I'm Not an Actor but I play One on TV

Oh my goodness I would loooooove to hear/see the notes on these.
I bet it would look a little something like this... (I'm scratching my chin and looking at the ceiling- cue wavy dissolve)

Okay, but be more terrified.
Can you do immigrant.
All right show me threatened
Okay your a dyke but your with us- got it? Go
No no no just like it's written- no no I don't care what you "actually know". You can read right- so read it- NO -like it's written- Read it like it's written- God what's wrong with you?
Oh, you're no doctor- Give her the parent card.
GRABS CUE-CARD FROM CUE-CARD HOLDER WAVES IT IN ACTOR'S FACE I am a California doctor- a doctor- got it? DoCK- K-K-K Doctor!- Do we have any actors who can read!? What the [expletive deleted] is wrong with you people?
Great great- show me loving homophobia- perfect!
Do it like you hate your son and resent your wife for making him a fag- excellent
Get this [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] out of my [expletive deleted] face- you're done- no you're done. Get off my set.
Perfect- Did the rest of you see this? That's how you sell paranoia-


This is so the MAN's version of rainbow coalition.

I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.

It's All of The Same...

Back in the day when I taught Neo-Fascism (high school economics)-

Oh that's right I was a high school social-sciences teacher. You didn't know that? Oh well, I was. Isn't that something? Good times.-

So, back then, it was a challenge to get the private Christian high schoolers to see the meaninglessness of the label "liberal" as far as our economics or politics was concerned. One of the things we did to that end was investigate how WorldCom collapsed. Remember that? WorldCom. It was a current event at the time and though it happened on W's watch, it was easy to pin on Clinton, so the little right-wingers could get into it and it taught an important lesson.

Anyway, we looked at WorldCom's apparent growth and collapse, and one of the things that was plain as anything to them, was the state made the legal arrangements that made conflicting interests no longer conflict. They understood that commercial and investment banks merging benefited "someone" and with my heavy-handed browbeating they learned that someone was the Wall St. bankers who gave money to the lawmakers who made the legal arrangements that made these new banks possible. These new banks could buy the stocks of companies like WorldCom as an investment bank with money from their commercial bank side and then inflate its value and use this inflated value to buy other "telephone" companies inflating the value even more and then do this over and over again with the new bank handling each deal and collecting fees for doing so. This could go on and on and on forever. It was a win-win. Until it wasn't. Except for those for whom it still was.

The kids could see that this was no accident or flaw in the machine but a design of the machine. In fact, I got some of these kids into hating the repeal of Glass-Steagal before hating the repeal of Glass-Steagal was cool (if only because young people love to hate people who get to take advantage of unfair situations even if they don't hate unfairness itself). None of us saw this coming- the great fake money collapse of the 21st century- but we could see that where and how the cogs of the legal machine were set, they were set in such a way as to benefit those who set them.

Duh.

But even back then it was about fake value, fake money. But that fake money represented the possibilities of real power to those that made and benefited from the legal arrangements that made the fake real.

This wasn't about liberal or conservative.* Those labels only mean something to class collaborators and fat cats. (Okay take it easy, Karl) This was about wealth and the way it manifests itself- making politicians rebel and keep the company of thieves, and all that. It reveals a little bit of what's hidden behind a veil of legitimacy.

Anywho... If any of that was a candle, this is a flood light. I know, I know, he uses bad words and doesn't show proper deference to religion. What are you gonna do?

Here, at least read this:

"People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations."

This is prophetic work for our dispensation- for good, bad, or other.

* Though I might add it was about big government. The lack of government oversight made the bad worse, both in terms of the lack of governmental oversight or concerted citizen power acting as a check on the dismantling of existing banking regulations and the creation of new ones that made the financial arrangements that led our present crisis- but they are kind of the same thing, aren't they?

