Some call me Jesus

(@ 6   – promoted by NLinStPaul)

NOTE:  Reading Kid Oakland’s beautiful diary yesterday (which is still on the rec list at dkos as I write this) made me think of this diary originally posted September 3rd, 2006.  Given the timeliness I hope you will forgive the repost.  ~ OPOL

Some call me Jesus…

Others call me Yeshua, others the Son of Man.  By any name I am who I am.

Lately it has come to my attention that I have been swiftboated by a gang of lowly sinners who march under the banner of the Christian Right.  They have obfuscated my teachings and associated my name with the terrible sins of war profiteering, torture, and the dropping of bombs on innocents and children.  And those are just the beginnings of their transgressions.  With your permission, I would like to take this opportunity to set a few things straight.

DISCLAIMER:  Please forgive my hubris.  No offense is intended to anyone’s religion, or lack thereof – just a little creative channeling of the Blessed Redeemer on a Sunday morning (actually, just a few things I’ve been wanting to get off my chest re: the ‘Religious Right’).  Any heresy or error included herein is my own.  I don’t really speak for the Creator – or his family.  Oh, and apologies to pastordan for veering recklessly into his territory.  ~ OPOL  ðŸ™‚  

(more below the fold…)

First a question:  What ever made any of you think I was a rightwinger or would endorse or approve of anything the rightwingers do, say, or believe?

Any lingering doubts about my rightwingedness can be cleared up at Jesusisaliberal.com.

In my day I was nothing if not a tireless advocate for the poor and downtrodden.  Have you forgotten this simple fact?  All my life I tried to be a good teacher of a few simple lessons.  Did you not understand me when I said that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle?  If you still don’t get it, sit down with a camel and needle sometime and do a little experimentation of your own.

Let me be clear.  Riches are as much a spiritual burden as they are a blessing.  Wealth is to be approached with trepidation – not lust.  Greed is not a Christian value.  Those who are blessed with wealth bear a great responsibility to those who are not.  I suggest you not take that too lightly, as so many have done.  There are consequences you know.  ðŸ˜‰

And war!  I said – War! Huh – Good God y’all.  What is it good for?  Absolutely nothing.  Say it again!   Like those lyrics?  Thought of ’em myself.  You should’ve seen the look on Edwin Starr’s face when I first ran ’em through his brain.  Priceless!

But the point is…I am not an advocate of war…not even the ‘good’ ones.  If you folks would follow my most basic teachings, there’d never be another one.  Wouldn’t that be something?  I’m tellin’ ya, you really oughta try it.

Now a lot of you have gotten very tricky with the biblical justifications of your philosophies and actions.  Most people of average intelligence can tell you that most anything can be biblically justified if you scour the text thoroughly enough.  Like it’s okay to beat your children because of that whole ‘spare the rod’ thing.  Don’t kid yourselves.  I was clear about this.  You’re not to harm a hair on their heads.  ’nuff said.

A couple of words about the Bible:  First of all, Dad didn’t write it.  Sure he inspired much of it, but it was written by fallible human beings just like yourselves.  And there’s plenty they got wrong, believe me, but we won’t dwell on that.  For now, I just want you to understand that the Bible is not a book, but rather a collection of books, written, edited, translated, and compiled (very selectively I might add) by men.  And as such, it is not infallible.  Feel free to use it for its comfort, wisdom, and literary excellence – but don’t misuse it.  Thanks.

That being said, here are a few my favorite passages:

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.  ~ Hebrews

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. ~ Hosea

And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever. ~ Isaiah

The price of wisdom is above-rubies. ~ Job

And they shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks. ~ Micah

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.  ~ Romans

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things. ~ Philippians

And then the Beatitudes are always nice (even if I do say so myself):

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,

for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,

for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart,

for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

But somehow I feel like you guys are not paying attention.  Despite my legion of ‘followers’ around the world, an estimated one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition.  About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes.  Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five.  While little children are starving in droves, you morons are blowing each other up with rockets and bombs!  Now what am I to make of that?  It’s all fine and good to save peoples’ souls, but maybe saving their lives should come first.  Just a thought.

And do not ever forget what I said about children.

“Anyone who welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But anyone who is an obstacle to bring down one of these little ones, who has faith in me, would be better drowned in the depths of the sea with a great millstone round his neck.” (Matt. 18:5-7)

Hint:  I wasn’t kidding.

I was a huge fan of children, and of a lot of other people whom so many of you routinely diss – and treat in a most heinous manner I might add (I loved Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure! – another one of mine.).  ðŸ˜€

I hung out with beggars, winos, prostitutes, and lepers.  These were my peeps.  They were humble and poor (and sinners of course) – but good people.  So where do you get off looking down your noses at these whom I called the ‘salt of the earth’?  I want you to know that it really rubs me the wrong way (if that matters to you).

And the way you treat each other, that could stand a lot of improvement.  If you know anything at all about me, or what I taught and said, you should remember this one (just a suggestion):

“..for I was hungry, and ye gave Me food: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in: naked, and ye clothed Me: I was sick, and ye visited Me: I was in prison, and ye came unto Me…Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

The least of these My brethren.  Remember that!  Ya never know when there might be a pop quiz.

A few more of my words that I wish you all would pay better attention to (again, just a suggestion):

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. ~ John

Let not your heart be troubled. ~ John

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.~ Matthew

Neither cast ye your pearls before swine. ~ Matthew

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? ~ Matthew

Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  ~ Matthew

A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.  ~ Luke

For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. ~  I Timothy

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.  ~  I Timothy

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. ~ Matthew

“LOVE ONE ANOTHER!”~ John

jesus-icon-MINE_500

That’s all.  Just had to get that off my chest.

Peace and Love y’all.  Peace and Love.

Peace-Out_OPOL_500

HONORING THE FALLEN: US Military KIA, Iraq – December 2007

( – promoted by pfiore8)

This isn’t a few days past the end of the month, as we all know. The coming day is the Holiday that seems to have run amuck, no longer celebrating the birth of Christ, even for Christians, except in words only and going through the motions.

It’s become more of a grab fest of materialistic riches and buying frency starting with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which somehow also has lost it’s meaning, from the wew morning hours right through the evening hours of the Eve. And now, with the political primaries so close, for the coming elections, a Spirit of anything but The Birth and Teachings of Christ has developed, while his name is bandied about by those seeking political office!

But one thing has stayed consistant these last few years, because of a failure of our Countries Policies and it’s Arrogance, wether Christmas is celebrated or not, there will be tens of thousands of Empty Chairs at the dinner tables, and family gatherings, on the Eve of and on the Day of ‘The Birth of Christ’, a savior to some, a prophet to some, or non-existant to others!

Tens of thousands of Innocents, each of these last years were lost! Hundreds of those serving this Countries Military, in each of these last years were lost! As it all still continues and will define much of what happens on this planet for many years to come, with many more Empty Chairs!

Those listed below, Fallen this month, will no longer be with family and friends to celebrate whatever it is Christmas has become, and neither will these,  November 2007, October  2007, September 2007, August 2007, July 2007, June 2007, May 2007, April 2007, March 2007, Feb. 2007, Jan. 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 as posted on my site and a few of the more popular internet sites.

Hopefully, with 7plus days left, I will not have to update the list below, for the month of December, a few days after it ends. For as of December 24th, the Eve of the ‘Birth of Christ’ this year of 2007, these are the knowns, the list below and the ones linked above, 3896 with one still waitimg on DoD confirmation, are the Reported!

