Pico's Latest Masterpiece

Gay Marriage, Anyone?

If you haven't read Lisa Miller's article in Newsweek about the Bible and gay marriage, you're in for either a shock or a treat, depending on your--dare I say it--stance. Entitled "Gay Marriage: Our Mutual Joy," the piece takes a daring swing across the pages of scripture and the words of selected churchly marriage rites to draw what I would think is the obvious conclusion for Christians: Jesus was about inclusion, not exclusion, and if you're going to throw the Bible at gays and lesbians, you'd better remember that the Bible's many models for marriage include some pretty repugnant arrangements.

For every biblical pronouncement on male-male sex, there are at least a dozen different interpretations, each dependent on the extent and quality of the interpreter's biblical exegetic training and tools and on his or her politico-theological orientation. For every strict constructionist, there are at least a dozen thorny issues to be explained or waved away--including the story of David and Jonathan, and the story of Naomi and Ruth, not to mention the explicit teachings of Jesus and the values and precepts implicit in his life, or the fact that adultery is mentioned in the Ten Commandments, along with killing, but same-sex marriage just isn't. You'd think, if it were in fact a fatal assault on one of society's main bearing walls, it would rate a mention in the grandfather of all No-No lists.

It's a very good piece for a mainstream popular magazine (as contrasted with a scholarly tome). Since I lambasted Newsweek recently for another piece in its Religion section, I think I owe it the courtesy of a favorable review for this one. Read it. These are among the kinds of questions students at good seminaries wrestle with, with the aid of good scholarly tools like Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, contemporaneous documents, comparative translations, and a few hundred years' worth of critical scholarship in many languages, from many traditions--aids not really referenced in this piece.

Most pew-warmers, however, don't get even a tiny taste of what goes on intellectually behind the doors of a good, tough seminary classroom. And that's because most graduated preachers don't have the courage to deal with the politics of issues like the place of homosexuals in our society today, or the integrity to take on the theocratic Right.

What Went Wrong? Read This.

It may not be the be-all and end-all on the question, what caused the meltdown of the US econony, but it comes from someone in a position to offer a credible opinion, and it squares with other analyses out there. This traces the catastrophe back to Reagan. Read it.

Corker's Corker

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker (R) has done wonders in remaking the once grimy, polluted river town of Chattanooga. He gets kudos from me for his vision and leadership in that matter.

But today's announcement that Corker is spearheading an alternative to the pending auto "bailout" bill slapped sense into my head. The guy is a just another fucking Republican.

Here's the context, from Rick Wolff, professor of economics at U. Mass, for the remarks that follow:

"Real wages in the US rose during every decade from 1830 to 1970. Then this central feature of US capitalism stopped as the figures below show:

Source: Labor Research Associates of New York, based on data from the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics; wages expressed in constant 1982 dollars.

1964 $302.52
1974 314.94
1984 279.22
1994 259.97
2004 277.57

No comparable steady rise in real wages has occurred since. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate real weekly wages declined again over the last year (2005-2006). American workers' reactions to this downtrend in real wages have profoundly shaped the nation's economy and society for the last thirty years.

Really. You don't say! Could this have something to do with falling domestic consumption, rising consumer credit indebtedness, catastrophic home foreclosures, and families shattered by impossible, extortionist-level health care costs? Ya think?

Now, before reading further, ask yourself what force in US history had most to do with dragging US workers up from the Great Depression--with creating the "Greatest Generation," the WWII generation, the most prosperous middle class in world history. Well, that would be FDR's New Deal, not least because of its intentional policies to empower labor unions.

Fast forward to December 11, 2008. Corker's alternative plan for aiding The Big Three would condition that aid on requiring (currently unionized) US auto workers to accept wages equivalent to the wages paid by non-unionized workers in foreign-owned factories in semi-rural communities in Southern states like Tennessee.

Here's a United States senator--a Republican, of course--who is intentionally using the auto crisis to leverage a Washington-driven wage-lowering, union-busting juggernaut and unleash it on US auto workers. I so have a problem with that.

I particularly have a problem with that because I know that Corker helped to mastermind the forthcoming move to Chattanooga of a brand new Volkswagen plant.

