I Really Am an Indian

I got a copy of one of my ancestors' applications for Cherokee citizenship. My great great great grandfather, Bayless J. Edwards, claimed that his mother was a full blooded Cherokee with the maiden name of Polly Redbird. If I don't have any other Indian ancestors, this would make me 1/128th Cherokee, not enough to permit me to open my own casino but enough to permit me to rant about the victimization of my people by the White Man.

Although this particular application was denied based on Polly's not having been enrolled in the tribe on a specified date, I have little reason to doubt Grandpappy Bayless's claims other than that the census taker in 1850 put her down as white. Polly's husband, Henry Edwards, and Polly were both born in North Carolina in about 1780 or so when the western part of the state was occupied primarily by the Cherokee. Intermarriage was not unusual among early settllers. Henry and Polly were early setlters in the Dahlonega area in the 1830s and moved further into Northwest Georgia as the Cherokees retreated. Since they were not inhabitants of the Cherokee nation and made no tribal claims, they were under no obligation to move when the tribe was evacuated to Oklahoma in the late 1830s. Their children and grandchildren passed for white. although that side of my family has long acknowledged Cherokee heritage even before it was fashionable to do so.

I hope someday to obtain confirmation of Bayless's claim, perhaps through DNA testing.

My genealogical research is difficult because so many of my ancestors were illiterate mountaineers who left few records of their marriages, births and deaths aside from long lost Bible entries. They certainly left no wills. So any information or documentation that I find is a treasure.

So, I wasn't lying when I filled out all those EEOC questionnaires by claiming that I'm multi-racial. I'm an African American because my ancestors came from Africa (60,000 years ago); I'm HIspanic because I had some ancestors from Spain (dating back to the 13th century); I'm Asian because my ancestors came from Asia (over the Bering Land Bridge 12,000 years ago), and I'm Native Americam because of Polly Redbird and possibly others. I haven't figured out a way to be Australian or Pacific Islander yet.

James Hartline, False Prophet

You know how I said Newt Gingrich was Douche of the Day? Well, James Hartline is Douche of the Week!

The wildfires in California? Caused by the gays, says Hartline:

"Each time homosexual activists attempt to force their agenda on California, there have been raging, massive, incinerating fires sweeping across the California landscape…

…The more that homosexual activists press their battle in California, the more there will be great calamaties (sic) in this state."

I have a few observations. Firstly, how does Hartline know that God is punishing California because of gays? Maybe He’s punishing California because of anti-gay activities by proponents of Prop 8. Maybe James Hartline is the cause of the fires and until he is run out of town calamities will ensue.
Secondly, there are always wildfires or earthquakes or mudslides or some such things in California, so gay advocacy or anti-gay advocacy and disasters coincide only because they coincide in what we sometimes refer to as coincidence, or the act of coinciding.

Thirdly, God ordained these fires from the beginning of time, and there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent them. James Hartline is a false prophet. He does not know the Mind of God.

Douche of the Day: Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich frets over "gay and secular fascism":

"I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion."

This is among the stupidest things Newt Gingrich has ever said and wins him Douchebag of the Day!

If Newt reckons that gay folks’ boycotting people who worked to deprive them of their civil rights is fascism, he needs a better dictionary or to use the one that he has. Private, voluntary, peaceful action of this sort is just about as non-fascist as it gets. And what about "homophobic and religious fascism"? Wouldn’t gay haters who boycott Disney or McDonalds also be fascists by Newt’s reasoning?

Frankly, Newt sounds like the apologists for the slavocracy who fretted about abolitionists or segregationists who fretted about enlightened racial attitudes. In each case, the traditionalists (slaveowners, racists, homophobes) were already using the government to sustain their values (slavery, segregation, and discrimination based on sexual orientation) and characterized a potential loss of power as the other sides’ "use of government" to impose its will. The reactionaries are imposing their will, but that’s evidently OK.

Gays with equal rights pose no threat to traditional religion unless traditionalists consider it threatening to be held up to ridicule and contempt for their anachronistic opinions. When black folks were guaranteed civil rights, you could still be a racist bastard. There’s nobody standing in your way even now, but you no longer enjoy widespread acceptance of your views. When gays get equal rights, you can still be a gay hating loon, but you’re not going to get very many folks outside of your cult to respect your opinion.

Abraham Lincoln’s address at Cooper Union comes to mind. What, Lincoln asked, would satisfy the advocates of slavery?

"..what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us."

This is precisely what the authoritarians demand of us on the question of homosexuality. Not only must we tolerate their homophobia but we must affirm it with all our hearts. Otherwise, we are "fascists".

Lactation

There's an interesting thread over at Pandagon about Salma Hayek's breasfeeding her thirteen month old child: http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/boobie_jokes/

How long is it appropriate to breastfeed? It's none of my frakking business, but it would not be outside the range of normal variation in higher primates to extend it for as much as four to five years. So, I'm not one to comment on Ms Hayek's preferences in this regard except to accept and affirm them as her choices to make. More power to her and her child.

Is it appropriate to admire the breasts of a lactating woman? It depends on how you express your admiration, I reckon, but it would be damn near impossible for me not to admire Ms Hayek's features. I have always admired her beauty and talent since I became aware of her. She is extremely attractive, and she is no less attractive now that she is lactating.

The American Family Association has a cool product in the merchandising section of its website.

It’s a burning cross! The AFA sales pitch says it all:

"Decorate this holiday season with the Original Christmas Cross to remind your friends, family, neighbors, and all who drive by your home, office, or church of the real meaning of Christmas."

Hat tip to AMERICAblog http://www.americablog.com/2008/11/because-nothing-says-christmas-like.html

Stimulate Me!

Robert Reich is calling for a major stimulus:

“Fiscal hawks and conservative supply siders notwithstanding, a major stimulus is in order. Government is the spender of last resort, and the nation is coming close to its last resort.”

The bailout of the tycoons isn’t going to shore up the economy. Consumer spending is the key to recovery, but consumers aren’t going to be spending if they fear for their jobs. So the government will have to step in and stimulate the economy and prime the job creation pump.

Like Reich, I’d like to see money spent on things that have lasting value, such as major infrastructure projects. It’s about time to build new bridges and tunnels and repair old ones. How about some monorails or super trains? Or hydrogen stations?

And if we run out of infrastructure, we can start beautifying our cities with fabulous monuments and statues and works of art and architecture for the ages. Pyramids would also be cool. And how about giving the wingers something and building that wall on the Mexican border? Let’s make it even more impressive than the Great Wall of China or Hadrian’s Wall. I’m talking something you can see from outer space.

Speaking of outer space, let’s ramp up exploration efforts and mine the moon.

These projects will employ a lot of people and will attract tourists for millennia. They’ll eventually pay for themselves.

Some new levees and fire breaks would be nice as well, and we’d save in the long run on flood and fire damage.

And how about free child care for everyone so they can all go to work and start spending again? Lots of jobs will be created for teachers and lunch ladies and janitors by such a program. And they’ll need houses and cars and consumer goods, too.

Legalize pot and put America’s farmers to work.

Lieberman on a Leash

I can't stand the treacherous Joe Lieberman, but I can understand why the Democrats would keep him around. The alternative for him is the wilderness with the other stupid Republicans, so he will surely be on his very best behavior and a short leash. He will be doing a heap of behind the scenes groveling and will have to be the loyalest of loyalists from here on out. He won't do this because he's loyal but because it is what he has to do for his own sake. I guess he is loyal, to himself that is, and the Democrats can count on him to do what he thinks is right for his own career.

I'm Boycotting a Lot of Folks Now

There are a lot of folks out there who want to control every aspect of my life and impose their moral and cultural sensibilities on me by force. I'm going to pray for them and try to love them, but I'm also going to avoid doing business with them whenever I can.

I've already put Mormons on my list. Now I'm adding the Catholic Church and their major backers. And the Christianist nutzoids in the religious right. When I figure out which products and services enrich these folks, I'm going to avoid them. No dollars for douchebags, say I.

Which is Worse, Killing Civilians or Pointing Out that Civilians are Being Killed?

