It seems to start earlier every year

Halloween is over and it is now time for the festive season. You know what that means don't you? You are right, it is time for the 2009 War on Christmas to begin.

I have seen my first "Keep Christ in Christmas" Facebook group, and the AFA (I think I need to start a "Get Family out of AFA" group) has its brand spanking new Boycott GAP This Christmas site up, apparently because GAP doesn't do enough to commercialize Christmas. (I would link to the site, but why help boost its visibility?)

Christians have forgotten, of course, that there was no Christ in Christmas. They took a pagan holiday and in the 4th century they shoehorned their own religious symbol onto it. Of course, most Christians haven't forgotten this...they never knew it in the first place. Somehow they missed the fact that their celebration focuses around such pagan symbols as fir trees, holly and mistletoe.

Christians, of course, feel rightly persecuted. The courts keep bringing up that damned Constitution and Bill of Rights whenever Christians try to enforce Sharia, oops, I meant Christian law. Non-Christians might be a bit confused at where all of this Christian persecution is. They have not, of course, been reading the New Christian Dictionary. The NCD's definition of "persecution" is "anytime we don't get things exactly our way!"

Some pollyannas might suggest that we could just all celebrate the holidays in our own personal ways, respect each other's beliefs or lack thereof, but it is just that sort of backsliding, politically correct, liberal hogwash that will, to paraphrase the late great George Carlin, " infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war."

NO ONE is forgetting 9/11, you idiots!

Now, I don't mean the readers of this blog are idiots. Let's get that settled right now.

I was in the car a fair bit today, and as about the only radio station I can get is the local talk radio station, I was lucky(?) enough to get to hear Glen Beck, El Rushbo, as well as our local host Pat White. All made a big point of "I have not forgotten 9/11 !!!" Guess what, no one has forgotten 9/11. It is not some sort of conservative only anti-holiday.

Of course I remember where I was on Sept. 11, 2001. I remember watching the second plane hit the tower; I remember seeing the towers fall. I remember the stunned daze that I was in all day.

What the various conservative radio heads fail to understand is that it is quite possible to remain angry about 9/11 without feeling that this required them to:

• Have agreed with everything that President Bush did or said after 9/11/01.
• Feel that torturing is acceptable for this country.
• Feel that holding civilians in perpetuity, without charging them, or even letting them know why they are being held.
• Think that this gave Bush an excuse to start a war that he had been planning for since well before the towers fell.

I love my country, I am a patriot; I don't think that requires that I also be a jingoist, or ignore the fact that Bush's "leadership" consisted of using 9/11 to further his own political agenda.

Conservatives, this is one American father that refuses to let you redefine "patriot" to mean "vote Republican or leave the country" any more than I will accept your redefining "family values" as "jingoism, sexism, racism".

A Bishop's Hypocrisy

Bishop D'Arcy has chosen not to attend the University of Notre Dame’s graduation ceremony, where President Obama is scheduled to deliver the commencement speech and receive an honorary degree. “President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred,” said D’Arcy, head of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, in a written statement.

"Hold human life as sacred"?? What a crock. Bishop D'Arcy feels that Obama is unworthy to share a stage with because Obama has not taken enough steps to oppose abortion and has removed the strictures and restrictions from government of funding stem cell research. Of course for the Catholic Church, unborn (or preborn as they now try to spin things) life is sacred, much more sacred, of course, than actual functioning human beings.

D'Arcy has no problem continuing to be a part, and an important part of a Church that protected and enabled child-molesting priests for who knows how long. A Church that is willing to publish and promote outright lies because they would rather have AIDS remain an epidemic in Africa than have someone break the Eleventh Commandment "Thou shalt not cover thy winky with a rubber thingie". A Church that will not sanction abortions in cases of ectopic pregnancy, when there is no chance of a viable fetus and every chance of serious, possibly fatal, complications to the woman. This is the Church that excommunicated the doctor and mother of an 80 pound nine-year-old child who aborted the twins she was carrying as a result of being raped by her stepfather. Obviously, for the Church, the lives of actual living breathing people, especially female people, are not worth much, but a fetus, not that is a life that must be held sacred!

