Today's Sermon, Part Three: Mormo-Babtist Whatnot

Jesus, Mary & Elohim, three of Joe Smiff's Holy Space Elves.
Yes, it's a big fight over which lie/fairy story/con game is to be believed. The Southern Babtists are saying poopy-oopy-doopy to the Mormons, who of course don't have a leg to stand on because their fairy story was made up so recently that, on a historical scale, it's like yesterday. Mormonism is the same deal as UFOs: Why don't they show up on the White House lawn, instead of appearing to one or two ordinary people in the middle of nowhere? Why didn't the Angel Moroni & Elohim & Jesus & whichever other space-elves were involved make a big public announcement & hand over all the golden scrolls or whatever bullshit it was to a whole bunch of people, instead of one nobody who was the spawn of crooks ("treasure-hunters" or whatever the fuck) who "lost" half the revealed stuff anyway?

HOW FUCKING STUPID CAN PEOPLE BE?

About this stupid:

The Mormons regard themselves as Christians, and Jesus figures prominently on the covers of LDS publications. They believe that after the death of Christ's apostles his church became confused, a period that ended only with the restoration of the Gospel by the presentation of another book of scripture by an angel to LDS founder Joseph Smith.

Most Christian theologians, however, disagree, not just because they disbelieve the angel story and the Book of Mormon that resulted, but by pointing to Mormon concepts including the ability of humans to become godlike entities after death. Most perturbed have been conservative Evangelicals like the Southern Baptists, who share many of the Mormons' conservatiave [sic] social values yet have a very strict view of what is and what is not scripture, and find themselves in competition with the LDS for congregants.

That kills us: "Our Savior came to save us from some con involving an apple tree & a snake, perpetuated on us by a space-elf who is & isn't the father of Our Savior, but you expect us to believe a different space-elf appeared w/ more stuff to read ('Oh, reading's hard. Just tell me the good stuff.') in upstate New York in the 19th century? Do you think we're nuts? You're crazy!!"

Land explained that he would look at Mormonism "as another faith in the same sense that I would look upon Islam as another faith. I think the fairest and most charitable way to define Mormonism would be to call it the fourth Abrahamic religion — Judaism being the first, Christianity being the second, Islam being the third, and Mormonism being the fourth. And Joseph Smith would play the same character in Mormonism that Muhammad plays in Islam."

Or that L. Ron Hitler plays in Scientology©.

We won't even bring up that Coulter person & her "perfected Jew" crap. Sunday is almost gone.

Today's Sermon, Part Two: "The Devil Is Not Going to Steal ORU."

The President & "First Lady" of ORU. Is she on leave as well?
Oral Roberts University founder Oral Roberts (modest, isn't he, as befits a man of God) dragged his aging ass from California to Tulsa, OK earlier this wk. AP coverage.

Dep't. of Irony:

The most sensational bit of evidence in a civil case against Oral Roberts University ironically exists because university President Richard Roberts ordered it.
Mr. Roberts, who announced a temporary leave of absence Wednesday, said last week in an interview with The Associated Press that he asked his sister-in-law Stephanie Cantees to be his eyes and ears in Tulsa and to report to him every week what people are saying about the ministry, whether it was fact or rumor.
Her report reached his desk three years ago, Mr. Roberts said.

We don't get it. Was it supposed to be a weekly report, or a one-off that's now three yrs. old? That also from the AP. And from the same story:

An Oral Roberts student repairing Ms. Cantees' laptop discovered the document and later provided a copy to one of the dismissed professors.
"It's interesting to me that a president of a Christian university hires someone to report to him what rumors are going on about town," Mr. Richardson said.

Very interesting to us as well. Especially when it's his sister-in-law who's hired. Aren't these people supposed to be living on a higher spiritual plane? And perhaps not keeping everyone in the family on the payroll, as if they're fucking Mafia? Is it too much to ask that the human species move beyond feudalism?

Little has happened since Just Another Blog™ was on this three wks. ago. It may be some time before it makes its way through the legal system & we can get the full poop on Lindsay Roberts & her "underaged companions." And if there is any truth to those accusations, we can bet there will be a settlement long before one witness testifies, no matter how indebted ORU is. A summary of recent events from TIME.

Bush the Jacobin

Of course we needn't pay attention to it. It was written by a sissy Francophone Canuck (a pepsi, if you will) who teaches history!! And that last name? Why, he might be, you know, one of them!! Is there no list somewhere that a real American can consult?