The Unreported, but Direct Results Of, may Never be Totally Counted, and those numbers will rise, Nor will All the Civilian Casulties!

Iraq

There have been 4,202 coalition deaths — 3,896 Americans {one additional still DoD unconfirmed}, two Australians, 173 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, one Czech, seven Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, one Hungarian, 33 Italians, one Kazakh, one Korean, three Latvian, 22 Poles, three Romanians, five Salvadoran, four Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians — in the war in Iraq as of December 18, 2007, according to a CNN count. (Graphical breakdown of casualties). The list below is the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose deaths have been reported by their country’s governments. At least 28,711 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. View casualties in the War in Afghanistan  

Pfc. Juctin R. P. McDaniel 19 524th Combat Service Support Battalion, 45th Sustainment Brigade, 8th Theater Sustainment Command Andover, New Hampshire Died of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident in Taji, Iraq, on December 17, 2007. The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.  

Sgt. Austin D. Pratt 22 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) Cadet, Missouri Died of injuries sustained in an incident that is currently under investigation in Balad, Iraq, on December 15, 2007  

Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan A. Lowery 38 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment Houlton, Maine Died of wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit using small-arms fire in Mosul, Iraq, on December 14, 2007  

Guardsman Stephen Ferguson 31 1st Battalion Scots Guards Lanarkshire, England Died on December 13, 2007, at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, England, of injuries sustained when the Warrior Armored Vehicle he was driving accidentally slid into a canal during a patrol in Basra, Iraq, on December 12  

Sgt. Samuel E. Kelsey 24 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division Troup, Texas Died of wounds suffered when a roadside bomb detonated in Tunnis, Iraq, on December 13, 2007  

Spc. Brynn J. Naylor 21 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division Roswell, New Mexico Died of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit using small-arms fire in Baghdad, Iraq, on December 13, 2007  

Pvt. Daren A. Smith 19 3rd Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division Helena, Montana Died of wounds sustained from a non-combat related incident in Baghdad, Iraq, on December 13, 2007  

Chief Petty Officer Mark T. Carter 27 Navy SEAL Fallbrook, California Died as a result of enemy action while conducting combat operations in Iraq on December 11, 2007  

Spc. Johnathan A. Lahmann 21 59th Engineer Company, 20th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade Richmond, Indiana Died of wounds suffered when a homemade bomb struck his vehicle in Bayji, Iraq, on December 10, 2007  

Spc. Randy W. Pickering 31 Regimental Support Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment Bovey, Minnesota Died of injuries sustained in a non-combat related incident in Baghdad, Iraq, on December 9, 2007. The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.  

Capt. Adam P. Snyder 26 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division Fort Pierce, Florida One of three soldiers killed when their vehicle encountered a roadside bomb in Bayji, Iraq. Snyder died on December 5, 2007, in Balad, Iraq.  

Sgt. Eric J. Hernandez 26 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division Waldwick, New Jersey One of three soldiers killed when their vehicle encountered a roadside bomb in Bayji, Iraq. Hernandez died on December 4, 2007, in Bayji, Iraq.  

Pvt. Dewayne L. White 27 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division Country Club Hills, Illinois One of three soldiers killed when their vehicle encountered a roadside bomb in Bayji, Iraq. Whited died on December 4, 2007, in Bayji, Iraq.  

Sgt. Kyle Dayton 22 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division El Dorado Hills, California Died of injuries suffered from a non-combat related incident in Ashwah, Iraq, on December 3, 2007  

Spc. Matthew K. Reece 24 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division Harrison, Arkansas Died of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Iraq, on December 1, 2007

Civilian Casulties

Just Foreign Policy Issues

Over a million {*1,139,602} Iraqis are estimated to have been killed as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. Learn More and Take Action»

*Estimate, click for explaination.

To

John Hopkins School of Public Health { October 11, 2006 report } puts the count at 650,000, with a range from 400,000 to 900,000.

Exact Count of Civilian Casulties may never be known, as is the case in every conflict, especially an Invasion by another Country. For it is the Innocent Civilians and those Defending their Countries {of which All would be counted if this land were ever invaded} who suffer the most, during and long after!

All the Deaths, Maimings and Destruction are the Blood on All Our Hands, No One can escape the Guilt!

You can view other Honor Rolls of the Fallen I have posted on my site {links above}, or from the CNN link at top and the other sources that you might use or know about.

“Never going home”

Some of the troops from the 101st division are on their third tour of Iraq.

Previous tours have lasted more than a year and this one will be more than 15 months.

The words “Never Going Home” have been etched onto the ceiling of this vehicle.



As Of December 24 2007, There Are 82 Pages w/5 ‘Silent Honor Rolls’ Each, Number Of KIA’s Varies With Each ‘Silent Honor Roll’;  Many now have numbers in the teens and twenties

In Honor – In Memory

If they were sent to fight, they are too few. If they were sent to die, they are too many!

Is ‘Funding’ Really For Troops?

What Happened To Funding and Oversite For Military/Veteran Care In Previous Congresses?

Those who take some sort of relief in the “We are fighting them over there so we won’t be fighting them here!”, Better Rethink their Future, or rather their Childrens Future!!

The Failed Policies will Haunt Us and the World for Decades!!

The words of Jesus on his birthday

Since tonight we celebrate the birth of Jesus, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the things he stood for during his life. I no longer consider myself a christian, but it’s not for lack of trying. I went to church at least 3 times a week growing up, attended a christian high school and college, and finally got my master’s degree at a seminary. So sometimes I feel like I’ve heard just about everything there is to say about Jesus.

But a theology professor of mine at the seminary used to talk regularly about how christians today focus on Jesus’ birth and death – but don’t talk much about his life in between the two. That’s why Christmas is probably the biggest holiday of the year and its also why they LOVED the movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

The life of Jesus is where he presented challenges to all of us in showing us how we can live in a way that truly does transform the world. In our power-driven consumer society – those messages go right to the heart of what’s wrong with our culture and ask us to live another way.

I also had a professor in college who took his bible and cut out all the verses (old and new testament) that were instructions for us to care for the poor, the widowed and the children. He would hold up that bible in class and show us that there was not much left after all that was taken out in order to make the point that today, we tend to miss the central message.  

Most of us have heard the beatitudes. They are perhaps the most powerful summary of what Jesus was trying to teach us:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,

for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

for they shall possess the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice,

for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,

for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart,

for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And most of us have heard the story of the good samaritan:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

I often think of the following passage at christmas and wonder what gift we could give to Jesus on his birthday.

Then the king will say to those good people on his right, ‘Come. My Father has given you great blessings. Come and get the kingdom God promised you. That kingdom has been prepared for you since the world was made. You can have this kingdom, because I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was alone and away from home, and you invited me into your home. I was without clothes, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me.’ “Then the good people will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food? When did we see you thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you alone and away from home and invite you into our home? When did we see you without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?’ “Then the king will answer, ‘I tell you the truth. Anything you did for one of the least of these my brethren, you also did for me.’

All of these passages call for something deep in our relationships with each other – and that’s what makes them so difficult to live out. The christians I grew up around are much more content with rules and dogma that are imposed from the outside as a way to live than they are with these deep truths about humanity.

