Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Are People Coming to Their Senses?

Salon.com News | Survival of the unfittest: Despite Jones’ ruling, the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based engine of the I.D. movement, is claiming victory. “Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world,” says John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, in a press release. “Americans don’t like to be told there is some idea that they aren’t permitted to learn about. Banning intelligent design in Dover will likely only fan interest in the theory.”

Another world? Perhaps — the real world, not the strange La-La Land in which people like John West live.

Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I get the feeling that in the past 6 months or so people have begun coming to their senses about a lot of the goofy shit that’s been going on in this country. More and more people are starting to realize that the Iraq war is wrong. More and more people are starting to see that Bush is an asshole and his minions are dangerously power-hungry connivers. (Amusing side note: I was just checking the spelling of “connive” in my Mac “dashboard” dictionary and their usage example is “The government had connived with security forces to allow murder.” Heh… maybe when the next edition comes out they’ll include a picture of Alberto Gonzales as an illustration for the word “connive”.) Anyway, more and more people likewise seem to be realizing that “Intelligent Design” is nonsense.

Like I said — maybe I’m just being overly optimistic, but it seems like the pendulum is starting to swing from the far right of political and religious kookdom back towards the middle. You know, ‘the middle’?, where the normal people live?

Time will tell, I guess.

Bush Almost Admits A Mistake

Achenblog: Daily Humor and Observations from Joel Achenbach
But still, Bush was acknowledging something that gave him no pleasure. I was half-expecting that he’d follow this with the sentence, “Therefore I have decided to resign my office at noon tomorrow.”

Heh… if only.

The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach has collected some quotes about Bush’s Sunday speech from regular participants on his blog. It appears to be unanimous: Bush is an asshole and everyone knows it.

Bush Toadies Told Him It Was Okaaaaay to Spy on Citizens

White House Briefing — News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration
Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government.

Indeed, a list that glaringly omitted the legislative and judicial branches. I guess George was absent from junior high school civics class on the day the teacher talked about “separation of powers” and “checks and balances”.

Ah… I love the smell of presidential ego in the morning. It smells like… impeachment.

Alberto Gonzales is Double-Plus Good!

Gonzales Defends Eavesdropping Program
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this morning defended the administration’s domestic eavesdropping operation, saying it derived its legality from the congressional resolution permitting the use of force to fight terrorism as well as from the “inherent powers” of the president as commander-in-chief.

Sometimes the title of a post really says is all, no?

Bush is… [cough, cough]…RIGHT About Illegal Immigrants

House Votes to Toughen Laws on Immigration
The House last night passed tough immigration legislation to build vast border fences, force employers to verify the legality of their workers and tighten security on the nation’s frontier, but it rebuffed President Bush’s entreaties to include avenues for foreign workers to gain legal employment.

Whoa…. I feel all dizzy and disoriented! I feel…strange!!! Which direction is “up”?

This is a day to mark on your calendars: I find myself in the weird position of agreeing with George W. Bush!

A lot of citizens are entertaining the exceptionally stupid idea that cleaning up after Americans — washing our dishes, digging our ditches, scraping up our garbage — is such great work that people would leave idyllic lives in their native countries just for the opportunity to do it!

Believe me folks, we’re not that wonderful.

The people who come here illegally to take these jobs only do it because they’re desperate to make a better life for themselves. There needs to be a way for illegal immigrants to get legal if they can show that they have regular employment and are able to support themselves.

Mark my words: This whole hard-line approach to illegal immigrants is going to backfire BIG time.

When Religious Kooks Compute…

…they come up with ideas like this one. The Rapture Letters site allows you to submit names and email addresses for all your sinful friends and relatives who will be left behind when The Rapture occurs. Since you’ll have been whisked off to heaven, you won’t have the opportunity to explain what happened. The “Rapture Letter” does the job for you.

Dear Friend;

This message has been sent to you by a friend or a relative who has recently disappeared along with millions and millions of people around the world.

The reason they chose to send you this letter is because they cared about you and would like you to know the truth about where they went.

This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been taken up to heaven….

The Daily Ray of Hope

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child–our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh
Miracle of Mindfulness

The Sierra Club will send you an email every day with a little reminder of why there’s still reason to be hopeful about the future of our planet. Just click on the words “Sierra Club” above to sign up.

Robert Fisk and The Great War for Civilisation

Salon.com Books | Blood and betrayal
In the face of America’s righteous rage, Fisk was one of the few commentators who dared to posit that America’s policies had something to do with the attacks. And he did so with brutal honesty. “There will be those swift to condemn any suggestion that we should look for real historical reasons for an act of violence on this world-war scale,” Fisk wrote — and he didn’t know the half of it. He was immediately savaged. Critics called him an appeaser, a traitor, an American-hater, an ally of Saddam, an enemy of Israel, an anti-Semite.

Now this is the kind of story that makes salon.com still worth checking out every morning. Gary Kamiya has written a fascinating report on English journalist Robert Fisk’s new book, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. It’s well worth sitting through salon.com’s ad to read this 6-page article. It’s more than just a review of the book — it’s a mini lesson in the history of the Middle East, too.

Bush Backpedals on Torture Ban in Pathetic Attempt to Salvage Reputation

White House, McCain Agree on Torture Ban
The vote sent a clear signal to the Bush administration that both chambers of Congress support the anti-torture legislation and want the government to adopt guidelines that aim to prevent damage to the U.S. image abroad. The White House had been aggressively pushing to create exceptions for CIA operatives and to water down McCain’s language to keep it from limiting interrogators’ options. But the administration and House Republican leaders lost some leverage yesterday.

All this is really great, but…. do YOU trust the Bush administration?

Right. Me neither.

I suppose, if this all gets written into law before Bush is out of office, and if the good guys can ever catch any of the bad guys actually doing some torturing, and if the decision to torture can ever be traced back up the line to Bush, it could be enough to impeach him!

Ah… that’s a happy thought!

Of course, I’d rather that no one be tortured at all — even if it means Bush has to finish out his term.

Episcopalian Music

I love Episcopalian churches. It’s not because of any particular feature in their theology, though I’m sure their theology is just fine. No, it’s because — in my experience — the Episcopalians really enjoy fine music during their services and they’re willing to pay musicians to play! I’ve played at a fair number of churches in the past couple of years so I’ve got some experience to back this up.

There’s a “movement” afoot in many of the mainstream Christian churches these days. They’re ditching their old traditional hymns and going for something called “praise music”. Now, it’s true that a lot of the traditional hymns are dirge-like and have lyrics that people these days can’t relate to very easily. The “praise music” I’ve heard, though, is really pretty awful. It’s insipid. The tunes are dull and the lyrics are repetitive and simplistic. I really dislike this kind of religious music. It’s… mindless. Even before “praise music” reared its ugly head, many churches had begun using crazy “new settings” of their old liturgical hymns. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, for example, has these crazy newer hymns that are almost un-singable. The tunes go all over the place. They don’t make sense. It’s like the composers just drew intervals and rhythms out of a hat and pasted them on the page. Like there was no plan. Frankly, I think this sort of “music” really detracts from the worship experience.

Not so with the Episcopalian services I’ve attended. The Episcopalians recognize the value of good music. Nine times out of ten, if you get a call for a good-paying church gig with really decent music, it’s an Episcopalian on the other end of the line.

God bless the Episcopalians!