Land of the prison, home of the coward.

Yes, our personal freedom has been irrevocably damaged by a weak attempt to control swashbuckling Insurance company practices and there's nothing ahead but free fall into the pit of Socialism - or Fascism if your paranoia runs better in that direction. I can't get through an hour without hearing the whining about "Obamacare" and "American values."

Of course there's little fear that the attempt to make it legal for a suspect to be held forever without trial will jeopardize our "freedom" at all. There's not too much concern that proof of innocence can't overturn a death sentence either. Freedom you see, is a personal, even solipsistic thing and like personal income, we Libertarians don't want to share it or spread it around. I need to be free to do anything, free from any responsibility to the country, but you can rot in hell, for all I care. Some call that Libertarian, some conservative, but either attempt is like pasting a label to Teflon - it won't stick. What it really is, is panic and what it's really not is justice. Yes, I know, if your one of those Glennbecky sorts, you'll insist that justice itself is one of many gates to hell and the corridor to Communism, but if you're one of those, you belong there anyway.

But here's an example or two: Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Senate's Armed Services, Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, wants to talk us into legislation that allows a "terrorism suspect" to be held forever without charges and without counsel. That's right, I said suspect. What's a suspect? it's whatever some justice department apparatchik or some informant or unnamed source says it is.

“There has to be some type of statute -- and he’s been clear on that -- for indefinite detention,” said Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop. An accused person is "too dangerous to release; but we also aren’t going to try them in either a military or a civilian court. So there has to be a system for that, and that’s why Senator Graham is looking for a legal framework."

Too bad there's no longer any framework to determine whether someone is actually dangerous, is a terrorist or even what terrorism is under such legislation, but never mind -- the government just knows and we're comfortable with that. Limited justice and limited freedom you see, is limited government.

And that doesn't scare you; not like filling out a census form, not like keeping your insurance from being canceled the day after they find that tumor because you had an unreported toothache in 1972. None the less, we want limited government, but only as concerns us, not them. A life sentence for suspicion is

"un-American and violates our commitment to due process and the rule of law,"

says the ACLU, as you'd expect from those Commies. Don't they understand we're afraid? Don't they understand that American values aren't worth taking a risk for?

They aren't worth taking a risk for in Texas; just ask Troy Davis, sentenced to die for a brutal triple murder in a trial so flawed it makes my hair stand on end. One of the victims, for instance, had complained of abuse and threats from a third party, who was not even interviewed by police. Ten years ago David Protess, at The Innocence Project at Northwestern University, whose group has exonerated 17 condemned prisoners using DNA evidence the court never saw, re-examined the case with his students and concluded Skinner is innocent. Texas won't reconsider a conviction based on new evidence. In Texas, innocence is no defense and Texas, for all it's guns and bravado is so terrified of Davis that they're willing to kill him and the hell with reasonable doubt. Fortunately, the Supreme court isn't from Texas and has granted a stay, just an hour before the execution

Sure, we want limited government, but with unlimited power to do whatever feels expedient and damn the very idea of social justice and screw anyone who ever thought the USA was worth fighting for. Don't you understand we're afraid?

Shameless, part II

Malcom Nance knows whether waterboarding is torture or not, even if Michael Mukasey doesn't know and if God's own president doesn't think you know. Nance is a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego. He's a counterterrorism consultant for the Government's Special Operations, Homeland Security and intelligence agencies and he's had it done to him. Even though he knew he wasn't going to be killed, those who undergo such treatment in some sordid basement in a third world hellhole don't know that and like most of us, they'll say anything to make it stop.

Nance was waterboarded and supervised the waterboarding of 300 other men, not to elicit information, but so that our men would know what might await them at the hands of some evil empire on a par with the United States of America.

In an op-ed piece in The New York Daily News today, Nance tells us that no matter how you look at it, waterboarding is torture.

"In the media, waterboarding is called "simulated drowning," but that's a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."

I doubt Mukasky would be able even to watch such a proceeding without being overcome. I doubt that most people would, but the truth is, such evil really does lurk in the hearts of men and the most ordinary people will do the most heinous things given the opportunity and the immunity and there are countless histories to prove it.