In a comment thread at Death Wore a Feathered Mullet, Vast Right Wing Conspirator complained that there had been no outrage on the left when Obama sugg sted that more resources in Afghanistan would mean fewer airstrikes and dead civilians https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=12369382&postID=5677258034520274177.

The right wing outrage machine had that one covered in any event, and it is true that the US has been killing civilians in airstrikes. What strikes me is that we are supposed to be outraged not by the deaths of civilians but by mentioning the deaths of civilians.

Baptism by Proxy

I can't get worked up about Mormons' baptizing my dead relatives by proxy. Do you want to know why? It's because I don't believe that Mormon baptism by proxy does anything. It signifies nothing. My dead relatives' eternal souls are unaffected.

Which is sillier? Believing in baptism by proxy or getting pissed about it even though you don't believe in it?

Besides, if the Mormons turn out to be right, our dead relatives will thank them.

East Ridge Fuzz Out of Control

My niece and her partner have been harassed by the East Ridge police department into penury. The cops have intimidated would be customers by spreading lies about their being drug dealers and threatening customers with adverse consequences if they are seen around the store. The store sells auto accessories such as rims and spinners and what have you, so the clientele is vulnerable to police harassment. My niece's partner is not a drug dealer and never has been. He's a retailer whose only crime is that he is a Palestinian-American. He is a good family man who is simply trying to make a living in the auto accessory business.

He won a settlement from the Dalton police department a few years ago when he caught two officers on his security cameras breaking into his store and talking about how they were going to have to plant some drugs. The harassment was so bad that they closed the store and moved to Florida for a few years. They missed their families in North Georgia, however, so moved back to the area and opened a store in the suburbs of Chattanooga. Evidently, the Dalton cops got the East Ridge cops to pick up where they had left off.

I need to help them find a lawyer who would be willing to take on the East Ridge fuzz.

Prop 8

I can't figure out why churches and denominations reckon it's a good idea to write discrimination against gay couples into the marriage laws. If your religious beliefs are such that you cannot tolerate homosexuality, then by all means refrain from marrying someone of the same sex or refrain from welcoming gay folks into your congregations. But there's no Biblical basis for going around funding antigay initiatives or advocating legislation that harms or disadvantages gays. How does that help the cause of religious freedom? It doesn't. It seeks to impose a single religious viewpoint on everyone.

Maybe in soldiarity with gays, we straight folks could stop marrying and accepting the special privileges that the state grants to heterosexual couples. Or we could lobby the state to get out of the marriage business altogether. Who needs the state telling us whom to marry and what the marriage contract means? Get the state out of the divorce business as well. How would you like that, fundies?

I'm on board with the boycott of Utah on account of Mormon funding of Prop 8 in California, and when I find out which businesses contributed to the initiative, I'll boycott them, too.

I have come to believe strongly that Christians should be open and affirming toward our homosexual brothers and sisters. If we love them, we will want them to be happy. It's as simple as that.

An Attitude of Gratitude

The theme at church the next few weeks is gratitude. Sunday's sermon was an exhortation to be grateful for God's creation. The preacher brought in a log he had split to show how he had marvelled at the presence of an insect that had burrowed into the log and how he had realized how amazing it was that God provided bugs to break down fallen trees.

At first, I thought he might have been smoking pot or something, because that's the kind of thing I tend to think of when I'm high. "Wow, isn't it amazing that our fingernails grow at just the perfect pace?" "Man, those stars are so huge and I'm so insignificant yet able to ponder my insignificance, something those stars can't do."

But then I realized he really meant it, and I understood what he was saying. He told a story of a woman in a prison camp who learned to thank God for fleas because the presence of fleas in her barracks had discouraged the guards from searching them and confiscating her Bible. Creation is a marvel, and we ought to be grateful.

Now, the preacher didn't get into things like being grateful for deadly viruses and tsunamis and such, but I could extrapolate from what he is saying that we ought to seek a way to be grateful, in some sense, for those things as well as for beautiful flowers, raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, and other favorite things.

As a Calvinist, I believe that everything that happens was foreordained from the beginning of time and that it is the will of God. Accordingly, even though I am unable to comprehend it or appreciate it, everything will ultimately work toward God's purposes.

I don't know that I will be able to be grateful for the disease that kills me or mine, but I hope that I will be resigned to it. What I can be grateful for is the fact that I ever existed at all. Every day is truly a gift. To be ungrateful is to focus on what I didn't get. "The power of flight would have been nice."

Harpooners for McCain

About three quarters of a mile down the road is the property of a crazy person. He let the historic house get so run down that the town condemned it and last month tore it down. The yard is strewn with junk. There are derelict cars parked all over the 113 acre property. Next door to this man's property is a household that even he refers to as crazy.

All I knew about the household came from the occasional glimpses of an eldely woman in a muumuu and the presence of a harpoon cannon in the front yard. Occasionally, the old man of the house would fire harpoons across the road at a target in the meadow. And they used to have a young woman in her twenties who would stand on the corner by the cattle farm with a backpack on and wave at all the cars all day. She's gone now. She wasn't right in the head folks say.

When they put up a McCain/Palin yard sign, I was not the least bit surprised. On the day after the election they put up a carefully stencilled sign that reads: "UNITED SOCIALIST STATES OF AMERICA OBAMA REDISTRIBUTOR IN CHIEF". It's still up. I just hope the dude doesn't start harpooning people.

At least now I know that the man with the junkyard is a good judge of character and that I don't need to worry about getting to know harpoon dude or his muumuu wearing mistress. .

Rehunkification

Remember how I vowed that I was going to lose weight and get in shape? Well, I fell off the wagon and gained it all back and then some. I have no excuse for this. I started back at the gym and have been eating sensibly and have lost three pounds this week. I'm feeling a lot better even with the tiny amount of progress I have made. I aim to drop three pounds a week for as long as I can by cutting calorie intake and exercising.

I bet I really keep it up this time. With God's help, I will.

My Prescription for the GOP

What should the GOP do to recover from its failures? The problem, as I see it, is that the authoritarian Christianist right finally took control of the party and turned it into something truly loathsome. (Leaving aside the Bush regime's corruption and incompetence which the nutzoid right enabled). Small government, more freedom and other used to be GOP principles were abandoned in favor of authoritarianism, nativism, jingoism and rabble rousing populism. Unless the country clubbers and small government types can wrest control of the party from their crazy allies on the far right, they should leave the party en masse and form a "small government conservative wing" of the Democratic Party. That would leave the Christianists with the shell of the GOP and some 20% of the vote, and the enlarged Democratic Party would enjoy a more or less permanent majority.

In my view, if you take out the unreachable authoritarian nutjobs from the equation, most of the rest of America pretty much agrees on just about everything that matters, at least to a close approximation. The country clunbbers and small government types have to recognize how toxic and dangerous their unholy alliance with the religious right was. And now the religious right is ranting about how the GOP lost because it wasn't crazy and authoritarian enough.

Anthony Cumia is an Imbecile

Stupid Anthony Cumia on O&A suggested that African Americans are better off because their ancestors were enslaved. I suppose on some level that's true. If their ancestors had not been enslaved, or indeed if any significant change in the timeline occurred, they would never have been born. I probably wouldn't have been born if history had been altered so significantly. I reckon that means that I'm better off because African Americans' ancestors were enslaved.

There's a number of events that, if they had not occurred precisely as they did, would probably have meant that I would never have been born. Hitler and the Holocaust come to mind. If Hitler hadn't come to power and been a genocidal maniac, I wouldn't be here. Does that make it reasonable to argue that I'm better off because of Hitler and the Holocaust?

America is Purple

This is a cartogram by population size that shows gradations of blue and red counties. There's a lot of purple areas where folks are pretty evenly divided. This means we'll have to have a significant exchange of folks from blue states to red and vice versa if we decide to go our separate ways.

This, and other cool maps come from:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

Should Black Folks Thank Me for Not Hating Them?