And though 18th-century France may seem impossibly distant to contemporary Americans, future historians examining Mr. Bush’s presidency within the longer sweep of political and intellectual history may find the French Revolution useful in understanding his curious brand of 21st- century conservatism.

We don't know what's worse, implying that Americans aren't good enough for his dumb old history, or trying to use that stupid old stuff to show us something. Doesn't he know that everything changed after 9/11?Above: Fighting terrorism avec la Terreur.

Today's Sermon, Part One: Values Boaters

Per Frank Rich (free from the wall of payment) in the NYT, their boat is, if not sinking, taking on water:

[T]he political clout ritualistically ascribed to Mr. Perkins, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values and their ilk is a sham.
These self-promoting values hacks don’t speak for the American mainstream. They don’t speak for the Republican Party. They no longer speak for many evangelical ministers and their flocks. The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time. Should Rudy Giuliani end up doing a victory dance at the Republican convention, it will be on their graves.
[...]
If they really believed uncompromisingly in their issues and principles, they would have long since endorsed either Sam Brownback, the zealous Kansas senator fond of using fetus photos as political props, or Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who spent 15 years as a Baptist preacher, calls abortion a “holocaust” and believes in intelligent design rather than evolution. But they gave Senator Brownback so little moral and financial support that he folded his candidacy a week ago. And they continue to stop well short of embracing Mr. Huckabee, no matter how many rave reviews his affable personality receives on the campaign trail. They shun him because they know he’ll lose, and they would rather compromise principle than back a loser.
Backing a loser, they know, would even further diminish their waning Washington status in a post-Rove, post-Bush G.O.P. The more they shed their illusion of power, the more they imperil their ability to rake in big bucks from their apocalyptic direct-mail campaigns. They must choose mammon over God if they are to maintain the many values rackets that make up their various business empires.

Ooooh, snap!! The NYT Magazine visits Wichita, where we see that lesser-known fire & brimstone-preaching bible-thumpers are not doing so well either, although we're not surprised, if this is what their message has come to:

“I think the Gospel is offensive, and I think the cross is offensive,” Wright continued. “I think Jesus loved everybody and I think he loved the Pharisees, but he certainly told them how the cow eats the cabbage.”

W/ its mouth, like most other mammals? Is rumination a specific biblical value? And though there are references to the "mainstreaming" of evangelicals (though today's god-squadders aren't as poor & stupiduneducated as those of 30 to 40 yrs. ago, it seems as if much of that "education" is still coming from Oral Roberts or Bob Jones Universities):

In the Wichita churches this summer, Obama was the Democrat who drew the most interest. Several mentioned that he had spoken at Warren’s Saddleback church and said they were intrigued. But just as many people ruled out Obama because they suspected that he was not Christian at all but in fact a crypto-Muslim — a rumor that spread around the Internet earlier this year. “There is just that ill feeling, and part of it is his faith,” Welsh said. “Is his faith anti-Christian? Is he a Muslim? And what about the school where he was raised?”
“Obama sounds too much like Osama,” said Kayla Nickel of Westlink. “When he says his name, I am like, ‘I am not voting for a Muslim!’ ”

“There is just that ill feeling, and part of it is his faith.” The other part would be? Well, what is it? Cmon, what's the "ill feeling?" Can't you say it? "Political correctness" got your tongue? If Jesus could tell the Pharisees how the cow eats the cabbage, can't you call a spade a spade?

We're still wondering whether all of this will result in an evangelical candidate to fulfill the H. Ross Perot function & get a Democrat (sadly, probably Hitlery) into the White House.

But don't count Jeebus & his earthly warriors out yet:

But liberals, he said, should not start gloating. “Some might compare the religious right to a snake,” he said. “We may be in our hole right now, but we can come out and bite you at any time.”

Please come out here & bite this!!

Boo, My Ass!!!

Yes, it's this Weds., Halloween, on S&M Blvd., 'twixt La Cienega & Doheny, from 1800-0000, & praise Jah it takes place on the western, monied side of town. And you'll keep your crap over there, if you know what's good for you. Masked trespassers will be shot on sight, because we don't know who you are, & are very nervous.

Sex Potatoes Re-Onion

If, like The Editor, you missed 'em the first time ('cause they didn't play L. A. on their 1978 See America & Break Up Tour) & you missed 'em on any reunion tours in the meantime, you probably missed 'em again in their first ever L. A. club gig. Extremely casual acquaintance (We think we exchanged two or three sentences w/ him @ a Richard Meltzer reading in the '90s, w/o knowing who he was.) Greg Burk gives the full scoop on the big show @ the Roxy. (Damn, we can't remember the last time we were @ the Roxy, but it must've been in the '80s.)