But our prospective Attorney General is capable of being evasive and we're capable of looking the other way or telling ourselves that "these people," these "terrorists" deserve it, even when they're kids picked up on the street in random sweeps or for having a suspicious name or because some enemy denounced them. face it we're capable of almost anything.

"One has to overcome basic human decency to endure causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you questioning the meaning of what it is to be an American."

says Nance, but moral dilemmas don't exist in our administration and are usually avoided by our citizens and beyond the degradation of all our claims of leadership, our pretended ideals, we have created by this sort of action, a worldwide culture of anti-American hate that will not go away in our lifetimes, if ever.

It's well that history will remember Bush as the man who murdered America, but it is not well for us. I think we have been tried and found wanting, our values reduced to meanness our democracy eaten away by the cancer of patriotism and we haven't the slightest ability or inclination to seek redemption.

Sunday in America

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.
_____

If I thought the national urge to get George W. Bush and his politics out of the White House included a desire to put religion back in the homes and churches and take it out of government, I was probably wrong. A Time Magazine poll published along with the article How the Democrats Got Religion in the July 23rd edition shows that the majority of voters affirmed the statement:

"We are a religious nation and religious values should serve as a guide to what our political leaders do in office."

Interesting, but not enlightening, was the breakdown showing that 74% of Republicans agreed as opposed to 38% of Democrats. A minority of those making over $75,000 per year agreed but a majority of those making under $35,000 said yes. All in all, the more religious one is, and the less affluent, the more one wants leaders who believe in the values derived from mythos and priestly authority so resoundingly condemned by the creators of the United States government.

Although 98% claimed they had never voted against a candidate mainly because of his religion, having no religion was the one single biggest negative stimulus out of the religious categories and the only category of belief in which a majority of respondents would reject the candidate was atheist.

The poll of course was not able to address the question that has been surveyed elsewhere ; the question of how intelligence relates to religiosity. The answer to that question seems to be that amongst the very intelligent, belief in a personal God is very rare and that belief, to a strong degree is inversely proportional to IQ. I won't argue that point, but I will argue the fact that the men who founded our government were not at all religious or receptive to the idea of a personal God or the validity of the Bible or the people who make a living interpreting it.

Does this mean that America has lost faith with its foundations? Does this mean that America prefers the nebulous mandate of invisible forces to a government of and by the people? Do we see our national mission as submission?

I can't answer that, but I can point out an article in the same issue of Time asking Will Georgia kill an innocent man? I can point out that procedures championed by the godbother Newt Gingrich allows that religiously boisterous and former slave owning State of Georgia to kill a man without really being sure of his guilt. That killing him at all is supported by "religious values" is enough condemnation of such values and the ability of human beings to justify absolutely anything with them.

I can point out that it is long past time for us to stop sucking our thumbs and put away the teddy bear and stop inventing reasons to avoid responsibility for what we do. I can point out that the American Revolution was in itself a violation of Christian principles. I can point out that we can never be a free country unless we affirm our constitution's declaration of independence from religion, but no one would listen who didn't already agree.

Preaching and practicing

My first reaction to the story about Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter was "who cares?" If he patronized Pamela Martin & Associates' escort service along with other sorry senators, sad sack military men and assorted other public figures on the public payroll, that's his business and his wife's business, not mine. He claims to have confessed a "serious sin" to his wife and applied for forgiveness with the god of his tribe, but neither are making statements. I don't think "sin" is the business of the government but I have to admit taking pleasure in the irony of yet another "Sanctity of Marriage" hypocrite being exposed as no more than a meddler and opportunist.

The sanctity of marriage and indeed the sanctity of anything isn't the government's business, as our Constitution aims to insure, but Vitter is the co-author of the Federal Marriage Amendment, that attempted to impose religious criteria on a civil institution and although he may invent gods to forgive him, he won't get it from me.

"We need a U.S. senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts values." said he in his campaign, somehow ignoring that he's trying to force his religious values on a nation. "This [ gay marriage] is a real outrage. The Hollywood left is redefining the most basic institution in human history, and our two U.S. senators won't do anything about it,"

Of course the "Hollywood left" has nothing to do with a social change that has affected such diverse places as Mexico and Canada and Europe and I suspect there are older institutions in human history, but down in the Bayou, where men are men even if they can't read too well, it's just another tail they pin on the donkey. It's the culture that is redefining marriage and it's the culture and the people who should. God is not a US citizen, does not pay taxes and doesn't get to vote. People do and they get to vote against the involvement of religion and its bigotry. If Vitter is bitter about secular democracy and would prefer the rule of godly authorities, he doesn't belong in public office and I do hope he's swept out in '08 along with the rest of the trash.

