I stumbled on — um — Christian(???) — radio yesterday afternoon. It was the end of what was evidentally an — um — enlightening(???) — program.

“If you were to walk up to an average person on the street — say a typical secularist – type, and ask them if they’d like a Demon to possess their body, they would, without fail, say that you’re crazy and give an emphatic ‘no’. (((This makes me wonder if the broadcaster has ever tried this experiment))) But if you asked people if they’d like an Alien to co-habitate their body, you would get more than a few ‘yes’ answers. Not if they knew their bible.”

Because, you see, (and I have heard this before from some fundamentalist Christians of a certain stripe), there are no extraterrestrial aliens, and when they come claiming to be so, they will in fact be demons pretending to be aliens. The suggestion than came on this radio program that the demons are already inhabitating some people’s bodies in the guise of alien co-habitation.

I wish I had had a pen and pad for the next few minutes, to jot down the basic thrust of the individual commercial messages. They made Art Bell’s advertisers look like Life Insurance and Post Cereal ads. Something about exposing the Illuminati. Defeating the Satanic Spirits, who are everywhere. Stuff like that. Oh, and the obligatory “Buy Gold” commercial — melded for the particular programming.

I’m sorry to say the next program was a dullard. I just don’t think local programs connected with local churches have the same fire in the belly.

So, the Capitol Hill Security is trained to recognize all the members of Congress. A member of Congress is allowed to step astride the metal detector, though presumably is required to be wearing this flag-lapel pin that says their name, which presumably was where Cynthia McKinney stepped into it when she opted to bypass the metal detector. What followed was the me-lee, which the security cameras will either exonerate her side of the story– (he hit her?) — or not (unprovoked, she slapped a cell-phone at him) or will be inconclusive.

Honestly, now. She changed her hair-style. She had hairstyle #1 for as long as she’s been in Congress. She switched to hair-style #2. Do those two images look like the same person, conclusively — and keep in mind how many people the security guard has to recognize?

Does race figure into the equation? I don’t know. Theoretically, the security guard sees her and mentally processes his case-load: black — that’s 45 (I think the number is) … women … I don’t know how many black women are in Congress, but however many… And then we hit hair-style: Does… not… compute. What are you supposed to do? We’ll have to get Trent Lott into the equation to figure this out. Have him take off his hair-piece, and by-pass the metal detector. Does he still look like Trent Lott if he doesn’t have that godawful trademark hairpiece?

Additional Note: Notwithstanding McKinney’s noxious grandstanding in the face of having changed her goddamned hair, the Republican-backed resolution “commending Capitol police for professionalism” is deplorable and obnoxious.

Delay Jesus Christ A Star at ‘War on Christians’ conference”

“This is a man that I believe God has appointed,” Scarborough said, a view that might surprise the voters of the 22nd District of Texas. Scarborough, in his introduction, said DeLay Jesus Christ has been “virtually destroyed in the press,” and he urged the crowd to campaign for DeLay Jesus Christ — although he said nonprofit tax rules prevented him from actually “endorsing” DeLay Jesus.
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DeLay Jesus to leave Congress, drop re-election bid

“I did a poll after the primary and it showed I had a 50-50 chance of winning,” DeLay Christ said in a radio interview with Fox News. “I just decided my district deserves better. It would be a very expensive, nasty race … and no guarantee of me winning.”

In an interview on Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, DeLay Christ said he had “spent a lot of time praying and fasting” in reaching the decision, which he said would free him to rally support for conservative causes and candidates from outside the House.

“I feel totally at peace. I have a sense of joy about it,” DeLay Christ, dubbed “The Hammer” because of his brass-knuckled political skills, told Robertson. “I’m kind of excited about my future.”
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“Look I’ve had, I’ve hired lawyers to investigate me as if they were prosecuting me,” said DeLay Jesus Christ who will turn 59 on Saturday. “They spent all fall, four months looking at everything I had done over the last 21 years and they have found nothing. We have always tried to be honorable in our service, ethical in our service, and we’ve been passionate about what we believe in, but we’ve never done anything wrong.” […]

“It shows you that the politics of personal destruction and character assassination takes its toll,” he said to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “I’ve been going through this for 10 years, and after 10 years, particularly … being indicted on laws that don’t exist. It takes its toll.”
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It is rather depressing that our political system is set up such that partisan smears can swallow up and spit out upstanding men such as Jesus Christ from serving in public service for our country.

