Yearly Archives: 2004

Dump Duhbya

Wishing you and yours a Christ-free Christmas!

Groups on Right Say Christmas Is Under Attack By Dana Milbank, Washington Post

Those on the other side of these battles say the Christian groups are wildly exaggerating the threats from a phantom enemy for the purpose of mobilizing evangelicals to contribute funds (some groups are explicitly using the Christmas issue to raise money) or to become politically active. On the Christmas fight, the American Civil Liberties Union, the group most often cited as the enemy of traditionalists, says it has not filed a single case blocking Christmas displays this year and cites half a dozen instances over the past year in which it has fought on the side of more religious expression.

“This is the winter equivalent of those summer stories about shark attacks being on the increase,” says Barry Lynn, who heads the liberal group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. The conservative groups, he said, “think they can make Christians feel like a besieged majority. It creates a Christian solidarity against all those who would oppress them: secularists in this season, gay and lesbians next month, abortion the next month.”

Whether the threat is real or a straw man, conservatives have been aggressive this season in citing the danger to Christmas. This week, Jerry Falwell, a conservative leader, told supporters that “so-called civil libertarians attempt to purge all vestiges of faith from the American public square.” Also this week, Paul M. Weyrich, another conservative leader, proclaimed that “the campaign to eliminate Christmas from our society is well underway.” Several conservative commentators have echoed the charge on television and radio and in newspapers.

Dump Duhbya

Torture FOIA Request

Records Released in Response to Torture FOIA Request

“I am responding to your request for feedback on aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques used on detainees at GTMO. I did observe treatment that was not only aggressive, but personally very upsetting, although I can’t say that this treatment was perpetrated by Bureau employees. It seemed that these techniques were being employed by the military, government contract employees and REDACTED.”
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Notes allegation of detainee at Abu Ghraib: “They tortured me and cuffed me in an act called the scorpion, and pouring cold water on me They tortured me from morning until the morning of the next day, and when I fell down from the severe torture I fell on the barbed wires, and then they dragged me from my feet and I was wounded and, and they punched me on my stomach.”

[via The Daily Aneurysm at jabartlett.com]

Theirs

The Reason For The Season

Solace of solstice by JOHN FOYSTON

Being merry in the depth of darkness is a darned sight easier knowing that the sun hasn’t gone away forever, and Tuesday’s winter solstice is when we turn the corner back toward the sun and light.

The winter solstice is the most hopeful of holidays, the one that requires utter faith in the great ticking clockwork of the heavens. It’s a day for the imaginative and the optimistic; the beginning of winter, yes, but also the day that promises that spring will come, and summer after that.

The winter solstice has been celebrated far back into the mists of history and beyond. Calculating the exact day of the sun’s return inspired some of humanity’s earliest technological feats, still visible in sites such as England’s Stonehenge, the Yucatan Peninsula’s Chichen Itza, Chaco Canyon in the American Southwest, the temple at Karnak in Egypt and a score more around the world.

At Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland, which was built about 5,000 years ago, the rising sun on the winter solstice sends a beam of light down a long passage to illuminate — for 14 minutes — a chamber that is dark the rest of the year. …

This time of year has been celebrated in many ways by many cultures. There’s the Norse Yule, which lends us our traditions of decorated evergreens, holly and mistletoe; in Pharonic Egypt, the god/man Osiris died and was entombed on the solstice; and ancient Greece had a solstice festival called Lenaea.

The Romans probably were the solstice champs with festivals such as Saturnalia and many others, which were consolidated by Emperor Aurelian in the third century into dies natalis solis invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, which was celebrated on Dec. 25. Christmas eventually supplanted that celebration, but during a period of centuries spanning the fourth to the 10th centuries.

The point being that the solstice has been a cause for celebration for millennia. Here’s a brief primer on what actually happens on this day…. [entire article]

The Writer’s Almanac – DECEMBER 20 – 26, 2004

In the northern hemisphere, today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night. It’s officially the first day of winter and one of the oldest known holidays in human history. Anthropologists believe that solstice celebrations go back at least 30,000 years, before humans even began farming on a large scale.

To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell

…Now, therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

loco

All Payne, No Brain

So, Greg Payne has joined the blovisphere (see bloviate) — these really are the times that try men’s souls.