I don't know or really care about Vitter's marriage, but it seems that it's suffered more from the tail that Dave got than the one he's trying to pin on "liberals."

Dobbs' last stand

At first glance I agreed with Lou Dobbs' commentary on CNN.COM this morning: A Call to the Faithful. He's been ringing the Separation of Church and State bell, proclaiming that the constitutional wall is being breached. Of course I agree that our administration has been promoting their sectarian doctrines over the constitution they are sworn to defend, but Lou's bell sounds a bit tinny and the reader soon recognizes that his real concern is that too many Christian leaders are talking about some form of amnesty or path to legal status for some or all illegal aliens. By insisting that Churches shouldn't take a stand on the question of aliens and their treatment, he's insisting that the subject of how we treat our fellow men is not the province of religion. It's not that Dobbs is a solipsist and I suspect he's not really a complete secularist either. He can see the difference between a President preaching and a preacher preaching. He just doesn't care. He's just making a stand.

I don't know what religion is about other than power and money if it's stripped of any concerns for human welfare and made unable to promote kindness, mercy or compassion. I don't know what kind of religious values Dobbs might be in favor of in that he quotes Paul's Letter to the Romans:

"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."

instead of promoting any particular teaching of Jesus. It's hard to understand why Dobbs is furious at Cardinal Mahoney telling his flock that:

"Anything that tears down one group of people or one person, anything that is a negative in our community, disqualifies us from being part of the eternal city."

It sounds suspiciously like a Christian sentiment, if not equally Jewish and Muslim. It sounds like some of the clergy is taking time out from gay bashing and trying to confound science and is instead promoting what Jesus taught rather than what the Roman Paul taught to the Greco-Roman pagans.

It sounds like Dobbs is steamrolling the separation he claims to support if after all, the US government is established by God and must not be opposed. The only supposition that makes Dobbs' tirade coherent is that he just doesn't care about logical consistency or human values as long as we can quickly and ruthlessly expel anyone who entered illegally or overstayed their visa. He's waxed nearly hysterical trying to show that we are all at risk of leprosy and other horrible things because of the "Brown Peril" overrunning our borders. Dobbs explains to us that there is a growing schism between leaders who call for decency and compassion and parishioners who just want the filthy, disease ridden, dope smoking, lascivious Mexicans to go away. Someone needs to explain to him that his "argument" was used to support slavery and trash abolitionists - even though he knows it.

As a rule, I suspect someone of racism when they persist in depicting people as groups and resist looking at the indecencies and inhumanities their policies will inflict on individuals. I think that fits Dobbs like a white hooded robe. Nativism, xenophobia and garden variety racism have been and continue to be as American as the 4th of July. The screams about protecting our borders are not a bit different than what the Immigration Restriction League was howling a hundred years ago; no different than the repugnant phobias against the Irish, the Yellow Peril hysteria that resulted in the Exclusion Act and expulsion of American Citizens of Chinese descent, the arrest and incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent and all the horrors and race riots of the Jim Crow era. The same rhetoric of disease, drugs, corruption of values, traditions, language, ethnic purity and the loss of jobs that was wrong then is wrong now and although I have been on Lou Dobbs' side when he had the guts to question the Bush administration and its lies, I am not on his side now and will not be until he begins to separate the perceived need to control the borders from his need to dehumanize and demonize a group of people. Some people may deserve a legal path to citizenship, others may not. It's not beyond comprehension that we may be able to accommodate both without resort to brutality, that we may be able to treat people as we would be treated - at least not for me.

For are we not men?

The Guardian and other British newspapers have long been less sympathetic to Israel's actions and perhaps to Israel itself than their American counterparts. Sometimes they may be right. The use of torture is illegal in Israel, just as it is in the US, technically speaking, but both countries have loopholes in the law or have simply ignored its authority.