The Opie and Anthony show that I listen to on the radio during the morning commute was marred by a rant by Anthony about how black folks don't express enough gratitude to white folks for being less racist than they used to be. Jim Norton countered him pretty well by arguing that nobody should be grateful to someone else for doing what they ought to be doing. If I'm less of a douche to you today than I was last week, I don't deserve a thank you.

Anthony seemed to suggest that racism was a thing of the past except among some "extremists" and that black folks should get over it. Now all their problems were their own fault. I know lots of folks who feel that way. They're all white and don't know any black people, so they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

They seem to think that black folks are trying to make them feel guilty for something they didn't do. They're wrong. It's not about guilt; it's about acknowledgement and understanding. Nobody wants their guilt, just for them to get their heads out of their asses. White folks who acknowledge racism and its legacy don't do it out of guilt; they do it because they have been informed and can't evade reality.

That Anthony really is a funny guy, but he's a nitwit about race.

Election

I watched election coverage on the cable media last night but fell asleep before the end (I was also guzzling wine). I was awake long enough to catch a holographic interviewee on CNN and to savor the FOX teams' bewilderment. I mostly stuck with MSNBC, and I got the feeling that the anchors were having a hard time pretending that they didn't already know that Obama was winning in a landslide.

I woke up to find that the GOP, which I despise, had been punished fairly sternly, but not as badly as I might have liked. I really wanted to see Saxby Chambliss and Ted Stevens go. I was also rooting for Al Franken. One of my Minnesotan friends tells me he suffered among some MInnesotans because he had used the "F-word" or an "Effenheimer" as my informant called it. Note to Minnesotans: It's OK to be nice, but don't be stupid about it.

Bummer about Prop 8.

I look forward to being disappointed by President Obama and the Democratic Congress.

Voting Was a Breeze

At my polling place, I didn't have to wait in line. I went right up to the table, signed in and voted. The whole process from the time I walked into the pollling place took 45 seconds, most of it because the little old lady at the table couldn't find my name in the book right away. I saw on the TV that some folks have had to wait in long lines for hours to vote. That's unacceptable, and I'd call for the ouster of the election officials who let that happen.

Let's Federalize Federal Elections

I'm not a big fan of elections, and I reckon there are good arguments for other ways of choosing leaders such as random selection or the hereditary principle. I'm also usually not one to promote any expansion of the federal portfolio and would just as soon see the federal government abandoned.

That said, if you're going to have a federal government with elected officials, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me for those elections to be run by county registrars and state secretaries of state with a wide variety of registration requirements and voting methods and allocation of resources among precincts. The helter skelter system in place today invites partisan abuses, fraud and voter suppression. A uniform set of standards for registration, ballots, voting systems, and allocation of voting machines/polling places among precincts would be reasonable for federal elections and would go a long way toward keeping voting and the counting of votes honest. It is possible that a single party could expropriate the process and turn the entire system into a farce, but I reckon it would be much harder to do this on a national level than it is on the local level. Besides, we're pretty much already there only with two parties with a monopoly on the ballot.

I favor early voting so that folks don't have to stand in line and so foul weather doesn't swing elections one way or the other. I can't vote early where I live, so I have to get to a polling place tomorrow come hell or high water. I reckon that voting booths and polling places should be distributed such that the ratio of voting booths to voters is pretty much the same everywhere (except in rural areas where you'd want to avoid having folks travel too far).

I favor loose registration requirements that allow folks to register as late as possible, even on election day. Hell, let's make it automatic for high school seniors and for soldiers and sailors when they sign up for school or service. I'm not too worried about folks' voting under assumed names, because both parties can play that game. Suppressing the votes of actual would be voters is a very much worse problem.

I used to be in favor of making voting more difficult, but that was just a way of undermining democracy. I'm still not a proponent of democracy, but I'd rather be up front about my position and let it prevail or fail on its merits.

I'd be interested to hear arguments against federalizing federal elections. It has never bothered me to be wrong; if it did I'd be a wreck.

Electoral Vote Map I Endorse

I've been following trends in political polling on this site: http://www.electoral-vote.com/ It features an electoral college map with summaries of polls for the various states. You can also see a graph of how the electoral map has changed over the last few months and compare it with 2004.

A Moose in Our Yard; Good Day at Church

There was a moose in the back of our house this morning. Jasper alerted us to its presence with unusually enthusiastic barking. At first, I couldn't figure out what it was, but it turned in full profile and was unmistakably a moose. It was an enormous she moose. I couldn't wait to tell everyone in the choir about it.

One of the assistant preachers was in the pulpit today, the one with the gift of prophecy. Boy did I feel like just about the crappiest Christian who ever lived when it was over. He really spoke the truth about our being, before anything else, citizens of the Kingdom of God with a calling to be different from the world, to love God and our neighbors in radical ways. He preached of implementing "Kingdom solutions" to various problems, all of which involved the Body of Christ acting freely in the spirit of love and service. For us, the election on November 4 is of tangential importance because there will still be work in the Kingdom to be done on November 5 and every day thereafter. I feel inspired to do something for someone, to open my heart to possibilities of service. Maybe this time the feeling won't pass so quickly, and I'll actually lift a finger to serve God and my conspecifics.

We had a last meeting of the faith and politics discussion group, the most satisfying so far because we got down to core issues about how to disagree with one another and how to find common ground through action. Nobody said a thing about the election, but we talked about how to put our faith into practice in addressing problems such as injustice, poverty, hunger, and all kinds of needs. We shared how overwhelming it all seems and how it might help to focus on meeting needs within the local community. We shared how being a better neighbor might be an excellent place to start.

The discussion was close to my heart in that we had a focus on voluntary, collaborative, non-coercive solutions informed by our faith. There was a substantial amount of common ground on this point from Republicans and Democrats alike, and I didn't feel like such an odd duck. The group seemed to come to a general consensus that solutions that were freely undertaken with no coercion were infinitely preferable to the alternative, although there was some disagreement about what to do if consensual solutions did not suffice. The preacher, who was facilitator, did not want to address the desirability or necessity of the state but to focus on how Christians of various political viewpoints can act together in the work of the Kingdom of God.

I'm thinking that my own advocacy of anarchism should focus less on a hypothetical stateless end state (which I won't live to see) and more on outlining alternative non-coercive solutions to problems. In addition, I can do more to point out problems that are artifacts of the state itself. Maybe a little more praxis and a lot less theory are what I need.

Turkey in the Oven

Mrs Vache Folle reads the Penzey's catalogue for recipe ideas. The last one had a great recipe for leftover turkey curry and for stuffing. So right now we have a turkey roasting in the oven along with a baking dish of homemade stuffing. Vache Folle will eat well tonight. And tomorrow, too, because that's when the turkey curry gets made.

We roast a turkey several times a year. It's not just for holidays.

For Thanksgiving, I want to roast a goose this year. Or, we might just eat at the Mohonk Mountain House over in the Catskills. It's just the two of us (four if you count Messrs Baggett and Stone who shouldn't eat too much poultry anyway because it gives them the runs). The Mohonk deal includes a day pass to the house and grounds, which are beautiful any time of year. After dinner (lunch to you Yankees), we can walk off our excesses on the hiking paths.

Nicknames

Rulers of yore often had gnarly nicknames. There was Domnall the Pock-Marked and Eochaid Crooked Nose of Dal Riata in the 7th century. Scotland had Malcolm Bighead in the 11th century and Malcolm the Maiden in the 12th and John Emptycoat in the 13th. Orkney was blessed with Erik Bloodaxe and Thorfinn Skullsplitter and Einar Falsemouth and Harald Smoothtalker. York had Ivarr the Boneless. England had Athelred the Unready (or the Heedless as I translate it), Swein Forkbeard, and Edmund Ironside before the Normans. The first Norman king in England was William the Bastard, later William the Conqueror. Later, there was Richard Lionheart and Edward Longshanks. Somewhere there was a Sigurd the Haughty. Russia had Ivan the Terrible.

What should GW Bush's kingly nickname be?

Look! An Ayrab!

Rashid Khalidi is someone you might be proud to have as an associate, so what the hell are McCain and Palin up to? Oh, right, race baiting. Khalidi is a Palestinian American, ergo an Arab, ergo probably Muslimish, ergo scary to the dumbasserate.

