What's That Smell?

Now I know Governor Jindal has had a bad week, what with being the governor of a state that has required billions of dollars of federal money just to survive and being simultaneously tasked by the Republican party with explaining why it is wrong for the federal government to spend money, so I hope y'all don't think I'm piling on by bringing up this story I read in
The Daily Beast concerning an article Jindal wrote for the New Oxford Review titled "Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare".

We've all done things that we regret, particularly in our younger days. Thought things, that in retrospect, were so mind numbingly stupid that we shudder to recollect them. But never, in the mind altered, anti-vaccine, New Age, nature boy, drunken stupor that was my college years did it ever occur to me that my girlfriend required an exorcism. Some of them may have been a little odd, but possessed? I don't think so. Of course, I didn't attend a whole lot of prayer meetings so maybe there is some sort of group dynamic that I'm not aware of. If you are looking for demons you just might find them. Especially in the area of the colon, as Luther was well aware.

Some of the symptoms Bobby's girlfriend exhibited (besides hanging out with Bobby Jindal) included trailing an odor of sulfurous vapors wherever she went and being unable to repeat the phrase "Jesus is Lord" without bursting into obscenities. Kind of like Richard Dawkins after an egg salad sandwich. You would think a Rhodes scholar would be able to eliminate the obvious, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome mixed with a dash of Tourettes or possibly IBS induced melancholia, before launching into spiritual warfare. He felt a sense of oppression and found it very hard to breathe whilst casting the demon out. I'm sure he did. That was probably the IBS, Bobby. Although it may seem so at times I doubt that the Devil is directly responsible for farts. If the poor girl smelled that bad why didn't you just dump her instead of putting her through a humiliating public exorcism?

So one of the new faces of the Republican party is a self proclaimed exorcist and the other one
needed to be prayed over to keep the witches at bay. That should lock up the batshit crazy vote for 2012. Next.

They're Baaaack!

And just in time for dinner and the coming Apocalypse. Derek and Sharon Gilbert, the Regis and Kathy Lee of paranoid eschatology, and hosts of PID Radio. Making dinner was never the same during their hiatus. Often I would drop silverware into the sink, burn or cut myself as I listened in slack jawed bewilderment as they would put 2 and 2 together to get 5. But it all makes sense. In a way.
So here's the deal. Things aren't as they seem and we go through life half blind with the blinker on, pawns of the shadowy forces that pull the strings behind the scenes. I'm talking demons and demi-gods, Masons and Bildebergs, One-Worlders and UFO's, earthquakes and diseases. Hell, even Springsteen's in on it. Everything means something, part of an elaborate plot and only through Scripture can you sort out the meanings of everyday occurences. We must be getting close to the End Times and I think that's what brought them back to the airwaves. "A tall black man will arise in the West..." - that's not a porno, that's a prophesy.

So, if you're off your meds, check out the podcast and find out who's a puppet and who's a playa. Get the lowdown for the coming showdown.

What's In Your Wallet, You Poor Dumb Bastard?

Not a Capital One card. I got this notice today:

Due to extraordinary changes in the economic environment, we're reviewing our existing credit card accounts. Having considered these economic conditions, you account's current Purchase rate, and the length of time you've had this rate and account, we will be increasing your Purchase rate. We're also raising your Cash Advance and Default rates.

Allow me to translate:

Due to our retarded business decisions that have led to the current economic environment in which we are losing our ass, we are going to jack your rate 6%. Not only because we can but we also couldn't help but notice that you have paid your credit card bills on time for the past ten years and you have also paid off a substantial car and signature loan to our bank. So we know you're good for it and we're only asking you to pay a little extra to cover the shortfall when we felt it necessary to loan money to people who could never pay it back. After all, we're all in this together, right? You don't mind, do you?

Hell no. I don't mind. Thank you and fuck you very much, Capital One.

Leave Michael Alone!

Good morning, Mr. Phelps. This doobie will self-destruct moments after you finish toking on it. File this one under "Who the Fuck Cares?". So Mr. Flipper-fingers likes to get high. So what? There aren't a whole lot of subjects that I consider myself an expert on, but take it from me, having had some acquaintance with the substance in question, marijuana is not a performance enhancing drug. I repeat "Marijuana is not a performance enhancing drug!". You will not swim faster when you are stoned. You will more than likely finish last. You will, however, enjoy it more.