The Center for the Defense of the Individual and B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has released a report, according to The Guardian, which asserts that Palestinian prisoners have been subjected to starvation, interminable and severe interrogations, sleep deprivation and more and that half of them had been beaten by the military before being handed over to Shin Bet.

According to the Gonzales/Bush definition of torture, they were probably handled humanely by virtue of having survived and there's the problem. The US can hardly lecture about morality and rule of law to Israel and that leaves only the Israelis themselves to protest and perhaps to do something about it. Now that people are out in the street demanding Olmert's resignation, perhaps there's a glimmer of hope that the incompetents and the religious right and the morally "creative" will effectively opposed in Israel. In the US we may have to wait until 2008.

Puff the magic Dragon

Is it a coating of non-stick Teflon that keeps things from sticking to Rollicking Rush Limbaugh, or is it just ordinary slime he's covered with? Perhaps, if he bothers to explain himself at all, he will tell us that public figures like Barak Obama are fair game for race baiting while college girls are not, but I'm waiting to see the kind of reaction we got to Imus' comment. I'm waiting in fact to hear any update on the story that appeared in Crooks and Liars last Friday much less the racist barb he tossed at the Illinois Senator last January. It may be a long wait.

Rush playing "Barak the magic Negro" to the tune of the silly Peter Paul and Mary song from the 60's on his radio show is only the latest in a career of ugliness, pettyness, maliciousness and malignant bullying that should have ended years ago. Whether it's blatant racism or whether it's calling an adolescent girl a dog on nationwide TV, there have been too many incidents egregious enough to have him fired and black listed -- and yet here he is, smelly phallic cigar in his fat mouth, stinking up the pristine Florida air and the public airwaves.

It's time the media stops hiding behind a disclaimer and fires the bastard.

Cross posted at The Reaction

Meet you round the corner - in a half an hour.

I don't mind admitting that I love reading headlines about militant moralists and biblical bloviators being caught with their God-glorifying lips around something undeniably secular. Few things cheer me up as much as the hot water rising about such people as the head of the US Agency for International Development and former Bush administration AIDS coordinator who made such a fuss about abstinence and faithfulness rather than condoms. Randall Tobias, chairman, president and chief executive of Eli Lilly, and until recently chairman of the board of trustees at Duke. Who was that lady we saw you with?

Yeah, right - like pastor Ted Haggard's rod and staff being comforted by a homosexual drug dealer - it was "only a massage" says randy Randall. I'm looking forward to more good times as more of the ten to fifteen thousand names of Deborah Palfrey's clients are published and I'm willing to bet that the family values pimps and abstinence/morality pervs are well represented. The hell with the Indy 500 -- bring on the Sleaze Bowl; this hypocrisy fest is my kind of event. Fellatio ad absurdum - bring it on.

Now your typical 20% lunatic fringe element Bush supporter will accuse me of creating a diversion so that we won't notice how well George is doing at making the world safer for his perverted plutocrat preacher friends who purchase the services of young upscale professionals, but I'm really not impressed that Democrats and Libertarians can be libertines too - they're not the ones with the blood on their Bible caressing hands at the moment. It's the traditional values hypocrites who want to dictate your sex life who are pestering the Congressional pages and indulging themselves in "game-playing of a sexual nature at 275 dollars an hour for a 90 minute session" as Ms. Palfrey calls it.

I'm sure the list of Johns only runs so high up the Administration totem pole however. There is one anatomical prerequisite for such sport and neither Bush nor Cheney is suitably equipped.

Worst of the worst

They're terrorists -- they're the worst of the worst, besides they're not citizens and they're not in the US so we can do anything we want to them. There is precedent and we're at war and that's the way we do it when there's a war.

You've heard it all and you've heard much more from people who don't seem to want to admit that the prisoners of war at Guantanamo aren't all guilty of anything and were grabbed from all kinds of places and for dubious reasons. The government admits it of course. In fact many have been cleared after years of suffering and isolation and "coercive" interrogation. At the moment there are 82 who have been cleared of charges (whatever they might have been) but we're still holding them for a variety of reasons including the ironic prohibition against sending them back to [other] places that use torture.