There’s one last story about Jesus that I’d like to share because it addresses this reliance on dogma and Jesus takes a direct hit at that kind of thinking. I have to say that in all the years that I heard thousands of sermons I NEVER heard one on this passage:

And it came to pass that he went through the grain fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of grain.

And the Pharisees said unto him, “Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?”

And he said unto them, “Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was hungry, he, and they that were with him; how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar, the high priest, and did eat the showbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them who were with him?”

And he said unto them, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”

What I hear in this story is Jesus saying that the “rules” are negotiable. What’s not negotiable is the dignity of every human being, and that, ultimately, trumps all the rules.

At this time of year, I usually go back and read an amazing diary written by the wonderful soul Kid Oakland about three years ago titled a christmas message. Here’s a taste:

Let me tell you something about the Jesus that I know.

He was a real man.  Born in a poor region to working poor parents.  He loved learning, he loved his mother and his father.

But he left them and spent his life with the poor, the outcast, the rejected, the defiled, the sick, the sinners, the bedraggled, the bereft, the self-hating, the lonely, the banished, the foul, the miserable, the desperate and finally, those sick with their own power.

He did this, not because of his ideology or his creed.  He did this not because of his doctrine.  He did this, quite simply, because he loved them.  He preferred them.

Their company, their stories, their lives, their environs, their plight and their faith.

And they loved him.  Because he touched them.  He looked them in the eye and believed in them.  Because, at the end of the day, when they looked to him they saw that his commitment to them was a commitment unsullied by qualifier or clause. It was a commitment to love them, even upon pain of death.  And they saw in him, a love that promised to love them as they were, who they were…fully, without judgement or flinching glance, or hypocritical accomodation.

As I said before, I don’t consider myself a christian, and don’t share these passages in an attempt to convert anyone… just to share these stories from a great teacher on his birthday.

 

And So This Is Christmas…

The Betrayal Is Complete: Permanent Occupation Of Iraq

If you ever doubted it…

…this should resolve the question once and for all: We are on our own.



Asked about her “greatest mistake,” Pelosi said Why don’t you tell me? ‘Cause I think we’re doing just great.” Remember when Georgie stumbled over a similar question and couldn’t recall any mistakes? It seems Our Only President is not the only one so afflicted.



The hand-off…


“Principles” for Permanent Iraqi Presence:

A “democratic Iraq” here means the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The current political arrangement will receive U.S. military protection against coups or any other internal subversion. That’s something the Iraqi government wants desperately: not only is it massively unpopular, even among Iraqi Shiites, but the increasing U.S.-Sunni security cooperation strikes the Shiite government — with some justification — as a recipe for a future coup.



In other words, we’re staying in Iraq to defend George Bush’s ass, and his puppet Nouri al-Maliki against all enemies, foreign and domestic. What will the presidential candidates say about this?

“Principles”?

And So This Is Christmas… and what have you done?



Cross posted at OOIBC, Edgeing, and dKos

Pony Party: Happy Holidays

Hi all – I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. I’m oot and aboot, so I probably won’t be here to comment. Have at it!

 

Right-Wing War on Christmas Vets: Why They Fight

Among the mouth-breathingest of mouth-breathing Republicans, it’s a well-known fact that every November or so, we libruls gather in our covens and plot the paganization of Christmas.  In theirLeft Behind-style fantasies, we are the legions of Satan, come upon the Earth to foist secular ideas and Godless traditions upon the flock of the Lamb.  They claim that only the Bible stands in defense of the faithful against the pernicious attacks of the heathen First Amendment, and that we will not be satisfied until we have, Egyptian-like, eradicated every trace of monotheism from our once-God-fearing civilization.  Each year, the scarred veterans of the (self-)Right(eous) stir their zealots to action, and in public squares and mangers throughout the land, battles over the soul of American culture are waged.  

As in all wars, sometimes an enemy’s gallantry on the field of battle impresses even a bitter foe – Napoleon, remarking on the Russian cavalry then crashing into his lines, said “Now these are Kossacks!” – and it’s in this spirit that Brandon Friedman suggested we take a moment to cite the valor of our opposition.  Others (links below) have done a great job “honoring” individual wingnut actions – now join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where we’ll take a look at what, exactly, they’re fighting for.

Historiorant:  From all over the left blogosphere, the commendations of our gallant foe are pouring in; verily, he is formidable, but the very fact that the good guys are compelled to note in their dispatches the adversary’s heroic action under fire (clammyc @ DocuDharma) and the times his bravery was such that he won the day (Erick Schmeltzer @ Huffington Post) speaks to the fact that the pro-tannenbaum forces are fighting tenaciously for every inch.  Rather like the Confederates at Pickett’s Charge, they may be trying to storm a solid position in the name of a dubious set of causes, but we have to respect the temerity it takes to throw oneself into the breach for an issue one really doesn’t understand.

“…for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.”  — Matthew 25:13

Nor when He first arrived, either, it would seem.  Dates are always problematic for our friends on the far right, their occasional efforts to tweak the calendar to their will notwithstanding.  From determining the date of the birth of Christ to the day of His return, evangelical math has run into problem after problem.  This really isn’t too surprising, given the cubit-based system of measurement, the firm belief that some Biblical figures lived over 900 years, and their odd interpretation of galactic time as revealed to them by an Irish Anglican bishop 350 years ago.  Why don’t we celebrate October 23rd – Creation Day, according to Bishop Ussher – anyway?

                                                     Photobucket

The obsession with Jesus’ birth – which, in terms of the re-envisioned “traditional” Christian theology championed by Global War on Christmas (GWoC) uber-kommandant Bill O’Reilly, is at least as important as His death and resurrection – is something about which modern Christians are far more likely to get up in arms about than their forebears.  As we’ll see in a moment, the occasion of Christ’s birth was used by early missionaries as a means of making pagan pre-converts comfortable with the new faith – nowhere in the New Testament is found a command to venerate the Virgin Birth.  If one looks into the older, pick-n’-choose sections of the Bible, quite the opposite is true.

Was the Son of God born on December 25th?  The short answer is “most likely not,” given that few facts point to that date as any more likely than the standard 1 in 365 chance – and several of the known ones surrounding 12/25 actually make it an unlikelier time than a date in the spring.  For one thing, it seems unlikely that the ruler of a far-flung, multi-latituded empire would initiate a travel frenzy in the middle of the winter…

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.  And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.   And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

Luke 2:1-3, KJV

…but probably more important to the fixing of December 25 at Jesus’ birthday was the usurpation of the god-figure who’d earlier laid claim to that particular calendrical moment.  As it turns out, the popularity of holy births on or about the time of the Winter Solstice is something that far predates monotheism itself, to say nothing of the Jesus-come-lately Son of God.

Wouldn’t you know it?  Those officious Romans are involved…

Jesus, of course, lived his entire life as a Jew under Roman rule (well, Mitt might have a slightly different take on that), his homeland occupied and governed by foreigners and puppet kings.  Nevertheless, none of the four canonized gospels – “the Constitution,” according to the Focus on the Family gang – mentions Jesus’ birth as being portentous of Jewish revolt.  In other words, He is not portrayed as a sword-wielding dispenser of Holy Justice (all misinterpretations of Isaiah 9:6 aside) nor as the revealer of some new autocratic/utopian form of government based around the worship of He and His Father; that would come later, around the time of the Crusades.  Hence, any effort to link the birth of Christ to some sort of foundational link to American government is sheer lunacy, despite the best efforts of some very determined historical revisionists.  This simple fact likely comes as a real shock to this bonehead, who seems to think that he’s got us libs pegged dead to rights:

The privatizers of faith are the same social engineers who demand universal public health care, who embrace public welfare, who bid a nation to come learn their simple doctrine of the solitary value of tolerance. That is, except tolerance for Christians.

