happened. You see, I'm the father, right? I make the decisions. What I say goes; it's a law of nature. It's how things have been for millions of years. (Or six thousand years, if you're a fundamentalist Christian...)

So I stop looking at the t-shirts and ceramic outhouses, and wander into the men's room, wondering if the Dairy Queen dipped cones are any better than I remember (and what I remember is dark brown paraffin over cold sweetened lard). And as I came out, wiping my hands on my pants (yeah, I sometimes wash my hands - I just don't always dry them well), my son wanders over, to tell me that everybody was waiting for me. So that we could all go into "the Thing!!"

Somewhere along the line, I'd lost control of things. I had been under the impression that I wasn't going to be wasting any time on this roadside "attraction," and that I was only wasting a buck on my son's unending curiosity. But my sons and my wife had apparently started making decisions without me, and we were apparently all going in together. (This was made much more palatable by my older son, the newly-minted marine, who was willing to pay for everybody else to go in.)

The only other memorable part of this trip, really, involved something that occurred a few seconds later, when we were standing by the counter waiting to go in. You see, I noticed that the cutoff for the children's entrance was age 18. So when my older son told the lady that we needed four tickets to get in, I piped up with "That's three adults, and one child."

That statement threw the lady behind the counter for a moment. She looked at us, and I motioned to my youngest and said "He's only 18." Which led her to ask to see some kind of ID.

Yes, that's right. You can look at this incident in one of two ways. Either we charged her a quarter to see his ID, or (my preferred version) Chris was carded to get into a cheap roadside attraction, but not to get a glass of wine.

Take it however you want.

Our little trip to Southern California

OK, so last week, my son graduated from Boot Camp. I've already talked about my feelings on the subject, so let's move past that. He did a hell of a job, and I'm proud of him.

My wife has a few physical issues. Between the Polycystic Kidney Disease (learn about it here, if you want) and the arthritis, she can't comfortably drive for more than a few hours; sitting is easier, but after a few hours in the car, there's no way she could take over the driving duties. So obviously, she had to either drive first, or not at all.

She has another issue, but it's one we thought we could exploit. If she goes to bed too early, she wakes up at about two in the morning and can't get back to sleep. It doesn't matter how tired she is, she wakes up. So, we packed the car the night before, she went to bed around six in the evening, and got up around one or two. (All times are approximate.) She got her bath, woke me up, and I stumbled my semi-comatose ass out to the car, curled up in the back seat and went back to sleep. And my other son, who at eighteen years old, feels that staying up all night is the natural way to live your life, climbed in the front seat to keep her awake.

You don't get the best sleep in the world in a car. OK, I don't: I know that some people have no problem with that, and I know from experience that when babies are cranky and refuse to sleep, strapping them in the car and going for a drive can work like a charm. But, by staying up until eleven or midnight, I was still groggy enough that I was out like a light shortly after we got on the highway.

Four or five hours later, we pulled into Flagstaff, Arizona, and swapped seats. My son, now seriously ready to sleep, got in the back seat. My wife, who sleeps in a car even worse than I do, stiffly climbed into the passenger seat, and I cracked open a coke and took over as pilot.

(One thing: my wife, stiff as she was, promptly crossed her legs under her, in what they used to call "tailor-fashion" - how do women do that? Especially when she's already said that she needed to trade because she was too stiff to drive. It's one of those mysteries of life, I guess.)

On the way to San Diego from Flagstaff, we hit one agricultural checkpoint (at the California border), and two illegal alien checkpoints. Admittedly, we were within spitting distance of Mexico for part of the drive, but it seems strange that we're expending so many resources on checking for illegal immigrants - the one thing that Bush has succeeded in doing is reducing the influx of undocumented aliens. Admittedly, he did this by ass-raping the economy, so that they have less incentive to come here, but he did manage it. So big props there; incompetence has an upside, after all.

We got to the motel at around three - one benefit of setting out early was that we had time to get settled in, and not just stagger groggily to bed. We also had time to consult the map, figure out the best way to get to the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot (or MCRD), and scout out the path ahead of time. (Where, incidentally, we discovered that gas was twenty cents per gallon cheaper than off-base prices. Score!)

Thursday morning, we wandered down to the MCRD, because it was "Family Day" (i.e., "We'll let you see your newly-hatched recruit, but you can't take him off-base."). And we found ourselves listening to a Drill Instructor (or DI) who sounded remarkably like Cheech Marin (imagine Cheech from the '70's, telling us that the next morning, we should get to the parade grounds two and a half hours early, to be sure that we got a seat: "So you chould get there at 7:30, with a little cafecito, a little pastry...").