So in this case, it would make sense to do what your gut might tell you: blame Clinton
Idioteque- Radiohead
Anywhere's Better Than Here- The Replacements
What's Behind the Mask- The Cramps
The National Anthem- Radiohead
Baba O'Reilly- The Who
I Ain't Got no Home- Bruce Springstein
Soul of A Man- Beck
Summertime Rolls- Jane's Addiciton
Don't Talk- The Beach Boys

If We'd Only Recognize The Things That Make for Peace

I think I've seen enough of me and others to know that we often harp loudest about that with which we struggle most. I mean I was raised in a pretty aggressive and violent environment. I was in a lot of fights and often didn't think twice about hurting others. In many ways, violence was the primary language and often a ready solution throughout my upbringing. So I understand that what I see as a spiritual commitment to nonviolence can be attributed to some reactionary motive. Fine, it may be I'm a big peace baby because I'm struggling to overcome my own violent tendencies.

So it's no surprise to me when someone who makes gross efforts to monitor and control the sexual behaviors of others that they are finally outed as doing things that make all their preaching a punchline.

And so I wonder, is that what's going on with THE GAY? I mean think of all the teachings, all the dos and do not dos, all the commands, and moral assumptions that could make up Christian sexual ethics but don't. Think of every potential resource in the Bible and the broad field of possibility in what we call Church History that is left alone because we say it has no bearing on us. Think of all that is passed over, ignored, rationalized and explained away in one way or another. And THE GAY, a concept I don't see in the texts that make up the Bible, remains. What's going on here?

I'm reluctant to universally apply my experience (or reduce to Freudian silliness what I see as a deep commitment), but is this of the same reactive substance as my nonviolence? Are you building walls to keep yourself safe?

I remember reading Robert Gagnon's The Bible and Homosexual Practice and uncharitably saying to myself, "Good Lord, this guy is a closet case." I can charitably say the book's imprecision, imbalance, and, general dependence on what we now call truthiness seem the result of some kind of blinding rage or panic. It's horribly clear that he has decided that homoeroticism and what we broadly call homosexuality is "inherently" awful (whatever inherently does to qualify awful) and so grasps at anything that may fit the bill. But are incest, rape, anal penetration, "uncovering nakedness", consensual intercourse, etc... homosexual practices? Are they homosexual practices any more than they are heterosexual practices? Does either phrase mean anything outside of a sense of the phrase as dehumanizing euphemism?

Really. Help me out here. I guess I'm a Kinseyan 0 so don't find the protection all that necessary. But others of you? Is same-sex attraction more prevalent among men than I can realize? Did I miss out on some haunting but seminal rites of male passage by not joining a fraternity, and now you all are making up for it? Do the belittling jokes and comments about women suggest you prefer the company of men in a deeper way than I first thought? (And I focus on men here because "man" is the status that has currency for these negotiations.)

Or is there something else? Is this confusion and frustration evidence of a larger confusion- a confusion about who and what we might be for? Does y/our need to read Leviticus 18.22 (for example) as having anything to do with homosexuality demonstrate y/our loyalty to an illegitimate power?

You've probably read my allusions to the idea that something like "enhanced interrogation" can only make sense if you're willing to accept and be determined by certain things- things that make a claim on you, things that hold you, things that blind you. That "thing" makes us slaves. Sometimes happy house slaves, but we are slaves nonetheless, and we take whatever mark or brand is necessary to get along and do business with that master. How does homosexuality make sense to us? How does heterosexuality? What has us bound for that to work?

Drag. If only there was something that freed us...

Oh hey! Wait a minute.

Look, your king comes riding on a donkey. Triumphant, but humble on a donkey...

Oh wait no...

I guess that doesn't have anything to do with this.

Thanks, Billy.

These Floors Are Dirty as Hell, and I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

When did being Wally George become a real career?
It's weird. You'd think you could actually pinpoint the moment in time that over-the-top stoner fodder became a news network's mainstay.




Friends, there comes a time in every man's life when he has to look the potato of injustice right in the eye...
So What- Miles davis

St. Jon the Evangelist

There is a good deal of hand-wringing over the looming death of evangelicalism. For good or ill, younger folks, at least many of those with whom I speak are finding less and less that resonates with the many-headed, yet faceless, beast that has dominated Western American Christianity for the better half of a century. And this is terrifying older folks who have gone, and are still willing to go, to the mattresses over matters of confession and practice. It's not that confession and practice don't matter to a lot of these younger people, it's rather a matter of confession and practice being shown in something other than confession and practice. That is, they seem to have little interest in worshipping a god that is all about creating well-trained parrots.