…and we would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling theocrats.

PhotobucketSo if we can dispense with the notion of Jesus as a great government-overthrower-and-reorganizer, we can move on to the issue of religion in Rome, and back to the issue of December 25.  This is no coincidence: Rome was generally a good place to be in December, owing to the large number of religious feasts and festivals in the latter part of the month.  Taken together, the whole thing was called Saturnalia; though it varied in length depending on the era and emperor, it generally lasted around a week, beginning on December 17.  It sounds like a party worth crossing the street for:

During the holiday, restrictions were relaxed and the social order inverted. Gambling was allowed in public. Slaves were permitted to use dice and did not have to work. Instead of the toga, less formal dinner clothes (synthesis) were permitted, as was the pileus, a felt cap normally worn by the manumitted slave that symbolized the freedom of the season. Within the family, a Lord of Misrule was chosen. Slaves were treated as equals, allowed to wear their masters’ clothing, and be waited on at meal time in remembrance of an earlier golden age thought to have been ushered in by the god. In the Saturnalia, Lucian relates that “During My week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of frenzied hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water-such are the functions over which I preside.”

ibid.

Though it might sound more like a springtime Fat Tuesday, Saturnalia was about the winter solstice, for it was on that day – December 25, by the reorganized Julian Calendar – that the Sun itself was born.   This dovetailed nicely with the ascendancy of the god Mithra, a deity imported from Iran by legionaries and immensely popular among Rome’s soldiers.  Controversy rages as to how much of an influence Mithraism had on early Christianity; positions in the debate range from one extreme:

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According to Persian traditions, the god Mithras was actually incarnated into the human form of the Saviour expected by Zarathustra. Mithras was born of Anahita, an immaculate virgin mother once worshipped as a fertility goddess before the hierarchical reformation. Anahita was said to have conceived the Saviour from the seed of Zarathustra preserved in the waters of Lake Hamun in the Persian province of Sistan. Mithra’s ascension to heaven was said to have occurred in 208 B.C., 64 years after his birth. This birth took place in a cave or grotto, where shepherds attended him and regaled him with gifts, at the winter solstice.

…to the other:

Back in the Roman era, Mithraism was perhaps Christianity’s leading competitor for the hearts and minds of others. Today Mithraism is religiously a non-factor, but it still “competes” with Christianity, in another way: It is a leading candidate for the “pagan copycat” thesis crowd as a supposed source for Christianity.

Mighty Mithraic Madness

Irrespective of the degree to which Christianity and Mithraism influenced one another is the fact that Roman religion was pretty crowded by the fourth and fifth centuries CE.  The empire itself was a patchwork of ethnicities, races, and ideas, tied together by culture-diffusing roads and trade routes in such a plethora of diversity that any modern dyed-in-the-wool conservative who came in contact with it would screaming for the hills; the empire’s decentralized, multi-pantheon approach to religious tolerance would similarly stupefy those who think that government has a patriarchal role in choosing the religious faith of its citizens.  It seems that during this time, both Jesus and Mithra became imbued with aspects of sun-godhood (including the regular day of worship being established on the Day of the Sun each week), with Mithra gaining the upper hand as the focus of Saturnalia increasingly became the worship of Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun.

Historiorant:  Last week, we here in the Cave of the Moonbat saw that Akhenaton, the “heretic pharaoh,” had beaten the Romans to monotheistic sun-worship by like, 1500 years.

PhotobucketMany gods and goddesses competed for the hearts and minds of the people, up to and including the emperor himself, and though the Caesars’ dealings with religion always had a political slant to them, it wasn’t until relatively late in the Imperial Period – during the reign of Constantine I (306-337), specifically – that one of them went the route of converting the entire population to the worship of one god (plenty of them had established the primacy of one deity or another among the pantheons, but as we silly church/state separators note, that’s different from obligating the citizenry to trash their own beliefs in favor of the king’s sole preference).  By 353 CE, the nascent Christian Church proclaimed that Christ had been born on the same day as Mithra (and the Egyptian Osiris, Greek Apollo and Bacchus, and the Chaldean Adonis…).  Interestingly, the Eastern Church, which didn’t have the Mithra problem of Rome proper, did not move its designated celebration from January 6 – a/k/a (in the Western Church) the Feast of the Epiphany – the date (the 12th day after Christmas) of the arrival of the Three Wise Men.

Re-Gifting a Holy Day

Ask most GWoC warriors about how the whole exchange-of-gifts thing got started, and they’ll tell you (if they’ve ever considered the matter at all) that it began with the Three Magi.  (While we’re on the subject: since Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar were likely Median or Parthian Mithradatic or Zoroastrian priests, our conservative amigos would be probably be distressed to note that Iranian influence upon the Christian faithful goes back that at least that far, to say nothing of the Persian deity’s apparent muddying of the Christian nativity story).  Even given all this time to get it right, however, Malkin and her ilk still miss the whole point of the Magi story – the gifts the Wise Men brought were offerings to the Christ-child, not to one another.  I mean, it’s not like they stood humbly before the Lord and exchanged gifts among themselves in His exalted presence; if they had, certainly Matthew 2:10-11 would read a little differently:

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.  And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

Emphasis mine – or am I wrong, and the whole gift-exchange more of a namaste-type “I honor the Jesus within you” thing?  If so, I can certainly see why the GWoCers would risk cultural upheaval on behalf of crass commercialism…I guess – u.m.

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Your resident historiorantologist would be remiss if he didn’t also note that of the four gospels, only half mention Jesus’ birth, and the two of them tell very different stories.  Nevertheless, by the time of the Apostle Paul, it was considered okay to give directly to the Church – even encouraged.  Here’s post-gospel Paul hitting up the Christians of Corinth in language a modern televangelist would recognize (and employ) in a heartbeat:

But just as you excel in everything-in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us-see that you also excel in this grace of giving.  I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others.  For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

And here is my advice about what is best for you in this matter: Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so.  Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means.

2 Corinthians 8:7-11 (New International Version)

When unable to reconcile their dual instincts favoring both “traditional” Christmas and “free-market” economics, conservatives usually retreat to the trenches of mysticism, wherein they wage a brutal mind-to-mind defense of the intentions or focus of the gifters and giftees, usually covering their atrocities against logic with a thick smokescreen made up of convoluted James 1:17: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.  

O Heidnischerbaum, O Heidnischerbaum!