Best bit of Rotten schtick:

Resplendent in polyester vest and plaid pants, Rotten worked his showbiz outrage to the point of near collapse, taking a break after 40 minutes for what he claimed was an irresistible response to nature's call -- well, that middle-aged prostate can indeed be a bummer.

Ain't that the truth. Should've worn some Depends™. Any one know what the deal is w/ that toof of Lydon's? Does he just take it out for show bidness purposes, Lixie Miller stylee? 'Cause if not, eventually the two neighboring ones are going to fill in that hole, & there'll be reason to call him "Rotten" again.

Not seen @ the big gig: Nancy Spongebob (l) & boyfriend John Simon Vicious (r), the "bass player" for the Sex Potatoes when they first hit it big.

Mad Tea Party

By Mark Bryan. As always, click to enlarge.

Blackwater References

The Ones Who Fly Away From Omelas (Why not have a distinctive blog title?) has a fine BW wrap up of links & whatnot. Be sure to click on the e-letter that BW (now calling itself Blackwater Worldwide, odd for a company that says it's so All-American, but no matter the name it remains a subsidiary of the Prince Group, just like all the off-shore, tax-free outfits "affiliated" w/ it) has sent to its "supporters." Why does a fucking corporation need "support," as if it were cancer research, or "Be Kind to Animals Week?" And it has a newish, less threatening logo.




Old logo on the left, new logo on the right.

Also, look at Danger Room (we've pre-clicked to the "Mercs" category) for an overview of Blackwater & its fellow private security contractors, & the "new logo" contest they're kindly hosting. Our fave? Right here:
Jesus, Guns & Money. All hail America! Or else!!

Our Long National Nightmare: Over? Or Just Beginning?

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Whether it's a GE™ locomotive barreling down on us, unable to stop even if the engineer sees us, or the light is the other end of the tunnel, & we're finally coming out of darkness & metaphors, Election Day 2008 is now just a year, a week, & a few days away. The nightmare is far from over (look at the choices) but as they say, a year passes like nothing. One of those choices is Sen. Clinton, who hits the Big Six-Zero today. Here's a shot of her from 40 yrs. ago:And the other Mainstream Inevitable Candidate is R. Giuliani (item immediately below). Ulp! Well, anything can happen in the yr. left. Except we don't have a yr. The nominations may be (inevitably) locked up by the end of Jan. (Iowa caucuses currently scheduled for 5 Jan. 2008.) We may have a "choice" between a crazed fascist & a cold, calculating fascist.

It's our personal speculation that Rudy's handlers (The Mafia? Pedophile priests?) set him up w/ a nurse as his most recent wife so she could keep him well-medicated, but there's always the chance that he'll go off the tranqs & we'll see his real nature. There's also the chance that American voters will like the real Rudy even more than the media image. ("Triple Guantanamo!!" "Where's Podhoretz? I want him to push the Big Red Death-to-Iran Button, he deserves the honor!!" "I'm all over this ferret like Michael Vick on a pit bull!!")

Giuliani's Goons: "Let's Have Another War!"

Same shit, different neckties:
Rudy "The Catholic" Giuliani has a swell collection of campaign advisers, though we're not yet sure who's counseling him on ferret policy. On foreign policy, however, he's got the cream of the croptop of the heap. The heap of neo-con bed-wetters, that is.

Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination.
[...]
Warnings like that one and his reliance on advisers like Mr. Podhoretz, who wrote an article in June for Commentary magazine called “The Case for Bombing Iran,” have raised concerns among some Democrats.
Mr. Podhoretz said in an interview published Wednesday in The New York Observer that he recently met with Mr. Giuliani to discuss his new book, in which he advocates bombing Iran as part of a larger struggle against “Islamofascism,” and “there is very little difference in how he sees the war and I see it.”

