In Defense of Biblical Marriage

The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to: "Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles. With any forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that God's Word and His standards will be honored by our government."

Any good religious person believes prayer should be balanced by action. So here, in support of the Prayer Team's admirable goals, is a proposed Constitutional Amendment codifying marriage entirely on biblical principles:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5.)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10) *

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

So there you have it. Go ye forth and sin no more.

Roe vs. The Mount Rushmore State

More from the Interfaith Alliance:

Supreme Court Says Church Can Use Hallucinogenic Tea
"The U.S. Supreme Court, saying law enforcement goals in some cases must yield to religious rights, ruled that the Bush administration can't block a New Mexico church from using a hallucinogenic tea.

In a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court said the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects the church, a 130-member branch of a Brazilian denomination. The justices upheld a preliminary injunction barring federal prosecution of church leaders. Roberts, ruling in his first religious-freedom case, rejected the Bush administration's contention that only a categorical ban on the substance would adequately prevent abuse and diversion to non-religious use." - (Bloomberg, "U.S. Supreme Court Says Church Can Use Hallucinogen," 02-21-06)

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In short, Roberts did what any good conservative justice would do. Congress had enacted a law clearly addressing cases like this (passed, ironically for right wing "religious freedom" types under a Democrat-led federal government) and Roberts applied it. What the Bushites were calling for was, gasp!, "legislating from the bench", asking the court to strike it down because it was a bad law, not a -valid- law.

Which brings us to South Dakota, which is preparing to directly challenge Roe v. Wadeenactingtign a clear ban on abortion.

Courts are conservative by nature. The 1973 Roe decision wasn't pulled out from deep inside the justices' nether regions. It came after eight years of litigation beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut, where the court overturned a state ban on married couples buying contraceptives. Brown vs. Board of Education came after twenty years of inspired NAACP-led litigation over the question.

Courts don't move fast. They base their holdings by extrapolating from prior holdings. In Roe it was extrapolating that if the state didn't have a constitutional power to tell folks when to use contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancy it logically didn't enjoy any power to tell women to have a child they don't want either. Becoming a parent is a private matter and should generally stay that way. But it took eight years for the court to move down that road, as the principle was extended through various cases on the issue.

Reproductive choice opponents haven't done any of this ground work. The best so far is a challenge to partial birth abortions, which arguably already sits within the time frame allowed under Roe to ban or regulate, depending on the specific facts of the law. I don't think, for now, the high court is going to grab this one case and run with it. It'll probably allow the lower courts to throw it out and move on, for now.

The irony is that abortions are actually declining, for good reasons and bad. The bad is that providers have been run out of a lot of towns. The good is that there's simply more access to birth control, preventing unwanted pregnancies. The ironic is that the one group where rates are going up are welfare-to-work mommas, who now have the same economic incentive as more educated have had over the last three decades to decide when to become a parent. Conservatives didn't think of that when they decided to ride the deadbeat mommas back into the workforce. Simple put, it's actually less of an issue now, and, like public opinion, the court might take that into account too.

So, South Dakota's exercise will be fun, but futile. For now. If Bush gets one more shot at the bench, then I'll start to worry.

Blowback

From the Friday, Feb 17, 2006, Interfaith Alliance newsletter:

Evangelist Travels US Aggressively Teaching Views Of Creationism
“Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies. "Boys and girls," Ham said.

If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"…

A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn't engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views — aggressively.” (LA Times, “Their Own Version of a Big Bang,” 02-11-06)

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I guess this logic applies to Christian ministers as well. When Mr. Ham tells someone about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, he should be asked, with confidence, "Excuse me, were you there? Can you remember that ...?"

Condi for President

I think that Condoleezza Rice has a great shot at becoming the next President of the United States.

She offers everything the Republicans need.

She’s attractive for a politician. Americans like pretty people.

She apparently has no ideas of her own. At no time during her time at Bush’s side has she ever said anything which resembles an original thought. Nor are there any initiatives or policy directives which appear to have any connection to her.

She's a complete mouthpiece for the GOP braintrust who really run the administration.

She’s “religious”, which will appease the Socialist Right, but she doesn’t preach it, which will appeal to the moderates.

