Friday, July 29, 2005
JUDOING THE JUGGERNAUT:
Every survey indicates that She Who Must Not Be Named already has the Democratic nomination for President all but locked up. Why, then, did she offend her loyalists by bothering to speak at the DLC convention? That stands, in practice if not yet in name, for Democrats Loving Corporations -- a group after my own heart, if someone must be a Democrat at all. Sadly for them, the last Democratic President who really did more than give lip service to their views was Grover Cleveland. Her husband also notably used them for ideological cover in his own campaign, but since then their relentless denunciation of the party has made them pariahs of the lefty web, and she has been catching flak for pandering to these "shills for subsidies and outsourcing".
Again, why does she think positioning herself as a "moderate" is so important, since she knows that she would have universal support from the left, and even (horrors!) some Republican women, as the ultimate affirmative action example? It's because she knows she may not be able to count on those votes. She may even face a woman opponent in 2008. Ponder this image:
This picture is taken from a site spotted by Travis of Rain Storm, who could not tell if this was "high-concept satire or the real deal," namely Americans for Dr. Rice ("Dedicated to Drafting Dr. Rice for President"). I assure you it is a very real deal. Every poll of Republicans that includes her name shows her as their first choice for the nomination. Fearful GOP stalwarts, trembling before the junior Senator from New York, have suggested that whichever middle-aged white male they nominate should pick someone like Rice as their Veep candidate to defuse voting booth sisterhood. That timid half-measure won't work. Proof? Mondale tried it for the Democrats in 1984, and his symbolic gesture of that year is today almost as little remembered as William Miller. (That other New York Congressman ran with Goldwater twenty years before, and later would up making an ad for a credit card company asking "Do you know me?")
Everyone on the right is apoplectic at the prospect of Mrs. The Clenis returning in vengeful glory to the White House. What we have to do to keep her out is not head-on opposition, which her blind loyalists will denounce as sexist, but judo. Give in to the Democratic hatred of Our Noble Lame Duck, and put others in her own party in a position to stop her.
Consider this: the continuing bad economic news, especially the rise in gas prices which will be even worse next year, will overwhelm the good news about returning troops when we start bringing them back from Iraq in 2006. We'll wind up in the same situation the Prez's father faced in 1992. Once war is off the front burner, voters begin remembering their pocketbooks, and voting accordingly. Next year, the Democrats will probably win the U.S. House. Their first priority then will be starting committee investigations to see who they can impeach first.
Let's keep that from happening, by a radical flip. After the 2006 election, in early January, the President should announce that the voters have made it obvious they hold his administration responsible for the nation's woes. Let him say that, as a good Republican, he does not accept the liberal view of collective guilt. Instead, he takes all the blame himself, since the people he appointed were only trying to carry out his policies. They should not be punished for any errors he may have made. Therefore, he is issuing a full pardon, in advance of any indictments, for everyone else in his administration. Then, as further penance, he is resigning his office and going back to the ranch. Good luck, and God bless America.
A waiting judge should swear in Cheney on live TV. Then the new Prez, now free from any fear of criminal charges, should stand at the podium and announce that he has been greatly moved by the self-sacrificing example of 43. In honor of his noble gesture, Cheney now issues a full advance pardon to Bush. Furthermore he feels he must try to live up to that great role model, so he too is immediately resigning.
This will mean the next President will be the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Full of her own ambition, she can be counted on to seek another term. That female incumbent means farewell, for at least the next election, to the dreams of our bête noire from New York. Meanwhile, the Chinese, still angry at Pelosi for her long advocacy of "human rights" restrictions on trade with them, will get back at her by ending their funding of our deficit. The economy will come crashing further down, just in time for the country's first woman President to lose in 2008 to the second one, Condi herself. If She Who Must Not Be Named even bothers to challenge President Rice four years after that, she will find the electorate has been thoroughly inoculated against her former trump card of being the first woman candidate. Folks will yawn, say, oh, another one, and give her no boost at all on election day.
In politics, timing is everything. This, admittedly uncomfortable, surprise strategy, will ensure that the greatest threat to Republican dominance misses her last period of possibility.
Every survey indicates that She Who Must Not Be Named already has the Democratic nomination for President all but locked up. Why, then, did she offend her loyalists by bothering to speak at the DLC convention? That stands, in practice if not yet in name, for Democrats Loving Corporations -- a group after my own heart, if someone must be a Democrat at all. Sadly for them, the last Democratic President who really did more than give lip service to their views was Grover Cleveland. Her husband also notably used them for ideological cover in his own campaign, but since then their relentless denunciation of the party has made them pariahs of the lefty web, and she has been catching flak for pandering to these "shills for subsidies and outsourcing".
Again, why does she think positioning herself as a "moderate" is so important, since she knows that she would have universal support from the left, and even (horrors!) some Republican women, as the ultimate affirmative action example? It's because she knows she may not be able to count on those votes. She may even face a woman opponent in 2008. Ponder this image:
This picture is taken from a site spotted by Travis of Rain Storm, who could not tell if this was "high-concept satire or the real deal," namely Americans for Dr. Rice ("Dedicated to Drafting Dr. Rice for President"). I assure you it is a very real deal. Every poll of Republicans that includes her name shows her as their first choice for the nomination. Fearful GOP stalwarts, trembling before the junior Senator from New York, have suggested that whichever middle-aged white male they nominate should pick someone like Rice as their Veep candidate to defuse voting booth sisterhood. That timid half-measure won't work. Proof? Mondale tried it for the Democrats in 1984, and his symbolic gesture of that year is today almost as little remembered as William Miller. (That other New York Congressman ran with Goldwater twenty years before, and later would up making an ad for a credit card company asking "Do you know me?")
Everyone on the right is apoplectic at the prospect of Mrs. The Clenis returning in vengeful glory to the White House. What we have to do to keep her out is not head-on opposition, which her blind loyalists will denounce as sexist, but judo. Give in to the Democratic hatred of Our Noble Lame Duck, and put others in her own party in a position to stop her.
Consider this: the continuing bad economic news, especially the rise in gas prices which will be even worse next year, will overwhelm the good news about returning troops when we start bringing them back from Iraq in 2006. We'll wind up in the same situation the Prez's father faced in 1992. Once war is off the front burner, voters begin remembering their pocketbooks, and voting accordingly. Next year, the Democrats will probably win the U.S. House. Their first priority then will be starting committee investigations to see who they can impeach first.