Kellogg's gets their panties in a bunch and drops Phelps as a product spokesman. Mercy! You'd think they would want to go after the stoner crowd. Because being high is the only way I could stomach those soggy shit flakes they call Wheaties. And that goes double for Corn Flakes.

Obama Takes Oath - Market Takes Dump

I knew it was too good to last

Merry F@#!king Christmas

I hit the daily double this Christmas. Not only was I wished a Merry Fucking Christmas but I was also called an idiot, all in the space of 12 short hours and by two different women. Normally I try to be proactive enough to ward off any potential holiday problems. I know how she is and after 20 years of eggshell walking at this time of the year I've gotten pretty good at anticipating when I am about to touch off a Christmas Apocalypse. Christmas Eve, the grandchild was sleeping, visions of ipods and nintendos dancing in her head, and I popped the Death Race dvd in the player and was sorting out my 10 thousand or so stocking stuffers when she and the child's father came in the door. Right away I offer to turn off the movie and put on some sort of sappy Christmas music.

"No, no. Go ahead and watch your (as opposed to our) movie."

Uh oh. "Um, ok." (I paused it anyway, I'm not completely stupid)

She walks in the kitchen, walks back out with the digital camera and proceeds to replay the hundred or so pictures she took during the Christmas festivities at Granny's house. Now, in my defense, I was there only two hours before and I even remembered what everyone looked like. Not being a fish, I was unable to keep one eyeball on the camera and one on Death Race without tipping her off. She is the Christmas Queen, after all. She knows when I've been bad or good and particularly when I am feigning interest. Turning off the camera, she stomps out of the room wishing me a

"Merry Fucking Christmas!"

"But I paused it........"

The boy laughs and laughs and laughs. Yeah, real funny.

The second incident occurred at my Dad's house during Christmas dinner. My sister-in-law was trying to make some point about the empty chair of Elijah (although I hardly think that setting aside a seat for God's invisible dick shortening enforcer is appropriate for Christmas dinner) but she made the mistake of framing it as some sort of question.

"What do the Jews do during seder...........?"

" I think they start out with the Feliz Navidad prayer."

"You idiot!"

That hurt. It hurt bad. I was just trying to help.

Holiday Tip

Do not say, "For Christ sakes, it's only a tree!"

Happy Birthday Bro

All these years have got me to reflecting:

Things I am sorry about:

1. Shooting you in the chin with an arrow.

2. Hitting you in the head with rocks (all occasions)

3.Talking you into taking your tricycle down Dead Man's Hill

4. Not talking you out of wearing those plaid pants in high school or combing your hair like Michael Caine on crack

Things you should be grateful for:

1. Setting the bar so low that you could shuffle over it on your life's journey.

2. Teaching you a valuable lesson: Don't ever, ever, ever listen to anything I tell you.

I do not regret jacking your jaw and launching you into the skittles table at the Otesaga Inn. If it did count, it shouldn't have. You had it coming and don't pretend you didn't.

The Christmas Magic Continues

I didn't particularly care for having my artistic efforts derided as retarded. Although my wife has backpedaled somewhat and told me that what she meant by retarded is that I was full of the spirit. WTF? How does that make any sense at all? That's like saying what I meant by calling you stupid is that your shoes fit well.

This constant criticism has only served to motivate me further and I have redoubled my efforts to put on a wholesome and tasteful Christmas display and make this the best Christmas ever.
What's Christmas without a manger scene? I realize mine is a little, well, mangy, as over the years the stable has gotten sat on a few times and most of the original figurines have disappeared. I think the only originals left are 2 sheep, the camel and Baby Jesus (or Baby Genius as my grandson calls him). I was short two Wise Men this year and the only ones I could find at Dollar Tree were a little, uh, tall. I think they bookend the display nicely, don't you?

My favorite is a little something called Bruce the Spruce that I picked up a few years ago. He's motion activated and unless I'm mistaken, made by Amish craftsmen.

My Very Special Christmas

Very special as in very retarded. That was how my wife characterized my outdoor display after I spent all afternoon freezing my ass off on a rickety step ladder. Just trying to please her. She's since tried to take it back, changing it to "design challenged". But once the R word is given, it cannot be taken back. Last year was my Blue Period. All blue, all the time. That didn't go over too well, so this year I tried to mix it up with a little color. I left the blue perimeter lights up. That was a lot of stapling so I doubt if they are ever coming down. The rules for outdoor ornaments: they have to be cheap, on sale and with instructions written in Chinese. Christmas is no time for retail. I think I outdid myself this year. Check out the display above in all its glory. Pretty sweet.

