From American Mercury, 1936

On the side of Roosevelt stands the massive fact that is hard to overestimate the imbecility of the great masses of the plain people; but in favour of Landon is the law of diminishing returns, which runs in politics quite as clearly as in love or war. (JL Mencken)

AND

So it is to be four more long years. Well, if there is any country in the world able to withstand eight years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it is America. We are gluttons for punishment. Dr. Roosevelt’s return to office is an extradordinary tribute to the Republic’s powers or resistance.

So the greatest show on earth continues. The nine executioners on Capitol Hill tremble in their august robes, the skeleton of the NRA begins to put on flesh, the new hordes of hungry jobholders sharpen up their store teeth as they approach the public trough. The saturnalia of corruption which has drenched Washington since 1932 can continue unabeted. The process of chaning American workingmen into unemployable paupers on the dole will reach a new high before the next election. The National Labor Relations Board will soon swing into action in earnest, paving the way for the dictatorship of labor agitators. The SEC, no l.onger restrained by fear of embarrassing the Fuehrer, can really crack down on the wolves of Wall Street. Doctor Tugwll, the Sweetheart of the Regimenters, can now make America Over in earnest; by next Election Day he will probably have resettled half a million George Dems in recalcitrant Maine and Vermont. The sublime Ickes, little Lord Fauntleroy of the Uplifters, will shortly have all the poor American Indians converted to Communism. Harry Hopkins, Prince of Spendthrifts, will erect a line of WPA workers leaning on their shovels all the way from North Dakot to Alabam for a windbreak in the erosion belt.

(Continue on later for more of the same…)

Was’nt that the most moving, topical, comforting thing you have heard recently? Is’nt that Son-of-a-Bitch really something to show to an already stunned and grieving world? He is saying the tsunami dead are dead because they do not believe as he does! Is’nt that Son-of-a-Bitch really something? What’s worse, we have at least 30/40 million more just like him. If I were younger, so help me, I would emigrate.
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There is an ebb and flow to these things, and America has always had a flow of this odd Puritanical Christianity running against a flow of Social Gospel Christianity. The national zeitgist changes in a hurry, for good or bad, and all I can really do is stick through it.
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Somehow I can’t grasp the applicability of that DeLay passage to the tsunami so it would have flown right past me, probably being interpreted as “don’t just say you’ll help; really DO IT.” Dense, thinking his selection was an afterlife judgement reference and that the stuff about the wheat grow with the tares and God making his sun to shine on everyone untl then still applied.

I wonder how it might have turned out if someone had been fast-thinking enough to get up right behind him and read the “Judge not that ye be not judged” or the mote and the log in eye passage.

Ya know, if God hates what I think that same book hints about, and he’s got some thunderbolts left, er….yeekers I hope something isn’t being brewed just for Americans – I mean he knows we’re not all guilty by assocation. Right? Right? I mean, he would use something more discriminating than tsunamis or zealous hijackers?
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are the evil doers sitting in washington?

Just a thought
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This reminds me of The Simpson’s episode where Homer creates a religion based on not going to church and the preacher guy is preaching to him quoting scripture, and Homer retorts by randomly choosing a verse and wait, I’m getting this backwards. It is the preacher guy who talkes about the foolish man who built his house on sand.

But is it really good to build a house on rock?
Wouldn’t that cause problems with earthquakes?
Dirt is probably better.
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I am so happy to see that our government has at last replaced our once secular government with a formal state religious order. That other great nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia could live under the commandments of their great god, and that we Americans were still stuck with the heathen, atheistic humanism of the infidel enlightenment, stuck in my pious craw like bitter blood of the lamb of heaven. Amen.
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I wonder if this is a way of saying that ONLY christians will enter heaven? After all isnt a bunch of aid money for earthly things like food and medicine a waste, when they probably will go to he!! anyway? These are the same ones who blame any “worldly ” tragedy on the moral decay of our society.
MAKES ME NAUSEOUS

Quote:Not every one who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven; but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

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taken from message board a and message board b, relating to DeLay at Congressional Prayer Meeting.

Perhaps Joe Biden was simply bitter as he was watching his 1988 presidential bid go up in smokes due to scandal — he cheated on a law school exam. But the Senator from the Great State of Delaware immediately did more than his fair share in turning the name “Bork” into a verb, meaning “to make a nominee completely unacceptable and unpalatable.”

Today, the state of politics has devolved to: “I love you, but you’re not very candid so far.”

His vote in regards to confirmation of Alberto Gonzalez, in case you can’t tell, is “yes”. The same goes for Lindsey Graham, the conservative Republican everybody is now watching for weird signs of dissension, who offered similar retorts in the hearing process.