My grandnephew and grandniece are half Redneck and half Palestinian, and they're as cute as buttons and not scary at all (except for the Redneck half).

McCain really has lost any honor he might ever have laid claim to.

Calling Palin Out on the Wardrobe is Not Sexist

I saw on the TeeVee that that woman, you know the Survivor loser cum token conservative on "The View", claimed that criticism of Sarah Palin for her $150K wardrobe paid for by the campaign was "sexist". What the hell? What's sexist about it? If Obama's campaign bought him $150K in clothes, you'd bet the right would be "outraged" (again). The criticism is not that Palin's Caribou Barbie and a real clothes horse.. It's that the campaign took donors' contributions to pay for something so frivolous and probably not contemplated by the donors. Plus McCain himself made a big fuss about Bill Clinton's getting a $200 haircut on his campaign's dime back in 1992. Moreover, Palin has been posturing as a non-elitist, an ordinary hockey mom. The $150K wardrobe, the tens of thousands on makeup alone go to the issue of whether Palin is a phony.

It is perhaps ironic for someone to defend Palin by calling sexism since Palin is hardly a feminist. Then again, I don't think she or her supporters really know what sexism is. Maybe they think it's any time a woman is criticized. There's been sexism aplenty, but this is not an example of it. Playing the sexism card in this context demeans the concept and is, itself, sexist.

Observations About Wingnuts

Right wing nutzoids are always "outraged" about something. They don't have the complete range of emotional responses that normal people do. They're never dissapointed, mildly annoyed, or a little miffed. They're outraged! It's hard to take them seriously because they're always going on about something.

Right wing nutzoid "intellectuals" are paranoid about liberal conspiracies to keep them from succeeding in life. It's not their second rate scholarship and mediocre talent that forces them into wingnut welfare slots in "think tanks" and rightie publications. It's liberal bias. Frankly, if the right wing bench wasn't so thin, these folks would be fry cooks. They should count their blessings.

Right wing nutzoids talk in code. For example, when they say that an area is the "real" America, they mean it doesn't have many uppity Negroes, Jews, Catholics, Puerto Ricans, or what have you. Nudge nudge. Wink wink. Say no more. They're reminding the dumbasserate why they live in red states. Remember how the Democrats came out for civil rights and how pissed off you were about that? C'mon, it still must really chap your ass. Besides, Obama's black. They use the code because some of their constituents would be uncomfortable with overtly racist oratory, and the code makes for plausible deniability. Everybody in the GOP knows the code words. "States' Rights" is another one. Federalism is a perfectly legtimate topic, but that's not what wingnuts are talking about. They don't care about federalism. They're appealing to nostalgia for segregation and Jim Crow.

Right wing nutzoids aren't funny, at least not intentionally. You can laugh at them, but they can't do comedy. That's because they're mean, and mean is just not funny. Don Rickles was funny, but he wasn't really mean.

Right wing nutzoids are less likely to be sentient than other people. They clearly have no self awareness beacuse they are blithely able to distort facts and to take positions contrary to their assertions of mere minutes earlier without embarrassment.

Frak! It's Snowing!

Snow is falling on Hosner Mountain this very minute, and it's still October. I was hoping for an Indian Summer.

My Audition for 60 Minutes

I have five fingers on each of my hands. Why five? Homer Simpson and a lot of other cartoon characters get by fine with just four. Some Amish people have six, something fancy talking science people call polydactylism.

My uncle Herman had four on his left hand. He started with five but a German soldier shot of his left ring finger in North Africa. He claimed it itched a lot of the time and that he couldn't scratch it because it wasn't there. That's a hell of a thing.

Herman's father, my grandfather. Had one digit on his right hand. He started with five like most of us but lost evrything but his thumb in an mishap in a sawmill in 1910. It kept him out of the cavalry in Wordl War I even though he was still an excellent shot and a superb horseman. Lucky for me he didn't go to Europe in World War I. I wouldn't have been born with my complete set of ten fingers.

Can I have Andy Rooney's job when he retires?

Energy Independence

The wanker running to unseat John Hall in my district has the words "Energy Independence Now" on his yard signs. Since he's the GOP candidate, I assume he means drill, baby, drill or some such nonsense. There ain't enough oil under the US of A to satisfy the enrgy requirements of Americans, and that's a fact. The US of A sits on 3% of the world's oil and guzzles up 25% of the world's oil. Do the arithmetic.

Besides, if more American oil is pumped out of the ground, it won't necessarily be sold to Americans. Oil is oil.

Finally, the amount of oil we're talking about in environmentally sensitive areas just might not be worth the risk. I don't have a whole lot of trust in oil companies not to destroy the beaches of the whole Gulf Coast.

I hear folks all the time say how unfortunate it is that we are dependent on oil from people who hate us. From what I'm hearing on the campaign trail, Alaskans hate Americans as much as anybody. And Texans pretend to like Americans but refuse to stop embarrassing us with their antics.

Energy independence is a meaningless phrase. To reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we should reduce our dependence on oil, no matter where it comes from. And that won't happen any time soon.

I Love Mrs VF

I just ate some leftover duck that Mrs Vache Folle made yesterday. She steamed the duck for 45 minutes to get rid of some of the excess fat, and then she roasted it on each side for 20 minutes. It was very good. Duck is all dark meat. We also had spinach that Mrs VF cooked up with garlic and some brussells sprouts, so half of the duck was left over. I chopped it up with a butcher knife into chunks just like they do in Chinese restaurants and fried my share in butter and olive oil. This made the skin and the layer of subcutaneous duck fat delightfully crispy. I heated up some of Mrs VF's signature mashed taters and went to town. She uses Neufchatel cheese and sour cream inctead of milk and butter, so the taters heat up as delicious as when they were first made. Now I'm enjoying a postprandial Johnny Walker on the rocks.

I sure love Mrs VF. I praise her cooking because it is truly glorious. I shop for the food and she cooks it up. For lunch yesterday we had baby back ribs. She parboiled them first then baked them at 250 degrees for four hours. They were slathered with chipotle grilling sauce and were to die for.

She also has a great sense of humor, one of the most important characteristics a human being can possess. On Saturday, we went to a comedy show fundraiser at the local firehouse and laughed our asses off. The comedians worked blue and didn't hold back in front of the firehouse folks. It was as good a comedy show as I have ever seen, and we have seen many.

She is also the most thoughtful person I know and truly caring and solicitous, even to me. And she's a looker to boot.

But the main thing is the cooking.

Partisan E-Mails

I'm a Georgia cracker, and Mrs Vache Folle comes from what I like to call the Keystone Krackers. So we got all the anti-Obama (previously anti-Hillary) e-mails forwarded from our kinfolk. I got a racist one from my mother, and I was taken aback because she always seemed to me to be the least racist person I knew, in the Deep South at least. I had to respond, and I at least got her to commit to vote against Saxby Chambliss. I'd like to think her dislike of old Saxby is based on something other than his broken pledge to restore the Confederate Battle Flag to the state flag, but I was afraid to ask.

In all fairness, Mom may not have realized that the e-mail was racist. It claimed that reader surveys of Country Living and Ebony magazines as to the three biggest fears yielded nuclear/terror attack, loss of a loved one, and terminal illness for the former and ghosts, dogs and registered mail for the latter. If the surveys were ever really undertaken, it might have been an interesting piece of cultural trivia, but it also included some verbiage that suggested Baraxk Obama was stupid just like the stupid ghost/dog/registered mail fearing readers of Ebony.

Of course, the comparison may not be very fair. Instead of Country Living, let's have Weekly World News readers' biggest fears: Satan in tornado form, Bat Boy, and the guy from Saw. Or Southern Partisan's Readership: Negros, Jews, Sammy Davis, Jr. Let's ask the readers of US, and OK! and In Touch what really scares them and mock their fears.

I mock the Country Living's readership's fears. None of their fears can be avoided by them. The Ebony fears are at least avoidable.

