When I decided some months ago to start blogging again, I intended to avoid politics; I was just going to write responses to the lectionary.
However, when the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination feels that it's appropriate to criticize President Obama for a "phony theology" that is "not based on the Bible," I can't help myself.
When Republicans in Congress can summon an all male panel of clergy to complain that their rights are threatened by insurance coverage for women's healthcare (and simultaneously deny an opportunity to speak to a woman who was prepared to speak to how the laws impact her), something has gone off the rails.
When I say "what Santorum gets wrong," I don't plan to do a point-by-point rebuttal of his various statements and claims. The last thing the world needs is more Christians pointing fingers at each other and saying, "I'm right, you're wrong."
Today, however, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. While there is a heightened focus on sin and all our various collective and individual failures, there is also necessarily an emphasis on forgiveness and salvation. What Santorum and people like him appear to have not understood - perhaps conceptually, intellectually, but clearly not in their hearts - is that salvation isn't up to us.
Oh, we can have a long argument about salvation by faith versus salvation by works, but that misses the point, too. It's not up to us. It's salvation by God.
The writers of the New Testament reached a pretty clear consensus that grace is a gift, freely given. We don't earn it, and in fact, we can't earn it. There is no person so good, so pure, so virtuous that they can enter into eternal life by their own efforts. No one deserves to go to Heaven. The astonished disciples asked Jesus, "Well, then who can get into Heaven?" He said, simply, "For mortals, it is impossible." Remember, this is the guy who also said, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can tell a mountain to uproot itself and fall into the ocean." But Heaven? "For mortals, it is impossible."
And then he says, "For God, all things are possible."
A lot of people - hopefully most people - concede this, even if they maybe don't really believe it. The most self-righteously pious, judgmental blowhard televangelist will also probably be the first person to say he's a sinner, but he's also a lot like that pharisee in the classic parable, pointing at the tax collector and saying to God, "I may not be perfect, but at least I don't sin as much or as badly as that guy." That's really where we find ourselves. "I may not be perfect, but at least I do not have sex outside of marriage/I do not use birth control/I have not had an abortion/[fill in the vice of your choice]." That's basically Rick Santorum: I assume he wouldn't dare say (and doesn't believe) that he's not a sinner, but at least his theology is "based on the Bible," not like that other guy's. It is a classic case of "holier than thou," in the most pathetic and literal (if illiterate) sense.
So it begs the question: if no one is perfect, then just how imperfect can we be, and still get into Heaven? And if that sounds like we're framing the question too much in a "works-based" theology, then let's rephrase: no one fully understands God or gets everything right, so...how wrong can we be and still be "right enough"?
But there again we fail to remember it's not up to us.
The Bible, which is sometimes described as a record of the history of salvation, is not a book full of inspiring, feel-good stories about virtous people, or, at the very least, that would be a grotesque oversimplification. It's a book full of troubling - but ultimately inspiring - stories about a whole lot of very real human beings who say and do all kinds of dumb, mean, fearful, selfish things. What we're meant to take away is that people are complicated, and that God can work with us and through us even though we screw up in ways big and small, all the time. Our brokenness is not an obstacle for God. Paul strenuously insisted that nothing can separate us from God's love, one of many verses the literalists prefer to pretend come with an asterisk.
And so, even laying aside the incredibly sad state of affairs that a self-professed defender of the Constitution does not understand why it's irrelevant, inappropriate and offensive to comment on whether the president's "theology" is sufficiently orthodox for the office, Santorum's own biggest mistake is failing to understand that no one's theology is sufficient.
You just can't legislate people into heaven, Rick.
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Proper 11, Tuesday, Year 1 - St Macrina
1 Samuel 25:1-22
I have mentioned before that for this two-year lectionary cycle I am studying with the King James Version. This evening I was reading along, following a typically awful Old Testament-style story of betrayal and bloodshed in 1 Samuel (the chapter which begins, by the way, with the death of Samuel...even though there are five more chapters to go, plus 2nd Samuel) but was taken aback when I got to the last verse of the lesson where David is praying to God for assistance in avenging an insult by slaughtering a bunch of innocent people, vowing by morning to have killed "any that pisseth against the wall."
Come again? LOL.
Curious, I turned to the other translations on my shelf (the NRSV, the NIV and the NKJV), all of which instead simply (and preferably...) refer to "men" or "males."
I Googled the phrase, and while admitting it's not like I spent hours of research on this, it does appear that in fact the King James has the more literal rendering of a Hebrew idiom for "men." (The phrase "that pisseth against the wall" appears in the KJV a second time in 1 Samuel 25, and in four verses of 1 & 2 Kings.)
But what really blew my mind was a video that came up of a Baptist pastor citing these verses to insist that God wants men to pee standing up. I won't link to it, you can find it yourself, if you're of a mind.
He relates a story about visiting Germany and seeing signs over toilets asking men not to pee standing up, and, explaining that his wife is German, he asked her, "Is this a joke?" and she apparently said, "No man in Germany pees standing up." "That's where we're headed in this country," says Pastor Steven L. Anderson.
Where to start?
I lived in Switzerland for a year and have visited Germany a couple of times. I lived in a university dorm in Zurich and, yes, there were signs over the toilets in the restrooms saying that peeing standing up was verboten. Now, this isn't because Switzerland has been taken over by anti-Christian feminist zealots, it's because, well, some men have really terrible aim, and no one likes to have to wipe someone else's pee off a toilet seat before using it. Duh. It's called etiquette.
But the idea that there is some sort of Teutonic cultural prohibition against urinating in a vertical position on principle is ridiculous. Any public restroom -- especially in train stations, etc -- will have urinals. In fact, in Switzerland, where the German dialects are sprinkled with French words, the common name for a men's restroom is a pissoir, where there's not a toilet in sight, and not even individual urinals, but just one long porcelain wall (!!!) with a drain at the bottom.
Moreover, "Sitzpinkler" -- which literally means "one who sits to pee" -- is a very common German derogatory word for a less-than-manly man, specifically one who can't stand up for himself.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with poor St Macrina, whose feast unhappily coincides this year with this particular lesson, and who deserves a better post.
Pastor Anderson goes on to caution his listeners against judging him for using bad language by arguing that this word "pisseth" comes directly from the mouth of God, via the Bible. He rails against other translations, including the New King James, for rendering the euphemism as "males" instead of keeping the word-for-word idiom, and cites this as evidence of the extent to which anti-Christian feminizing political correctness has infested even the church itself, in what basically amounts to a xenophobic, sexist, homophobic rant where a holy concept of "masculinity" can be so narrowly defined as to require certain orthodox, patriotic postures for peeing.
I lament that this is the sort of sermon that gets regularly posted to YouTube, and this is what has the potential to go viral. When I think of the hundreds or even thousands of thoughtful sermons that must be given in all kinds of churches every Sunday, to think this is the sort of pathetic nonsense that will form or reaffirm some people's ideas about Christianity and the Bible, I am filled with anger and despair.
I have mentioned before that for this two-year lectionary cycle I am studying with the King James Version. This evening I was reading along, following a typically awful Old Testament-style story of betrayal and bloodshed in 1 Samuel (the chapter which begins, by the way, with the death of Samuel...even though there are five more chapters to go, plus 2nd Samuel) but was taken aback when I got to the last verse of the lesson where David is praying to God for assistance in avenging an insult by slaughtering a bunch of innocent people, vowing by morning to have killed "any that pisseth against the wall."
Come again? LOL.
Curious, I turned to the other translations on my shelf (the NRSV, the NIV and the NKJV), all of which instead simply (and preferably...) refer to "men" or "males."
I Googled the phrase, and while admitting it's not like I spent hours of research on this, it does appear that in fact the King James has the more literal rendering of a Hebrew idiom for "men." (The phrase "that pisseth against the wall" appears in the KJV a second time in 1 Samuel 25, and in four verses of 1 & 2 Kings.)
But what really blew my mind was a video that came up of a Baptist pastor citing these verses to insist that God wants men to pee standing up. I won't link to it, you can find it yourself, if you're of a mind.
He relates a story about visiting Germany and seeing signs over toilets asking men not to pee standing up, and, explaining that his wife is German, he asked her, "Is this a joke?" and she apparently said, "No man in Germany pees standing up." "That's where we're headed in this country," says Pastor Steven L. Anderson.
Where to start?
I lived in Switzerland for a year and have visited Germany a couple of times. I lived in a university dorm in Zurich and, yes, there were signs over the toilets in the restrooms saying that peeing standing up was verboten. Now, this isn't because Switzerland has been taken over by anti-Christian feminist zealots, it's because, well, some men have really terrible aim, and no one likes to have to wipe someone else's pee off a toilet seat before using it. Duh. It's called etiquette.
But the idea that there is some sort of Teutonic cultural prohibition against urinating in a vertical position on principle is ridiculous. Any public restroom -- especially in train stations, etc -- will have urinals. In fact, in Switzerland, where the German dialects are sprinkled with French words, the common name for a men's restroom is a pissoir, where there's not a toilet in sight, and not even individual urinals, but just one long porcelain wall (!!!) with a drain at the bottom.