I found this message printed out in a random public location:

To Tom Potter Mayor of Portland Oregon

Dear Tom,
I was glad to be able to talk with you yesterday (01/04/05) at City Hall about my idea to get people worldwide to chant “Peace and Security!”. I heard you say on TV and I have the PortlandTribune (01/04/05) reading it right now about our children being canaries in a coal mines warning us “we’ve forgotten the basic laws of humanity.” That is why the idea I have is the right one at the right time. http://fourloves.info/chant2
The children are warning us the basic laws of humanity are saying “PEACE AND SECURITY” is the basic need for ALL children of the world! And we ALL are someone’s children and need security and peace or teaching ALL to learn to work out ALL world problems in a peaceful way! A world chant can get that idea to become the WORLDS FOCUS POINT! Even if we can get Bin Laden and those thinking like him to have a change of heart about how to fix things that would stop war worldwide would it not? Am I naive to think that just might happen? Might be! BUT WILL IT HURT TO GIVE IT OUR ALL OUT TRY? Can we save ALL those little canaries (children) worldwide? Let us be zealous in trying and make that our ALL OUT TRY! Is that not a great positive world fix idea?
Nathan IBO # 3581775
PS If you will please, fax, mail, email, and have ALL to put my link on ALL websites worldwide. And more so try to get Bin Laden like leaders to see it! And I have info that the United Nations needs to fix things with terrorist once they have that right info. But I will keep that until after the chant is going earth-wide! I have the answer to the terrorist problem worldwide! Fact! Tom, you said, “Together, we will ensure our children’s future by working with our business community” and that is a great idea for our local community. But for children to have a peaceful future in security we need a key to our worldwide community! You can work on the local community but give me the key to the worldwide community by getting all to link my website to their websites. Have it say, “Peace and Security Chant” on all websites. You have the power, I do not! I know I need a proofreader but other than that I know what is needed to bring peace and security! Believe it or not I do! Do you know of any greater positive goal for ALL the earth? I have not heard of one! I might be a little naive and odd in my way of doing things but I am ALL heart and sincere! Nathan 01/06/05.

Does anybody watch TBN non-ironically?

I’ve clicked past and stopped twice within the past week or two. We know that the channel broadcasts from a parallel universe where the laws of physics work entirely different from our own, though there are similarities between our universe and theirs.

Ronald Reagan was evidentally president over there. I sat and watched a 3 minute collage of Reagan, music set to patriotic music. It brought to mind this letter Reagan sent to Robertson or one of those guys: I sometimes wonder if these are the end-times described in the Book of Revelations.

Apparently not, because the bible is encoded with messages about Bush and not Reagan. That’s the other thing I watched: an MIT computer specialist of some kind is shock-o-locked to find that the bible is encoded with such that if you read some passages backward and inside out crossing out this and throwing in that over there, the words “George Bush”, “Taliban”, “World Trade Center”, “WTC”, ” “9/11”, “Trinity”, “Broadcasting”, and “TBN” all show up. What’s more Bush read that bible passage: “When I walk through the valley of death I see no evil” — or something like that.

Which can only mean… the End of Days. Or God is redundant, ie: why does he have both “Trinity Broadcasting” and “TBN”?

On second thought, it was a good thing that a Senator joined in what seems at first glance a lackluster protest of Ohio’s electoral votes.

It is the role of the minority party to find nooks and crannies with which to draw attention to problems they, if in power, would seek to correct. Study the past, study the Republicans circa 1993, and force issues at any available opportunity. Thus, after snickering at the second tier blogs and the liberal radio hosts ramming on and on about something that seemed destined to go nowhere, I’ve come around.

The Democratic Party Leadership? They didn’t want any part of this. Note that John Kerry skipped town, and there’s no other way to see his scheduling as anything but avoiding the specter in case some Senator actually took the plunge. Dragged in, they had to prepare themselves with some sort of coherency statements… downplay Bush v Kerry, the towering vote at the end which I’d have voted “Present” on had I opted for a “Conciousness” vote as a theoretical Senator or Congressman, in the same spirit I find myself never voting for a major party presidential candidate due to its uselessness in determining an actual president.

Which is how it’s just going to have to be… and by that, I mean every sentence in the preceeding paragraph.

Next up, I guess: taking note of the handful of “no” votes to Alberto Gonzalez.

See, when Will Eisner returned from World War Two to resume his work on The Spirit, he found that he was a bit embarrassed by the minstrel racial charicature that was the sidekick — Ebony. So he had him go off to get an education, so as to clean the character up a little bit. In the interim, The Spirit found a new temporary sidekick:

A fat eskimo boy named Blubber. (?!?!)

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If you ask for a list of cartoonists, a mention from me of Eisner might come across as a bit cursory… he kind of gets lost in the shuffle in my estimation… but nonetheless, I can’t take anything away from him.