Faith Priorities

Check out Jim Wallis at Huffington Post and his "Faith Priorities":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/my-personal-faith-priorit_b_137530.html

I prefer this approach to listing "non-negotiables".

Hat tip to Mrs Vache Folle.

Google Group Goes Public

I went ahead and changed the settings on my Google Group "Church and State" so that anyone can join. My fellow churchgoers mostly took a pass, but I'm still interested in this idea even though the church discussion group ends this Sunday. Our season of meaningful dialogue will have come and gone.

So, any of my imaginary readership that wants to join should feel free to do so. You don't have to be a Christian, but it would be helpful if you were willing to sign on to the premise that we can discuss important issues with gentleness and reverence and in consideration of the love we have for one another as conspecifics.

The purpose of the group is not so much to advocate political positions, although this will doubtless occur if anyone signs on, but to try to gain a fuller understanding of one another's positions and the needs and concerns that underlie them. I'm hoping for a lot of reframing, and I aim to try to reframe issues whenever I can as moderator.

Does it Matter that McCain Family Owned Slaves?

There's a good piece at Huffington Post about McCain's slave owning ancestors: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abby-ferber/does-it-matter-that-mccai_b_136872.html

I was a little disappointed because I was half expecting to find out that McCain himself kept some slaves in his many mansions.

The point is that the McCains continued to be well to do after the slaves were freed, while their former slaves struggled. The legacy of slavery is still with us. It's not that white folks with slave owning ancestors should feel guilty about it; it's that we should acknowledge that the freed slaves were not in very good shape economically when they were emancipated and that a century of Jim Crow made it very hard for them to get ahead. They never did get that 40 acres and a mule that was discussed. Even with civil rights legislation, there is still a great deal of discrimination against the descendants of the slaves, so there's little wonder that black folks are on average poorer than white folks.

Most of my ancestors were illiterate dirt farmers and didn't own any slaves. They were mostly hillbillies and lived in areas where slavery was less common than on the piedmont or tidewater. Slavery was bad for them because they had to compete with slave labor. Some of my ancestors, however, were slave owners, and I have checked to see whether I personally benefit from their crimes. My family's circumstances were such that the wealth generated by slavery went to other branches of the family and did not trickle down to me or even to any of my great great grandparents. They all pretty much had to start over after the War Between the States, and the advantages I enjoyed were due to my grandparents' hard work that saw them rise from sharecropping to owning their own farm. Of course, if they had been black, I'd have been a sharecropper, too. Black folks in my home town didn't have a chance of getting ahead. White folks literally would not let them.

Rapturists are Wrong

All this Rapture nonsense annoys the crap out of me. I know, I know, it's no crazier than any other religious belief, but it's not in the Bible and it's not part of the Christian tradition, at least not until the 19th century. Rapturists are a whole 'nother religion as far as I'm concerned.

I was talking to my Dad, who studied theology in college and was meant to be a Campbellite preacher, about the Darbyites and where they got this foolishness from. His take is that they imagined that John, who wrote the Apocalypse, was more akin to Nostradamus than to a Biblical prophet. He was a fortuneteller, not a soothsayer, in their eyes. All the prophets, to such folks, were writing, not about the time and place they lived, but about the far distant future. How you'd know which prophets to include in your canon hasn't been explained, but that's how they see prophesy.

Dad reckons, and I agree with him, that John was writing in apocalyptic code about conditions in his own time and that he alludes to persons and nations acting at that time. He was regarded as a prophet because what he wrote was true when he wrote it, and readers at the time understood what he alluded to.

I don't expect Christ to return any time soon. As Martin Short remarked on Real Time the other day, he's probably going to visit the trillion other planets who didn't nail him to a cross before he comes back to us.

Greenspan Shocked

Alan Greenspan is shocked and confused that bankers would fail to protect their shareholders. Why would they? Each actor was supposed to act in the best interests of the fictitious corporation for which they worked. Each actor, therefore, dons a mask of disinterestedness while pursuing his own interests. The banker wants a bonus and goes after profits, real or imaginary, and takes as many risks as he is allowed to take. The shareholders want their shares to appreciate and/or yield dividends, so they don't check the risk taking. The cautious banker would get left behind and show only modest profits compared to his more highly leveraged competitors, and the shareholders would punish him for it. The market would punish him for it. His superiors would punish him. He'd go home, and his wife would punish him, too.

There is simply nothing in the system to check the excesses that brought the credit system down except for the prospect of a massive failure, and nobody expects their bank that they run as geniuses from the best schools to fail. How could it? They're too big to fail. They've never failed at anything, so they're not going to fail now.

The thing is that a lot of these bankers aren't even very bright. They don't even know how their bank works half the time. Sure, they went to Ivy League and quality safety schools and all that, but they were legacies who didn't really need to be all that smart to get in. And once you're in, those schools are no more demanding than others. After school, positions were made for them at banks, and they patted themselves on their backs for rising so high in the meritocracy.

Who will pay for their ineptitude? The shareholders, taxpayers, working stiffs at the banks. You can bet the masters of the universe will land on their feet. Nobody will remember whose bright idea it was to walk the leverage plank all the way to the end.

Music

I was never as into popular music as my peers when I was a youth. I never bought records, and I didn't have a stereo in my room. I'd occasionally listen to an album with a friend and nod approvingly, but I was just humoring them. In college, when folks would yammer on and on about which drummer had been in what band before the third album of so and so had been released, I would just listen and wonder who the hell they were talking about.

Now I own about thirty CDs of various artists with no particular genre in the majority. I own four Alison Krause CDs. I also have a Windham Hill collection and three Andreas Wollenweider CDs. I have some blues, some jazz, some Springsteen, and some classical. I rarely listen to any of them except in the car from time to time.

I love music, even though I am not much of a consumer of it. I have always been in choirs and choruses, and I sing all day long in the shower, the car, around the house, when I mow the yard, when I'm cooking.

I can't stand pop music nowadays, so I rarely listen to the radio for music. I tune in to sports competitions or news, only occasionally settling on a song, usually an oldie that brings back memories of my salad days. I am pretty sure that there is only one hip hop song that runs in a continuous loop. And country has gotten even more unbearable than ever. I would rather listen to polka than country.

I have never made a mix tape.

My Failed Google Group

I started a Google group to continue the discussion some in our church have been having about faith and politics. So far, there's been one taker, and my opening post is all there is. A lot of the folks in the discussion group are oldsters and not apt to be interested in an on line discussion, but many are good candidates. I'm beginning to think that it's me, that my coreligionists are a little freaked out about participating in anything with a self avowed anarchist. I reckon they're afraid I'll disillusion them.

It may be that folks are timid about having anything in writing.

There's one more discussion on Sunday, and if others from the church don't sign up, I'm going to open the group to the public. That may be for the best since that would open it up to a wider range of perspectives than one Dutch Reformed congregation in the Hudson Valley.

Don't Rush to Judgment on McCain's Ties to Al Qaeda

Pretty much everyone who has been paying attention has heard by now that JS MCain promised not to go into Pakistan and apprehend Osama bin Laden even if he knew exactly where he was. Evreyone also knows that subsequent to this promise McCain received the coveted endorsement of al Qaeda. Let'e not rush to judgment and fall into the old post hoc ergo procter hoc fallacy. Just because the promise preceded the payoff, it does not follow that there was any kind of tit for tat. Al Qaeda simply supports candidates that it believes are best for its agenda. That's all. The promise had no impact.

On the other hand, if there is a terror attack conveniently timed to help McCain after one of his surrogates suggested some months ago that a terror attack would be helpful, I might start to wonder if a deal hadn't been cut. Still, it could just be a coincidence.

Head Banging

I get tired of the same old questions about anarchy, especially the one that goes "What would you put in the place of government?" The answer, obviously, is "nothing". I'm an anarchist, remember? What part of an-archy do you not understand? I liken the question to someone's asking you what you are going to put on your neck after you have that tumor removed. You can't imagine a world without government? That's the fault of your feeble imagination, not my ideology.