The 82 cleared prisoners who remain at the little piece of Cuba we insist isn't US territory and so doesn't have to pretend to be a free country governed by law, come from 16 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Even if these people, with what remains of their sanity, dignity and resources are ever repatriated, I'm willing to bet that no hearts and minds have been won amongst them or the families they go home to and I will bet these people who were guilty of having an unlucky name or who were in the wrong place with the wrong face won't get much in the way of compensation for their damaged or ruined lives, much less an apology. Even so, "Sorry - we were looking for the other Abdul" isn't going to matter much.

So what's my point other than giving a damn about justice and the value of human life? It's that the bar stool warriors and Brooks Brothers bully boys have been advocating the torture of innocents and don't give a damn because they're too afraid to care about justice, the rule of law, decency, ethics, morality, human life or the Christianity they profess when someone sleeps with the wrong person or doesn't feel like praying in public. "There's a war on" and accusations of being "soft on terrorism" aren't excuses for barbarism and these pillars of Republican wisdom are starting to smell like the rotten things they are.

Illegal! Illegal! Illegal!

The sin of Sodom was incivility to strangers. According to the story, Abraham argued with God that he shouldn't punish them as a group if there were innocents amongst them and God agreed.
May God have such mercy on Palm Beach County, Florida.

I read today in the Palm Beach post, about the Puac family. Francisco Puac worked in Guatemala investigating the drug cartels, a profession that's not often good for the health. His cover blown and on the run, he was granted asylum in the US in 2001, but his family thought they would be better off using 6 month tourist visas which would give them more flexibility. They were wrong and unless a hearing tomorrow goes their way, they will be deported.

Deborah Puac attends High School in affluent Boca Raton. She's enrolled in High School and as an athlete is hoping to attend the Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps' national championships in Pensacola in a few weeks. Our military of course, desperately needs such people, but the Christians of Palm Beach County do not. Deprived of witches and in a country that allows Jews and Heretics civil rights, they need "illegals" to burn. The article is festooned with comments stressing the danger to jobs and to our future if she's allowed to remain, Spanish accent and all. You'd never judge by watching them drive, but the Palm Beachers are very, very concerned with the technicalities of the law.

I suspect that the Immigration service will overlook the technicalities and allow the Puacs to remain as a family; at least I hope so, but then I'm not a Christian, I'm not worried about some job and I have a conscience. As for the Churchgoing cowards, bigots and sinners of Palm Beach County -- I wish there were a God to blow them all to hell.

Precedent McCain

If, as Emerson said, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, then John McCain qualifies as a finalist in the micromind competition.

"You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was"

said he to a reporter on his tour bus somewhere in Iowa. Caught off guard with questions about whether he thought our government should spend any money on providing condoms and instructions for their use in Africa in order to fight the plague of AIDS, he seemed far more concerned with not contradicting the absolutely ridiculous statements he's made in the past than with providing an answer to the question. Mumbling and stumbling about abstinence, he evaded further questions about sex education and prophylaxis in his own country by saying he supports the president and

"people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”

I don't know whether to forgive him the grammatical solecism, but to support Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, head of Bush's AIDS Advisory Council and his immoral and idiotic program of substituting religious polemics on the virtues of not having sex for medical advice on the prevention of the AIDS epidemic, is absolutely unforgivable. Anyone who puts his religion's dogma above the preservation of human life, has violated not only his Hippocratic oath, but has set himself outside the human race.

Do words like liar, scoundrel, enemy of decency and even evil have any meaning at all any more in the context of the Bush administration? Does John McCain's campaign for the presidency have any discernible theme other than his lack of concern with what evil he supports as long as he can convince enough evil men to support him? The question is not whether to vote for this cringing dog of the demented religious right; the question is how long it takes for America to realize that the real enemy combatants are not in Guantanamo, but in Washington, in Kansas, Oklahoma and cruising through northern Kansas in a bus. How long before everyone recognizes that John McCain doesn't care how many mothers and how many children die as long as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the rest of the pantheon of vermin are happy with him?

Return of the Newt

Now let's make it clear - Newt Gingrich is not a hypocrite for having flung excrement at Bill Clinton: whooping and hopping like a zoo chimpanzee whose cage had been rattled, even though he was himself having an illicit sexual affair at the time. Not a hypocrite at all, said he to Focus on the Family, a self-congratulatory Christianist radical group. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards." Pandering to the Godbothers is of course not just a way to render one's sins nugatory, but a signal that Newt intends to run for President.

