262. A LIFE SENTENCE OF POVERTY

From the Archives. (October 2006) 25 years and 4 months, adjusted to 19 years and 2 months with good behavior and the requisite “Hi, my name is Jeff and I am an alcoholic” confessional.

Yep, that’s the punishment our judicial system meted out to ENRON mastermind Jeffrey Skilling.

The judge commented that Skilling’s “crimes have imposed on hundreds if not thousands a life sentence of poverty.”

First, if that’s a crime, then why ain’t George in jail?

Second, don’t you worry that former ENRON employees will still be bagging groceries in 2025 when Jeffrey is released back into the world?

So. I’ve been pondering the phrase life sentence of poverty ever since I read that line this morning.

Have also been mulling over the reality that so many news stories demonstrate our levels of cultural, environmental, intellectual, and soul-depriving poverty.

Example: have you seen what former Louisiana legislative candidate David Duke has been up to lately?

The guy’s copying Ralph Reed and his ilk and urging racist people to run for office.

Now I respect David Duke more than I respect Ralph, because at least he states what he believes out loud, whereas Ralph advises folks to run as stealth candidates in order to increase the likelihood that they can force their extremist views on everyone else.

But John Ubele has gone a step further and is encouraging his flock to form a national pro-White political party.

Meanwhile, Foley’s subterfuge and David Kuo’s timely confessional and Bush's "taking the Lord's name in vain" have left the Christianists aghast with the reality that, golly gee, people might actually make fun of them while kow-towing to them for political advantage.

So now they want their own party.

Church. Politics. What’s the difference anymore? (Except for those handy tax breaks)

I suggest that these 2 groups have a confessional lovefest wherein they collectively state their intention to control the lives of the rest of us. Then they can form their own party and see how far they get.

I know. Let’s call them the Bigocrats!

Mistuh Big ...

Anyway, Writergrrrl spent 15 long and head-banging years involuntarily committed to those fundies and untold numbers of hours under the judgmental vice of Baptist camp counselors and can tell you with confidence that submitting to those purportedly Jesus-inspired strictures, particularly if you are a woman, is the equivalent of accepting a life sentence of spiritual poverty.

261. WAVING THE JESUS FISH FOR FUN AND PROFIT

From the Archives. (October 2006) Well well well, the sins of the Gross Old Pedophiles are certainly coming home to roost, aren’t they?

Now we have the Curt Weldon scandal on top of the Foley scandal on top of the Ralph Reed scandal on top of the Abramoff scandal on top of Who’s Next?

Meanwhile, I spent my lunch break re-reading the Times’s expose on special-interest handouts that the Republicans continue to extend to religious groups and lemmetellya if I’m ever accused of tax evasion, I plan to state that my actions were ecclesiastic decisions subject to special interest provisions.

I mean, who knows? Seems as if folks can avoid all sorts of legal ramifications simply by waving a little Jesus fish around.

(Which reminds me of the drug-dealing jeweler in my hometown who took to writing "Jesus Loves You" on his sign after getting busted for selling pot. His new-found faith didn't keep him from continuing to deal though.)

So. What separate and unequal benefits have our legislators adopted to subsidize religion (even as they work to deny equal benefits to those of us who worship at the labial font)?

Let’s start with legalized job discrimination. Secular businesses such as day care centers and hospitals are at a competitive disadvantage now as the fish-wearers reap more profits.

Fish-wearers are being awarded tax breaks for initiatives such as luxury communities, theme parks, and golf courses that have nothing to do with maintaining a house of worship. This deprives localities of tax revenues while forcing us all to subsidize groups whose principals we may oppose.

Yes, it seems that Bush&Co decided to take a slice of the Establishment Clause too when they set their eyes on the Constitution er that “just a goddamn piece of paper.”

•

Meanwhile, I finally connected with Jamie, who has, no doubt, been holed up reading the On Our Back issues that I pasted generic magazine covers on so that she can take them to her treatments.

(Those nurses have no idea what's inside her copy of Computer World. Hee!)