I suppose that has to happen if the Good News remains good news, but I wonder if this is helped along by the fact that evangelical churches largely agree to be happy accomplices to the powers that want to destroy us.

Oh, this is about Jon Stewart again.

Movements die, and evangelicalism as a movement is/was not long for this world, but how much does a comedian acting as a prophet help to pull the plug? Stewart is willing to clearly lay out the picture and call evil what it is, while we, as churches, suggest this is no concern of ours, it'll be fine because God tells us we don't have to worry, or worse we say it's our job to support the oligarchs that want to determine an existence for us wholly at odds with what it means to be human (as far as Christians may be concerned).

While You Were Sleeping

If we have another child it will be named Jonathan Stewart [skybalon]


or

Rachel Maddow[nominalized] [skybalon]

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Barring that possibility, they ought to be declared Servant of God*. God knows the church can use the inspiration.

* Without their needing to be dead- we're not Catholic after all.

BOOOOOO

Have you ever received a "bill" for a hospital or doctor's office visit itemizing the cost of each little thing you were offered or that was used in your treatment? For example, when I tried to chop off my thumb, the statement I received for the subsequent treatment showed the cost of the exam, the sutures, the whole vial of numbing agent (though they didn't give the whole bottle), the syringes, etc... It was incredibly expensive.

Typically they have some indication on them that they are not bills. Usually something like "THIS IS NOT A BILL". That's very clear.

A friend of mine learned a fun little secret about those "statements".

They're lies.

He received an itemized statement from his insurance company that a.) did not include the THIS IS NOT A BILL clarifier and b.) itemized things he was sure he did not receive or use, so he called the hospital to give his insurance info and make sure he, or his insurance company, was not being overcharged, and he called his insurance company to find out why he was being charged for things his insurance was supposed to cover.

Turns out, the hospital had already been paid, and the statement he received from his insurance company was, in fact, one of those THIS IS NOT A BILL statements.

Phew.

But the itemized things he didn't use?

It wouldn't be right if someone was being charged for goods or services that weren't used, no? After some bureaucratic back and forth, he was told it was okay if there were a few things overlooked or added to the statement because the amounts on the statement are not what what the insurance company pays. They actually paid about a third of what was listed so there was no need to worry about being overcharged. Thanks for his concern, have a nice day.

Isn't that good news? Isn't that lucky?

The insurance company can negotiate and contract for set rates because of its size and market control, so they pay less than what might otherwise be the market rate* for those goods and services injured and sick people might need.

Bully for them.

I wonder though, why send a statement indicating they paid X when they actually paid less than X? What's that bit of deception for?

A cynical person might say it's meant to make you extra thankful for your insurance company taking the hit. Maybe, if you're doing an analysis of what your insurance costs against what you receive, it's meant to make you think you're getting a better deal. (That sounds like fraud.) Maybe it's meant to make you think "Healthcare costs are out of control", while you shake your fist at the sky.

I don't know.

Here's something else I don't know. If item A really only costs $500 (for example), what's the big idea of charging the uninsured $1500? That's odd, too.

What I do know is that the idea of mandating universal insurance coverage is nonsense. Especially because a.) the above is the kind of garbage insurance companies are up to and b.) insurance companies do not exist to provide health care but make money for their shareholders by minimizing expenses, i.e. paying for your health care.

President Obama (nickname pending) thinks this nonsense makes good sense. That's awful; it's more awful when you consider that before he was President Obama (nickname pending), he understood that the best approach to healthcare was a single payer system.

Oh, but why worry about that? You'll be dead soon and never have to worry about being sick or hurt again. Well, maybe not soon, maybe after a bitter and long battle with a terrible disease brought on by your poor eating and exercise choices, then you'll be dead. Still, it seems political, and you're not political. You're just some schmo who's gonna die from heart disease or cancer. What do you care about health care?

Oh I shouldn't assume. Maybe you're not the kind to be pacified by the sweet release of death. If this is something you are interested in, you should get behind H.R. 676. Contact your representative, and tell them to co-sponsor it. Maybe donate to the Citizens Alliance for National Health Insurance.

* That seems confused. Insurance companies get to bypass the market? That's fundamentally not free-market, isn't it?

