"YOU LYING SACK OF CRAP!"

I wasn't even going to do a posting today, but I am reminded that ongoing reality exists, even if I would personally rather take a vacation from it. On Stephanie Miller they were saying that Francis Shaffer advocate a violent overthrow of the government if Roe verses Wade was not overturned. I found some foundation that this charge is true. Shaffer was influenced by a lot of Germans. He was also into dominionism. He believes United State laws should be based upon legal principles in the Old Testament. Shaffer taught that the big battle was between Christians and that made-up entity called “secular humanism” - - which I guess is probably related to the other entity “Islamo – Fascism”. Apparently Michelle Bachman is a Francis Shaffer fan, who is one of the most revered figure in the Christian circles I used to hang out in. A lot of these people are lying sacks xof crap. This morning Stewart Sutcliffe raised the issue with me “What makes you suddenly think you can base any judgement on Christianity on what some Catholic pope wanna be says on TV?” According to him, the whole child molestation problem with priests has been laid to rest and is no longer a problem. They cane on the TV and announced after the interview ran in February that fresh child molestation problems by priests had occurred. When you think about it, with clergy’s record of lying to me, it’s silly that I should believe anything that comes out of their mouth that I have not confirmed from some other source. Stewart was outraged by the notion that heterosexual married people molest just as many children as Catholic priests do. Rick Perry told that eight or nine year old boy that “The earth is very old, but in Texas we teach creationism along with evolution in the schools”. That apparently is false. Not even in Texas do they teach creationism in science classes. John Huntsman warned over the weekend that “any presidential candidate won’t be able to win if he is seen in the eyes of the world as an enemy of science”. Of course lies about our founding fathers “tirelessly working to end slavery” persist. It is argued that these are mid mistakes on Michelle Bachman’s part but deliberate lies. Now they are saying things like “We in America did Black people a big favor by giving them a free boat ride to America and taking them into a Christian country”. There is one thing I saw in a film a long time ago that quoted some history book as saying “- - But as for Sambo, it is now believed that the Black man suffered less than any other group of Americans in the pre civil war South from economic ups and downs”. Apparently people like Bachman are saying this was a happy period for Blacks and “The slave and master dwelt in mutual harmony and respect one for the other”. Speaking of myths - - you do know that Teddy Roosevelt had such bad vision he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. This is documented.

Just for a reality check concerning relations between Elvis and the Beatles. A lot of sugar coating has been going on lately. I’ve read that Elvis definitely resented the Beatles when they came on the scene. Elvis was suspicious of others doing “his songs”. And when Terry Stafford put out “Suspicion” a song Elvis had bombed with, Elvis said “Let the bastard have his hit”. We hear how dominant Elvis was with John Lennon. So remind me now, just how many Elvis songs did the Beatles release as a group- either on an album or “Past Masters Volumes One or Two” or the “Rock and Roll” album, or “Live at Hamburg” or the Decca tapes (fifteen songs) or the songs recorded with Tony Sheridon (eight songs). Well, you tally them all up and there is a grand total of one song - - - and believe me that was a really obscure song - that the Beatles completely reworked, “I’m Gona Sit Right Down and Cry Over You” on the Hamburg album. And actual Beatle interviews from the period indicate extreme awkwardness when the Beatles visited Elvis here in LA at home. They noted how fat he was and that he just sat there watching a color TV with the sound off. John Lennon mused incredulusly - "This is the guy who we have been idolizing all these years????" John Lennon asked if Elvis would do any real rocker songs again” and then added “Then we’ll buy it”. And apparently there wasn’t nearly as much “jamming” going on- - as has been portrayed to the press.

