Worshipful Humor

If you don't read anything else today, please do yourself a favor and read these articles at Landover Baptist Church.

Attention Citizens Living in God's Country Without His Permission! An invitation to become a Real American™

That's why today, non-Christian quasi-American friend, it's time to get on board 100% with the winning team! Don't risk ending up in Hell and spending a lifetime doggy paddling in the lake of boiling lava while that bloated ignoramus Michael Moore bobs like a pork crackling buoy of singed, bubbling blubber beside you, spitting out his blasphemous research for all of eternity! It's a horrifying thought, but it just a preview of the frightening, sadistic horrors the Lord Jesus has in mind for you if you don't start showering Him with fawning, effusive flattery before He gets around to smiting you and flinging you into Hell.

Ex Injun to Deliver Thanksgiving Sermon

Freehold, Iowa - "I call him, Chief Running Red Butt, in jest," says Pastor Deacon Fred. "Because I remember when we rescued him from his heathen parents' reservation split-level out in the woods, Pastor Hardwick unloaded a round of buckshot into his naked red hiney. Well, he's come a long way since then, when he was about 6-years old, just barely out of the papoose. He had trouble walking because, and a lot of folks don't know this, but when Injun babies take their first steps, it is to hop around a fire. I'm told most Injuns don't walk on both feet until they first get drunk and lose their balance, which is usually around eight or nine."

That shit cracks me up and I hope it does the same for you.

Hack Is Hacked

While perusing James Wolcott, a daily read, I came across this article by Col. David Hackworth of Soldiers For The Truth. In it, he lays some blame for the situation in Iraq and has a word or two for a former mayor of the Big Apple. Go back and read Wolcott's lead-in, too.

I constantly hear the chant that we must support our troops. But what I see is more superficial lip service than serious consideration for our warriors’ welfare. If our top generals truly supported the troops, for example, they would have acknowledged that we were about to become engaged in a long-term insurgency campaign – and planned appropriately – long before the first tank shocked-and-awed its way into Iraq.

Any good infantry stud who’s studied insurgency warfare – especially Israel’s campaigns in Lebanon and Palestine, and ours in Vietnam and the Soviets in Afghanistan, where about 30 percent of all U.S. and Soviet casualties were the result of mines and booby traps – would have surmised from the get-go that our Iraqi insurgent opponent’s weapon of choice would be hit-and-run ambushes augmented by explosive devices. So it’s not a stretch to think it should have been obvious to our brass hats that Iraqi resisters would look at explosive devices as a cheap, easy method of inflicting casualties and disrupting operations, and use the same historically proven tactics that drove the Turks out of Iraq (then Mesopotamia), the USA out of Vietnam, the Soviets out of Afghanistan and the Israelis out of Lebanon.

During the final days of the presidential campaign, one of the thousands of neglected ammo dumps became an election flash point. In an attempt to take the heat off Bush, Rudy Giuliani actually went so far as to state that the heisted ammo was “the troops’ fault” and not the responsibility of the commander-in-chief.

But while Bush shouldn’t be held responsible for tactical snafus, his generals sure should – starting with Tommy Franks. It’s time that the C-in-C showed his support for the troops by nailing the culpable parties for all of the major military screw-ups in his pre-emptive war.

Hack's right. Bush is responsible for the strategic fuckup for being there in the first place, and the Brass is responsible for the tactical fuckups now that we're there. I'm sure these brave soldiers acquiesced en masse to protect their careers by not speaking out in the first place, but, had they done the right thing, which was to all resign on the spot, maybe 1100+ GI's and who-knows-how-many Iraqis would still be alive. Following the (p)resident off the cliff and taking our troops with them, or more properly, shoving the troops off the cliff at the (p)resident's whim while remaining safe themselves, was flat fuckin' wrong. I hope Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and a whole buncha others will eventually be made to pay for their sins and errors. It's a nice thought, but fat chance, white boy.

And an ambitious former mayor who dodged the Vietnam draft should be rapped on the head with the butt of an M-16 rifle for putting the politically expedient bad mouth on our brave soldiers.

Shit, a butt stroke with an M-16 is a love tap. They were never intended for close work with butt or bayonet. Let's put some real old-time grunt oomph! into the deal and use my favorite war-club, the M-14, and launch his head into the next county. Oh, I forgot, we don't want to hurt ol' Rudy, just express a little displeasure. Never mind.

Do What We Say...Or Else!

File this under "Toe the Party Line":

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONGRESS?SITE=CADIU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Dowd Nails It To The Cross

Maureen Dowd writes about the hate-filled pseudo-Christian bigot attitude towards their new False Idol and the rest of us, in the NYTimes:

You'd think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like "love thy neighbor," "turn the other cheek," "good will toward men," "blessed be the peacemakers" and "judge not lest you be judged."