Corker, here, among other things, is acting indirectly to protect Volkswagen from the threat of future unionization by effectively rendering the (northern) unions' negotiating power moot through mandating a extra-market lid on the wages of home-grown workers.

Extra-market? What does that mean? Republicans like Corker are champions of a "free market," a market unfettered by regulation or by any other "outside" force. Here, however, we see the truth: Republicans all along have strongly supported any outside intervention in the market, so long as it improves the lot of the management and owner class, and worsens the lot of the workers.

Here's a United States senator spearheading legislation that would treat the US as a level playing field in terms of cost of living. We all know that it isn't.

Here's a United States senator ignoring the extravagant compensation of US auto executives, but pulling the plug on wages of workers--wages that have been in persistent decline since the mid-1960s.

Are we really so stupid that we put into office men and women who want American workers to earn LESS, not more? Are you kidding me?

No economy grows from the top down. First of all, there's rarely any "down," in the sense of "trickle down," as the figures above demonstrate. Second, when wages stagnate, who buys product? The current automaker crisis should be etching that lesson on every forehead in Congress. The big hush-hush not being discussed these days is that it's not merely about lousy strategic planning on the part of the Big Three. It's about steadily falling US wages and the steadily rising cost of living.

Well DUH. (Does this make me a Nobel candidate in Economics? Evidently it should.) I learned that lesson when I was 12 and my Dad cut my allowance from $.25 a week (!) to $.20 a week. I doubt that the corner market felt the crush, but for me it was cruelly, bitterly painful to discover that $.20 meant fewer candy cigarettes than $.25.

All of this, to me, points inexorably in the direction taken by the workers at the Republic Doors and Windows factory in Chicago. Fight back. Don't expect an easy victory. The Patriot Acts have ensured that government has a whole 'nuther arsenal to deploy at will on uppity Americans. But be that as it may, we've got a fight coming. Best ready up.

Schools? Nah, Prisons.

From Erika Yancy at Alternet:

"The good news: in the past 20 years spending for higher education has increased 21%. The bad news: in that same 20 years, spending for prisons increased 127%.

"We're creating criminals, not citizens."

Of course that federal spending is your tax dollars, in the form of per capita/per diem payments for every prisoner. And it's now going to the owners of and investors in privatized prisons. These investors, by the way, include VP Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Now that's what I call great job! You ge to throw favors at legislators who "woik witch ya," and you get to enforce the laws that put people in prison and money in your pocket. Cool!

By now, you should be tracking over to mandatory sentencing and to the recent war on undocumented workers, whom the Bush administration has classified as felons, or whom dozens of new privatized facilities have been constructed or are in the works, and of whom thousands are being rounded up and "detained" at Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and other privately owned prisons like this one, in something like 16 states. See Project Endgame. (I kid you not.) Can you say, "Hmmm, this is not a coincidence!"

About the California City facility, the website for California City Real Estate says this: "The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced Friday it would contract with Corrections Corporation of America to house criminal aliens in its 2,304-bed facility near here.

"The federal contract with CCA to house the inmates at the California City Correctional Center is worth $529 million at the end of 10 years. It begins with a base period of three years, with seven one-year options and ensures that the prison, completed last year at a cost of over $110 million, will be filled."

Not a bad return on investment, eh?

The stench from Blogojevich is as nothing compared with the stench of the Bush administration. Just keep it in perspective--and ask your legislators why the Bushies aren't doing time.

The view outside Chez Blogojevich!

Thanks to the very funny icanhascheezburger.com

Please Help. Now.

Economy Can't Stand Massive Layoffs?

No kidding!

Could the White House have thought of that before inviting the fat cats to plunder and pillage it? (Plunder and pillage? What else do you call "de-regulation"?)

I no longer believe anything this White House or this Congress tell me about bailouts.

I mean, do I really know that the economy "can't stand" massive layoffs? No, I don't. I thought the economy couldn't stand the failure of Wall Street investment banks, too, but apparently they weren't facing ruin after all. The evidence is that they just wanted fatter bonuses. Pure Shock Doctrine at a neighborhood near you.

So now, I want those who testify before Congress to testify under oath and under penalty of perjury, racketeering, fraud, and extortion. And THEN I want their signatures on contracts stipulating restructuring for a challenged environment, prudent industrial and manufacturing reinvestments, new green jobs, fair pay checks for the workers, and their commitment to partner with the government to create and support universal health care.