To be truthful, my wife is not very high maintenance. She drives a 10 year old car (OK, 11 years old) and we live in a 100 year old house stuffed with a mishmash of, uh, period furniture and within spitting distance of a major rail line. She puts up with my 5 year remodeling projects and my Dr. Seuss construction techniques. She doesn't spend a lot on clothes, or her hair, or pedicures or any of that stuff. Her only vices, besides Starbucks and making fun of me, are high end electronics. Makes it easy to buy for her every year. Right now in her purse are an iphone, kindle, digital camera and GPS locator. She carries around more hardware than the Space Shuttle. So life as a married man is pretty easy for me except for this particular time of the year when she turns into the Christmas Queen and I am her incompetent subject. I just can't get anything right.

For five years now she has been bugging me to get an artificial tree. I've always been a natural tree kind of guy, I like the way it smells (at least until the dog pees on it) and I like the fact that it keeps the tree farmers in business and encourages more open space. Maybe pesticide and herbicide soaked, but open nonetheless. We had an artificial tree when I was a kid and as my dad was an OCD engineer, the tree had to be erected practically needle by needle in a precisely defined and methodical way. A real pain in the ass Christmas tradition. I swore I would never do this to my family. I lied. She finally wore me down this year. I'm too old and tired to put up the good fight. Why she tasked me with this purchase and sent me out solo, I'll never know. She has only herself to blame. So at Ollie's Bargain Outlet I found a 9' kinda real looking tree with, yes, fiber optics! Not only that, the base is an MP3 player. I set it up, loaded the MP3 player with the Carpenter's Christmas Album (yes, I know, it makes me want to purge, too - but she loves it) and surprised her when she came home from work.

Why does she keep looking at me like that?

Every Day is the End of Days

Obviously, someday, somewhere, somehow someone is going to get it right and actually predict the time and place when it all comes to an end, at least for humanity. The trouble is, when it does happen, there won't be anyone around to say I told you so. Revelation reads like the author (John the Whoever) expected it to all come tumbling down in some sort of blood soaked revenge fantasy. He had real issues with women, not to mention the Romans and his fellow Jews. Apparently a combination of paranoid schizophrenia and never getting laid can put a hurting on one's mental stability. John fully expected the end of times in his life and must have faced his own personal apocalypse a bitter and frustrated man. Since then, every semi -charismatic psychotic with a hair up his ass and a gaggle of weak minded followers has been predicting the Second Coming. From Savonarola to David Koresh, so far, no dice.

Which brings us to the problem with this way of thinking. It becomes us against them. When the "other" is excluded by God's will, anything that happens to them is also God's will. If you're chosen you make it, if not, well, you just burn forever. Although the planet would be a better place if the wingnuts that believe this sort of stuff raptured off into the heavens and left the rest of us alone. Maybe they could take the Islamists, Moonies and Scientologists with them. What is more disturbing is that we have had two presidents and one vp candidate who have ascribed to John the Revelator's fever dream. Now I'm not sure these religious beliefs influenced policy decisions but they couldn't have helped. I might be alone in this but I prefer my government leaders with a least of veneer of rationality. According to Jonathan Kirsch in A History of the End of the World Ronald Reagan was batshit crazy even before the alzheimer wagon came to pick him up sometime during his second term:

"That's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off, everthing's falling into place. It can't be long now"

Thanks, Ron. No wonder you didn't give a shit about going toe to toe with the Soviets. You figured you'd drop your pants and ascend to heaven before the first nukes went off. And arms for hostages? Why not? Whoopee, we're all going to die. And your buds were as batshit crazy as you (by the way, blogging a personal note to a dead president is eccentric, not crazy):

I have read the Book of Revelation and yes, I believe the world is going to end - by an act of God, I hope- but everyday I think that time is running out."
Caspar Weinberger - Secretary of Defense

"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns."
James Watt-Interior Secretary

Explains a lot, doesn't it? And we have the current, soon to be former, occupant of the White House who has done his best to usher in a period of Tribulation. And, of course, Sarah Palin, demon free since 2005, proclaiming the need to move our embassy to Jerusalem. We Apocalyptitians know what that means. You betcha.

