Kentucky Fried

My friend the Colonel sent this in reply to a silly psoting on myspace. Good times, good times:

"I met Ann one night while jogging on the NLU campus around midnight, I spotted a couple of shadows near the adminstration building. I threw a big rock into the bushes and out came two people, a man and a woman, holding radios and fruit jars with clear liquid in them. I didn't bother asking what they were doing but later I met Ann in the light of day and realized it was her, I now know from the news that the male was Hugo Chavez."

The Chorus and the Ring

My brother won a prize! My brother won a prize!

(snippet from official communique')
Congratulations. Your paper, "Howard Kester, the Lynching of Claude Neal, and Social Activism in the South during the 1930s," was judged the best entry in the LeRoy Collins Graduate Essay contest. The award will be presented at the Society 2006 Annual Meeting luncheon on May 26 at the Naples Grande Resort and Club.
(end snippet)

He's sooooo cool!

Oh and check out Dangerblond's blog. I think she's cool, too.

The rest is just things

I had an epiphany - as I do from time to time.

And, the kernel from that ephemeral moment is . . . .

stuff doesn't matter.


yo.

Exhuming McCarthy

From this site (although I do not agree with, not condone, the anti-Israel and some other stuff on that site - it was just convenient)
-------------------------
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections
-----------------------

I'm just saying . . . .

The Boy in the Well

I generally think Andrew Sullivan is a tool, but this article was unexpectedly agreeable to my palette.

My Problem with Christianity

by Andrew Sullivan
(originally published in Time , May 15, 2006 edition)
link to Time article

Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them.

The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian right is many. There are evangelical Protestants who believe strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the corrupting allure of government power. There are lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith society. There are very orthodox believers who nonetheless respect the freedom and conscience of others as part of their core understanding of what being a Christian is. They have no problem living next to an atheist or a gay couple or a single mother or people whose views on the meaning of life are utterly alien to them--and respecting their neighbors' choices. That doesn't threaten their faith. Sometimes the contrast helps them understand their own faith better.

And there are those who simply believe that, by definition, God is unknowable to our limited, fallible human minds and souls. If God is ultimately unknowable, then how can we be so certain of what God's real position is on, say, the fate of Terri Schiavo? Or the morality of contraception? Or the role of women? Or the love of a gay couple? Also, faith for many of us is interwoven with doubt, a doubt that can strengthen faith and give it perspective and shadow. That doubt means having great humility in the face of God and an enormous reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on anyone else.

I would say a clear majority of Christians in the U.S. fall into one or many of those camps. Yet the term "people of faith" has been co-opted almost entirely in our discourse by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. "Sides are being chosen," Tom DeLay recently told his supporters, "and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will." So Christ is a conservative Republican?

Rush Limbaugh recently called the Democrats the "party of death" because of many Democrats' view that some moral decisions, like the choice to have a first-trimester abortion, should be left to the individual, not the cops. Ann Coulter, with her usual subtlety, simply calls her political opponents "godless," the title of her new book. And the largely nonreligious media have taken the bait. The "Christian" vote has become shorthand in journalism for the Republican base.

What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would be to construct something called the religious left. Many of us who are Christians and not supportive of the religious right are not on the left either. In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican, by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand?

So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

That's what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back.

(Disclaimer: Re-posting of this article should in no way be interpreted as an endorsement of Time, Andrew Sullivan, Christianity pr the clubbing of baby seals.)

South Central Rain

It finally stopped raining. I love the rain - don't get me wrong. Nothing better than sitting on a covered porch with a beer and good book listening to the pitter patter of raindrops but *geesh* enough already. The ground is so saturated I feel like I'm back in the homeland. It supposedly will be clear until next week - I hope so - the kids have had 3 field trips cancelled and a ball game.

Oh - BTW all you peeps who thought I was being paranoid - HA HA HA! Big Brother WAS tapping my phone.

That amazes me - and people like Sessions try to defend this - what do they care how many times I call my sister every week, alarmingly high as that number is. There is no purpose to be served by this - I am tempted to switch my phone service from Bellsouth. And now, the man in charge of the NSA domestic spying is nominated to head the CIA - so we want the military in charge of intellligence? And we are supposed to believe there is no conflict of interest here? As a student of Latin American history, this is bad. bad bad bad. mucho bad! Grande bad. Coup d'etat bad.

Anyway - off to drive the taxi - both baseball and gymnastics today - across town from each other at back-to-back times. Oh. Joy.

A.

The Omnipotent Hedgehog

\begin transmission from the Cosmic Hedgehog
"I feel compelled to comment on this. With the government telling us what a great nation we are, and how we are God's favorite or some such non-sense like that, I wonder what kind of spin they'll put on this. Basically, it's the same old, same old. If you are lucky enough to born to white family that can afford insurance, you probably going to be okay. If not, oh well.

'The report, which analyzed data from governments, research institutions and international agencies, found higher newborn death rates among U.S. minorities and disadvantaged groups. For African-Americans, the mortality rate is nearly double that of the United States as a whole, with 9.3 deaths per 1,000 births.'

I can't help but find this an obscenity for a nation that prides itself so on it's Christian ethics and morality. A nation that sees itself fit to impose it's will on the rest of the world. We don't feed our starving, we don't educate our children, we don't provide shelter for our homeless, and we don't provide adequate medical care unless you can afford health insurance. Yep, our Christian practices and religiosity must really make Jesus and his Dad smile.

article here

\end transmission\

A.B.D.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ME!

whew and now - to rest.

Thanks to everyonefor all the support and e-cards! I'll have a pithy post tomorrow! :-)