Alright. Maybe if we lift "the United States' ban on assassination," per Michael Rubin, we can take care of the Guiliani menace w/o the mess of an election. Of course, we won't be convinced that Rudy really means it until he signs Michael Ledeen on as well. Maybe this schmuck is as good, though:

One of Mr. Giuliani’s most important foreign policy tutors is Charles Hill, a career diplomat and former deputy to Secretary of State George P. Shultz in the Reagan administration. Mr. Hill had never met Mr. Giuliani when he was invited to a 45-minute meeting at Giuliani Partners in late February — a meeting that stretched to nearly three hours.
Mr. Hill went on to become the campaign’s chief foreign policy adviser, and to assemble a team that is united by its generally hawkish views and its belief in using American power to achieve its aims.
Just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Hill
joined a number of foreign policy experts in signing an open letter to Mr. Bush urging that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”
Instead of talking about “the war on terror,” Mr. Giuliani speaks of “the terrorists’ war on us,” or, as he put it in a recent speech to a group of conservative Christians, the “Islamic terrorists’ war against the United States.” He sometimes faults Democrats for failing to mention that the terrorist threat comes specifically from Muslims.

Or American foreign policy, depending.

Blackwater USA in ah Babylon

An official of the Bush admin. was forced to resign (w/o, as yet, receiving a Medal of "Freedom") as a result of the colossal cock-ups involving State Dep't. "supervision" of private security contractorsmercenaries in Babylon. That's somewhat good news. Not so good? John D. Negroponte (the D stands for Deathsquad) is now handling even more State Dep't. matters:

As she has concentrated on the Middle East peace process, Iran and Russia, Rice has increasingly turned major responsibility for hot-button issues -- including North Korea, Pakistan and Iraq -- over to Negroponte. He has taken the lead on management problems, such as the contractors, along with his longtime Foreign Service colleague Patrick Kennedy, a senior management official who served as Negroponte's management deputy when Negroponte was director of national intelligence, before he took the No. 2 post at the State Department.

Great. Once these people have established themselves as scum, can't they all just "retire?" Permanently, instead of being recycled as soon as the next more overtly fascist administration steals an election? Is that too much to ask? Yes, because beings like Cheney will actually recycle themselves, & all their little chums, until...well it never really stops. There are always more in the wings.

But the changes in security policy for Iraq and in her team are unlikely to temper rising criticism of Rice's management style. She is due to testify today before the House oversight committee, whose chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), has accused the department's prime security contractor in Iraq, Blackwater Worldwide, of tax evasion; charged the department with papering over evidence of widespread corruption in the Iraqi government; and accused the State inspector general of failing to monitor shoddy work and overspending in construction of a new, $600 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Maybe the gig as provost @ Stanford didn't prepare her too well for running State. And we might even bet that her studies in Kremlinology & Eastern Europe (when they were the Soviet Union & the Warsaw Pact nations) may not have helped much w/ the current gov'ts. & individuals running things in the New Europe.

Congress was also raking Sec. Dr. Rice over the coals, as anonymous officials issued denials:

State Department officials denied any double standard or impropriety in the firing of Griffin and this week's promotion of two of his subordinates who directly oversaw the hiring of contractors, including those in Iraq.
[...]
Rice's answers on the Blackwater scandal did not satisfy many Democrats during the hearing, including Rep. Paul Hodes of New Hampshire.
Before giving Blackwater hundreds of millions of dollars, "didn't you or your subordinates ever stop to ask whether or not the legal framework was a place to hold these contractors accountable for its actions?" he asked.
Congress is moving to put all armed contractors operating in combat zones under military control and make them subject to U.S. criminal jurisdiction.

From the NYT, it's Blackwater, under seige!!

Even in the Blackwater compound, no definitive account has emerged of how and why the Sept. 16 shootings occurred, company employees said. For its part, Blackwater has said that its guards were responding to an insurgent attack. But in furtive discussions over recent weeks, certain details about the episode, they said, have gained currency among many Blackwater workers, many of whom would like to believe that their colleagues acted appropriately.
Those workers said, for example, that Blackwater guards who fired at Iraqis in Nisour Square described how an Iraqi driver had pulled up his car well after the Blackwater convoy had arrived and warned traffic to stay back. The encroaching car, the workers said, caused their colleagues to feel threatened and initiate machine-gun fire. They also said that friction between Blackwater convoys and groups of armed Iraqi police in the days before the shooting had created a mutual distrust, and that the police officers, perhaps as a result of earlier disputes, fired at the Blackwater convoy. “The Iraqi police were testing these guys at various intersections,” said one former Blackwater guard who has spoken with men on the convoy at Nisour Square.
Iraqi police at the intersection have said they were not armed that day, and none of the dozens of Iraqi witnesses interviewed by Iraqi investigators and reporters for The New York Times said they saw anyone firing at the Blackwater convoy or even brandishing a weapon.
But in a measure of the gulf between the narratives that have taken hold in the Blackwater compound and on the streets of Baghdad, the former guard and a current employee said that a consistent view had developed within the compound: that Blackwater was fired upon by Iraqis with AK-47s who fled the scene after Blackwater returned an overwhelming amount of fire.
“How long does it take for a dead terrorist to become a dead civilian?” a Blackwater employee said. “As long as it takes to remove an AK-47 from the body,” suggesting that accomplices might have removed weapons as they fled.
The Blackwater employees said that talk about the Sept. 16 shootings had also focused on a heated dispute between members of the team in the square, pitting the men pouring gunfire into Iraqi vehicles against other Blackwater guards who were imploring them to stop.
“There was turmoil in the team, where half the guys were saying, ‘Don’t shoot,’” said a military veteran who spoke to a member of the Blackwater team on the convoy.