Whatever the relative standards of morality and decency demanded by Newt or by God, both seem to be entirely situational and subject to constant reinterpretation as befits the sales goals of the moment, but by my standards Newt is a hypocrite whose hypocrisy is rather too indelible to be washed away as easily as he would wish. "Clinton was punished for perjury" claims Newton although he was neither punished nor a perjurer. "you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials" but you can apparently accept tax evasion and you can accept sinners throwing stones at sinners and bearing false witness against the innocent as long as you clear it through God's own laundry, Focus on the Family.

Irrespective of his honesty in denying a sexual relationship, the question was irrelevant to the charges against President Clinton and of course not only were the charges not proved, they were heavily dependent upon fiction, bought and paid for by those who are lecturing us about ethics, morals and family values.

Gingrich apparently retains a good deal of popularity amongst the Republicans, at least the segment of that party that has become used to running things, and I believe we're seeing the launch of his trial balloon. Whether there is enough hot air available to float it, laden as it is with ego and freighted with enough ethical baggage to weigh down the Hindenburg, remains to be seen.

When is black Black?

The Daily Curmudgeon wrote yesterday about the electability of Barak Obama and rightly mentioned that a hidden streak of bigotry would make his success unlikely -- and that of course, is because he is a black man, or at least his father was a black man and an African. Of course that streak of bigotry doesn't always reside behind a white face and the discussion of whether Obama is really black or African or half white or half black or African-American or an American of partial black African descent has, in my opinion at least a trace of that odor that clings to Senator Biden's now famous condescending evaluation. "He ain't like them other colored boys, is he?" is how one blogger on The Reaction heard it.

The debate amongst many people however, isn't whether Senator Obama is or isn't like some stereotype, but whether he can be further pidgeon-holed or categorized or deconstructed or reconstructed, obstructed, embraced or dismissed according to some arcane formula found deep in a forest of nuance and innuendo I dare not enter. Much about Obama's ability to understand the experience of Americans who descend from those once enslaved in the continental United States (but not elsewhere) depends, it seems, on these fine distinctions: as though his dark complexion had not exposed him to the prejudice and stereotyping by a society that in most cases doesn't care where great great great grandpa came from as long as you look black. Is it any different than saying that a black man couldn't represent a white society well?

To my way of thinking, the insistence by some African American writers that only a man whose ancestry is politically correct can represent or hope to find support from African Americans, is as demeaning as any white senator's suggestion that a black man who has confidence, poise, a command of English, a brilliant mind and a superior education somehow doesn't represent them either.

It smells funny in those woods; it smells like prejudice, but perhaps a trace of it clings to us all, even though some of us wish the Senator from Illinois could be judged on his record, his ability and his character and not what some people would make of his ancestry.

A dog's life

I once saw dog skins displayed for sale in a Xian market; a sad sight as much for my suspicions of the mistreatment of the animals as for the actual sight of their hides hanging in the smoggy wind. I've been infuriated at video of crated dogs being thrown violently onto oriental concrete floors from the back of trucks, man's best friends whimpering at the pain. I love dogs as much and maybe more than anyone, but because I'm a human and a bit of a hypocrite, I don't suffer as much when people hunt raccoons or weasels for their skins or bludgeon cattle for their hides.

There seems to be a distinction, although a hypocritical one perhaps, between raccoon fur and the fur of the Asiatic Raccoon dog, although both are quite intelligent and both share the "cuteness" factor which after all is the most important indicator of how we decide whether an animal is a friend or food. When the Humane Society finds that some fur being sold under designer labels as raccoon or rabbit is actually dog, we are offended. Some of what is labeled as fake fur, they say, turns out to be raccoon dog as well and there is a push to put the raccoon dog on a list of forbidden fur. I have no idea if that animal is endangered. I have no idea whether this is an animal you would want or could have as a pet. I have no idea whether it is more attractive or cuddly than a raccoon, but dog is the magic word that puts it in a different category from something you might set a trap for or would call an exterminator in a panic if you found one in your attic. Our hierarchy of sympathy for animals is not objective.

