Author: NewMexiKen

Hey morons!
(that’s who the Republicans think reside in Arkansas and West Virginia)

Report in The New York Times — Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible

The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass mailings to residents of two states warning that “liberals” seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for President Bush.

The mailings include images of the Bible labeled “banned” and of a gay marriage proposal labeled “allowed.” A mailing to Arkansas residents warns: “This will be Arkansas if you don’t vote.” A similar mailing was sent to West Virginians.

Eva Cassidy

NewMexiKen hasn’t written about Eva Cassidy for new visitors. Here’s what I had to say in August last year.

Eva Cassidy was a singer from Bowie, Maryland, near Washington, who died of melanoma in 1996. She was 33. Click here and here and here to read about Eva.

I first heard Eva’s CD Imagine one evening last October at Tower Records in DC. I bought it then and three more CDs since. Her eighth album, American Tune is due out August 12th. [I have it, too.]

According to reports, Boston DJ Robin Young was able to get Sting to listen to Eva’s rendition of “Fields of Gold”. “She has him on camera saying that he was quite territorial about that song, arrogant even, only to be brought to tears by her totally different vocal interpretation.”

Eva Cassidy owns “Over the Rainbow” and “Fever”.

Well, actually Eva shares ownership of “Over the Rainbow” with Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.

No saved person left behind

The following is from Bill Moyers’ speech at the Society of Professional Journalists national convention on September 11, 2004:

How do we explain the possibility that a close election in November could turn on several million good and decent citizens who believe in the Rapture Index? That’s what I said – the Rapture Index; google it and you will understand why the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series which have earned multi-millions of dollars for their co-authors who earlier this year completed a triumphant tour of the Bible Belt whose buckle holds in place George W. Bush’s armor of the Lord. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the l9th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative millions of people believe to be literally true.

According to this narrative, Jesus will return to earth only when certain conditions are met: when Israel has been established as a state; when Israel then occupies the rest of its “biblical lands;” when the third temple has been rebuilt on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques; and, then, when legions of the Antichrist attack Israel. This will trigger a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon during which all the Jews who have not converted will be burned. Then the Messiah returns to earth. The Rapture occurs once the big battle begins. True believers” will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation which follow.

I’m not making this up. We’re reported on these people for our weekly broadcast on PBS, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you that they feel called to help bring the Rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That’s why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It’s why they have staged confrontations at the old temple site in Jerusalem. It’s why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the 9th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released “to slay the third part of men.’ As the British writer George Monbiot has pointed out, for these people the Middle East is not a foreign policy issue, it’s a biblical scenario, a matter of personal belief. A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed; if there’s a conflagration there, they come out winners on the far side of tribulation, inside the pearly gates, in celestial splendor, supping on ambrosia to the accompaniment of harps plucked by angels.

One estimate puts these people at about l5% of the electorate. Most are likely to vote Republican; they are part of the core of George W. Bush’s base support. He knows who they are and what they want. When the President asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, over one hundred thousand angry Christian fundamentalists barraged the White House with emails and Mr. Bush never mentioned the matter again. Not coincidentally, the administration recently put itself solidly behind Ariel Sharon’s expansions of settlements on the West Banks. In George Monbiot’s analysis, the President stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli expansion into the West Bank than he stands to lose by restraining it. “He would be mad to listen to these people, but he would also be mad not to.” No wonder Karl Rove walks around the West Wing whistling “Onward Christian Soldiers.” He knows how many votes he is likely to get from these pious folk who believe that the Rapture Index now stands at 144 — just one point below the critical threshold at which point the prophecy is fulfilled, the whole thing blows, the sky is filled with floating naked bodies, and the true believers wind up at the right hand of God. With no regret for those left behind.

The whole speech is well-worth your time.

On-going investigation

From Juanita:

The story isn’t that Tom DeLay didn’t get indicted. The story is that everyone he knows, or has ever had lunch with, did.

Nah, I’m just kidding. Not everyone.

However, if you were to draw a triangle of love, trust, and dependence around Tom, all three corners of it are facing the distinct possibility of life in prison with a roommate not of their own choosing. Plus, with all the corporations indicted, Tom can’t shop anywhere, eat out, make a phone call, turn on a light, or drink those little rum umbrella drinks without raising eyebrows from here to Washington, Dee Cee.

Jim Ellis, a snippy man who runs DeLay’s Americans for a Republican Majority PAC (ARMPAC), John Colyandro, the executive director of DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), and Warren Robold, a DeLay fundraiser, were all indicted on several counts of FeLony DeLay DeVotion.