I really can't stand it when people say things like "if there was no government, there'd be anarchy". I'm pretty sure they mean chaos or some such thing, and even though they have never given it a moment's thought before and have never lived without a ruler, they feel that they can say unequivocally that we would spiral into a postapocalyptic war of all against all if the goverment went away, or even if it were diminished in power appreciably.

It's not my job to tell people what to do once they throw off their rulers. I don't know what a post archy community would be like. There'd be an infinite number of possibilities for folks to organize cooperatively. The state is evil, and I won't budge an inch on its legitimacy.

More on Politics and Faith

This was the second week of sermons and discussions about faith and politics. The sermon, in a nutshell, was an exhortation for Christians to view themselves foremost as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and to practice love and justice in all that we do. As with the last sermon, it was as uncontroversial as one could hope for if one wanted to avoid controversy. Jesus is Lord. If we can agree on that proposition, we should be able to discuss any issue together.

I was astonished to learn that a churchgoer had characterized the program of the last two weeks as "demonic and divisive" and had gone off to one of the satellite congregations in protest. Of course, the program is dicey, but the pastor has handled it capably and lovingly, and the whole point is that we need to try to wrestle with potentially divisive issues rather than pretending that they don't exist. I couldn't figure out what the angry churchgoer found so disturbing, and I wish that he or she had chosen to discuss it with us in the discussion group. This person has not been a discussant.

Then again, I have on rare occasions heard some partisan congregants mutter that praying for peace was "political" or that any reference to "social justice" was "socialism". Last time I looked, we had signed on to worship the "Prince of Peace", and Jesus and no small number of the prophets were very concerned about social justice. I suppose on some level, everything is "political" especially if the state is always your first resort. The personal is political, it has been said; and the community is certainly political if you use politics in its broadest sense. So, if you are tetchy about "politics", just about anything is out of bounds.

The second discussion group was interesting but not as satisfying as the first. One particpant was so partisan that she came with talking points. For example, she made a point to talk about "conservatives" versus "socialists". She didn't seem to listen to anyone else's concerns or points and she seemed keen to advocate for McCain going so far as to throw out some dubious attack on his character. Her contribution was small, but it reminded me how important it is to impress on people the ground rules of such a discussion.

I was also disappointed that a couple of folks felt the need before the meeting to get me to deny that I was really an anarchist, to admit that I conceded that the state was necessary. They were not capable of listening and were too busy trying to get me to take off my tin foil hat to grasp what I was getting at. They were newcomers to the group and one of them was the partisan I wrote about above.

I am wrestling with what makes some folks so uncomfortable about the idea of open discussion with gentleness and reverence. I suspect that for some the very idea that some issues about which people hold deeply held and emotionally charged views are up for discussion is intolerable. There is no room for discussion, and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong. If the pastor gets them to accept the idea that other people might have completely different points of view about, say, abortion or homosexuality or what have you and still be just as Christian as they are, their whole world will collapse on itself. The authoritarian leaning and legalistic members of the congregation will be the most unwilling or even unable to embrace openness and differences of opinion. For them, the only point of discussion is to bend the recalcitrant to their way of thinking. They are, by definition, intolerant, so calls for tolerance are intolerable.

On the other hand, the tolerant members appear to be willing to welcome the intolerant and to hear them and to engage in a dialogue. I suspect that such a dialogue would result in relatively fewer conversions to intolerance than to tolerance once everyone is really heard.

One Party; One World

The US has a two party system. We don't abide those third and fourth parties because that's just too many and a recipe for chaos. In fact, I reckon two parties is one too many. Let's cull it down to one and call it The Party. Things would be a lot simpler that way. Party members would decide things for the country, and only the best and the brightest would qualify for party membership, as long as by best and brightest you mean adherence to the party line.

As long as we're simplifying things, let's admit it: there are just too many countries with divergent forms of government and interests that inevitably lead to conflict. Once we get the The Party in power, we can start annexing some of these other countries or, at the very least, make sure that The Party runs them even if they continue to exist nominally as "independent" entities. Eventually, The Party will run the whole world.

Frak the GOP

I am so pissed at the GOP that I not so secretly yearn for an O'Bama landslide. I would also like to see the nonGOP party get 60 Senate seats and kick Joe Liebermann to the curb. And a bigger Congressional majority, too. The GOP needs this to force it to purge itself of the more corrupt and dangerous elements that have taken it over. If it doesn't do this, then to hell with them. Let them be out of power for the rest of my life at least. Let them go the way of the Whigs or the Know Nothings or the Anti-Masonics.

"Conservatives" are better when they are out of power. They can block stuff on the basis of "conservatism". When they're in power, they conveniently forget their "conservative" principles and go hog wild. They just aren't up to governance. Look at their "intellectuals" for crying out loud!

Look what "conservatives" have done when in power. They've increased the size and power of government and run up debt like there's no tomorrow. Reagan and the Bushes alike.

I get the feeling that folks who are conservative in their viewpoint have been played by the GOP. Just like libertarians and Christian fundamentalists. Maybe these constituencies should form their own parties. The libertarians, I am told, already have in a manner of speaking. How about a "Conservative Party" and a "Christianist Extremist Party"? Then the GOP could go back to being the party of the country club set.

What He Said About ACORN

yournamehere at DEath Wore a Feathered Mullet has gotten a little political lately. He nails the whole ACORN scare tactic here: http://vivalasvegass.blogspot.com/2008/10/acorn-intro.html

Rapture Ready Folks Shouldn't Run for Office

If you expect to be raptured, as I understand Sarah Palin does, you have no business seeking high office. As I understand it, the rapture will come right in the middle of the tribulation or the beginning, so the rapture ready officeholder will be nowhere to be found when things get really tough for the rest of us. We want a leader who will stay with us in the times of tribulation, not one who aims to skip out on us when the going gets tough. What good is a Commander in Chief who is AWOL at the Battle of Armageddon?

My Take on the Debate

I poured myself a scotch and water and watched the debate. McCain seemed almost sane for the first several minutes but returned to his usual incoherent ramblings in short order. He made a lot of funny faces and blinked about a zillion times. Never blinks, my ass.

Joe the Plumber might be the only vote McCain secured with his performance last night. Joe, an employee at a small plumbing company, makes over $250K? Really? He must be putting in a lot of overtime. If he makes that much, then I don't feel too bad for him if he gets a tax hike.

I turned off the TV before the pundits started telling me what I had just seen and heard. I saw John McCain looking like a half wit next to Barry O'Bama who never lost his cool. Of course, he wasn't going to do anything to make it look as if he was beating up on a crippled old dude. O'Bama tried to stick the issues. McCain, not so much. He came off as a whiner and unstable.

O'Bama was poised and won my admiration for his strategy of attempting to appear as if he wanted to show the American people where he and McCain differed on the issues. He knew McCain would never let that happen. Issues are not McCain's strong suit.

What do I think of O'Bama's positions? Not much, but I reckon that of the two men on stage last night he is a lot less likely to get me killed or to kill other people needlessly or to accelerate our progress toward a police state.

Questions That Won't Be Asked

I would like the candidates to answer a few questions at the debate:

1. Will you commit that you will not pardon anyone from the Bush regime for crimes, including war crimes, committed in connection with their offices?

2. Will you support the investigation of waste, fraud and abuse by contractors and others in Iraq and Afghanistan?

3. Do you repudiate the concept of the unitary executive?

4. What do you think the Tenth Amendment means?

5. What will you do to depoliticize the intelligence services?

6. Will you order American personnel to stop torturing people?

7. Will you order the release of all detainees who cannot be shown to be guilty of any crime?

More Advocacy for the Matrilineal Extended Family

I really get tired of people who argue that the so called traditional nuclear family is "natural" because it takes both a man and a woman to make a baby. Indeed, so far it has required contributions of sperm from a man and an egg and womb facilities from a woman to make a baby. It does not follow, however, that any particular household form is superior when it comes to raising that baby. There's no logical connection between the statement of how babies get conceived, as matter of fact, and how babies should get raised, as a normative proposition. I have to go with the idea that there are any number of ways to raise babies without frakking them up, and that it isn't up to me to tell anyone else what their domestic arrangements should be.