Don't get me wrong, I have strong feelings about humane treatment of animals. It's human to be humane after all and although animals have little inhibition about ripping other animals to pieces and eating them, there is hypocrisy in everything human. I know that pigs are intelligent animals, but I do like the bacon and bratwurst that comes from killing them. I feel terrible eating lamb and I won't eat rabbit unless I'm in danger of starvation ( which I'm not) because they're cute. I try not to eat mammals at all, in fact, and I have gone so far as to chase a wayward mouse, several lizards and any number of insects out the door rather than to kill them, but I draw my ethical lines in a different place than PETA or those who refuse all animal products for either moral or other reasons known only to Californians.

As I said, all that is human is hypocritical and those eating their organic vegetables fertilized by fish and bone meal, or manure from cattle fed on ground up parts of other cattle also have to explain why bugs and vermin and parasites are not worthy of their compassion, why the wildlife and habitat destroyed by their developments and their agriculture and their waste products doesn't outweigh their sentimental sympathy for raccoon dogs and why that leather upholstery in your BMW is more morally supportable than a hamburger. There really is no way to live the doctrine of Ahimsa, no way to survive without participating in the destruction of life and much of that life, from tapeworm to tiger, would be quite happy to consume you, given the chance. The lion that lays down with the lamb would die, as would the lambs in time, and miserably too, if there were nothing to keep their numbers down. Utopia would be a dead world.

That middle class American fantasy of a wind-powered, pollution free pure land : an escapist fantasy paradise full of organically grown, low energy, cruelty free, natural fiber where everything is artisanal or Tuscan or organic, or at least has a pretentious Euro-style name. Where everyone is very thin and very well dressed and very middle class and perpetually healthy and totally in tune with the latest wisdom about crystals and nutrition and fung sui and the pandas and baby seals and raccoon dogs frolic care free in the sun, is just that -- an escapist delusion; a tiny, temporary thing that could only exist as a bubble supported by the suffering and exploitation of others.

In the world of the immediate future; in a world of tens of billions struggling to eat, despoiling the land and sea and air in the process, there may no longer be any way to eliminate factory farms or animal suffering or to implement organic farming on anything but a tiny scale. Does it matter if we decrease our individual energy use by 20% while the population doubles? There may be no way to save most of the animals, there may be no way to save us or even to approach that fantasy of the simple, pure, pre-industrial but high tech, tastefully dressed in organic cotton life of sipping $6 organic soy milk Tuscan Lattes with artesanal Madagascar cinnamon sticks hand picked by joyful virgins in a tropical paradise. Life pushes the limits and the limit of our life is squalor, privation, disease and suffering as our numbers inevitably continue to grow.

Just how many worms are in that can?

People who oppose same sex marriage will usually tell you it's unnatural. Evidence for this is that they don't like it, God doesn't like it, that it doesn't produce children or that homosexuality, like religion, books and rock & Roll does not occur in nature and therefore shouldn't be condoned by man.

In all probability, no one not afflicted with some form of idiocy, such as Fundamentalism or a seat in Congress, would be unable to expose these arguments as unworthy of credence, but the credo so often expressed by religidiots who oppose homosexual relationships because our function is to breed, have argued themselves into a corner.

Enter the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance [stage left of course.] The group , formed after Washington courts upheld a gay marriage ban, has filed an initiative in that State requiring married couples to produce children within three years or have their marriages annulled. Of course they can't have any expectation that it will pass into law, but it will be interesting to see the believers wriggle out an explanation for rejecting it, if in fact they believe that marriage is only justified as a baby producing scheme.

What of infertile couples who adopt children? Shall we annul their contracts? if not, then why not allow Gay adoptive parents? You really can't argue God's will here since God could produce a man from mud (and supposedly did) or impregnate an unmarried virgin (and supposedly did.) So if God wants Adam and Steve to have kids, he can handle it. You got a problem with allowing God some free will Preacher?

That homosexuality is observed in nature can't really be disputed. It can only be denounced as fraud from a position of religious evidence-blindness. If it is observable in animals, it cannot then be written off as unnatural behavior by definition nor denounced as an unnatural choice by religious conviction since animals are not capable of making moral choices: not having eaten a mythological fruit from a metaphorical tree. What occurs in nature is by definition natural.