The Senior Investigative Congressional Correspondent at the beauty shop called Tom DeLay’s office to get his response on all his best friends and closest aides getting indicted on more counts than they’ve got toes. Tom’s official reply was, “Oink. Oink oink. Oink, oink oink oink. Squish, spattle. Oink!”

No. I’m just kidding again. What Tom truly did say was much worse than that. They indict three of his closest friends and Tom’s reaction is, I promise I’m not making this up, his reaction is, “This just emphasizes what I’ve said all along — that this investigation isn’t about me.” He really said that. You can look it up.

Go read the rest.

A year ago

NewMexiKen excerpted Mark Twain on juries a year ago. It’s from Roughing It and worth reading again for its continued timeliness. An excerpt from the excerpt:

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence and probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh, with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, he is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs.

Refuting the pessimists

Juan Cole has a must read if you care to have some perspective about Iraq as it is today, If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?. Some excerpts:

What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target “safe houses” of “criminal gangs”, but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?

Juan Cole is a Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Random thoughts while flying home

Is it just me, or does seeing a pilot trying to find something to read in the airport bookstore just like us passengers seem kind of disconcerting?

Remember when we used to gripe because all we got to eat from the airline was a lousy sandwich? Those were the good old days.

Watching planes taxi and take-off (while waiting our turn) makes me wonder if these things really can fly. I mean, how could those thin wings hold up that big fuselage in thin air? And if it’s that simple, how come the Chinese didn’t invent flying 2,000 years ago?

The woman next to me reached around the seat, tapped the guy in front of her and said, “Excuse me, but could you put your seat up so you won’t be reclining into my lap?” He did.

Landing in Albuquerque is always a thrill. A thrill to be home, yes. But the thrill I mean is that white knuckle approach over the mountains with a few thousand feet to spare, then trying to make enough turns on a dime to line up on runway 26.

Stephen King …

was born on this date in 1947. The Writer’s Almanac has a lengthy essay on King including this:

After college, King worked jobs at a gas station and a laundromat. His wife worked at Dunkin’ Donuts. He said, “Budget was not exactly the word for whatever it was we were on. It was more like a modified version of the Bataan Death March.” His writing office was the furnace room of his trailer home, and all of his rough drafts were typed single-spaced, with no margins, to save paper.

He sold a series of horror stories to men’s magazines, and he said that the paychecks from these stories always seemed to arrive when one of his kids had an ear infection or the car had broken down.

His first novel was Carrie (1973), about a weird, miserable, high school girl with psychic powers. The hard cover didn’t sell very well, but when his agent called to say that the paperback rights had sold for $400,000, King couldn’t believe it. He said, “The only thing I could think to do was go out and buy my wife a hair dryer. I stumbled across the street to get it and thought I would probably get greased by some car.”

Interestingly enough, science fiction novelist H.G. Wells was also born on this date — in 1866.

Antietam

Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862. The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any other single day in the nation’s history. So intense and sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his mind’s eye the very landscape around him turned red.

Stephen W. Sears
Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

They haven’t called me

From Jimmy Breslin:

Anybody who believes these national political polls are giving you facts is a gullible fool.

Any editors of newspapers or television news shows who use poll results as a story are beyond gullible. On behalf of the public they profess to serve, they are indolent salesmen of falsehoods.

This is because these political polls are done by telephone. Land-line telephones, as your house phone is called.

The telephone polls do not include cellular phones. There are almost 169 million cell phones being used in America today – 168,900,019 as of Sept. 15, according to the cell phone institute in Washington.

There is no way to poll cell phone users, so it isn’t done.

Read more from Breslin.

217 years ago today

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.

On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention met for the last time to sign the document and send it to the states for ratification.

Most Indians aren’t even Indians

Scary jibberish from Tom Coburn, Republican candidate for U.S. Senator in Oklahoma:

All right, listen, I know the tribal issues. I was a congressman where most of the Indians are in this state. The problem is that most of them aren’t Indians. The average Cherokee quantum is 1/512. All right, most people in this room have more Cherokee in them than the Cherokee. All right, and they want to grow that because as they grow their rolls, what happens is they get more money from the federal government. The worst thing that can happen is to have 37 DEQs, 37 EPAs, and 37 tribal courts that you’re going to have to deal with in this state, and I won’t let that happen if I’m a U.S. Senator.

Altus Town Hall, 8/21/04

The Democratic candidate, Brad Carson, is a member of the Cherokee Nation.

Thanks to Ralph for the info.