This isn't about union wages. This is about the unfettered costs of health care. Get that money off the backs of US companies and families facing foreclosures (that's all of us) and our economy will be fine.

Far Right, Radical Right: Defining Terms

Do you ever get frustrated by the loose way we throw around terms like "far Right," "radical Right," etc? I do. Most of the stuff I read uses phrases like these without explaining what they're supposed to mean. That leaves me in the uncomfortable position of assuming that I know and/or agree, when maybe I don't.

If you had to pick one thing, one variable, that distinguishes the "far" Right from the "radical" Right, what would it be? What one attitude or behavior or ideology would clarify the difference, if any, between the US "far" Right and the US "radical" Right?

What about the one thing that distinguishes the "far" or "radical" Right from the regular garden-variety Right, or from "conservatives"?

What sparked my latest round of OCD was reading Heidi Beirich's review of a book about Willis Carto and the American Far Right (current issue of the Intelligence Report of the Southern Poverty Law Center). She castigates author George Michael for using such terms loosely. Well, he's not the only one. So I'm trying to work out a coherent typology--if only for myself.

While I'm emailing Heidi for clarification and discussion, do you guys have any thoughts? Please, pitch in if the subject interests you at all.

Proyecto Cartas/Project Letters

A blogger colleague recently hung a new blog called Project Letters (Proyecto Cartas) to encourage all of us to write the President on February 12 to ask for thorough, humane, and sane immigration reform (my adjectives).

Although I'm sure that he would welcome all letters encouraging just and compassionate immigration reform, from the tone of his model letter, I believe that he would especially encourage personal appeals rather than the usual brief political paragraph--letters that paint for the new President our unique individual feelings of horror, shame, and agony at the current inhumane treatment of Hispanics and Latinos in the USA.

Please visit this site when you have a moment, and lend a pen to this worthy cause. The site is available in Spanish and in English.

Blagojevich and All That Doesn't Meet the Eye

If IL Democrat Governor Rod Blagojevich is guilty of the extensive corruption of which he is charged in today's indictment, he deserves to go down hard and in flames.

The degree of venality and cynicism revealed in the statements attributed to Blagojevich is boggling--as is the degree of stupidity. There are no excuses, and if he is guilty, as wiretapped quotes seem to indicate, Democrats will be contending with the shame he has heaped on his party for months, if not years, to come.

My fervent hope, of course--and strong belief--is that Obama's people are not involved in any way, and have never been involved in the filth of Chicago politics. Significantly, according to CNN's reports this morning, Blogojevich himself seems to exhonerate Obama, observing that all that he could squeeze from the people was "appreciation." "Fuck them," Blogojevich said.

Analysis of the alleged crimes and corruption is important. And at the same time, the timing of this federal bust will not have escaped you. It, too, deserves examination. It's always also about context and timing.

One, Blagojevich follows his predecessor governor, Republican George Ryan, on the short walk to the house of shame. Something's pretty rotten in Illinois when two governors in a row are busted on corruption. We've heard for decades about corrupt Illinois politics, but this takes the cake.

Two, the seat of former Illinois Senator, now President-Elect Barack Obama, is involved. It occurs to me is that Obama is at a vulnerable point in his ascendency to the White House.

I'd say the public temper is on a pretty short fuse when it comes to more corruption in high places. Even in stabler times, the mere hint of corruption can tincture reputations permanently. In bitterly partisan, angry times like these, the hint of scandal can significantly weaken anyone whose name arises in the course of its investigation, even when it isn't justifiable. I worry that the GOP will relish having the "Blogojevich-Obama" mantra to hammer into the public mind. The timing this indictment gives commentators like Limbaugh and Hannity a lot of fodder in this sensitive and critical pre-inaugural moment.

Three, both Blagojevich and Obama have come out publicly in support of the workers who are occupying the Chicago-based Republic Windows and Doors factory. You will remember that management gave these workers three days' notice of closure, blaming the bank of America for refusing to make critical operating loans. Because the Bank of America is among recent beneficiaries of a large chunk of public money intended to loosen up loans and preserve jobs, Blagojevich has barred state officials from continuing to do business with the Bank.