In point of fact, the gift-giving is likely another remnant of Saturnalia, when people would often exchange presents – especially wax candles, to celebrate the rebirth of the Sun – amongst their family gatherings and neighborly revelries, but really, what good are such trinkets if one doesn’t have an 8-foot coniferous tree inside one’s house to put them under?  The Bible is quite clear on how that tradition’s roots connect with the birth of Jesus:

Oh, wait; no, it’s not.  While the custom might make sense if the nativity story had Mary giving birth beneath a pine tree, the Bible mentions nary a sacred shrub in conjunction with Jesus’ first hours.  For the origins of this one, too, we must look far back – past the Romans, who decorated fir trees with red berries during Saturnalia; back, past the Babylonians, who told a god-related rebirth fable centered around an evergreen sprouting from a stump; at least all the way back to pre-Captivity Biblical times, during which the Prophet Jeremiah speaks pretty unambiguously about what God thinks of being worshipped with pagan trees:

Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel:  Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.  For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.  They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

Jeremiah 10:1-4, KJV

It has taken the United States around 200 years to forget George Washington’s warning about entangling foreign alliances, about 50 to space on Ike’s premonition about the military-industrial complex, and only 7 to convince itself that human rights are stupid – so imagine the kinds of warnings that could be relegated to the dustbin of history over a 1500-year period!  As usual with violations of their own clearly-stated edicts – q.v. the very sordid story of the Rev. Ted Haggard – those spreading the Good News had ample justification for not adhering to their own rules, and as usual, it was found to be that service to the faith demanded a relaxation of its own standards.  Think of it as burning the Scriptures in order to spread them.

PhotobucketSo it was that in during the 8th century, a Benedictine monk from Devon, England, set out for Frisia and Germany, so as to convert the Frankish pagans to the Way of the Cross.  His given name was Winfrid, but Pope Gregory II renamed him Boniface; the moniker was later (i.e., posthumously) prefixed the moniker with the coveted “St.” (and the less-coveted title of “martyr”), and Boniface is now the patron saint of brewers, the Netherlands, and Germany, among other things.  He had cajones of brass, that’s for sure; perhaps his example is why so many of the less-than-ummm…-confident men of the conservative camp are inspired to get so wound up about being able to publicly decorate a tree.

Clearcutting in the Name of God

Bill O’Reilly likely imagines himself a kind of latter-day St. Boniface, but given the fact that he was too fearful of dying for a government-determined cause too risk enlistment in his country’s armed services during a time of war (his own bio page is hilariously evasive on this), it’s pretty unlikely that Boniface would ever see O’Reilly as anything more than a blowhard chump.  In instituting the Christmas tree among the Odin-worshipping Franks, Boniface strode into a sacred grove of oak trees surrounded by Viking-type characters who each knew a thousand ways to kill a man with an ax, and challenged the god Thor to strike him down if Boniface were to harm the ancient Oak of Donar.  Next…

Taking his courage in his hands (for a great crowd of pagans stood by watching and bitterly cursing in their hearts the enemy of the gods), he cut the first notch. But when he had made a superficial cut, suddenly the oak’s vast bulk, shaken by a mighty blast of wind from above, crashed to the ground, shivering its topmost branches into fragments in its fall. As if by the express will of God (for the brethren present had done nothing to cause it) the oak burst asunder into four parts, each part having a trunk of equal length. At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle, the heathens who had been cursing ceased to revile and began, on the contrary, to believe and bless the Lord.

Willibald: The Life of St. Boniface

The story goes that Boniface next indicated a fir sapling growing from the roots of the ancient oak was to be the new arboreal symbol of their faith, possibly indicating the Trinity through the sapling’s shape.  According to www.saintboniface.info, he also told the new Christians:

“This humble tree’s wood is used to build your homes: let Christ be at the centre of your households. Its leaves remain evergreen in the darkest days: let Christ be your constant light. Its boughs reach out to embrace and its top points to heaven: let Christ be your Comfort and Guide”

The Christmas tree was apparently especially popular in Eastern Europe – this source has them being hung upside down from ceilings by the 12th century as a symbol of Christianity, which raises an interesting red-meat question for the Republican dogs to sink their teeth into: if an inverted cross is the height of blasphemy, than what of an inverted Christmas tree, which actually forms the shape of a cross when hung upside-down?  Furthermore, what if such a practice were, in fact, a tradition that precedes most of your own by several centuries?

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Christmas in the Age of Splinter Groups

It’s hard to know exactly when the first decorated Christmas trees appeared, but it was probably during or shortly before the 16th century – reports as to the exact date vary from 1510 in Riga, Latvia, to 1570 in Bremen, Germany, with several possible points and times in between.  It was primarily a Protestant phenomenon (Martin Luther himself may or may not have had a Christmas tree), and mostly focused in northern Germany.  From there, the practice spread over the next two centuries, down the Rhine and across Bavaria, eventually corrupting the Catholics of Austria (and thus Spain, via the Hapsburgs) and Eastern Europe.

That isn’t to say that Protestants were uniform in their regard for Christmas – the more stringent sects in Switzerland and Scotland came out foursquare against it.  In what might be the real opening salvos of the War on Christmas, the holiday was banned in Scotland in 1583, and when ultra-religious nutjobs assumed tyrannical rule over England in the mid-1600s, it was banned there, too.  By then, of course, religious separatists were already establishing a foothold on the east coast of America, and they took legal steps to ensure that they weren’t bringing any Old World pagan cooties with them:

“For preventing disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others: it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county.”

From the records of the General Court, Massachusetts Bay Colony, May 11, 1659; via A Puritan’s Mind

Historiorant:  Troutfishing‘s excellent diary a couple of weeks ago cited the same Mass. Bay Court records – and it also touches upon some topics – like Christmas sex in Japan – that your resident historiorantologist just isn’t going to be able to get to tonight.

Though the royal family, with its German connections, brought Christmas trees with them to England in the 1700s, and though Germany itself had developed Christmas marketing to a high form – they were stretching silver into tinsel by the centennial of Martin Luther’s letting of the indulgence cat out of the papal bag, and many towns were holding special midwinter markets on their picturesque walkplatzs (I’m especially partial to the one in Trier) – it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that Christmas caught on in England and France.

And what’s a conspiracy without the Queen of England being involved?

PhotobucketWe’re accustomed to leaders so morally radioactive that we don’t often think of people copying the styles or goings-on popular in the land’s halls of power.  This wasn’t always the case: When Queen Victoria and Prince Albert set up a Christmas tree and published a photo of themselves with it in 1846, English socialites fell all over themselves trying to ape the royal couple, followed quickly by inferiority-complex-suffering Americans, who aped the English socialites.  By the 1850s, manufacturers had sprung up to provide crap to hang on the branches of the trees, though in a peculiarly American trait, people put national flags at the top.  Methinks BillO would like to see this particular marriage of jingoism and religion return, but that he’d be conflicted about taking down the angel or star that’s currently there.

Victoria reigned over a period that saw amazing advances in the production of stuff, and a concurrent interest in new ways of selling more stuff.  It turns out that paganism was rife with symbols ready and waiting to be exploited by the cunning entrepreneur, and during the late 1800s, such men saw to it that the modern rites of semi-secularized Christmas were firmly ensconced in our culture.  The first printed Christmas card appeared in London in 1843 (of 1000 printed, 12 still exist in private collections – see an image of one here), and though they became quite the rage in Germany and England, it took another quarter-century for them to catch on in the United States.

The modern perception of Santa Claus – are there really elves in Christian theology? – also took root during this time, and though the story is often told that it was Coca-Cola that made him a part of our “traditional” Christmas, it appears that this may be an urban legend.  There’s no doubt that Depression-Era Coke artist Haddon Sundblom helped to cement the popular image, but Santa as a bewhiskered, red-suit-with-white-fur-trim-wearing, jolly old elf was firmly a part of American culture by the 1920s, if not earlier.