D'Arcy has published no criticisms of the Pope re-instatement of a Holocaust denier as a Bishop. To be fair, once the criticism got loud enough, his Popeness did say that the guy should, eventually, maybe, renounce his claims. . . But no hurry!

This comes as no shock to many women, who realize that the Church has rarely considered them more than breeding sources for future Catholics and sources of evil temptation to us weak, weak men who fall for their wiles. After all, St. Paul warned us about them, and we all know that the Church, as well as their Ptotestant brethren, are followers of Paul's teachings far more than Jesus's. That Jesus guy had a bunch of crazy ideas about loving thy enemy and helping the poor, and where is the profit in that crap?

Pastor calls out God

I have said for years that many theists have a lower opinion of their God than I, as an atheist, could ever have. Here is a case in point. The following clip is from the invocation at a McCain rally. I realize that the pastor in question was most likely provided by the local GOP, and his prayer was not vetted (that is assuming that the McCain campaign actually vets anyone (cough .. Sarah Palin .. cough)), but these are the people that McCain has chosen to pander to in his Faustian attempt at power.



I thought that baseball players doing a quick prayer (for a hit, presumably) before readjusting their cup was a bit silly. I mean I know he is omnipotent and all, but to throw a baseball game seems a bit, um, petty for God. This guy tops any of that. In a grown up version of the child's "God, I want a pony. If you don't give me a pony, then you don't exist", this pastor wants God to maintain his street cred by throwing an election. What the American people want is apparently less important than Allah thinking that the Christian god "ain't all that".

Never mind the fact that the pastor doesn't know enough about other religions to understand that Hindu and Buddha are not gods, or that a lot of American Christians want Obama to win, or even that Allah is just God in another language, and, in fact, is the same Abramaic God that he is calling out, just running under a newer patch. this guy thinks that the same God who told him to pray in private and render unto Caesar will change his omnipotent mind if called out by a local bible thumper. This guy's God may be omnipotent, but, in the pastor's mind at least, is a bit insecure about it, and can be coerced into throwing an election using tactics that most parents try to teach their children to resist. What's next? Will God be caught smoking behind Heaven's gym because "all the cool Gods are doing it!"?

GOP, following the party lie

Is there anything currently more ludicrous than John McCain's slogan "the Straight Talk Express". Boy George in full regalia is ten times straighter than the McCain campaign these days. After being called on the various lies (Obama plans to raise taxes, Palin said "No" to the "Road to Nowhere", Palin never sought earmarks while governor), McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, came right out and said, ""This election is not about issues." Of course not, if McBushCain's campaign gets its way. It knows that on issues it will lose. They need to keep selling "Obama is going to raise taxes"; "Obama is a celebrity" and "Obama is an elitist" like there is no tomorrow, and hope that their unofficial compatriots will keep selling the "Obama is a secret Muslim" meme for them. Not only does McCain lie about Obama, he even distorts non-partisan comments about Obama. It has gotten to the point that even Karl Rove is complaining about McCain's lies.

As if simple lies are not enough, McCain's campaign is now trying to make it harder for eligible voters to vote and trying to trick people who think they are applying for absentee ballots into applying incorrectly. In Florida, McCain's campaign handed out instructions on how to apply for an absentee ballot with the incorrect address. In Ohio, he added an extra question, not required for the application, that, if not answered will cause the request to be rejected. Even the Ohio Attorney General was angry about this one. McCain once said that he was not willing to "lose a war to win an election." In yet another about face on his positions, we know that he is now willing to sell his soul, and the American people down the river to win one. I don't care what political party you favor, how can anyone with any morals at all stomach what the GOP has become? Oh yeah, I forgot, as long as he want to stop those nasty gay people from marrying and will toss out insincere promises to do something about "Roe vs Wade", "value voters" will stomach anything.

P.S. Recently the story broke that while Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, her new sheriff, with her approval, began charging rape victims for the rape kits used in the investigation. The McCain-Palin campaign has vigorously denied it, but documents bear out the original story.

GOP panic? More on Obama acceptance

I planned to make more comments about Barack Obama's acceptance speech last night, but I just read the news about McCain's selection of Gov. Palin as his running mate, and was stunned.

Palin's name had been bandied about a month or so back, but had slacked off when word came out that she had used her position as governor to push for the firing of her ex-brother-in-law who was a state trooper, and then firing the head of the State Police when he wouldn't do it.