Every statement seems calculated not to offend. She’s someone you wouldn’t mind living next door, and you’d probably make a point never to say anything stronger than “gosh darn” in her company.

As she’s been a foreign policy apparatchik all her life, she can’t get tagged with any problematic domestic policy concerns at all. She's never said a thing. In short, she can’t come off as a classic political Negro who wants to take white peoples’ money and give it to other Negroes.

She’s advocated strong policies favoring killing foreigners. This is very important for a member of an outside caste. History shows that "out" castes generally validate themselves to the inside caste by being good at killing the "in" caste’s enemies. This is why I’ve long felt that the first black president would be a former general. I thought it would be Colin Powell. Condi’s credentials are close enough.

She’s offers the voting public something new, a ‘difference’ as a black woman while still ‘staying the course’ with the ongoing disaster.

Political cartoonists will love her. They will vote for her en masse as a full employment measure.
Rice will be the first non-married president in quite some time. Gossip columnists looking to speculate about her love life will vote for her en masse solely as a full employment measure.

Aryan Nations leaders will see her as proof of the Black-Zionist government conspiracy against all they stand for and will vote for her en masse as a full employment measure.

Unless John Edwards gets a little more fire in the belly, there’s no one on the Democratic side who can counter her edge. Hillary Clinton is the presumed frontrunner, but she’s not providing enough thunder from the left to satisfy the party’s activist wing, who’ll probably run someone against her, and then leave it up to MoveOn.org and the rest of the non-candidate liberal political wing to run the anti-Condi effort. The short primary season favors Clinton, as Dean discovered against Kerry, but the field could be remarkably open in a non-incumbent year.

Joe Biden is also running for the Democratic nomination. Six people will care.

John McCain will run for the Republican nomination. More Democrats who respect his principled stands on some key issues despite his appalling overall voting record will care than Republicans.

If Rice runs or wins, then Barak Obama will run in ’12 to maintain cosmic balance.

Me, I’m spending the time organizing the "Free Ecotopia Movement" to say goodbye to all this foolishness. For anyone else interested, the steering committee next meets Tuesday down at the Harmonic Convergence coffee house. Bring a friend and you get a free caramel mocha latte.

Field of Schemes

There’s just something about sports stadiums and arenas which turn ordinarily sensible public officials' brains into goo.

Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s some of these people actually said that “Without the Giants, San Francisco won’t be a ‘major league’ city.” I guess the stunning scenery, the fantastic weather, the high culture, the cable cars and the history means nothing without a major league pitchers mound right smack dab in the middle of it.

I had a high school teacher in San Francisco who didn’t mind having taxpayers build stadiums. As he was a card carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, this was kind of surprising.

Stadiums are public places where people come together for relaxation and community, he said. That’s a good public purpose which even a lukewarm pinko like he could support. He just had one caveat.

If everyone’s taxes are paying for it, he said, every seat should be the same price because everyone should enjoy the same right to a seat as they generally would in any public space. You don’t set rates for Golden Gate Park, he said, holding the prettier parts for those willing or able to pay more. The maintenance and operations come out of everyone’s pocketbook, so everyone has the same right to access. The only qualification is who shows up early enough to get the best seat on the grass at the Park. Public stadiums should operate the same way.

It’s an interesting idea. I’ve carried it with me through years of debates over public stadium finance in San Francisco (for the Giants); Oakland (for the Raiders) and now here in Sacramento, where the NBA Kings are insisting that the city build them a new arena.

The proudest card carrying liberal can get swept up in all the supposed civic virtues of a publicly funded place for millionaire athletes and their owners to make even more millions.

In 1989 San Francisco's mayor was Art Agnos, a former social worker whose claim to infamy lay in part in allowing a smelly homeless encampment to take over Civic Center. He put time and energy into a proposal for a ballpark at the current site. He lost, and paid for it when the local left turned against him at the next election (splitting the vote and bringing in a former police chief to replace him.)

Oakland has almost no private tax base outside of the people who live there. It’s the core part of the House district of Barbara Lee, the lone persistent voice against giving George Bush carte blanche to start wars. It’s Berkeley with a ‘hood. Yet they spent millions in tax dollars to build swanky suites at the Oakland Coliseum (which have remained generally unfilled) to bring the Raiders back to Oakland from L.A. The city and county promised to sell tickets and corporate suites for Al Davis, so the team owner wouldn’t have to dirty his hands with trying to earn his own living. This was the second and successful attempt to bribe Davis back from Los Angeles. The first try, in 1990, sank when it was revealed that the city and county promised to buy unsold seats to guarantee Davis a sellout every game.

