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Know Your Greek Orthodox Priests Before You Experience Roid Rage

Greek Orthodox Priest

As much as I want to try to help people understand that, yes, there truly is something called a Greek Orthodox Church, and, yes, it is a Christian religion that has been around since forever and that it isn't on the Jihad road with us, there's a part of me that realizes that many people are simply too stupid to understand anything at all about the world in which we live:

Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his actions:

The man tried to rob him.

The man grabbed Bruce's crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English.

The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.

"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them.

Greek Orthodox Priests generally don't shout "Allahu Akbar" because of the fact that they don't speak Arabic, they don't believe in Allah, and because they believe wholeheartedly in Jesus Christ. There there's the fact that this happened on Monday, not long after the Fort Hood shooting rampage, which is probably where the young man got the idea, in a panic, no doubt, to try to glom onto what happened there and earn a little sympathy. I believe that we can perhaps think about forgiving the young man for lying through a human growth hormone and steroid-laced chemical fog that has warped his brain, probably similar to the one that drove Roger Clemens throughout much of his later years in baseball. Clearly, his 'roid rage (he's into that stuff and has blogged about it) and his inability to deal with the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that he most emphatically does not have because he has never deployed as a Marine indicate that he's just a violent, reactionary young man with no judgement or impulse control.

Know your Greek Orthodox priests, my friends. Oh, and Sikhs aren't Muslims, sir. I know you're looking at what's on their head, and I know you're flushed with anger and you're confused, but they're not Muslims, so calm down.

Ignoramus of the Week: Alice Shannon

Book Burning

Misguided Populism Never Works in America

Larry the Cable Guy Represents the Spirit of America

Add poor Pat Buchanan to the list of failed populists. I know where he's coming from--sometimes I get nostalgic for German military hardware, myself. I've sailed for decades on the Admiral Hassenpfeffer, a monument to the ingenuity of the German Kriegsmarine, even though all they did was take a French or Italian corvette and add their own jury-rigged naval hardware to it.

Buchanan goes all in with this column*:

Unter Bezugnahme auf die weiße Wähler der Arbeiterklasse in den Industriestädten vom Verlust von Arbeitsplätzen dezimiert, sagte Obama: "Sie bekommen bitter, sie klammern sich an Waffen oder Religion oder Antipathie gegen Leute, die nicht gefallen oder Anti-Einwanderer-Sentiment-oder Anti-Handel sind Gefühl als eine Möglichkeit, ihren Frust zu erklären. "

Dennoch, wir hatten diese Leute schon gesehen. Sie waren Perotistas im Jahr 1992 gegenüber NAFTA im Jahr 1993 und blockierte die Bush-McCain-Kennedy Amnestie im Jahr 2007.

In ihrem Leben haben sie ihren christlichen Glauben aus den Schulen ihre Steuern bezahlt gesäubert wurden, gesehen und in Filmen verspottet und im Fernsehen. Sie haben ihre Fabriken gesehen Fensterläden in die Tausende und deren Arbeitsplätze in die Millionen gehen nach Mexiko und China ausgelagert. Sie haben Billionen Dollar Steuern gehen sehen für Great Society Programme, haben aber keinen Great Society gesehen, nur einer steigenden Kriminalität, Illegitimität, Drogenkonsum und Abbrecherquoten.

Sie sehen auf Kabel-TV als illegaler Einwanderer in ihr Land zu gehen, sind mit kostenlosem Ausbildungen und Gesundheitswesen und für eine Stelle bei niedrigeren Lohn für als amerikanische Familien leben können - dann tragen mexikanischen Flaggen in den amerikanischen Städten und Nachfrage US-Staatsbürgerschaft.

Sie sehen, Wall-Street-Banken gerettet, wie sie ihre nächsten Honorarzahlung Schweiß, dann lesen Sie die Bank Gewinne die Höhe schießen und die fette Boni für die Banker sind die glänzenden zurück. Weder sie noch ihre Kinder jemals von affirmative action profitiert, im Gegensatz zu Barack und Michelle Obama.

Sie sehen eine Regierung in Washington, die nicht ihre Bücher Gleichgewicht kann, gewinnen unsere Kriege oder zum Schutz unserer Grenzen. Die Regierung Schaufeln aus Billionen Fortune 500-Unternehmen und Banken, das Land zu retten aus einer Krise der Regierung und Fortune 500-Unternehmen und Banken geschaffen.

Amerika war einst ihr Land. Sie spüren, sie zu verlieren. Und sie haben Recht.

Ah, Amerika. Liebe es oder lass es.

Populism isn't the road to success in American politics, and Buchanan employs populism the same way that Senator John Edwards tried to employ it. Both men are failures for good reason. Their populism is ignorant and blind, but to opposite things. Buchanan thinks there is some white hierarchy that prefers a purely Caucasian country rooted in 1950s ideals. Edwards (now silent, for good reason) campaigned as if he and he alone knew what a coal miner thought about how things should be, and tried to say there was nothing the government couldn't do to make things more fair for all. Neither man gets it half-right.

Buchanan is wrong because there was no ideal America, not in the 1950s and not at any time in our history. There was no magical decade of pure white or pure American cultural values. That's the fallacy of reading too many pop historians and too many books reinforcing political bias. Edwards was wrong because no one believed his love of the common man was genuine enough to win the votes of people who have heard the class envy song and dance over and over again. Buchanan wants your class envy to be based on hatred of people who are different; Edwards wanted his class envy to be based on you resenting rich people. Uh, the person to loathe is yourself for not being happy with what you have, sir.

