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Another Tea Bagging Event to Come
It looks like we are in for another round of tea-bagging parties. The tax protestors are unfazed by the tax cuts enacted by the current administration; nope, it was too little too late for these rambunctious seniors. The idea of crotchety old Republican men involved in tea-bagging presents, I admit, an interesting mental spectacle. Presumably the women in that august assemblage cheer their favorites on in this riot of Levantine debaucheries. But I give credit to these mostly ancient reprobates, when it comes to standing up for what you believe in they have it in the bag. And don’t think hecklers bother them; they know how to handle nuts. Some pundits claim the Republicans are all done as a party but I can’t agree; by election time they will haul something out of their sack of tricks. The date for these frivolities will be Independence Day, what could be better from a patriotic standpoint? They hope for a better attendance this time around for despite the unending and shameless promotion by FOX news last time around it was rather a flop more notorious for tea-bagging and the antics of the participants than in numbers. In fact only about 300,000 attended nationwide; less than one-tenth of one percent of the population. In Washington D.C., where the weather was uncooperative it was called, “The Fizzle in the Drizzle.” Perhaps it is a base canard to term these people as “Republicans” for most of the people that came had little to do with the Grand Old Party. If you took the Libertarians out of the mix what would have been left? Not a lot, a few secessionists, anti-abortion activists and people who are just “a’gin” the government. Happy tea-bagging to all of you!! This was posted on May, Sixteenth, 22 days after Sean, “The Coward” Hannity reneged on a promise to be publicly waterboarded for charity. He was a coward then and remains one now.
Another quote on toture by Winston Churchill
President Obama recently recalled some words by Winston Churchill in regards to torture. The fools over at FOX news then proceeded, in their usual asinine way, to take pot shots at the President by quoting Churchill out of context and implying that this Prime Minister of Britain was a hypocrite because his government ordered the bombing of German cities which produced a high number of civilian causalities. The apparent line of thought by the FOX jerks is that if you bomb a city it is okay then to torture it’s citizens. At least that is what I think their reasoning is, one can never be sure though when you are dealing with cultural illiterates. Keith Olbermann has established a regular cottage industry correcting the historical gaffes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean “the Coward of the County,” Hannity. These two clowns seldom get anything right, -you have to wonder what day care center they recruit their staff from. Winston Churchill was a statesman, author and columnist and lecturer for decades and had something to say on just about any subject one could think of. Taken out of context his words could be used to support; or alternately, to condemn, almost any position. He spoke and wrote about the treatment of captured prisoners, and yes, he did talk about torture. The quote below, given in a full context, was in a book of his that was published just after WWI, I think that this clearly shows his thinking about torture: he lumped it in with cannibalism. The bold type is mine.
“Germany having let Hell loose kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed. Every outrage against humanity or international law was repaid by reprisals often on a greater scale and longer duration. No truce or parley mitigated the strife of the armies. The wounded died between the lines; the dead moldered into the soil. Merchant ships and neutral ships and hospital ships were sunk on the seas and all on board left to their fate, or killed as they swam. Every effort was made to starve whole nations into submission without regard to age or sex. Cities and monuments were smashed by artillery. Bombs from the air were cast down indiscriminately. Poison gas in many forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered, often slowly, in the dark recesses of the sea. The fighting strength of armies was limited only by the manhood of their countries. Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When it was all over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian states had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility.” From The World Crisis, by Winston S. Churchill, Volume one, page 3, Chap. I, 1923, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Photo shows Churchill as he looked in 1914 at the outbreak of the war; he served then as First Lord of the Admiralty.
Bristol Palin, a pawn in mom’s game.