PhotobucketI’d love to historiorant on the origins of Santa, but this is already really long, and stories about Turkish saints and Dutch faeries would make it way longer still – perhaps next year.  All’s I can say for now is: thank God someone is out there, making sure that the 80-year-ancient tradition of Santa remains sacrosanct in the modern Christian Christmas rites.

Historiorant:  Why They Fight

The GWoC heroes are big believers in Goebbels Law: Repeat a lie often enough, and it will become established fact, regardless of the real truth.  They live their lives by this maxim; their careers depend upon it, but since this angle on the debate is pretty viciously personal, I’ll go ahead and let one of their own make the argument from BillO’s own right flank:

The very foundation of the Christmas holiday is a lie. The Messiah was not born December 25th. He did not ask us to celebrate his birthday. He did not say to set up a tree in our house and decorate it and our houses with anything. Santa Claus does not exist. He doesn’t have reindeer that fly and he isn’t going to come on December 25th and leave any gifts. Everything is a lie. Is Yahweh the originator of this holiday? Or is it the father of lies? Yahushua condemned the leaders of that generation for teaching lies:

   John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

So what – exactly – is it that conservatives are conserving, again?

In the GWoC, our foe gets bent way out of shape when he thinks that pagans are trying to remove from the holiday the symbols that Christians adopted from the pagans long ago – see this article from WorldNutDaily if you don’t believe me.  The irony here is that in seeking to remove government-sponsored religious iconography, progressives are actually aiding the errant soldiers of the opposing side in finding their own path back to the Light – yet our efforts consistently go unrewarded by what should be an admiring opposition.  

We certainly admire them – it takes nerve to stick by one’s beliefs when one doesn’t really know the reasons why one has them.  Among the most surprising things about the GWoC is that conservative combativeness extends even beyond our place in space and time – in fact, their actions in defense of Christmas defy the expressed will of God Himself.  Think of it: using the Lord’s name to justify rituals of which He would never approve – that takes balls!

And yet, too often we find our respect unreciprocated, and find ourselves left with nothing but our own, probably deeper, understanding of the real meaning of Christmas.  Many of us see it as yes, a Christian holiday, and the recognized date upon which to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, but a lot of us also see it as an amalgamation of diversity – a joyous secular testament to what happens when societies interact and start swapping cultural elements.  Yes, it has its origins in Roman sun-worship, but no, I do not pray to Sol Invictus – for me, the pagan threads in the Christmas quilt simply represent a continuity with the timeless, historic past that always lies just beneath the surface of our hyper-modern, high-speed society.  I understand that I’m probably violating the proscriptions of Jeremiah myself – I am, after all, eager (in an academic sense) to learn of the ways of the heathen – but if that’s the case, I’m in good company: No less than the valorous generals of the Global War on Christmas proclaim their undying desire to actually practice and defend those very ways.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketSo let’s hear it for our noble foe: He doesn’t have a clue what he’s fighting for, but he’ll assert to the death his right to fight over it!

Oh, and Merry (from the word’s medieval connotation of “blessed”) Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Here’s Hoping for a great New Year, from the Cave of the Moonbat.  May the season’s meanings, and not its definitions, fill your heart.  ?

Historically hip entrances to the Cave of the Moonbat can be found at Daily Kos, Never In Our Names, Bits of News, Progressive Historians, and DocuDharma.

Nataline Sarkysian And Louisiana

Heartbreaking is the story of Nataline Sarkysian, the 17-year-old for whom CIGNA denied payment for a liver transplant, then reversed its decision when it was too late. My intent here is not to focus on this, because it already has been well-diaried, but to bring up a stunning parallel between this human tragedy and what has been happening to New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana.

This is the parallel: the same way CIGNA in effect killed Nataline by neglect, BushCo has been doing the same to Louisiana ever since New Orleans’ levees broke. Thursday’s violent suppression of the protest at City Hall–on which I plan to diary more extensively in the next few days–is only a symptom of this.

Louisiana post-Katrina can be compared to a terminallly-ill patient needing life-saving treatment, and BushCo’s federal government to a mean-spirited, bean-counting insurance company that’s denying payment. Or paying only for Band-Aid remedies. So New Orleans is being allowed to rot and Louisiana is being allowed to die. And I worry that Jan. 21, 2009 (optimistically assuming a Democrat who has the best interests of New Orleans and Louisiana wins) could be too late.

Here’s one example of a Band-Aid remedy: Because Katrina forced many evacuees to relocate in Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Lafayette and other cities elsewhere in the state, Louisiana is now in the grip of a painful epidemic of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental and emotional ills. This is statewide because when the evacuees resettled, they brought with them their traumas, losses and other “baggage.” On top of this they’ve had to deal with insurance companies, FEMA, and the Road Home program. All of which is frustrating and exhausting.

So now these agonized evacuees (as well as people now in New Orleans who also are suffering from problems) are seeking treatment for them. But because Katrina destroyed so many mental health facilities and those elsewhere in the state are strained to the breaking point, Louisiana has insufficient resources to ease the pain of the afflicted–waiting lists for mental health services are months long.

And what has BuchCo done? The federal government has been funding Louisiana Spirit, a counseling service. This sounds good, but it is a Band-Aid remedy. According to federal regulations Louisiana Spirit is not allowed to pay doctors–who are the only people who can prescribe medications and other intensive treatments. Louisiana Spirit is beneficial for someone whose issues so far have been minor who merely needs someone to talk to. And counseling can also prevent a minor issue from becoming one severe enough to need mental health treatment. But not for someone already seriously ill. So for Louisiana BushCo’s funding this service has been like giving someone who has cancer only pain-killers–making her feel more comfortable without treating the source of her pain, that is killing her.

As noted–that is but one example–citing them all would make this diary several times as long. It’s time for the Democrats (whether they’re presidential candidates or members of Congress) to stand up for Louisiana and bring her the help she and her people so desperately need–not more Band-Aids from BushCo. And to do this before it’s too late.

12 Days of Christmas, Docudharma Style

(9 pm – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Hey, we’re back with the final version of Docudharma’s 12 Days of Christmas. Most of the lyrics have come from Rusty1776 and On The Bus. If you have lyrics, leave them in the comments… so please join in!!! But first, I’m re-posting Frank Kelly’s 12 Days of Christmas because I think it’s just hysterical. I’m laughing as i try to embed this… really and truly… this is great.

and this, holly hocks and ivy, is bizarre…

DOCUDHARMA’s 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS…

On the first day of Christmas, my country gave to me a president free of party affiliation

On the second day of Christmas, my country gave to me Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the third day of Christmas, my country gave to me reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the fourth day of Christmas, my country gave to me Netroots celebration, reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation . . .

On the fifth day of Christmas, my country gave to me a Docudharma nation, Netroots celebration, reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the sixth day of Christmas, my country gave to me psychiatric evaluations, a Docudharma nation, Netroots celebration, reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the seventh day of Christmas, my country gave to me a Congressional investigation, psychiatric evaluations, a Docudharma nation, Netroots celebration, reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the eighth day of Christmas, my country gave to me shocking revelations, a Congressional investigation, psychiatric evaluations, a Docudharma nation, and Netroots celebrations, a reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the ninth day of Christmas, my country gave to me Cheney’s cross examination, shocking revelations, a Congressional investigation, psychiatric evaluations, a Docudharma nation, and Netroots celebrations, a reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the tenth day of Christmas, my country gave to me torture repudiation, Cheney’s cross examination, shocking revelations, a Congressional investigation, psychiatric evaluations, a Docudharma nation, and Netroots celebrations, a reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my country gave to me collective hallucinations, torture repudiation, Cheney’s cross examination, shocking revelations, a Congressional investigation, psychiatric evaluations, a Docudharma nation, and Netroots celebrations, a reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

On the twelveth day of Christmas, my country gave to me a Caribbean vacation, collective hallucinations, torture repudiation, Cheney’s cross examination, shocking revelations, a Congressional investigation, psychiatric evaluations, a Docudharma nation, and Netroots celebrations, a reconciliation, Bush’s resignation, and a president free of party affiliation

That’s our wish list for the 12 days of Christmas.

