His name was NOT Steve.

 "When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross"

I wish I could say that was Sinclair Lewis, and perhaps he does too, but it seems he never did. Perhaps someone needs to say it however, because there is something coming; something already here dressed in red, white and blue, blowing hard about Christian values and lying, slandering, maligning, dripping with hate and evil and blood and grasping for power enough to make the devil blush.

You can't talk to some people about Allen West if you are objective about him.  To many ex-military people, it seems as though he is some sort of a hero or, perhaps it's more about some sad kind of solidarity than about sympathy.  I saw a lot of that during the Vietnam war:  the way people looked at me when I talked about the My Lai 4 massacre or when others suggested that indeed Lt. Cally was a war criminal who disgraced his country as much as anyone ever had. Perhaps you've read accounts of how he ordered a small boy who had just escaped the bullets, running screaming from the pit of murdered women and children to be shot. The order was carried out. It was outrageous that he was held accountable said my war supporting, true American coworkers -- just outrageous.

We don't burn no draft cards down on Main Street;
We like livin' right, and bein' free.

 I never did quite understand the attitude, but as I wanted to keep my job, I just kept quiet.  By the time  Allan West 'retired' from the US Army to avoid a Court Marshal for abusing an Iraqi prisoner, I no longer was a working man and loudly protested his attempt to become my Congressman.  For many here, the attitude was strangely the same.  He ran as a hero and of course we can't criticize anyone who was "fighting for our freedom" as such things are so grotesquely described.  In fact such people who thought differently then he or John Wayne or the people from Muskogee did, said West, should be deported.

But West's campaign failed and he promptly pulled up his tent stakes and went somewhere else to live and to prosper as the head of something called the National Center for Policy Analysis.  Of course as another failed far-right politician and criminal, he followed in the footsteps of Oliver North and became a Fox News contributor. 

West's current Bogeyman, as is that of his owners at Newscorp seems to be the alleged emergence of Sharia Law under the Muslim alien Obama.  Sadly people listen to him and because there never is a hint of rational cognitive function supporting the claims of the Far Right and the Fox Right you hear it discussed all the time.  Sharia law is taking over, even though it isn't -- not at all, not in Muskogee, not at Wal-Mart.

It's a strange proposition for people who strive with flapping tongues and logic all curled up like a pig's tail to push Christian Values as a substitute for the body of laws we've had since the beginning.  They want Christian law, even though there is no such thing, and they fear Muslim Religious courts that don't exist.  Hell, they think Wal-mart is part of the legal system and they get rich from this stupidity.  But Allen West has announced "Proof" that even without any courts or any mechanism to impose it, even such all-American importers of  foreign goods as Wal-Mart is trying to impose it on its customers.  Yes, that's right and as he observes with ungrammatical and folksy charm:

There was a young man doing the checkout and another Walmart employee came over and put up a sign, “No alcohol products in this lane.” So being the inquisitive fella I am, I used my additional set of eyes – glasses – to see the young checkout man’s name. Let me just say it was NOT “Steve.”

I pointed the sign out to Aubrey and her response was a simple question, how is it that this Muslim employee could refuse service to customers based on his religious beliefs, but Christians are being forced to participate in specific events contrary to their religious beliefs? Boy howdy, that is one astute young lady.

Imagine that, this employee at Walmart refused to just scan a bottle or container of an alcoholic beverage – and that is acceptable. A Christian business owner declines to participate or provide service to a specific event – a gay wedding – which contradicts their faith, and the State crushes them.

Seems the nonSteve checkout boy was a minor.  There was a law, an American, Christian Values law forbidding  a minor to serve or sell alcohol.  As usual the devil is in the details and as the devil speaks through Allen West and his Tea Party hooligans, liars, traitors, schemers, thieves, torturers and war criminals are lying about those details.  His screed was titled, Sharia law comes to Walmart? but he later changed it to More ominous signs of Christian persecution. (Did he mean to say persecution of Christians ?) What does it matter?  Lies have their own grammar, it seems and to the people who are looking to put a rational face on their bigotry, racism and hatred West's face will do fine.   See, we're not racists.

In a way, it's liberating to be old and not to have to give a shit about what the tinhorn patriots and liars for God have to say or what they threaten to do, and there's no reason to refrain from saying that the My Lai murderers and the unnamed perpetrators of similar massacres are no better than the Nazi Criminals we executed years ago, and that Allen West is their brother in dishonor.   They dishonor our country, they dishonor all things honest and true and decent, they dishonor our species .