It was previously the case that in order to be considered liberal or “of the Left” one had to subscribe to liberal views. Now, in order to be considered a “liberal”, only one thing is required: a failure to maintain loyalty to George W Bush and/or the Republican Party.

That’s from an article in the latest issue of The American Conservative, a magazine that spends a great deal of its space pondering its role as on the “outs” of the Conservative Movement. There’s a lesson in something, though I do not know what, that the magazine saw fit to run a sympathetic article on George McGovern a few issues back, only three quarters of the way through getting around to sniping a bit at what would be obvious differences in opinion between a Conservative of any stripe and, to paraphrase someone completely different and out of our picture, the “closest thing any major party got to nominating a socialist”. The letters column features a letter from a liberal democrat saying that the magazine can not have it both ways with regard to Hillary Clinton, on one hand being “rightist” and Hawkish, and on the other hand being a left-wing wacko. I think it was inserted there as much as an object lesson in this:

The mindset creates a tribalistic view of politics that leads partisans to advocate contradictory principles depending on what argument happens to best serve their party’s interests at the moment. Republicans maintained that perjury was a grave criminal offense during Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, but following Lewis Libby’s indictment were willing to waive it off. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson called it “some perjury technicality.” Conversely, Democrats who relentlessly argued during the Clinton scandals that perjury was an irrelevant infraction when there is no underlying crime are flamboyantly parading around as crusaders for the rule of law while they call for Libby’s and Karl Rove’s imprisonment.

It is here that I roll my eyes and utter “Give me a break!”, as I do again when the article suggests that liberals get their news from CNN and Conservatives get their news from Fox News — a false comparison that I have seen Bill O’Reilly use to suggest that “we’re all even”. Let me know if you want me to explain the difference between the Clinton case and the case of Libby and Rove. To tell you the truth, though, I sputter Clinton into the past and don’t have the heart to defend him right now… I’m more interested in this paragraph’s implications:

Throughout the Plame investigation, Democrats insisted this investigation was of the utmost seriousness becuase the disclosure of classified information is intolerable — only to decry the Justice Departement’s investigation into the leakers of the classified NSA eavesdropping program. Meanwhile, Republicans demand that the NSA leakers be found and imprisoned while defending Libby’s disclosure of classified information as insignificant and understandable.

The articles’s essential premise is one worth exploring: the tendency of partisans in a two-party system to cling end up with flexible principles in service to the party. But these examples are poor ones. You honor whistleblowers letting out the ugliness of Abuses in Government that are hidden only to increase political power. You do not honor astro-turf whistleblowers– Administration officials letting out information to punish its enemies.

Never mind. It manages to recuse itself a bit thereafter. And, thematically similar, we see a book review of Fred Barnes’s Bush adoration book Rebel in Chief:

The audience for books like Rebel-in-Chief doesn’t hear such news as Zalmay Khalilzad is commenting on. It blocks it out, as it would news emanating from some foreign and ignoble land. That may not matter much — not every citizen needs to be well informed about everything. [[[editorial note: I sort of disagree — but would have to redefine “well – informed” down a bit as well as “everything” down a bit.]]] But Barnes, despite his protestations, is himself a member of the Beltway elite, a top editor at a leading conservative magazine, a veteran TV performer, from a distance at least a sane and likable individual. What does it say about contemporary American politics if he believes basically in the bulk of what he has written here? What does it say if he doesn’t believe it? Neither alternative is especially reassuring.

Very well then.