Yet somehow I'm not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals who claim to have put their prodigal son back in office.

I'm getting more the feel of a vengeful mob - revved up by rectitude - running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels.

Bob Jones III, president of the fundamentalist college of the same name, has written a letter to the president telling him that "Christ has allowed you to be his servant" so he could "leave an imprint for righteousness," by appointing conservative judges and approving legislation "defined by biblical norm."

"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America - though she doesn't deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganism," Mr. Jones wrote. "Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ." Way harsh

Read B.J.'s whole letter here, if you've got the stomach for it.

Here, Ms. Dowd describes how the Christian Retarded Right lays into that Commie Rat Bastard, Arlen Specter, for daring to question their agenda. And a little about that other good Bible-thumper, John Ashcroft. Read it.

And since the president has no end in sight to his war on terror, that makes him infallible ad infini-tum?

So now the 'Christians' want their pay-off. I can't wait to watch the the fun when the Christers figure out that since they got him elected, Bush doesn't need them anymore. I think they're gonna be very irate when they find out he used 'em like a two-dollar whore and then didn't pay them.

Arafat Voided

Tom Friedman is my favorite Middle-East expert because I can understand him, and what he says sounds studied and rings of logic and thought, unlike government (ours, theirs, who cares?) bullshit. From today's NYTimes, on Arafat's 'legacy':

The day after Yasir Arafat died, USA Today carried a big, bold headline that caught my eye. It said: "Arafat Dies, Leaves Void."

All I could think of when reading that headline was its double meaning. Yasir Arafat left a void of leadership, with no formal successor. But he also left a void of achievement. And it is that second void that really matters, considering that he led the Palestinian movement for some 40 years

Excuse me, but Yasir Arafat put the Palestinian cause on the world map in 1974, when he was invited to address the U.N. General Assembly. What did he do with all that attention after that? Very little. There is a message in his life and his legacy for every world leader: If all you do is express the aspirations, but never produce the reality, then history will judge you very harshly. And any honest history of Yasir Arafat will judge him on his voids, not his visions.

They may judge Arafat for being the inventor of terrorism as a media tactic too, but that's just my humble opinion.

The meat of the article is here.

If only President Bush called in Colin Powell and said: "Colin, neither of us have much to show by way of diplomacy for the last four years. I want you to get on an airplane and go out to the Middle East. I want you to sit down with Israelis and Palestinians and forge a framework for a secure Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and progress toward a secure peace in the West Bank, and I don't want you to come back home until you've got that. Only this time I will stand with you.

Fat chance.

See ya!

Won't be around much today. Here's why. Plus I got a buncha shit to do this morning.

Politics in Religion

Jeff looks at it a little differently. While we're on the subject of hypocrisy:

[. . .]

Needless to say, while the holy one not only meant that the church (any church) should stay out of politics, no doubt this doctrine was also intended as an "internal memo" as well. If J.C. was telling his followers to keep out of state politics, he was also saying, "Keep the politics OUT of the church as well."

[. . .]

You see, gays are only a pawn in their game. The leadership knows that the redemption of homosexuals is a totally lost cause and frankly, they could care less about them.

But, at the same time, why let such a traditionally prejudicial hatred go untapped? And so, they decided to use the issue of gay rights as both a wedge and a firestarter to further other causes, including the election of their faux-christian Presidential candidate.

[. . .]

Go read.

The stench of hypocrisy

[. . .]

If anyone is laughing all the way to the bank this election year, it must be the undisputed king of the red cultural elite, Rupert Murdoch. Fox News is a rising profit center within his News Corporation, and each red-state dollar that it makes can be plowed back into the rest of Fox's very blue entertainment portfolio. The Murdoch cultural stable includes recent books like Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" and the Vivid Girls' "How to Have a XXX Sex Life," which have both been synergistically, even joyously, promoted on Fox News by willing hosts like Rita Cosby and, needless to say, Mr. O'Reilly. There are "real fun parts and exciting parts," said Ms. Cosby to Ms. Jameson on Fox News's "Big Story Weekend," an encounter broadcast on Saturday at 9 p.m., assuring its maximum exposure to unsupervised kids.

Almost unnoticed in the final weeks of the campaign was the record government indecency fine levied against another prime-time Fox television product, "Married by America." The $1.2 million bill, a mere bagatelle to Murdoch stockholders, was more than twice the punishment inflicted on Viacom for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." According to the F.C.C. complaint, one episode in this heterosexual marriage-promoting reality show included scenes in which "partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers' bodies," and two female strippers "playfully spank" a man on all fours in his underwear. "Married by America" is gone now, but Fox remains the go-to network for Paris Hilton ("The Simple Life") and wife-swapping ("Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy").

