MOVIE’S FOR MODERN CONDITIONS

Recently, I’ve come across three movies which I recall from my youth and middle ages that sum up what it means to be modern human animal: Chinatown, Dr. Strangelove, and 400 Blows.

“Chinatown” ends in the failure of all moral conditions to deal with modern dilemmas. Everything “decent” fails in that movie and the “bad guy” triumphs. In “Dr. Strangelove”, the end of humanity is presaged by bushman-like chest thumping American behavior. The movie clearly anticipates Bushmania by decades, Bush being the Chill Wills character who rides the atom bomb down, waving his ten gallon hate and yelling Texas whoops and hollers.

But “400 Blows” is more subtle, French, and I like it best of that three. When the escaping delinquent boy runs out onto the beach and stop action freezes his slender form facing freedom and moral ambiguity, we’re left with the image of a human animal taking full responsibility for his own destiny. To take moral responsibility into our own hands is to face the moral ambiguity which is the true state of the evolved animal in the modern world. Truly courageous peoples will be required to accept this destiny which a godlike evolution places upon us. The morally ambiguous view took on power in the last half of the 20th Century. How can we have let the bushmen among us take us back to the view from their African veldt?


MORE FALLOUT FROM BUSH’S TOXIC PLANS

I’ve already mentioned the cresting wave of Moslem fundamentalism which threatens to subvert democracy in Iraq. See “the bombing of Christian churches” in the August second world newspapers.

Another Bush foul up less spoken of is the subverting of democratic reforms and religious moderation in Iran where we face many dangers. Bush’s cowboy actions in Iraq and the world have undermined the reform movement in Iran, returning power to the mullahs and weakening the reformers’ position. Now Iran is toying with atomic weapon technology and America can’t afford to fight a two front war so all we can do is wag a hollow stick at them while speaking loudly. Goodness sakes! We need us a president with the power for nuanced thinking, not a religious fundamentalist who sneaked into the White House.


CHRISTIANS FAIL TO RISE TO THE CHALLENGE

I’m constantly amused by discussions with religious people who turn a blind eye to reality and disappear into denial. In more than one of my discussions, the issue of Bible scholarship has come up.

One interesting book called “The Elusive Messiah: a philosophical overview of the quest for the historical Jesus” by Raymond Martin (Buy It!) delves into the conflicting arguments of Bible scholars and demonstrates the difficulty of arriving at a definitive view. Martin reviews the major scholarly positions on the authenticity of the Jesus narrative in the Bible. In the end, he summarizes by saying that the various positions eventually depend upon what documents the scholar accepts which support one view or the other.

Fair enough? Yet, when I point out that even my view (as well as their fundamentalist view) must, therefore, be hedged around by the relativity of the evidence and by our decision as to which scholars to believe, the Bible thumper even refuses to believe that scholars exist who might question his dogmatism.

I’ve experienced the weirdest sorts of mental side leaps when I confront a fundamentalist with the existence of Christian scholars who doubt the authenticity of the Bible view of the world. I can understand a Bible thumper refusing to accept my idea that god doesn’t exist, but how can he deny the existence of dissenting scholarly views about the Jesus narratives? All he’s got to do is walk to a library shelf and look up the wide ranging discussion between scholars about the authenticity of the Jesus narratives. You’d think we could at least agree that authoritative dissent exists, but a fundamentalist Christian seems unable to admit dissent into his world view. They seem to want to ignore that such views by Christians even exist. They become mental contortionists whose squirming is discomforting to a realist like myself.
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"I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." —Woody Allen

WILL ISN’T ENOUGH TO TURN BACK TRUTH

George Will reported some more good news for us atheists in his “Last Word” column in Newsweek (August 2, 2004). A University of Chicago report reports that between 1993 and 2002 Protestantism is down to 52% of Americans from 63%. Religions outside of Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism more than doubled from 3% to 7% while Americans claiming no religion rose from 9% to 14%. An increase of more than 50%.

