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Politics - Paul's blog

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

PostHeaderIcon Sorry, no cracker today

Wafer“Polly wants a cracker”

Sorry Polly, can’t have one, cuz you voted for Obama, and by doing so, you have aligned yourself with ‘intrinsic evil’.

For details see: link

If you know me you will now expect a long and bitter rant about abuse of (in this case: perceived) authority …

But I will show strength and restrict myself to a simple remark, since my blood pressure is way too high already as it is.

Concerning the remark by the volunteer church lector:

“I don’t understand anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and could vote for someone who’s a pro-abortion candidate,” said Ted Kelly, 64, who volunteers his time as lector for the church. “You’re talking about the murder of innocent beings.”

“anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic …” let alone a Catholic? Can you say ‘arrogance’?

Oh RIGHT, I forgot, Catholics are those Über Christians. I know: I was raised as one.

“You’re talking about the murder of innocent beings.” .. True! But I’m just wondering: Are you a vegetarian, Mr. Ted Kelly?

 

PostHeaderIcon Indiana Jones and the Communist Curse

 
Some critiques on the “Crystal Skull” Indiana Jones movie, from Russia.

Communist Party members in Russia want to ban Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from local theaters, calling it anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history.

(Anti-Soviet propaganda? Get with the program: the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. As for distorting history: wait till you see the Matrix!)

“It’s rubbish,” said Sergei Malinkovich, a leader for the St. Peterburg Communist Party. “In 1957 the Communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?”

(Come on! It’s not nearly as bad as when we tricked them with the lies of Harry Potter)

“Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett [are] second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA,” the Party member wrote in a blog entry. “We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country.

(Why? Because Russia already HAS enough second rate actors?)

Source:

Communist Party members in St. Petersburg said on a web site this week that the Soviet Union in 1957 “did not send terrorists to the States,” but launched a satellite, “which evoked the admiration of the whole world.”

(Oh that Sputnik thing? Looks like a crystal skull to me!)

Moscow Communist lawmaker Andrei Andreyev said Saturday “it is very disturbing if talented directors want to provoke a new Cold War.”

(I bet he finds this disturbing! Considering who lost the previous one.)

Source:

“What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame,” said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg.

(Scare kids with Communists? And WHO is accusing us of that? HAHAHAHAHA)

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones [movie] outright to prevent “ideological sabotage.”

(And which ideology exactly would be sabotaged by this work of pure fiction?)

“Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957,” St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.
“They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war.”

(Your kids don’t know what happened in 1957? Blame on you, Russia! As for us making them think you guys almost started a nuclear war in 1957: True, that’s distorting history alright, we all know that didn’t really happen until 1962)

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia’s Culture Ministry to ban the film for its “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

(Soviet propaganda? See above. Having a Culture Ministry banning movies: way to go guys!)

Source:

Party leaders accused the actors Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett yesterday of promoting crude, anti-Soviet propaganda in their new film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. They have urged Russian moviegoers to boycott the film and told Ford, 65, not to visit the country.

(Well, if Ford doesn’t get to go to Russia, then you don’t get to play in his next movie! So! There!)

The Communist Party’s ideology committee in Russia’s secondlargest city saw red over the plot. In an open letter, it declared: “Your work in this film is an insult to the Soviet and Russian people, who remember the difficult Fifties when our country was concluding its reconstruction after the Great War, but did not send merciless terrorists to the USA.” It said that Russians had loved Ford in previous serious roles ” which include a Soviet submarine commander in K-19: The Widowmaker – but went on: “You have no future in Russia any more. Speaking plainly, it is better for you not to come here. You will be beaten and despised.”

(Beaten and despised. Yes we have grown up a bit since the end of the cold war …)

The party’s central committee called Steven Spielberg’s film an attempt to “slander Soviet Communists” and poison the young against them. It called Ford and Blanchett “capitalist puppets”.

(Capitalist puppet: Psst, here in the west, that’s a compliment!)

Source:

“Our women don’t look like Nazis, but maybe Cate Blanchett was threatened by unemployment, so … she made this film,” Perov said.

(What DO Nazis look like?)

“The film is low-quality and would raise a smile if there wasn’t a danger of drawing into its orbit teenagers who know nothing about the 1950s,” Vladimir Mukhin, another member, said in comments on the Internet site.

(Low quality films raise smiles in Russia? As for your ignorant teenagers: why not TELL them about the fifties? Oh I know… I know.. it IS a bit embarrassing, but hey, they deserve to know!)