Sacramento mayor Heather Fargo is a nice, sensible, progressive mayor. She represented my district before becoming mayor. She has good ideas about managing growth, preschool and efficient government. But she’s nuts about spending $400 million on a new arena for the Kings. Polls and other devices find little support for the idea. She had to pull an advisory vote on one proposal after it became clear that it was dead in the Sacramento River. But she persists, up to engineering the premature retirement of the city manager who opposed it.

They say it sells the city.

“The Raiders sell Oakland.” Yeah, unfortunately, they do. When folks see the Hell’s Angels-in-Darth Vader guys beating the crap out of each other in the seats and the parking lot, they go, “yeah, that’s Oakland.” One would imagine a good public relations firm could do much better for far less.

Same in Sacramento, which suffers under a poor self-image of being the “cowtown” of Northern California cities. Yep. Being the capital of one of the largest states and, effectively, nation of the world is nothing but a pile of oats and alfalfa without an NBA team.

These stadiums and arenas are not civic investments. Study after study finds this that they don’t add a dime to the tax base. The brilliant Field of Schemes website provides in-depth research and review on all this. Yet we’re in a Renaissance-style era of public stadium and arena construction.

And I’m part of the problem. Despite everything I’ve written above, if my favorite baseball team threatened to pack up and leave because it wanted a new place to play, I’d be the first to the street corner lying my tail off to get voters to give ‘em one. (I’m saved regarding the Kings in that I’m not much of an NBA fan.) There’s something about the crisp green grass, cold beer and the crack of the bat that I just can’t resist. I'd beg, borrow and steal to keep them around.

That's the great thing about obsession. It doesn't have to be logical and rarely is. And you just don't care.

Spring training has begun, and the silliness starts once again, for another year. I can’t wait. Play ball!!

Chickenhawk

From elsewhere in cyberspace ...

The administration has decided that there is too much political wrangling going on in Washington and is beginning a program to smooth over relationships. In the spirit of this new "kindler and gentler" political atmosphere, Vice President Cheney has invited Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to a quail hunting vacation in Texas next weekend.

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You also have to wonder how much more responsible noted "Chickenhawk" Cheney would be with a gun if he'd served in the military and actually learned how to handle one.

For some nasty but enlightening and supremely relevant fun, go here to the "Chickenhawk Database."

The 23rd Qualm

The 23rd Qualm
(Reportedly written by a retired Methodist minister. )

Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.
He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.
He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.
He restoreth my fears.
He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution and war,
I will find no exit, for thou art in office.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discomfort me.
Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.
Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.
My health insurance runneth out.
Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.

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The Jehovah’s Witnesses recently came knocking. I saw them coming down the street earlier so I just laid low and didn’t answer the bell this time.

There have been times, though, when I've opened the door. It's great fun.

One of the more interesting human failings is the assumption that others want and fear what you want and fear, and the consequent tendency to erroneosly base human relations or even just a sales pitch on this presumption. Jehovah’s Witnesses are as human as the rest of us, and I find myself in enjoyable conversations like:

JW: What would you say if you stood in judgment before your Creator today ?

Me: I’d say leave me alone and let me die in peace.

JW: But He offers you Eternal Life if you believe in Him (as we say you should.)

Me: But I don’t wanna live forever.

JW: What? What do you mean?

Me: I don’t want to live forever. I’m happy living a meaningful life being nice to kids, effecting a little change to leave the world a little better off than when I got here and see a few ballgames. Then, when I’m done, I’m done.

JW: But you can live in Paradise!!

Me: I lived in San Francisco for years and still go to ballgames at the cool park there. That’s close enough for me. And then I'll die and return to the Earth, like a good member of the natural world.

JW: But the world is such a horrible place!

Me: No it's not.

JW: Yes it is.

Me: No it's not.

JW: Yes it is. How can you say it's not? Look at all the evil things we see on the news.

Me: Of course we do. It ain't news if the plane takes off and lands safely, only if it crashes.

JW: But there's evil in the world!!