Moreover, "Sitzpinkler" -- which literally means "one who sits to pee" -- is a very common German derogatory word for a less-than-manly man, specifically one who can't stand up for himself.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with poor St Macrina, whose feast unhappily coincides this year with this particular lesson, and who deserves a better post.
Pastor Anderson goes on to caution his listeners against judging him for using bad language by arguing that this word "pisseth" comes directly from the mouth of God, via the Bible. He rails against other translations, including the New King James, for rendering the euphemism as "males" instead of keeping the word-for-word idiom, and cites this as evidence of the extent to which anti-Christian feminizing political correctness has infested even the church itself, in what basically amounts to a xenophobic, sexist, homophobic rant where a holy concept of "masculinity" can be so narrowly defined as to require certain orthodox, patriotic postures for peeing.
I lament that this is the sort of sermon that gets regularly posted to YouTube, and this is what has the potential to go viral. When I think of the hundreds or even thousands of thoughtful sermons that must be given in all kinds of churches every Sunday, to think this is the sort of pathetic nonsense that will form or reaffirm some people's ideas about Christianity and the Bible, I am filled with anger and despair.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Obama's First Huge Mistake
The selection of evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20 is absolutely astonishing and tremendously disappointing.
President-elect Obama's defense of the choice is ironic: claiming that he wants to honor and represent the diversity of America, he has gone with a pastor who has stood in public opposition to that ideal.
Rick Warren is entitled to his religious views that homosexuality is incompatible with Scripture and to hold the belief that marriage should be between one man and one woman. He is even entitled to disregard all the available scientific research on the subject of sexual orientation and continue to maintain that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice" that can be "treated." He was entitled to support California's Proposition 8 and to campaign on its behalf.
What Pastor Warren was not entitled to do, however, was to participate in a campaign of dishonesty about the "threat" the civil marriage of same-sex couples posed to religious freedom and freedom of speech. He claimed that any religious figure who spoke out against homosexuality or same-sex marriage could be "charged" with hate speech and fed the silly fear that churches would be "forced" to hold same-sex wedding ceremonies.
Either Mr. Warren does not understand his own first amendment rights that he claims to be so worried about, or he is a liar.
The legalization of civil marriage for same-sex couples does not restrict in any manner any person's fundamental right to speak in opposition. Just look how many people were censored or arrested for "hate speech" in California during the four months that same-sex marriage was legal there: zero. And how many pastors were forced to bless same-sex unions agains their deeply held religious beliefs? None.
It is true that Warren's rhetoric has been more moderate in tone than many other conservative religious leaders, but the content was no less poisonous. It is odious that in the name of "diversity" Barack Obama has given this honor to a person who used his pulpit to call for the elimination of existing rights for a minority population based on prejudice -- whether protected speech, or no.
Barack Obama's victory was in large part possible because the nation chose to soundly repudiate the politics of pander perfected by Karl Rove in targeting people like Rick Warren and his supporters. It is disheartening that this selection reinforces the notion that to be a credible religious figure in America one must be socially conservative. Why couldn't Obama have picked a progressive member of the clergy, like evangelical activist Jim Wallis? Or why not Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who is also a scientist? Or perhaps a prominent African American scholar like Harvard's Peter Gomes?
Consider me extremely disappointed.
President-elect Obama's defense of the choice is ironic: claiming that he wants to honor and represent the diversity of America, he has gone with a pastor who has stood in public opposition to that ideal.
Rick Warren is entitled to his religious views that homosexuality is incompatible with Scripture and to hold the belief that marriage should be between one man and one woman. He is even entitled to disregard all the available scientific research on the subject of sexual orientation and continue to maintain that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice" that can be "treated." He was entitled to support California's Proposition 8 and to campaign on its behalf.
What Pastor Warren was not entitled to do, however, was to participate in a campaign of dishonesty about the "threat" the civil marriage of same-sex couples posed to religious freedom and freedom of speech. He claimed that any religious figure who spoke out against homosexuality or same-sex marriage could be "charged" with hate speech and fed the silly fear that churches would be "forced" to hold same-sex wedding ceremonies.
Either Mr. Warren does not understand his own first amendment rights that he claims to be so worried about, or he is a liar.
The legalization of civil marriage for same-sex couples does not restrict in any manner any person's fundamental right to speak in opposition. Just look how many people were censored or arrested for "hate speech" in California during the four months that same-sex marriage was legal there: zero. And how many pastors were forced to bless same-sex unions agains their deeply held religious beliefs? None.
It is true that Warren's rhetoric has been more moderate in tone than many other conservative religious leaders, but the content was no less poisonous. It is odious that in the name of "diversity" Barack Obama has given this honor to a person who used his pulpit to call for the elimination of existing rights for a minority population based on prejudice -- whether protected speech, or no.
Barack Obama's victory was in large part possible because the nation chose to soundly repudiate the politics of pander perfected by Karl Rove in targeting people like Rick Warren and his supporters. It is disheartening that this selection reinforces the notion that to be a credible religious figure in America one must be socially conservative. Why couldn't Obama have picked a progressive member of the clergy, like evangelical activist Jim Wallis? Or why not Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who is also a scientist? Or perhaps a prominent African American scholar like Harvard's Peter Gomes?
Consider me extremely disappointed.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Continuing Saga of the iTunes Genius Sidebar FAIL
I know I have taste in music that runs outside the mainstream, but seriously...what's going on at iTunes? Why is it that when my selection is "Il segreto per esser felice" from Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia sung by Marilyn Horne that the iTunes "Genius" recommendation is "Con te partiro" as "sung" by Andrea Boccelli? This would be like me going into a restaurant and remarking that I like Veuve Clicquot and having the sommelier respond by suggesting a glass of Diet Pepsi. WTF, people?
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Greetings from a Fake American
I haven't written very much about the political world recently. Frankly, the prospect of a McCain presidency, however depressing and terrifying, is presently so unlikely that it animates me less than the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency did during the primaries. (And, in a couple of weeks, I presume I will be receiving apologies from the Clintonistas out there who insisted that Obama would be powerless in the face of constant Ayers/Wright/Hussein smears from the right.)
Don't get me wrong; it's not in the bag and Obama is right to warn against complacency. In one respect, this will be a fairly close election: I would be very surprised if Obama is more than five points ahead of McCain when the popular vote is tallied. However, I think the Democrats' electoral strategy is solid, and I'm glad our hopes aren't pinned on Ohio and Florida. Barack doesn't need either of them to win; this year he needs Pennsylvania and Virginia. If he gets those two, it's over. He can lose Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, Indiana and North Carolina -- and he'll win at least some of them -- and still take the election. (I base that on the assumption that Obama wins CA, CT, DC, DE, HI, IA, IL, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NY, OR, PA, RI, VA, VT, WA & WI for a total of 272 electoral votes.)
I guess now is also a fine time to admit that I was wrong on this point.
However, I am being roused out of my blogging apathy by the recent common mantra from the McCain campaign and their supporters that they somehow represent "real" America. First there was John McCain's brother, who said that northern Virginia was "communist country," which was echoed by McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer when she talked about "real Virginia." Touting "small-town" values had always been a part of Sarah Palin's campaign schtick, but then she had to go off in North Carolina and talk about "real America," saying, "the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit," and lauded them for their "pro-America" stance. (She has since apologized for those remarks.) Rep. Michelle Bachman of Minnesota called for an "expose" of anti-American members of Congress.
So much for George W. Bush's 2000 strategy of campaigning on a message of bipartisanship and his famously worthless oath to be "a uniter, not a divider." We've now reached a point where supposedly serious people can say with a straight face that only parts of this country are "real" or "pro-America," and we have a candidate for the White House who can somehow claim that grass-roots efforts to register first time voters and get them to take advantage of the primary fundamental right bestowed on us by the Founders threatens to destroy "the fabric of democracy."
Yesterday, McCain and Palin clarified their stance in an interview to air tonight on NBC. In response to a request from Brian Williams to define what they meant by "elite," Palin said this: "Oh, I guess just people who think that they're better than anyone else."
McCain went on to elaborate that by "elite" he means the folks who live "in our nation's capital and in New York City," adding, "Who think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves."
Okay, so...wow.
Because, you know, our country's largest city and of course the capital don't have any "hard-working, middle-class Americans," just atheist feminist socialist gay-married immigrant welfare queens who drive Priuses, instead of American-made Cadillacs, on their way to abortion parties with a bottle of chardonnay in one hand and the Koran in the other.
The rhetoric from the right really is that bizarre these days. Consider Rep. Robin Hayes of North Carolina, who tried to deny that he warmed up a McCain rally crowd by saying, "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God" before he was exposed by a tape of the event.
You know, look: I'm a liberal. I'm gay, I drive a Honda, I live in an infamously progressive city, I believe climate change is real and has human causes, I think healthcare is a fundamental human right, I think the Iraq war was a mistake, I do not believe that all Muslims are terrorists, and I happen to like sushi, goat cheese, lattes, pinot noir and imported vodka. I supported Obama against Hillary in the primaries because she's too conservative for me. (Well, and she's a liar.) Sue me. But dangit, I was born in this country, I work hard (and make roughly one-fifth of Joe the Plumber's salary, apparently), I pay taxes and I frickin' go to church and believe in God. And I vote. I don't "hate" hard-working religious Americans, I am one.