Not quite the "thin blue line" of police forces. But the stories don't all seem to match, do they?

Delays

This broadband crap is more complicated than one might suspect, or AT&T are a bunch of incompetent suckwads. Which do you think?

We were advised by the latest person w/ whom we had a conversation that it would have been faster to cancel the previous account entirely (rather than change the name & keep the same 'phone #, which has been in the family for 33 yrs.) & just get an entirely new #.

We are now informed that if the order goes through today (Thurs.) it will be Mon. or Tues. before the DSL is reëstablished. The process apparently is not under the actual control of AT&T, who must to wait for the old whatever to "drop off" or something, then they can place the order, which will then take several more days to come to fruition. Is there not an on/off switch? They certainly manage to cut it off promptly if you don't pay, & restore it soon enough once they've received their pound of flesh. Why such a big deal to change a name on an account? Bastards!!

In the meantime, the ability to wander the vast web wasteland in search of amusement & tidbits to share is severely hampered, as is the anal retentive typing/copying & pasting process. It's suck city, baby!

A Matter of Time (UPDATED)

Of course there'd already been muttering that this most recent round of SoCal wildfires was all the fault of those eco-nuts who prevented Bush from selling the forests to the highest bidders, who would then clear out those pesky ol' trees that are burning. (Oh, it's not old growth forest that's burning, it's mostly chapparal & scrub oaks? 'Scuse us.)

And those California Nat'l. Guard troops & equipment in Iraq & Afghanistan aren't any problem at all. Duncan Hunter, joke Republican presidential candidate, was just on Lardball w/ Chris Matthews, & between repeating the "Reaganesque" line "We're optimistic, we'll rebuild" about San Diego County (Remember Al Einstein's definition of crazy: Repeating the same action but expecting different results) he announced that firefighting is not done w/ a wall of bodies facing the flame, & if it were, the 1st Marine Division is right there @ Camp Pendleton. This has, of course, nothing to do w/ the Guard being trained & experienced in disaster relief, refugee assistance & so on (& we'll bet that some Guard members/units have some training & experience w/ wildfires) which is what was being discussed, but Hunter isn't one to let facts get in the way of the partisanship he decries in the left, yet practices himself.

But it was just a matter of time until the real concerns of the lunatic fringe right (not to be confused w/ the lunatic mainstream right) surfaced, & here they are, right on schedule:

As the embers cool, investigators in public and private will begin asking some hard questions, including how in blazes these fires happened: Were some of the purportedly wild fires scorching more than 600 square miles of Southern California this week set by border-crossing Islamist terrorists?

"How in blazes" indeed. Aren't we clever? Of course, they'd have to be "border-crossing" terrorists, they couldn't possibly have come in legally & overstayed their visas, because our highly efficient Dep't. of Homeland Security doesn't let that happen. By the way, how do these "border-crossers" get into Mexico in the first place? We continually hear that Mexico is very harsh on Central Americans trying to come into Mexico illegally, while pushing as many Mexican citizens as possible over the U. S. border.

An Oxford-educated engineer, bin Laden knows the power of asymmetrical warfare wherein a few matches and bottles of gasoline can cause millions of times their cost in damage to enemies, from military families in San Diego to morally-corrupting Hollywood stars in Malibu.