None of this has prompted an uprising from the red-state Fox News loyalists supposedly so preoccupied with "moral values." They all gladly contribute fungible dollars to Fox culture by boosting their fair-and-balanced channel's rise in the ratings. Some of these red staters may want to make love like porn stars besides. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) An ABC News poll two weeks before the election found that more Republicans than Democrats enjoy sex "a great deal." The Democrats' new hero, Illinois Senator-elect Barack Obama, was assured victory once his original, ostentatiously pious Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race rather than defend his taste for "avant-garde" sex clubs.

Frank Rich in the NYT. No need for further comment.

Don’t Say I Didn’t Tell You So

My God, get me a stake! Ronnie Raygun has come back to life but with an Austrian accent! Let’s put an end to this before he truly wakes up:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/13/arnolds.year.ap/index.html

Mark my words: the Republicans will try to move heaven and earth to get a constitutional amendment allowing foreign-born citizens who have been in the United States for 20 or more years to run for president so Ahhnold can be their Golden Boy of 2008. He’s already following their lie-to-the-voter, do-whatever-I-want platform to perfection. But will voters remember come election day? Well, is Dubya filling out a change-of-address form?

And you thought Clinton had an intern problem. You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Shit

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney walked out of a Washington hospital on Saturday after undergoing tests to check his symptoms of shortness of breath.

[. . .]

I was hoping to hear, "Vice President Hastert was just sworn in . . ." No such luck.

The flu

From the Dog:

[. . .]

As always, Americans prove totally incapable of assessing the actual risks of anything. Hence, we seem to have no problem as we value "intellectual property rights" of government subsidized pharmaceutical companies who refuse to set realistic prices for AIDS drugs in the third world as more important than (1) saving human lives over there, and (2) reducing the possibility of devastating pandemic that will infest and blow back over here. We stand by as our own government-- alone in the world-- fails to step up to make sure it has ample alternative supply of this year's flu vaccine (a mistake that will probably result in the unnecessary shortening of thousands of American lives). But we go apeshit at the possibility of (Arab) terrorists exploding a nuclear device in one American city.

[. . .]

This Avian flu will be 'The Next Big Thing'. Melanie looks at the possible pandemic too.

A programming note

Over at Creativity, my redheaded step-child of a blog. An experiment:

I'm debating writing a book online. A little each day, posting it here as I write. I know Stephen King did something like it, writing and selling a chapter at a time. I'll have to think about it.

More to come . . .

[. . .]

I'm thinking of time constraints. No, this is not a non sequitur. See my post below. I write novels of about 150,000-175,000 words. It might take a year to get it all out here. Ah well, something more to think about . . .

[. . .]

Okay, this is the way it's gonna be. I'm gonna post a section - a 'scene' if you will - when I write it. It might drag on a while (months to a year) but hopefully my writing skills will keep you interested. Comments always welcome. I'll probably be starting in the next week or two and I'll post a firm date when I have my outline together.

Background: This will be the tenth book in a series of 14. Unlike the others I've written, I know how this one's gotta end. Generally, I start with a concept and see where my characters take it. I've already got an idea how it's gonna go - I've been working on it for about 5 years - but I have yet to be happy about the results. I'm turning to this 'public writing' deal out of desperation. I'm willing to try anything at this point to get this one done.

The problem is - and I have to be vague so as not to give anything away - that in the world I've created, a tipping point is reached on many levels. Now, my writing involves many aspects - political, social, military, economic - that conspire to shape this world, and there are a few things I have yet to resolve in a concise, succinct manner. All my other attempts have been over 200,000 words and that's a bit too long. Tom Clancy can get away with it, I can't.

A word about editing. Don't break my balls about typos. I use MS Word to write, and I was gonna use it to write and then cut and paste here, but that won't work out too well, too time consuming to go back and redo all the italics and formatting for this (CSS/HTML) platform. I'll probably miss a few things, even though I have a spell checker. This spell check doesn't know shit about grammar and homonyms.

So, with that said, tally ho. I'll let you know when the balloon goes up.

Note: If you want to see what my writing's all about, go here.

Now, as regular readers of this blog know, I've refrained from hawking my books here. This is not the forum and I'm not starting now. This is purely an invitation to our readers to get a look at my creative processes. I won't be bothering you folks coming here for political diatribe, and the foodies who wait, salivating, for Gordon's next post about something to eat. I'll post a link in the sidebar once I get started for those who might be interested. Now, back to your regularly scheduled ranting and raving.

This is good

"And a slick DJ in a blazer with a badge came on and said 'here we go'!*

From WaPo:

The deputy director of the CIA resigned yesterday after a series of confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new chief of staff that have left the agency in turmoil, according to several current and former CIA officials.

John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year CIA veteran who was acting director for two months this summer until Goss took over, resigned after warning Goss that his top aide, former Capitol Hill staff member Patrick Murray, was treating senior officials disrespectfully and risked widespread resignations, the officials said.