“Indians and aliens unite with Jones and his untrustworthy buddies to save the world from a Russian threat – what rubbish, simply a paranoid Churchillian fantasy,” Mukhin said.

(Right! Fantasy! Finaly one who ALMOST gets close!)

 

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.”
And God granted it.
Voltaire

*sigh*

I guess that’s what a life long exposure to state sponsored propaganda movies, presented as the truth and historically correct, does to the less enlightened minds: it apparently grows a blind spot for the genre of ‘FICTION‘.

 

To be sure:

Not all Russians are communists and apparently the above sentiments don’t quite represent the opinion of the average Russian:

The protests appeared to have little impact on the film’s commercial prospects. It was released on Thursday on 808 screens in Russia, a record for a Hollywood film.

PostHeaderIcon Mitt Romney’s faith

Mitt Romney faith speechJust a few loose remarks about Mitt Romney’s “faith”-speech:



Mr. Romney said:

..I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

Considering that he also mentioned that he did not “confuse” religion and politics, I wonder if he would agree with a slight broadening of the last sentence of the quote given above: “A person should not be elected because of his faith or lack thereof nor should he be rejected because of his faith or lack thereof.”

I fear his campaign would have been over had he said it that way …

As for his remark:

Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom

uhm… been to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan or Iran lately, Mitt? And if you plan a trip to these countries, better keep that quote to yourself! Religion is NEVER about freedom.

He furthermore mentioned that:

… some have taken the idea of separation of church and state beyond its original meaning by trying to remove any acknowledgment of God from the public arena

Not quite. The vast majority of ‘secularists’ simply don’t want their tax dollars being spent on such “acknowledgements of God”. That’s all. Sure, there may be a handful of folks who’d like to see it “removed from the public arena” altogether, but they are greatly outnumbered by the ones who prefer to force their beliefs down everyone’s throat (10 commandments in courthouses, religious dogma in science classes, you name it). In that respect: the number of people who take the constitution beyond its original meaning is negligible compared to the ones knowingly violating it on a daily basis.

On the same topic he reminded us that:

It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

This, of course, is nonsense. NOBODY who favors a strict separation of church and state favors the establishment of a new religion. They either are “in it” to protect the freedom of the faith they already have (quite a few!), or they’re not interested in a religion to begin with. To call ‘secularism’ a religion is not understanding the issue.

But all in all, compared to a Mike Huckabee, who calls himself “a Christian Leader” and actively plays the “faith card” .. Romney’s slight downplaying of his faith and its influence on his politics is .. ever so slightly .. refreshing.

PostHeaderIcon Paul for Prez .. or “The Ging!”

Gingrich for president

Gingrich: $30 million will get me into presidential race (link).

Yeah, me too!

In fact, I’ll do it for half of that!

Which I think is a bargain, if you look at Gingrich’ ideas:

I think, as a general rule, that levees should not break, that bridges should not fall, that students should actually learn.

(Note the ‘general’ … I guess he thinks that there are cases where levees should break, bridges should fall, and students should be kept dumb. Is he a politician or what? NEVER say something absolute, that they can pin you down on later!)

So… 15 million!

15 million and I will run. (Not that fast, though, and ignore the irrelevant fact that I’m not an American citizen .. don’t be so xenophobic, willya)

PostHeaderIcon Head in the sand

losing Iraq war
I just read this:

President Bush vetoed a $124 billion war-spending bill Tuesday because it included an Iraq pullout timetable which he called setting a date for failure.  

 “setting a date for failure“?

No. It doesn’t.

It sets a date for admitting failure!

The actual failure happened years ago.

I’m currently ‘into’ investing, and re-reading my ‘investment’ books.

Every single one of them mentions the single biggest error one can make: staying in a losing position thinking it will go up soon and that it will erase the losses.

It never does.

In that light .. even if it WAS setting the date of failure… (known in investing-speak as placing a stop-loss order) that would be a good thing.

Support our troops.

Get them outa there!

PostHeaderIcon Just weird

tampa hard rock casino bingoTriggered by an earlier post (link) I ordered a DVD of Martin Scorsese’s movie ‘Woodstock’. Last Friday I watched the opening song of that festival by Ritchie Havens. And just like when I saw that movie when I was 17 years old, in an old small obscure theatre in my home town of The Hague in the Netherlands, for some odd reason, it struck me how incredibly mishandled and tortured his guitar looked. Well, true, Ritchie’s technique differs remarkably from Andrés Segovia’s, but still. He himself must have realized too, that his guitar had reached its end of life, because after the Woodstock concert he gave it to his chauffeur.

