Tuesday, September 09, 2008

But yeah, it IS that stupid...

Barack Obama: A pro-vaccine pharma shill who doesn't care about autistic children?


The stupid, I fear it will burn me to a crisp. It's neuron-apoptosing in its intelligence-devouring intensity, and my brain still hurts from reading the passage above. (Sadly, once having seen it, I can't unsee it, wish as I might.)


Ewww. I had to look up apotosing. Ewww! Now I have to floss MY brain.

Yeah. It DOES kinda have that effect.

Hm, have you noticed the overlap between anti-vax folks and Christianist Republicans? I bet you five bucks they will at least try to pressure Palin into bringing up the whole false link between autism and vaccines. I'd be interested to see if there was a statistical correlation between comorbid PTSD and autistic traits within children exposed to churches like this. All else aside - imagine dragging an autistic child to this shrieking hootinany!!!

Gleaner, Wonkette and even maybe even John Stewart miss "Pappa Bear's" Best Line.

Once you listen to this, and savor O'rielly's amazing lame response to Stewart's artful on-air roast of him for not blaming the Palin's Sr. for the manifest indescretions of Young Ms. Palin as he had already done to Brittney Spears' parents for the indiscretion of the younger daughter, back up to the one minute mark.

Clearly it's easy to miss, but here's a crude transcript:

In a commentary a few months ago I scolded the parents of Brittney Spears for not supervising their children, a situation that has been well-documented....

Of course, there is no evidence that the Governor's children are unsupervised...


So, Bill, are you saying that Bristol Palin WAS supervised when she conceived? Do you have proof? Home video perhaps?

Should there be proof that she was under parental supervision when she became pregnant, I think there would be some rather pointed bi-partisan interest in such a family dynamic, even before we consider who by, really.

On the other hand, Bill, if you are actually suggesting what my catholic-educated ears picked out of the background noise - that Bristol's baby is the product of an "Immaculate Conception," - I think I'll tell you what I suggested to Fr. Kieran, SJ, just before he told me to shut me heathen yap.

Which is it, Bill? Was she "properly supervised?" By whom? And how does pregnancy fit into "proper supervision" when we all know that in her family's moral scheme, that would make her A Bad Girl Who Is Probably Going To Hell?

...even in cases of rape and incest.

I mean, Bill, if you really respected the Palins - or anything other than your loofa - you really ought to try and do an honest day's work of spin control. All the total effect of your "clarification" was to make things one hell of a lot worse for the Palins.

I mean, not that I particularly care. I happen to believe that you don't bet on getting a nice red Roma tomato from a deadly nightshade - even if they are closely related.

Monday, September 08, 2008

The Spiders Behind Sarah's Eyes.

It's alleged that Sara's home church, the one she was raised in, is an heretical church. At least, some in the Assemblies would probably say that; similar churches have been so named.

As a person raised in the Anglican High Church Tradition, I'm tempted to say (and I think with more than a little validity, both in the doctrinal and far more essentially, biblical, red-letter sense) "well, takes one to know one," dismissing it as simply a turf dispute between entities of equally questionable parentage.

That would be what you would call a "Grave Sin of Spiritual Arrogance." Or, in a less High-Church Sense - stupid!

Tolerance must end at the point where one is tolerating intentional evil in the name of allowing for "differing interpretations" of spiritual truth. This is not because it's "wrong" to tolerate evil. This is because that which is evil wishes to eat you and use your living corpse as a meat puppet. Friends, that would be one of the better outcomes.

The place where you know you have crossed that line of tolerance is when those you are tolerating publicly state they wish to kill you both spiritually and literally and turn all you have made and treasure into the sort of wasteland in which only that which those such as themselves can live within.


Watch this video. If you don't, what I'm going to say after will seem like raving lunacy. After watching it, I think you will find my conclusions to be stated as moderately as is humanly and decently possible.



One of my claims to special knowledge is the fact that as a child I was exposed to every available form of religion available. My mother was something of a relgious addict and she was always looking for a new high and a new set of simple answers.

I've been in a lot of varieties of Evangelical, Pentecostal and Prosperity Gospel meetings. I've been to many, many churches where people spoke in tongues, and yes, I've felt "The Spirit" move around me. Problem is, in some churches, one is not sure what spirit that might be. At that time - both out of rebellion and as a matter of trying to figure out what was making me feel oogie about it all, I delved into classical magic, shamanism and various ethnological traditions involving voluntary spirit possession and ecstatic trance states.