I Was Saying Oboooma
Indie via iTunes

Building and Repairing Bridges is Liberal?

If you put up with me all the way to the asterisks in the last post, kudos to you.

I am ready to believe that this bundle of thumbs approach to Republican argument is a strategy meant to further move a corporatist state agenda. (Here comes my unique cuckoo.) Tying Obama to a leftist agenda and describing his policies as socialist obscures what is actually left.

Subsidizing insurance companies and calling that healthcare reform is not socialism. Indefinitely occupying Iraq with tens of thousands of whatever-euphemism-is-used military forces is not leftist liberalism. Escalating the war in Afghanistan is not socialist. Taking our money and giving it to banks in the hope they lend it back to us is certainly not socialism (though that policy began under a "conservative" president). Continuing Bush administration secrecy is not being a good pinko. I don't write this as a disillusioned Obama supporter, I write this as a person who values leftist politics.

Obama's not a leftist. Or, if he is, he's a leftist in the same way President Jesus was a conservative. And just like dum-dum support of President Jesus pushed thoughtful, genuine conservatism off the table, calling Obama's overarching ideologies socialist confuses what is socialist. That's fine if that's what you're after- in fact, it seems strategically brilliant if that's what you're after, but it seems like you would only be after that if you were The Man and if you're reading this you are very likely not The Man.

Calling Obama's agenda socialist makes sense if a.) you're a dummy or b.) you're trying, for whatever reasons, to co-opt the label to limit the possibility for leftist reforms. Wether that's good or bad to you consider this, the President Jesus years saw so many "conservatives" hop on a band-wagon loaded with such glaringly non-conservative baggage that Ron Paul could seem presidential.* Real advocates of a small government, fiscal tight-fistedness, and anti-imperial foreign policy could only stand by with their hats in their hands while being a conservative came to be a matter of clobbering homosekshuls with the KBR version of the Bible. That may be a lot of things- stupid, shallow, plutocratic, anti-Chrsitian, what have you- but it is not conservative. So while conservatism was hobbled we had a country that could pursue an imperial vision, unchecked executive power, illegal spying on its own citizens, torture, kidnapping, TARP, etc. That is some coup.

So where will we be if we have a similarly confused notion of what is socialism or what is liberal? Will politics largely be a matter of aesthetic choices? We'll allow Obama to continue with the above but everyone will know we're liberals because of our Shepard Fairey-ized pictures. Blah blah blah, point being, I'm the kind of paranoid/crazy that could believe entrenched corporate interests only benefit from Joe The Plumber conservatives on one side and Apple® liberals on the other (as if it were a matter of sides).

Maybe the upshot of this is Dennis Kucinich will someday seem presidential.

* At this, you should shudder like Sideshow Bob getting whacked in the face with a rake handle.

You're Fighting the Last War, Pops

Long time readers of my webworld diary risk alienating friends and family but may also recall my brilliant assessment of the previous presidential campaign's race-based strategies. In short, I said I thought the racial "othering"* of Obama wouldn't be the success it had been for Republicans in previous campaigns because the "signifiers,"* when compared to the actual Barack Obama, just didn't stand.

I think the same applies to the use of "socialist" among those lunatics and intellectual cripples trying to tie some vague fear of the misunderstood to Obama's social and economic policies. So just as the clumsy use of racism backfired (in the US, against a black man, of all things), I think the "socialist this" "socialist that" nonsense won't fly and may, in fact, backfire.

First, when one describes any of the present policies as socialism, and means that as an argument against them I think, "This person's a bit silly, they're just not someone I can take seriously on this matter, perhaps I should change the subject to building pigeon traps".

In order for this bit of crazy to carry any weight, I'd have to be of a like-kind of crazy. I'm not, so it turns me off and leads us to something else. It's the kind of point that can only be a point for those who see it as a point, as such it's the kind of thing that builds the walls of stupid higher and reduces the possibility of reaching anyone not already comfortably settled in that garden of dumb.

See. It's self-defeating in its self-buidling.