These should be signs of good cheer for all Americans. It means that the truths of the human condition are being recognized and the basis for our accepting once and for all our power to change our own destiny is broadening. This has nothing to do with one religion getting one up over another religion; it’s got to do with the spread of real truths based in real observations and measurements and acceptance of our human, unsuperstitious place in the natural world.


ANOTHER CONSEQUENCE OF UN-NUANCED PRESIDENTIAL THINKING

Many American thinkers predicted that fundamentalist Moslems would gain control in post war Iraq. The recent attacks by Iraqi fundamentalists on Christian churches in Iraq demonstrate what happens when our nation is lead by a President who is adverse to nuanced discussions of policy and who pursues a bull in the China shop approach to world leadership. This cowboy rodeo clown is a real dude. How can Americans continue to support his failures? The decline in American literacy continues to be my guess as to the fall off in intelligent American leadership. Bush’s supporters decry the rest of us for referring to Bush’s low intelligence quotient, but how can we ignore his sad ineptitude when his actions and words continually demonstrate his ignorance? My goodness, folks, if you don’t want us to think you’re dumb too, then quite supporting George Bush. We’re going to pay for our illiteracy in the future.

What worsens his mistakes is his hidden agenda which slipped out a year ago when he called his war "a crusade". Now, at last, in the recent attacks on Christian churches in Iraq, his words come home to roost on him and to kill many of the faithful.


I MUST HAVE SAID THIS A THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE

The more I observe the hatred of fundamentalist American Christians, the more I’m certain that should a modern Christ appear in America with his “reported” forgiving and accepting nature the fundamentalists would crucify him again. Only we liberals, with our penchant for accepting cultural trends and beliefs like a woman’s right to control her own reproductive system and the gay lifestyle, would try to save him. America’s modern Sanhedrin would be led by Robertson, Falwell and Frankie Graham.
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"Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down." —Woody Allen

TALKING BEHINDS

In a Friday, July 30, 2004 story, USA TODAY writer, Peronet Despeignes, inadvertently exposes how much people talk out of their behinds (polite word). Peronet quotes people on their responses to the Democratic Convention and John Kerry. It’s much too easy for someone who pays attention all four years to the issues and to the decisions the President and Congress make to see the men and women who have no idea what’s going on and who only mimic what the news tells them to think. If I hear “flip-flop” once more or “too soft” on defense, I’ll be chewing my bowler brim in frustration.

Here’s a woman: “The convention’s not swaying anyone’s mind.” How does she know that? I know I’ve heard commentators say over and over that there aren’t enough votes left to sway so the conventions will be ineffectual, but I ain’t seen no polls yet. She’s talking through her b---.

Here’s another, a male: “Many consider Kerry elitist, the kind of liberal that looks down on working class people here [Boston].” Just an impression. No facts to back it up. No reference to his record which would show otherwise. Sounds like a man who’s been listening to Fox news. He’s talking through his b---.

Here’s another: “We are in a war against murderers trying to kill us and take over the Western world.” This guy’s a paranoid type, easy to convert into a chest thumping bushman. He shows the ability of an orangutan to discriminate complex issues. I bet he doesn’t realize that somewhere over in Baghdad, there’s a dirty guy with a bomb, thinking the same thing of our American bushmen. Both men are talking out of their a---- and don’t have a fact to rest their b---- on.

It’s just so obvious how many Americans pay no attention to what goes on for four years and then get their opinions second hand a month or two before the election.


LET THEM SIGN LOYALTY OATHS

In 1964, I was awarded a teaching assistantship at Southern Illinois University. Upon arrival, I was surprised to find I had to sign a loyalty oath in order to get the assistantship and enter the graduate program. In Illinois, McCarthyism was still alive, and they would not offer government employment to people suspected of being harmful to America.