Yes, it would certainly take an Oxford education to figure that out. Although we swear to you we haven't gone any farther from the House of Bouffant than the 99¢ Only Store in the last two wks., the concept of setting Southern California afire for terroristic purposes during the Santa Ana Winds occurred to this reporter & one of his associates in schadenfreude & nihilism several yrs. ago, when we were glued to the tube watching the houses of the privileged go up in flames. (An annual Southern Cal fall ritual.) Neither of us have an Oxford education, though we're not not nearly as stupid or paranoid as Lowell Ponte. Added stupidity:

Although a new Osama bin Laden video was issued at almost exactly the same time these fires began, and might have contained a coded command to his operatives to carry out planned arsons, it makes sense that al-Qaida has claimed
no credit for the fires.
[...]
But bin Laden would probably be embarrassed, in the wake of his astonishing terrorist “achievement” on 9/11, to be seen resorting to mere fire setting around the homes of innocent people.

Well sure, because terrorism works so well when it's thought to be an accident or a downed power line. You might even think that Oxford intellectual Bin Laden would go ahead & claim credit for the fires anyway, just to get Ponte's pants even more piss-soaked. And it would take a "coded command," because no "border-crossing" terrorist could put the concepts of high temperatures, high winds, & dryness/drought together, especially after those power lines were knocked down & some fires started.

Other possibilities: the fires were all accidental, like the one north of Los Angeles reportedly touched off by a spark from welding equipment.

Or, perhaps, one or more of these fires were ignited accidentally by an illegal alien’s campfire, as has happened before in Southern California. Even if evidence points this way, do not expect the liberal media to report anything this politically incorrect — or this likely to give inconvenient fuel to critics of our liberal border policies.
[...]
TV and radio talk-host Glenn Beck deserves credit for having Competitive Enterprise Institute experts Chris Horner and R.J. Smith explain how radical government environmental policies under President Bill Clinton interfered with rational forest and brush management, and set America up for today’s catastrophic super-fires.

Extra credit to Mormon asshole Beck for his statement that people who hate America & live in Malibu are losing their houses to forest fires. And extra credit to Ponte for pointing out how Bush & the Republican-dominated Congress had six yrs. to establish a "No Forest Left" policy to "rationally manage" forest & brush (but didn't). That was Clinton's fault, too, right? It always is. As was noted on Sadly, No! by a member of the commentariat, Trilateral Chairman, Bush seems to like clearing brush, he could have helped.

Real credit where credit is due: J— commenting @ S,N! must've brought it to the attention of Gavin Sadly, who posted it at exactly the same time as we were asking if such a thing had happened two threads previous!!! Coincidence? We think not.

UPDATE (@1731 PDT): Just heard on MSNBC's Countdown that the Fox News Channel's morning show (Fox and Friends) was making a big deal (transcript) of an FBI memo from four years ago that indicated an Al Qaeda member or informant or a guy who lived down the street from a guy whose sister-in-law used to work w/ a dame who was married to an Arab once, only he was a Christian Arab, but really what difference does that make, told the FBI of an Al Qaeda plot to light simultaneous forest fires in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming & Utah during the summer. No confirmation of said plot, either, but it could be what's behind the current fires, the Fox tools implied. You certainly do have to get up early in the morning to put one over on Just Another Blog™.
Damn! We're just lucky that hurricanes, tornadoes & earthquakes can't be caused by human agency, we'd need more home-care workers to keep changing the Depends™ on these clowns. Volcanoes? Could go either way.

Further arson poop, from a self-proclaimed "voice of the resistance."

Life Sucks...Death Not (Yet) Imminent

Don't believe a word these "people" say:Still no DSL, & the lying sacks o' shit @ AT&T said it would be on by 2000 PDT this evening (two hours 30 minutes ago). And it's hot & nasty. Most of the smoke is missing the House Of Bouffant, but there's definitely a pall over the Los Angeles Basin. Maybe the DSL delay has to do w/ the firestorm (as the local news yokels are calling it) or some crap like that, but we don't give two shits if all the hill-dwelling home owners from S. B. to S. D. are in refugee centers w/ nothing but the clothes on their backs, we'd like some service here. Damn! And we're losing readership; too much trouble to surf the web for anything worth commenting on or linking to or anything, period. Phooey.

We can, however, make mock of a politician who just sent us an e-mail:

Dear Friend:

Fires continue to rage across southern California. I am working to make sure that California has needed resources from all federal agencies. We need firefighting resources and equipment as well as assistance for the thousands of people who have been left homeless or evacuated. I am working to see that these resources get to California as soon as possible.

I hope you will use my Senate website as a resource in the days ahead, both for yourself and for any impacted family or friends. It will have constantly updated information about where fires are burning, evacuation centers, and the federal resources that will be made available in the days ahead. You can find my fire feature at http://boxer.senate.gov/calfire.cfm
Sincerely,
Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Jeezis, Babs, don't you have the guts (in the middle of exploiting the suffering of others) to mention that maybe we should have brought the California Nat'l. Guard back from Iraq to guard us & our all-important property a little sooner?