Please forward to Santa.

He’s in Gitmo right now, but they still let him read his mail in between waterboardings. 

A simple guide for lazy Democratic congresspeople

With one year left in the Bush regime, here’s a simple guide:

If Bush proposes it, it is either illegal, immoral, or stupid (possibly all three).

You don’t need to think about it, or analyze it, or poll about it, or have focus groups about it.  You just need to OPPOSE it.

Why any Democratic senator or representative supports anything Bush does is beyond me.  As for Republican senators and representatives…..they’re just beyond me, altogether!

Let’s take a look

Invading Iraq (huge Democratic support): Illegal, immoral and stupid

Patriot Act (near universal support): Illegal, immoral, and stupid

NCLB (lots of support): Stupid

Mukasey as AG (enough support to pass):  Immoral

Changes in tax code: Immoral and stupid

Gonzales as AG : Immoral and stupid

Alito and Roberts on SCOTUS: Immoral

Drilling in ANWR: Immoral and stupid

see? It’s easy!

If Bush proposes it, you oppose it.  

Always.

The Acteal Massacre And Another Arrest

On December 22, 1997, a decade ago, paramilitary forces attacked the village of Acteal in Chiapas, Mexico. The attack became known as the Acteal Massacre.  45 people, mostly women and children, who were attending a prayer meeting were killed.  The victims, including children and pregnant women, were members of the pacifist group Las Abejas (“The Bees”).

While the Las Abejas activists professed support for the goals of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), they had renounced violence. Many suspect their affiliation with EZLN was the reason for the attack.  Following the murders, there were charges of government involvement and complicity. Soldiers at a nearby military outpost didn’t intervene during the attack, which lasted for hours, and the following morning, soldiers were found washing the church walls to hide the blood stains. Wiki.

Join me across the jump.

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The 1997 Funeral In Acteal

According to ZMag:

The horror began on December 22, 1997, shortly before 11 am, when 70 heavily armed men, all wearing dark blue police type uniforms, entered … the pine covered highland community of Acteal. They stormed into the church where village members along with refugees from nearby communities who had recently fled mounting paramilitary violence were kneeling in prayers of peace. As the shooting began, men, women, and children desperately ran to supposed hiding places- the river, the cornfields, and the mountains. A five-hour killing spree ensued, resulting in the deaths of 45 innocent people, mostly women and children. Survivors recounted the terror as the paramilitary group ruthlessly searched for victims, killing them at close range, often in the back. Women hid with their children in caves lining the nearby river. When a baby cried out in terror, armed men followed the screams in order to find those hiding and assassinate them. Special police forces observed from 200 meters away as the bloody events unfolded. They never once intervened. Instead, to cover up the magnitude of the event, they attempted to hide the bodies in a cave and in a ravine.

The EZLN and many Chiapas residents accused the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of complicity in the attack, and following the change of government in 2000, survivors asserted that the investigation was being stalled and that the authorities were refusing to question or arrest suspects.  There have apparently been at least 18 convictions in connection with the massacre.  Most appear to have involved possession of weapons restricted to the army.

According to IHT this weekend:

Since the Acteal massacre, on Dec. 22, 1997, dozens of people have been arrested and convicted. But the case remains as foggy as the community, which is so high in the hills that clouds sometimes linger at ground level and the lush vegetation can disappear into the haze.

Then-President Ernesto Zedillo, reacting to international outrage over the killings, ordered an aggressive investigation. What prosecutors found was ugly: While local government officials and police officers had not wielded the weapons that day, they had allowed the slaughter to occur and tampered with the crime scene afterward.

The killers had been members of the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The victims were Roman Catholic advocates from a group called Las Abejas, or The Bees, who sympathized with the Zapatista rebels who were in open revolt in Chiapas.

All involved were poor Tzotzil Indians, many of them related.

Mexico’s courts have apparently been severely taxed by the cases.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s courts struggle to handle what has grown into one of the country’s longest and most complex cases. A dozen judges have been involved in the trials and, now, the appeals of their convictions.

A year ago, the public interest law clinic at Mexico City’s Center for Investigation and Economic Studies began defending those convicted of taking part in the massacre. Lawyers say they have found that outrage over what happened to the innocents that day led to more abuses. They describe an effort to round up anyone, which sent many other innocent people to prison. “The Acteal case shows all the problems of Mexico’s criminal justice system,” said Javier Angulo, who teaches constitutional law at the center and supervises a team of students who are representing the Acteal defendants. “We solved the problem of the Acteal massacre by creating other problems and arresting people who did nothing at all.”

The case is an ideal one, Angulo argues, to show law students that every defendant ought to be treated fairly, even if there is great public dismay over a particular crime.

Which brings us to today’s news.  According to AP:

Authorities on Sunday said they re-arrested the alleged mastermind of a 1997 massacre of 45 men, women and children in southern Mexico.

Antonio Santiz was detained Saturday – the 10th anniversary of the killings – on charges he participated in a series of violent robberies in the days leading up to the Acteal massacre in the southern state of Chiapas, police said in statement.

Chiapas Justice Minister Amador Rodriguez Lozano called Santiz the presumed “intellectual author” of the killings and said he is believed to have provided many of the weapons used in the massacre.

The arrest, Rodriguez said, was an important step in an still ongoing investigation into the massacre.  Santiz had been arrested for his alleged involvement in 2000, but a judge threw out the charges in 2001, ruling there wasn’t enough evidence.

Meanwhile, the massacre was remembered on Sunday in Mexico City:

A convoy of cars has demonstrated in Mexico City to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the killings of 45 Teotzil Indians in Acteal.

A total of 15 cars carrying cardboard coffins on their roofs drove around the streets of the south area of Mexico City on Saturday.

The demonstration was organized by the political group ‘La otra campana’ or ‘The other campaign’, which supports human rightsm, AP reported.

Pony Party, NFL Round-up (now with Muppets)

Docudharma Times Monday Dec.24

Christmas Eve Open Thread

Warnings Unheeded On Guards In Iraq : When Shielding Money Clashes With the Free Will of the Elderly : Huckabee campaigning for 23% sales tax: Village wins £158m in El Gordo lottery: In one Iraqi village, a taste of what might be

U.S. Officials See Waste in Billions Sent to Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

USA

Warnings Unheeded On Guards In Iraq

Despite Shootings, Security Companies Expanded Presence

The U.S. government disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.

The warnings were conveyed in letters and memorandums from defense and legal experts and in high-level discussions between U.S. and Iraqi officials. They reflected growing concern about the lack of control over the tens of thousands of private guards in Iraq, the largest private security force ever employed by the United States in wartime.

