Saith DeLay:

“A reading of the Gospel, in Matthew 7:21 through 27.

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.

Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?

“Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you: depart from me, you evil doers.'”

Everyone who listens to these words of mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man, who built his house on a rock:

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse; it has been set solidly on rock.

And everyone who listens to these words of mine, but does not act on them, will be like a fool who built his house on sand:

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

He finishes reading, says nothing more, and sits back down.

……..

Somewhere buried in the 2004 election results, the obvious creeps out at you: What, you honestly think you’re going to defeat Tom DeLay over there in Sugarland? Get real!

Not that it matters too much. DeLay is defeated, he worms his way into an equally as powerful lobbying job.

As for Phelps… you knew that was coming, didn’t you?

Do you believe an angel rides in a whirlwind? Well, do you?

The “silver linings” of the Democrats’ 2004 election results starts off strongly, and then becomes thin. The Democrats saving grace for 2004 centers on some Mountain West results.

Montana is exhibit one. The Democrats gain control of the governorship, both houes of the state legislature, and just for the hell of it — Congratulations to Montana’s Potheads. (An issue that the Democratic candidate for governor had to battle against to score credibility, along with constant images of the man with a boatload of guns.) And, for what it is worth, Kerry did better in the state than Gore did. As Tom Brokaw mentioned in the eulogy to the Democratic Party, and the troubles they face outside the coastal enclaves and upper MidWest, Clinton won the state in 1992… now Montana elects Democrats to state office.

Colorado is exhibit two. Here we head toward the famed “Salazar brothers”. Ken Salazar won the state’s US Senate seat. His brother took a House seat. Everything is peachy keen. And Colorado almost looks like a bonafide swing state for presidential elections!

From there, the great “linchpin in the Mountain west” fades out considerably, and I’m left scratching my head. Wyoming had a county that voted for Kerry… Dick Cheney’s county, as a matter of fact. Idaho elected an openly gay woman to the state legislator, from that great bastion of Idahoian progressivism — Boise. Salt Lake City, if you squint hard enough and look in places…

Things go to Hell in a handbasket from there.

The map starts to look pretty much the same… you know, the inverted 1896 map all over again.

“Every Mexican in America is an American of of a job. FUCK BUSH!!”

What that graffiti was supposed to say was “out of a job”, but whoever scrawled it into that store restroom was evidentally in a hurry — and I imagine racists defacing property are paranoid about being caught anyway.

The other day as I hurry across the street to cross the MAX train, I hear some assholes in a car shouting at a black man waiting for the train “Fucking Nigger!”, and to me “Yeah! You better run!” I turned back, smiled, and waved for no particular reason, before they turned to the next random person on the street. I don’t know what their deal was, though I suspect less racism per se (there is nobody whiter than I) so much as nihilism.

Which brings me to this event on Portland’s socio-political horizon. Chunk that one into the garbage category, and move on.

As per usual, Art Bell in his annual predictions show (where callers generally gravitate toward predicting huge-scale earthquakes, alien landings, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis tearing the Earth ashunder) warned the audience not to predict political assassinations, as that always gets a visit from the Secret Service.

Occasionally we’ll get a story like this one, or closer to home for me because it came straight from “Mad Cow Country” (where I grew up) this one.

It occurs to me that I very easily could have been met by the secret service. I was following the lawsuit involving the Army of God and vagrant members, and the so-called “Nuremburgh Files” with that list of abortion-providers and maybe politicians… if they ended up dead, their name crossed out, if they ended up wonded, they were in a gray font. Um… “inspired” (?)… I posted onto my website a list of assassinated presidents, crossed out were Lincoln, Garfield, McKinnley, Kennedy … grayed were Reagan and Ford … and Clinton was at the end of the list for no good reason. I had it up for about six hours, taking it down for a number of reasons. #1: Bad taste. #2: In the event of a meeting with secret service, I’m not entirely sure how the hell I could explain. (Not that I could expect any law enforcement officers to check into it. Who was reading this thing? Me, my brother, and two dudes from school, more or less.) #3: The cross-outs weren’t showing up on the web, thus the joke was muddled, and I thought it was so slight that it wasn’t worth the effort of fixing.

The matter of whether or not I would have been questioned by the Secret Service hinges on where on the front page of my old website I would have had listed the “Assassinated Presidents” list. Local police officers did end up looking at my website… for my purposes here, the less said about the incident the better. And they ended up printing out the first three pages of the thing, to alert my father. (Alien Abduction Story, Debating Whether I am a Diety… up at the top because, they were my favourites on that site… which, of course, suggests the whole deal of the “Assassinated Presidents List” is moot, because I doubt I would have had it up there…

… though, perhaps it would have been bunched up with … Uh, who the freak knows?)

I am walking in the direction of a house, and I see displayed in the right-hand half on a window the Stars and Bars — the old Confederate Flag. I groan.

Then I notice on the left-hand side of the window the old Hammer and Stickle — the flag for the old Soviet Union. It all starts to make sense. It’s an ironic mix, or a defunct mix, or something.

Self-described Communists wouldn’t wave that flag — probably choosing instead plain red or a Che Guevra banner or who knows what. Patriots of the old Confederacy would still wave their flag, however, and demand their multi-cultural right to do so with the Yankee and Black’s fully forged respect on the matter.

General Lee and Comrade Lenin — I salute you both.