(UPATE/CORRECTION 24 October 2007 @ 1710): Sen. Babs was discussing the Nat'l. Guard shortage today on telebision, but sort of copped out, saying that we had enough equipment, by borrowing from other states & so on. Guess she didn't want to sully her e-mail w/ politics.

Lt. Gov. Garamendi (a Dem just like Boxer) has also been on telebision, about the strapped Calif. Nat'l. Guard, & how Bush's visit tomorrow is photo ops bull, & a distraction, and Bush hasn't done much to rebuild New Orleans, so please keep your promises this time, Bushie.

Speaking of Iraq, tonight Law & Order Special Victims Unitwas all over torture, or enhanced stressing, or whatever this week's euphemism is. Another example of horrid left wing media bias. We thought series creator Dick Wolf was of the right-wing persuasion, one of those rare-as-hen's teeth Hollywood conservatives. Guess the Bush admin has lost another one.

SOUTHERN CAL OCTOBER: GATES OF HELL OPEN ON SCHEDULE, JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN!!Remains of Malibu Presbyterian Church. Where's Jebus going to live now?
Below: ECU of Hellmouth, CA.More on Halloween, from CBN.

Let's Have a War (Blame Canada Edition)

Pere Ubu, commenting @ Sadly, No!, has brought to our attention a bit of pop national psychology from a (need we say?) liberal, hippie, pussified wimp professor who teaches in Norway, fercissakes. This commie crank thinks the United States is a bad place. My Gawd, read this:

In fact, the U.S.A. is the least threatened nation on the planet. Its geographic, demographic, and economic size, and its location, give it far greater security than Russia, or Holland, or Hungary, or France, or Finland, or Iraq, or Iran. These nations are easily attacked from several sides, and in modern history have been thus attacked. These nations have reason to be fearful, but in fact are less fearful than is America. Certainly it is impossible for foreign forces to invade and occupy the U.S.A. even should the U.S. have the most minimal defenses.

He's ready to turn this country over to the atheistic Islamic hordes!! And he bases his analysis on the perfectly rational plans the War Dep't. had in the 1920s & '30s to defend This Great Nation of Ours™ from Mexico & Canada. Just examine the potential menace from Canada!! LAKES!!

In the mistakenly published 1935 testimony to Congress about the need for new air bases to attack Canada, a military expert explained that Canada has thousands of lakes, and each of these is a potential float-plane base. He asked the congressmen to imagine the fearful vision of the sky filled with bush-pilot float planes flying down from Canadian forests to bomb Boston and Baltimore.

Prof. Rudmin also compares War Plan Green, the plan for defending our economic interests (oil, surprise!) in Mexico by attacking Mexico, w/ Operation Iraqi LiberationFreedom. Talk about the paranoid style in American politics. It seems we'll never be rid of this militaristic crap. One really must wonder if most of those who left Europe for the "New World" were paranoid fascist bullies driven out by their neighbors, whose traits have been inbred into the nation's so-called character.

The Tale of Tweety

Note that even in college (Holy Cross) he was a sneering twerp.
Just Another Blog's™ demanding schedule usually has it awake & off the couch by 1400 PT wkdys., or 1600 PT for sure, so we usually take a peep at the man his staff dubbed "Tweety" ('cause of the hair color he uses) to see what crap the masses are having stuffed down their mental throats by the Old Media Washington, D. C. cocktail weenie crowd. And one thing we've determined is that Matthews is a tool, & not the sharpest one in the MSNBC drawer either. While we've never given much of a shit exactly what his problem was, while wandering the vast wasteland (the Internet, not the telebision wasteland Newton Minow predicted in the early '60s) we encountered a delicious hit piece in Slate that gave us a better idea of Mr. Matthews' demons:

Legendary. Supporter of democracy. Learned reporter. Distinguished. Prolific. All of these words may capture Matthews' character, but not as well as do flighty, braying, shameless, and opportunistic. It's a shame that nobody gives a Sammy Glick Award. Matthews would be a cinch.

Haw haw. And this:

"He made no secret about it. Chris Matthews wanted to be a pundit, a player, a face on the Sunday political talk shows," Rosenstiel writes. But the transformation required journalistic credentials, which Matthews lacked.