Last Saturday afternoon, while walking around, contemplating to get a beer, I suddenly stood eye in eye … with that very same guitar!

It hung on a wall.

I could have touched it.

I stared at it for a while, not knowing what to think of this coincidence: one night seeing back that guitar I first wondered about some 37 years ago on a DVD, and then the next day, actually seeing that very same guitar.

Hanging on a wall.

On Indian tribal land.

The very same, relatively small, patch of Indian tribal land, where last month, the day before my birthday, the combination of a punctured abscess, the flu, Chloral Hydrate, Diphenhydramin, Clonazepam, Diazepam, Nordiazepam, Temazepam, Oxazepam, Lorazepam, Atropine, Topiramate, Ciprofloxacin and Acetaminophen, killed Anna Nicole Smith.

Update: as one of the commenters pointed out, this is incorrect. Mrs. Smith died on Indian Tribal land in the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Broward county, Florida, near Miami, not the one in Tampa.

But neither of these events is the topic of this post.

Yes, indeed, we were at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tampa.

Please have a look at their website at this link: link.

Did you see the slot machines in that picture?

My wife played those slot machines there for, oh, probably two hours or so.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

And this is what my post actually is about!

No, you DIDN’T see those slot machines on that website I just mentioned. Nor did my wife play any slot machines there.

In fact, check out that website again! The word ‘slot machine’ is nowhere to be found!

Most of the people in that casino may have THOUGHT they were playing slot machines, but they weren’t.

It’s all an illusion.

I already had made the observation that, while they had a nice and BIG poker room besides these ‘slot machines’, this casino, strangely enough, didn’t have any ‘table’ games. No black jack, no roulette, no you-name-it.

Then, on the way home, my wife asked me if I knew what the word ‘DAUB’ meant. I admitted that my knowledge of the Seminole language was inadequate to explain the meaning of that word. She said the ‘slot’ machines had a button with the word ‘DAUB’ on it, which mystified her. There was also, at the top of the machine’s screen, a grid with numbers, that almost looked like …. and yes… at home, some googling confirmed her suspicion: those machines were NOT slot machines. Slot machines are illegal on tribal land. These were bingo machines! The similarity with well known slot machines? Well: “The lower screen is just there for entertainment,” Gail said. “The cards are on top”.  See: link

Do a google on ‘daub slot machines’!

How come they can get away with such obvious fraud (I know… ‘loophole’ is the word), but a game of skill, like online poker, is firmly and effectively banned? (Well, I KNOW why, but I had to mention it!).

WHAT a …   (help me find a word here…)

PostHeaderIcon Coming out

Pete Stark CSAApparently, last weekend Congressman Pete Stark (D-California), has come out as someone who does not believe in a supreme being. This makes him the first congressperson ever to admit such a thing.
He made this statement:

When the Secular Coalition asked me to complete a survey on my religious beliefs, I indicated I am a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being

To be perfectly clear:

ALL HE DID WAS INDICATING ON A POLL THAT HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING.

That’s all. Nothing more. He didn’t confess that on ‘the floor’, he didn’t request special treatment and he certainly didn’t bash other people’s beliefs. He was just being honest (while he was the first one to ADMIT this, I’m sure there are more people in congress who share his disbelief).

And LOOK at the reactions!

For a long time I have believed that a very important basic ingredient for people’s tendency to be religious is fear. (To be a God-fearing person is considered a positive Christian trait, and you’d better fear hell too!).

I have seen the fear component manifest itself often and at various levels of consciousness, but seldom have I seen it so clearly as in this outburst from The Christian Seniors Association (CSA). See link.

Allow me a few quotes from that article and my comment on it:

… they want to establish a right for liberals to bash Christians and berate God around the clock …

ALL HE DID WAS INDICATING ON A POLL THAT HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING.

It is time for religious members of Congress to push back.  A simple declaration of a belief in God by members of Congress on the House floor will be greatly informative for the American people…

To “push back”? Note: Pete Stark did NOT announce his disbelief on the House floor.

ALL HE DID WAS INDICATING ON A POLL THAT HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING.