Secondly, like the "I guess I'm not that scared of black people if Barack is black people" phenomenon that won over enough white folks, the concrete comparisons that may follow from "It's Socialism, BOO!" may have the effect of opening people to socialist policies that the rest of the western industrialized world finds good and helpful.**

There's no Evil Empire, Joe Mc Carthy. Your clicks and clacks invite comparisons to Sweden, Canada, England, and Germany rather than the Soviet Union.

The what?

Exactly.

"You mean socialist like our allies? Okay... That sounds pretty good."

"You mean a single payer healthcare system could be like the fire department? That's not scary. That just sounds like good social and economic policy."

* Wonk wonk wonk
** Though Obama's policies are not socialist so what they're actually open to may be something else cleverly disguised as the socialism they think they're open to. What? Maybe I'll come back to that.

Now...?

I just can't stay away.

I tried. Oh how I tried, but nothing could fill the void. Religion, family, booze? Nothing could fill the blog-shaped hole in my heart...

So here my netlog waited. Reliable. Unwavering. Good and faithful little diary. Of course I couldn't leave you forever.

And you, dear, little lambs. Was I gone too long? Had I left you wondering if there was something you had done to keep me away? You might've, but I'm so gracious I won't bring it up now. Let's just savor the sweetness of this reunion and get to what matters, no?

And what matters? You do.

I have something for you. Well, maybe not all of you- those of you for whom my harping about nonsense like torture and war seemed like... harping- I want to share something that will wipe the scales from your eyes.

For some of you it may now seem natural to oppose the occupation of Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan. CIA kidnappings are newly awful to you. Torture is suddenly torture. It is no longer un-American to challenge and question US policy.

Good?

Maybe your conversion is a bit like showing up at AA meetings to get dates*, but who knows where the wind may blow?

For others though, some vestigial principle stands in the way. After securing your salvation with secret prisons all over the globe, torture, and the sacrificial murders of Afghan taxi drivers you're too committed to your dhimmitude. Perhaps, you've surrendered so much of your soul to make sense of euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation", "extraordinary rendition", and "detainee", you're unsure how to proceed in a world where those are nonsense.

I am here for you. Actually, this is here for you:

"The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality. When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgement that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes."

In case you missed it "the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality". That means sticking things in people's butts.

No I know you're one not likely to make sharp distinctions about homosexual practices. In fact, you're probably someone for whom the phrase "homosexual practices" means something and as such distinctions aren't a part of the calculus. The upshot is this probably counts as gay.

There you go. You can augment your commitment to torture with the fear of the love that dare not speak its name. Never mind that it's not love- it's probably gay enough for you.

Now, with news that the Obama administration is maintaining Bush administration practices and that Binyam Mohammed was tortured in Guantanamo as recently as a month ago you can shake the dust from your outrage (out of practice outrage is still outrage, little lamb) and put it to use.

Apply sexual assault and violence and I'm sure whatever truth or sense of decency has been hindering you will magically melt away.

You're welcome.

* See? I could have written "laid". I am so kind to your delicate sensibilities.

Nations Sign Cluster Bomb Treaty

Well, some nations anyway.

"The first of more than 100 countries have begun signing a treaty to ban current designs of cluster bombs, at a conference in Oslo, Norway.

Campaigners are hailing the treaty as a major breakthrough.

But some of the biggest stockpilers, including the US, Russia and China, are not among the signatories. "

BBC News

This isn't the kind of thing that affects you negatively, is it? I mean, you're not likely to come across a bomblet so you can easily avoid injury. You could probably go your whole life without meeting anyone effected by a bomblet so you'll never have the awkward experience of trying not to stare at some kids stumpy legs or arms.

Besides, we couldn't be who we are without using cluster bombs, could we? And we like us don't we? You at least like you, right?

Yeah.

I thought I was upset by this. I almost called the Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 to do some ranting, but no... I think we'll be okay here.

They Can Have My Gold When They Pull It From My Cold Dead Teeth

I've noticed the reemergence of a golden thread running through the various paranoid media outlets I visit. (I hate myself.) If you're a certain type of paranoid, now is the time to invest in gold.

Well... I suppose you don't have to be paranoid to turn to gold to offset currency instability, but I'm sure this ad is meant to appeal to a specific someone:

Someone not necessarily concerned with inflation or currency exchange. Someone that still has foodstuffs left in their Y2K stockpile. Someone who generally feels haunted by some vague fear but who is also much more terrified now than they were of even Y2K.