Let's keep that from happening, by a radical flip. After the 2006 election, in early January, the President should announce that the voters have made it obvious they hold his administration responsible for the nation's woes. Let him say that, as a good Republican, he does not accept the liberal view of collective guilt. Instead, he takes all the blame himself, since the people he appointed were only trying to carry out his policies. They should not be punished for any errors he may have made. Therefore, he is issuing a full pardon, in advance of any indictments, for everyone else in his administration. Then, as further penance, he is resigning his office and going back to the ranch. Good luck, and God bless America.
A waiting judge should swear in Cheney on live TV. Then the new Prez, now free from any fear of criminal charges, should stand at the podium and announce that he has been greatly moved by the self-sacrificing example of 43. In honor of his noble gesture, Cheney now issues a full advance pardon to Bush. Furthermore he feels he must try to live up to that great role model, so he too is immediately resigning.
This will mean the next President will be the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Full of her own ambition, she can be counted on to seek another term. That female incumbent means farewell, for at least the next election, to the dreams of our bête noire from New York. Meanwhile, the Chinese, still angry at Pelosi for her long advocacy of "human rights" restrictions on trade with them, will get back at her by ending their funding of our deficit. The economy will come crashing further down, just in time for the country's first woman President to lose in 2008 to the second one, Condi herself. If She Who Must Not Be Named even bothers to challenge President Rice four years after that, she will find the electorate has been thoroughly inoculated against her former trump card of being the first woman candidate. Folks will yawn, say, oh, another one, and give her no boost at all on election day.
In politics, timing is everything. This, admittedly uncomfortable, surprise strategy, will ensure that the greatest threat to Republican dominance misses her last period of possibility.
Monday, July 25, 2005
THE WAGES OF INGORANCE ARE DEATH:
Specifically in this case, the damage was done by advocates of gun control, who have prevented almost all the British public, and even the usually weaponless bobbies, from learning how to use guns, and equally important, when not to use them. That takes lots of training and becoming familiar with making split-second decisions about life or death.
If the future police had grown up there, as in this country, getting air rifles in elementary school, a .22 in middle school, and a deer rifle in high school, then they'd be familiar enough with their responsibility not to panic faced with an scared unarmed innocent fugitive. If you don't want more questionable shootings by police in the U.K., then repeal their gun laws.
Hundreds of relatives and friends of a Brazilian shot to death in London after being mistaken for a terrorist marched along the cobblestone streets of his hometown Monday, demanding the arrest of the British police who fired the fatal shots. ...So who's to blame for this man getting shot several times in the back of the head while other officers held him down? The answer, as usual, is liberals.
"It's easy for Blair to apologize, but it doesn't mean very much," said Mayor Julio de Souza. "What happened to English justice and England, a place where police patrol unarmed?"
Specifically in this case, the damage was done by advocates of gun control, who have prevented almost all the British public, and even the usually weaponless bobbies, from learning how to use guns, and equally important, when not to use them. That takes lots of training and becoming familiar with making split-second decisions about life or death.
If the future police had grown up there, as in this country, getting air rifles in elementary school, a .22 in middle school, and a deer rifle in high school, then they'd be familiar enough with their responsibility not to panic faced with an scared unarmed innocent fugitive. If you don't want more questionable shootings by police in the U.K., then repeal their gun laws.
NO BURDEN IS HE TO BEAR:
The American Street's Kevin Hayden's ailing brother Tom has now passed on.
The American Street's Kevin Hayden's ailing brother Tom has now passed on.
Si mon frère vivant était rentré harassé d'une longue chasse, je lui aurais enlevé ses chaussures, je lui aurais fait à manger, je lui aurais préparé son lit.... Polynice aujourd'hui a achevé sa chasse. ... Il a droit au repos.
--Jean Anouilh's Antigone
Saturday, July 23, 2005
SEE, I TOLD YOU HE WAS A LIBERAL:
The public needs to know the truth!! I unsuprisedly quote this post from Jusiper.
The public needs to know the truth!! I unsuprisedly quote this post from Jusiper.
Support traditional marriage, oppose John Roberts
I am deeply, deeply shocked that George W. Bush would support a man who has openly engaged in the transvestite lifestyle. Please write or call Senator Brownback's office and complain about this Souter in the works:The school yearbook from 1972, his junior year, shows he played Peppermint Patty in the production of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown."
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
BAD COMPANY IN THE ENNEARCHY**:
I'm afraid the Democrats and their captive media have intimidated Our Noble Lame Duck with their attacks on The Rovinator. Now he's trying so hard to please them that he's appointed a wild-eyed liberal, John G. Roberts Jr., to the Supreme Court. Why do I say that, when he is anti-choice, anti-flag burning, and has voted to uphold military tribunals in Cuba? Because I don't care about such symbolic issues as these. With my love of pure and perfect ideal corporations, I focus directly on the bottom line for business. According to ABC News:collective company which provides the very tools by which we interact each day. All the more so since that firm has proven, in working together with the government of China, that it will happily cooperate in censoring dangerous terroristic concepts. Remember, when monopolies are outlawed, only outlaws will be monopolists.
**Ennearchy = government by nine persons.
I'm afraid the Democrats and their captive media have intimidated Our Noble Lame Duck with their attacks on The Rovinator. Now he's trying so hard to please them that he's appointed a wild-eyed liberal, John G. Roberts Jr., to the Supreme Court. Why do I say that, when he is anti-choice, anti-flag burning, and has voted to uphold military tribunals in Cuba? Because I don't care about such symbolic issues as these. With my love of pure and perfect ideal corporations, I focus directly on the bottom line for business. According to ABC News:
In private practice, Roberts represented 19 states that, along with the federal government, sought to break up Microsoft Corporation.I don't accept that this was merely aggressive representation of a client. Even attorneys should bear the moral responsibility for the evils their arguments seek to inflict, such as penalizing the
**Ennearchy = government by nine persons.
Friday, July 15, 2005
THE CAT OF ARRHYTHMIA:
(Part Two of three of "Beware The Cosmic Bricklayer". Part One was here.