I think that all of us who sit in our armchairs and survey world culture get jaded to a degree when is comes to stupidity. Morons like flat-earthers, holocaust deniers, people who say that our going to the moon was a hoax and cerebral cortex lacking Scientologists parade their idiocies past us continually. But every now and then a piece of truly inspired stupidity passes under our noses and when this happens it behooves us to stand back and enjoy the show. Candie’s Foundation, a group started a few years back with the laudable ambition of combating teen pregnancy, has selected Bristol Palin, the daughter of failed Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, as a spokesperson to peddle the ultimate weapon against pregnancy: no sex. Never mind that Bristol had sex herself, as proven by the resulting baby, she was made the ambassador of abstinence. Looming heavy in the background is mom and her fundamentalist religion. Ah, yes, once again Theology raises it’s tired, withered hand against the power of Biology. It’s a no-brainer as to who will win, teen girls can’t resist sex anymore than evangelists Jimmy Swaggert or Ted Haggard could. I think it would be hard to fault her for wanting to have some of the sugar stick after seeing the young stud-muffin18-year-old Levi Johnston on television. To a girl her age this handsome, energetic young man would be hard to resist. For a while they were together but now Bristol and Levi and their respective families are at each others throats parading their dirty laundry in front of delighted audiences and the readers of scandal magazines. Mom Palin seems all too ready to reach right down into the ditch for a handful of mud to fling at the Johnston family. More baggage for the Ambassador for Abstinence to carry. I watched a very painful interview of Bristol Palin a few days ago. I genuinely felt sorry for her. Nobody had bothered to prep her for these questions, which were outstandingly mild. Or if they had prepped her she must have suffered stage fright and forgotten everything for she didn’t seem to have a clue as to what she was doing sitting there. She couldn’t understand that there was any seeming conflict in her position as a teen mom and her leading the charge for abstinence. The whole things was sad in the extreme and the crass stupidity that put her in front of any audience anywhere is simply overwhelming. Nobody with an once of brains could think that this poor girl wanted anything to do whatsoever with this so-called ambassadorship. She is in far over her head and she looked exceedingly uncomfortable. But this was not about Bristol Palin, no, it is about her mom’s insatiable political ambition. Sarah Palin tried to take the liability of having an unwed teen daughter and turn it into political hay. And being who she is, Sarah Palin, she made a mess of it. But maybe mom and dad had an unwitting role in their daughter’s early sexual behavior. After all, she frequently handled the greatest phallic symbol of all as shown in the picture. Maybe looking at the barrels of these weapons gave her ideas about other things long and straight.
Sean Hannity on American Idol
FOX commentator Sean Hannity passed his initial singing test and landed a spot later this year on the popular American Idol show. This is in spite of being assigned the song “Coward of the County” by Idol producer and judge Simon Cowell. “In light of his reneging on his pledge to be publicly waterboarded for charity we felt this song suited him better than any other,” Cowell explained, “and while I wish Sean the best I hope this is the last we hear of anyone from FOX for a while at least, if Anne Coulter came knocking on our door, what could we possibly do for her? Transsexual related songs are few and far between.”
Great Moments in Christianity, – Witchcraft Trials
“THOU SHALL NOT SUFFER A WITCH TO LIVE” ( EXODUS 22:17). Too bad for the tens of thousands of innocent men and women who were later put to death on behalf of this fatal verse that no guidance was given as to how to determine if somebody was a witch or not. In early Christianity witches were small potatoes. If somebody’s cow died or if lightning hit a barn the blame would have been put on demons if natural causes were thought to be lacking. For some unknown reason the thinking shifted from horned demons out to cause the faithful a hard time to witches putting spells and curses on people. It is difficult to pinpoint when this happened but in the year 1208 Innocent III used witchcraft to discredit a heretical sect, the Cathars, by accusing them of practicing witchcraft. Propagandists for the Church, in woodcuts distributed to the peasants, depicted Cathars kissing the anus of Satan in a ceremonial show of loyalty to him. In the year 1484, a medieval Pope, Innocent VIII, sent two Dominican inquisitors, Kramer and Sprenger, to Germany. The two men wrote a book together, considered at the time the best textbook on Witchcraft. The name of this book was, in Latin, Malleus Maleficarum, which means The Witch’s Hammer. This volume is a compendium of hate, nonsense, sadism and sheer cruelty and its publication did much to inspire the periodic outbreaks of witchcraft hysteria. The basic contention by these nitwit authors was that if you are accused of witchcraft you must be guilty, it is just then a matter of how best to torture you to gain a confession. So every half-wit and village idiot went around accusing people of witchcraft, old women were common targets but nobody was really safe. Men, women, children, old or young, it made no difference. To make things worse the property of the victims were confiscated. Many private scores were settled although sometimes the accusations would rebound upon the accusers at a later date as friends and family got even.