Then the recruits had their "motivational run" (apparently, marines are motivated by the chance to run in formation), and then shuffled off to the barracks while we, their families, went to the Base Theater, where we first got to see a film about their training (which sounded remarkably like cult indoctrination, but with guns), and then got to sit there while a couple of marines speechified at us.

One of the speeches, from the MCRD Commanding General, BG Salinas (surprisingly short woman), included the statement "Now, when the formation breaks and you get the chance to hug your Little Johnnie, and you rush up to him and you look and realize that this isn't your Little Johnnie, hug him anyway. Because somewhere over there, somebody else's parents are hugging your Little Johnnie."

Her point, of course, was that all the marines, with their freshly-shaved heads, looked alike. Which may have been relatively true with some of these beetle-browed hydrocephalics, but we'd already seen Luke in formation, and he wasn't quite as Neanderthalic as the rest. (Is "Neanderthalic" a word? Hmmm... Well, it is now...)

And shortly after that, the new marines all fell in, yelled a little bit, got spoken to sternly, and we got to spend the afternoon with Luke.

He looked about the same: the hair was a little shorter, the muscles actually less than when we'd seen him last, but in uniform instead of jeans and a tee-shirt. He walks a little taller, but overall, he's still my son.

And apparently, he was already a marine. The graduation ceremony the next day was a complete formality: apparently, they're called marines as soon as they finish this grueling, three-day hazing called "the Crucible," where, in the course of this three days, they get a total of eight hours of sleep and two MRE's (that's "Meal, Ready to Eat," if you don't know), and then they have a four or five hour march through the hills of San Diego. Mostly uphill.

The next morning, 455 new marines marched onto the big old blactop football field that they call the "parade deck," yelled a little more, the band played, there was more speechifying (this time including a talk by the Secretary of the Navy), and they were done.

More tomorrow.

Just drink your damned eggnog and stop making up "wars"

November has turned to December, the white meat from the turkey has slowly turned grey, and the War on Christmas has begun.

In Olympia, Washington, the first shot of the annual "war" has to do with an atheist group putting up a sign opposite a "holiday tree" and a nativity scene. A sign reading, in part, "There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds." And with this simple sign, they caused Bill O'Reilly to have a brain aneurysm.

There's a long history of tension in Washington State. It seems that, in 2005, state Rep. John Ahern (R-Unsurprisingly) took umbrage at the politically-correct "Holiday Tree" in the state capitol, donated by the Association of Washington Businesses.

Ahern objected, saying the thing was clearly a Christmas tree. In protest, he gathered with a few dozen supporters on the steps of the Capitol to sing carols that year. Then he tucked a little "Merry Christmas" sign at the base of the tree, along with a shiny cardboard cutout of a Jewish menorah.

And so it began. The next year, bearded orthodox rabbis gathered with Gov. Chris Gregoire to light a large menorah in the rotunda. That triggered a request by Olympia real-estate agent Ron Wesselius to erect the Nativity scene.

State officials balked. Wesselius sued. The state settled, and Wesselius last year was allowed to prop up the figures on the Capitol's third floor. As a result, Capitol officials now say they'll honor virtually any request for a religious or political display. As long as it's not disruptive, costs taxpayers nothing and is not seen as the state endorsing any viewpoint, "it's pretty much wide open," said Steve Valandra, spokesman for General Administration, the state agency that issues the permits. "It's free expression."

As a concept, the War on Christmas is primarily a 21st century construct, promoted by right-wing pundits in an effort to provoke feigned outrage. A similar term ("Kulturkampf against Christmas") was used in 1999 against Housing and Urban Development Secretary Anthony Cuomo (he had ruled that HUD would use multicultural references in a 4-floor holiday celebration - it should probably be noted that the group using this term, VDARE, is opposed to immigration and multiculturalism, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has called them a hate group composed of "racial nationalists").

But that isn't the only shot being fired this year. A member of the Utah State Senate (and, imagine that, also a Republican) is sponsoring a nonbinding resolution encouraging retailers to use "Christmas" instead of "holidays" in their advertising. (Apparently, the Mormon church has successfully solved every other problem in Utah, and they can afford to spend their time and money on this kind of thing.)

Many point to Bill O'Reilly as the leading General in the War on Christmas. He is one of the biggest names to rant against the issue every year, along with other right-wing luminaries (luminarias?) such as Sean Hannity. In 2004, O'Reilly and Hannity worked together to pubicize several examples of "Christmas Under Siege." (The earliest reference I'm finding for this current spate of stupidity is December 10, 2004, although I've found references saying that it was December 3, 2004 when Bill O'Reilly launched his first assault on the subject, as far as I can tell.)

Other right-wing pundits were quick to join in: John Gibson of Fox News actually went so far as to publish a book in 2005 titled "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought."