MOST OBNOXIOUS BUMPERSTICKER SEEN THIS WEEEK: A confederate flag with the caption Fighting Terrorists since 1864

COOLEST BUMPERSTICKER SEEN THIS WEEK: Just another godless atheist working for equality and world peace.

BEST OF SPAM: "Essential message. You must read" (which was delivered alongside "Significant letter. You require to read.")

260. WALKING AROUND WITH OUR SOULS IN OUR HANDS

When we are working, we are working nervously. We are carrying our souls in our hands. (Sabah Al-Atia, a trash collector in Baghdad, as quoted in the New York Times, 13 October 2006)

From the Archives. (October 2006). Stacy Shiff had some interesting perspectives in today’s “Desperately Seeking Susan (NYT, 10.13.2006):

Now we are Photoshopping rather than airbrushing; with enough slicing and dicing, an argument can be made for anything.

Examples:

Impeaching a president for a blowjob is definitely not a miscarriage of justice if that president is the so-called liberal Bill Clinton.

or

Passing legislation that makes it impossible to convict a president of war crimes that he and his administration committed is not a miscarriage of justice if a powerful Christian jihad lobby supports that president and the corporate-owned news outlets fail to publish negative opinions about it.

or

Telling the president in an early-August daily briefing entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US” doesn’t mean that the president and his staff had any idea that Bin Ladin might attack in the US.

or

Being briefed in July about said looming attack after meeting in reserved airspace does not mean that Condi committed perjury when she said No one could have guessed that terrorists would use planes as weapons against buildings.

or

Publishing sensational story after sensational story about children being executed or horny legislators flirting with nubile young men is, apparently, much more responsible journalism, however, than calling for Condi’s resignation after she covers up her lies.

And, hey, now the president can declare journalists who express outrage are enemy combatants and haul them off to Gitmo.

Our democracy has turned into a bad joke.

Meanwhile, some folks in the blogosphere are suggesting that the Republinazis outed Foley themselves, knowing that the reaction would distract folks from the fact that Condi got caught covering up her prior knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist threat.

So let me make sure I have the formula right: Out a queer = Bush gets pardoned for authorizing war crimes that result in torture and death + legislators suspend the Constitution right in front of our faces + the Iraqi debacle gets worse every day (and let’s don’t even mention all those billions of dollars that vanished without a trace under Bremer’s watch)

...

but, hey, sex sells.

259. LUCIFER’S FOLLIES, OR, I KNOW, LET’S BLAME THE HOMOSEXUALS!

From the Archives (October 2006) Huh. Jerry Falwell says that Hillary’s nomination as Democratic presidential candidate would arouse even more evangelical opposition than Lucifer’s.

Wonder what Jerry’s nomination would arouse among thinking people?

And does anyone believe that Fox and O’Reilly accidentally—oopsie! real sorry folks—ran a banner identifying Foley as a Democrat at least twice before someone called them on their self-serving little blunder?

Yep, I’ve been catching up on my reading.

Checked out Mollie Ivins’s dildo diaries today and can confirm that Texas is even more backwards than my repressive home state.

Have also been following the Times series on the ever-expanding benefits that our leaders are extending to christianist groups. Hope the series garners a strong response.

This made me wonder what the christianists have been up to—besides being strangely silent about Foley—and that’s how I discovered the Christian Coalition trainer who encourages people to make up press credentials in order to find out if voters are planning to vote for republicans (and then harass them if they’re not).

The Christian Right’s lack of morals are really coming to light in the wake of this scandal.

Yep, another closeted Republican suffering from internalized homophobia has followed the path blazed by Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Ralph Reed and gotten himself revealed as a moral hypocrite.

Is anyone surprised?

So how are the christianists responding? Well, they’re playing the specious blame game in an effort to avoid taking responsibility for putting their careers before their so-called morals. Or they're keeping quiet in an effort to keep the Republican failures in connection to this scandal under wraps.