This is -- slightly edited for length -- the actual manuscript of Edgar Allan Poe's orginal prophetic vision. As with his other "stories", this was foreseen by him under the influence of serious drugs which led him into clairvoyant predictive trances.
As always, his editors dumbed it down and took out the references to the future, afraid those would hurt sales. In this one, for instance, they replaced the titular arrhythmatic cat with a cask of Spanish dry sherry called "amontillado".
Now that the wall-worshipers are showing their hands, it is time to uncover Poe's real predictions for our time. Perhaps later we can print some of Poe's other genuine manuscripts, such as the one for "The Gold Bug", about Republican Congressman Ron Paul and the Federal Reserve Bank.)
The thousand injuries of Fristunato I had borne as I best could, but when he suggested that I acquiesce in a recess appointment instead of confirmation I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity.
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fristunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point -- this Fristunato -- although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his vivisection of felines. He of course had professed to do this as physiological exploration in pursuit of his prior occupation. I frankly shared the experimental instinct which had driven our mutual commander to youthful removal of wings from insects.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the convention season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much.
I said to him "My dear Fristunato, you are luckily met. I have received a cat with what was purported to be arrhythmia, and I am curious to observe its flailing heart directly."
"How?" said he. "Arrhythmia? A cat? Impossible! And in the middle of the convention!"
"I would like to see this phenomenon in action," I replied; "and I have anesthetized the creature in the basement of my office building in preparation for an operation. You were not to be found, and I was anxious to verify its condition before the animal could expire."
"Arrhythmia!" protested Fristunato.
"I must see for myself."
"Arrhythmia!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to the Surgeon General. If any one has a critical eye it is she. She will tell me --"
"This Surgeon General cannot tell arrhythmia from hyperventilation."
"And yet some fools will have it that her skill is a match for your own."
"Come, let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your basement."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. The Surgeon General --"
"I have no engagement; -- come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The basements are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Arrhythmia! You have been imposed upon."
Thus speaking, Fristunato possessed himself of my arm; and I suffered him to hurry me to the building where my U.N. mission office was located.
There were no security guards there; they had absconded to make merry at convention parties. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the building. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from the desk two flashlights, and giving one to Fristunato, led him to the elevators that went to the basements. We came at length to the lowest sub-cellar. I requested him to be cautious as he followed, since these obscure chambers were only lit tonight by the dim emergency exit signs.
The gait of my friend was unsteady. "The cat," he said. "How will we see to perform surgery upon it?"
"It is farther on," said I; "and I have a portable generator to provide adequate light. But observe the white web-work of nitre which gleams from these cavern walls."
He turned towards me, and looked into my eves with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication.
"Come, a shot of this good Tennessee whiskey will defend us from the damps. Drink," I said, presenting him the flask.
He raised it to his lips with a leer, and emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement -- a grotesque one.
"You do not comprehend?" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood of the masons."
"Yes, yes," I said.
"A sign," he said, "show me a sign."
"It is this," I answered, producing from beneath the folds of my coat a trowel.
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the arrhythmatic cat."
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the coat and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily, and we proceeded. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt. The chamber was filled with tall, combination-locked, fireproof file cabinets, scattered haphazardly. At the most remote end we perceived a still further interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the basement.
It was in vain that Fristunato, uplifting his flashlight, endeavoured to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the arrhythmatic subject. As for the Surgeon General --"
"She is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood drunkenly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed, it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power."
"The arrhythmia!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his tipsy astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the arrhythmia."
As I said these words I busied myself among the jumbled file cabinets. I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to apply cement to the floor across the entrance of the niche he was chained within, then shifted heavy cabinets to fasten them in place. As I worked, I spoke enthusiastically to the near-stuporous Senator within.
"You should be honored to share space with these files," I said. "Among them are some of the most guarded secrets of the organization. This one" -- here I tapped on the heavy metal with my trowel -- "has the decoded intercepts of Stalin's instructions to Alger Hiss at the U.N. organizing conference in San Francisco. This next one" -- I said as I slowly shoved it into place, further blocking the victim's air -- "has receipts for payments to mercenaries to assassinate Dag Hammarskjöld. And the last one I'll affix here has all the aerial photographic evidence that the South Koreans actually staged a quick secret provocative raid across the border to lure the North into attacking, providing an excuse for the Korean War."
A drunken slur came came from the diminishing opening. "I thought that was a commie propaganda myth."
"Yes, that's what you were supposed to believe. An excellently done piece of work from the good old days when we still knew how to do proper cover-ups." I paused before pushing in the last cabinet, and sighed. "Nowadays, with cameras and the internet everywhere, it's much tougher to make a good excuse for invasions. Someday we may find it impossible to start any conflicts at all, no matter how necessary, even against monsters."
But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Fristunato. The voice said "Ha! ha! ha! -- he! he! he! -- a very good joke, indeed -- an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the convention -- he! he! he! -- over our whiskey -- he! he! he! But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the convention, my wife and the rest? Let us be gone."
"Yes," I said, "let us be gone."
"For the love of the Wall, Boltonor!"
"Yes," I said, "for the love of the Wall!"
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud -- "Fristunato!"
No answer. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last cabinet into its position; I plastered it up. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!
(Next week, in Part Three: Another take on the dreadful schemes of the evil brick evangelists, as depicted in an unholy literary miscegenation between a Japanese novelist and a writer of American comics.)
(Part Two of three of "Beware The Cosmic Bricklayer". Part One was here.
This is -- slightly edited for length -- the actual manuscript of Edgar Allan Poe's orginal prophetic vision. As with his other "stories", this was foreseen by him under the influence of serious drugs which led him into clairvoyant predictive trances.
As always, his editors dumbed it down and took out the references to the future, afraid those would hurt sales. In this one, for instance, they replaced the titular arrhythmatic cat with a cask of Spanish dry sherry called "amontillado".
Now that the wall-worshipers are showing their hands, it is time to uncover Poe's real predictions for our time. Perhaps later we can print some of Poe's other genuine manuscripts, such as the one for "The Gold Bug", about Republican Congressman Ron Paul and the Federal Reserve Bank.)
The thousand injuries of Fristunato I had borne as I best could, but when he suggested that I acquiesce in a recess appointment instead of confirmation I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity.