Sex. Lies and Santorum

"He is imposing his values on the Christian church. He can categorize those values anyway he wants. I’m not going to,”

lied Republican candidate Rick Santorum to an assemblage of Tea Bag idiots immediately after having categorized President Obama's "values" and his "agenda"as being

“not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology,”

Yes, some phony ideal is on the agenda. A phony ideal involving liberty, Democracy and a constitution that never mentions God or gods or scriptures of any religion and declares that there shall be no religion in government. Science is a phony ideal to sanctimonious Santorum too because we all know that Senators Jesus, Mary and Joseph agree with the oil companies and that the president's job, as 'Rick' told the 'baggers, is to keep gas prices down (and the subsidies up, no doubt.)

No sir, all that Washington, Jefferson and Madison secular prattle is phony and if we're looking for full employment, a decent quality of life and personal liberty you must turn to The Christian Scriptures which forbid us to charge interest on a loan or obtain a divorce or marry whom we will or even to enjoy sex when it isn't only for making babies. Some churches I won't mention have interpreted it to demand a king chosen of God rather than an elected government, but don't bother Rick with that. It's already on his agenda.

So why is this sex-fearing, woman hating, half-witted fake theologian; this lame-brained Longinus and meretricious medievalist mewling about theology while pronouncing Ernulphian maledictions on what he pretends are President Obama's values, cursing them one by one? Because theological statements don't have to be true, you see; don't have to be supported by evidence and are easily and frequently used to do horrible things to people. Cognitively impaired, confused and historically ignorant "conservatives" seem pre-lubricated to receive ecclesiastical wisdom without discomfort and Faith invents facts as well as it rejects them to the despair of brother Ockham.

So Obama, who thinks a Harvard Law degree makes him as good as a white. Christian man, agrees with Justice Scalia that religious freedom does not legalize acts done in the name of religion and yet, conservatives still want to shove the notion that he's a radical, Liberal, Christian-hating Sodomite Commie up the national hoo-ha and true to form, the 'baggers assume the position and take it.

How can any curse suffice?

Amerika Über Alles

Mitt Romney is hard to figure out, partly because his most salient feature is the love of ingratiating himself dishonestly with any group he thinks is worth ingratiating himself to. So I have to wonder if he really thinks the United States is the nation chosen of God to lead the world as he told cadets at the Citadel yesterday or whether he just assumes that people embarking upon a military career are dreaming of imperial glory. I have no way of knowing whether these cadets have Napoleonic dreams or are attracted to arms because of some sense of personal weakness and humiliation, but I'd hesitate to bet that many really think that US history isn't filled with mistakes at home and abroad or that we aren't a better, more moral nation than once we were. Of course I don't mean to say we shouldn't strive to be a good influence in the world, but being a good influence doesn't mean command, doesn't mean control, doesn't mean we're the infallible and mighty hand of some invented Lord as Romney would be implying if there were any implications beyond opportunism in anything he has ever said in public.

But as I say, you never know what Romney thinks, particularly if your assessment is derived from listening to the man. You certainly can know that he's willing to put some strange interpretations on events to bolster his imperial and messianic aspirations whether or not he believes them. President Obama's "apology tour" for instance; Mitt would like to make the psychorabble feel important and loved by associating honesty with apology and apology with weakness and weakness with Jonah-like abdication of a divine mission. Of course Obama never went on an apology tour, but what black man has ever not been in danger from Godly Americans when someone accuses him of winking at a white girl. Where there's smoke, there's fire, we say, forgetting that where there's smoke there may be a smokescreen and there may be arson.

That Obama portrayed American history in a poor light by admitting that we have sometimes been guilty of arrogance and have sometimes made mistakes is a big fish to swallow, to invert the metaphor and it clashes with Romney's carefully crafted humble demeanor. There's nothing humble about him and there's something disturbing about the belief in divinely ordained male control of family life his religion seems to demand, at least to an outsider like me.

"An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender"

said the man who is more frightening for his benign smile. To me there is no one more dangerous than a man who can call upon a sufficiently established god to justify world domination and I don't think I need to offer examples. No one more dangerous unless, of course, we add the photogenic charm and the forked tongue. What Mitt really is saying is that America is chosen to be the priest and caretaker of the planet and what he is implying is that by being its ordained leader, he's God's agent on Earth. Where and when have we heard this before? Certainly not from the founders of our Republic who took up arms against God's own chosen King.

I've often been told that Obama "went over there and apologized to them" by Fox News victims totally ignorant of where there is or who said what. It's a lie of course and a big one but it isn't going away even if Romney never says another word about it or is magically transported to another world for him to rule, as apparently he thinks he will be. Lies, like cancer cells, are all but immortal. Truth and decency and the hope for a world not run by pompous and powerful thugs in expensive suits and plastic hair are as fragile as a dream.