(We should probably ignore that Bill O'Reilly published a "holiday reading list" .this year - it doesn't mean that he's given up the fight. After all, Fox News annually holds a "holiday party" instead of a Christmas party. Strangely, Bill O hasn't complained about that so far.)

There are even websites devoted to listing every shot fired in this War, and several published "Naughty Lists" of retailers who aren't sufficiently Christmassy.

But this culture of repression is an ongoing theme among some Christians. In 2002, a family in Queens, NY, backed by the Catholic League, filed suit against the City of New York and the Department of Education, saying that their policy allowing secular holiday decoration discriminated against Roman Catholics.

Of course, times change, as does the battlefront in the War. As far back as 1921, in an antisemitic 4-volume set entitled "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem," Henry Ford complained about "Jewish opposition to Christmas," and even listed several of their attacks on Christmas.

Almost forty years later, the John Birch Society" decided that the villain wasn't Jews, but Communists.

In 1959, the recently formed John Birch Society issued an urgent alert: Christmas was under attack. In a JBS pamphlet titled "There Goes Christmas?!" a writer named Hubert Kregeloh warned, "One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas -- to denude the event of its religious meaning." The central front in this perfidious assault was American department stores, where the "Godless UN" was scheming to replace religious decorations with internationalist celebrations of universal brotherhood.

"The UN fanatics launched their assault on Christmas in 1958, but too late to get very far before the holy day was at hand," the pamphlet explained. "They are already busy, however, at this very moment, on efforts to poison the 1959 Christmas season with their high-pressure propaganda. What they now want to put over on the American people is simply this: Department stores throughout the country are to utilize UN symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations."

With one in four Americans no longer identifying themselves as Christian, you'd think that it would be time to include everybody else in Christmas.

But that isn't how the game is played. The "War on Christmas" isn't about peace and goodwill at all. It's a celebration of victimization, more than anything else. It's a continuation of the drumbeat of "Fear the latest enemy!" that's worked so effectively for Bush and company. A former radio news director explains it best.

To begin with, talk show hosts such as Charlie Sykes – one of the best in the business – are popular and powerful because they appeal to a segment of the population that feels disenfranchised and even victimized by the media. These people believe the media are predominantly staffed by and consistently reflect the views of social liberals. This view is by now so long-held and deep-rooted, it has evolved into part of virtually every conservative’s DNA.

To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners.

So if you run across somebody decrying the War on Christmas, just ask them, "If this is really a season of peace and joy, shouldn't you be trying to spread some?"

Why would a black woman try to justify slavery?

Oh, look, Lord. Here's somebody with practically no understanding of history. Why would a black woman try to justify slavery? Is this like the wife of an alcoholic saying "he just needs it to relax" or something?

Her name, Lord, is Jean Gasho-Musuka, and she apparently hasn't read Your book all that closely, has she?

"With the issue of Slavery Christians are often put in a corner because they are trying to defend God and at the same time the bible nowhere directly attacks slavery. The bible does not condemn slavery."

Actually, Jean, the Bible not only "does not condemn slavery," it actively supports it. It's filled with wholesome examples of how slaves should behave.

All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered. (1 Timothy 6:1)

(For clarity, I'll be using the NIV here.)

Of course, while you tried to justify your argument with statements (in your "Responses" section) like "What you have to understand is that slavery in Biblical times was very different from the slavery that was practiced in the past few centuries in many parts of the world," it shows that you still don't have a full understanding of the Bible.

(Oh, by the way, you and your friends need to stop feeding from the same trough. I smell plagiarism when another one of your commenters, "michael," repeats your arguments pretty much word-for-word.)

Well, of course racial slavery was less common. Different races are found in different parts of the world, and they didn't have much long-distance travel back then. Very little contact between different races. Does that really make it better?

Regardless of that, slavery was very similar in ancient times and more recently. And if you'd truly read your Old Testament, you'd know that. Slaveowners, for example, were allowed to beat their slaves, as long as they survived the ordeal.

When a slave owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner's property. (Exodus 21:20-21)

And, of course, the slave is just supposed to take the abuse.

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. (1 Peter 2:18-21)

Of course, there were other interesting rules for slaves back then.

If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. But if the servant declares, "I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free," then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. (Exodus 21:2-6)

See, you lose your investment in six years, unless you hold his wife and child hostage. Then you can make him yours for life. That's family values for you!

Of course, selling your daughters as sex slaves is even a better example of family values, isn't it?

If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as menservants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money. (Exodus 21:7-11)

And see? You're even allowed to cast your sex-slave aside, and it doesn't cost you a thing (past your initial investment, anyway)! What a great way to keep peace with your new wife!

Let us pray - Lord, please allow this woman to read and truly understand your Book. And if she does so, and still feels that it has any relevance in the modern world, please make her stop misquoting it.

