Pat’s Pretzel Logic

You have got to love Pat Robertson, a man worth a cautiously estimable 200 million dollars,  because he thinks that Christians in America are subject to “abuse and discrimination and bigotry”, “more terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history”.  Now obviously this is not even close to being even remotely like what is actually true, but never the less, the guy has enough people that agree with him that he can say any kind of ridiculous thing that comes into his head and money pours in regardless. It is a pretty sweet racket that he has going actually,  and if people are stupid enough to throw dough at the guy, who am I to hate on his ill gotten and lavish lifestyle?

Sometimes the thoughts that form in Pat’s head escape through his mouth providing the reasonable people with some comic relief, like when he told us that  Planned Parenthood was nefariously teaching our children the ins and outs of beastiality, along with ”everything that the Bible condemns”.  After the horrors of September 2001 Pat sagely informed the world that the tragedy had taken place because, among others things, American government at it’s highest levels had,  ”insulted God”. Pat assured his reputation as a crackpot when he asserted that homosexuality and Satanism are synonymous with one another, that “the two things seem to go together”.  Suffragists took umbrage when he suggested that feminism was merely a guise for an agenda that encourages women to, “kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians”, but Pat doesn’t care what anyone thinks especially not women because according to him their place is where he, a man, says it is.

The sham news department for the Robertson founded Christian Broadcasting Network posted an article on their website asserting that voters feared voting for Barack Obama because it would mean that he would be “instantly assassinated” upon receiving the Democratic nod, (http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/311019.aspx). One woman interviewed in the article claimed that she would not vote for the Senator from Illinois because she didn’t want to be “responsible for signing his death certificate”. It is common knowledge that Mr. Obama has a Secret Service detail that is comparable only to the one that accompanies the President.  Self righteously suggesting that reserving support for the man is the best decision, because the white powers that be in America will never let him survive, is akin to the reasoning that rationalized slavery as appropriate and segregation as necessary.   

Rudy Giuliani seemed pretty stoked when Pat Robertson, who openly called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, endorsed his doomed, one trick Presidental bid. Tonight pundits are speculating on the demise of the aforementioned candidate, and certainly the candidate himself is scratching his head, wondering how things could go so wrong with the support of such an influential and well regarded partner like Pat Robertson and his willing followers. The possibility exists that despite the continued stream of revenue that continues to flood CBN and fill Robertson’s pockets, the actual influence of the one time candidate has obviously waned and might even be the kiss of death for a potential occupier of The White House. No one knows for sure why Giuliani’s campaign ultimately failed, though his singularity of purpose could be blamed, I like to think that by hooking his cart to Robertson’s falling star he helped to hasten the demise of a campaign that was doomed from the start. 

Pat Robertson is neither demigod nor prophet and the things he says undermine the credibility of his sanity, giving the impression that he lives in a world where God has a voice that it uses to deliver bad news. With people like Robertson spewing nonsense, the world  will continue to be divisive place and humans will continue to focus on their differences and not on shared similarities. On the up side, with Robertson’s ilk roaming around , the ambitions of the ill fated will always have something other than their own shortcomings to blame for their failures. 

All Pat Robertson quotes came from here: http://en.wikiquote.rg/wiki/Pat_Robertson

From Among Us

Hell yes! They caught the guy who stabbed Shannon Harps to death on New Years Eve just a few blocks from my apartment. It has been a little disconcerting to know that any of the derelicts who solicit change around the neighborhood could easily have been the killer. Apparently they have a positive DNA match for some guy who is already locked up in King County Jail for an unrelated charge. Hopefully this dude will enjoy the ass raping that awaits him upon arrival at prison. They say that violence begets violence and based on what this particular dirtbag has put forth I expect that for the next twenty or so years he will experience an unhealthy diet of isolation and unceremonious rape.

 Many of my friends are young women who live alone and the thought that any of them could meet such a sudden and brutal end as what befell Ms. Harps infuriates me. There is no love here for the perpetrators of such heinousness. For the last three weeks a killer has walked among us and the neighborhood has remained on edge as a result. It is my hope that the vile individual who took an undeserving life will experience the uneasiness that he inflicted here.

 Now the more sensitive among you might feel that my hostility toward this asshole crosses the line and if that is the case, too fucking bad you panty waist bleeding heart motherfuckers. If ever there was a dude whose actions denied him the benefit of any sort of sympathy, this is that guy. The judge in the case apparently agrees with my line of reasoning as the killer’s bail is set at, an out of reach, one million dollars. I don’t want him to get the death penalty as that would be too easy an out, instead I prefer that he endure a life that requires him to be vicimized redundantly. I do not absolve this so called human from his responsibility to pay for what he has taken and I will not forgive him for what he has done, that is Jesus’ job.  All of the rest of us can sleep a little bit easier now that such retardation has been removed from amongst us. RIP SH.

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“I want to read good news. I want to be innocent again”

from the song Good News by Something Corporate. It can be found on their excellent 2002 record that I love; Leaving Through The Window.