Outbreaks of witchcraft hysteria, with subsequent mass executions, began to appear in the early 1500s. Authorities in Geneva, Switzerland burned 500 accused witches at the stake in 1515. Nine years later in Como, Italy, a spreading spiral of witchcraft charges led to as many as 1000 executions.
The Reformation divided Europe between Protestant regions and those loyal to the Pope, but Protestants took the crime of witchcraft no less seriously–and arguably even more so–than Catholics. Germany, rife with sectarian strife, saw Europe’s greatest execution rates of witches–higher than those in the rest of the Continent combined. Witch hysteria swept France in 1571 after Trois-Echelles, a defendant accused of witchcraft from the court of Charles IX, announced to the court that he had over 100,000 fellow witches roaming the country. Judges responding to the ensuing panic by eliminating for those accused of witchcraft most of the protections that other defendants enjoyed. Jean Bodin in his 1580 book, “On the Demon-Mania of Sorcerers,” opened the door to use of testimony by children against parents, entrapment, and instruments of torture.
In 1591 Scotland’s witch-hunting had its origins in the marriage of King James to Princess Anne of Denmark. Anne’s voyage to Scotland for the wedding met with a bad storm, and she ended up taking refuge in Norway. James traveled to Scandinavia and the wedding took place in at Kronborg Castle in Denmark. After a long honeymoon in Denmark, the royal newlyweds encountered terrible seas on the return voyage, which the ship’s captain blamed on witches. When six Danish women confessed to having caused the storms that bedeviled King James, he began to take witchcraft seriously. Back in Scotland, the paranoid James authorized torture of suspected witches. Dozens of condemned witches in the North Berwick area were burned at the stake in what would be the largest witch-hunt in British history. Later, after reviewing confessions of so-called, “witches” he would come to doubt the whole issue of witchcraft.
In 1643-1645, the largest witch-hunt in French history occurred. During those two years there were at least 650 arrests in Languedoc alone. The same time was one of intense witch-hunting in England, as the English civil war created an atmosphere of unrest that fueled the hunting, especially under Matthew Hopkins later played brilliantly by Vincent Price in the movie, “The Conqueror Worm“. The Thirty Years War, a conflict that raged in several European states from 1618-1648 following an attempted rebellion by Protestants in Bohemia from the Roman Catholic Hapsburg rulers, produced slaughter and suffering that sparked additional witch hunts.
In 1692 the hunt for witches came to America. Nineteen people in Salem were hung for witchcraft not counting the ones who died in prison. Of course they endured terrible hardships and privations before, during and after the trial and were in all likelihood ready to die than to continue such treatment at the hands of their fellow citizens.
After this the hunt for witches died off, the rise of knowledge from the renaissance coupled with the rise of humanistic thinking made people look for other explanations for disease and natural phenomenon rather than thinking such things were the result of curses and hexes.
Christians are very defensive about this subject. When once I brought the subject of the torture and execution of accused witches by Christians up to a former employer, a conservative Christian, he got highly indignant and told me, “They [ the witches ] shouldn’t be allowed to live !”
Great moments in Christianity -The Black Death.
Great Moments In Christianity, -“The Black Death”.
(This series is dedicated to all good fundamentalists and Evangelical Christians everywhere, including Sarah Palin. Heck, Especially Sarah Palin! Why do I bother? I wouldn’t care at all about what other people believe but these mopes insist on shoving their silly beliefs in everyone’s face and adopting an insufferable air of moral superiority that they parade around during political contests. They love to scrutinize the behavior of others, so I think turn about is fair play. How have Christians behaved over the centuries? They want prayer in schools, but does prayer work? What about “Christian Charity?” -does it even exist? These and other topics will be looked into.)
Medieval artists vied with each other in attempting to show the sheer horror of the Great Plague. None of them, however, were able to capture the true scale or intensity of the suffering. This picture depicting death and chaos is by Peter Brueghel.
When we speak of the Black Death we are referring to the Great Plague of the 14th century. This is not to minimize in any way the other pandemics that occurred either before of after, yet this was by far the worst; this is the one that came the closest to snuffing out human society. The disease, which came to be known as the Bubonic Plague, was carried by rats and then transmitted by fleas to humans. The results were usually fatal. Symptoms included lymph nodes that became so swollen and toxic that they protruded hideously from the skin, sometimes they burst. Often those infected suffered madness in their last hours as the disease ran its’ course. Suffering, of course, was almost beyond comprehention.