Amen.

How can God be wrong?

In 1972, a man named Harry McCall was attending Bob Jones University; in the bookstore, they sold a 32 page pamphlet called "Is Segregation Scriptural," written (you probaly guessed this) by Bob Jones, Sr. It was based on a message he'd sent out in 1960, in response to a little ruling called Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (for those of you not up on your legal rulings, Brown declared that segregated schools, and therefore segregation, were unconstitutional).

Now, this little booklet (which Mr. McCall excerpts in a blog called Debunking Christianity) gets right to the point. In the words of Dr Jones (pater):

Now, we folks at Bob Jones University believe that whatever the Bible says is so; and we believe it says certain fundamental things that all Bible-believing Christians accept; but when the Bible speaks clearly about any subject, that settles it. Men do not always agree, because some are dumb-some people are spiritually dumb; but when the Bible is clear, there is not any reason why everybody should not accept it.

Straightforward, isn't it? Keep that thought in mind. "The Bible is always right."

Dr. Jones then points out the following bit of Scripture (Acts 17:26): "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation."

He seems to base his entire argument on that point: God set up each race in the place He felt that they needed to be. Or to put it more bluntly,

God never meant to have one race. It was not His purpose at all. God has a purpose for each race. God Almighty may have overruled and permitted the slaves to come over to America so that the colored people could be the great missionaries to the Africans. They could have been. The white people in America would have helped pay their way over there. By the hundreds and hundreds they could have gone back to Africa and got the Africans converted after the slavery days were over...

All men, to whatever race they may belong, have immortal souls; but all men have mortal bodies, and God fixed the boundaries of the races of the world. Let me repeat that it is no accident that most of the Chinese live in China. It is not an accident that most Japanese live in Japan; and the Africans should have been left in Africa, and the Gospel should have been taken to them as God command His people to do.

Now is where the logic gets spectacularly twisted.

Now, you colored people listen to me. If you had not been bought over here and if your grandparents in slavery days had not heard that great preaching, you might not even be a Christian, You might be over there in the jungles of Africa today, unsaved. Bt you are here in America where you have your own schools and your own churches and your own liberties and your own rights, with certain restrictions that God Almighty put about you - restrictions that are in line with the Word of God.

See, that's the important point - as far as Dr Jones is concerned (definitely Jones pater - and probably fils, considering that he wouldn't allow the flag flown at half-staff when Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot), God wants the races kept separate. It's pretty plain in his closing prayer.

Our heavenly Father, bless our country. We thank Thee for our ancestors. We thank Thee for the good, Christian people - white and black. We thank Thee for the ties that have bound these Christian white people and Christian colored people together throughout the years, and we thank Thee that white people who had a little more money helped them build their churches and stood by them and when they got sick, they helped them. No nation has ever prospered or been blessed like the colored people in the South. Help these colored Christians not to get swept away by all the propaganda that is being put out now. Help us to see this thing and to understand God’s established order and to be one in Christ and to understand that God has fixed the boundaries of the nations so we would not have trouble and misunderstanding. Keep us by Thy power and use us for Thy glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

So, as you can see, segregation wasn't just the official policy of Bob Jones University: as far as the founders were concerned, it was the unerring word of God. (Keep that phrase in mind, too. "The unerring word of God.")

Let's move up a couple of decades, to the present day. Bob Jones University has reversed their former policies on race. On their website, they've posted the following statement:

On national television in March 2000, Bob Jones III, who was the university’s president until 2005, stated that BJU was wrong in not admitting African-American students before 1971, which sadly was a common practice of both public and private universities in the years prior to that time. On the same program, he announced the lifting of the University’s policy against interracial dating.

Our sincere desire is to exhibit a truly Christlike spirit and biblical position in these areas. Today, Bob Jones University enrolls students from all 50 states and nearly 50 countries, representing various ethnicities and cultures. The University solicits financial support for two scholarship funds for minority applicants, and the administration is committed to maintaining on the campus the racial and cultural diversity and harmony characteristic of the true Church of Jesus Christ throughout the world.

Remember those two important phrases? "The unerring word of God"? "The Bible is always right." It really doesn't matter whether you subscribe to them. The point is, BJU based a policy on their interpretation of a Biblical passage. Which they now admit was wrong.

Maybe, people's interpretation of the Bible aren't always right.

Now, let's tie this into current events. (Current events other than the recent racist resurrgence, that is.) In the middle of this pamphlet on segregation (which they now admit was wrong), you find the following statement.

A Christian relationship does not mean a marriage relationship. You can be a Christian and have fellowship with people that you would not marry and that God does not want you to marry and that if you should marry you would be marrying outside the will of God. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t good, solid, substantial people who do not have any hatred and do not have any bitterness see that?