I've said before that we have experienced a kind of apocalypse, and now we see it is a zombie apocalypse- Obama seems to be raising the Clinton dead for his administration. So sure, I can see why you'd be afraid. But gold?

I've never understood why gold is so valuable generally, but it seems especially worthless if things are about to go horribly wrong.

Like so much of contemporary Conservatism, I think hyping gold is a move to squeeze a little more blood from REAL AMERICANS (thick-skulled rubes) who are only too happy to dig their own graves if they think it means they're taking the next guy's plot. (I should think of a more artful way to construct that image- it seems like a good one.) The fear on which selling gold depends seems not only a scam but also a misdirection. When there's a run on gasoline and bullets... and football pads, S&M gear, mohawks, dune buggies, and Tina Turner anthems- then we'll know it's all over. But by then it'll be too late, and who's going to want your shiny yellow rocks then?

Maybe They Should've Built a Cracker Barrel Instead of The Chili's

My brother was recently assaulted by a couple of Bros just west of the Glendora country club. According to him, some Bros started yelling at him from their truck and followed him from the Glendora Marketplace to Route 66. He was initially confused- wasn't sure if he knew these guys or what, and then they started shouting the N-word and making some sort of gesture. He likes The Rap Musics and listens to it pretty loudly so I guess that makes some kind of sense. When he pulled over and got out of his car, they self-corrected and used the phrase "Sand-N-word" instead. If you've ever seen me or my brother, that makes more sense.

He should've stayed in the car.

The other day a friend of mine told me one of his students was called a N-word Lover for sporting an Obama '08 sticker on his car. This was at the Glendora Marketplace, too.

My response then was something I've said before and and will now say again:
"30 miles east of Los Angeles sometimes may as well be
2000."

And I Proudly Stand Up...

Please join Citrus College, City of Glendora and Azusa Pacific University in Saluting our Veterans.

The Ceremony will begin at Citrus College Center Quad at 11:00 and end with Flyover and Landing of US Army Helicopters at the APU Football Field



SALUTING OUR VETERANS
Thursday ▪ 6 November 2008 ▪ 11:00 AM to 1:30 PM



Musical Prologue
Covina Concert Band

Welcome, Proclamations, and Remarks
Dr. Jeanne Hamilton, Vice President of Student Services at Citrus College
Karen Davis, Mayor of Glendora

Presentation of Colors
American Veterans State Honor Guard (AMVETS)

National Anthem
Dani Bustamante, Cameron Lanier, and Frank Rodriguez, Citrus College Music Students

Moment of Silence
Chaplain Rick Givens, Azusa Pacific University

Salute to Fallen Veterans
American Veterans State Honor Guard (AMVETS)

Keynote Address
Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis

US Army Helicopter Flyover

Closing Remarks
Dr. Jeanne Hamilton, Vice President of Student Services at Citrus College

US Army Helicopter Landing at APU Football Stadium

We command people to go and do things that no human should do, to subject themselves to the worst we have to offer, to be bound to a way of being that requires death and destruction, but I would be seen as the jerk for saying this event meant to honor anyone seems like a whole lot of nothing. I guess we do what we can.

It's Nothing Personal

So there you have it, fags. TRADITIONAL VALUES... well Mormon values anyway, cut the legs out from your homosexual agenda. Decent, righteous upstanding Californians were able to tell queers they don't know that they can't marry.

Oh, and of course I don't mean "fag" or "queer" in any disparaging way. Just like no one means anything disparaging by saying you are inherently incapable of doing or being what is necessary to marry. You're fine, really. This was always all about THE CHILDREN. And since this was always about what marriage means for kids, it's only a matter of time until we make minimum income and education requirements before allowing people to have children. We won't allow divorcées with children to remarry because that really screws up a kid. We'll probably reconsider interracial marriage as well- that just seems like it's inviting problems. What else... who knows? I mean, there's all kinds of things we need to do for THE CHILDREN now that we've got this ball rolling.