When Shielding Money Clashes With the Free Will of the Elderly

Eight years ago, when Robert J. Pyle was 73 years old, he had about $500,000 in the bank and owned a house in Northern California worth about $650,000. He was looking forward to a comfortable retirement.

Today, at 81, he has lost everything. Mr. Pyle, a retired aerospace engineer, now lives in his stepdaughter’s tiny, mountainside home in a room not much larger than his bed.

By his own admission, Mr. Pyle willingly made every decision that led to his financial problems. He gave away large sums to people he thought were friends, and then, in need of money, sold his house at a deep discount to the first person who offered to buy it.

Huckabee campaigning for 23% sales tax

Political suicide? Quite the opposite for the GOP White House hopeful — so far. But many call the plan for a national levy ‘crackpot’ (even if it would shut down the IRS).

WASHINGTON — Mike Huckabee, one of the most conservative Republicans in the 2008 presidential race, has embraced one of the most radical ideas on the campaign trail: a plan to abolish all federal income and payroll taxes and replace them with a single 23% national sales tax.

The idea — dubbed the “fair tax” by proponents — has been a political asset for Huckabee; its well-organized backers have helped catapult him from the back of the presidential pack to its top tier.

Sales tax proponents have tapped into seething voter hostility toward the Internal Revenue Service to become a below-the-radar political force, popping up at campaign events and candidate forums in Iowa and elsewhere.

Europe

Village wins £158m in El Gordo lottery

Paul Hamilos in Madrid

Monday December 24, 2007

The Guardian

When Spain’s Christmas lottery, El Gordo, paid out €219m (£158m) to the inhabitants of a tiny northern village and their friends at the weekend, locals popped champagne corks and swigged cider, the region’s traditional drink, as the prospects for the year ahead suddenly looked rosy.

For the 45 inhabitants of Molledo the prize could not be more welcome. A remote village in the depressed region of Asturias, Molledo has struggled, along with many parts of rural Spain, as young people move to the city, leaving behind an ageing population.

When the powerful can live beyond the law, corruption is never far away

In Russia, as elsewhere, a lack of transparency feeds a gangster culture that hamstrings social and economic progress

Max Hastings

Monday December 24, 2007

The Guardian

Some of us speculate occasionally, albeit without real cupidity, about what we would do if we suddenly found ourselves in possession of a billion pounds. Even after funding a big house with lots of staff, car with chauffeur, yacht, helicopter and suchlike, there would be enough left to live on the interest, with a few hundred million to spare.

I suppose one could entrust the money to Polly Toynbee and George Monbiot to give to deserving causes, but not many billionaires are enlightened enough to do that. Instead, there are today so many doggedly materialistic possessors of surplus wealth that a huge luxury goods industry exists to succour their plight.

Asia

Uzbek president returned in election ‘farce’

· Law flouted as leader prolongs rule yet again

· Dissidents condemn EU inaction over regime


Uzbekistan’s autocratic ruler Islam Karimov yesterday tightened his grip on power, when he was re-elected president in an election condemned by opposition activists as illegal and a “farce”.

Karimov won an overwhelming victory despite being ineligible to stand as a candidate, having already served two consecutive presidential terms.

Election officials claimed that Karimov’s first term began in 2000 – despite the fact that he has ruled Uzbekistan for 18 years, first as a Communist party boss, and then, after independence, as president

China raises 13th-century ship and its porcelain treasures from seabed

By Clifford Coonan, China Correspondent

Published: 24 December 2007

Chinese archaeologists have successfully raised the wreck of the Nanhai No 1, an 800-year-old merchant ship, from the depths of the South China Sea and will begin the laborious process of sifting through its cargo of exquisite porcelain and other treasures.

The ship went down in storms as it left a southern Chinese port to sail the rich trade route known as the ancient Marine Silk Road and was quickly buried in silt, which has preserved the priceless haul of 80,000 relics on board. At 30 metres long and 10 metres wide, it is the largest cargo ship discovered from that golden age of Chinese merchant history.

Salvage experts used a specially designed sealed steel box containing tons of seawater and silt to lift the ship from the seabed while keeping it in the environment in which it has been preserved for hundreds of years.

Africa

Record numbers of child soldiers drafted into Congo war

By Jonathan Brown

Published: 24 December 2007

Record numbers of children are being recruited to fight on the front line of eastern Congo’s escalating and increasingly brutal conflict, it is claimed today.

Concern over the plight of child soldiers increased after aid workers for Save the Children reported seeing youngsters in militia close to some of the worst of the fighting near Goma, capital of the war-torn North Kivu district. The charity says that as well as acting as combatants, children are being recruited to work as porters, spies and sex slaves by the rampaging armies. There was also evidence, the charity said, that militias were targeting schools to boost their numbers as clashes between government soldiers and rebels forced 800,000 people to flee their homes in the region, contributing to a major humanitarian emergency as people were left without access to clean water or health care. Hussein Mursal, Save the Children’s country director, called on the international community to step in to prevent another generation of Congolese children from being brutalised by armed conflict. “The situation for children is eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is catastrophic. Fighters from all sides are using children as frontline fodder, raping young girls and attacking houses,” he said.

Zuma triumph scares South Africa elite

JACOB ZUMA scored a victory last week that was so stunning, so overwhelming, so momentous that for a brief moment his own supporters could barely take it in.

Then the singing, dancing and tears of joy that had erupted among his followers spread like bushfire from the conference at the University of Limpopo, Polokwane, to the Zulu heart-land in Zuma’s native KwaZulu-Natal at the news that he had trounced President Thabo Mbeki for the leadership of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Elsewhere there was shock: no other African state has seen such a frontal rejection of authority. There was disgust among some voters, who will never trust Zuma after allegations against him of corruption and rape. Others, including wealthy whites and black middle-class supporters of Mbeki, felt a sense of panic.

Middle East

In one Iraqi village, a taste of what might be

U.S. troops reach out with aid as part of an effort to secure an insurgent stronghold.

OWESAT, IRAQ — On a recent December morning, Spc. Daniel Jones, a member of the civil affairs team that falls under the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, helped to unwrap an array of goodies in a school classroom set up as a makeshift distribution center.

Scores of residents from Owesat, a village about 15 miles southwest of Baghdad on the west bank of the Euphrates River, showed up to collect the gifts. They included blue, black and red children’s rucksacks, packets of pencils, woolly hats, aloe vera lip seal, key chains with spotlights, and small bottles of shampoo.

“Our job is to try and have them like us a little more,” said Jones, 20, from Walter, S.C. “We ask them, ‘What do you need? How much water do you have? How good is the water?’ ”

Engaging villages like Owesat is a key part of the U.S. military’s strategy to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. By helping to provide basic services, such as medical aid and humanitarian supplies, the military hopes Iraqis will become more tolerant of coalition forces based in their homeland, begin to provide intelligence on militants and cooperate with efforts to create a stable environment.

Israel rejects truce with Hamas

JERUSALEM – Israel’s prime minister pledged Sunday to continue attacking Gaza militants, ruling out truce negotiations with Hamas amid widespread skepticism about the Islamic group’s ability to halt rocket attacks.

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An Israeli cabinet minister, meanwhile, angered moderate Palestinians with another plan for new Jewish housing in a disputed part of Jerusalem, complicating renewed peace talks.

There have been almost daily reports of truce feelers from the embattled Islamic Hamas regime in Gaza, and Israeli defense officials have said they are examining the proposals.

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