Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

This 1551 statue shows Emperor Carlo subduing a naked figure in chains. The naked victim of his Catholic majesty represents Protestants* —

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* Christians in those days hadn’t managed to read the New Testament up to Luke vi, 26) — they were still stuck on the parts of the Bible where Jesus rages against abortion, homosexuals, and suggestive cheerleading, and urges his followers to attack their opponents by any means possible… er, if you can find some of these passages in your New Testament, could you let me know? They seem to be somehow missing from my old copy…

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I´d like to declare this a national holiday–celebrating 364 days ahead during which we won´t worry about whether our own mothering (or child-ing) measures up to the infinite and eternally throbbing marketing hype of Mothers Day. I just wish my mom were here to laugh with me at an anti-Mothers-Day-Day. And I´m thrilled I have two great daughters to share the joke.

They’re up past 100 hours now, filbustering in the rain. If you’re near Princeton, stop by and give them a hand.

Jon Carroll and/or radical Unitarians want to know:

Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus.

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Thanks to the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator for my new name and to Brother Broadsword of Moderation for the link.

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first and only entry in this “blog”

via Frank Paynter

What’s going on in the Mideast now, and what should we now do about it? I’m sick of the sanitized (or uglified) spin each side creates to justify its own two-years-ago position.

If anyone could, Jeff Jarvis could lead both sides to a truce on “there-weren’t-any-WMDs” or “yeah-but-Saddam-tortured-people.” Such pointless debates just polarize people who need to be working together. Because what happens next in the Mideast is going to matter to every one of us, and to my children as well as to your children.

Oh yeah, I didn’t quite live up to this standard in my most recent blogpost. But I’m planning to do much better in the future!

Two years ago today, US troops and others invaded Iraq. Today protestors mark that two-year anniversary.

The Bush backers, having long since given up on finding weapons of mass destruction, now claim that invasion was right because…insert their current justification here. A few months ago, it was right because Saddam was evil. Now it is right because democracy is spreading.

March 19 marks another anniversary. On March 19, 1951, the democratically elected government of Iran nationalized oil production. A CIA-led coup followed swiftly, replacing Iran’s elected leadership with the Shah’s autocratic rule–thereby setting the stage for the religious and nationalist backlash that gave the world Ayatollah Khomeini.

Democracy in the Middle East? Great idea! But as Russell Mokhibar and Robert Weissman point out, “We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It.”

Oh joy, oh Rapture–there’s a growing belief that the end of the world is at hand. This outlook can be dangerous to our planet, warns Bill Moyers–because if you are looking forward to the Rapture, then here are some of the signs of the end that are good things: famine, drought, plagues, global climate change,….

What happens next, wonders Moyers, if “environmental destruction is not
only to be disregarded but actually welcomed – even hastened – as a
sign of the coming apocalypse.”
If you think Moyers’s concern is overblown, consider the case of the
apocalyptic red heifer.

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Born-again Christians teamed up with fundamentalist Jews to breed a flawless red heifer. But this story is not meant to have a happy ending–except for the fanatics trying to set it in motion. The Jewish group wants to sacrifice the animal as a first step toward rebuilding Jerusalem’s Temple. The second step, unfortunately, would be to destroy two of Islam’s most sacred shrines in Jerusalem, provoking all Israel’s neighbors to attack it. The Jewish group is convinced their G-d will give them a swift victory. The Christian group hopes for a different scenario–after a fierce Arab-Israeli war, all the Jews become Christians or else get incinerated. Then the messiah arrives and the Rapture begins. As Moyers describes it, “True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.” The perfect heifer will be ready to sacrifice in April, 2005, at a time when Israeli fundamentalists are already said to be plotting to strike at Islamic shrines. At least one Israeli has called this little red cow “a four-legged bomb.” If this bomb goes off in Israel next month, American apocalypticists will have helped to light the fuse.

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Some of my best friends are Libertarians, so I understand the conservative critique of government social spending, also known as “handouts” and sometimes even “the public trough”.

I believe, however, that the point of such spending is not to create a subclass of entitled loafers. Even if you don’t have any sentimental urge to help people in need–most social programs benefit society as a whole, not just the folks who are getting the actual money. Some people need a temporary hand if they’re ever going to become productive citizens.

A classic example of such a program that worked was the GI Bill of Rights, which helped US veterans get back into the work force after World War II. I came across a 1945 speech by my grandfather to a bunch of bankers where he explained why this “tax and spend” program was good for taxpayers as well as for veterans:

I hope veterans returning from the Iraq War will have the same opportunities offered to them, and I hope that a Kerry presidency will bring new hope to their communities as well.

I blogged about my grandfather “the two-shirt Democrat” before, and put the full text of my his remarks on the GI Bill here.

Magee later found and posted a screenshot of the HTML form that generates this letter–a spam-generating engine run by the Republican National Committee

Shooting down well-financed-fakers is exactly the kind of stuff we all hoped the Internet would help us do. Woo hoo!