While she has conservative credentials, her almost total lack of experience makes it hard for the GOP to keep pushing the "too inexperienced, too lightweight" meme about Obama. Her selection, along with her speech mentioning Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton, seems like a desperate attempt to get the votes of disgruntled Clinton supporters. From a practical aspect, with a 72 year old presidential candidate, we have to take a hard look at whether Palin would have any business being the president, if worse comes to worse.

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Back to Obama's speech. While it was a fantastic speech overall, here are the points that I especially liked.

• Obama's review of his antecedents. Many Americans know little about Barack Obama than the crap that GOP emailers have been spewing out. The "elitist" claim is particularly absurd, when we look at the two candidates. Obama was a mixed-race child raised by a single mother, who qualified for food stamps for part of his childhood. McCain is the son and grandson of admirals, who was able to get a command despite coming almost dead last in his class, and is now married to a nine figure heiress. And we are supposed to believe that McCain is "just one of us?"



• "Eight is enough". No, not the TV show. Obama made the point very well that electing McCain is just four more years of George Bush. McCain believes (well, currently believes. He has changed positions on almost every position in the last eight years, from being an actual "maverick" in 2000, to falling in line with every one of Bush's positions now) that we need to keep cutting taxes on the wealthy (and help those poor downtrodden heirs and heiresses keep more of daddy and mommy's money.) He believes that bin Laden is apparently hiding in Iraq (which brings me to another great line "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.")


• "It's because John McCain doesn't get it." That is it in a nutshell.


• Obama's listing of specific changes to be made to help our economy. While Obama has had much more detailed plans than McCain, those have not always been made clear. Soundbites and stump speeches are not the place to detail specifics, but people need to be made aware that the specifics are there.


• "And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons." Clearly a point made to help pull in the female vote, it is also an important truth. As the father of an beautiful, intelligent daughter, I want her available choices to be determined by her intelligence and work ethic, not her chromosomes.


• "And Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us" - It was important for Obama to push the point that he is not simply talking about so-called "entitlements", but for ways to help us help ourselves.


• I loved the strength and confidence that Obama showed while making his challenges to McCain, including his line about "temperament" for the position of commander in chief. McCain is often likable, but from all reports he also has a hair trigger temper and makes spur of the moment decisions that he changes the next day. These are not the characteristics that I want a C-in-C to have.


• "So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first." - I am sick of conservatives pretending, and often claiming outright, that they are the only ones who love their country. I am a patriot, but that doesn't make me a a narrow-minded jingoist. I have, for years, used the example that we should love our country like it is our child (correct its mistakes and direct it where we feel it should go) instead of like we are the children(my mommy's always right...my daddy can beat up your daddy)


• "Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things." - This attacks the classic GOP "wedge issue" strategy. The GOP has, ever since Reagan, focused on narrow divisive issues to scare social and religious conservatives into electing them. These same people haven't figured out that the GOP doesn't really care about abortion, gay marriage or prayer in school. It cares about helping the wealthy get more and more. They pay lip service to the scare issues, but use their actual political clout to help cut taxes on the wealthy and protect the Haliburton's of the world.

These are a few of the thoughts I had last night. I look forward to this election with hope and trepidation. I realize that electing Obama will not create Xanadu, but the only way we can make actual changes is by trying, and it seems that for too long we have stopped trying. We owe our children and grandchildren the effort.

Let's eliminate "take responsibility" from political language

John Edwards fessed up and said that he was "taking responsibility" for his affair, after hiding in hotel to avoid reporters. While I understand the importance of taking responsibility for things in real life, taking that responsibility includes consequences. In political speech, it means, "I got caught and can't get out of it."

George Bush "took responsibility" for mistakes in the Iraq debacle, for the despicable push-polling against McCain in 2000 and if the illegal partisan hiring in the Justice Department is proved, I am sure he will square his shoulders and "take ...", well you know, for that also because it is a completely meaningless phrase in politics.

Conservatives decry the fact that homosexuals have suborned the word "gay", liberals don't like the fact that that Fundamentalists are trying to redefine "family" to mean "narrow-minded, hate-filled bigotry", but the political abuse of that phrase beloved by stern fathers everywhere is truly a bipartisan effort.