Crazyanity

 

Today is Halloween. Of course, a good Christian should have nothing to do with this sick, wicked holiday. After all it’s Satan’s day. So let’s all get up a petition to get the day renamed “Harvest Ween” or something less demonic-sounding. At the very least we should provide an alternate venue for our children. Something healthy and wholesome in the church gymn-atorium with costumes of Bible characters. And we should remember to pray for all those lax parents who need to wake up and be very afraid of this day. After all, I heard that covens of witches perform human sacrifices of children they nab on this most wicked of nights. ( I know it’s not an urban myth because I heard it on Christian radio.) Okay. Time out. Maybe right-wing talk radio’s fear mongering  needs to do a little fact-checking.  Like the fact that Halloween IS a Christian holiday. It goes back to the 1500s. The day was the Hallowed Eve (by the way, hallow means holy). It was the night before All Saints’ Day. Young, Christian boys would dress up to mock the devil. Martin Luther had it right. “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him.”  Or as the Bible says, “Greater who is He who in us, than he who is in the world.” So let’s all take a break. Take a pitchfork to Old Harry. Study a little church history and stop trying to muck with a Christian Hallowed day.

Chill, baby, chill

Sarah Palin was beating that Bill Ayers drum again on CNN. Can we just give her an account at Neiman’s and send her on her way?

GOP terror tactics

Peggy Noonan had it right. John McCain could actually be a quite formidable candidate if he would simply think before he speaks. The latest example of his propensity to just blurt things out was this Friday, when he told the crowd of supporters that he was afraid that al-Qaeda may be planning new attacks to sway this election. This would be classic GOP fear-mongering except that he was implying two very curious thoughts. The first is that the terrorists are pulling for the Democrats. This is very curious, given the main reason we haven’t had a terrorist attack on US soil since 9-11, is that the current President has made killing Americans infinitely easier. He has put them within spitting distance. Thank you, Mr. Bush. You’ve saved al-Qaeda the trip. He has also helped increased recruitment for the terrorist cause by putting boots on the ground on sacred Islamic soil. Which, for those who actually have been paying attention, is the real reason that Osama bin Laden hates the US. We keep desecrating their land with our military bases. So, in fact, the military policies of the Republicans have proven a boon to terrorism. So I don’t see Osama pulling for the Democrats. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The second implication in Senator McCain’s remarks is that a terrorist attack on America would somehow hurt his bid for Commander-In-Chief. This is almost laughable. Such a tragedy would play right into his hawkish strengths! It would be exactly the thing that would make American’s pull the McCain lever. So, on second thought, maybe this isn’t an example of McCain shooting from the lip. Maybe this guy is a Rovian genius! Maybe Peggy has pegged the old boy all wrong.

When dreams die

Seems like no one is satisfied with the explanation of Benazir Bhutto’s death. Odd, when you think about it. I mean, there are so many explanations to chose from. Something for everyone, really. She was killed by an assassin’s bullet. She was killed by a bullet-proof limo. She cracked her noggin. She had cracked the code on underhanded political shenanigans Even Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf isn’t satisfied. And he’s the calculating S.O.B. who engineered the whole thing––at least that’s one of the explanations. Now, maybe I sound a little callous. My apologies. But I come from a city that rather famously gunned down a President. And we are still trying to sort that one out. There’s the lone gunman theory. The two gunmen theory. The Mafia hit theory. The CIA hit theory. I think that there are even one or two that implicate LBJ, the Klu Klux Klan, Jackie and the Freemasons. It seems nobody likes it when visionaries die. We are afraid that the dream will die with them. And we are just not satisfied with lone gunmen and exploding people. We certainly take umbrage at the thought that a nasty fall could be the lethal culprit. Something big had to be afoot. So we conduct extensive investigations, convene our commissions, file our reports, then write our conspiracy books. Visionaries deserve nothing less. And the personal vanity of our collective dreams can’t possibly be so fragile that they can be ended so easily, so randomly. Dreams and dreamers deserve better.

Over a Barrel

Okay, I’m just thinking out loud here. But go with me. The next presidential election, let’s elect some oil man from Texas. You know, a guy who is cozy with the Saudis. Then––just to be on the safe side––we’ll invade some oil-rich, middle eastern country. Some sort of preemptive strike. Are you with me so far? We’ll throw our weight around as the last remaining Superpower… and badda bing, badda boom: a record drop in the price of oil. Sound like a plan? Right? A no-brainer. So why are oil prices at a record high––$100 a barrel? Will somebody explain this to me? Okay. Plan B. We elect a woman with no connections to the petroleum industry, we snub the Saudis, withdraw from an oil-rich…

The Zeitgeist Conspiracy

Zeitgeist the Movie–– coming to a computer near you. It’s a 2-hour YouTube extravaganza all about how 9/11 is a shadowy government conspiracy. And how Christianity is nothing more than a rehashing of Egyptian astrology. And how Jesus is simply a retread of the Sun god Horus. The net-net of “movie” is that the Man (be he the Roman Emperor Constantine, the Illuminati, or the Federal Reserve) is ingeniously conspiring to keep us down. Among his methods are myth-based religions, human suffering and a group of clever Masons. When does Lara Croft come in and save the world? But I digress. Which is why I love the Internet. The crazies get equal time. I can blog that Muhammad was really a sock puppet and upload a video warning that implanted microchips are the apocalyptic mark of the Beast. And the crazies beget more crazies. And those crazies get followers. And those followers beget more fear and suspicion. Why, it almost sounds like a …what’s the word?…Conspiracy. Freaky!