So, in my preparing to believe, I'm going to have to leave this whole Revelation thing on the back burner. I think I'll do it last in my traipse through the Bible. Which is as it should be, I suppose. I just can't get past the seven headed beasts coming out of the sea and I certainly can't, uh, swallow that whole thing with the Big ole Babylonian Whore with her cup of fornications. Just too gross.

Expelled - No Entertainment Allowed

I'm going to put preparing to believe on hold for a little while in order to appropriately review the blockbuster documentary Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed. Since Ken the Ham doesn't have much truck with the Intelligent Design guys I think I can honestly critique this mess without losing ground in changing my worldview to a more fundamental perspective.

The whole thing is fairly well done in a Michael Moorish way, complete with badly lit, heavily edited, sweaty, atheistic "Darwinists" with bad teeth and I'm sure equally heavily edited, glowingly lit, earnest, reasonable young scientists whose only crime is that they apparently can't do science. And the reason they can't "do" science is not because they lack a coherent testable hypothesis but because they are being suppressed by some sort of monolithic Darwinist establishment. What is Intelligent Design? Beats me. It is apparently a mystery to its practitioners, too. Along the way someone mumbles something about Intelligent Design being the theory that some structures are better explained as a result of actions by an Intelligent agency. Which structures is left unsaid, not to mention how or when. Dembski assures us he has a reliable design detector and it's only a matter of applying engineering principles to ferret out the details. Let's get crackin', Bill. We see novel structures emerge all the time in bacteria. We should be able to catch that pesky designer in flagrento designo. Using engineering principles, of course. Nowhere are we given a review of modern evolutionary theory except for a cartoon version of mutation and selection. At one point, someone (I think it's Berlinski) says evolutionary theory is so inconsistent that it can't even identify what a species is (which would seem to be a point in favor of common ancestry to me) . A little later, Jonathan "the Rev. Moon wants me to destroy evolution" Wells defines evolution as change within species. It is almost as though these Discovery Institute guys have been beaten about the head so severely by Darwinists that they have forgotten everything they ever learned about evolutionary theory.

My favorite part of the movie involves Ben Stein flying to Paris to interview Super Dave Berlinski. As usual, Ben meets him in the street and they wander over to Dave's pad to get the lowdown. This is one major quibble I have with the film's production values. It seems for every two minute interview we get a five minute preliminary of Stein wandering around the scenery looking either confused or, later in the film, doggedly determined and even later, determinedly confused. This all had me doggedly looking for the fast forward on my remote. On the stroll over we learn what a giant cranium Berlinski has. Princeton, Stanford, Rutgers. This guy has done it all and, to listen to him, knows it all. He also lives in the oldest house in Paris and he can even say "After you" in French (I guess). Stein can say "Thank you." (I'm sure of that one). Being a douche bag in one language isn't enough for these two Type A intellects. During the interview Berlinski reclines in this bizarre futuristic papa-san chair which gives us a great look up his nose while he's looking down his nose at evolutionary biologists. Stein perches at his feet like a puppy, knowing that, at least on this occasion, he has been out polymathed. Berlinski suffers from "Smartest Guy in the Room Syndrome", a syndrome which I myself have also fallen victim to. Only it was a small room. and it was just me and the dog (badda boom). Leaning back against the chair to increase blood flow and for added support of his huge, overactive melon he pontificates on the hierarchy of the sciences: pure mathematics first, followed by physics, and with evolutionary theory bringing up the rear, somewhere behind phrenology. I guess tens of thousands of lifetimes spent gathering data and thousands of tests and fulfilled predictions don't qualify as rigorous. If only there were someone with a massive enough intellect to spot the problems and turn this ship around before another 150 years are wasted. Maybe Berlinski is the One. Somebody call Oprah.