And since we've already plunged into Slate, let's get into the other big Internet magazine that starts w/ an "ess," Salon:

Chris "Tweety" Matthews is indeed an insufferable blithering jackass, a creepy Irish-American misogynist who fits nicely into conservative Catholic Jack Welch's similarly-pedigreed stable of thoroughbred infotainwhores.

Testify, brother. (Didn't know Welch, former chairman of GE, was a Catholic too.) The above & the following excerpt are from a comment to this item, which excoriates Matthews & his cocktail weenie buddies.

I find it interesting that admirers can somehow brush aside Tweety's adolescent loathing for Hillary Clinton (I'm not a fan), or his embarrassingly homoerotic gushing over men in power. During the post-war era of Freudian psychotherapy, Tweety would've been instantly classified "latent homosexual".

Talbot's characterization of Tweety as a shallow, superficial blarneymonger comports with my mercifully limited experience of him.

Ah, Freud. Mostly full of crap, but an excellent source of sophisticated-sounding insults. More Irish-Catholic misogyny, as evidenced in Washingtonian:

The irony of the situation came to a point when Matthews began to discuss Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. “You gotta be heard because men just keep talking,” he said after he mentioned the “big, deep, green, scaly, horny monster” of misogyny that might rear its head at at the polls.

“Men are all whipped into silence on this topic,” he said. He also noted that women’s voices often scale upwards when they try to be heard in a debate, and he conjectured that men might weary of Mrs. Clinton’s sometimes strident tones.

“Not 8 years,” he imagined men thinking.

“When a man yells, it’s entertainment. When a woman yells, it’s Eleanor Clift,” Matthews said.

Or, when Chris yells, it's an asshole of the first water. And speaking of Freud, how 'bout that "horny monster" of misogyny? And those "whipped into silence" men? What exactly was it that "whipped" them, Chris? Something that so scares you, you dare not speak its name?

Last & least, here he is, morning after-stylee:It wouldn't be Just Another Blog™ w/o an unflattering photo, would it? Note hair & its dye.

Daily Obligation (& UPDATE)

Your friends & ours @ Bugger™ seem unable to upload pictures now & for a while, & we've nothing but items w/ images to run, so we'll beg your indulgence. And we're still using the freaking digital telegraph of dial-up. So don't hold your collective breath before Monday, when the Donkey Shit Line should be happening. If not, AT&T™ can count on some damage to some of their physical property. Hell, let's throw Google™ into the threat matrix as well. Restore image uploading or I'll nuke the town of my youth, Atherton, where it seems half of you fucks live!!! ATTENTION GOV'T. LICKSPITTLES: A TERRORIST THREAT HAS BEEN MADE!!! COMING TO GET US? UPDATE (20 October @1150): Google™/Bugger™ have gotten their shit back together, so Atherton will not be rendered a glassy parking lot, but this dial-up is getting more & more irksome. We'll grant AT&T that they said it might not be happening until Monday, but sheesh! Hey, sitting here making idle threats against vast impersonal corporate entities is more fun than standing on a street corner foaming at passersby!

"Mee-Ow!" Indeed

In the feline spirit of the previous item ("Mee-ow!") & to keep the punters amused while we await the return of DSL, we give you, in the finest web log tradition of Friday cat pictures, Princess Lillie:
"I may not be in focus, puny humanoids, but I can still rip your friggin' throats out & feast on your entrails (as long as I get you while you're asleep)!"

Science Not Gone Far Enough

Still stuck in dial-up (Samuel Morse could've telegraphed more quickly than this!!) so please don't expect much activity here until we reënter the 21st century. AT&T said today, or maybe tomorrow, or Monday @ the latest. Let's check the modem right now! Nope, DSL indicator still flashing red. Why does it take so long? Not enough "engineers" to make a few mouse clicks? It's not as if they have to rewire anything. Punch in the phone #, click a button...

To hold you over, please examine the picture above.

What is it?

Our guess? Extra Terrestrial scientists, working from telebision signals sent into the ether just after the introduction of color tee vee, attempted to create a robot/android/clone/replicant/doppelgänger/simulacrum of a human female for their own insidious purposes, such as stealing vital human bodily fluids (if you know what we mean) to improve the failing DNA of their dying species. Look at it. The perfect hemispheres on the chest. The hair color that doesn't occur in nature. The nose. The disproportionate lower lip. (Is that how it will obtain the vital bodily fluids?) The blank, soulless eyes. It can't be a human being, can it?
Mee-ow!