Does anybody remember a little thing in California recently called Proposition 8?

Black President - White Power

Presidents-elect typically get hate-mail after they win an election. And disgruntled members of a losing political party are known for making inappropriate comments about their new, unwanted Commander-in-Chief. But Barack Obama is facing something that no other president has had to deal with: racial backlash.

The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive.

Incidents of racist graffiti have been cropping up around the country; nooses have been found in several locations; and internet threats have all increased in numbers which have caused concern (and significantly increased workload) among Secret Service agents.

One of the most popular white supremacist Web sites got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election, compared with 91 new members on Election Day, according to an AP count. The site, stormfront.org, was temporarily off-line Nov. 5 because of the overwhelming amount of activity it received after Election Day. On Saturday, one Stormfront poster, identified as Dalderian Germanicus, of North Las Vegas, said, "I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how 'messiahs' come to rest. God has abandoned us, this country is doomed."

More than merely strong upticks traffic on white supremacist sites, the Southern Poverty Law Center and police departments across the country have documented hundreds of race-related incidents since election day, from both individuals and groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other supremacist organizations. Two different assassination plots against Barack Obama have been foiled so far; admittedly, in both cases, these were low-end, inbred mouthbreathers without a chance of success (the second pair thought that they could kill 144 blacks before they got killed in a suicide attack on Obama: this isn't a plan; it's the plot of a direct-to-cable movie), but these are just the ones they've broken up so far.

All of the various racist organizations are hoping that Obama's election will increase their membership more than any other single incident in recent years. And they're certainly trying to take advantage of it by stepping up their recruiting drives. Flyers have been found in several places around the country, and they're even moving into digital recruiting.

There has been some judicial pushback, though. One teen who was beaten by Klan members just got a $2.5 million judgment, and the state appeals court has agreed to review an overturned conviction of a Klansman for the 1964 abduction of two murdered black teens.

And just because I find irony in it: aside from admitting that Obama's election will be an outstanding recruiting tool, Thomas Robb, the Klan's national director, was struggling to put a brave face on the election of a black man.

"I know that you have been hearing that Obama would be the first black president," Mr. Robb writes. "However, you and I both know this is not true. Obama is only half black. Not only is he only half black — he was not raised in a black environment. He was raised by his single mother," who was white, and abandoned by his African father, something "so common with black men that there are jokes about it."

Of course, that logic doesn't explain why Obama has been married to his wife Michelle for sixteen years, but we'll move past that.

My favorite Klan story recently would have to be this one: a lady takes a bus from Oklahoma to Louisiana to join the Klan, and after they shave her head and make her run around in the woods for several hours with a torch, she decides she wants to go home. So the "Grand Lordship" shot and killed her. (I'm not sure if that qualifies as Darwin at work, or justifiable homicide. Of course, since it was another racist who shot her, the "justifiable" excuse kind of goes away, doesn't it?)

Yes, by the way, he called himself "the Grand Lordship" - apparently, he didn't think Wizards or Dragons were serious enough for an important title like his.

Then his Lordship pulled out a knife and tried to dig out the bullet, figuring that he'd be able to cover up his dastardly deed. (I guess that they don't know much about forensics in the backwoods of Louisiana.) Then he has two other guys hide the body under some brush.

Sheriff's investigators said they received the initial tip from a convenience store clerk. Two of the group members went into the store and asked the clerk whether he knew how to get bloodstains out of their clothes, Strain said. The clerk told them no and called the sheriff after they left.

Now, if you're going to run around the woods in white robes, shouldn't you already be pretty good at stain removal? It seems to me like you'd be getting a lot of practice at it already. But this is the high quality of racist we have to deal with for the next eight years.

We can only hope that having a visible black man as President of the United States will provide the children of racists with a role model - a better role model than the toothless hatemonger in charge of their family. I actually don't have much hope that this will happen, but it's always possible.

But it means that we have one more reason that Barack Obama needs to succeed.

Time for our annual Health Assessment

OK, since our health plan costs less if I fill out some health assessment, I decided that it made sense to do that. Once I finally found the assessment (not easy, since they gave me the wrong location for it at first), I started noticing some problems right away.

Under my personal information, it asked if I was Latino or not. I can accept that – it's an ethnicity, not a race. But then, the next question did want to know my race, followed by "answer yes or no for each." And the choices were White, "Black or African American," Asian, Pacific Islander, or "Native American or Native Alaskan."

I could easily have marked each one "yes," which seems a little excessive. Most people settle on one or another of those choices and stick with it. Sometimes, like with Tiger Woods, people can’t accept a black man playing golf, so they parse his background a little harder, to show that he’s not a "normal" black man. But, unless you’re fixated on the "one drop" rule of the Old South, most of us stick with a single-word descriptor. I'm white, but I pretty sure that if you go back far enough you'll dig up black and Native American DNA. I don't know of any specific Asian or Pacific Islander DNA, but that's always a possibility. We're mutts. Welcome to America.