We have long recognized that all of this hot air about ‘separation of church and state’ has been a veiled effort to intimidate and silence religious voices in public policy matters …

Isn’t it a bit ‘un-American’ to call your own country’s Bill Of Rights ‘hot air‘? And no, it was not to intimidate, and no it was most certainly not veiled. It is a very CLEAR meassure to, indeed, keep ‘religious voices out of public policy matters’. That’s why it’s called ‘separation of church and state’. But in any case, it’s not something that Mr. Stark even so much as mentioned.

ALL HE DID WAS INDICATING ON A POLL THAT HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING.

If the liberal House leadership refuses to recognize lawmakers who want to affirm their belief in God …

Wait a minute now, NOBODY was refusing anyone anything …

ALL HE DID WAS INDICATING ON A POLL THAT HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING.

But based on some of these remarks, I think it IS valid to state that it is the CSA who ‘refuses to recognize lawmakers who want to affirm their disbelief in a god‘.

Congressman Stark’s statement [ … ] could be the moment which defines the decline of our country …

You’ve GOT to be kidding me! This would define the decline of our country?

ALL HE DID WAS INDICATING ON A POLL THAT HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING.

… the day that religious Americans stood-up to the liberal bullies who are so determined to use the power of government to silence prayer and every other religious expression of free speech.

Okay, NOW someone is REALLY going overboard here. NOBODY wants to deny religious people their right to pray and believe whatever they want. All that the non-religious people ask is to not have those beliefs FORCED upon them and that their tax money isn’t spent on some specific religions.

However, congressman Stark didn’t even mention that request.

ALL HE DID WAS INDICATING ON A POLL THAT HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING.

While I agree there is some rather nasty bullying going on here, it is NOT Pete Stark who is the bully!

This is a fight which is destined to be fought in America and we think it should begin today.

This is a FIGHT?

ALL HE DID WAS INDICATING ON A POLL THAT HE DIDN’T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING.

PostHeaderIcon Slippery slope

KhalidAnd suddenly we hear from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) again!

I must admit, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we never would have heard from him again (like a few other high profile terrorists who made the headlines when they were captured).

“I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z,” Mohammed … said …

Mohammed, … also said he was responsible for a 1993 attack on New York’s World Trade Center, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, and an attempt to down two American airplanes using shoe bombs.

Wow! He was the guy behind all that?

Does that mean we’re now going to release Ramzi Yousef, who we have in custody for masterminding the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center? (Granted, KSM IS his uncle). And Bali? I thought they picked up Abu Bakar Bashir for that. For that same bombing in Bali, the US has Riduan Isamuddin (known as Hambali) in custody (in an ‘undisclosed location’, which, as we now all know, means either Israel or somewhere in Europe, probably in one of the Balkan countries).

But, as it now turns out, is was KSM who masterminded it all and confessed to it all.

You know … somehow I can’t get the thought out of my mind that KSM was being … well … let me say … ‘given an incentive’ or ‘persuaded’ to admit all this. I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of the pressure that was put on him involved some levels of discomfort. Maybe even more than some ‘okay’ (Cheney!) ‘waterboarding’.

If I would have had the same audience as some of my bluddies, I could imagine the TONS of comments along the line of “I don’t give a rat’s ass: FRY the pig!”

And, you know, I totally understand that sentiment.

But is it right? Wouldn’t we be stooping down to what we so despise in our ennemies? Besides, from a practical point of view: if we (illegaly!) torture them so that they confess .. so that we can kill them legally .. what’s the point? Why not (illegaly) kill them right away? Saves a LOT of money, time and problems.

Anxious to receive some comments on this .. but I know, that’s slightly problematic with only two readers 😉

And yes, I also put this in the ‘religion’ category. Is KSM a serial killer, a beast, an animal? No, I think he’s primarily just a deeply religious being.

Link to article: link

Update:

Today [3/15/2007] it became known that KSM also admitted to having beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

In fact, I thougt that that was what he was picked up for in the first place, but anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear tomorrow that he masterminded Jimmy Hoffa’s disapearance as well, or had the hand in JFK’s assassination.

Link to article: link

PostHeaderIcon Frank Zappa and Big Brother

ZappaIn my previous post I used the phrase “.. treating dandruff by decapitation”. I didn’t make up that expression, I borrowed it from Frank Zappa, who used it when he was referring to the attempt to setup some censorship for song lyrics back in the 80’s. I found the expression on (in?) Wikipedia, doing some research after I watched a video of him being on ‘Crossfire’ more than 20 years ago.