Examples:

The Foley revelations, according to Gary Bauer, chair of the Campaign for [Homophobic, Evidenced-Based-Reality-Rejecting] Working Families, are merely "an attempt to discourage Christian conservative voters and to get some percentage of them to stay home so that the Left can retake the United States Senate and the United States House."

Yep. We Lefties brainwashed the man into seducing nearly grown boys using the same brainwashing methods that you christianists have used with the children you send to your brainwashing camps.

(I know. I’ve been there.)

Other politicos are trying to distance the scandal from political parties altogether and blame, yes, the homosexuals:

Neither party seems likely to address the real issue, which is the link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse. (Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, in reference to the Foley scandal)

What? Don’t you wonder how this idiot can even write that with an um straight face on the heels of one heterosexual man raping and executing public school girls whom he took hostage in Colorado and another heterosexual man executing a roomful of Amish youngsters whom he planned to rape and torture?

At least Foley was flirting with people who have hair around their genitals.

Perkins also said, and fairly ungrammatically, that "it shouldn't be totally surprising when we hold up tolerance and diversity as the guidepost for public life this is what you end up getting."

Think about that.

Human Life International went a step further and attempted to blame the Foley scandal on Planned Parenthood. (The fuck?)

There is never an acceptable excuse or rationale for the type of deviant behavior former Congressman Mark Foley has admitted to. Homosexuality is every bit a part of the culture of death as is abortion and contraception. Not surprisingly, Foley was an ardent supporter of both, representing the interests of Planned Parenthood 64 percent of the time thus far in 2006.

Yes, put those children in christianist schools so they never have the opportunity to learn about evidence-based reasoning, then feed them crap like this and some of them just might buy your bullshit.

•

Meanwhile, a woman on Craig’slist discovered that her academic husband is cheating on her and wrote this wonderful rave, which I’m posting here because it will vanish soon, although it’s currently posted at http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/141149695.html:

RAVE: My cheating husband!!!
Ok, so I just found out that you've been writing about 25 emails a day to one of your female colleagues, all signed with the words "with bated breath". GREAT! You seem to have decided that bisexual vegetarians with questionable hair choices are more up your alley. WONDERFUL! Oh, did you say that she cares about your academic career, unlike me, who is always at work? Great! I'm such a bitch, aren't I, me with all of my work and bill paying. I'm glad that someone has the time to listen to you talk about postmodernism. That really takes a lot off my back. Actually, upon close inspection, it seems like this whole thing is taking a lot off my back. For example...

Things I Don't Have to Do Anymore since You Have Found a Deeply Intellectual Fuck Buddy:
1. Pay your rent.
2. Get you through graduate school.
3. Hear the word "deconstruction" while I'm trying to eat a goddamn hamburger.
4. Fry bacon for you.
5. Pretend to enjoy CNN.
6. Pretend to care about all things academic.

Things I Will Be Able to Do:
1. Buy shoes.
2. Eat chicken, which you find disgusting.
3. Shop at a store other than Target.
4. Unapologetically watch America 's Next Top Model.

So go ahead. Fuck her. I know you want to. I mean, you pretty much said so in that last email, now didn't you? If you'd just get on with it, I could possibly have you out by the end of the month, and be able to enjoy all of next month's pay check without having to buy any of your books or any of your pencils or any of your goddamn subscription-only foreign news channels. You've been to the movies, you've had study dates. The next logical step is fucking. So put down the goddamn books and get your mouth on hers. Let's step it up! I want to go buy myself some shoes!

And yeah, I'll be sad, and I'll cry and I'll eat some Ben and Jerry's. But you know what? I won't be homeless. You, my friend, you're going to have to get a job that doesn't involve reading Nabokov. So enjoy that. God knows I will. In fact, I'll give you five bucks if you'll just hurry the fuck up and get it over with. Take the money, dude. You're going to need it.

Oh, and yeah, I did break into your email. So go ahead...tell me what you read in some obscure book about privacy. Tell me loud and long. Because I'm never going to have to hear that shit again.
141149695

Yee haw, babe.