The Republican Party, as embodied today by John McCain, has no message for the country and no vision for the future aside from a rude, non-sensical belief that (at least) half the country is fake, unpatriotic, hateful, lazy, elitist and amoral. Their ideas and policies are so exhausted and bankrupt that their last remaining argument is a spurious claim that they represent the "real" America. No wonder conservatives of principle are deserting in droves to endorse Obama.
Don't get me wrong; it's not in the bag and Obama is right to warn against complacency. In one respect, this will be a fairly close election: I would be very surprised if Obama is more than five points ahead of McCain when the popular vote is tallied. However, I think the Democrats' electoral strategy is solid, and I'm glad our hopes aren't pinned on Ohio and Florida. Barack doesn't need either of them to win; this year he needs Pennsylvania and Virginia. If he gets those two, it's over. He can lose Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, Indiana and North Carolina -- and he'll win at least some of them -- and still take the election. (I base that on the assumption that Obama wins CA, CT, DC, DE, HI, IA, IL, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NY, OR, PA, RI, VA, VT, WA & WI for a total of 272 electoral votes.)
I guess now is also a fine time to admit that I was wrong on this point.
However, I am being roused out of my blogging apathy by the recent common mantra from the McCain campaign and their supporters that they somehow represent "real" America. First there was John McCain's brother, who said that northern Virginia was "communist country," which was echoed by McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer when she talked about "real Virginia." Touting "small-town" values had always been a part of Sarah Palin's campaign schtick, but then she had to go off in North Carolina and talk about "real America," saying, "the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit," and lauded them for their "pro-America" stance. (She has since apologized for those remarks.) Rep. Michelle Bachman of Minnesota called for an "expose" of anti-American members of Congress.
So much for George W. Bush's 2000 strategy of campaigning on a message of bipartisanship and his famously worthless oath to be "a uniter, not a divider." We've now reached a point where supposedly serious people can say with a straight face that only parts of this country are "real" or "pro-America," and we have a candidate for the White House who can somehow claim that grass-roots efforts to register first time voters and get them to take advantage of the primary fundamental right bestowed on us by the Founders threatens to destroy "the fabric of democracy."
Yesterday, McCain and Palin clarified their stance in an interview to air tonight on NBC. In response to a request from Brian Williams to define what they meant by "elite," Palin said this: "Oh, I guess just people who think that they're better than anyone else."
McCain went on to elaborate that by "elite" he means the folks who live "in our nation's capital and in New York City," adding, "Who think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves."
Okay, so...wow.
Because, you know, our country's largest city and of course the capital don't have any "hard-working, middle-class Americans," just atheist feminist socialist gay-married immigrant welfare queens who drive Priuses, instead of American-made Cadillacs, on their way to abortion parties with a bottle of chardonnay in one hand and the Koran in the other.
The rhetoric from the right really is that bizarre these days. Consider Rep. Robin Hayes of North Carolina, who tried to deny that he warmed up a McCain rally crowd by saying, "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God" before he was exposed by a tape of the event.
You know, look: I'm a liberal. I'm gay, I drive a Honda, I live in an infamously progressive city, I believe climate change is real and has human causes, I think healthcare is a fundamental human right, I think the Iraq war was a mistake, I do not believe that all Muslims are terrorists, and I happen to like sushi, goat cheese, lattes, pinot noir and imported vodka. I supported Obama against Hillary in the primaries because she's too conservative for me. (Well, and she's a liar.) Sue me. But dangit, I was born in this country, I work hard (and make roughly one-fifth of Joe the Plumber's salary, apparently), I pay taxes and I frickin' go to church and believe in God. And I vote. I don't "hate" hard-working religious Americans, I am one.
The Republican Party, as embodied today by John McCain, has no message for the country and no vision for the future aside from a rude, non-sensical belief that (at least) half the country is fake, unpatriotic, hateful, lazy, elitist and amoral. Their ideas and policies are so exhausted and bankrupt that their last remaining argument is a spurious claim that they represent the "real" America. No wonder conservatives of principle are deserting in droves to endorse Obama.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Might Have to Wait Until Next Week to Retire
The Year-to-Date Rate of Return on my 401(k) is now -41.4%.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Who Told You You're Allowed to Rain on My Cookie Parade?
Damn this economy!!!!!
While driving to work this morning, I heard on NPR that Mother's Cookies filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations. They were unable to get a loan to make payroll.
Those pink and white frosted circus animal cookies were one of my absolute most-needed comfort foods for bad days. Definitive proof that George W. Bush has wrecked the country.
While driving to work this morning, I heard on NPR that Mother's Cookies filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations. They were unable to get a loan to make payroll.
Those pink and white frosted circus animal cookies were one of my absolute most-needed comfort foods for bad days. Definitive proof that George W. Bush has wrecked the country.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Why Sarah Palin's Family is Fair Game
"I have said before and I will repeat again: People's families are off limits," Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said on Tuesday. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."
Noble words, with which I'd happily be first to concur. But no...not until I hear the same principled stance from Republican activists who have made discrimination and fear-mongering a rallying cry and make people like me political props in their campaign of distraction.
The 2008 Republican Party Platform explicitly calls for writing discrimination into the Constitution, seeking both to deny same-sex couples the right to marry and to deprive the courts of their proper role in protecting the civil rights of all citizens from the tyranny of the (shrinking) majority.
Their defense of "traditional" marriage is lined with all the discredited tropes of the waning anti-gay movement. They insist that restricting marriage to heterosexual couples protects "our children's future," although the government neither requires nor recognizes procreative intent or capability as a characteristic of civil marriage. The platform paints a disparaging view of children who grow up "in homes without fathers," while failing to note that the research they cite exclusively refers to the children of heterosexual mothers whose fathers chose not to live up to their responsibilities, not the children of committed same-sex partners. We are meant to ignore that some children of single-parent households turn out just fine (see Obama, Barack) and others have two fathers.
You see, according to Republicans like Sarah Palin, a family like this one is a better place for children than this one. The belief that any pairing of married heterosexual parents provides a stabler, healthier home than any same-sex couple could possibly offer is just not born out by any sort of evidence, at all.
Never mind their foreign policy disasters or the tanking economy -- look out! Here come Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi! Give me a break.
This is not a trivial issue. Palin and her ilk have literally campaigned on the promise to protect America from gay bogeymen (and women). Sure, in an ideal world, Bristol Palin and her circumstances would be irrelevant. They should be. And so should the private lives of millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, taxpaying, hard-working citizens. But when the RNC uses us to scare up voters, I refuse to sit idly by and not point out the egregious hypocrisy of people like Sarah Palin.
So Bristol Palin is 17, pregnant, and scheduled to marry the teenage father. Now, who knows? Maybe these two are genuinely in love and will live a happy, committed life together. It's entirely possible. My grandmother was pregnant (turns out, with someone else's child, my father) when she married her husband, and they're still married 65 years later and raised three kids, two of whom are divorced. But the research shows that pregnant brides are 50% more likely to get divorced, and that's factoring in a heterosexual divorce rate that isn't anything to be proud of.
Here's why Sarah Palin's family matters. You won't find anyone to argue that Bristol was being responsible by getting pregnant while unmarried and still in high school, even if they now assert she's doing the right thing by marrying the charming father. Though McCain aides may protest that the "liberal media" is smearing Palin's family, it was the GOP that first trotted out the Palins as a model to be emulated.
If you agree with Barack Obama that this subject should be off-limits, then you're at odds with James Dobson, whose activist organization Focus on the Family -- note the name -- is at least as political as it is religious. Here's his statement on the Bristol Palin situation.
Now, let's reflect back on his comments regarding the daughter of a sitting vice president who got pregnant outside the bonds of civil marriage.
Seventeen year-old Bristol Palin is about to marry a fellow teenager; they will have full government recognition and protection for a relationship that is, let's face it, a last-ditch attempt to make right a stupid mistake made in a brief moment of passion. Sarah Palin thinks this is just great. Yet compare that to Mary Cheney, who had been in a committed relationship with her partner for 15 years when they made the conscious decision to raise a child. (They're now at 17 years together, 6 years past the average heterosexual marriage duration of 11 years.) Sarah Palin thinks that Mary and Heather deserve no recognition or protection; Mary is the biological mother, so in the unfortunate event of her death, Sarah insists that Heather has no claim to the child. Sarah thinks Heather should not have been allowed to be present in the hospital for the birth, nor should she be allowed to be with Mary in the hospital under any circumstances. The couple, according to Palin, is not entitled to any insurance, inheritance or social security benefits.
Sarah Palin is receiving heaps of praise for supporting her teenage daughter's decision to have a child before she even completes high school and to marry another student who openly boasted on his MySpace profile that he doesn't want kids while simultaneously insisting that Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who had been in a committed relationship longer than Sarah has been alive, deserve no protection or recognition.
John McCain, Sarah Palin's running mate, cheated during his first marriage which ended in divorce.
Gay folk get scapegoated for the political gain and moral failures of uninformed ideologues like Sarah Palin, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and David Vitter. I will heed Barack Obama's call to leave her family alone just as soon as she stops blaming me for everything that is wrong with heterosexual marriage.
Republican, heal thyself.
Noble words, with which I'd happily be first to concur. But no...not until I hear the same principled stance from Republican activists who have made discrimination and fear-mongering a rallying cry and make people like me political props in their campaign of distraction.