I’d like to share this video with you.

My reasons:

First of all, this is, again, about freedom versus governmental control, and I totally agree with Zappa’s views of over 20 years ago expressed in this clip. Including the belief that there are strong forces at work trying to turn this country into a fascist theocracy, even though the main topic was censorship.

Second, I’m a Frank Zappa fan. What this man has done in his career as a musician is simply incredible.

Third, I simply found it remarkable how he dealt with the whole event: here’s a guy who is being accused of the dirtiest things, gets words put into his mouth, is almost violently attacked and he just sits there … neatly dressed, suit and tie, very articulate, stays relatively calm (yes, okay, he tells one of the guys, when he gets too vitriolic, “kiss my ass”, but hey.. this is Frank Zappa .. in this program, because of his belief that one should be allowed to say things like that …), and manages to get his point across despite the three (!) loudmouths that keep yelling at him.

Fourth, it’s entertainment! Hey… this is Frank Zappa! And yes, he is very serious (he has seriously considered running for president). But still.

See for yourself .. (okay, it is a bit long, but this is historic material)


Link to Zappa on Crossfire in 1986

For more on Zappa, see Wikipedia (link).

PostHeaderIcon A case of nuts

NutsI recently introduced two NCOTW’s.

One was Donald E Wildmon, founder and head of the American Family Association, the other one was Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host.

These two people now seem to have found eachother!

Dennis got my NCOTW price for his column in which he rails against a Muslim congressman’s intention to swear his oath on the Koran when he takes office.

Donald’s American Family Association now chips in on the issue by publishing Dennis’ column and urging its three and half million members to take action.

See their webpage here (just ignore their spelling errors).

Donald urges his followers to: “Send an email asking your U.S. Representative and Senators to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of Representatives and Senators.”

Apart from the fact that such a law would be extremely unconstitutional (See article VI: “.. no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office ..”), it would also be extremely stupid.

Let me try to explain this:

“Senators and Representatives are bound by Oath or Affirmation…”, that is, they can choose between simply promising to uphold the constitution, or they can swear to do so.

Swearing is, by many, considered a stronger version of just promising, and done by invoking something that is sacred to the person swearing (a holy book, a beloved person) (see footnote 1).

The main point is, that they perceive swearing to be much stronger by invoking something that’s sacred to them! Presumably in the sense that if they break their oath, they would be betraying this something or someone sacred!

So, what makes the oath so strong is that something sacred to the person who swears is involved. That‘s the crux of the matter.

For instance, suppose I promise something, but you think it should be stronger than that and ask me to swear on the bible. Since I’m an atheist, the bible doesn’t mean a thing to me (well, at least not a positive thing), so if you really insist, sure, if that makes you happy I’ll do that. The point is that it shouldn’t make you happy, because it’s me who has to keep the promise and I don’t get any extra incentives for keeping my promise from puting my hand on your holy book, the Koran, or last month’s Playboy, to me it would still be a promise.

So .. it comes down to simply this: if you really want someone to swear, that is, promise something in a way that this person feels he can’t break it, then you want him to invoke something that is sacred to him! NOT YOU!

By forcing him to swear on something that’s only sacred to you and not to him you take away the meaning of this little ‘extra’ that an oath has over a promise.

If you want your senators and representatives to swear, you want to make sure that breaking their promise desecrates what they hold holy, not something you consider sacred. By forcing him to swear on your holy books, you actually give him an incentive to break his promise, especially if he finds your holy book offensive!

So, from a pure logical point of view it’s absolute insanity to even consider a law that requires people to swear on a specific holy book.

But then, logic usually involves some thinking, and thinking is exactly what the religious right seeks to ban from society, so I have little hope, that people like Dennis and Donald will ever understand the mindboggling stupidity of their misguided activism.

It’s precisely this fear of thinking and logic that makes people like Dennis come up with drivel like

“America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on”

and has Donald blindly repeat the idiocy on his website.

 

Note 1) In all practicallity, to me personally, there is no difference. If someone doesn’t think my promise is good enough, then I don’t see how my swearing on my late mother would make a difference. The only way it could make a difference is if my promise wasn’t fully “meant”, but that’s not how I personally ‘promise’! But apparently, for other people, swearing on, for example, what they perceive as a holy book, does make a difference (makes me wonder how I should rate such a person’s simple promise, but that’s a different discussion).


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