When I pick up a newspaper, the shenanigans and shady dealings that fill the pages, motivates me to pause  and consider that perhaps things are finally spiraling completely out of control. For the most part this is entirely true, and the catch is that there is very little that any of us can do to make things right. For the last seven years our ship of state has served only as a pirate vessel coercing other countries to join our battle against elusive, invisible specter that is supposedly hell bent on our complete demise. With the rallying cry of “Never Forget” Americans have been lured into lazy, simplistic reasoning that allows us to view others as different than, and possibly a threat to; us. I refuse to accept this spirit of fear that has been loosed, instead choosing to see people of different races and nationalities as fellow humans like myself who, through no choice of their own, are utilized as mere pawns in a global game that makes the rich more wealthy, and bestows power upon entities who already have far more influence than is necessary.

I have heard it said that if Hillary Clinton gets elected that there will be one third of Americans who have never had a President who was not a member of the Bush or Clinton families. I do not know whether this statement is true or not but it certainly seems reasonable to believe that it could easily be. The fact that we choose our candidates from such a limited pool of contenders and the fact that they have to pony up ginormous amounts of money just to be considered as a part of the process seems to undermine the democratic myth and reinforce the idea that class ranking is the key to success in American politics.

In the 2000 election the combined total earnings for the candidates was 500 million, in 2004 we are talking 800 million, and in this years election the candidates are on track to raise a combined 1 billion bucks. (http://opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp) Now for a guy who made about twenty grand last year, you can see how I have come to feel disassociated from the political process and how I can easily feel like I have no representation from my national political leaders. America has become an aristocracy that is no longer concerned with the peoples will, instead our political system represents only the wealthy and the powerful, two groups that are more foreign to me than any person born and raised in another country.

“And did we tell you the name of the game boy? We call it riding the gravy train.” from Have A Cigar by Pink Floyd

Errant Parent And The Day Hell Came To Visit

I heard an 18 year old porn star interviewed this morning on the Stern Show. Generally this is the kind of guest who is par for the course on Howard’s Show, but Summer Verona was not only introduced to the porn game by her step father, he also serves as her manager, and in this capacity, the step father is on set to supervise her escapades. We also learned that her step father is the one who takes it upon himself to make sure that her mons pubis is appropriately shorn for action and that he does the waxing himself. Now I am about as open minded as it gets and have very little problem with things that many would cringe at, but a step daddy shopping his wife’s barely grown daughter around to porn producers seems just a little inappropriate. Surely a step father grooming the genitalia of his wife’s daughter is over the invisible line that seperates icky from o.k..

This weekend in the New York Times there was an article about  how some of the soldiers that left for Iraq and Afghanistan confident, capable, and mentally stable are returning rattled, broken, and in some cases, as a menace to society. Of course when individuals are forced to confront the horror and devastation that a war machine and it’s weapons can inflict, it can wreak havoc inside a persons mind and things that were formerly considered reasonable can distort, and become entirely new perceptions and sensations.  It starts when you enlist, and the concepts of diplomacy and tolerance are forsaken on behalf of force and power. We teach our children not to raise their fists to one another, yet as adults we solve our most vexing problems through strength and violence, bending others to our agenda or else, as Reagan joked about The USSR, the bombing will begin in five minutes. The maxim is simple; a knife beats a club, a gun beats a knife, a bomb beats a gun, and a nuclear bomb is the trump card. You can check out the entire article at this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html?scp=1&sq=veteran+%2B+murder

Back in 1989 when I was serving onboard the U.S.S. IOWA (BB-61), I was primerman for the center gun  in turret number one on the day that Brian Gendron, the Primerman for center gun in turret number two was obliterated along with 46 other guys. Some of the victims that day were blown apart into tiny unrecognizable bits, and others who could surely could see their demise coming by the position of their lifeless bodies, were only strangled to death by the thick, acrid smoke, that accompanied the fire. Like myself, Brian Gendron had joined the Navy to earn college money,  and to say he eagerly awaited his discharge is an understatement of the highest order because he loathed the Navy, and as it turns out, rightfully so.

 The eleven hours that I spent in that hell retrieving the bodies of those guys, completely changed my life, and I can honestly say that I have never thought about anything the same way ever since. They offered us counseling and made psychiatrists available to anyone who wanted to talk to them, but the culture in the military is big on machismo and rugged individualism, so most of us chose not to speak with someone who might have helped us to make sense of the whole goddamned mess. When all of this happened I wasn’t even twenty years old yet and frankly I really had no idea how important it could be to talk about something so traumatic. The bottom line is the military had a responsibility to force treatment upon me and everyone else who was there that day, especially those of us who went into that turret to retrieve the fallen. To this day I have never sat down with anyone to sort through the dark cloud of emotions that were aroused by the events of that day and I wonder how my life might have been diferent had I not been there that day at all. At least I remain to consider such thoughts, of the four of us that sat together at breakfast on the morning of April 19, 1989, I was the only one left alive by dinner time that night.

 After I was finished with The Navy I asked my Dad why he did not talk me out of enlisting and his answer was that he did not talk me into it. Sometimes, what seems like the right decision turns out to be not so much, while at other times, choices may seem entirely appropriate to an individual while society at large looks on with disdain. Life can be tricky, and it’s truths will always be elusive, but there are two certainties generally accepted by most people; Veterans deserve treatment for PTSD, and parents should never take up the cause of hair removal on their childrens genetalia. Have a great day everyone. Oh yeah, one more thing; Rest In Peace Brian.