So how did the society, which was centered around the church, react? The first thing that happened was that they blamed the Jews for poisoning the wells! Everywhere Jews were either slaughtered or else driven out to town, often to suffer the deprivations of thieves or to die from exposure. In one German town they were nailed into barrels, while still alive, and dumped into the river to drown. In another city, this time in France, they were taken to the local cemetery and given the choice of being baptized or killed, over two thousand were slain. Forcible baptism was a common theme; one variation being that sometimes the Jews were killed even after they submitted, with a knife at their throats, to being baptized. Yes, the good Christians killed them anyway. There were several towns in which the Jews were herded into a house that was then set on fire. In fairness it must be said that in a few localities the authorities tried to protect the Jews that lived there pointing out that they knew of no crimes the Jews had committed. This did not last for long as mobs of peasants descended on the local officials who decided that it was either them or the Jews who would have to die. And the choice they made was never in doubt. Yet for all of this mayhem the inhabitants died in droves from disease. Killing the Jews didn’t help them one bit. The only alternative for the rest of society, (perhaps not everyone had a Jew to kill or maybe they were not so bloodthirsty) was prayer. The churches and cathedrals were filled to capacity, at least in the beginning, when it was over there were not enough people left to fill much of anything. The monks, abbots, friars, bishops, archbishops, sacristans and the common people lifted their voices praying God almighty to spare them this awful fate. But they died anyway. The monks died just as fast as thieves did. The abbots raved in their final moments of agonized existence as did murderers. God didn’t hear the tearful prayers of mothers; their children died in their arms. The only voice heard did not come from on high, no, it came from the dead cart that wended its’ way through the villages where the cry was heard, “Bring out your dead.”
Society was frantic to find a way to end this pestilence. Groups of ordinary people, seeing the ineffectiveness of the church’s efforts, took it unto themselves to placate the vengeful God who was visiting wholesale suffering on the land. They thought that maybe self torture would make God understand that they were sincere so they banded together and took the name of “Flagellants.” They would walk in a long procession from city to city, from village to village, whipping the bare back of the man in front of them. As this dreary cavalcade of fanatics made its way trough the land with their backs dripping blood the people, some of them anyway, were sure that THIS would make God relent and end their dreadful sufferings. But of course it didn’t. The ones that flailed their backs died just a easily as did the village idiots. God didn’t hear their pleas anymore than he heard the sound of the whip as it dug into their flesh. Prayer failed them as it did everyone else.
When the Black Death was over a full third of Europe had died and the survivors in rough shape as they looked over the unsown fields. In some areas the mortality was so high that whole villages were wiped out. The few survivors lived in the woods like animals.
The church had failed miserably to protect its’ members. No prayers were heard, no miracles saved the people. Where were the Saints we might well ask? Why didn’t the Virgin Mary, who showed up so often in medieval times, inform the sufferers that the Jews were not to blame? She was talkative enough other times, why didn’t she tell her followers that if they wanted killing to take it out on the rats that were spreading the disease? Why were the Saints silent when they were invoked time and again, why didn’t they use their influence to end this horrible situation? Why didn’t God help out?
Yet despite their miserable performance the church wasted no time in reestablishing their position in society. They took the tithes of the people, and their money, they took the grain, the wine, the meat, the fish, the cloth and anything else they could lay their hands on and went on as if nothing had happened. Using fear of hellfire and eternal damnation as club to beat the villagers with they eventually restored their hierarchy. But in the end Christianity showed that it could pass no test, that prayer always failed and that the only way they could maintain their position was through fear and brute force.
Right-Wing “Skunkworks” in high gear.
The ultra-right segment of the republican party has worked in overdrive to smear Obama in this election setting new records in lies, infamy, deception, calumny and sheer lunacy. Some months ago I got a call from a friend of mine, a guy who, despite some fine qualities, hates anything that smacks of being, “liberal.” This includes Senator Obama; he is in good company however, my friend didn’t like Hillary either or even FDR for that matter. He called to tell me that he found out that Obama had taken his oath of office for the US Senate on a copy, not of the Bible, but rather the Koran! I was skeptical of this though and did some checking, it was of course an out and out hoax. Despite the fact that this lie was easily seen through you can still find it listed as gospel truth on a few web sites.