Today, as I watch fundamentalist Christians, Muslims and Jews causing trouble all over the globe and endangering America, I’m not so sure that we shouldn’t revive loyalty oaths. In Marietta, Georgia, for example, a fundamentalist school board has decided to undermine the Constitution of the United States and to teach Creationism for which there is no evidence (Adam and Eve, etcetera) even though we all know that Creationism is a Christian interpretation of human evolution. Furthermore, fundamentalist President Bush constantly pushes his religion on all of us.

To protect American freedoms, our new loyalty oath ought to ask job applicants if they are an American first or a fill in a religion first. If candidates can’t vow they are Americans first, they should not be allowed to hold government jobs. Anyone who can’t put the Constitution above their religion is attacking the heart of America as surely as someone who flies a plane into an American building. The Constitution is all that guarantees our freedoms. It’s an oath no true American should have any trouble with, and it doesn’t discriminate against any one religion but rewards everyone who swears loyalty to the Constitution above their religious book.
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"Is life worth living? That depends on the liver." —Alcholic Anonymous

ATHEISTS DO NO EVIL

As I put my new homemade bumper sticker on my little blue Aspire (128,000 miles and counting), I thought of all the poor people in the world who still live in their old world order of evil and good. “Those poor Christians, Jews and Moslems who live in a world filled with evil,” I thought. “My heart goes out to them.”

Imagine! To live in a world full of evil and terror! Wow! No wonder the religious are always shocked and puzzled by the activities of the living world. I was once like them, uncomprehending, seeing bad everywhere I looked, until one day I entered the evolving and natural, modern world. Now, where I once felt despair and hopelessness, I feel positive and believe that some day we’ll create a better world where superstition and religion are conquered.

What does my new bumper sticker say? It reads, “ATHEISTS DO NO EVIL”.

Leaving the “evil” world behind every thing makes sense once we accept that what we’re witnessing is an animal becoming human rather than an evil-born human failing to act transcendentally. With luck someday those who see evil everywhere and create trouble wherever they go will lighten up and quit doing destructive things. Instead of decrying the evil behavior of others, they’ll become positive, understanding, accepting and constructive Darwinians. We can hope so anyway.


ARE WE FREE AGENTS?

“Determinism is the thesis that ‘there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future’ (Van Inwagen 1983, p. 3).... First, many thinkers assume that determinism implies inevitability. It doesn’t. Second, many think it is obvious that indeterminism—the denial of determinism—would give us agents some freedom, some maneuverability, some elbow room, that we just couldn’t have in a deterministic universe. It wouldn’t. Third, it is commonly supposed that in a deterministic world, there are no real options. only apparent options. This is false. Really?” (from Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves” on p. 25.)

Again, I’m firing at you some passages from Dennett. I find this stuff fascinating, for I’ve been ready a long time now to accept that I’m just a complicated robot. As you can see from the passage above, Dennett won’t quite grant me this freedom to be unfree. His arguments don’t always convince me, but I find his complicated logical sequences to be refreshing to my old clunky mind.


IN LOUISIANA WITH THE MEN AS THEY TELL IT

This guy comes onto a job site I was working at over in Belle Chasse. He claims to be able to run a dozer. So the foreman hires him ‘cause we really need some guys at the time. So the guy climbs up into the seat and gets a load of dirt and goes to dump his bucket into a truck. Only he misses and drops the bucket onto the cab of the truck. Lucky, nobody was in the cab at the time. Everybody stops to watch what happens next. There’s a long pause, then guy in the dozer grinds some gears and tries to jockey the dozer but nothing moves. Then he just climbs down out of the seat—he ain’t saying nothing—and walks off into the distance. Whistling.

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"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." —George Santayana

GUS VAN SANT’S “ELEPHANT”

Rented “Elephant” last night and watched it. It was on my list of “to sees”. I recommend it for the same reason I recommend many movies of that type: they don’t depend on plot. “Plotted” fiction distorts reality. Life doesn’t have a plot. Life is a series of happenings around about which the mighty left brain, always trying to make sense of sensory input, casts a net of meaning where there is no meaning.