The 2008 Republican Party Platform explicitly calls for writing discrimination into the Constitution, seeking both to deny same-sex couples the right to marry and to deprive the courts of their proper role in protecting the civil rights of all citizens from the tyranny of the (shrinking) majority.
Their defense of "traditional" marriage is lined with all the discredited tropes of the waning anti-gay movement. They insist that restricting marriage to heterosexual couples protects "our children's future," although the government neither requires nor recognizes procreative intent or capability as a characteristic of civil marriage. The platform paints a disparaging view of children who grow up "in homes without fathers," while failing to note that the research they cite exclusively refers to the children of heterosexual mothers whose fathers chose not to live up to their responsibilities, not the children of committed same-sex partners. We are meant to ignore that some children of single-parent households turn out just fine (see Obama, Barack) and others have two fathers.
You see, according to Republicans like Sarah Palin, a family like this one is a better place for children than this one. The belief that any pairing of married heterosexual parents provides a stabler, healthier home than any same-sex couple could possibly offer is just not born out by any sort of evidence, at all.
Never mind their foreign policy disasters or the tanking economy -- look out! Here come Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi! Give me a break.
This is not a trivial issue. Palin and her ilk have literally campaigned on the promise to protect America from gay bogeymen (and women). Sure, in an ideal world, Bristol Palin and her circumstances would be irrelevant. They should be. And so should the private lives of millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, taxpaying, hard-working citizens. But when the RNC uses us to scare up voters, I refuse to sit idly by and not point out the egregious hypocrisy of people like Sarah Palin.
So Bristol Palin is 17, pregnant, and scheduled to marry the teenage father. Now, who knows? Maybe these two are genuinely in love and will live a happy, committed life together. It's entirely possible. My grandmother was pregnant (turns out, with someone else's child, my father) when she married her husband, and they're still married 65 years later and raised three kids, two of whom are divorced. But the research shows that pregnant brides are 50% more likely to get divorced, and that's factoring in a heterosexual divorce rate that isn't anything to be proud of.
Here's why Sarah Palin's family matters. You won't find anyone to argue that Bristol was being responsible by getting pregnant while unmarried and still in high school, even if they now assert she's doing the right thing by marrying the charming father. Though McCain aides may protest that the "liberal media" is smearing Palin's family, it was the GOP that first trotted out the Palins as a model to be emulated.
If you agree with Barack Obama that this subject should be off-limits, then you're at odds with James Dobson, whose activist organization Focus on the Family -- note the name -- is at least as political as it is religious. Here's his statement on the Bristol Palin situation.
Now, let's reflect back on his comments regarding the daughter of a sitting vice president who got pregnant outside the bonds of civil marriage.
Seventeen year-old Bristol Palin is about to marry a fellow teenager; they will have full government recognition and protection for a relationship that is, let's face it, a last-ditch attempt to make right a stupid mistake made in a brief moment of passion. Sarah Palin thinks this is just great. Yet compare that to Mary Cheney, who had been in a committed relationship with her partner for 15 years when they made the conscious decision to raise a child. (They're now at 17 years together, 6 years past the average heterosexual marriage duration of 11 years.) Sarah Palin thinks that Mary and Heather deserve no recognition or protection; Mary is the biological mother, so in the unfortunate event of her death, Sarah insists that Heather has no claim to the child. Sarah thinks Heather should not have been allowed to be present in the hospital for the birth, nor should she be allowed to be with Mary in the hospital under any circumstances. The couple, according to Palin, is not entitled to any insurance, inheritance or social security benefits.
Sarah Palin is receiving heaps of praise for supporting her teenage daughter's decision to have a child before she even completes high school and to marry another student who openly boasted on his MySpace profile that he doesn't want kids while simultaneously insisting that Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who had been in a committed relationship longer than Sarah has been alive, deserve no protection or recognition.
John McCain, Sarah Palin's running mate, cheated during his first marriage which ended in divorce.
Gay folk get scapegoated for the political gain and moral failures of uninformed ideologues like Sarah Palin, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and David Vitter. I will heed Barack Obama's call to leave her family alone just as soon as she stops blaming me for everything that is wrong with heterosexual marriage.
Republican, heal thyself.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Andy for GOP Secretary of State
If John McCain wins in November, I think based on my extensive foreign policy experience that he should definitely consider me for Secretary of State.
First off, I was born in the State of Washington, which is on the border with Canada, and I have even visited Victoria. I grew up in Oregon, which is right across the water from Korea, which means that I am familiar with the threat posed by Kim Jong Il. After a year in Los Angeles (which is close to Mexico), I spent nearly fourteen years in Manhattan, which, as everyone knows, is the home of the United Nations.
In high school I traveled as an exchange student to Japan, which is close to China. I also visited Hawaii, which has only been a state since 1959 and so barely counts as the U.S., which is why Barack Obama is only kinda-sorta an American. From 2000-2001 I lived for 10.5 months in Zurich, Switzerland, which is a real diplomaticky sort of place, and I spent a major percentage of my time there as an ambassador for our nation, explaining to the citizens of "Old Europe" why it was that the candidate who received fewer popular votes was actually the rightful winner of the election and assuring them that, despite what they had heard about George W. Bush, everything would be fine. "What's he going to do," I asked them. "Start a war?"
During this time I also sang for the Mayor of Zurich and the President of Switzerland. I have met hundreds, if not thousands, of queens.
In addition to Switzerland, Canada, Japan and the Kingdom of Hawaii, I have also traveled to Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. While in London, I saw Buckingham Palace. I speak fluent English, conversational German, passable Italian and can read French. Perhaps more importantly for present times, I have sung in Russian, Spanish and Hebrew. I also took three years of Japanese in high school, and once slept with the son of a Brazilian diplomat. (Okay, twice.) Oh! and a friend of mine is married to woman from Zimbabwe.
I have never been to Washington, D.C., but this just means that I would confirm McCain's outside-the-beltway-box thinking and his maverickyness.
Though I admit I have never served on the PTA, my stepfather was a teacher. I was elected to the Vestry in January of 2008, which means I have held elected office longer than Barack Obama has been the Democratic nominee.
Given the depth and range of my foreign policy experiences, I believe I would make an outstanding Republican Secretary of State. Oh, and as for the vetting process, I assure you that Rocky and Starbuck are up to date on licenses and vaccinations. Thank you.
*******
PS, on an unrelated note, prayers for the people of New Orleans.
First off, I was born in the State of Washington, which is on the border with Canada, and I have even visited Victoria. I grew up in Oregon, which is right across the water from Korea, which means that I am familiar with the threat posed by Kim Jong Il. After a year in Los Angeles (which is close to Mexico), I spent nearly fourteen years in Manhattan, which, as everyone knows, is the home of the United Nations.
In high school I traveled as an exchange student to Japan, which is close to China. I also visited Hawaii, which has only been a state since 1959 and so barely counts as the U.S., which is why Barack Obama is only kinda-sorta an American. From 2000-2001 I lived for 10.5 months in Zurich, Switzerland, which is a real diplomaticky sort of place, and I spent a major percentage of my time there as an ambassador for our nation, explaining to the citizens of "Old Europe" why it was that the candidate who received fewer popular votes was actually the rightful winner of the election and assuring them that, despite what they had heard about George W. Bush, everything would be fine. "What's he going to do," I asked them. "Start a war?"
During this time I also sang for the Mayor of Zurich and the President of Switzerland. I have met hundreds, if not thousands, of queens.
In addition to Switzerland, Canada, Japan and the Kingdom of Hawaii, I have also traveled to Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. While in London, I saw Buckingham Palace. I speak fluent English, conversational German, passable Italian and can read French. Perhaps more importantly for present times, I have sung in Russian, Spanish and Hebrew. I also took three years of Japanese in high school, and once slept with the son of a Brazilian diplomat. (Okay, twice.) Oh! and a friend of mine is married to woman from Zimbabwe.
I have never been to Washington, D.C., but this just means that I would confirm McCain's outside-the-beltway-box thinking and his maverickyness.
Though I admit I have never served on the PTA, my stepfather was a teacher. I was elected to the Vestry in January of 2008, which means I have held elected office longer than Barack Obama has been the Democratic nominee.
Given the depth and range of my foreign policy experiences, I believe I would make an outstanding Republican Secretary of State. Oh, and as for the vetting process, I assure you that Rocky and Starbuck are up to date on licenses and vaccinations. Thank you.
*******
PS, on an unrelated note, prayers for the people of New Orleans.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Knock, Knock
Hey did you hear the one about John McCain and his seven homes?
Come on, Democrats. You're all taking the same cheap shot. Don't any of you have anything of substance to say?
(And wow, I am really glad right now Obama didn't pick Sebelius as Veep. BO-ring. And yet, positively riveting compared to last night's appearance by Pelosi.)
Come on, Democrats. You're all taking the same cheap shot. Don't any of you have anything of substance to say?
(And wow, I am really glad right now Obama didn't pick Sebelius as Veep. BO-ring. And yet, positively riveting compared to last night's appearance by Pelosi.)
Sunday, August 24, 2008
I Have a Sinking Feeling About This
This show on Discovery about whether Noah's Ark and the flood were real is absolutely terrible.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Worst. Vacation. Ever.