The Charismatic and Pentecostal ecstatic religious traditions owes a great deal to Afro-Caribbean Religious traditions. Unfortunately, they did not comprehend what it was they were taking, in many ways, and while it's certainly possible to ensure that the Holy Spirit is that which is the only thing moving in a church - bear with me, it's a believe it or don't thing - many pentecostal and evangelical churches don't have the first clue as to why that would be important. I've been in churches where, not only wasn't it consecrated, it would have had to be cleansed before anyone should step foot in it, much less hold any religious service within.

Yes, Virginia, there are things out there that are evil are un-bodied, and would like to sneak into you and look out at the mundane world from behind your eyes. I've seen it enough to know it when I see it - not that I'm about to advice "deliverance sessions." IMHO, if you need that sort of service, consult a Catholic Exorcist, or a well-respected Shaman in the North American aboriginal traditions. I do not know what their precise advice would be in regard to such churches - save that I'm certain that "stay the hell away if you value your soul" would be pretty much the first reaction.

I try to avoid the word "demon" because it's uselessly broad. There's obviously a huge, varied spiritual ecology out there, and from what I can grasp of it (and to the degree I'm interested, beyond not encouraging such creatures in my life,) I see much of what's going on in this church as being something of an opportunistic infection. Is it evil?

If that word is to have any meaning at all, and if you go by the practical advice of the "know them by their fruits" dictum, yeah. It's evil. Worse yet, from my perspective, the evil is not external; whatever this thing or things may be, it's working with what was there all along, and the church seeks out those who wish they had an excuse to be as vile and self-righteous about it as - well, their Poster Child, Sara Palin.

This is not a church that tries to take good people and make them better. This is a church that makes the worst instincts and most hateful tenancies of people into doctrinal mandates, telling them that not only are their hatreds justified by faith, but they are mandated by God.

You don't need to take my word for this. The video above is compiled from public sources - read for yourself, then compare what they say about their doctrine, intents and what they feel Christians should do with the red words in your bible; the words attributed to Christ. See to what degree they differ.

This, of course, assumes that they are truth-tellers in regard to written doctrine. I'd not bet a lot on it, I'd be more inclined to go with video records made by these people and the related "latter rain" cults such as Joel's Army. (Discernment Ministries entry) (Southern Poverty Law Center entry.) It's not at all difficult to find very conservative evangelical sources that are deeply concerned about these heresies, and their stated intentions towards those they deem "unsaved" and "ungodly" is starting to make more secular folk think of them a very present, potentially terroristic danger.

Me, well, I think both tend to underestimate the personal directness of the spiritual and individual threat.

Even in churches where "tongues" are a regular occurrence, even in cases where I've felt the need to ward myself against things that wanted to set up shop in my head, I've never heard or seen anything like what is captured on this tape.

If it looks like an Hieronymus Boch painting, and it sounds just like the screams and shouts of damned souls, knowing what it is, precisely is not really all that important. We know what it is not from the evidence of our own eyes. And if it's not OF Christ and does not act AS Christ, than ... follow me, here, what's the proper prefix for "Against?"

In terms specific to Sarah Palin - Christians, that is to say, Honest to God Christians who take the red letters seriously, and measure all else (particularly later writings by Paul) against those words, that sort of christian is not known for leaving trails of impotent hatred or easy dealings with corrupt people. They do not manage by corrupt means. They do not lie, they do not cheat, they do not abuse their power to gain personal revenge.

By their fruits ye shall know them, and Sarah Palin is a rotten, sour persimmon. This is a tree that should be cast into the fire - metaphorically, of course, but that metaphor should be very hot and pure indeed.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Never say Oops;








Just found this - REPUBLICAN strategist Frank Lutz running a focus group with undecided, independent voters on their reactions to Palin. You don't need the helpful text commentary to realize that Frank ain't feelin' the love, or real happy with the hand he's been dealt. I lost count of the times he said "Ah, INTERESTING!"


A particularly evil friend of Frank's might just send him one of these here T-Shirts.

Palin; the public racist.

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

read more | digg story

H/t The Gleaner. I followed the story from there.

Here's a righteous excerpt:

... Sarah Palin may be just a few news cycles away from becoming the early 21st Century's answer to singer, orange juice industry spokestress and fellow pageant sister Anita Bryant (condemning you to hell for your liberal elitist views, at right), whose outlandishly Bible-icious homophobic crusade made her one of the most mocked people of the 1970s and turned her very name into a punchline. (As an Alaskan, Palin already knows plenty about days without sunshine.)

Anyway, remember, when Palin becomes, like Bryant, the object of widespread public ridicule and scorn, it's all on McCain -- picking her was his decision, his judgment, his spectacular demonstration to the country that he is not, to borrow a phrase, "ready to lead."