We start the film with a complete non-sequitor from Stein as he smugly asks "How did life begin?" (a chemistry question in an evolutionary biology class), transition to a series of outright lies concerning Sternberg and Crocker losing their jobs (Sternberg was never employed by the Smithsonian which makes losing a job at the Smithsonian kind of problematic and Crocker didn't have her contract renewed for refusing to teach what she was hired to teach), wander off the rails a little bit with more smug non-sequitors directed at the religious beliefs of famous biologists and somehow end up with Darwin and his damned finches being responsible for the Holocaust. Not a mention of Collins, Miller, and countless other scientists who seem to find room for religion and evolutionary biology in their lives. Along the way Ben becomes increasingly concerned and emotional (I guess, hard to tell) and ends up burying his head in his hands when he realizes it was Darwin, not Hitler, who killed off his relatives. Not only does this propaganda piece hit all the logical fallacies, it adds a patina of misinformation so subtle that it takes quite a bit of digging around to get the real story. Goebbels would be proud.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. "

America Gets Group Hug from Obama Nation

If all politics is local, effective politics is personal. The local paper is scratching its head trying to explain the precipitous decline in support of the Republican nominee from 77% in 2004 to a mere 66% in Tuesday's election. For a party that has had a stranglehold on our local elections since Lincoln, the lack of any sort of ground game, especially a face to face outreach to any undecideds, is astonishing. The Republican effort seemed limited to an ample supply of yard signs, one Sarah Palin's Traveling Circus rally just north of here and the annual chicken corn soup picnic. At no time was I ever contacted by an actual person acting on behalf of the McCain campaign. What I received was an unending series of robo-calls from anonymous voices telling me why Obama is wrong for American. I can't recall receiving any telling me why McCain was right for America. I even got suckered into participating in what I thought was a voter's survey. I should have realized right off that something was fishy when the lead question was whether I was more concerned about the economy or partial birth abortion. Being one of the duller knives in the drawer, I played along until I realized any answer to any question led to a canned negative statement about an Obama position. Wasting a couple of minutes until I had my "Hey, wait a second...." moment just ended up pissing me off. I imagine I was not alone in this. I got exactly one robo-call from the Democrats, a message from my buddy Bill Clinton urging me to vote and telling me where and when the polls opened.

My wife volunteered for the Obama campaign. She took the day off work to help get out the vote, work the polls and volunteer at the headquarters. Since the convention she would receive text messages from the campaign, asking what she thought of the debates or telling her where rallies were going to be held. Multiply that by thousands of districts, with tens of thousands of volunteers being made to feel that they count and are part of something bigger and more importantly, that they are making a difference. This happened all over the country, in latte sipping burbs and hillbilly heavens alike.

That was the brilliance of the Obama campaign. They used high tech communications to advance old style politics. They humanized the process. My district may never become one where Democrats can compete but there is a big foot in the door now. And it can't bode well for the future of the Republican party that, for the first time ever, the local high school went for the Democratic candidate. People will remember the smiling lady with the Obama button who offered them coffee while they were standing in line at the polls or the polite young black students who came to their door to offer them some literature. The "other" has a face now and somehow they seem not so very different.

Where are you, Joe?

How's he gonna catch bin Laden if he can't even keep track of Joe the Plumber? Maybe Joe was out using his new found celebrity to lay some pipe.

An Open Letter to John McCain

Dear John,

We both know the road to the White House goes through Pennsylvania so let me give you a few tips about convincing a key demographic that you need to win over, semi-literate, working class white boys. As a card carrying member, let me clue you in as to how we think and how to get our votes in these last few days before the election and, more importantly, target ad campaigns to different areas of the state. I've lived in eastern , western and now central Pennsylvania. You need to figure a 5 point IQ drop from east to west per zip code as you move across the state, a 5 point drop south to north, and then a 50 point drop off when you hit the West Virginia border. But you probably already have WVA sewn up. Here's my tips:

1. Scare the white people! This is absolutely essential for success. It is a time honored Republican strategy and one you have to embrace yourself rather than simply farming it out to Sarah. Bill Ayers ain't going to do it. Wrong shade of terrorist, if you catch my drift. We sure aren't going to be scared of some skinny white hippy, even if he's got a bomb. We know you got Rev. Wright in the bag. Time to let him out. Now there's a bogeyman that will get us worked up.
2. Don't worry about calling us racists and don't ever apologize, ever, for anything (unless you get drunk and are gone all weekend and have to explain it to Cindy). Calling a coal cracker a racist is same as telling him he has a nice truck. It's a given and he don't care. Murtha will be reelected by a landslide. Learn from him. And don't get tangled up in the punchline. It makes you look like John Kerry.
3. Keep up with the Joe the Plumber stuff. And, for Christ sake, don't get all huffy about the media digging up dirt on him. The more we find out about his unlicensed plumbing adventures, his failed marriage and his back taxes, the more we can relate. And the more you can talk about Obama taking Joe's dough (even if he doesn't really pay any) and giving it to crackheads the better it will be. Even though we can't balance our checkbooks we feel qualified to expound on the merits of Obama's tax plan, just like Joe. And even a guest appearance on "The View" is better than unclogging toilets. We all figure he found his ticket out and we don't blame him for that. Next stop is "Who Wants to Marry a Plumber".
4. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT MENTION SOCIAL SECURITY! If you want to set up private accounts save it for after the election. A lot of us got our 401K statements and we're wondering why we didn't just buy a truck when we had that money. The free market system has let us down. We are not used to having money that we put away disappear. And don't mention Medicare. If Mom and Dad get wind of your health care proposals you will lose the all important cranky old people vote.
5. Don't mention your enlightened stand on immigration. It's all about the brown people, bro. We're more scared of them than anything. We think they're after our jobs. I mean they would be if we had any jobs left out here.
6. Send Sarah to every godforsaken bingo hall in every godforsaken borough in this godforsaken state. Just keep that red leather jacket halfway zippered and if someone asks you about her qualifications just wink and say "Would ya?".
7. Here's the tricky one, but the one that will put you over the top. Distance yourself from everyone in the current power structure. Blame the president, the congress, the democrats, the republicans, even your running mate for the problems we are having. Remember that you have to convince the majority of Pennsylvanians to vote against their own self interest. This will take a certain amount of creativity. Have a highly placed yet anonymous party operative feign fury at your betrayal of the Republican party. Let the media smugly and gleefully out him as Karl Rove. A masterstroke: you will be able to publicly sever the tie to Bush and at the same time carry on the same Bush policies unnoticed. People who feel kind of bad about being suckered into 2 terms of a Bush presidency will have a reason to believe that you will be different. While the media is doing a post mortem on the Republican Party you slide right into the White House. It'll work, dawg. Trust me.

Good luck and bless your heart,

Scripto

A Glossary of Palinese

First the results of the poll:

57% of you feel that Sarah Palin's witch hunting ways disqualify her for the presidency.

43% of you are stupid.

I predict that in the last 10 days before the election stupid will trend up to around 48%

What she says:---------------------------------What she means:

Bless your heart -----------------------------------------Fuck you
Bless his heart -------------------------------------------Fuck him
Bless her heart ------------------------------------------Fuck her
You betcha ----------------------------------------------Damn straight
Doggonit -------------------------------------------------God damn it
Can I call you Joe?----------------------------------- Fuck you, Joe
Real Americans------------------------------------------Rednecks

Elites------------------People who try to figure out what I'm saying

Yeah, we get it

"Sarah Palin was on the verge of inciting a race riot in Northern Florida yesterday. At her rallies, the Republican faithful mob hurled a racial epithet at a black sound man, and screamed "kill him" and "treason" at Barak Obama.
"Boy, you guys just get it." Palin responded."

From the Nation on
Sarah Palin's Florida appearance

Suck It Up - America!

<
Quit yer whinin'. The political process is not irretrievably broken. It's just bent a little. How bent it is is inversely proportional to how well your guy is doing. And right now I feel pretty good about the process. It ain't over yet and I'm sure there is a lot of swift boatin' coming our way but gosh darnit, I'm going to enjoy this fleeting moment of bliss. It's been 8 looonnng years in coming. I don't know if Pennsylvania is the next big state to be abandoned by the McCain campaign but I've noticed a curious lack of 527 style attack ads coming our way. Maybe T. Boone Shitkickins has decided to invest his money in trying to save our country instead of destroying it. We are the land of the second chance.

Look at the bright side. This time we don't have to choose from two rich guys from Yale. We got an aged war hero and his babelicious running mate and a black senator with a Arabic name and his running mate, the man who should be President. How cool is that? And how bad has the current administration fucked things up to make this even a possibility? The potential for measured political discourse is always there. We saw it in the two interviews on September 11. Both men gave thoughtful, insightful answers and I came away with the feeling that either one was capable of holding the office. Of course, the feeling went away when McCain realized he could really lose this thing and begain pulling out all the stops in a hysterical attempt to turn the tide. Palin? Sweet Jesus in the morning! What was he thinking? Of course, I also came away from the last vice presidential debate impressed by Cheney's calm demeanor, so I am no judge of character. I thought even if Bush wins maybe this guy can keep him from doing something really stupid. Little did I realize he would become the Dark Lord of the New American Imperium and preside over the wholesale destruction of the american economic system. Oops.