So it turned out that the only thing I took with me on my fabulous August beach trip that proved to be even less useful than the condoms (hey...you never know!) was sunscreen.
It's been a busy, stressful summer and I haven't taken any time off, so I've been dying for a little "me" time to go hide somewhere and decompress. After church on Sunday, I drove out to Waldport, eager for some long walks on the beach and quiet time in prayer and meditation.
Okay, well...first, it immediately became apparent why the Howard Johnson had vacancies in mid-August. As Elizabeth Taylor said in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, "What a dump." Don't get me wrong: I wasn't expecting the Four Seasons, but wow, that place is long overdue for some fresh paint and some general maintenance. It might not kill them to pick up the trash in the grassy area between the hotel and the bay or clean the leaves out of the pool, either...not that it was warm or dry enough to go in the pool. Ahem.
I mean, sure, the room was clean. And by clean, I mean, it had this overpoweringly chemical "clean" smell that gave me a headache and made me sick to my stomach. Fortunately I had a sliding door with a screen...that opened up onto the "pet area." Watch where you step.
About 5 minutes after I arrived, fog as thick as pea soup rolled in and you couldn't even see across the street. I had planned on driving down to a decent restaurant in Yachats (there's not much in Waldport), but I looked at the fog and figured maybe I should stay local. I thought I would investigate the "Ahi Grill" on site at the hotel.
You can't really see what the restaurant looks like from the lobby; you have to go down a hall and around a corner and bang you're suddenly in the dining room, which is about the most depressing little excuse for a "restaurant" I've ever seen. But the waitress pounced and said, "One for dinner?" and I just didn't have the heart to say, "Oh, dear God, no," so instead I said, "Yes, please," with a sinking feeling in my gut. Ahi might be Hawaiian for tuna, but it's also Italian for "ouch."
The menu was depressingly limited; I had settled on the fettuccine alfredo with chicken, but just then the same dish was brought to the woman sitting at the table next to me, and it was far more food than I could possibly eat (and didn't look that great) so when the waitress came I asked for a burger and fries. ($6.95)
So, look, I just wanted to have a quiet dinner alone staring at the bay. Some people might find that depressing, I guess, but I think it's relaxing. Unfortunately, the tourists on either side of me had other ideas; they were the types that like to chat up strangers.
First they remarked on the weather, a reasonable enough starting point, and complained that it was 60, dark and rainy in the middle of August. (Hey, welcome to Oregon; you take your chances.) This prompted one man to say, "Yeah, global warming my foot, what a joke." To which the other table rejoined, "That's right, up in Spokane we had the coldest winter anyone can remember this year." And thus I found myself surrounded by global warming deniers. "It's just a plot so some people can make money." "Yeah, Al Gore -- he has a huge house and I heard he drives three humvees!"
Let's see...the Spokaners complained about how Governor Chris Gregoire "stole" the election from Dino Rossi, then they all commiserated about high taxes and moaned that Barack Obama wants to give us "Canadian" healthcare, "even though everyone knows Canada has the worst healthcare in the world." Naturally then we had to gravitate to Iraq, and it was generally agreed upon that "the Iraqi people are tremendously grateful we are there" and that "the liberal media" simply refuses to report the good news. The oldest man in the group then remarked, "Iran is next, mark my words. Just read Revelation, it's all there."
By this time my blood was positively boiling and the Revelation remark was the last straw. You read Revelation, you butthead. I held my tongue, though (see James 1:19-20) and instead said, "Can I get the check?" I didn't have anything to drink with my dinner because I'd brought along a bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir that was waiting for me back in the room; and it's a good thing, too, or I might just have told them off. Instead I wished them all a peaceful visit to Oregon.
About that wine: as I was shopping for the trip, I came across a new label, Anam Cara Cellars, and with my recent introduction to Celtic Christianity, I took that as a sign. Well...it's awful. Tart, no body, with strong hints of pickle. Gross.
It was only 7:00 and I was still mad, so I decided I'd go for a walk on the beach, even though it was windy and foggy. Alas, there is only one public access route to the beach from the hotel, and I hadn't gone very far past it when I realized it was already lost in the fog and growing darker. A storm was coming, so I turned around and went back to the room, cold, wet, sand-encrusted and depressed.
I decided to take the old fart's advice and read Revelation. All of it, so that I could feel justified about my self-righteous indignation. And it made me madder still, because it's actually quite wonderful and there's really nothing in there about Iran; it's about Rome. Anyone with seven heads and ten horns can see that.
A thunderstorm rolled in and, there being nothing else for it, I turned out the lights, reclined on the bed and watched. This was nice for about two hours, but then I felt really tired and wanted to actually sleep. I would drift off for about 10 minutes and then awake again to another window-rattling blast of thunder. The storm finally passed about 3:00.
I awoke about six and lay in bed debating with myself about whether I should try to get more sleep or get up and take advantage of the day; at 6:45 I rose and went for a walk on the beach, which was definitely the highlight of the entire trip. Got some great pictures -- see below -- until flashes of lightning appeared over the ocean and I decided I'd better high-tail it off the beach and get some breakfast.
After morning prayer I hopped in the car and drove down to Yachats to get coffee at the Green Salmon, which has amazing coffee and pastries and boy, if you dared insult Al Gore at the Green Salmon, you'd probably be thrown out. My kind of place.They are closed on Mondays.
After sitting in the car in the parking lot in the rain for about three minutes chanting, "No! Fuck. No! Fuck. Fu-u-uck!!!!" I figured I might as well drive down to the Fred Meyer just north of Florence and go to the Starbucks there.
Ummm...I misjudged the distance. It's like 25 miles.
And the Florence Fred Meyer does not have a Starbucks.
They do have an imitation Starbucks. There were two customers in line ahead of me, which meant I stood there for 12 minutes until I got to order. (Yes, I counted.) I asked for a large coffee and a low-fat marionberry muffin. "Okay, sir, just so you know, the muffins just got delivered so it might still be a little bit cold, is that all right?" "Sure," I said.
Cold? Fucker was frozen. I'm serious. It was cold, wet and mushy on the outside and muffin-ice at the core. Also the coffee was weak and tasted like cigarettes. Within an hour I had a "you have not had coffee yet" headache.
It was raining.
At this point I decided it was time to give up and go home.
You know, the Oregon Coast is wonderful, even in inclement weather. All it takes is a good bottle of wine, a comfy chair and a marvelous view. Well...three strikes. I was outta there. I drove back to the hotel, told them I had changed my plans and asked for a refund for the second night.
The good news is, I got 37.25 mpg in the new car.
* * * * *
The day looked like it maybe had some promise; sunrise over Alsea Bay.
Alone on the beach; perfect.
The tide was definitely out; have you ever seen a beach so broad?
Kind of hard to tell, but these are pelicans.
A great blue heron.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Antichrist is a White Male Evangelical Christian in his 60's from Sullivan County, Indiana, Who Drives a Blue 1998 Nissan Sentra
Is Barack Obama the Antichrist?
Short answer: no, long answer: what kind of biblically illiterate douchebag asks such a question?
Last week, the McCain campaign released an ad that purports to mock Obama's alleged "messiah" status with his followers (who would be, according to any and all available polling, a majority of the nation), but numerous observers have noted that, as Eric Sapp of The Eleison Group puts it, "If the McCain camp was trying to spoof Obama as Messiah, they missed a number of more obvious images and did a very poor job with this ad. If they were trying to draw parallels to Obama as Antichrist, they nailed it."
I continue to be appalled, saddened, infuriated and frightened that so many people insist on pushing the myth of "the Antichrist" while citing a "literal" interpretation of the Bible. A genuinely literal reading of the handful of relevant passages -- all from the first and second epistles of John -- would require one to acknowledge that "even now many antichrists have come."
So despite the fact that by the end of the first century the apostle John (as the tradition of authorship holds) is telling us that multiple antichrists are already in the world, many people today are on the lookout for "the One."
In an article for Time rife with errors on the Barack-as-Antichrist meme, Amy Sullivan points to a chain e-mail currently in circulation that "claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be "a man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent."
Here is where Sullivan truly misses the boat. She points out that "the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam." It's more like 500, but that's irrelevant, especially since the point here is that End Timers assert that Revelation predicts the future. First, the phrase "the Antichrist" is not found in Revelation, nor in Daniel, another apocalyptic writing she points to but messes up the reference. She refuses to call the bluff of the literalists who insist the Bible says what it plainly does not say.
In one particularly embarrassing instance, Sullivan compares Barack Obama to the description of the Antichrist (in the character of Nicolae Carpathia) in the popular (and nonsensical and heretical) Left Behind novels of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins; in one sentence she gets multiple facts wrong about both Carpathia and Obama.
Here, though, is where she could really have gone in for the kill and written a great piece. In a predictably excellent post on the McCain ad, Slacktivist quotes LaHaye himself (via The Wall Street Journal) debunking the Obama rumors: "The Antichrist isn't going to be an American, so it can't possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania." [Emphasis mine.]
How is it that if the Bible is so clear on the identity of the Antichrist, no one agrees on who it is?
Jerry Falwell insisted that the Antichrist would be Jewish.