As to whether God likes it or not, it all depends on your God and his or her (or their) forthrightness in expressing itself and the consequences of her displeasure. Since we can all agree that we have free will, I choose Rafafu, the god of a West Papuan tribe of tree-dwelling cannibals called the Kombai and frankly my dear, Rafafu doesn't give a damn what they do in Washington. If anyone wishes to contradict my Rafafian beliefs, they're welcome to parachute into the jungle and discuss it with the Kombai.

Now since the government is strictly forbidden by the Constitution to tell you who God is or wants or should be dealt with, I'm breathlessly waiting for the State of Washington to admit that their ban is illegal

He's cured!

I read this morning in the Denver Post that "One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is "completely heterosexual." I'm convinced too that such things are possible because I remember a college roommate who after only 4 or 5 hours of consultation with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide was convinced that he was the Easter Bunny, but I'm also convinced that Haggard's conversion won't last much longer than this morning's South Florida cold snap or my buddy Jim's lagomorphic fugue.

Of course the curability of the "Disease" of Homosexuality isn't supported by anything more than the testimony of people of the caliber of Haggard. It's only a belief and one of a nearly infinite series of beliefs engendered by the need to sustain a fundamental belief that you can be absolutely certain of a God and of his likes and dislikes from listening to men like Ted Haggard. But one can believe almost anything for a time and that's evidenced by the line of ambulances one sees picking up people who have nearly killed themselves getting out of wheelchairs or throwing away their crutches at revival meetings. For a few minutes they believed those twisted legs could walk again. Some people may enjoy believing that Ted is no longer interested in methamphetamines or men. Some believe because they are so terrified of themselves. Some people just enjoy believing.

Although I'm one of those who likes to temper belief with the knowledge that it is ultimately elusive, I'm pretty damn sure that Haggard is a fraud -- even to himself -- and that his only real conviction is that he can continue to fool enough people enough of the time to maintain the power and money and authority that he loves so much. Along those lines, Ted recently sent an e-mail to his former New Life Church members saying he and his wife may move to Missouri and seek Master's degrees in psychology. "the Holy Spirit has been convicting and healing me" said Ted who is lucky that a secular court didn't convict him of drug charges. But of course avoiding the consequences of misdeeds through lachrymose ritual and an impressive line of bullshit is the backbone of his profession.

It was of course, the oversight board of the National Association of Evangelicals that suggested, in the interest of healing his "wounds," that Ted move to the Show Me State and go into "secular work." Could it be that they have doubts too?

Loaves and fishes in the world of the Mouse

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

-Matthew 19:21-

But don't try this in Orlando - that would be illegal.

DO NOT LIE OR OTHERWISE BE IN A HORIZONTAL POSITION ON A PARK BENCH ... DO NOT SLEEP OR REMAIN IN ANY BUSHES, SHRUBS OR FOLIAGE ... per city code sec. 18A.09 (a) and (o).

-sign in an Orlando park-

I can't think of any major religion that doesn't stress the duty to feed the homeless, the poor and sick and even a passing familiarity with the sayings of Jesus would be enough to suggest that this country that loves to make up stories about how our laws are based on the Bible and how Christianity or some nebulous "Judeo-Christian values" are the foundation of our nation, has no particular interest in any values that are inconvenient, unsightly or expensive.

American piety is all a sham of course, the business of America is business, not morality and anything that gets in the way of the wealthy becoming more wealthy is not part of our value system -- so don't get any ideas about emulating Jesus and feeding the poor in Orlando - Disney doesn't want to hear about or have to look at the poor and homeless. It's illegal in Orlando to give food to the hungry without a permit and you won't get a permit more than twice a year even if you wear sandals and have a beard and holes in your hands.

BATHING AND/OR SHAVING IN RESTROOM IS PROHIBITED ... per city code 18A.09 (p) ...

Of course if anyone objects to putting up Christian symbols all over the place or redacted copies of the Ten Commandments in schools and courthouses - that's a different story. We will raise holy hell. We're a Christian nation, of course, even if we wouldn't let Jesus walk on the grass much less wash the feet of the poor per city code 18A.09 (p). So our father which art in heaven better not attempt to give you any daily bread unless you can pay for it and if God hands out manna in Lake Eola Park, he's facing a misdemeanor charge.