Now, I then find that they want to know about my nutritional habits, using the following questions:

• Do you eat at least 2 cups of fruit each day?
• Do you eat at least 2.5 cups of vegetables each day?
• Do you eat at least 3 ounces of whole-grain products (cereals, breads, crackers, rice, or pasta) each day? One ounce is about 1 slice of bread, 1 cup of breakfast cereal, or 1/2 cups of cooked rice or pasta.
• Do you consume at least 3 cups of low-fat or fat-free milk, yogurt, or cheese each day?
• Do you regularly eat foods that are high in cholesterol or fat such as fatty meat, cheese, fried foods, eggs, or baked goods?

Feel free to do that math on your own. I guarantee that I don't eat seven and a half cups of food every day, not to mention the three slices of bread I'd be cramming in on top of it. You'd have to wheel me into work with a forklift. (Oh, by the way, bread qualifies as a "baked good" – I know what they mean, but they needed to think a little harder about that wording.)

We'll skip the questions about my physical activity – I know I'm a slug. But at least I don't smoke.

Then we hit the following question: "In a given week, on how many days do you typically have one or more alcoholic drink? (one drink = one 12 oz beer, 5 oz of wine, one shot of liquor or one mixed drink)"

I have a bad feeling about this. Are they paying attention to the studies that indicate that two glasses of wine per day is good for your heart, or to the Alcoholics Anonymous-type determination that one drink a day makes you an alcoholic? The source of their data needs to be considered, after all.

Which is followed by "In the last 30 days, how often did you use drugs or medicine (including prescription drugs) to affect your mood or to help you relax?"

I think that qualifies under the heading Stupid Questions. Because you have two choices. If somebody is on anti-depressants, they’d need to answer "daily," which is probably a really bad answer. And everybody else will answer "Never". Even if they’re "self-medicating," they’re going to lie anyway - they already got past the drug test, so they aren't going to screw things up now. So what good does that question do? Does it help to throw in questions where you're requiring a percentage of your employees to lie?

Skip a few, and it gets to "During the past 4 weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems? (Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, Always)" And the choices include:

• Breathing problems
• Backaches
• Chest pains
• Dizzy spells, tiredness, or fatigue
• Frequent headache
• Joint pain
• Trouble sleeping
• Trouble urinating

On Friday night, when the guys down the street decided to have that party and it spilled out into the street, do I count that as "trouble sleeping?" And you can see where that would lead directly to "tiredness or fatigue," right?

So I decided to self-medicate a little at that point, with about 2.5 ounces of medicinal alcohol. In rum form, if you're curious. Which led to a dizzy spell (and, incidentally, a certain amount of trouble urinating, but I don't think that they want to know about that one – it was more of an aim issue.)

And headaches? Not until I started this quiz.

So how screwed am I by that question?

"In the last year, how many times did you visit a doctor's office or clinic?" was followed by "In the last year, how many times have you gone to the emergency room?" Uhh... "daily?" I work in a freaking hospital!!!

"In the last year, how many times have you stayed overnight in a hospital as a patient?" Finally, "as a patient." Thank you.

"In the last year, how often did doctors or other health providers explain things in a way you could understand?" I'm an admin guy - over the course of a three month period, there are 14 different meetings I go to (between one and three times each, depending on the meeting), and I take the minutes for all of them. Do you know how often I have no idea what the hell it is I'm typing? I just throw the words down on the paper and everybody's happy.

"Has anyone in your family (brother, sister, mother, father, grandparents) ever had heart problems?" My dad graduated West Point, and then spent 24 years in the Army. There's a question whether he actually had a heart. Does that count as a problem?

"On average, how close to the speed limit do you usually drive?" And why is it that they think people are going to admit to breaking a law? Again, why do they insist on throwing in questions that everybody's going to lie about?

"During the past 4 weeks, would you say that you experienced a lot of stress, a moderate amount of stress, or relatively little stress?" Well, are we including this quiz in that answer?

Then we come to one of the worst questions on this thing.

Compared to others like me, my overall risk of developing illness or disease is:
• Much higher
• Higher
• About the same
• Lower
• Much lower
• Don't know/Not sure

Let’s go over that again. First five words: "Compared to others like me."

The answer is "exactly the same!" Every time!! Even if you're an overweight, cancer-riddled, two-pack-a-day smoker, your chances of getting sick are exactly the same as every other overweight, cancer-riddled, two-pack-a-day smoker. Are they just trying to weed out hypochondriacs and people who think they're immortal?