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fristunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point -- this Fristunato -- although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his vivisection of felines. He of course had professed to do this as physiological exploration in pursuit of his prior occupation. I frankly shared the experimental instinct which had driven our mutual commander to youthful removal of wings from insects.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the convention season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much.
I said to him "My dear Fristunato, you are luckily met. I have received a cat with what was purported to be arrhythmia, and I am curious to observe its flailing heart directly."
"How?" said he. "Arrhythmia? A cat? Impossible! And in the middle of the convention!"
"I would like to see this phenomenon in action," I replied; "and I have anesthetized the creature in the basement of my office building in preparation for an operation. You were not to be found, and I was anxious to verify its condition before the animal could expire."
"Arrhythmia!" protested Fristunato.
"I must see for myself."
"Arrhythmia!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to the Surgeon General. If any one has a critical eye it is she. She will tell me --"
"This Surgeon General cannot tell arrhythmia from hyperventilation."
"And yet some fools will have it that her skill is a match for your own."
"Come, let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your basement."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. The Surgeon General --"
"I have no engagement; -- come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The basements are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Arrhythmia! You have been imposed upon."
Thus speaking, Fristunato possessed himself of my arm; and I suffered him to hurry me to the building where my U.N. mission office was located.
There were no security guards there; they had absconded to make merry at convention parties. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the building. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from the desk two flashlights, and giving one to Fristunato, led him to the elevators that went to the basements. We came at length to the lowest sub-cellar. I requested him to be cautious as he followed, since these obscure chambers were only lit tonight by the dim emergency exit signs.
The gait of my friend was unsteady. "The cat," he said. "How will we see to perform surgery upon it?"
"It is farther on," said I; "and I have a portable generator to provide adequate light. But observe the white web-work of nitre which gleams from these cavern walls."
He turned towards me, and looked into my eves with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication.
"Come, a shot of this good Tennessee whiskey will defend us from the damps. Drink," I said, presenting him the flask.
He raised it to his lips with a leer, and emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement -- a grotesque one.
"You do not comprehend?" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood of the masons."
"Yes, yes," I said.
"A sign," he said, "show me a sign."
"It is this," I answered, producing from beneath the folds of my coat a trowel.
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the arrhythmatic cat."
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the coat and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily, and we proceeded. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt. The chamber was filled with tall, combination-locked, fireproof file cabinets, scattered haphazardly. At the most remote end we perceived a still further interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the basement.
It was in vain that Fristunato, uplifting his flashlight, endeavoured to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the arrhythmatic subject. As for the Surgeon General --"
"She is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood drunkenly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed, it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power."
"The arrhythmia!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his tipsy astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the arrhythmia."
As I said these words I busied myself among the jumbled file cabinets. I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to apply cement to the floor across the entrance of the niche he was chained within, then shifted heavy cabinets to fasten them in place. As I worked, I spoke enthusiastically to the near-stuporous Senator within.
"You should be honored to share space with these files," I said. "Among them are some of the most guarded secrets of the organization. This one" -- here I tapped on the heavy metal with my trowel -- "has the decoded intercepts of Stalin's instructions to Alger Hiss at the U.N. organizing conference in San Francisco. This next one" -- I said as I slowly shoved it into place, further blocking the victim's air -- "has receipts for payments to mercenaries to assassinate Dag Hammarskjöld. And the last one I'll affix here has all the aerial photographic evidence that the South Koreans actually staged a quick secret provocative raid across the border to lure the North into attacking, providing an excuse for the Korean War."
A drunken slur came came from the diminishing opening. "I thought that was a commie propaganda myth."
"Yes, that's what you were supposed to believe. An excellently done piece of work from the good old days when we still knew how to do proper cover-ups." I paused before pushing in the last cabinet, and sighed. "Nowadays, with cameras and the internet everywhere, it's much tougher to make a good excuse for invasions. Someday we may find it impossible to start any conflicts at all, no matter how necessary, even against monsters."
But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Fristunato. The voice said "Ha! ha! ha! -- he! he! he! -- a very good joke, indeed -- an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the convention -- he! he! he! -- over our whiskey -- he! he! he! But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the convention, my wife and the rest? Let us be gone."
"Yes," I said, "let us be gone."
"For the love of the Wall, Boltonor!"
"Yes," I said, "for the love of the Wall!"
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud -- "Fristunato!"
No answer. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last cabinet into its position; I plastered it up. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!
(Next week, in Part Three: Another take on the dreadful schemes of the evil brick evangelists, as depicted in an unholy literary miscegenation between a Japanese novelist and a writer of American comics.)
Thursday, July 14, 2005
BEWARE THE COSMIC BRICKLAYER:
(Part One of three.)
You probably believed your public school "history" textbooks, when they told you that the Anti-Masonic Party, those immigrant-bashing Pat Buchanans of the nineteenth century, died out long ago. Apparently their fears are still alive out in Red State America, and with good reason.
Maybe the time has come to show we're onto their game by taking some of their "sacred symbols" and tossing them through the windows of Democratic campaign headquarters across the country. It's time for all three faiths that still worship what these metaphysical masons dismiss as "sky gods" to unite against the greater threat -- those vile "new agers" who bow down instead to man-made idols that have not even the pretense of consciousness, much less divinity.
(Tomorrow, in Part Two: New revelations, from the heretofore-repressed genuine manuscripts of Edgar Allan Poe, of how this cultural war, between those who pray up to the sky and those who prostrate themselves before stone, was predicted by him over a century and a half ago, accurate down to a Senate leader and a nominee for the U.N.)
(Part One of three.)
You probably believed your public school "history" textbooks, when they told you that the Anti-Masonic Party, those immigrant-bashing Pat Buchanans of the nineteenth century, died out long ago. Apparently their fears are still alive out in Red State America, and with good reason.
Corrections: An Editorial Observer column in The Times on July 4 misidentified the North Carolina official who said that if Muslim witnesses were allowed to swear on the Koran, someone who worshipped brick walls might want to swear on a brick. It was a spokesman for the state Administrative Office of the Courts, not a Guilford County judge.This has shown new light on what evil those Godless rock and rollers were really about. Here are the secret real lyrics, previously available only to members of the cult, from a hit by one group we'll call "Floyd":
--New York Times, July 13, 2005.