Politicians mess with the Bank of America at their peril. If they do so during the most blatantly anti-union, pro-corporatist administration in history, would pay-back surprise anybody? Not me, expecially if the said payback manages to besmirch both the governor and, by proximity, also organized labor.

Let's stay tuned. This is going to get uglier before it gets prettier.

From the "How Words Happen" Department

See? And you thought Latin was a waste of time! From the CNN website, and I encourage you to go there and follow the excellent related links:

Sixty years ago this month, the U.N. voted unanimously to adopt the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It was ambitious, serious, far-reaching -- and largely the result of Lemkin's lifetime of effort.

A Pole and a Jew, Lemkin had watched in horror as Hitler nearly succeeded in his plan to exterminate the Jews. Six million Jews -- including 40 members of Lemkin's family -- died at the hands of the Nazis.

Today, we call what happened at Auschwitz and the other death camps "genocide." But at the time, there was no name for the Nazis' crimes. The word "genocide" did not exist.

In 1944, Lemkin wrote a book about the Nazis. In it, he combined the Greek "genos" for race with the Latin "-cide" for killing: Genocide. Lemkin had named the crime he spent a lifetime trying to prevent.

So? So if you can't name a thing, can you communicate about it? If you can't communicate about it, can you alter or affect it?

"The limits of my language are the limits of my world."

How a Dog Drinks, Slo-Mo

This is so cool. Who knew?



Hat tips to Bill Zardus for this video.

GM, Ford, Crysler, and Universal Health Care

It's the healthcare costs as much as anything else. So doesn't this create a perfect opportunity for big business to support a national, universal health care program?

Mid-Month Miscellany

Hi
I've been out of town, taking a needed break from my desert fortress to revisit my homeland, Tennessee. I've learned something important: You can go home again, and you probably should. After I let this experience simmer and distill a spell, I'll try to write more about what it's like to wander down the roads of childhood and to see roads and towns and courthouse squares bearing the names of your ancestors. What Southern hospitality means, at the hands of family, new friends, and a herd of five horses.

Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide
Is it a given that all who fly these days will get a cold, or is it just me? I even slathered my hands and arms to the elbow with that alcohol-based handwash--not once. Multiple times. Doesn't work when three passengers in your half of the airship are coughing.

Hell, airlines should pay us to fly. It's hazard duty.

The Detroit Three
I've been watching the bailout hearings all morning. Of all the interrogators, the two who most impressed me were Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) and Senator Jon Tester(D-MT).

Tester is that flat-top farmer guy. I already liked him and didn't even know he farms organically. His questions trended around ensuring that no taxpayer money will go to funding overseas plants, jobs, or initiatives. He got those assurances. I appreciate it.

Corker is the former mayor of Chattanooga, TN. I had heard good things about him, I had no real way to assess his work. Now I do. We spent Thanksgiving in Chattanooga, which I last saw in the mid-1960s. His vision and leadership have turned Chattanooga from a polluted, boring runt town to a thriving, green, high-tech, clean, arts-centric hotspot that we'd be happy to inhabit. Corker wondered why we should rescue Chrysler when its own holding company won't invest in it. He doesn't think we should bail out Chrysler when its plan may merely be to stay alive long enough to be bought by someone else. No jobs there! I agree. I liked his approach so much that I called his Washington office to tell him that although I generally can't stand Republicans, he's a big exception. I made sure they know I'm from Tennessee, too. Don't anybody tell me he's a Troglodyte, please. I couldn' bear it.

Georgia on My Mind
What's the matter with those people? Building a trash landfill on top of Union Bethel's 311 slave graves? Re-electing Saxby Chambliss? Disgusting. Some things are self-evidently wrong. Both these actions fit that category. Stephens MDS needs to resolve this with a process and an outcome that honors people, not profits. As to Chambliss, he needs to excuse himself and leave the planet through the slime hole from which he came.

And by the way, Georgia's Democrats and African American voters could do worse than consider what this election says about the critical importance of staying involved in the electoral process even after Obama.

Tell Congress and Obama to Pass the DREAM Act

Let's not blow another opportunity to do something decent, right, smart, and prudent, and honest. After all, we're all immigrants at some time in our lives, all dependent on the kindness of strangers. Maybe that's one reason that all the sacred scriptures make such a point of requiring everyone to give our best to strangers, travelers, visitors, and guests. At one level, it's about acknowledging our common humanity and interdependence.