And as far as THE CHURCH's responsibilities in the matter, we can show how seriously we do take marriage by telling straight couples that we won't allow them to get married because they don't meet some random serious and consequential set of criteria. We can have church committees monitor the sex lives of congregants to make sure they're not doing anything to violate nature or tradition. Ministers will no longer hire themselves out to "perform" weddings. In fact, we could probably go to some type of arranged marriage system- all in all, that just makes sense.

So in short, no hard feelings, right homos? We just really really love marriage... and children. Don't forget to think of THE CHILDREN.

It's a Beautiful World

I'm sure you've heard that some voters are viscerally (read racistly) against voting for Obama but don't want to say so, so they use the Secret Muslim or We Don't Know Enough About Him memes to justify their not voting for him though they might were he white. That's silly, you don't have to be racist to not vote for Obama. It might help, but it's not necessary.
Likewise, you don't have to be not racist to vote for him. To wit, this Esquire article describing a white supremacist argument for supporting Obama:

White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. Here, I see a white man, who is almost dead, who declares he wants to fight endless wars around the globe to make the world safe for Judeo-capitalist exploitation, who supports the invasion of America by illegals--basically a continuation of the last eight years of Emperor Bush. Then, we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women--when usually negroes who have 'made it' immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize--that’s the kind of negro that I can respect.

Esquire via BOING

Well Sure, Why Didn't You Ask Earlier?

"Pakistan's government summoned the U.S. ambassador today to urge an immediate halt to missile strikes on suspected militant hide-outs near the Afghan border."

LA Times

Are the kind of people that feel it's okay to go around blowing up other people the kind of people you can ask to not blow up other people?

Thanks For Nothing

"A U.S. military judge barred the Pentagon Tuesday from using a Guantanamo prisoner's confession to Afghan authorities as trial evidence, saying it was obtained through torture."

AP News

Once, on a family trip to Mexico, I bought a half dozen or so throwing stars and a butterfly knife. At least once. Anyway, when my dad found out he said it was fine that I bought them, but I couldn't bring them into the car, carry them on my person, take them across the border, or give them to anyone else to do the same.

My indignant response: "Well then why did I even buy them?!"

He Is An Elitist

"Senator Barack Obama will use his prime-time half-hour infomercial on Wednesday night to make what is effectively a closing argument to a national audience of millions. At times he will speak directly into the camera about his 20-month campaign, at others he will highlight everyday voters, their everyday troubles, and his plans to address them."
NY Times

If he thinks people bitterly cling to guns and religion when the abject desperation of their lives is too much to bear... Well, Bill Watterson said it before.

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I Still Wouldn't Say "Convinced"

What is this country coming to?

So a crazy white woman accuses a generic black man of attacking her and it turns out to be false. Forget the electoral elements of this, within living memory this type of accusation- even false- would have been enough to bring about the murder of any number of black men throughout the country, or in more enlightened environs, the arrest and imprisonment of some random innocent soul who made the poor choice of being tall, black, and young in the United States.

But the times they are a'changin'.

And it's these a'changin' times that still have me disagreeing with The Qweenbean over the possibilities of an Obama presidency.

You know people who were raised and taught by good decent upstanding folks who knew as plain as anything that black people... no not people... blacks were just different, in a worse kind of way, than white people. It wasn't about hate. It's not about hate. It's about the banality of racial epithets, the impropriety of mixed marriage, the existence of something you call race, and the sensible wisdom of the Biblical mandate to stick with your own kind. It's why a black* man was never going to be your pastor, your boss, your son in law, or your president.

But that world is ending and an apocalypse is seldom a welcome thing. It's difficult to see one's sense of everything come crumbling down. Who, except for those willing to accept the call to be the church**, can confront that? And even for those who have accepted the role of sojourner, it's not easy. It's with that dis-ease I am concerned.

There is a rationale to the craziness exhibited by someone whose foundations are failing. This "Everything is Dying and I Have to Make You See It" so I'll scratch a "B" on my face makes sense. It's a desperate and crazy sense- but still a sense. Her world is ending, nature and reason themselves are threatened, what else would you have her do?

The threatened and dying have a limited palette but can be inordinately loud; that's my concern.

If things are changing, if we are living through the death of one world and the birth of another in a significant way, there will be zombies. And we all know how awful zombies can be.

* And pay attention- black isn't a reference to skin color.
** Not THE CHURCH