Then they gave me a list of changes where I could improve my health (exercise, quit smoking, all the usual things), and asked "What keeps you from doing more to improve your health?" followed by a list of choices. Unfortunately, "sheer laziness" wasn’t one of the choices. They could have at least given me "Other," to cover things like "I'm a masochist and enjoy the occasional heart attack."

"What is the main reason you want to maintain or increase healthy habits and activities?" Uhh… so I don't have to take tests like this any more?

Then it went back over the choices, and asks "Do you think you’ll be able to make this change?" Am I actually getting nagged by a multiple-choice test? Can I go back and include this in those "how much stress" questions?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a deep-fried Snickers bar and a shot of vodka.

Take the bad with the good

This has not been the best week for my part-time job.

See, I got called by the security company I moonlight with this weekend. It wasn't to work the Joe Satriani concert, which was depressing. But it was two nights of work, not just one; so that was cool. But it was a monster truck show, which was kind of depressing. I'm just not a monster truck show kind of guy, I guess.

This was serious low-rent entertainment. It's possible that there were more people in the audience than teeth. It was in Tingley Colliseum, which seems a little strange (you know, cars, indoor events - just seems a little weird); the Friday night show was about 3/4 full, but Saturday was a capacity crowd - all 13,000 seats. The headliner was, of course, Gravedigger (he even has his own website: gravedigger.com); he's one of the only monster trucks I've heard of besides the legendary (?) Bigfoot. If anybody cares (and I'm sure that somebody must), the other performers were el Matador (who happens to be extremely caucasian), the Pitbull (an Albuquerque native), King Krush, and the Ninja Turtle truck.

So no, before you ask, I didn't get to see Robosaurus or anybody like that. There were the monster trucks, some quadrunner racing, and the "street warriors" (time trials with modified street trucks).

The driver for Pitbull is apparently really into charity work - according to the announcer, he's going to sign his entire paycheck over to the Carrie Tingley hospital after the event, and he's going to spend the week with his truck and pit crew at the children's cancer ward at Carrie Tingley, too. So that's kind of cool. He also has hair down to the middle of his back, and (according to the announcer), cuts 10" of it off every year for Locks of Love.

Which would be easier to believe if I had 5" of hair right now, since I shaved my head six months ago. I'm thinking that he might cut off 10" whenever he gets it, but it takes a little longer than 12 months to get there. Unless he's just some kind of mutant freak.

The announcer was reasonably good - during the "Party in the Pit" on Saturday (where the trucks and drivers were all parked down there for a meet-and-greet with anybody who paid extra for their ticket), he lost his temper with kids climbing on the 5' tall tires, or on the brand new trucks that one of the local Ford dealerships had on display, but he had a steady supply of jokes and trivia for the crowd. (He did repeat the line "his truck runs on two squirrels and a mad cat" three times in two nights, but he didn't do too bad overall.)

I guess mechanical breakdowns are a pretty common part of the show - among the monster trucks, Matador's right rear wheel snapped off in a turn, and on Friday night, Pitbull misjudged a hill and ended up on his roof. One of the "street warriors" lost his driveshaft in a jump, and when they brought the front-loader to drag him out the blade punched into the right rear tire and punctured it. (That's what they use instead of tow-trucks: one big front-loader and one small one.)

The quadrunners were two teams of four riders: "Team Albuquerque" and "Team Las Vegas." And they tried to drum up enthusiasm by having a little wrestling drama going on. Team Las Vegas was, of course, the bad guys: they wore black jerseys, "rode dirty" (trying to drive the other team into the wall on the turns) and the team leader came out both nights and talked about how much he hated Albuquerque ("it smells," "this place sucks," all kinds of generic insults) and couldn't wait to take his money for winning and leave.

(Amazingly enough, Team Albuquerque won both nights - I couldn't have guessed that was going to happen. I wonder if Team Las Vegas ever gets to win. I guess they were doing too good Saturday night, because the team captain disqualified himself by cutting across the middle of the track to put himself in first place again. Crowd seemed to enjoy it, though.)

The crowd was reasonably easy to handle, especially when compared to, say, the crowd at Crue Fest. There was really only one issue: at the end of the show, part of the crowd decided to make their own way out of the arena, which would have put them too close to the trucks (insurance reasons - the people can't go close when the trucks are moving). So I had to drive them back and then keep them off those stairs. And, just to make things perfect, there's this drunk lady with her kids sitting nearby, and the son tells me proudly that he has a flag and waves it at me. I congratulated him and went back to dealing with the idiots. Apparently, the lady decided that I was supposed to give her son my entire attention, and starts screaming at me, "He was just trying to show you his flag! This is supposed to be all about the kids! Mr. Big Shot! Mr. Minimum Wage!"

So that was fun.