We don't need no Ten CommandmentsHere is more hidden propaganda for their architectural deity, from the very end of an album-long song by another we'll call "Jethro":
We don't need no Crucifix
No sky-god icons in the courtroom
Judges, leave your Bible home
Hey! Judges! Leave your Koran home!
All we swear by is a holy Brick from the Wall
All we do is worship sacred Bricks in the Wall
So your Yahweh is not worth an oath;Now the truth comes out. All those musicians' references to getting "stoned" were only euphemisms for walling in devout Judeo-Islamo-Christian monotheists with concrete blocks and the bright red fruit of kilns. Finally they are letting their rocky mask slip. Why now? Is it a coincidence that recent polls show She Who Must Not Be Named far ahead of anyone else as the choice of Democrats for their party's nomination?
And your Jesus we dismiss as Goth;
And by Allah to swear we'd be loath:
We say, "Blest as a Brick."
Maybe the time has come to show we're onto their game by taking some of their "sacred symbols" and tossing them through the windows of Democratic campaign headquarters across the country. It's time for all three faiths that still worship what these metaphysical masons dismiss as "sky gods" to unite against the greater threat -- those vile "new agers" who bow down instead to man-made idols that have not even the pretense of consciousness, much less divinity.
(Tomorrow, in Part Two: New revelations, from the heretofore-repressed genuine manuscripts of Edgar Allan Poe, of how this cultural war, between those who pray up to the sky and those who prostrate themselves before stone, was predicted by him over a century and a half ago, accurate down to a Senate leader and a nominee for the U.N.)
Friday, July 08, 2005
THE INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED FOUR:
There is good news for fans of movies adapted from comic books. No, it's not the latest such film, which cannot possibly be skewered enough. It's a new proposal for a conservative version of that story instead.
The original Fantastic Four was one of the three pillars of the Marvel Comics revolution. (The other two were The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk. No, youngsters, the soon-to-be-much-bigger The Angst-Enveloped X-Men came a little later.) The sea change was wrought by Stan the Man, Jack the King, Steve the Randite and company (and, as a wordsmith, I never forget the contributions of the incomparable Artie Simek). Into the rather predictable Code Approved dullness of NASA-style cardboard cutout heroes suffocating the medium at the start of the sixties, they injected whimpering agonizing over personal relationships, straight out of soap operas. But they did it in a sexless, twin-beds-for-married-couples, televisionized version.
Stan Lee later seemed to imply he was inspired by serious stuff such as Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther or Flaubert's Education sentimentale: Histoire d'un jeune homme. His actual nearest model was that late fifties bestseller, Metalious' Peyton Place, but with capes and masks. The emphasis on inner whining held sway for two decades, until Frank Miller and Alan Moore dynamited it with insanity and vigilantism.
This latest example of the genre has been updated in various awful ways, including a fierce anti-capitalist angle which belittles the vicious Victor Von Doom from the ruthless ruler of Latveria into a bad billionaire businessman. The liberals of Follywood just don't believe true evil can exist outside of corporate boardrooms. (To be fair, their own production companies do provide plenty of horrid examples.)
What is really needed to refresh the medium is to bring in, not "politically correct" references to current society, but real down-and-dirty politics filled with Red State values. Hence this treatment for a much better remake of the original material, meant to be financed by a Scaife grant and subject to oversight by Medved and Dobson. (Yes, I switch the starting jobs for the future "thing" and "torch". That's prosaic license.)
The story begins in 1991. The leader of the four who become our heroes is a Dispensationist preacher, Dub Bob Crawford. He wants to overcome evil by bringing about the End Times. To do this he needs to sacrifice a flawless red heifer on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
He enlists three helpers for this project. His own secretary, Connie Sue Petty, will come along to videotape the event for the media. The actual bloodletting will be done by a bulky construction worker and part-time kosher butcher, Dickie Ben Chayim. Naturally, the wimpy powers-that-be have refused permission for this "provocative act". Because the Temple Mount is heavily guarded, the enablers of the Apocalypse will have to strike very quickly.
Crawford's plan is to land in a helicopter, kill the calf, then flee back into the sky. To pilot the copter, he brings in Connie Sue's brother (really only a step-brother, hence adding an undercurrent of possible Southern pseudo-incest to future episodes), the hot-shot crop-duster and Nam vet, Donnie Johnnie Petty. (No, of course he's not really related to racing's Royal Family, but the dynamic connotation of the name won't hurt sales a bit.)
As the group is zooming toward their destination, Gulf War I begins. Iraq promptly fires missiles at Jerusalem. The one which gets through and strikes the helicopter is experimental and filled with genetically altering gas. Instead of killing them, it causes their aircraft to crash through the roof of a chemical plant. With the chaotic mixtures which result, no one can say exactly what the four are exposed to, but it does give them all super-powers:
Mr. Phantasy decides that if God was willing to let Satan start a war just so that they could be prevented from killing the heifer (which winds up dyed blue by the chemical mixtures, and becomes a mascot for the heroes), then He must not be ready to personally intervene yet with the Rapture. It will be up to the four of them to destroy evildoers, one villain at a time. That must be why He has given them these superpowers. They all pledge to work together for Good (although no one is willing to actually clasp hands with The Trojan, so they just sort of wave in his direction). They move into a bankrupt megachurch headquarters in Tulsa, financed by Dub Bob's television appeals to support their mission.
One subplot of the story is Dickie Ben's agony over his appearance. It's not that he is ugly. It's that he is seen as a symbol of birth control and a living enemy of abstinence, thereby revolting all good conservative females. His fiancee abandons him for an Orthodox rabbinical student. Later he does fall in love with a blind woman who sees him as he really is inside. Unfortunately, she turns out to be the innocent (in fact, so virginal that she had no idea what his name meant) daughter of insidious lefty radio commentator Al Frankensnark, who is manipulating the public like puppets to fear these peculiar and powerful beings. Al is really laying the groundwork for his own attempt to seize power in the sequel.
Soon the good guys and gal face their first villain. Unlike the newest movie, which jumps ahead several issues, this version begins just like the comic series did, with an underground monster. Mr. Phantasy, able to see into the very soil, tries to warn people, but the vast liberal media, led by the evil Al, mocks and scorns him. Soon church buildings all over Tulsa are cracking and collapsing, undermined by an army of blind suicide tunnelers that burrow underneath until they bring the structures down on their own heads.