[. . .]

So, all the career people are leaving and are gonna be replaced by political hacks. Didn't I say that here, here, and here? If we thought the Agency was in sad shape before 9/11, wait until you see what they do to it now.

*'Sally Simpson' from The Who's Tommy.

Another one bites the dust

WASHINGTON Nov 12, 2004 — Rod Paige, who rose from racial segregation to become the nation's first black education secretary, intends to leave his Cabinet position, an administration official told The Associated Press Friday.

[. . .]

I wonder who'll (p)resident Dicknose'll get to replace him? Jerry Falwell maybe? Judge Roy Moore? He's gotta do something to pander to the Christo-fascist base after the Gonzales nomination.

From ABC via Corrente.

Saturday Cattle Dog blogging

Princess Shayna

Thought For The Day

Saw this on A Mockingbird's Medley:

"If reality is outlawed, only outlaws will be real."

A fine thought. I just wanted to share.

Trolling Bait

This might be getting away from the political theme of The Alternate Brain a little, and then again it might not. Cultural diversity is political, ain't it? Since we seem to have latched on to a pretty erudite mob of culinary experts and critics, I invite them to read this restaurant review and then comment. I don't know jack about Filipino, Thai, or any food from Mongolia to India, and not that much about that either. Let 'er buck, boys and girls!

Fuck you, Grandma 2

AARP's been bought. Via Atrios:

The White House dislikes the word "privatization,'' which it sees as a misleading and imprecise way to describe Mr. Bush's ideas for Social Security. Democrats insist that the term is accurate.

E-mail messages circulated within AARP in recent weeks indicated that the group would avoid the word whenever possible.

One message, by an editor of an AARP magazine, says, "There is a new forbidden word at AARP: Social Security privatization.''

Another e-mail message, by a manager of its Web site, says, "The term 'privatization' is stricken from our vocabulary forever.''

David M. Certner, the organization's director of federal affairs, said "privatization'' had no fixed meaning or definition. To some people, he said, it means "getting rid of the entire program'' - a goal not favored by the White House.

You knew they went under when they endorsed that stupid prescription drugs card plan thing that did absolutely nothing. Except allow his cronies in the pharmaceutical industry to make more profits off our seniors. Now they're not even taking an objective look at Bush's Social Security savings account not-privatization thing that will probably do absolutely nothing. Except allow his corporate cronies to fuck our seniors again. Didn't AARP begin life as an advocacy group or something like that? I'd think twice about getting involved with them at this point.

War Story

We had a request from The CultureGhost to share our war stories. Mine are boring and Fixer's are probably classified for seventy-five years or until he dies, whichever comes last, so I went and found a modern-day one. I think it's a barn-burner, but decide for yourself. From Gen. Bing West, USMC Ret., in Fallujah, via Slate. You can learn more at WestWrite.

The Watchdogs of Fallujah

Subject: How the Pioneer Robot Plane Helped Win an Artillery Duel

Spotting insurgents was not a problem for "The Watchdogs"—Marine Air Wing unit VMU-1 that operated the Pioneer. Based in a tent next to a runway a few miles outside Fallujah, the Watchdogs had flown several hundred surveillance missions over the city during the past five months. The insurgents had no place to hide. When they came out of doors, they were seen, tracked, and attacked—day after day. Several times the Watchdogs had seen pickups suddenly swerve into empty lots, the occupants jumping out, setting up long tubes, firing a few rockets and scurrying off before a response attack could be launched.

Today's mortar attack from the mosque, though, broke the usual shoot-and-scoot pattern. This time the mortar crew was staying and fighting back. The half-completed mosque looked like a small soccer stadium, with an oval-shaped courtyard wall several stories high and an empty interior court. In the center of the court was a single mortar tube pointed north toward Camp Fallujah, the logistics hub of the coalition operation. Every 10 minutes or so, three insurgents sprinted from a large house a few hundred meters north of the mosque and disappeared under the eaves of the wall. A few minutes later, they dashed out, each dropping one round down the tube and madly sprinting back to the house.

"What do you think, guys?" asked Neumann, whose leadership style was inclusive. "The tube or the house?"

"House!" came back the chorus.

"Stay in there, muj. You're almost in paradise. Don't leave now. Don't leave."

The courtyard door opened, and a man walked to the truck and slowly drove away.

"Boot muj sent out to get the Coke. Luckiest bastard on the planet."

The muj get to go to Heaven and the Marines live to fight another day, or hopefully, come home. Read the article for all the in-betweens.

I also recommend Gen. West's book, The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division. I read it and liked it.

This Day In History

From Geov Parrish in Working For Change:

1926: First civilian airplane bombing in U.S. occurs when private plane drops three explosives on Charles Berger's Illinois farmhouse in feud between rival beer and rum factions.

Can't we all just get along?