This time the skunk works of the far right have come up with something just a far-fetched but a bit more complicated. They are trying to say that Senator Obama was born outside of the US and therefore not eligible to be president. The perpetrator of this smear is a pettifogging lawyer, Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, PA who claims, of all things, to be a democrat! He lists his claims on a website: Obamacrimes.com/. I won’t bore you with too many details, if you want to see the true depth that some will go to in order to assassinate somebody else’s name give it a shot. Suffice to say that he regards the copy of Obama’s birth certificate, which has been posted online for months, to be a fake and backs this statement up with an, “analysis,” supposedly done by a highly skilled professional, – who to date nobody has been able to find. Berg has filed in Federal court to force Obama to come up with the, “authentic,” document and makes several dozen other assertions, none supported by anything like facts, to bolster his so-called case.
This of course is a political stunt, a knowing attempt to sow confusion among the voters, especially the independents. Of course it is too ham-handed to work, the lies too blatant to be believed except. By most people that is. But there are people out there who hate Obama so much they will fall for just about anything. The fact that earlier this year a researcher found Obama’s birth listed soon after he was born in a Honolulu newspaper should be the end of this matter. Among sane people it would. But in the world of OZ on the right wing there are snake handlers, Evangelical Christians who believe the world is only 6,000 years old, apocalypse waiters, end of days morons, paranoid stump grinders and those who think that our trip to the moon was a fake. In their numbers we can find Sarah Palin who would fit into that group very well.
So if you want to learn more about this attempted dirty trick go to:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
Sarah may need a job; the rump of the republican party.
So what will Sarah Palin do after the election? Well, she will continue of course to be the Governor of Alaska, at least until the next election, that is. But there is every possibility she has become, “tainted goods,” politically. Her popularity in her home state has suffered from both internal scandal and a severe loss of image. This presidential campaign has laid her ignorance bare in a way that wouldn’t happen in a purely regional contest. Her rather mild interview with Katie Couric showed her to be an empty skirt, a shallow mind never refreshed by learning, -just another empty intellect in a party that has been severely, “dumbed down,” in recent years. At one time the republican party had people, a good many of them, who could articulate their position with both clarity and intelligence. And if I couldn’t be persuaded by their logic I could still admire the length and breadth of their arguments. There are still few remaining intellectuals in the republican party but their mental abilities seem to be in short demand. What happened?
I think the party has suffered so many internal and external defeats that only the viewpoints of the extreme right wing count for anything now; moderates get shouted down, “compassionate” republicans are scorned with derision, especially by talk show radio hosts. The left and middle of their party is gone or in hiding leaving only cranks, evangelical Christians and a few survivalists who haven’t as yet made it to the ranks of the Libertarians. You can see it and hear it at their rallies. John McCain himself has been forced to defend Obama against stupid charges that he is a Muslim or, muslin if they can’t get the word right. I saw a film of a reporter going up and down a line of people waiting to get in to a McCain rally; their talk and thinking was so bigoted, so hateful and crassly stupid that it was like being in some sort of time warp going back to white Birmingham in 1960. This is the rump of the once proud Republican party which is just about all that is left. Mere cannon fodder who get shamelessly exploited by the republican leadership on social issues during elections, and then promptly ignored until their money and votes are needed again.
What would happen if Roe versus Wade was finally overturned? They would have to haul Carl Rove away in an ambulance for one thing. The loss of money would be staggering. Without this single issue to whip up the troops with what could take its’ place? Oh, they would still get a little money from the anti-abortion folk, and some votes but nothing remotely close to what they get now. The leadership understands this fully, and while they will certainly fight the good fight they will be very careful never to win.
So we are back to finding employment for Sarah Palin, well, she is still rather attractive, she could always find a job serving beer. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that she likes country and western music, that sort of road house would be just the place for her to get a job!
Entry for October 07, 2008 no party at FOX
The party is just about over for the rabid right wing team at FOX, all they will have from now on is fond memories of Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush. All I can say is that it couldn’t have happened to a better group. Forget the polls, if you want to find out who is winning the election just flip to FOX news. If you see a scowling Bill O’Reilly screaming about big government or a red faced Sean Hannity railing against atheists and liberals, well, you know their guy is headed downward.