The left brain imagines a god and then makes a meaning out of religious life and forces a religious interpretation onto the activities of the happening world. The left brain imagines a philosophy called “existentialism” and feels it everywhere in its mental landscape of firing synapses which it, then, projects onto the stuff “out there”, beyond the cranium. I’d say, projecting my own reality, that “Elephant” uses a nonsensical Universe as the basis of its meaning. Nothing is explained in the movie, no meaning projected onto the happenings. You get a series of unexplained activities from beginning to end. The “why” is left out, the left brain given no encouragement to “figure things out”, but, of course it does its work, and I ramble on about “absence of structure”.

When I was a kid, during the double feature era, and watched eight movies on some weekends, I took in so many plot-directed films that I truly did believe that life itself had denouements. I imagined that if I just said the right words at the right time, I could alter a conclusion or change a situation. I thought life had BIG moments that changed circumstances for ever if one could just find that moment and act on it. I believed that the structure I was forcing on the happening Universe was the true structure.

Unfortunately, that’s not how life works. Reality keeps happening while we try to manipulate it and others to our own purposes. All that a belief in plot-driven life leads to is to those kinds of persons like myself who become wheedlers and manipulators, always trying to make life and people come out as we want them to. Gosh, could our and Islam’s fundamentalists use a healthy dose of the reality which underlies Van Sant’s movies! They’d maybe learn to let go and let be. Peace would fall on earth like a stone. We wouldn’t know what to do or how to feel. We’d be struck dumb....

But that’s just my left brain practicing wishful thinking.


PAST MANIPULATORS AND AN AMERICAN LOYALTY OATH

In 1964, I was awarded a teaching assistantship at Southern Illinois University. Upon arrival, I was surprised to find I had to sign a loyalty oath in order to get the assistantship and enter the graduate program. In Illinois, McCarthyism was still alive, and they would not offer government employment to people suspected of being harmful to America. I was furious as I scribbled my name illegibly on the dotted line.

Today, as I watch fundamentalist Christians, Muslims and Jews cause trouble all over the globe and endanger America, I’m not so sure that we shouldn’t revive loyalty oaths. In Marietta, Georgia, for example, a fundamentalist school board has decided to undermine the Constitution of the United States and to teach Creationism for which there is no evidence (Adam and Eve, etcetera) even though we all know that Creationism is a Christian interpretation of human evolution. Furthermore, fundamentalist President Bush constantly pushes his religion on all of us.

To protect American freedoms, our new loyalty oath ought to ask job applicants if they are Americans first or a—fill in your religion—first. If candidates can’t vow they are Americans first, they should not be allowed to hold government jobs. Anyone who can’t put the Constitution above their religion is attacking the heart of America as surely as someone who flies a plane into an American building. The Constitution is all that guarantees our freedoms. It’s an oath no true American should have any trouble with, and it doesn’t discriminate against any one religion but rewards everyone who swears loyalty to the Constitution. If America should have a Bible, it should be the Constitution which is an unmistakably secular document.


PAGLIA DOESN’T [DIDN’T] GO FAR ENOUGH

Paglia writes, “[Shakespeare’s] ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’ demonstrates that life cannot be lived as a series of perpetual self-transformations without violating social and ethical principles. My generation learned this the hard way, going down in sexual disease and drug overdoses.” (p. 227, Sexual Personae)

Her interpretation of “Anthony and Cleopatra” aside, I don’t know why Camille would say that. I was a teen ten years before her hippy generation but adopted the hippy life when it came my way, cast off a wife, children and traditional marriage, sank into alcoholism and suffering, came into existentialism and lived that for awhile, then moved on into the 21st Century and science and did not die back to the conservative youth I was. I found true freedom in atheism and cast off Paglia’s conservative Apollonian line for a better reality which lives neither in Apollonian rigidity nor in Dionysian disintegration. She may think she has found a way out, but she didn’t go far enough if she has returned to those worn out conundrums of Dionysus and Apollo, outworn images of the human animal’s religious past brought back over and over and reinterpreted ad nauseam. Perhaps she didn’t experience debauchery deeply enough to get through to the other side. Perhaps she didn’t even try to throw off the shackles of Puritan America. Of course, I haven’t finished her book yet—it’s slow reading. Maybe she’ll win through yet. I begin with Chapter Eight when next I hold Paglia’s body* in my hands.

