When bad things happen to worse people

Dearest kindly brightened my day with the news that another of of the Almighty's loudmouthpieces was caught "with his pants down and his wallet out" as Dearest put it. Except that's not quite correct. Checkbook would be more to the point. Except that that's not quite correct, either. Seems that the Rev. reported the checks missing.

Hmmm...lessee here: That would involve bearing false witness and adultery AND stealing (given that the check would have not been honored). In other words, three Commandments down in one shot. You have to admire the multi-tasking, if nothing else...

If I believed in Hell, I'd hope for a special place reserved for such Prurient Puritans. Satan wouldn't even have to work at it.. Just lock 'em all in the same room. Naked. With every sex toy and XXX film ever made. Imagining the eternal tension between holier-than-thou and hornier-than-thou more than offsets the "EEEEeeeeewwwww!!!" factor--trust me on this.

Got any more bright ideas, Mr. President?

Three cheers for schadenfreude: At least the s(t)eamy Vitter/Allen/Burkman highjinks these past two weeks may well pay off in 2008. That being said, it's a sad state of...errrr...affairs to find yourself rooting for Larry Flynt to help clean House (and Senate) of their "Do as I say, not as I do" faction.

All the same, that's been the one hopeful spot in the political week. And then there's everything else. For instance that Global! War!! On!!! Terror!!!! What do we 'mericans have to show that could possibly be worth going-on-half-a-trillion dollars, over four thousand US lives (I'm including the contractor body-count), our birthright Constitution maimed and still bleeding, and the accelerated ill will of our fellow travellers on this Spaceship Earth?

• 24% of the senior leadership positions at the Department of Homeland Security (an Orwellian name if ever was) are vacant. Mmmm-hmmm, that would be the people who are supposed to stand between us and Big, Bad, Bin Ladin. Missing from their posts. And did we mention that in two years the DHS had 844 cybersecurity "incidents"? Do the long division, peeps: That's over one per day.
  
• Which, perchance, explains why getting your mitts on enough radioactive material to FUBAR a city block is just so d---ned easy these days.
  
• And those troublemakers from Iran and Syria who are embarassing our little nation-building exercise in Iraq? Turns out that they're more likely to hang their head-wraps in Saudi Arabia. You know, those repressive b@$+@rds our extortionist gas prices keep in power?
  
• But it appears that this may not be the chiefest of our concerns. Because al-Qaeda got its groove back.

Yeeeeeah....it all just gives you a warm, cozy feeling, dun'nit?

In any branch of our military, such mortally dangerous incompetence would guarantee a court-martial and sacking. But not for its Decider-in-Chief. Yet, by now, Napoleon's (alleged) advice to "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" is moot. "Cui bono?" no longer matters: Impeachment should be not only "on the table," but served as the main course. Primarily for the sake of future Americans now endangered because the bar for governance has been lowered--to the point where a trench has to be dug for it. And---even more to the point--the unprecedented proceedings which remove the President and Vice-President from office should be immediately followed by handing both (and their hench(wo)men) over to the Hague to answer to the world's justice.

Plainly put: Mere impeachment is not enough. This Administration has thumbed its nose at public sentiment, Constitutional boundaries, and the covenant that those in power make with History when they assume office. If China can execute its food and drug inspector for corruption, why should we not insist on such accountability from those whose venality and hubris and sheer myopic incompetence have cost thousands of lives? Let them meet the same fate as Keitel, Jodl, Streicher, et. al.: Choking on the ashes of their legacies, ears ringing with the calumny of History, on their way to an ignoble and ignominious grave.

Now we're all Charlie Brown

Some days it feels like I wasn't born with enough capacity for outrage. 'Cuz this one's a doozy. A federal appeals court has ruled that those suing the NSA for its illegal eavesdropping do not have sufficient legal standing to bring the almighty NSA to justice.

Now, unless I'm woefully under-informed, to prove damages, you have to provide evidence that you were being illegally wiretapped.

Seriously now, what do you think the odds are that any-old-one can obtain the evidence in the first place? Yep--you guessed it. About the same as the likelihood of Osama bin Laden dropping by Oktoberfest for a brat and a Leinie's.

Forget the football, Charlie Browns: It's time to aim for Lucy. Remember this next November. Tattoo it on the insides of your eyelids if necessary. But do not, Not, NOT let the b@$+@rd$ who confirmed these police state sympathizers stay in office.

Another bee in the swarm

(Actually, this time I'm not actually talking about bees. I'm merely making good on saying that I'd chip in with my tuppence of text to the Blog Against Theocracy swarm. So with apologies to those on whom I've previously foisted these observations/ opinions, here goes...)

Arthur: I am your King!

Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you.

Arthur: You don't vote for Kings!

Woman: Well, how did you become King, then?

Arthur: The Lady of the Lake,...[angels sing]...her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your King!

Dennis: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Arthur: Be quiet!

Dennis: Well, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Arthur: Shut up!

Dennis: I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Arthur: Shut up, will you? Just shut up!

Dennis: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!