Nowhere is that clearer than in education. The DREAM Act offers a clear choice. Either we consciously add the children of undocumented residents to the legions of despairing, uneducated poor, or we give them the means to realize their vast potential. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

From Change.org:

Every year, thousands of undocumented American students graduate from college and high school, and face a roadblock to their dreams -- they can't drive, can't work legally, can't get loans or establish credit, can't further their education, and can't contribute to the economy. It is a classic case of lost potential and broken dreams.

The federal DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), is a bipartisan legislation that would permit a select group of undocumented students conditional legal status and eventual citizenship granted that they meet the following requirements:

--if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16, are below the age
of 30,
--have lived here continuously for five years,
--graduated from a U.S. high school or obtained a GED
--have good moral character with no criminal record and
--attend college or enlist in the military for at least two years.

Barack Obama has stated that undocumented students brought up in the United States are "American for all intents and purposes." Senator Richard Durbin has implored Congress to "give these kids a chance." Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has said: “In short, although these children have built their lives here, they have no possibility of achieving and living the American dream. What a tremendous loss for them, and what a tremendous loss to our society.”

Why penalize children for the actions of their parents? Why throw away the talent we have invested in from K-12 right when we can make use of it? Why deport students from the ONLY home they have ever known?

Let's bring these students out of the shadows, out from underground. Tell President-Elect Obama to pass the DREAM Act in 2009. Talented students and their families living in fear of raids and ripped apart by deportations, cannot afford to wait for change.

- DREAM Activist (MA Graduate DREAMer - Blogger), San Francisco, CA Nov 24 @ 01:27PM PST

It Gets Better: Begich Beats Stevens in Alaska Senate Race

Even if Stevens wins every one of the 2,500 uncounted ballots, he still loses. Nuff said.

This leaves us with final decisions yet to be made in MN and GA. Fingers, toes, and eyes crossed.

TX County Indicts Cheney and Gonzales

Associated Press reports this little bit of intrigue:

McALLEN, Texas -- Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the outgoing prosecutor.

The indictment returned Monday has not yet been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens.

The seven indictments made public in Willacy County on Tuesday included one naming state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. and some targeting public officials connected to District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra's own legal battles.

Regarding the indictments targeting the public officials, Guerra said, "the grand jury is the one that made those decisions, not me."

Guerra himself was under indictment for more than a year and half until a judge dismissed the indictments last month. Guerra's tenure ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March.

Guerra said the prison-related charges against Cheney and Gonzales are a national issue and experts from across the country testified to the grand jury.

Cheney is charged with engaging in an organized criminal activity related to the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.

Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on Tuesday, saying that the vice president had not yet received a copy of the indictment.

The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons.

Gonzales' attorney, George Terwilliger III, said in a written statement, "This is obviously a bogus charge on its face, as any good prosecutor can recognize." He said he hoped Texas authorities would take steps to stop "this abuse of the criminal justice system."

OK well this makes me happy. Of course I expect that both will speedily be pardoned. Fun while it lasted.

Private prisons are a blight on civilization. But that would be right up Cheney's alley, that would: spreading blight on civilization where 'ere he goes, traipsing about willy-nilly, a sadistic F'd up Johnny Appleseed from Hell.

This Has to Stop. Now.

I'm pretty upset. Five minutes ago, moments after I fired off an email to Newsweek for its bogglingly irresponsible article, "Is Obama the AntiChrist?," I learned that a Roman Catholic cardinal at the Vatican has called Obama's agenda "destructive," "violent," and "apocalyptic," and inquired what grieving Catholics should do with "our hot, angry tears of betrayal."

Apparently it's not enough that Sarah Palin ignited the "patriots" and the racists to shout kill slogans. Now, no less than Newsweek and a member of the upper tier of the RC hierarchy have elected to stoke the flames still higher. Much higher.

My concern has partly to do with the overlaps among four populations: extremely conservative Catholics, Protestant fundamentalists, racists, and extreme Rightwing militia/minuteman/"patriots."