Others say he will be homosexual. (I guess that's not mutually exclusive.)
Historically, the favorite candidate has been the Pope.
Maybe it's Putin. Or Ahmedinejad. Or Suri Cruise. Here's an article that claims the Pope says George W. Bush is the Antichrist.
And all of this absurdity is pushed by people who insist they're just reading the Bible "literally."
The real story here isn't that some people think Barack Obama is the Antichrist; it's that the "Rapture" and "the Antichrist" are extra-biblical myths hawked by charlatans -- false prophets, if you will -- who distort Scripture to support their own secular agendas and call it "literalism."
Short answer: no, long answer: what kind of biblically illiterate douchebag asks such a question?
Last week, the McCain campaign released an ad that purports to mock Obama's alleged "messiah" status with his followers (who would be, according to any and all available polling, a majority of the nation), but numerous observers have noted that, as Eric Sapp of The Eleison Group puts it, "If the McCain camp was trying to spoof Obama as Messiah, they missed a number of more obvious images and did a very poor job with this ad. If they were trying to draw parallels to Obama as Antichrist, they nailed it."
I continue to be appalled, saddened, infuriated and frightened that so many people insist on pushing the myth of "the Antichrist" while citing a "literal" interpretation of the Bible. A genuinely literal reading of the handful of relevant passages -- all from the first and second epistles of John -- would require one to acknowledge that "even now many antichrists have come."
So despite the fact that by the end of the first century the apostle John (as the tradition of authorship holds) is telling us that multiple antichrists are already in the world, many people today are on the lookout for "the One."
In an article for Time rife with errors on the Barack-as-Antichrist meme, Amy Sullivan points to a chain e-mail currently in circulation that "claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be "a man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent."
Here is where Sullivan truly misses the boat. She points out that "the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam." It's more like 500, but that's irrelevant, especially since the point here is that End Timers assert that Revelation predicts the future. First, the phrase "the Antichrist" is not found in Revelation, nor in Daniel, another apocalyptic writing she points to but messes up the reference. She refuses to call the bluff of the literalists who insist the Bible says what it plainly does not say.
In one particularly embarrassing instance, Sullivan compares Barack Obama to the description of the Antichrist (in the character of Nicolae Carpathia) in the popular (and nonsensical and heretical) Left Behind novels of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins; in one sentence she gets multiple facts wrong about both Carpathia and Obama.
Here, though, is where she could really have gone in for the kill and written a great piece. In a predictably excellent post on the McCain ad, Slacktivist quotes LaHaye himself (via The Wall Street Journal) debunking the Obama rumors: "The Antichrist isn't going to be an American, so it can't possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania." [Emphasis mine.]
How is it that if the Bible is so clear on the identity of the Antichrist, no one agrees on who it is?
Jerry Falwell insisted that the Antichrist would be Jewish.
Others say he will be homosexual. (I guess that's not mutually exclusive.)
Historically, the favorite candidate has been the Pope.
Maybe it's Putin. Or Ahmedinejad. Or Suri Cruise. Here's an article that claims the Pope says George W. Bush is the Antichrist.
And all of this absurdity is pushed by people who insist they're just reading the Bible "literally."
The real story here isn't that some people think Barack Obama is the Antichrist; it's that the "Rapture" and "the Antichrist" are extra-biblical myths hawked by charlatans -- false prophets, if you will -- who distort Scripture to support their own secular agendas and call it "literalism."
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Poor Hillary
The New York Times reports today on the, shall we say, tepid response from Democrats to Barack Obama's gallant request for donations to help Senator Clinton retire her $23 million campaign debt.
Ahem.
I think it was a nice gesture on Obama's part -- he even personally contributed the legal maximum of $2,300 -- to acknowledge Senator Clinton's historic accomplishment.
But I am confused about this notion that there should be any obligation on the part of Democrats -- especially Obama supporters -- to provide financial aid to one of the world's richest, most powerful couples.
Gas prices are soaring, the US is hemorrhaging jobs, people are rioting around the world protesting the skyrocketing costs of basic food staples (16,000 children will die today from hunger-related causes) and we're supposed to dig deep into our pockets and pass a buck to a Senator and her ex-President husband who are collectively worth $109 million?
Senator Clinton was not some political neophyte. She knew well what she was doing when she spent $11 million of her own fortune -- check it, folks, eleven million dollars of her own money she spent, and she wants help!?!?!?!?!? -- on her presidential campaign. That was a gamble, not an investment. Even if she'd won the nomination, there's no guarantee she'd recoup that loss from donations.
It was many weeks from the time that her path to the nomination became mathematically improbable until the day she surrendered -- pointedly, not on the day Obama clinched the nomination; no, on that evening, she delivered a bizarrely Bushian alternate-reality speech in which she announced she would ponder her options -- and during this time her campaign wildly spent beyond its means.
It is particularly ironic that she wants help from Obama supporters, after she spent months (and millions of dollars) trying to damage his reputation with cheap guilt-by-association smears and misrepresentations.
I think we can breathe a sigh of collective relief that she will not be put in charge of fixing our economy. No wonder conservatives deride welfare and entitlement programs, when you have millionaire liberals telling the Times that they are "bitter" that no one is rushing to help them recover from their financial folly. Imagine if the Clintons had to pay for their own debts! Why, by my calculations, that would leave them with only around $80 million. Poor dears. How would they get by?
I don't know what she's going to do. Maybe she'll have to write another book?
Ahem.
I think it was a nice gesture on Obama's part -- he even personally contributed the legal maximum of $2,300 -- to acknowledge Senator Clinton's historic accomplishment.
But I am confused about this notion that there should be any obligation on the part of Democrats -- especially Obama supporters -- to provide financial aid to one of the world's richest, most powerful couples.
Gas prices are soaring, the US is hemorrhaging jobs, people are rioting around the world protesting the skyrocketing costs of basic food staples (16,000 children will die today from hunger-related causes) and we're supposed to dig deep into our pockets and pass a buck to a Senator and her ex-President husband who are collectively worth $109 million?
Senator Clinton was not some political neophyte. She knew well what she was doing when she spent $11 million of her own fortune -- check it, folks, eleven million dollars of her own money she spent, and she wants help!?!?!?!?!? -- on her presidential campaign. That was a gamble, not an investment. Even if she'd won the nomination, there's no guarantee she'd recoup that loss from donations.
It was many weeks from the time that her path to the nomination became mathematically improbable until the day she surrendered -- pointedly, not on the day Obama clinched the nomination; no, on that evening, she delivered a bizarrely Bushian alternate-reality speech in which she announced she would ponder her options -- and during this time her campaign wildly spent beyond its means.
It is particularly ironic that she wants help from Obama supporters, after she spent months (and millions of dollars) trying to damage his reputation with cheap guilt-by-association smears and misrepresentations.
I think we can breathe a sigh of collective relief that she will not be put in charge of fixing our economy. No wonder conservatives deride welfare and entitlement programs, when you have millionaire liberals telling the Times that they are "bitter" that no one is rushing to help them recover from their financial folly. Imagine if the Clintons had to pay for their own debts! Why, by my calculations, that would leave them with only around $80 million. Poor dears. How would they get by?
I don't know what she's going to do. Maybe she'll have to write another book?
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Review: BSG "Revelations"
WARNING: SPOILERS
Well, I hate to say it, but I found last night's "cliffhanger" disappointing. Battlestar Galactica has an amazing track record of putting on thrilling, surprising, revelatory finales. Think back to "Kobol's Last Gleaming: Pt. 2" or Admiral Cain launching alert fighters or Baltar surrendering to the Cylon occupiers. I had high hopes for last night; maybe that was my problem.
Those great episodes all share two things: a breakneck, exhilarating pace and a last-minute plot twist that leaves you infuriated that you have to wait for months to see the resolution. Last night wasn't fast-paced so much as it was rushed. Moments they have been setting up for years passed by quite perfunctorily. Honestly, I was more moved when Aidan found out Carrie was smoking again than when Starbuck learned Anders was a Cylon.
I didn't buy Adama's reaction to Tigh's "coming out" scene, either; it looked like he'd gotten dumped. I would have had a lot more questions for the Colonel, and would have felt incredulity more than rage and grief. The idea that a battle-traumatized and grief-stricken old man was going cuckoo is far more plausible than, "I'm a 60 year old robot," and I would have pressed to be convinced. Starbuck should have had Adama's blow-up scene, and vice versa.
Poor Tyrol! No one even cared that he's a Cylon. You'd think Athena, at least, would have something to say about that. The whole fleet seemed to adjust pretty easily to the discovery that the XO, the deck chief, the Caprican Pyramid star and the president's aide-de-camp have been Cylon agents the entire time. For a moment I thought we were getting somewhere when Tory snapped at Roslin, but she, too, seemed to recover from her petulance quickly.
Admittedly, I have a bias in favor of religion, and a large part of what fascinated me in the early episodes was the overtly evangelical language of Number Six and the unfolding colonial prophecies. The writers tried to return to prophecy and religion this season, but it has been altogether less coherent and relevant. That whole Kobol/Arrow of Apollo/Map to Earth thing from Season 1 was wicked cool. Last night we got a Viper with a GPS system. Instead of unlikely coincidences that suddenly appear to have been preordained, we got maybe one of the laziest deus ex machina moments since baroque opera went out of fashion.