Oh, indeedy do. In my not entirely mis-spent youth, so many people called me a faggot, I assumed there must be something to it, and it was just at that point in time.

In Northwest Washington, if you were gay and in a bathhouse, it was unwise to just assume everyone in there was gay. A good steam is real popular with loggers and fishermen, for reasons that should be obvious.

So pretty much everyone used her catchphrase - "You know, a day without orange juice..."

And then you knew it was ok to drop the towel and ... well, that sort of discussion is for other blogs.

I think I can safely point out that if McCain was looking for someone who was exactly the sort of person who can honestly be said to stand for everything "The Base" is understood to be - and I mean that in a fine, bipartisan way - Palin is precisely the Right choice.

Wrong for the Republic, Wrong for me, Wrong for the party, Wrong for the Constitution, Wrong for liberty, freedom, choice, utterly Wrong for the survival of Christianity as a social force for change in North America - but that's what "The Base" wants and that's what "The Base" gets.

Update and a bump: I find that I'm in agreement with Deepak Chopra, (from HuffPo, via Silenced Majority Portal) who has an analysis of the reasons why Palin appeals to "the base" that is as unflattering as it is obvious and accurate.

It Goes To Credibility, your Honor...

Hilzoy, writing in the Washington Monthly, managed to nutshell one critically important aspect of the postmodern Presidency that McCain is striving to inherit, the critical fact that lies go to credibility.

If we are simply reduced to picking a candidate based on which lies we prefer while knowing they are lies, we may as well just write representative democracy off as a failed experiment. If a man or a woman lies to me in order to gain my vote, and worse yet, lies in service of appeals to my basest instincts, they work against the fundamental, REPUBLICAN premise; that some people ARE more qualified to represent us than others; that while you or I may not be interested in or able to do the job ourselves, it should be possible to learn enough about the candidates to choose between qualified candidates who make an honest case for their ambitions and intentions.

When politicians lie -- and here I mean not just putting the best spin on things, but out and out lying -- they might as well walk up to each and every one of us and say: Hello! I have no respect for the value of your time! You might have other things to do -- work, playing with your kids, taking a long hike in the mountains, whatever -- but I don't care. I'm going to put you in a position where you're going to have to research everything I say, or else just give up on your civic duty. You don't get to assume that my words are, if not exactly true, at least somewhere in the general vicinity of the truth, and decide whether or not to vote for me. If you want to be an informed citizen, you'll have to become obsessive, like hilzoy.




I was going to blog this, as a natural followup to my last post. However, I do like to read what other folks are saying, to see if there's a hole somewhere a post naturally fits. Well, it turned out that someone had written the damn blog post for me. Ted; I'll back this up with a personal invite; you can blog here any time you care to.

Palin is so obviously unfit for command -- not because of her experience, not because she is a woman, and not because comes from a small state or even that she holds conservative views. She is unfit because she has never even thought seriously about the job or the issues she would address before McCain gave there the nod.

That shows you everything you need to know about the nature of the Conservative Movement that has cynically selected a "maverick" like McCain to continue its control of the country. The conservative movement is not "conservative" in the least. It is radical and revolutionary at its core. And like all revolutionary movements through history it's aim is destruction. The Republican Party waves a lot of flags and speaks of duty, honor, country and patriotism. But at some deep level they do not believe that America today believes any of those things. They believe that conservatives are patriotic and loyal to the American tribe, but they don't think the nation is. And that is their primary issue. That is the "change" Republicans cheered last week. They are not interested in the least in the mortgage crisis, or the environment, or whether invading Iraq is wise or insane. They care only that people think America is pure and good. When Republicans listen to Democrats talk about what is wrong in America, they do not hear about problems that must be solved but proof that liberals hate America.

Conservatives are not in the least interested in a government that works because it doesn't believe in government. That don't want good government. They want no government at all. That is why conservatives can campaign against the government even when they control it.

Neither are they interested in good governance -- the kind that requires balanced judgment, knowledge of the issues, an even temperament for leadership. Governance requires balancing interests and bringing the country together by making people see that there is more that unites us than divides us. Conservatives believe in unity too -- but it is the unity of conformity and obediance to orthodoxy. And the only real issue they believe in is erradicating a modern, secular American culture which conservatives consider to be corrupt. They would replace it (or "purify" it to use a horrifying but accurate word) with something more aligned to the particular folkways of the largely rural southern sub-culture.

We are simply talking two different languages here. Democrats are running to take the helm of the government of a nation is perilous times. Conservatives are running to continue a cultural revolution that would destroy the very institutions they seek to control.

Posted by: Ted Frier on September 7, 2008 at 10:18 AM | PERMALINK

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