Me: Yep, and goodness too. There are volunteer firefighters, Boy Scouts who help little old ladies cross the street and parents who turn off the teevee to read to their kids. There's plenty of good in the world, which is why I like it.

As a matter of fact, the presence of evil makes you appreciate the good even more.

JW: But there's a new world coming!!

Me: What's wrong with this world? Oh, we've covered that ...

JW: It's a -better- world!

Me: The Republicans are going to admit their guilt in raising deficits, starting wars and turning the public treasury over to the corporations?

JW: Oh, but that doesn't matter!

Me: To those of us in the here and now it does. Besides, that's the "new world" I want to live in. What's the point of getting a "new world" if doesn't give me what I want? For that I could just move to Alabama.

I then take "The Watchtower" and thank them for their interest. They're persistent, though. They'll ask if they can come by and try again. I have to respect that dedication to closing the sale.

You see, to me, if there is an afterlife which rewards or punishes for your deeds in this life, it has to be uniquely tailored to make any sense. One person's Heaven could easily be another person's Hell. My idea of Heaven is sitting in a neverending baseball game between the Giants and Dodgers with the Giants absolutely killing the Boys in Blue. Sitting next to me is a Dodgers fan, suffering in endless agony and torment for his sins.

Outside of that, my goal at the end of life is to have lots of cool people come to my funeral and say some nice things about me. If I get that, then it was all worth it.

Hamas

Back in college, I wrote a paper on the success of the Italian Communist Party in the mid-'80s,, then one of the largest democratic Communist parties in Western Europe. They were uncorrupt, hard-working and responsible for managing northern Italy's largest and best-run cities. Yet they couldn't achieve national power.

The answer to an Italian was simple. Ask why they voted to have the Commies run Rome, Milan and cities in between and they'd say because the Commies were clean, hard-working and good managers. The streets were clean, crime dealt with and the streetcars ran on time. Then why didn't you elect them to national office?

"Good God, man, these folks are -Communists-!!"

I wonder how applicable this will be in the new Arab Palestine, where Hamas now has to make the sewers work and the buses run on time.

Hamas's success shouldn't be much of a surprise. They were the only real organized opposition to Fatah, a decidedly non-democratic collection of corrupt thugs and plug uglies not too far from the better-dressed but just as smelly bunch the Communists replaced in Italy's municipal circles. You didn't like Fatah, where was there to go?

The scariest yet most intriguing part is how Hamas, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has best learned the science of running and winning campaigns. They had James Carville-style political war rooms, legions of grassroots campaigners, many of them women, armed with clipboards telling them who was most likely to vote for Hamas and whether they'd gotten to the polls yet.

I've run local campaigns, I know the difference a smart ground pounding effort can make. For one, it makes you look serious about governing. If they're this well organized, the casual voter thinks, they'll probably pay attention to details when they're in office.

This is the real challenge to "spreading democracy." It's not just about elections. It's about knowing how to work within an open electoral system, mobilizing voters, raising money and forming coalitions. The dead wood authoritarians we're trying to reform in the Arab Middle East, like Fatah and Egypt's Mubarak, have no background and no history of this. You hold an election, you pronounce yourself a winner and you go home. Polling, voter tracking, GOTV? Huh?

Americans don't see this challenge because this country never really had it. In 1770 The American colonies were already freer than Britain in many ways. Colonial legislatures were smaller and more democratically responsive than Parliament. There were already the roots of a democratic political culture when the Constitution set up the republic we know today. Egypt doesn't have that.

We need to export more than just elections. Heck, a lot of these countries have been holding elections which mean nothing for years. We need to send them our pollsters, our campaign hacks and our attack ad wizards. We need to teach the non-Islamic side how to fight, and win, a legitimate democratic campaign.

Conventional wisdom holds that Hamas and groups like it will likely moderate their stance and become responsible once they have to sweep the streets. Could be. But back in the 1930's a certain German political party with a similar missionary zeal successfully learned and applied the fine arts of campaigning to win election and promptly put a stop to any future elections once they got in. And that was just for starters.

If we don't start exporting the high art of calling people at the dinner hour to get out an vote, we might not be seeing too many more open elections in the future around the Middle East either.

Emotional Distress

Found on the news wires ...