And, alas, the final plot twist? I'm afraid I saw that coming, and not because I was feeling particularly intuitive. It just seemed obvious that this wasn't going to be what they were expecting. Of course, questions remain: who did it? Did the other Cylons get there first, or did the 13th tribe annihilate itself, as we ourselves seem on the brink of doing? And what do they do now? And maybe more importantly, do I still care?
Well, I hate to say it, but I found last night's "cliffhanger" disappointing. Battlestar Galactica has an amazing track record of putting on thrilling, surprising, revelatory finales. Think back to "Kobol's Last Gleaming: Pt. 2" or Admiral Cain launching alert fighters or Baltar surrendering to the Cylon occupiers. I had high hopes for last night; maybe that was my problem.
Those great episodes all share two things: a breakneck, exhilarating pace and a last-minute plot twist that leaves you infuriated that you have to wait for months to see the resolution. Last night wasn't fast-paced so much as it was rushed. Moments they have been setting up for years passed by quite perfunctorily. Honestly, I was more moved when Aidan found out Carrie was smoking again than when Starbuck learned Anders was a Cylon.
I didn't buy Adama's reaction to Tigh's "coming out" scene, either; it looked like he'd gotten dumped. I would have had a lot more questions for the Colonel, and would have felt incredulity more than rage and grief. The idea that a battle-traumatized and grief-stricken old man was going cuckoo is far more plausible than, "I'm a 60 year old robot," and I would have pressed to be convinced. Starbuck should have had Adama's blow-up scene, and vice versa.
Poor Tyrol! No one even cared that he's a Cylon. You'd think Athena, at least, would have something to say about that. The whole fleet seemed to adjust pretty easily to the discovery that the XO, the deck chief, the Caprican Pyramid star and the president's aide-de-camp have been Cylon agents the entire time. For a moment I thought we were getting somewhere when Tory snapped at Roslin, but she, too, seemed to recover from her petulance quickly.
Admittedly, I have a bias in favor of religion, and a large part of what fascinated me in the early episodes was the overtly evangelical language of Number Six and the unfolding colonial prophecies. The writers tried to return to prophecy and religion this season, but it has been altogether less coherent and relevant. That whole Kobol/Arrow of Apollo/Map to Earth thing from Season 1 was wicked cool. Last night we got a Viper with a GPS system. Instead of unlikely coincidences that suddenly appear to have been preordained, we got maybe one of the laziest deus ex machina moments since baroque opera went out of fashion.
And, alas, the final plot twist? I'm afraid I saw that coming, and not because I was feeling particularly intuitive. It just seemed obvious that this wasn't going to be what they were expecting. Of course, questions remain: who did it? Did the other Cylons get there first, or did the 13th tribe annihilate itself, as we ourselves seem on the brink of doing? And what do they do now? And maybe more importantly, do I still care?
Friday, June 06, 2008
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Hillary: Ball's In Your Court
Admit it, Senator Clinton. Your passionate advocacy on behalf of the voters of Michigan and Florida came only after you discovered that you needed their delegates to clinch the nomination. You told a public radio station in New Hampshire that Michigan would not count. And now the DNC has granted you more delegates than you had any reasonable right to expect.
Even if the DNC had seated the Florida and Michigan delegations in full, you would still trail Barack Obama, albeit by a tiny margin. Nonetheless, there is only one standard the party uses to determine the nominees, and that is the delegate count. That is the standard you and your surrogates insisted upon in the early days of the primary contest. As with Florida and Michigan, your arguments cynically commuted themselves into populist rhetoric in favor of "the popular vote" once it became clear to you that you could not win according to the rules of the contest.
Recognizing that there are many to blame for the current delegate fiasco, the DNC met to attempt to find a compromise. Do you know what a compromise is? It's when all parties involved give up something they want in order to achieve the greater good. The Committee awarded you delegates that you had previously agreed not to count, delegates that your senior campaign advisor Harold Ickes had voted in favor of eliminating for 2008.
You aren't going to win this nomination, and not because it was stolen from you, but because the process that was agreed upon by all candidates well in advance of the first vote selected Barack Obama. Your advocates decry sexism even as your campaign benefits from the open support of racists, xenophobes and religious bigots.
This was an ugly primary with unnecessary and unfortunate complications, but any way you slice it, Barack Obama is the winner. Your claim that you are ahead in the popular vote is disingenuous and you know it. Politics can be ugly, but the reality here is that the Obama campaign played by the rules and came out ahead. Respect that. Do you want a Democrat in the White House, or do you want you in the White House?
The call now is for healing and unity, but the onus is on you. The responsibility belongs to you and your husband to stop repeating the gross distortion that you are leading by a standard that does not matter. You continually imply that the rules you agreed to have led to an illegitimate result, even though you have benefited from a last-minute rule change that granted you delegates you had forsworn. You were the one calling loudest for the DNC to reconsider Michigan and Florida, and now you must live with the decision, as the Obama campaign accepts that the ruling results in a net delegate loss for them.
I have disagreed with you on a range of issues for many years, and I did not support your candidacy, but until recently I respected you, and had you been the rightful nominee I would have supported you whole-heartedly. But your campaign has resorted to Rovian politics of distraction, inflating side-issues, trafficking in guilt by association (for which you should be most grateful that the Obama campaign has not responded in kind, given some of your husband's friends and business partners) and most reprehensibly constantly dispensing discredited, distorted arithmetic to advance a bogus claim using an invalid standard that you are the rightful nominee. This stops now.
There is not much that Barack Obama can do to heal the party, because he's not the one who has inflicted the wound. The responsibility rests on you and your husband. Will you respect the democratic process and support the rightful nominee to help repair this country? Or will you, in your Macbethian quest for the throne toss aside reality and all principle and tear down our country's best shot at dismantling partisan gridlock, tossing aside rules and process?
Stop blaming Barack Obama for the crisis you created. Fix this, or live with the consequences.
Even if the DNC had seated the Florida and Michigan delegations in full, you would still trail Barack Obama, albeit by a tiny margin. Nonetheless, there is only one standard the party uses to determine the nominees, and that is the delegate count. That is the standard you and your surrogates insisted upon in the early days of the primary contest. As with Florida and Michigan, your arguments cynically commuted themselves into populist rhetoric in favor of "the popular vote" once it became clear to you that you could not win according to the rules of the contest.
Recognizing that there are many to blame for the current delegate fiasco, the DNC met to attempt to find a compromise. Do you know what a compromise is? It's when all parties involved give up something they want in order to achieve the greater good. The Committee awarded you delegates that you had previously agreed not to count, delegates that your senior campaign advisor Harold Ickes had voted in favor of eliminating for 2008.
You aren't going to win this nomination, and not because it was stolen from you, but because the process that was agreed upon by all candidates well in advance of the first vote selected Barack Obama. Your advocates decry sexism even as your campaign benefits from the open support of racists, xenophobes and religious bigots.
This was an ugly primary with unnecessary and unfortunate complications, but any way you slice it, Barack Obama is the winner. Your claim that you are ahead in the popular vote is disingenuous and you know it. Politics can be ugly, but the reality here is that the Obama campaign played by the rules and came out ahead. Respect that. Do you want a Democrat in the White House, or do you want you in the White House?
The call now is for healing and unity, but the onus is on you. The responsibility belongs to you and your husband to stop repeating the gross distortion that you are leading by a standard that does not matter. You continually imply that the rules you agreed to have led to an illegitimate result, even though you have benefited from a last-minute rule change that granted you delegates you had forsworn. You were the one calling loudest for the DNC to reconsider Michigan and Florida, and now you must live with the decision, as the Obama campaign accepts that the ruling results in a net delegate loss for them.
I have disagreed with you on a range of issues for many years, and I did not support your candidacy, but until recently I respected you, and had you been the rightful nominee I would have supported you whole-heartedly. But your campaign has resorted to Rovian politics of distraction, inflating side-issues, trafficking in guilt by association (for which you should be most grateful that the Obama campaign has not responded in kind, given some of your husband's friends and business partners) and most reprehensibly constantly dispensing discredited, distorted arithmetic to advance a bogus claim using an invalid standard that you are the rightful nominee. This stops now.
There is not much that Barack Obama can do to heal the party, because he's not the one who has inflicted the wound. The responsibility rests on you and your husband. Will you respect the democratic process and support the rightful nominee to help repair this country? Or will you, in your Macbethian quest for the throne toss aside reality and all principle and tear down our country's best shot at dismantling partisan gridlock, tossing aside rules and process?
Stop blaming Barack Obama for the crisis you created. Fix this, or live with the consequences.
Democratic National Circus
I watched the Rules & Bylaws Committee meeting this morning. What a masochist I am!
The only thing that is clear is that there are truckloads of blame to be spread in every direction. The DNC screwed up in continuing to give primacy to Iowa and New Hampshire, they screwed up by punishing Florida even though it was clear that primary was moved up because of Republican machinations, and they screwed up in both places by not really thinking through the fall-out of telling two swing-states, "Your vote won't count."
Hillary Clinton screwed up by not raising her valid objections way, way earlier and then by exaggerating them to the level of Constitutional crisis only once it became clear she desperately needed the Florida and Michigan delegates to remain a viable candidate. Barack Obama shouldn't have taken his name off the Michigan ballot in what was probably a silly pander to Iowa.