*of work

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“One must have a heart of stone not to read the death of [Charles Dicken’s] Little Nell without laughing.” —Oscar Wilde

WHAT’S IN A HAND UP?

It’s instructive that our local newsweekly The Inlander published an angry letter to the editor (Amber Custer) about homeless adults which contained the standard conservative cliché, “get a job, go to school”, while in the same issue producing a feature on homeless children which confronted the angry conservative cliché with its answer. Let’s put aside the fact that many working Americans with low paying jobs are homeless under this Republican regime which refuses to raise the minimum wage. As your article demonstrates, out of homeless children arise homeless adults, the damage done long before an American reaches adult status.

Where would drinking, drugging seven to thirteen year olds get these jobs the angry conservative tells them to get? Where would street dwelling children get the clean clothes and the middle-class manners to successfully compete for jobs? Who’s going to hire a drunken ten year old? No American wakes up one day and consciously “chooses” to be homeless. It takes a long history of abuse and failure or a sociopath’s genetic makeup to create the self-destructive psychology with which many adult homeless persons undermine their own best interests.

People who scream about the homeless would better spend their time being grateful that they were born with the genes for a good IQ or helpful parents, or with the genes that make for mental and physical health, with a loving grandparent (like mine) or a school counselor or a middle-class upbringing or an economic status that helped prepare them to hang on when times were tough. Counting their blessings might soften the hardened hearts whose angry jibes only contribute to the indignities already visited upon the homeless. Grateful conservatives might offer a helping hand up rather than a kick in the teeth.
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"I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind.
The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building." —Charles Schulz

SO THIS IS AMERICA?

An ignored minority does live in America, the minority of the non-Christian, and it is evidenced by the fact that no non-Christian has ever been president of the United States. Our Constitution clearly states that our president need not pass any religious test, yet Christians have kept out all religions but their own from the presidency.

Our current president in his power hunger has no compunction about manipulating America’s religious prejudices to remain in power, and his power base of Christian fundamentalists is only too happy to go along with him. Recall that before the right wing fundamentalists approved George Bush to be their candidate in 2000, they required him to write a letter testifying to his religious beliefs. He had to pass their religious test before they would support him. Fundamentalists and conservatives have happily forced god onto our currency and into our pledge of allegiance even though that was not the intention of our founding fathers. Now we’re even fighting god’s war for democracy (according to a Bush press conference) against Moslems.

The bushmen have already disregarded so many Constitutional protections—can they be expected to respect any of them? If you ask me, the greatest threat to American freedoms which has ever existed is alive and active in the Republican Party under George Bush. Sadly, we can see how many Republicans who would normally be outraged at such disrespect for the Constitution gladly kowtow to the trend because they love being in power more than the Constitution.



WHERE WERE YOU ALL THESE YEARS? TANKS A LOT!

Heard today that the reason gas prices are rising is that China’s economy is demanding more and more resources to keep its growth on track. Not too long ago, the rapid expansion was in Japan. India is using ever more gasoline to grow its economy. Can Russia be far behind? What about Brazil?

Liberals anticipated these developments way back in the 60s. I suppose someday soon, the rest of America will come around to knowing what some of us have known for 50 years. That’s why some of us have always driven fuel efficient cars. Not only does that help our pocket books, it makes us patriots by helping America remain independent of foreign oil. Other Americans put themselves first, America and everyone else second. If we are ever going to have a global economy in which world wages are high so job out sourcing won’t be necessary, we’re going to have to support global growth by doing with a little less ourselves in the way of big cars and waste like Christmas lights on homes, etcetera. I suspect we can find thousands of ways to become a more fuel efficient country, but that’ll take patriotism and working together. Conservatives don’t like that because it isn’t their favorite dog eat dog thing to do and cooperation smacks of bleeding heartism.