Everybody complains about the quality of the candidates but I believe those that survive vetting by an aggressive press are for the most part brighter and more able than their predecessors. Even our thieving politicians are a little smarter. Boss Tweed, Jimmy Walker and Huey Long wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes in the public arena nowadays. Secret ballots didn't come into use until the end of the 19th century, blacks were effectively disenfranchised by Jim Crow laws, women didn't get the right to vote until 1920, you could get beat up by club wielding poll watchers for coming out of the booth with the wrong colored ballot stub. And things aren't better? Where was this mythical land of sturdy Cinncinatuses (Cinncinati?) casting well reasoned votes free from rancorous party politics?

Results of the Sarah Palin Fit to President Poll are just in:

14% felt that she did not have sufficient grasp of the issues
14% thought that having a nice rack and being demon free was not sufficient qualifications
42% thought it was a joke
28% prayed it wasn't happening
and 2% must have disappeared somewhere into the interwebs.

I took a lot of flack for not including a positive response in case some of you are actually brain damaged enough to think that she is presidential material. So I be running a new poll just for you.

Preparing to Believe - Man Arrives

I'm stuck on Jesus. On songs about Jesus, anyway. The 14 year old Sony receiver in my pickup will only scan the Word FM. As the manual tuner is inaccessible I'm going to have to take this as a sign. To my tin ear the songs sound like any other top 40 station, only they're right with Jesus and every hour or so Ken Hamm breaks in with a short creation science moment. There's rap about Jesus, country about Jesus, alternative about Jesus. It's all good and very positive. There are even lists of businesses that are right with Jesus. So it occurred to me that this change in worldview will be easier than I thought. There seems to be a whole other independent American way set up. I can get my car fixed by Christians, shop for groceries at Christian stores, buy a house from Christians, get my science at the Creation Museum, send my kids to christian schools and then to Liberty Baptist University. If they're smart enough, they can go to Patrick Henry and help rule America. It's a whole big blanket of God insulating the believer from the things of this world. Once I manage to weasel my way into the community of believers it will be very hard to fall away. Everything's right there. Far better than the so-called "community" of non-believers. I don't see any atheist auto body shops in my area. Bunch of bitter drunken know-it-alls. Hitchens, bah! I bet Ken Ham wakes up feeling better on Sunday morning. Today Ken said that if there was a worldwide flood we would expect to find millions of dead things buried in the ground. And what do we find? Millions of dead things buried in the ground. Take that, Stephen J. Freakin' Gould. Hope you get Around the World with Ken Ham while you're roasting in hell!

While wading through Genesis I found one thing that puzzles me:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

"Our" image. I kind of wanted to join a monotheistic religion. Who's this "us"? And are just men created in God's image? Or is it women, too? Is God trans or maybe supra gender? I'm confused.

More Cornpone, Please

Doggone it, what can I say? Maybe I watched a different debate. Grumpy old politico Pat Buchanan and pretend everyman Joe Scarborough are convinced that Palin nailed it. Biden was "boring" (i.e too many factual presentations of actual policy proposals) and Palin spoke directly to the people. She sounded to me like Ned Flanders channeling Ronald Reagan. Hot diddily doo. Every wink into the camera reminded me of an Amway presentation selling guaranteed pure products like "freedom", "jobs" and "lower taxes". And just like Amway, it's a sales technique to get us to pay too much for a product we don't need. Trickle down economics is a pyramid scheme and a McCain election will guarantee most of us staying at the bottom. Sarah Palin's job is to sell these Republican products and get us to vote against our own self interest. I found the whole folksy, wink-wink Mr. Deeds bullshit belittling and condescending. We are not that stupid and we have had enough of that shit with Bush and I'm hoping we don't fall for it again.

I am a working class guy and I can tell you guys like Buchanan and Scarborough don't get it. Their contact with working people is limited to picking up the dry cleaning or dropping their car off for an oil change. If you are a waitress or a nurse or a mechanic or a construction worker or a factory worker you know what I mean. I used to deliver redi-mix to homeowners, usually lawyers or doctors or accountants, and this was their big once in 10 a year moment to do some really heidi-ho blue collar manual labor. I'd hear how great this kind of work is. No, it isn't. Try it for 15 years. Otherwise you don't have a clue. And quit feeding us bullshit, we're full.