Beating up a right-wing meme

There is a fairly standard homophobic meme, which says that decriminalizing homosexuality is a slippery slope which leads to all manner of interesting behavior. The most obvious example of this is our boy Rick "Man-on-Dog" Santorum; I talked about his use of this particular argument yesterday.

But how can you dispute this somewhat idiotic idea?

Answer: You can't. You're wasting your time. The people who find this kind of argument convincing aren't swayed by logic. But personally, I enjoy it, so let's press on.

Well, then, what is the danger, exactly? What is the inevitable result of all this brightly-colored gayness? The usual list includes two or more of the usual suspects.

1. obscenity
2. fornication
3. adultery
4. adult incest
5. bestiality
6. pedophilia (with or without added incestuousness)
7. bigamy
8. the complete destruction of marriage as we know it

And really, that last one, which occasionally stands by itself, is the easiest to rebut.

Just ask "how?" How will marriage becoming more available, to more people, destroy the entire concept of marriage? You'd be amazed how many people can't actually answer that.

Let's consider the rest of these ignorant concepts, in no particular order.

Obscenity: You don't see this one too often. "Freedom of speech" and all that. So fuck it. Let's move on.

Fornication and Adultery: Now, this is a slightly tricky area, and a vaguely sexist one, at that. Fornication is mentioned less frequently these days, but you might run across it. Sex, when not between two people married to each other, is "fornication" if the both partners are single. It's "adultery" if either partner is married.

(Really, it all goes back to the fact that, until fairly recently, women were property. The legal definition just tells you which property crime has occurred.)

But really, both of these are idiotic examples. Fornication isn't a crime, but the results of it can be. Spreading an incurable disease or not taking financial responsibility for the potential pregnancy? That's where the blame should be pointed.

And adultery is a civil matter. In most states, it can be cause for a divorce, but that's between the husband and wife.

So the right answer to this one is simply "You're saying that adultery doesn't go on now? And hasn't gone on since time immemorial? Are you going to claim that more men will fool around on their wives because some other men are in a committed, legally-binding relationship? Why?"

(Notice the pattern here? "How?" and "why?" are the two easiest crowbars to dismantle the argument.)

Bestiality and Pedophilia: You've got to remember that when our idiot wingnut friend try to start listing all the things that homosexuality will lead to, they often like to include these two. (Because, you know, if two men are attracted to each other, they'll be attracted to anything!)

These two examples are stunningly simple to rebut. Just point out the all-important word "consensual." Children and dogs can't consent to anything. If they don't immediately concede the point, go on the attack: "So, by your logic, because heterosexuality is legal, so is rape?"

Incest and Polygamy: Now, these are the only remotely tricky ground that's out there. Because it's true: once you widen the definition of marriage, you have to explain why you don't throw it open to practitioners of either of these activities.

This is particularly true of polygamy. My personal attitude toward polygamy is "why not?" Toss the idea to a couple of lawyers, let them draw up a standard boilerplate contract for multiple party marriages, and let people hook up in whatever polymorphic patterns they want. All kinds of good reasons that this would be beneficial: guidance for the kids, economic stability, and so on. But that's a much longer argument than I want to get into.

Incidentally, the most common polygamous "marriage" in America these days is the creepy cult-like one, with the ugly overtones of misogyny and rape. Those are bad. Of course, it's equally bad when dealing with an overbearing, controlling husband and his wife, too. So, really, that's another, longer discussion that I don't feel the need to open up.

As for incest, well, look into the health problems of purebred dogs: they're just a mobile mass of medical maladies, from hip dysplasia in German Shepherds and Labradors, to epilepsy in beagles, dachshunds and Dalmatians. It's the inevitable result of reinforcing genetic problems by breeding from too small a gene pool.

After all, as we've already shown, these people are making an openly false comparison, and really, there are only two types of people who’d use it:

1. People with limited critical faculties, who never actually think about the talking points they repeat.

2. People who know exactly the size of the lie they’re spewing, and don’t care.

In either case, when you’re faced with this level of lemon-scented bullshit, why should you feel constrained to stick with simple logic, when you can easily turn their own rhetorical style back on them? So, instead of getting completely sidetracked from the issue of gay marriage, I recommend, as I often do, the attack.

Just ask a simple question: Why do you oppose polygamy and incest? After all, the Bible is in favor of both of them.

First of all, Jesus didn't say that "Marriage is between one man and one woman." What he said was "at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female... For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

So, first, he wasn't defining marriage, he was justifying not getting divorced. And it's really rude to take your Lord and Savior out of context like that. Especially since you don't then go on one more verse to where He explains, "you shouldn't get divorced, you shouldn't get married,l and you shouldn't have sex at all." (Matthew 19:8-12)

It was the Apostle Paul who later added, "Well, if you can't keep your pants on, you should marry somebody." (1 Corinthians 7:8-9) And he never even met Jesus, so why are you taking his word?