Another possibility will be war and more war. And the irony is that nothing wastes gasoline more than wars to protect gasoline resources. Do you know how many miles per gallon a tank gets?

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"I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time." —Charles Schulz

SWEARIN’ OFF

Today, I do abjure forever the name of “liberal Democrat” and assume only the small letter title “atheist”. (Unless I forget that today I swore off.) My wearing both titles, gives religionists who think only with their brain stems an excuse to attack liberal causes which are more humane, democratic and Christian-like than any fundamentalist cultural program I’ve ever experienced. Not that many Christians don’t get involved with the poor, but at bottom, they have the ulterior motive of making converts so all their efforts are self-serving rather than charitable.


A NEW PARTY? REPUCRATS or DEMOCANS

I’m sure liberals and conservatives of old have much more in common with each other than truly conservative Republicans have with fundamentalist Christians. Clinton’s Republican-like balancing of the budget added to a liberal’s natural tendencies to want to make society a fair and just place ought to be able to forge a new party with undeniable strength.


STALKING THE OPPONENT

At this very moment, I’m looking at a conservative male who doesn’t know I know he’s a conservative, and he doesn’t know I’m an atheist whose observing him. He’s eating lunch and visiting with his daughter.

He’s got a stony face and seems unable to have a real smile on his face. His eyes shift around, and he rarely makes eye contact with the people he’s talking to. He’s very guarded. This is not the kind of man I’d like to have guarding me in an Iraqi prison, if you get my drift. Anyhow, in twenty minutes, he’s not cracked a smile, even when he’s talking to his daughter. The funny thing is that I know his disability is all genetic, and I can’t take any more credit for my tendency to smile and clown around than he can for his genetic tendency to frown. The one difference between us is that I accept the genetic truth of our natures, and he doesn’t.

Speaking of the neocon smile—just take a gander at the VP’s smile on page 28 of the July 26, 2004 Newsweek. That smile is in the mouth and not at all in the eyes which is how you can tell a real smile. Neocons don’t know anything about traits like this, and if they do read or hear about it, they dismiss it as nonsense. Neocons just don’t know anything about human nature. All their info is based on moral and intellectual abstractions. They make their observations on how life ought to be rather than on what human nature.............

I’m tired of saying what I was just about to say. The truth may be that well-educated liberals and conservatives pretty much know all they need to know about human nature. It’s what they want to do with the knowledge that makes them different. A liberal wants to make society safer for the less-advantaged while the neocon wants to make the society more punishing.


ROUN ’N’ ROUN SHE GO AND ONLY THE PO’ ‘RAQIS KNOWS IT’SO

In a post some weeks past, under the title, “PREDICTION”, I predicted that Saddam’s police would soon be torturing Iraqi’s just as in the old days, only this time for a new regime. Man! I was right on. Turns out this Allawi guy is a real strongman, the kind of strongman that only a neocon could love.

“He [Allawi] has flooded the streets with cops, many of them from the old regime. He’s started a new General Security Directorate, otherwise known as the secret police.... There’s a danger that Iraqis may end up with a pro-American dictator, the sort of banana-republic despot that an American leader once famously called ‘an SOB, but our SOB.’ Then one of the last good reasons to have invaded Iraq will have proved as illusory as those long-lost weapons of mass destruction.” Newsweek, July 26, 2004, p.37

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"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." —Woody Allen

MARTHA STEWART DON’T GET IT

Darling Martha, how can you say that, “A small personal matter has been blown out of all proportion and with such venom and gore.” (Newsweek, July 26, 2004, p.40)

I want to be on your side on this issue, but I can’t because you don’t get it, and you do need to get it. Otherwise, I condemn you to conservative hell.