If you find Monty Python's send-up of Arthurian politics in the least bit funny, then you will understand why I think that theocracy is such a very bad idea. Basically, it boils down to this: Putting yourself in charge of other people because you think you talk to supernatural beings is as ridiculous as crowning yourself King in "some farcical aquatic ceremony". Only far, FAR more dangerous.

Plainly put, theocracy is based on faulty principles that make it disasterous in practice. And it is more than high time that well-meaning people stopped listening to the silky lies of those who would graft a steeple onto the halls of government.

If this country, as some claim, was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, the principles in question were, quite bluntly, the wrong ones. Mainly I'm thinking of slavery and the second-class status of women--both as much a fact of life in 1776/1789 as they were in the ancient world. Moreover, the Bible's worldview is blatantly monarchist, something which our Founders quite emphatically distanced themselves. Scripture has diddley to say about voting. That came to us from the (pagan) Greeks and the Norse. In short, the "Judeo-Christian principles" argument is an outright lie coupled with stealing credit for ideas that were created by non-Jews/Christians.

But (the well-meaning Christian might ask), what about the Ten Commandments that are the basis for our laws? Last time I checked, it wasn't against the law to covet, commit adultery, party on the Sabbath, worship other Gods (with the penalty that your children unto the third and fourth generation are punished for your lack of faith), etc. Really, only murder, stealing and perjury have made it into the laws of this land. But Judeo-Christian principles can hardly claim to hold a monopoly on those values. Those kinds of things are pretty much frowned on anywhere you look. Including under Communist rule, I might add. Again, a lie coupled with plaguarism.

And so, failing on the merits of the historical record (as well as basic logic), the well-meaning Christian will fall back on trying to divine the intent of the de-facto "patron saints" of American democracy. (That would be the folks that we remember today, with maybe Lincoln allowed to tag along.) After all, if their pastors/priests know the mind of the Almighty, how hard can it be for them to commune with the shades of guys who have only been dead a couple hundred years?

Were the Founders of the United States Christian men? Mostly. No argument there. That's how they were raised, for pete's sake. Would anyone expect them to suddenly become Buddhist? Did they also assume that most Americans were and would continue to be Christian? Absolutely. (Again, is this surprising?) Did they necessarily consider that a thing of unqualified good? Maybe not so much. What tends to be glossed over in the hagiography-and-handwaving that passes for high school history is that the very deep rifts between Puritan, Baptist, Quaker, et. al. were a large concern in the politics of the day. This was a world in which it was not unheard-of for people to be driven out of town (and hanged when they didn't stay banished) for the "crime" of not following the crowd.

As much as we've manage to demolish many of the barriers to full participation in society since 1789, basic human nature does not change. The brotherhood under Christ is as much of a pretty lie as it was centuries ago. Establish a "Christian" government in this country, and you'll see its many factions fall on each other like hungry dingoes, and in less than a New York nanosecond. The internecene butchery of Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq will be a minor kerfuffle in comparison to the "Our Jesus can beat up your Jesus" war that would erupt here. Bluntly put: If the arsenal and resources of the most powerful nation are up for grabs, you can bet your collection plate tithe that the battles will NOT be rhetorical. The likes of Pat Robertson (who has no moral qualms with assasination) and company will guarantee that.

Detritus

There are any number of things that fell by the wayside when I morphed into what passes for an adult. A small sample:

• I used to consider a steady diet of television (the four major food groups: ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS) my birthright as an American.
  
• I used to believe that the thought actually counts.
  
• I once considered any bottle of wine worth opening when it bore a sketch of a chateau/manor, and a British or French brand name.
  
• I once had a taste for pastels and Rococco. (Mom hasn't yet realized that I've outgrown this. For her sake, pretty-please don't rat me out.)
• For some time, my most cherished wish was to be able to fly under my own power.
• When I was young, I could actually eat Velveeta cheese straight-up.
• Once, I believed that my mother was right about bad people being bad because they didn't feel loved.
  

And I used to like holidays. Really I did. July 4th was one of the better ones, actually. Sitting on the bank of the river, wanting--despite being old enough to know better--to catch one bright petal of those flowers of light--and to have it stay lit forever. Now all the holiday means to me is two weeks of white trash neighbors failing to amputate parts with firecrackers. And being annoyed with the VFW types who tend to monopolize the day. (You folks have your own friggin' holiday. And I take that one QUITE seriously, thank you very much.) And, in general, just not being able to shake the feeling of living in a decaying empire. Not necessarily "decaying" as in the fall of Rome. More like 18th Century Venice: All Carnivale and courtesans before Napoleon's thugs rolled in. Yes, a Venice analogy will do well enough, I think.

And so the Fourth joined the churchyard clique of standard-issue holidays that I've learned to dread (and often despise) for their empty, tchotchke-spangled mummeries.

A few of the B-list festival days have survived, though, and are now well-tended as part of a careful cross-breeding program with the few private holidays eked out of the workaday calendar. Enough of a menagerie, I think, for the erstatz grown-up who still likes peanut butter and fast carnival rides and Dr. Seuss and dollhouses and the heady perfume of a freshly-opened box of crayons and...