All of them are already whipped to frenzies of rage by the election of the young African American moderate. Just visit the Free Republic site for proof. Remember: This nation has been subjected to a steadily ant-liberal toxic infusion for some thirty years. I mean the likes of Michael Medved, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller, Tom DeLay, Tom Tancredo, Lou Dobbs, and the rest. When it takes only one zealot alight with holy conviction, pouring apocalyptic kerosene on the white-hot flames of race, religion, and nativism isn't merely irresponsible. It's explosive. It's all but inciting assassination.

As I wrote to Newsweek's editors:

Regarding http://www.newsweek.com/id/169192 -- Well, golly! Can’t you do something else to make sure some paranoid fundamentalist nut job kills the next President? It wasn’t enough for you that Palin stirred the “patriots” and the racists to shout kill threats? That Southern Law Poverty Center is warning of a sharp spike in threats and violence toward African Americans (and others)? Now you have to go the next giant step by giving credibility to those who think that he’s “the anti-Christ”? Why don’t you just take out a contract?

I’m aghast. There’s a responsible way to write about stuff like this, but surely it isn’t to give it the Newsweek imprimatur, as you do here:

"The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they're not nuts: "They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared," Staver says."

You could have troubled to interview universally respected, educated biblical scholars such as John Shelby Spong or Elaine Pagels or Bart Ehrman, who could have spoken to End Times phantasms like “the anti-Christ” from a deeply knowledgeable, profoundly Christian place. But nooooo. In tone and content, you’ve both perpetuated the public view that only fundamentalists speak for all Christians, and quite possibly put the President-Elect’s very life in graver danger than ever.

You’ve got a young wife, two little girls, the Secret Service, the majority of Americans, and a whole, breathless, hopeful world to answer to.

If anything happens to him, the ensuing chaos will dwarf today’s troubles. Thanks ever so for upping the odds. Shame on you. Serious heaps of shame on you. What were you thinking?

Even Blitzer himself--as today, for instance--is stoking the flames. Inadvertently? Who can say. All day long, his drum beats incessant fear to thrum within conservative Americans, that Obama will abolish restraints on gay men and lesbian women in the military. Whether he will or won't we don't know. It gets ratings. Consequences be damned.

What's disturbing, in other words, is that the timing is as troubling as the content, because it adds weight to the heavy backpack of outrage that zealots on the Far Right have toted since Obama was first nominated. And remember: For at least the last eight years, Bush has explicitly "Christianized" the US military and military academies, and created his own private army. Think Mikey Weinstein. Think radical extreme Christianist Erik Prince and his private mercenary military force, Blackwater.

Bush, Blackwater, the Christianization of the armed forces, and 30 years of anti-liberal hate propaganda, in my view, raise the ante far beyond anything we might have anticipated when John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. There's a sinister constellation of means and motive on a scale unprecedented in this country. Not even the run-up to the Civil War saw these things.

It troubles me enormouslythat I'm not seeing or hearing, anywhere, even a sporadic appearance from even one universally respected, highly educated biblical scholar to speak for Christians (as contrasted with Christianists) about the meaning of concepts like "the anti-Christ," Apocalypse, Armageddon, and the like--what they are, what they aren't, what they mean, what they don't mean.

For that reason, all--and I mean ALL--that most Americans know are the fevered nightmare fantasiesof extreme Christianist militant Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind chronicles.

And remember: The Left Behind series of cheap novels--close to 100 million copies have sold--hawk a violent, bloody fundamentalist vision of the End Times, and reportedly have inspired at least one computer game that advocates killing anyone who can't be converted to militant Christianist fundamentalism. These things weren't even on the horizon when the Kennedys and King were assassinated. And we have no way of knowing how many folks are running around out there who've been fed this poison since birth. We do know there are a lot of them.

What can you and I do? Make ourselves and everyone we know acutely aware of these developments, challenge anything in the media anywhere that fans these flames even inadvertently, and hold the whole country accountable for ensuring that we protect this young President-Elect and all the hope that he has stirred in hearts across the world.

The alternative is unthinkable.

Made it to CNN!

Hey, Cool! At least some of my post to the CNN Newsroom made it on-air:

I would be happy to give the Big 3 funds to retool, re-educate its workforce, and re-grow a productive American Middle Class. I would not be happy to fund the same old mediocrity, environmental apathy, and golden lifestyles for patently failed executives. Thank you. JS