I’m a small investor, myself, and the whole set of laws you’re supposed to honor is there to make it fair for my investments to have an equal chance in the market place with yours. Insider info makes investing unequal. Since I can’t fly around the country and be in personal touch with the presidents of companies I invest with, then you should not be allowed to profit from contacts with them either. If you don’t get it, then damn it to hell. Maybe you need to be a Republican. They don’t believe in fairness and economic justice for all. To them, it’s the Darwinian survival of the richest.


GANGS AND CONTROLLED SUB
STANCES

I must not read the right news sources. It should be headline news. It’s bleeding obvious that the mobs arose very much as a result of alcohol prohibition. Now, as our local paper in Spokane talks of increased gang violence (July 2004), we need to see that all those illegal drugs, those “prohibited” drugs, are the cause of this new arrival of gangs into our culture.

What would gangs do if all drugs were legal, controlled and dispensed along with advice for breaking the habit? Think of all the cops who’d be freed to pursue violent criminals, how much our prison population would shrink, the taxes we could raise, and all the money we’d save for other important social needs. Who’s against this legalization and why? We know the gangs are against it. They’d have to get honest jobs. So, who else is on the side of these gang bangers? And why?


THE HOMELESS 9/11

It’s good to know the recently released report says that we’re safer now than before 9/11 but that we still need to be safer.

Someone ought to ask the homeless how safe they feel in this culture. The average poor person, living in substandard housing in substandard neighborhoods or the homeless person, sleeping on a winter heating grate, most likely stands a greater chance of being mugged and murdered in the street by a criminal than he does of being harmed in the next terrorist bombing. Yet we spend lots of tax dollars to make New York and Washington safe while leaving the poor out in the cold, suffering 9/11 after 9/11. Again!


IDEOLOGUES AND THE CONSTITUTION

These religious ideologues just won’t give up in their efforts to destroy our American Constitution. The House of Reprehensibles, full of flaming neo-conservatives, has just passed an unconstitutional law to strip the courts of jurisdiction over marriage laws. They actually would turn the Constitution upside down and open it to further depredations just to do harm to homosexual American citizens.

The knowledge we must all hold close is that the Bible has no standing in the Courts of Law. The courts must be religion blind in all its dealings with American citizens. The neocons would do anything to destroy that impartiality which stands between them and putting the Bible above the Constitution in American law. (Spokesman Review, July 23, 2004, p. A1)

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"The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around." —Herb Caen

CHICKS IN GUN SIGHTS

Every once in awhile this old catfish comes across word of the Dixie Chicks and their continuing troubles caused by one’s belief in practicing “freedom of speech”. Their punishment is endless even though every advancing day proves anyone's anti-Bush sentiment to be justified. Everyone realizes that country music fans (mostly uneducated white males) are also Bush’s chief fan base (not counting the wealthy) and, with those types, freedom of speech is much talked about but not much practiced in the act itself unless, of course, it’s their own right to uniformed spewing. O—of course—and they charge hard for their right to own guns, but, being uneducated, they don’t like to protect the rights of speech of people who, unlike them, can walk, chew gum and reason all at the same time. In fact, they probably want their guns to shoot down those who practice free speech which doesn't agree with their ideas. Their vindictiveness is boundless. And Dennis Miller doesn’t think these guys are fascists!


IN THE SCHEME OF THINGS

Our president of the bushmen, when you take in the whole scheme of things, because of his religious fanaticism, probably has more in common with Islamic fundamentalists than he does with the modern peoples of America, Canada, South America, Russia, China, Japan, and eastern and western Europe. In his foreign policy, he’s also psychologically closer to the WWII Japanese and German Imperialists than with most Americans other than our own precious fundamentalists.


O! OF COURSE!

Get this header for short piece in the Spokesman Review on July 21, 2004: “US tells Sudan to end violence”.

“Yeah, right,” I can hear the Sudanese government saying.

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"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." —Mark Twain