Well you’ve heard the adage “Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger”. Well those thirty three Chilean miners who were trapped for 69 days would seem to be contradictory evidence of that. All of them are suffering from all manner of psychological “post traumatic stress” problem. Apparently this is one case where Dr. Gene Scott’s charishad adage doesn’t apply. Our prayers as always go out to these brave miners who had to learn survival skills and discipline quick and fight off their darkest thoughts. Of course now Christianity has done a John Kerry flip-flop on the whole issue as evidenced by things that Bill Halliday and Neil of KFI say, having introduced the “damaged goods” doctrine, by which a bad experience can actually disqualify you to even continue to be a Christian. Of course people like Chuck Smith used to say “I would respect anybody who gave Christianity a good try- - so they had some kind of moral basis on which to attack it”. But now they are saying “Obviously anybody who professes Atheism has psychological issues. And as I have formerly indicated “issues” if a code name for “mentally unbalanced”. Of course Rev. Halliday says that one of the things that qualified Jesus Christ to even “run for Messiah” in the first place is that he had a good upbringing of two parents and had a “happy childhood” free of trauma and all of that. Whereas in his rant against gays in January 1995 Halliday said “Virtually all homosexuals were sexually molested as a child”. And there is the line about seventeen of nineteen of the first Roman Emperors being homosexual and all. (Marcus Aurelius was one of the few who weren’t) In this vein I am not sympathetic to the idea that a way to insure Priests don’t molest children is that they be married, preferably with children. That priest on Sixty Minutes said that “Most people who molest children are married heterosexual men”. I hope I can take him at his word on that. I would not seek out a job ministering to children, but if I were to I doubt a protestant church would hire me because I am childless. I could point to the four-odd years I spent interacting with Nicholas at the earliest age. They would say “That is well and good. And the minute you can produce DNA evidence that Nicolas is your son, we’ll be glad to hire you”. As you know childlessness is “the gift that keeps on taking” because you will remain that way eternally in Heaven, whereas people with offspring will have a whole dynasty of prodgeny to revere them. Of course if you are an “Atheist with an agenda” like Neil of KFI talks about- - you should hope and pray that the church doesn’t ever change. Just stay as anachronistic as it is with its middle ages cathedrals and stone and stained glass and burning incense and those round communion wafers and priests who get drunk on the wine. The whole contrast between papal regalia and penniless Latino women groveling for a handout, is something an Atheist would almost grow naustalgic about were it taken away. Well, I hope you all enjoyed this little Sunday even homily. This evening’s program was not new. You’ve heard it through and through. But everyone can use a refresher course.

The first Sixty Minutes segment was a re-airing of a vital incident that betrays (among so many other vital issues) the moral hypocracy of the Bush Administration on the most cherished issue of national security. The story goes back to the ‘nineties when the Clinton administration was getting so much “Intelligence” on foreign activities that they could not possibly process the vast amount of data. A system had to be devised to sift through it all and make sense of it. One math genious came up with a computer program called Thin Thread. This is a program that cost thirty million dollars to perfect but it was ready to roll in January of 2001 just as the Clinton administration was leaving office. Unfortunately the Bush administration scrapped it. They said that they wanted an even more grandious program that would be carried out by private industry they named “Trail Blazer”. While Thin Threat cost millions, “Trail Blazer” would cost billions, and it would take years to institute. In fact the program has so many cost overruns that the whole thing was scrapped in 2005. But there were a number of concerned people in the National Security Administration and one of them was named Tom Drake. They wrote Bush a letter saying if Thin Thread had been in place those critical seven months, they most likely would have ample warning of the 9 – 11 attacks. But Bush would have none of it. They tried to go before congress and get a committee investigation going, but congress was not into that sort of investigation so soon after 9 – 11. So they filed other formal reports in channels. Finally they went to the Baltimore Sun, which began doing articles on this N S A blooper. Now the government filed charges against the men but prosecuted only Tom Drake. He was facing 35 years prison time because of espionage charges. Finally in the past few months a court threw out most of the case and the presiding judge had some harsh words to say to the Prosecution. Drake was let go with only community service for a time. Clearly this is a case like the Seigelman case in Alabama that should be investigated by congress. But President Obama has never had any appetite for anything that would cast a pall over the credibility of his immediate predecessor in that office. It’s as off the President and George Bush had some unspoken agreement. If there were just one major scaldal in the Bush Administration it would be worth pursuing. But there are such manifold scandals, and you know what they are, that the scope of the cover-ups of the Bush years is on a scale that defies imagination.