The Latest Stupidity: Endangered Christmas

The efforts by the nutso element of the right wing to insist that God and Christ are under attack is almost laughable. Their rationale seems to be that if you're a Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist or agnostic and you're not being force-fed "Jesus is the reason for the season" non-stop, then secular pagans are trying to kill Christ a second time.

Bah humbug. This is even more laughable than "the media is biased toward the left."

My family was among the first to arrive in America - both from my Native American side and my Mayflower side. The English side came here because of religious intolerance. So are we really going to make America into the land of religious intolerance by forcing every non-Christian to observe our holidays?

This holiday has featured lawyers paid for by wingnuts to defend kids' rights to print Jesus messages on candy canes distributed to classmates, to "I believe in Jesus" cakes being brought to nursery schools. They went after Macy's for having the audacity to say "happy holidays" this year rather than Merry Christmas. And the only reason the folks who went after Target for banning Salvation Army donation pots is that they like the fact that the Salvation Army discriminates against gays. Trust me - the people who targeted Target a) don't shop there and b) probably aren't the types to donate anyway. If the Salvation Army advocated abortions, these same folks would be screaming to ban SA from bell ringing.

Are we as Christians really so insecure about our beliefs that we behave as if they only have validity if we force everyone else to convert? Go back and look at the Bible. Nowhere in there does it say that Jesus wants you to bring the non-believers to him broken and bloody from the bricks you hurl at their heads.

Note to the nutwing: Christianity isn't synonymous (I know, it's a big word: use a dictionary) with hypocrisy and hatred. So stop trying to reduce it to such.

Yeah, the President Was Real Broken Up

Remember on Tuesday when the president took a few seconds out of his busy vacation schedule to offer condolences for the dead troops? If my chronology is right, this is a photo taken of him right after that.



Yeah, he looks really broken up - sort of a Texas member of the Soprano family. Bet the boots or coat cost more than the $12K death benefit paid to each military family.

All hat, no cattle (or soul) indeed.

The Iraq Situation

People won't like me saying this, but it made me sick when Bush stopped on his way to a two-plus week vacation to say he was sorry about the deaths in Iraq today, but that Rummy's doing a great job.

I'm also sick to death of hearing about 40, 60, 80, 100+ Iraqi civilians killed (the U.S. keeps no official count) while the only deaths that bother us are Americans. We're an invading, occupying force in their country trying to push through elections to seat who we want there - the U.S. government couldn't care diddly squat about Mom and Pop Baghdad (or their little kids). Iraq's just part of our empire building.

Our military deaths are tragic, no doubt, but ALL lives there matter.

Congratulations to all of you nitwits who re-elected George Bush and company. You must be very proud of yourselves right now. I hope you'll be the first to encourage your kids to give their lives for Iraqi oil. God knows Bush is encouraging the drunken twins to do so.

Gee, We Needed a Laci Peterson Fill-in

With the world - er... that part of it who thinks life is more interesting when a woman has been murdered and there's a big media response - grieving the end of the Scott Peterson trial, how lucky (ugh) we are that we now have this terrible Missouri case where one woman ripped a fetus from another woman so she could claim the baby was hers.

This just sounds like another really sad case all around, and I can't quite fathom why we're seeing hours of coverage of this around the dial.

Couldn't we pay attention to real stuff for awhile? It's even more horrific and becoming educated about it might mean we wouldn't be condemned to repeat some of this outrageous conduct again.

Mr. Popularity

CNN's running a poll asking if people agree with the choice of Mr. Bush as Time's "Man of the Year". Of about 150,000 respondents already, only 34% say yes. Hmmm.

In the "Andy, I'm Not Sure How This Helps" Department

From WCAX:

WASHINGTON White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card says investigators knew about many of the background issues that ultimately sank the nomination of Bernard Kerik to be secretary of Homeland Security.

However, Card did not say whether a decision was made to overlook Kerik's shortcomings in order to move his nomination along. Card told A-B-C's "This Week" that "it was Bernie Kerik's decision not to go forward."

Card did acknowledge that "many of the questions that have been raised in the media were well understood by the White House when they considered Bernie Kerik."

Card defended the administration's background-checking system. He said "the process of vetting in the White House is not to telegraph to lots of people what your intentions are."

So in other words, his mob connections, indiscretions, facts that he couldn't live by the same laws he was applying to others, and assorted other issues did not matter. Good grief!

So Bush does consider homeland security a joke. A very expensive one on us, too.

Shooting Them for No Particular Reason

Xan at Corrente also offers something pretty disturbing on a number of levels:

People do weird things when they're bored and lonely...but they do really awful things when they're scared:

(via Raleigh-Durham NC News & Observer)

A North Carolina National Guard member thought to be the first U.S. soldier convicted of murdering an Iraqi said he "snapped" and shot the 17-year-old boy after they had consensual sex, according to court-martial records released this week.

Pvt. Federico Daniel Merida, 21, of Biscoe, a tiny town south of Asheboro, pleaded guilty during a court-martial in Iraq to shooting the Iraqi national guard private, whose name the Army withheld. The Los Angeles Times reported shortly after the court-martial that the victim's name was Falah Zaggam

According to the records, Zaggam and Merida were on guard duty May 11 in a tower on the perimeter of an Army camp near Tikrit in northern Iraq. About 10:30 p.m., Merida shot Zaggam repeatedly with his M-4 carbine.

The "gay panic" motive was the third that Merida offered. He first told investigators that Zaggam demanded money at gunpoint. Later, he said he killed Zaggam because the boy forced him to have sex.