In the interest of keeping this crappy (and yes, minimum wage) job, I didn't bother to explain to her that, if I were doing it for the money, I would find another job. I do this because they pay me to see shows (admittedly, not one I particularly wanted to see, this weekend, but some of the concerts have been spectacular).

I also didn't ask (and I actually worked this speech up in my head, but held it back) whether, if this show actually was all about the kids, if this was how she wanted her particular kid to remember her, spewing drunken invective against people just trying to do their jobs. (Yes, the actual job that I was being paid for: in this case, her son was reasonably well-behaved, so I was allowed to ignore him; she, however, was falling into the "drunk and disorderly" category. Which meant that, in order to do this job that she was so dismissive of, she was the one I was supposed to pay attention to. There's probably irony in that.)

Next week, I'll be doing security for Method Man, and I'm not a big fan of rap, either. However, the next night, if our company gets the contract, I'll work security for a midget wrestling event.

I didn't even know they still had those.

Dear President Obama,

I only have one request. Please live up to the hype.

Any woman will be happy to explain this: you're going to have to do a great job just to be considered "good." And as you're probably aware, you have nothing but roadblocks ahead of you now; you get to face bigotry on a scale you've never seen, blatantly insane right-wing viewpoints, and the disappointment of some of your most ardent supporters, who won't accept that you failed to turn water into wine in your first hundred days in office.

You have the unenviable task of reuniting a country splintered by years of divisiveness and Fox News. You get to rebuild the reputation of an America now scorned by countries that used to be our closest allies.

If the attacks of September 11, 2001 had not happened, George W. Bush would have gone down in history as a vaguely ineffectual president. But sadly, he has now left a legacy that you are going to have to spend most of your first term reversing.

On the other hand, merely by existing, you've given hope to a generation of young black men who didn't see any chance of getting ahead. (It's a shame you aren't a woman – that would be two glass ceilings to burst through.)

But there's your choice: do a good job, and be remembered as an inadequate excuse for a president. Or do a magnificent job, and be considered "OK."

Good luck with that.

A brief reflection on the 2008 election

I'd like to just say, as the results pour in from around the country:

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!

Incidentally, I'd also like to say that I have nothing but support for Barack Obama in this time of tragedy. His grandmother has died prior to his election. That has to be hard for him. If I weren't drunk, I would be a lot more sympathetic. On the other hand, if Barack Obama hadn't won, I wouldn't be quite so drunk.

No, that's not true: if Barack Obama hadn't won, I'd be even drunker. To the point that, if I wasn't drunk now, I'd be seriously drunk about 15 minutes from now.

In fact, I can't see a result of this election that doesn't result in me being extremely drunk at the moment.

Oh, to hell with it. I'm going to go in search of the McCain concession speech, to revel in a little shadenfreude. (And if I wasn't, as I've pointed out, already drunk, I'd give you a link to tell you what "schadenfreude" means. But I am, so I won't - hell, I'm just happy that I can spell "schadenfreude" right now.)

Oh, and by the way...

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!

Madelyn Dunham, 1922-2008

Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother of Barack Obama, died of cancer between 4 and 5 a.m. Eastern time at her home in Honolulu, the day before the polls open for the 2008 presidential election.

The Barack Obama presidential campaign issued a statement under his name and that of his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng:

It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer. She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure.

Our family wants to thank all of those who sent flowers, cards, well-wishes, and prayers during this difficult time. It brought our grandmother and us great comfort. Our grandmother was a private woman, and we will respect her wish for a small private ceremony to be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, we ask that you make a donation to any worthy organization in search of a cure for cancer.

The woman Obama called "Toot" helped raise him during his childhood in Hawaii, and was a strong feminist in 1970's Honolulu, managed to become one of Bank of Hawaii's first female vice presidents, despite facing both sexism and racial discrimination.

Obama and Soetoro-Ng lived with their grandparents Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, and later with their mother, Ann Dunham, in 1970s Honolulu, where white people were routinely the target of discrimination.

Sam Slom, a Bank of Hawaii economist then, who is now a Republican state senator in Hawaii, recalls that as a part of the white — or "haole" — minority in Hawaii, he would regularly see housing ads that made no effort to hide racial preferences. He says he remembers ads that read, "No haoles" or "AJAs (Americans of Japanese ancestry) Only" or "No Japanese."

"That's the way it was," Slom said. "Did people talk about race? We had local jokes … like that 'pake' (Chinese) guy or the 'yobo' (Korean) who did this or that. I certainly got my share of haole jokes."

Her health had been declining for some time, and Senator Obama had suspended his campaign two weeks ago to fly back to Hawaii to be with her.

Whether this will have any effect on the campaign has yet to be determined, but it may be a critical loss of focus in the final hours before the election.