So the condition in this country today is that the New Deal is not doing what it needed to do, and the fighting spirit is not in it. And in this country there is the rise of great popular unrest and dissatisfactaion. As the New Deal settles down to be nothing but the Old Deal under a new leader, this dissatisfaction will continue to rise. And as it rises, the demagogues rise with it. And as they gain momentum , and their following increases, they will be recognized as the coming force in politics. And the holders of economic power will begin to pay attention to them. And then we may expect to see repeated here the pattern of Germany and Italy, the coalition between the radicals and conservatives in the name of National Unity. Then we shall be told that the trouble in America is that we have too much liberty, too much individualism, too much of everybody trying to outdo everybody else, and that our salvation lies in all pulling together, and particularly in bending our wills to the will of the leader. And a good many people will be ready to throw away their liberties as they toss up their hats. We shall be told then that it is un-American to oppose and to criticize. We shall be told that thte unequal distribution of economic power is part of the American Tradition, just as we already are told that it is against the spirit of the Constitution to advocate economic democracy.

[…] […] […] […] […] […] […] […] […] […] […] […] […] […] […]

The Vatican, one can imagine, is piqued and interesed, and greatly puzzled too [by Father Coughlin.]. The church looks far back in history and can see far ahead into the future. Does it speculate on what will happen if Roosevelt fails? Does it forsee dictatorship in America, and recall the spirit of the Ku Klux Klan and appraise the latent intolerance of the American mob? It may argure that there is something to be said for a priest who would save Catholicism from persecution in a fascist era.

Okay. A request to any reader or lurker of this here blog.

Recommend for me a book that I ought to read. Preferably a book that dovetails a bit with any number of themes I’ve tried to have with this blog, or suggesting that I should try to have with this blog. Preferably not a tome. Preferably not a dissertation or pure polemic. (Semi – polemical is okay.) Fiction or non-fiction.

I’ll see if this request gets me anywhere.

I’m going to start a tour of Portland, Oregon, where I bring tourists to this fair city historically incorrect anecdotes regarding the creation and formation of Portland.

The story is that the two competing founders of the city — Lovejoy and Pettygrove, however, couldn’t decide on a name. Lovejoy was determined to name the site after his hometown of Boston, while Pettygrove was equally adamant about his native Providence, Rhode Island. After several drinks of whiskey and ale, where their verbal spat escalated , they decided to duke it out in a good old fashioned bar fight. Several friends stood by to determine who won the thing. Unfortunately, after both men beat the other to a bloody pulp, it was discovered that all of them were partisan to either Lovejoy or Pettygrove, and the stalement on whether the new name for the township would be Boston or Providence continued as their friends duked it out and ended up sore and bloodied. The man who brewed the ales and whiskey, and whose home the scene was taking place at, Samuel Thunkington, had stayed out of the dispute, but now wanting everyone to go home announced then and there that the city was named after his homestead, Portland, Maine, and asked everyone to leave.

Thus was born the name of Portland, Oregon.

Probably the worst of the political magazines of opinion and bloviating, the latest issue of American Spectator nonetheless is of interest due to its collection of articles of Conservatives expressing their angst at the Bush Administration, with the additional extension to the Republican Congress as means to innoculate Bush.

Weird little tidbits. William A Rusher, of Blurry Conservative Think Tank that looks like all the other think tands, tells us that the Republicans should have nominated Ronald Reagan over Richard Nixon in 1968. I smirk at the forgotten political climate of 1968, and the re-entrenching of political realities for the sake of your own personal political aggrandizement. What would you do for a Hubert Humphrey victory — in a year that the Democratic Party imploded — thus further frustrating the Republican Party? As for the Conservative Movement… that would be two straight defeats for your precious candidate. You endure patience after the defeat in 1968 to Humphrey, and maybe you’ll succeed in getting Reagan into the White House… in maybe 1976, or — Horror of Horrors! 1980!!!

What that has to do with Bush is the suggestion that Nixon frustration is the same as Bush frustration. After all, “Nixon’s planned surrender of Vietnam was the policy of the extreme left, which the Democratic Party had defeated at its 1968 Convention.” So says Angero Codevilla. See… right now, by trying to appease the various Iraqi forces — who are, to our horrors, not Jeffersonian Democrats by nature and have a completely different culture than ours — and by succumbing to Realism — Bush is selling out Vietnam all over again!