These pathetic creatures are degenerate human beings, bred underground in total darkness by their master, the Mussulman, to be Muslims and hate Christians, and fed endless lies about virgins which await them in heaven. Dub Bob finally leads his team to blow up this monster's headquarters, then find and drag him out of the hole he was hiding in. His surviving fanatical followers are locked in the Oklahoma state pen, where guards pose them for embarrassing lewd photos, which will be sold in calendars to pay for rebuilding the destroyed churches.
All of this is only a warmup for the big fight against the main villain. He actually went to the same college in South Carolina as Dub Bob, but was kicked out for dating higher class students. (They were to graduate in the same year as him, but they had a lot more class -- and money.) Vowing revenge against the world, he began wearing a spacesuit so that no one can even tell what his origins are. Continuing his scheme to marry money and power, he converted to Islam so that he could wed the daughter of an oil-rich Emir, and will inherit that nation as Consort Regnant when his father-in-law dies. This mastermind is the evil Dr. John Karaoke.
Mr. Phantasy first realizes something is amiss when his powers let him see that the very large cloud passing overhead is synthetic, covering a huge airship. By the time the authorities have predictably dismissed his warning, the zeppelin has already reached its destination in the nearby Texas panhandle. The Intelligently Designed Four, as they are belittlingly labelled by Al the on-air orator, hurry to Amarillo. There they find Dr. JK has been busily abusing his diplomatic immunity as a Prince to buy up all the available helium production from local wells.
Some clever trickery by The Immemorable Girl, ploying girlish wiles from a handbook on Seduction for the Totally Clueless, lures him into an obsession with her and uncovers his scheme. When the oil runs out someday, and jet planes are replaced by nuclear-powered airships, he plans to have gained monopoly control of the world's helium supply, so that he can use that for international extortion. To me, that just sounds like a good business plan, but Dub Bob shows how much farther he can see than we ordinary humans by realizing that if the future Emir can ground Dirigible Force One at will, then the President of the United States would be at his mercy. (Actually, that sounds like a good business plan to me, too, but never mind....)
This leads to the climactic battles that true superhero fans read the books and view the movies for. Determined to raid the airship and find the illegal (even under Texas laws, which are very loose) weapons of mass destruction which Dr. JK bragged about having stashed there, and incidentally to seize his supply of helium, the four stage an attack on the zeppelin from four different directions.
Sorry, but I won't spoil it all for future movie-goers by detailing here how the villain defeats and captures each of them in a separate brutal battle, then they manage to escape and overpower him. At the end, Good does triumph over Evil, but it is set up for a sequel when the Prince seems to fall to his death into the cloud miles in the sky. (But in the words of one of Miller's classic tales of Daredevil and the Kingpen, after a careful search, "There is no corpse.")
(Dedicated to Michael Chabon, whose masterpiece about the early years of comics might have been really great, if he had just left out all that gross and icky guy-on-guy stuff.)
There is good news for fans of movies adapted from comic books. No, it's not the latest such film, which cannot possibly be skewered enough. It's a new proposal for a conservative version of that story instead.
The original Fantastic Four was one of the three pillars of the Marvel Comics revolution. (The other two were The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk. No, youngsters, the soon-to-be-much-bigger The Angst-Enveloped X-Men came a little later.) The sea change was wrought by Stan the Man, Jack the King, Steve the Randite and company (and, as a wordsmith, I never forget the contributions of the incomparable Artie Simek). Into the rather predictable Code Approved dullness of NASA-style cardboard cutout heroes suffocating the medium at the start of the sixties, they injected whimpering agonizing over personal relationships, straight out of soap operas. But they did it in a sexless, twin-beds-for-married-couples, televisionized version.
Stan Lee later seemed to imply he was inspired by serious stuff such as Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther or Flaubert's Education sentimentale: Histoire d'un jeune homme. His actual nearest model was that late fifties bestseller, Metalious' Peyton Place, but with capes and masks. The emphasis on inner whining held sway for two decades, until Frank Miller and Alan Moore dynamited it with insanity and vigilantism.
This latest example of the genre has been updated in various awful ways, including a fierce anti-capitalist angle which belittles the vicious Victor Von Doom from the ruthless ruler of Latveria into a bad billionaire businessman. The liberals of Follywood just don't believe true evil can exist outside of corporate boardrooms. (To be fair, their own production companies do provide plenty of horrid examples.)
What is really needed to refresh the medium is to bring in, not "politically correct" references to current society, but real down-and-dirty politics filled with Red State values. Hence this treatment for a much better remake of the original material, meant to be financed by a Scaife grant and subject to oversight by Medved and Dobson. (Yes, I switch the starting jobs for the future "thing" and "torch". That's prosaic license.)
The story begins in 1991. The leader of the four who become our heroes is a Dispensationist preacher, Dub Bob Crawford. He wants to overcome evil by bringing about the End Times. To do this he needs to sacrifice a flawless red heifer on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
He enlists three helpers for this project. His own secretary, Connie Sue Petty, will come along to videotape the event for the media. The actual bloodletting will be done by a bulky construction worker and part-time kosher butcher, Dickie Ben Chayim. Naturally, the wimpy powers-that-be have refused permission for this "provocative act". Because the Temple Mount is heavily guarded, the enablers of the Apocalypse will have to strike very quickly.
Crawford's plan is to land in a helicopter, kill the calf, then flee back into the sky. To pilot the copter, he brings in Connie Sue's brother (really only a step-brother, hence adding an undercurrent of possible Southern pseudo-incest to future episodes), the hot-shot crop-duster and Nam vet, Donnie Johnnie Petty. (No, of course he's not really related to racing's Royal Family, but the dynamic connotation of the name won't hurt sales a bit.)
As the group is zooming toward their destination, Gulf War I begins. Iraq promptly fires missiles at Jerusalem. The one which gets through and strikes the helicopter is experimental and filled with genetically altering gas. Instead of killing them, it causes their aircraft to crash through the roof of a chemical plant. With the chaotic mixtures which result, no one can say exactly what the four are exposed to, but it does give them all super-powers:
- Dub Bob gains the ability to stretch the ultimate, metaphysical truth, in other words the very fabric of space-time, allowing him the vision to see things which no one else even realizes are there, and to ignore the very internationally accepted laws of nature. He is to become known as Mr. Phantasy.