There is no "right" solution, and there's certainly no decision that can be made that will make everyone happy. How do you account for the hundreds of thousands of voters who stayed home because they were told the elections wouldn't count? How do you allocate votes in Michigan for "Uncommitted," knowing full well that some -- maybe even most, but not all! -- were for Barack Obama?
The speakers this morning all stressed the need for party unification. There is no decision that can be made by the DNC that will achieve that; the decision belongs to the voters, that we just have to deal with the shitstorm that was dealt to us, abide by the ruling, whatever it is, support the nominee, and go forward. And as soon as a Democrat is in the White House in January 2009, we set to work fixing this incredibly stupid nominating system.
I propose seating the delegations from both states in full, based upon the primary results as they stand, questionable as they are. If the DNC feels procedurally obligated by their stupid rules to halve the delegates, so be it, but I fail to see the rationale behind punishing the voters for the idiocies of the party officials and candidates.
This requires significant concessions from both candidates. However you feel about his strategic decision to remove his name from the Michigan ballot, Barack Obama has been in complete compliance with the rules, stupid though they are, that were agreed to in advance by all the candidates. It's Hillary who disproportionately benefits from changing the rules at the end of the game.
On Michigan, I found myself uncomfortably agreeing with the Clinton camp: the "Uncommitted" delegates should not be assigned by the DNC, they should be called "uncommitted" and allowed to declare for the candidate of their choice. It makes the race infinitely closer, but I see no other solution that even approaches fairness.
Frankly, the Obama plan to split the Michigan delegates 50/50 is ludicrous. Even using Clinton-style magical math, you can't make any kind of reasonable argument that Clinton did not win Michigan; if we're going to make some attempt to respect the intent of the voters, calling what was obviously not a tie a tie is not the answer.
The Michigan Democrats' proposal ends up with numbers that sound right -- a 69/59 split in favor of Clinton -- but the idea of using exit polls and uncounted mail-in ballots is insanity. No, thanks.
The nominee will be Barack Obama by a hair. There will be millions of Democrats who aren't happy with that, but I assure them they'll be much less happy with John McCain. On all the significant issues facing this country, Obama and Clinton are mostly in the same place. We have got to put the ugliness of this nomination fight behind us and focus on fixing the country.
And as soon as we're back in the White House, we set about changing the nominating process. Maybe we should abandon delegates and dump caucuses and stick to the popular vote, but at the least, we've got to vary the order in which states vote. I propose a random lottery -- and for 2012, New Hampshire and Iowa don't get to go in the hat, they go last.
The only thing that is clear is that there are truckloads of blame to be spread in every direction. The DNC screwed up in continuing to give primacy to Iowa and New Hampshire, they screwed up by punishing Florida even though it was clear that primary was moved up because of Republican machinations, and they screwed up in both places by not really thinking through the fall-out of telling two swing-states, "Your vote won't count."
Hillary Clinton screwed up by not raising her valid objections way, way earlier and then by exaggerating them to the level of Constitutional crisis only once it became clear she desperately needed the Florida and Michigan delegates to remain a viable candidate. Barack Obama shouldn't have taken his name off the Michigan ballot in what was probably a silly pander to Iowa.
There is no "right" solution, and there's certainly no decision that can be made that will make everyone happy. How do you account for the hundreds of thousands of voters who stayed home because they were told the elections wouldn't count? How do you allocate votes in Michigan for "Uncommitted," knowing full well that some -- maybe even most, but not all! -- were for Barack Obama?
The speakers this morning all stressed the need for party unification. There is no decision that can be made by the DNC that will achieve that; the decision belongs to the voters, that we just have to deal with the shitstorm that was dealt to us, abide by the ruling, whatever it is, support the nominee, and go forward. And as soon as a Democrat is in the White House in January 2009, we set to work fixing this incredibly stupid nominating system.
I propose seating the delegations from both states in full, based upon the primary results as they stand, questionable as they are. If the DNC feels procedurally obligated by their stupid rules to halve the delegates, so be it, but I fail to see the rationale behind punishing the voters for the idiocies of the party officials and candidates.
This requires significant concessions from both candidates. However you feel about his strategic decision to remove his name from the Michigan ballot, Barack Obama has been in complete compliance with the rules, stupid though they are, that were agreed to in advance by all the candidates. It's Hillary who disproportionately benefits from changing the rules at the end of the game.
On Michigan, I found myself uncomfortably agreeing with the Clinton camp: the "Uncommitted" delegates should not be assigned by the DNC, they should be called "uncommitted" and allowed to declare for the candidate of their choice. It makes the race infinitely closer, but I see no other solution that even approaches fairness.
Frankly, the Obama plan to split the Michigan delegates 50/50 is ludicrous. Even using Clinton-style magical math, you can't make any kind of reasonable argument that Clinton did not win Michigan; if we're going to make some attempt to respect the intent of the voters, calling what was obviously not a tie a tie is not the answer.
The Michigan Democrats' proposal ends up with numbers that sound right -- a 69/59 split in favor of Clinton -- but the idea of using exit polls and uncounted mail-in ballots is insanity. No, thanks.
The nominee will be Barack Obama by a hair. There will be millions of Democrats who aren't happy with that, but I assure them they'll be much less happy with John McCain. On all the significant issues facing this country, Obama and Clinton are mostly in the same place. We have got to put the ugliness of this nomination fight behind us and focus on fixing the country.
And as soon as we're back in the White House, we set about changing the nominating process. Maybe we should abandon delegates and dump caucuses and stick to the popular vote, but at the least, we've got to vary the order in which states vote. I propose a random lottery -- and for 2012, New Hampshire and Iowa don't get to go in the hat, they go last.
Monday, May 26, 2008
All Right, Fine. I Miss the A Train.
I admit it, I never thought I'd say it.
It's a three-day holiday weekend, and I was going downtown to meet up with a new friend -- not a date, the new head of the Oregon chapter of Integrity -- and then to meet up with an old friend afterward (also not a date). And let me tell ya, Daddy wanted to get his drink on, so I left the car at home and took the bus into town. You know, so I could be responsible and irresponsible all at the same time. (Alas, no opportunity for irresponsibility presented himself.)
Here's the thing: in New York, the subway is the great democratizer. Even celebrities have been known to ride the subway. Sure, there's crazy people, but all of the city's vast majority of (semi-)normal people are also on the train. The subway is no weirder than any other part of town.
Not so with Portland's Tri-Met. In the Rose City, the bus seems to be exclusively reserved for the smelly and/or insane.
Case in point: I'm on my way into town just after 7:00 on a Sunday evening. Fifth Avenue this is not; the bus closest to me runs once an hour on Sundays. A few blocks past mine, a pony-tailed stoner gets on and complains, "Yo...dude, I've been, like...waiting, seriously, dude, I totally like checked my watch, I've been waiting like fifty-three fucking minutes for the bus, man, I mean...yo."
To which the driver responded, "It's Sunday...the bus runs hourly."
Stoner: "Okay, yeah, but...like seriously, I waited almost an hour and no bus came by. I'm totally serious, it was like, almost an hour."
Driver: "Yeah, um, because the bus runs once an hour."
Stoner: "Okay, well, but...that's no reason why I should have to wait almost an hour for the bus. I mean, yo."
Then he sat in front of me. He did not smell pleasant. A few blocks later he turns to me and shows me his paper transfer. "Dude! Check out the punches on this thing!"
Me: [perplexed, unsure how to respond, smiling politely but non-committally]
Stoner: Dude, like, look how many there are, isn't that fucking hilarious?
Me: Umm...yeah, okay. Sure.
Stoner: You don't think that's like, you know, totally fucking funny, how many punches there are in my ticket? I mean, yo, check it.
Me: Yeah, that's pretty hilarious.
Stoner: Fuck yeah.
When I reached the bar where I was to meet my new friend, my first stop was the bathroom. Not because I had to pee, but because I had an incredible urge to wash my hands. In fact, I kind of wanted to just be hosed down. I was worried I smelled like B.O. and piss.
* * * * * * * *
So, the last bus for Beaverton leaves at 11:00.
I knew I didn't want to bother with the bus again. I'd just take a cab home. I think I left the last bar around 1:45.
In New York, you can pretty much just walk out of the bar and hail a cab. If you're on a (relatively) quiet side-street, you can walk to the nearest avenue - -with traffic flowing either uptown or downtown, depending on your need -- and hail a cab within, oh, a minute? (Unless it's rush hour and raining.) So, yeah...Portland. No cabs.
In the wee hours of the morning, I used to really hate the A train. Sometimes you'd wait a very long time, and there were some crazy people. There was the guy that barked at me, the guy who hit me over the head with a curled up New York Times while yelling "Fucking cracker!" (I just went to my Zen place and ignored him), and the guy who yelled at the empty seats before throwing up all over himself. (I'd include the guy who mugged me at gunpoint, but that was on the #1, not the A.) But even in the middle of the night, I rarely waited as long as it took to get a cab tonight, and it was a lot cheaper and...well, not necessarily significantly cleaner.
So yeah, I admit it. I moved out here for the sake of convenience, but the A train was much better than the #54 bus.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
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