Finally, reports Court TV , an Alabama man is suing an AOL chat-room pal for inflicting "severe emotional distress and physical injury that is of a nature no reasonable man could be expected to endure it."

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Couldn't he just sign off?

Super Bowl XL

Yeah, I was one of the millions and millions of people glued to my set for the Super Bowl. And why not? It’s been a month since the holidays ended. A long, cold, dark month which produces equally dark nights of the soul, where spring is just a rumor and a soul will do just about anything to reach out, even root for football teams he couldn’t care less about two weeks earlier.

Actually, it was a very pleasant afternoon in the low ‘60s at my house, and I watched the game with three generations playing around me. But the justification still stands. Super Bowl has become a national ritual because it’s played when most of us just need something to do.

It was a good game. It wasn’t high scoring but it was at issue for most of the sixty minutes. There were a couple of dramatic turnarounds, and a few great plays. Best of all, most of what little star work there was performed by second-tier names. That’s always fun, to see some guy who will probably fade off the depth chart in a year or so have a day in the sun. Even when the game’s indoors.

That said, a few random shots:

It’s time we put the great Commercial Watch to rest. It’s gotten lame, lamer and this year was the lamest of all. And it’s only going to get worse, because football has decided that everything has to be clean, wholesome and inoffensive, which means dull. Humor and edge has to be at someone’s expense. When the little old lady slips on the banana peel it’s funny for everyone but the little old lady, but it’s still funny. When the little old lady can’t slip, there’s no funny, no edge.

The funniest ad was the guy tackling the babe who said, “I’m open!” during the pickup football game and I’ve read some complaints about that. Let’s just have Bambi sell the beer and be done with it. I formally declare Commercial Watch dead and gone.

No one loses anymore, they wuz robbed. The Seahawks whine that a few calls didn’t go their way. Big deal. First, most of the calls could have gone either way. That’s life. That’s the difference between A minus and B plus in your term paper, depending on the teacher. You deal with it. What you learn is that if you put down a slam-dunk A plus you don’t have to worry about it. The Seahawks played a C plus. Sit down, have a latte and relax for next year. When all is said and done, most guys in the NFL still earn more in one year than most other guys will make five or ten, or more.

On this point, Joe Montana was dead wrong to demand money for a gathering of Super Bowl MVP’s, then claim he had to see his son’s basketball game over the weekend. Yeah. You ain’t got enough money, so you had to ask for it, and then stiffed the event which helped make you a (rich) household name in the first place because you might miss one of umpteen kids’ games. Why is your son living large again? Oh, because you were a famous football player who won what big game?

Joe was still a great QB but his image as a standup guy has fallen off my chart as of now.

The game drew great ratings because the Steelers are a storied franchise. Several years ago the network pimps were moaning that New England vs. Carolina was a ratings dud, because New England’s baseball and hockey land and most folks couldn’t find “Carolina” on a map.

So let’s end this charade and declare that only cool and highly marketable teams can play in the Super Bowl. After the conference final, the network which airs the game will be allowed to choose whether or not it thinks it’ll make enough money off the teams still standing. If not, they get a nice trophy and the network gets to pick two names of cooler teams out of a hat and make up some reason and trophy for them to play and win. No more whining up in corporate HQ about having to pimp the “wrong” matchup.

(This isn’t restricted to football. In 1997 NBC’s chief of marketing publicly hoped for a four game sweep in a Cleveland-Miami World Series. The Series came down to the last innings of the seventh game, one of the most exciting Series in recent years.)

The best thing about the Super Bowl is that the NFL season’s been stretched into early February. This means that I only have to endure two weeks or so between the last snap of pro football and the opening of the gates at baseball’ spring training. In between, it’s the NBA long pre-tournament exhibition season (a.k.a. “the season”, but when 16 of 29 teams make the postseason tournament, you’re really just playing for the fun of it) and pro hockey, Russia and Canada’s answer to Arena Football. Fun for a couple of guys who don’t date much, but nothing the rest of us can really take seriously.

(To show how confused pro hockey is, a “minor” league team, the Stockton Thunder, has opened up about an hour south of me. It plays in the “East Coast” Hockey League. Heck, even the Triple A Pacific Coast baseball league knows to stop at the Mississippi River.)