The Bible can't even figure out what incest is. The definition comes from three different places in the Old Testament: Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, and scattered around Deuteronomy. They're all very specifically written for men (remember, women are property), and the three sources don't even agree.

Best example: nowhere in the Bible does it say you can't have sex with your daughter. Both chapters of Leviticus tell you that your stepdaughter and your daughter-in-law are off-limits, but it's apparently open season on your own girlspawn.

(Also completely available as partners: all your cousins, your step-sister, your niece, any aunt on your mother's side, and Grandma.)

This biblical confusion about incest is emphasized with the fact that Lot, the only good man in Sodom or Gommorah, had drunken sex with both his daughters and conceived two sons: his son through his older daughter founded the Kingdom of Moab, and the one through his baby girl founded the Kingdom of Ammon. (Genesis 19:30-38)

More than that, though, Abraham, the holiest man in the Bible, is considered the father of all Christendom (and all the Jews, and Mohammed); he married his half-sister on his father's side. (Genesis 20:12) His son Isaac married his cousin Rebekah (Genesis 24:15). And both of the sons of Isaac married their cousins (Genesis 28:9, Genesis 29)

I'm not entirely clear what this says about the "Children of Abraham."

And most people already know that the Bible is full of examples of polygamy. Many, if not most, of the major prophets of God had two or more wives - Abraham and Jacob (obviously), Gideon (the guy who put all the Bibles in the hotel rooms), King David and the wisest of all men, King Solomon, are all fine examples.

And if anybody tries to claim that the Old Testament doesn't matter any more, thanks to Jesus? Well, you've just hit the jackpot.

First of all, Jesus said, over and over, that the Old Testament was still important, still valid, and, indeed, "all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3:16; also see Matthew 5:18-19, Luke 16:17, and Matthew 5:17, among many other places)

On top of which, and possibly more important, if the words of the Old Testament don't matter, then why is it they're opposed to homosexuals again?

Religion is fun.

Jesus needs jets

Coming soon, to an in-box near you:

"The Department of Defense denied a request for a military flyover at the 2009 'God and Country' rally. Obama denied a military flyover at the annual "God and Country" rally in Idaho, where new military recruits were inducted and all military were honored. This is the first time in 42 years that there has not been a military flyover in formation, and organizers were stunned that Obama refused to allow this. . . . . it was because of the event's "Christian nature." This is beyond unbelievable action by the Commander in Chief and President, and Americans need to know about it!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes, stunning - they were stunned, I tell you -- stunningly unaware that in November of 2001 the Department of Defense under George W. Bush decided to prohibit the Military's support of events that

"provide a selective benefit to any individual, group or organization, including events with religious themes."

Yes, America's memory is short and in only a year, the deeds of Bush can be attributed to his successor with impunity - and with outrage. Whether or not the event "honors the military" or was in previous years primarily for that purpose, it's organizers stated purpose for 2009 was that

"Our mission is primarily about spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ."

According to Snopes.com, the Treasure Valley God & Country Festival; "unabashedly a Christian event" has four steps to witnessing about Jesus Christ (i.e., bless people, fellowship with them, meet their needs, present the Truth), and say of the rally's program of events: "At the end of the evening, we move to step four, presenting the Truth. Each year, we ensure that the message of the Gospel is presented, and information is provided for those who have heard and want to know more about Jesus Christ."

That's all well and good, but not when it's done with taxpayer money; not when it requires the US government to spend a great deal of money proselytizing for any religious group, using the prestige of the US military to raise money for churches and doubly so in times when the public wants to justify every unnecessary expenditure. In a nation of churchgoers, government financing of revival meetings is more than just unnecessary, it's illegal.

Of course lying to the public to make it seem like the President "disrespects the troops" because of a decision made in accordance with the US constitution, almost a decade ago and under the previous and Republican administration , is in fact necessary to people who write these electronic cruise missiles. Necessary because they have nothing to offer but lies and no hope of being relevant without stirring up anti-American hysteria. Necessary because they need power the way a vampire needs blood and they'll do or say anything to get it including ripping the throat out of America. They need hysterical people and what better way to get them into the fold but to insinuate that Obama hates their religion?

To a rational person the unprecedented tsunami of false witness from the radical right would wash away any pretense to being Christian or to be of any other reputable religion for that matter, but that's where the hysterical irrationality, the gullibility and yes, the intellectual laziness of America comes in and any chance for a free and prosperous future goes out.