Hard-working White Folks

David Duke is gone and the hard-working white voter needs a champion. This week they found it in Hillary Clinton. In USA Today, Clinton made it clear:

“Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

It is good to know that there is still someone in the Democratic party that is not afraid to stand up for the white man. And to call a spade, a spade. It might not make her the nominee. But she definitely has a shot at Grand Dragon.

The old soft shoe

This year, Bush has danced the Zulu Hustle in Africa. He’s tap danced for the press corps awaiting a belated John McCain. He’s danced with a New Orleans dixieland band, with his finger a’wagging and his hips a’grinding. But when it come to answering questions about a housing crisis, lost jobs, a tanking economy, the rising price of gas or the never-ending war in Iraq, the man can’t dance a lick. Who voted for this guy, anyway?

John the Baptist?

There’s been a lot of discussion about where Barack Obama goes to church. But not as much about the GOP presumed nominee, John McCain. These days, McCain attends a Southern Baptist Church in Arizona. When he’s attending church. He’s not a member, however. John and his children have not bothered to join or get baptized. Or walk the aisle. Or fill out the card. Or do any of those things that make a Baptist a Baptist. This, after 17 years of their association with the Arizona megachurch. Which is smart. After all, you never know what your pastor might blurt out in mid-homily. Yup, deniablity. It’s a politician’s best get-out-of-jail free card. At least, until the cock crows.

Bush sees God

President Bush was asked by EWTN anchor Raymond Arroyo: “When you look into Benedict XVI’s eyes, what do you see?” “God,” the president answered. Really? I see an old guy with a funny hat. Bush just never ceases to amaze me. It’s simply amazing how one man can move from Evangelical Protestant, bypass Roman Catholicism, and land smack dab in garden-variety blasphemy. All in an one-word response. Awesome answer, Mr. President.

Anyone? Anyone?

That’s right, it’s Ferris Bueller’s droning high school economics teacher. But the subject this time is Darwinian evolution. Mr. Stein’s playful and slightly hokey documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, has already been branded by members of the scientific community as specious and misleading. Little wonder. It is a Michael Mooresque exposee with a clear agenda. And the agenda is not to make the American scientific community look good. It interviews the leading scientific minds in both Darwinian evolution and in the controversial Intelligent Design movement. And although Stein is out for a hachet job, the film does what public education officials seem reluctant to do in their classrooms: look at both sides of the debate. However, it is less a movie about the recent battles in public education than it is one about the politics and metaphysical biases ingrained in mainstream Darwinism (as well as those in the ID movement). Celebrated evolutionist Richard Dawkins and other ID opponents are interviewed for the film (actually, they were led to believe they were being recorded for a much different film––one about how the growing threat of religion to science; oh well, survival of the fittest, and all that). They share candid comments about atheism, its logical flow from evolutionary science, their own personal loss of faith, and a curious openness to a version of ID in which the Intelligent Designers are big-brained Extra Terrestrials–––just not this awful God person, thank you very much. It is, all in all, a fascinating film; if for no other reason than we get to hear from the folks the mainstream media seem to keep under wraps: the Intelligent Intelligent Design advocates.

Pump power

If you can’t lower the bridge, boys, raise the river. If this administration can’t lean on the Saudis, Exxon-Mobil or successfully invade an Arab country and consficate their oil, at least they can do something. I know what! Let’s eliminate the gas tax. After all, Republicans love giving tax breaks. And it’s an election year. So let’s give it to everyone, even the poor. Well, when John McCain announced his idea today, I had to admit, I liked the sound of it. I even liked it 12 years ago when Bob Dole said it when he was running for President. And best of all, it’s an economic policy that’s tangible, that people actually can grasp. And the GOP has got to like any bill that doesn’t disrupt Exxon-Mobil’s greatest record earnings in the history of the US economy. After all, those boys have earned it.

No wonder he shoots people in the face

Yes, it is a naked woman. And yes, Cheney is going to go blind.

“My bad”

She just keeps doing it. Confusing speech facts with real facts. Once again, Senator Clinton’s fond recollections of her “experience” were contradicted by the reality of that “experience.” No sniper fire this time, at least. While campaigning in Oregon, the senator from New York invited the crowd to check the record. If they do so, they were confidently assured, they would see that her opposition to the Iraq war actually predates Barack Obama’s opposition. Of course, it doesn’t. You may recall she voted to authorize this war. So to make the fact check work in her favor, she added a very curious parameter. If you check the record since January 2005. Why January 2005? That’s when the junior senator from Illinois actually came to the Senate. The junior senator who warned that invading Iraq would be a giant mistake back when Senator Clinton was actually voting to authorize the President’s grand adventure––that junior senator. You see, if you do that, Hillary said, she actually was against the war first. The only problem is even when you do the math her way…Obama still comes out ahead. Oops. At least, she can say that she is currently against the war she was formerly for: you may remember how well that line of argument worked for Mr. Kerry, (AKA: The Flip-flopper).

Tolerating Freedom

Freedom of religion is complicated business. More complicated these days because of something called “tolerance.” Look as you may, you won’t find the “T” word in any of our founding documents. Because tolerance––in the way that it is popularly conceived–doesn’t seem to tolerate many of the built-in disagreements various religions historically have had with each other. To say nothing of religions’ varigated positions on you lovely heathen. Which brings us to the congregants of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church––a faithful band of true believers who truly believe that GOD HATES FAGS. Not something you will run across in the anathemas of Trent, but then again, not something entirely inconsistent with the sacred writings’ conspicuous intolerance for all things kinky. (You may recall, that nasty Sodom and Gomorrah business.) Be that as it may, it seems that a federal judge has recently put a $5 million lien on Rev Phelps’ tax-exempt temple. According to the story, his church is being sued for their colorful devout behavior: Showing up with their banners and signs at the funerals of gay men. Which sounds as much like a freedom of speech issue, as a freedom of religion one. And it appears the government is clearly trying to limit both. So perhaps the moral of the story is that even free speech has it’s limitations. You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. And you better not yell at gays period. Especially the dead ones.

Loaded

Okay. Is it just me or does this blue-collar, populism of Hillary Clinton’s receive a little blow back when we learn that she and Bill cleared $109 million over the past six years. I mean, saying you are going to help the hard-working poor prevail against the filthy rich seems to work better if you don’t happen be filthy rich. Of course, the Clintons do represent that segment of the dirty, stinking rich who are asking the government to increase their tax burden; And I guess that counts for something. But class-warfare rhetoric seems to work best when the bad guys aren’t ones making the speeches.