- Dickie Ben's skin changes to a thick and impenetrable orange covering, braced for strength with random black ribs. It also prolongs his reach and extends his endurance, while giving him the strength of ten. The new invulnerable hero will be called The Trojan.
- Donnie Johnnie can now spray huge streams of acid from his hands or feet, fast enough to lift him into the air and powerful enough to dissolve almost any opponent. He decides his new power will permit him to devastate the elitist intellectuals who laughed at him in school, so he takes the name of The Humanist Scorcher.
- Was there anyone else? Oh, yes. Connie Sue gains the ability to cause short-term memory losses, thus making villains forget that they have already won a fight. Henceforth she is The Immemorable Girl. (In a future sequel, she is elevated to The Immemorable Woman and gains more power, but this is based on the real original, not the later revisions by the Straussian cult of Neo-Comic writers.)
Mr. Phantasy decides that if God was willing to let Satan start a war just so that they could be prevented from killing the heifer (which winds up dyed blue by the chemical mixtures, and becomes a mascot for the heroes), then He must not be ready to personally intervene yet with the Rapture. It will be up to the four of them to destroy evildoers, one villain at a time. That must be why He has given them these superpowers. They all pledge to work together for Good (although no one is willing to actually clasp hands with The Trojan, so they just sort of wave in his direction). They move into a bankrupt megachurch headquarters in Tulsa, financed by Dub Bob's television appeals to support their mission.
One subplot of the story is Dickie Ben's agony over his appearance. It's not that he is ugly. It's that he is seen as a symbol of birth control and a living enemy of abstinence, thereby revolting all good conservative females. His fiancee abandons him for an Orthodox rabbinical student. Later he does fall in love with a blind woman who sees him as he really is inside. Unfortunately, she turns out to be the innocent (in fact, so virginal that she had no idea what his name meant) daughter of insidious lefty radio commentator Al Frankensnark, who is manipulating the public like puppets to fear these peculiar and powerful beings. Al is really laying the groundwork for his own attempt to seize power in the sequel.
Soon the good guys and gal face their first villain. Unlike the newest movie, which jumps ahead several issues, this version begins just like the comic series did, with an underground monster. Mr. Phantasy, able to see into the very soil, tries to warn people, but the vast liberal media, led by the evil Al, mocks and scorns him. Soon church buildings all over Tulsa are cracking and collapsing, undermined by an army of blind suicide tunnelers that burrow underneath until they bring the structures down on their own heads.
These pathetic creatures are degenerate human beings, bred underground in total darkness by their master, the Mussulman, to be Muslims and hate Christians, and fed endless lies about virgins which await them in heaven. Dub Bob finally leads his team to blow up this monster's headquarters, then find and drag him out of the hole he was hiding in. His surviving fanatical followers are locked in the Oklahoma state pen, where guards pose them for embarrassing lewd photos, which will be sold in calendars to pay for rebuilding the destroyed churches.
All of this is only a warmup for the big fight against the main villain. He actually went to the same college in South Carolina as Dub Bob, but was kicked out for dating higher class students. (They were to graduate in the same year as him, but they had a lot more class -- and money.) Vowing revenge against the world, he began wearing a spacesuit so that no one can even tell what his origins are. Continuing his scheme to marry money and power, he converted to Islam so that he could wed the daughter of an oil-rich Emir, and will inherit that nation as Consort Regnant when his father-in-law dies. This mastermind is the evil Dr. John Karaoke.
Mr. Phantasy first realizes something is amiss when his powers let him see that the very large cloud passing overhead is synthetic, covering a huge airship. By the time the authorities have predictably dismissed his warning, the zeppelin has already reached its destination in the nearby Texas panhandle. The Intelligently Designed Four, as they are belittlingly labelled by Al the on-air orator, hurry to Amarillo. There they find Dr. JK has been busily abusing his diplomatic immunity as a Prince to buy up all the available helium production from local wells.
Some clever trickery by The Immemorable Girl, ploying girlish wiles from a handbook on Seduction for the Totally Clueless, lures him into an obsession with her and uncovers his scheme. When the oil runs out someday, and jet planes are replaced by nuclear-powered airships, he plans to have gained monopoly control of the world's helium supply, so that he can use that for international extortion. To me, that just sounds like a good business plan, but Dub Bob shows how much farther he can see than we ordinary humans by realizing that if the future Emir can ground Dirigible Force One at will, then the President of the United States would be at his mercy. (Actually, that sounds like a good business plan to me, too, but never mind....)
This leads to the climactic battles that true superhero fans read the books and view the movies for. Determined to raid the airship and find the illegal (even under Texas laws, which are very loose) weapons of mass destruction which Dr. JK bragged about having stashed there, and incidentally to seize his supply of helium, the four stage an attack on the zeppelin from four different directions.
Sorry, but I won't spoil it all for future movie-goers by detailing here how the villain defeats and captures each of them in a separate brutal battle, then they manage to escape and overpower him. At the end, Good does triumph over Evil, but it is set up for a sequel when the Prince seems to fall to his death into the cloud miles in the sky. (But in the words of one of Miller's classic tales of Daredevil and the Kingpen, after a careful search, "There is no corpse.")
(Dedicated to Michael Chabon, whose masterpiece about the early years of comics might have been really great, if he had just left out all that gross and icky guy-on-guy stuff.)
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
FALLING ON MY SWORD FOR FREEDOM:
The departure of the gap-truthed swing vote of the Supine Courtiers has left some liberals fuming over the past instead of planning for the future. Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged is still all unforgivingly pre-911 about the amorphous Arizonan. The pseudosymous “Dawn Summers” of Clareified has fired a drive-by shot at one of Sandy’s colleagues. Meanwhile, David Sirota has actually divined Our Noble Lame Duck’s best strategy:
It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good existing judge as the sacrifical lamb sent out to draw the diversionary fire. Instead, let’s toss up a name from blogtopia (yes! skippy coined that word!). While there are some obvious candidates teaching at Tennessee and UCLA, both of those web wonders are frankly too devoted to civil liberties to become reliable tools of America’s Team if confirmed, or to scare the Senate liberals sufficiently to lure them into torpedoing the Coddling Compromise on filibusters. It’s not even worth talking about the open lefties, whether from red states or from blue ones.