The aptly named Payne insists he’s never been called boring — just wait a couple more days. In a week’s time he’s fallen from calling the Journal “ruffians” to posting about Zoolander. His well will run dry soon. Will his Alibi column become a rehash of blog entries?

Like most in celebrity-obsessed America, where notoriety equals importance, Payne loves his role on our small stage. He plays the bad-boy Republican, tough enough to throw coke cans at cops, smooth enough to talk the panties off Pika (he thinks). The kinda guy Zell Miller calls a wimp.

It’s not just that “witty Right Winger” is an oxymoron, it’s that wit is despised by his ilk. The Red-faced Right takes everything seriously here at the End-of-Days.

Thank Payne for warning us that the Radical Right will have its revenge for Bernie Kerik at the next opportunity. It’s good to see another Republican for adultery and misrepresentation. Nevermind that Kerik was so feckless.

Anyone who thinks Zell Miller is right about Payne should note how harshly Payne puts down fellow Republican Brad Winter for his “frustrating middle-of-the-road style.” Yeah, I hate moderation in Republicans — not that I’ve seen it in 20 years.

Payne, an outsider whose ancestors have been here fewer than 150 of the last 13,000 years, writes about the humilation he suffered at the hands of a ‘weird, weaselly, funny-looking lawyer from NEW YORK‘ (gasp!). Huh. GP doesn’t mean “Jew,” does he?

Clearly, the “unfiltered” Payne is as good for the community as untreated sewage. But, then, why treat the blogosphere any differently than the biosphere? God gave it to us to poison as we like.

Turns out reading is just too much work for his audience — it’s easier to listen to Lush Limbaugh all day and stare at Pravda, er, Fox News, all night. Someone should start a pool as to when he quits. mjh

Theirs

‘Santa and Jesus are side-by-side’

The Daily Aneurysm at jabartlett.com

Even though I am a liberal (and thus, as we’ve been told all month, an enemy of Christmas) and not religious (which makes me an enemy of America), I celebrate Christmas without cognitive dissonance and no feeling of hypocrisy. Christmas was long ago transformed from a religious holiday into an event so thoroughly secular that the wingnuts’ efforts to force it back to its religious roots, annoying though they are, represent closing the barn door long after the horse is gone. Santa and Jesus are side-by-side elbowing for space under trees from coast to coast, and I daresay in most households, they co-exist peacefully, making no demands on one another.

Dump Duhbya

In 1956, they were Southern Democrats, now they are the Republican Base

Southern Manifesto 1956

We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power. It climaxes a trend in the Federal judiciary undertaking to legislate, in derogation of the authority of Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people. …

the Supreme Court of the United States, with no legal basis for such action, undertook to exercise their naked judicial power and substituted their personal political and social ideas for the established law of the land.

This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion…. inflamed by outside meddlers….

We commend the motives of those States which have declared the intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means. . . . We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision [which brought equality to more Americans].

Dump Duhbya

That’s what happened in Canada!

The Daily Howler

Anywhere except in American ‘news,’ these views would be seen for what they are — the kooky rants of screaming crackpots, the kind who need to be supervised closely by relatives and loving friends. But increasingly, screaming crackpots like Bill O’Reilly control the agenda of America’s discourse. And mainstream pundits refuse to note the absurdity of the ongoing conduct. It’s so much simpler to look away as the kooky-con clowning goes on.

O’REILLY: “Now, all of this anti-Christian stuff is absurd, and may even be a bias situation. But the real reason it’s happening has little to do with Christmas and everything to do with organized religion.

“Secular progressives realize that America as it is now will never approve of gay marriage, partial birth abortion, euthanasia, legalized drugs, income redistribution through taxation, and many other progressive visions because of religious opposition.

“But if the secularists can destroy religion in the public arena, the brave new progressive world is a possibility. That’s what happened in Canada.”
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Bill Donohue (not O’Reilly): “Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It`s not a secret, OK? And I`m not afraid to say it. That`s why they hate this movie [Gibson’s Passion]. It`s about Jesus Christ, and it`s about truth. It`s about the messiah.

“Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions.”

[mjh: No point in telling this idiot anal sex never leads to an abortion.]