As far as I'm concerned, what could be more unnatural than the so called traditional nuclear family? I doubt very much that our prehistoric forebears would have survived long in such an arrangement. On the contrary, they'd have banded together in larger extended family groupings.

To belabor the point, I reckon that matrilineal extended families with visiting spousal relations are as "natural" as anything else contrived by mankind. My nephews and nieces are as close to me genetically as my own grandchildren. Over the centuries, the difference will be negligible between my direct and indirect descendants in terms of relatedness. However, I'm just about 100% sure that my nieces and nephews are actually related to me and not changelings. My matrilineage will almost certainly be my kin whereas my patrilineage will be fraught with multiple risks of cuckoldry, and it takes only one of these to wipe out my genetic contribution.

It would be genetically stupid to adopt a patrilineal family structure unless we also adopt a costly and inconvenient social order that keeps women under strict control of their mates. What would be the point of such a regime, with all the misery and unhappiness that it would entail, when the matrilineal solution is available at much less cost and with much more personal freedom?

I'm not telling anyone how to live, mind you, but you could do worse than the matrilineal extended family.

Political Discourse From the Poorman Institute

The Poorman Institute nails it with a brilliant analysis of political discourse: http://thepoorman.net/2008/10/13/observations-on-recent-trends-in-political-discourse/

The thesis:

"I’ve noticed, recently, that people who disagree with me are stupid and dumb. I can’t really believe they are as stupid and dumb as they seem, so I think they must be crazy as well.

Why are they so crazy? Well, any discussion of this would have to begin with how stupid and dumb they are. Imagine if you were so stupid and dumb that you actually disagreed with me, even when I was totally right? That would be enough to drive anyone crazy.

But the flip side of this requires looking at how smart I am. I’m pretty much right about everything, and with each passing day, as more and more of my predictions are born out by events, the incredible differential between people who disagree with me and are stupid and dumb, and me, who is wise and correct, becomes harder and harder for these stupid dummies to bear. And it drives them crazy."

What an Obama Victory Might Mean

I hate it that so many of my countrymen, especially those with a similar cracker heritage, are still racists. An O'Bama victory in November might well be interpreted as a sign that we have turned the corner as a country on racism. The election of the first mulatto president was something that I thought I would not live to see.

You may well disagree with O'Bama on the issues and reckon, beyond all sense, that McCain is the better candidate, but most of the yokels I have talked to reckon that his blackness is a disqualifier despite McCain's demented agenda.

I dreamed last night that my mother called me to warn me that she had read an e-mail that tied O'Bama to Islamic "bloodlines" with designs on world domination. We had a big fight when I told my mother that this was nonsense, and she wept at my inability to see that O'Bama was EVIL. I was happy when I awoke that no such conversation had taken place (phone logs establish that I did not drunkenly forget the call). Was this connected with the highly fraught political discussion at church? Just as I would hate to think that my fellow parishoners are racist yahoos, so I would hate to think of my mother in that light. Perhaps I equate my church with my family in some way and that I should explore how my ambivalence about church participation relates to my ambivalence about my family.

Perhaps I should get therapy or pastoral counselling. But who has the time?

Why Regulation of Corporations Doesn't Bother Me so Much

Corporations are monstrous creatures of the state that permit and promote large, impersonal, and unaccountable organizations that could not survive without the corporate fiction. If you want to do business as a corporation and accept the "benefits" granted by the state, you should expect to be regulated out the wazoo. It's only right. Corporations lack consciences and minds. They are designed to allow individuals to hide behind fictions and justify actions that they would never be able to pull off as individuals.

I reckon states can put any conditions on corporate activities that they want. It's their creature, their gift. You should expect it to come with strings.

Confessions of the Socially Phobic

I have come to suspect that a lot of my defects as a human being stem from my abandonment by my father and the presence of a psychotic and abusive stepfather in my young life. I have abandonment issues. D'uh. But I also have heightened anxiety that I suspect came from years of wondering when the stepfather was going to go off on me. I could never turn the hypervigilance off, and now I have to take Zoloft to get through the day. The social phobia dates back to high school when, although I craved society and friends, I felt that I could not risk letting anyone into my private hell. I was too ashamed to let anyone know what was happening to me.

Later in life, when I had put my dysfunctional family behind me, I had issues with forming attachments. I could be your best friend, but when you left, or when it was time for me to move on, it was always "have a good life". I have never been a faithful correspondent.

Now, at 50, I am starting to realize that I want to work on these issues and to make the effort to connect with my conspecifics. I want to have a social life. I have to work on it. I am convivial and amiable, and I should exercise these characteristics. I would be happier if I spent some effort becoming part of a community. I'm not sure how to start or if I even have it in me.

I Was Worried Over Nothing

The day of the "Jesus for President" sermon came. I didn't know why I had expected anything else, but it was a very principled call for those of us who submit to the Lordship of Jesus to discuss politics with one another "with gentleness and reverence". The Biblical text was from Samuel, the part where the Israelites demand a king. God instructs Samuel to warn the people that a king will take their sons and daughters, their treasure, and enslave them for his purposes. The Israelites still wanted a king, and what God through Samuel had warned of came to pass and then some. (I confess that the tax rate of 10% that God suggested seemed somewhat attractive).

About 12 of us and the pastor met in the narthex to discuss politics. The question put to us was what issues drove our political choices and how that related to our faith. We were all white. We ranged in age from about 35-80. We had a split of men and women. We spoke openly but with gentleness and reverence. We love each other, after all, and our eyes are on the eternal, so whatever the politics of the moment may be should not drive us apart. We of all people should be able to discuss any issue openly and respectfully. And we did, for a good hour and a half. There was the unrepentant Republican who came with a set of talking points about "smaller government", "lower taxes", "defense of marriage", and "national security". He claimed to be surprised at what he called "extremist" views of the other discussants, and he wasn't talking about me. He was talking about the moderate suburban Republicans who expressed an attraction to Barack Obama and a concern for social justice and controls on the potential excesses of unfettered capitalism.

I was surprised at the openness at the discussion about issues such as race and the admission that many of us have a hard time getting it, how we tend to delegitimize the grievances of black folks as ancient history or victimology. I have been selling my co-religionists short. At least those who selected themselves for the discussion were among the most thoughtful and honest folks I have ever talked to about political matters.

I was given an opportunity to express myself openly and freely and to explain what a Christian Anarchist believes, at least the way I see it. Nobody batted an eye, and I got the feeling that I had given the discussants food for thought. At least there were none of the usual reactions about how insane my position was. I said that I failed to live up to my ideals and that, although voting itself should be avoided as an act of violence, I may very well vote as an act of self defense. My issues were choosing the party that was least likely to get me and mine killed or to accelerate our advance to a police state. I feel that I can wear my tin foil hat to church now.

I Said I Was Freaking, But I'm not Really

My faith has changed me in many ways. The other day, I got stuck in line at the supermarket behind a woman who was using three different food stamp debit cards and cash to pay for her groceries. It took a half hour for her to pay. Before my conversion, I would have been enraged and probably would have been a real douche about the situation. But on that day, I just contented myself to read the tabloids and make sure that I didn't make the poor woman uncomfortable. I also made sure that the cashier and bagger understood that I was content to wait and that I acknowledged their good work on behalf of the woman. The transformation amazes me. I am a different person through the working of the Holy Ghost, and I thank God for it.

I'm not saying that I'm Mother Theresa or deserve an attaboy. Far from the case. I'm just saying that I notice a real difference in my outlook on life. Take the current economic crisis. Even though I have anxiety neurosis and am, in fact, very vulnerable to adverse economic conditions, I'm not worried at all. God will provide, and if he doesn't, it's all part of His plan. I originally intended to be a drifter, you know, and this may be my chance to fulfill my childhood ambition. I am truly content with what I have, whether in plenty or want, and I trust in the Lord and lean not on my own understanding.

Of course, it is possible that I will think differently when I find myself living under an overpass and eating roasted rat. I hope not. I hope that I will be resigned to the will of God and will be a witness to the transforming power of the Holy Ghost.