I therefore am volunteering to be the burnt offering myself. Yes, I am qualified, even though for many years I have not practiced — but then neither had liberal icon William Douglas when he was picked. Never having been a judge or a legislator means I have no record for Teddy’s staffers to take pot-shots at, but my many writings on the web should be enough to draw all the fire the Rovinator could want. Furthermore, I will pull no punches in testimony before the Senate. My goal will be to make even the sacred Wall Street Journal aghast, and the New York Times welcome even Pat Robertson by contrast. The next nominee will then sail through on greased skids of relief. Here are just a few of the provocative positions I will proclaim partiality to:
The White House is promising to consult fully with the Senate before sending up a victim for them. If you agree with my strategy, you now have the chance to contact your Senators and urge them to plead with the President to nominate me. After the fireworks over my hearing die down, he will then be able to propose his real choice, and make this gang of nine Extremely Right once again, as they were before FDR’s court-packing threat intimidated them into appeasing socialism. Call them today!! AC for the SC!!
The departure of the gap-truthed swing vote of the Supine Courtiers has left some liberals fuming over the past instead of planning for the future. Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged is still all unforgivingly pre-911 about the amorphous Arizonan. The pseudosymous “Dawn Summers” of Clareified has fired a drive-by shot at one of Sandy’s colleagues. Meanwhile, David Sirota has actually divined Our Noble Lame Duck’s best strategy:
This technique worked well before for both Reagan and Nixon. Look up the fight over Bork, and over Tricky’s rejected nominees.I have a prediction: O’Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist will both retire…Karl Rove will have Bush put up one crazy, wild-eyed conservative lunatic in the John Ashcroft mold, and one hard-right winger who seems “moderate” compared to the crazy…the lunatic goes down to defeat, but the hard-right winger gets through, and Bush replaces the lunatic with another hard-right winger as a “compromise.
If just O'Connor retires, it will be much the same strategy - first nominate a wild-eyed lunatic. It's a win-win for Bush - either the lunatic gets appointed, or the lunatic loses, and then Bush puts up someone a shade less crazy - but equally as conservative - as the “compromise.” The media will play along with this storyline, billing the second nominee as “moderate.”
It would be a shame to waste a perfectly good existing judge as the sacrifical lamb sent out to draw the diversionary fire. Instead, let’s toss up a name from blogtopia (yes! skippy coined that word!). While there are some obvious candidates teaching at Tennessee and UCLA, both of those web wonders are frankly too devoted to civil liberties to become reliable tools of America’s Team if confirmed, or to scare the Senate liberals sufficiently to lure them into torpedoing the Coddling Compromise on filibusters. It’s not even worth talking about the open lefties, whether from red states or from blue ones.
I therefore am volunteering to be the burnt offering myself. Yes, I am qualified, even though for many years I have not practiced — but then neither had liberal icon William Douglas when he was picked. Never having been a judge or a legislator means I have no record for Teddy’s staffers to take pot-shots at, but my many writings on the web should be enough to draw all the fire the Rovinator could want. Furthermore, I will pull no punches in testimony before the Senate. My goal will be to make even the sacred Wall Street Journal aghast, and the New York Times welcome even Pat Robertson by contrast. The next nominee will then sail through on greased skids of relief. Here are just a few of the provocative positions I will proclaim partiality to:
- Choice: I see nothing in the Constitution which requires any state to impose a mandatory death penalty on killers of preborn babies. That is clearly a choice which the Founders believed should be left up to the legislators themselves. It would be unconscionable judicial activism to order the execution of fetucidal doctors, and so I would not strike down laws which merely imprisoned them instead.
- Torture: The Eighth Amendment only prohibits acts which are both cruel and unusual. Once precedents have been established of the normality of such practices at U.S. controlled installations overseas, their cruelty alone should be insufficient to ban them here at home. While warnings at arrest would still apply to ordinary domestic criminals, obviously animalistic terrorist facilitators apprehended under the Patriot Acts are too dangerous to be covered by those human inventions.
Furthermore, while Article I, Section 9, bans Bills of Attainder, that only applies to laws singling out individuals. Article III, Section 3, by saying “no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood ….”, clearly implies that attainders would be okay if done as part of a general law applying to all traitors. Since one definition of an attainder is “the loss of all civil rights consequent to a sentence of death”, those convicted of treason could be tortured at will, perhaps as a means of raising revenue by charging for the privilege.
- Elections and Redistricting: If anything I say pleases Democrats, it should be my statement that I would have voted against even hearing the case of the 2000 Presidential election. They will be much less enthusiastic about my belief that the electors should have been chosen by the Republican Florida legislature. Nor should it be alone. Article IV, Section 4, does explicitly “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”. Note the capital letter “R”. The conclusion is obvious. Delay’s designates can redesign districts at their discretion.
- Pledge of Allegiance: Our students should not be taking an oath to a piece of cloth. Instead they should be swearing their loyalty to the President of the United States. It would be wrong to force anyone to say this pledge. It would be equally wrong to deny those offended by such refusals their freedom of non-association with such traitors through voluntary shunnings by other children. To prevent inappropriate excesses, we should post the names of these claimants of conscience in public places with stern warnings that Americans like these (and their parents) have the right to any subversive thoughts they wish. That’s what makes this country great.
- Prayer in Schools: It is a violation of the First Amendment to establish government educational institutions which use taxpayer funds to oppress the natural spiritual instincts of children worried about passing their next test; therefore, unless there is Fourteenth Amendment “equal protection of the laws” funding for schools which actively indoctrinate them with religious dogma and practices, then the public schools fail to pass Constitutional muster, and must be closed forthwith. Remember that Article IV, Section 1, also says “Full Faith … shall be given in each State….”
The White House is promising to consult fully with the Senate before sending up a victim for them. If you agree with my strategy, you now have the chance to contact your Senators and urge them to plead with the President to nominate me. After the fireworks over my hearing die down, he will then be able to propose his real choice, and make this gang of nine Extremely Right once again, as they were before FDR’s court-packing threat intimidated them into appeasing socialism. Call them today!! AC for the SC!!