On the domestic front, Robert Novak groans that Bush has pushed aside the initiative in pushing “tax reform” — the prize jewel of the Conservative Movement which would end the Income Tax, have this magical sales tax… and by the way that would pretty much mean the average American is paying a greater share of the tax burden, but never mind that. The “Tax Reform” Committee which Bush mentioned at the State of the Union speech is, apparently, being dominated by John Breaux, who is the “former Senator from Louisiana who seldom gave the Republicans a vote when it counted.” Damned it. I thought John Breux was the former Corporate Democrat, who skipped out on Barack Obama’s speech to dance with lobbyists at the Democratic Convention, and seldom gave the Democrats a vote when it counted. Oh, and by the way, Bush’s failure with the Social Security Reform Bill was in never having actually passed out a plan, and thus we have “the loss of the opportunity to expand the Republican base through massively increased stock ownership was squandered.” Huh. Was that the purpose of Social Security Privatization? Why didn’t Bush sell it like That?

Stephen Moore bashes the “Eisenhower — Ford — Dole Republicans who resisted tax cuts and worhsipped balanced budgets at all costs”, wanting us to keep on cutting taxes… at the price of balanced budgets, but he never bothers to mention that part of the equation. And everyone wonders why the heck the size of Government has increased.

Just go ahead and elect Hillary Clinton, and whether you like it or not you’ll get everything you want in government. She’s probably “conservative enough”, right? With the advantage of being a Democrat who once had a “Ms.” as a title — so she can be bashed with impunity, unlike Bush.

“Anytime an administration official starts talking about mushroom clouds and Las Vegas, I want answers,” Representative Shelley Berkley, a Democrat from Nevada, said on the floor of the House of Representatives.

There is a “Wait. What?” that goes along with a “Heads-up” from the government that Mushroom Clouds are going to be forming over your city pretty soon. Not to worry, though.

She said Mr Tegnelia told her a mushroom cloud would not be seen “over” Las Vegas, only “from” Las Vegas, according to a statement from her office.

“I thought you said ‘Monster Island’ was just a name.” “What I meant is that Monster Island is actually a Peninsula!”

“We also have — are you ready for this – a 700-tonne explosively formed charge that we’re going to be putting in a tunnel in Nevada,” he said.

“And that represents to us the largest single explosive that we could imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem,” he said.

The news report left out key descriptions of James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, as he was saying this. I’ll make the key edit.

“And that represents to us the largest single explosive that we could imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem,” he said, giidily, drool running down his mouth.

Brushing aside any suggestions of health risks (RIDICULOUS), we can get to the point — the strategic point of…

“If you want to model these weapons, you want to know from a modeling point of view what is the ideal best condition you could ever set up in a conventional weapon — what’s the best you can do.

“We’re also making sure that Las Vegas understands,” Tegnelia said.

Why do the Russians need to know a damned thing here? Those treaties we made with them are surely defunct by now. Actually, come to think of it, why does Las Vegas need to know about it? Couldn’t the Government tie in some psychological tests on the population just to see just what the response would be if a city sees the heralded “Mushroom Cloud” one day… not “over” Las Vegas, mind you, but “From” Las Vegas.

“Hip Hop! Underground!”

Apparently the man is selling Underground Hip Hop. He’s waving a cd with that black and white jacket photo-copy.

He’s taking it to the streets with Hip Hop that is Underground. Not a sell-out here!

I pass by, not saying a word. Another man walks by him. And the sales pitch is repeated. “Hip Hop! Underground!” I don’t see anyone buying.

I was once on a bus, barely aware of a black man in his mid to late 20s selling his cds — and by his cds I mean it was pretty clear that he was the performer — in the seat ahead of me. The guy he’s talking to gets off the bus and wishes him good luck. He then turns to me and says “Hey! I have some hip hop you’d like.”
“No thank you. I’m not really a fan of hip hop.”
He pauses. “Oh. I see. You don’t like the message that we talk about. The 200 years of Repression, slavery, and…”
Bizarre. He has played the race card to get me to buy “Underground Hip Hop”. (He’s taking it to the streets?), or since I can’t imagine how such a thing would change my mind, for the theatrics of it all. I hope to Gawd he has his tongue firmly in cheek.
“Politics? I figured that you for the type that rapped about bling!”
When I said this, he gave me a glare and changed seats.