I Fear a Lot of Things, Especially Fear Itself

I'm freaking out a little. Palin/McCain seem to be trying to incite a race war or to turn the so called "Culture War" or "War on Christmas" into an actual shooting war. Sadly, in my case, it will be a re-enactment of the brother against brother conflict of the war to prevent southern secession, because plenty of my kinfolk and in-laws are slack jawed yokels without the good sense that God gave a duck. On the other hand, many of these folks will be too liquored up to act on their violent impulses. The danger is that all it takes is one Palinite nutzoid suicide bomber to get "lucky".

On Sunday, the title of the sermon at my church is "Jesus for President". I have a queasy feeling that this could well be the day that I discover that a lot of my fellow churchgoers are Christianist nutcases or that my church endorses the state as a matter of principle. There is a discussion afterwards, and I am debating on whether to participate. If the sermon passes muster, I may not want to risk having the discussion destroy the illusion that my co-religionists are not mostly gung ho for Caesar. I have been tiptoeing around the topic for several years. On the other hand, perhaps I should air my seemingly radical anti-state views and see how they are received. They flow from my religious beliefs and are, to that extent, principled. I like the choir and lots of folks in my church, and I dread having to disassociate myself on this issue. I may be worrying over nothing.

The good news is that I failed in my program to become physically fit and svelte and that I am as fat as ever. If there is famine in the postapocalyptic dystopia, I am set. What seemed like shameful gluttony at the time will look like wisdom and prudence in hindsight. I packed it on in the years of prosperity and will be able to ride out the lean times. Mrs Vache Folle, on the other hand, is doomed. She imprudently maintained a high state of physical fitness as if the times of plenty would never end.

Don't Consume Fructose!

Mrs Vache Folle wants us to avoid high fructose corn syrup, and I figured she was being a tin foil hatter about it until recently. It turns out that fructose doesn't work the same way in our bodies as sucrose or glucose, that it messes with the satiety signals, that it contributes to obesity, that it kills bees that are fed with it, that it kills lab rats who are fed with it, and that children are better off drinking Kool Aid than fruit juice. Who knew?

I'm totally on board with Mrs VF's fructose avoidance policy. Also, we have decided not to eat anything that isn't food. We're going with Pollan's directive to eat real food, mostly plants and not too much. The last part will be a challenge for me, what with my being a glutton and all. As I'm typing this, I'm also eating corned beef hash with two eggs over medium on two slices of oat toast. But I'm proud to state that there's not an iota of fructose in my meal.

I understand that government may be to blame because of price supports for sucrose that make fructose from corn less expensive than sugar from cane and beets. Let's open up the sugar market and see if fructose stays on top. Big Sugar and Big Corn will never let that happen.

Touchy People

It has been my experience in my half century of life that folks who are weirdly touchy about particular accusations usually feel deep down that the accusations are true. John McCain gets weirdly defensive and outraged at any suggestion that he is a liar. This is because he knows deep down that he is one.

He is very quick to characterize almost any criticism as a challenge to his patriotism, and he gets way more worked up about such challenges, real or imagined, than he would if he didn't in the depths of his soul feel really guilty about something related to patriotism. I reckon he is haunted by the hundreds of prisoners of war known to have been left behind in Vietnam and whose existence he worked very hard over the years to cover up and whose return he did nothing to advance. Maybe he did some really bad things while in captivity and can't forgive himself for them. Maybe both.

Did Poor People Make the Banks do Bad Things?

Some of my wingnut conspecifics appear to have fallen for the GOP talking point that poor people caused the meltdown of the financial system. That's right. Poor people, whom the government encouraged or required banks to lend to, took down the whole system. They made those unsophisticated financiers raise their leverage ratios to unimaginable levels and develop exotic products free from regulation and from any sound banking practices. Those poor people mess everything up, and now we have to pay the piper.

It's hard for me to swallow it when people despise the poor and exalt the rich. I am suspicious of any explanation for a crisis that involves this type of reasoning. Let's be honest about the financial meltdown. Mortgages are only part of the problem, and subprime mortgages went to a lot of people who are by no means poor. It was a rational risk a few years ago to get into a house with financing that would become problematic a few years down the road, because you were going to flip that house for a profit or get more conventional financing when the equity went up to permit you to afford a conventional loan. Many people did this and succeeded. Others got left holding the bag when the housing market became depressed and they owed more than the house was worth and couldn't refinance. It was a bummer for them but hardly indicative of moral decadence.

Now it's easier to get a kidney than a mortgage, and the housing market is depressed even more by that. The depression of the housing market erased most people's primary base of wealth, so they had to retrench and stop buying things. This caused the economy overall to slow down. This caused businesses to be strapped and to be unable to pay for supplies and to pay down their credit lines on time. This made corporate bonds less secure. Meanwhile, the big banks were leveraged out the wazoo and circulating overvalued and risky credit default swaps to the tune of $62 trillion. Poor people didn't cause this mess. Smart, rich people did.

And it wasn't accounting rules that brought everything down. Blaming mark to market for the crisis is like blaming your thermometer when it shows that you have a fever.

Making things worse is that the big banks are public companies whose stock price is not just the market's gauge of performance. It's a signal to everyone else that the bank might not be trustworthy. When a bank loses the confidence of other banks, it's game over. The banks can't trust each other, so there's a credit crunch. Before you know it, there's a credit freeze. You can't get a car loan, the dealer can't finance his inventory, the car maker isn't selling cars, the vendors and employees of the car maker don't sell as much, none of these businesses can finance anything after a while. Folks get laid off in droves.

I think I'll invest in the ink they use to print money. And in wheelbarrows. People will need them to carry their currency.

A Tale of Computer Woe; Service Pack 3

A week ago Friday, I could not get on the internet of or get e-mail. I could, however, use voice over internet and call the cable company to get help. I went through the automated troubleshooting system until it asked if I was calling over a voice over internet phone and stated that I'd likley have to turn off the computer and unplug it, in which case I'd lose phone service. So, I was connected to a technical helper who, after running some diagnostics (or at least that's what he pretended to be doing), informed me that it was the router for my Vonage service and that I should call Motorola. He gave me the numbers.

Motorola had a lengthy phone menu that, once I finally got to the product type I was dealing with, informed me to contact my internet service provider. D'oh! I bet the Cablevision tech guy was laughing at how I had gotten the old runaround. I bet he has a chalkboard behing his station where he marks each time he gets a schmuck off the line with the old call Motorola ploy.

I had a stiff one to calm myself and called back. This time I had use of a cell phone and was able to bypass the router altogether and establish that the router was not the problem. Tech #2 spent quite a while with me, then despaired and suggested that I needed a new ethernet card.

Mrs Vache Folle went to Staples where the geek derided the idea that the ethernet card was the issue. He wouldn't even sell her one but suggested that we bring the computer in for a diagnostic scan. When I told my carpool companion what I was going to do, he offered to come over and fix the problem. He's a ninth level IT mage, so I was grateful. He couldn't do this until over a week after the problem manifested itself. He tinkered around, familiarized himself with my antiquated system, and called Cablevision where he impersonated me. I listened to his side of the conversation, and if I closed my eyes, I could imagine I was in a Nick Burns skit. With his help, Cablevision finally hit on a plausible explanation: some software defect was preventing Cablevision from recognizing my computer's address.

So, my friend the IT mage and I got drunk while we watched "The Big Lebowski" on DVD. This morning, he fiddled around for a half hour, discovered that MS Windows Service Pack 3 was the problem. It contained a bug or feature, who knows which, that blocked the cable company. He uninstalled it, and voila!

To Cablevision, Motorola and Microsoft: thanks for nothing. Kudos to Staples, unless they were setting us up to sell us a new system, in which case shame on them. Many thanks to the IT mage and his willingness to work for booze.

A Rule of Thumb

One thing that you can know for sure about a person who says any of the following:

"Let's not play the blame game."

"How we got in this mess is not important."

"There's no sense in finger pointing."

"There's plenty of blame to go around."

"Mistakes were made."

It's their fault.