Still, overall, it’s great fun. I look forward to next year’s game between the 49ers and Raiders. Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

The New (Old) Right

On February 1, Useless Eaters said...
"Socialist Right"?

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Yep, the “Socialist Right”. The title fits, and any resemblance to the name of any other current or past group is intentional.

What’s frightening and too familiar about the Socialist Right and similarly named groups out of recent history is how they can manage to make themselves victims of a vicious conspiracy no matter how much political power they actually hold. They need an unseen enemy to justify the fact that some people will still, amazingly, publicly disagree with them. So they’ve got the gay liberal education establishment and media. Progressives holler at conservative politicians and corporate swindlers. These guys go after “people next door”, teachers, librarians, doctors, students, folks who are frightening because they could be in your town, on your block, TALKING TO YOUR CHILDREN!! AHHHHHHH!!

What makes ‘em good “Socialists” is that, unlike real conservatives, they want the state to do their dirty work in forcing everyone to live, breathe, think and do the nasty the way they do. Of course they hate the courts. The courts’ primary job in a democracy is to protect the individual from collective coercion, the “tyranny of the majority’ as the man said. Or as the more contemporary philosopher Larry Flynt said, “You can’t have four wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.”

The Socialist Right would say, “Why not?” Why should we tolerate people who don’t go to church or make love with the lights on if we don’t want to? Socialism worries about stuff like this. Socialist states spent just as much time trying to control how people felt, thought and acted as the Nazis did, maybe more so because they were trying to build the New Man. Well, the fundies are out to build the New Biblethumping Man, using the same time honored approach of state power to bully individual compliance to a single collective vision.

Real conservatives don’t do this. Heck, George Will is on a one-man crusade to save “true” conservatism from this kind of extension of sort of state power. He’s been real fun to read lately, sort of the conservative version of the disenchanted hippie. But just as conservatives in a certain well-ordered European nation couldn’t break with their native Socialist Rightists, I see it as amusing but not politically significant.

Me, I’d like to form the Blue State Free Militia for the inevitable showdown. But my wife won’t let me buy a gun.

Righteous Justice Dept.

According to the AP:
The idiot fan shown here being corraled by a Steelers linebacker after interrupting a Steelers - Browns game by running on the field will be jailed over Super Bowl weekend without access to radio or TV.

Ah, now, that's knowing how to make a really good judicial butt-whoopin' hurt. We need more of this.

God of Storms

So the idiot mayor of New Orleans says that God punished the country, etc. for supposed sins by sending Hurricane Katrina and blah, blah, blah.

You know, maybe the problem isn’t that the Old Testament God is mad at us. Maybe the problem is that we’re sucking up to the wrong god in the first place.

The problem is storms. Big storms, bad storms, storms that knock out cities and seacoasts. We’d like them to stop. So the logical religious conclusion is to find the god responsible for storms and ask him to ease up a little.

Yes, we should worship Thor.

That’s right, the Norse god of thunder and storms and the Protector of Man.

It only makes sense. He’s the guy with the magical swirling hammer which makes the storms, or stops the storms. He’s the one we need to get on our knees for. Not some guy whose most destructive claim to fame is fire and brimstone on desert cities made out of dirt. We call him in to take out some Mideastern city when we need it. For now, we need storm abatement, and for that, we need Thor.

This shouldn’t require too many changes. Christmas, with the trees and all the other Yule trappings, can stay the same. Conservatives will be happy that fewer arguments over nativity scenes on the courthouse lawn means less work for the ACLU. Nor is it un-American, given the cultural and ethnic ties between so many Americans and the Norse and Germanic traditions.

Thor’s wife, Sif, an Earth goddess, should make for a seamless transition for Easter. Heck, the biggest change might be going to church on Thursday instead of Sunday. But Muslims take Friday off and Jews and Seventh Day Adventists get Saturday without much to do. We can handle it.

So light those bonfires and sacrifice those hamburgers or whatever it is Thor ask for. Let’s get holy on those storms asses and bring in a guy who knows how to take ‘em to the mat.

Yes, it’s an opportunistic appeal to a deity or belief based on a specific returned benefit or advantage. So what? If it worked for Emperor Constantine eighteen hundred years ago or so, it can work for us. So get down on your knees and pray before the next storm season. Don’t make us go Odin on your ass.