Loathe your own failings, correct them, cowboy up, and go get a better job. Get off your fat ass and change the way you look by eating less, and exercising more. Pills won't solve your problems. Starting a blog about how you're right and everyone's wrong and why don't they listen won't solve your problems--it'll just create new ones that you can't anticipate. If you're blocked by anyone, kick them in the nuts, run over their foot, find a way to make it work, and remember, you can always hire a bad lawyer to create enough grief for someone to get them to capitulate if you can just convince a judge that you're not as crazy as you look. Failing that, find a way to move up in what you do. Improve your lot in life by playing within the rules. Or, don't! The only reason why there even is a men's basketball program at the University of Kentucky is because they know how to cheat and get away with it! Isn't that hilarious! And everyone knows they cheat. No one does anything about it. Why? Because this is America, and all you need is cash.

For you whining little shits, I know, I know--the little brown people are in your way (Buchanan) and the government won't let you have a handout (Edwards).

Well, here's what you should do (Rogers): get mad, and get her done. (Git 'r done). Get it done. Get here done. I'm at a loss, I don't know the proper way to write it--but that Mater fellow is the real populist. Git'r done. Go do it. Just do it. Go get yourself some. Get down on it. Get going and get moving. Get the lead out. Go through it like shit through a goose. Get shorty. Get on the bus. Go. What are you waiting for? Go. Floor it. Run out the back door. Jump out the window. Tear ass through the parking lot. Don't give up, give it your all. And, if all that fails, get drunk, then sober up and try again tomorrow. Never, ever give up. Never, ever listen to those idiots--what do they know? Always, always, always do your best and never stop moving.

America is where you go when you want to do something. It's where you go when you want to Git 'r done. People have been coming here for hundreds of years to get away from the bullshit that prevented them from getting 'r done wherever they were and that's what this country is about. The brown people aren't the problem--the brown people are the new us, sir. Give them a hug, but don't feel bad about not helping them. You're not supposed to help the new people--you're supposed to worry about your own problems. They'll figure things out and make things work or they'll go home--that's how that works. There's no right color to be an American--green? I like green, though. You have to have green to make a living and buy things, so maybe the only right color for an American in green. Government, try to take less of my green, okay? I know you want to level the playing field, and I think that's fine. Keep it level. But don't tilt it so that one group of people gets all kinds of advantages--that's not the American way. My belief is that if you're going to come here, come here and git 'r done. Do things for yourself. Make it work for you. Anyone who cheats you is teaching you a lesson. Fall for the old Ponzi Scheme or the old I'll-fix-your-roof-but-first-I-need-$3,000-for-supplies ruse a few times and you'll learn to be as conservative as an old banker in about three days.

Get out of here with the populism. It doesn't work. Give me a call to action any day. Shut up and start doing. Quit with the complaining. Life's not supposed to be fair--it's supposed to be a screaming nightmare and then you die. If you toughen up, you can make it work for you. And it's up to you to figure that you. No one can do it for you. And, of course, no one knows why America works so well because of what I'm telling you. It's a mystery. It's just America. And America is the best idea there ever was.

*the original text:

Referring to the white working-class voters in the industrial towns decimated by job losses, Obama said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Yet, we had seen these folks before. They were Perotistas in 1992, opposed NAFTA in 1993 and blocked the Bush-Kennedy McCain amnesty in 2007.

In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobsoutsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.

They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on – then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.

They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.

They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

My blog? Why, yes. Yes I do have a blog.

Nothing is more dangerous

Tyra Examines Gay Exorcisms With Help From Insane People

Inarticulate Rage and the Rise of New Militias

Ever notice that surfers generally don't join armed militias?

I don't believe that there is a new wave of actual "militia" organizing. It seems too inarticulate for that. But, perhaps, being inarticulate is where a new wave of militia organizing starts. Perhaps it is being created in a void where people cannot express their opposition through a political party. The Republican Party has been good at stoking ignorance and fear lately, not so good at articulating where we need to go and why conservative values matter in a time when conservatism has been discredited by a series of turns of event. There are no leaders left, just unimaginative followers. Pick the ten most senior Republican Senators, and you have a who's who of the also-rans in American political life. I'm loathe to admit it, but there was a time when these people could have been rock stars. Now, they're just stumblebums.

The Los Angeles Times tries to get to the heart of who and what the new militias look like. Perhaps, in the case of the Oath Keepers, and in the context of this one example, the new militias are a bit small and disorganized to really matter. Rand Cardwell is the organizer at the center of this story, and, as an ex-Marine and laid off worker, tries to convince his fellow Americans of a few key points:

The first order of business was a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which called the Oath Keepers -- which claims more than 1,000 members nationwide -- a "particularly worrisome example" of a "virulently antigovernment 'Patriot' movement" that has been reinvigorated, in part, by the fact that the president is black.

The center documented angry videos that had been posted on the Oath Keepers website; in one of them, a man called Obama an "enemy of the state."

Cardwell betrayed only a hint of the exasperation that this line of criticism stirs in him. Nothing, he said, could be further from the truth. He served side by side in the Corps with African Americans. One of his best friends is a black guy.

"Our goal," he said, "is to support and defend the Constitution, and that's where it begins and ends at. . . . We're not a hate group. We're not a racist group. We're not calling for armed revolt against the government."

Founded this year by Stewart Rhodes, a Yale-educated lawyer and former staffer of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the group calls itself nonpartisan and features on its website a 1776 quote from George Washington warning of an incipient moment that would determine whether Americans will be "Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed."

"Such a time," the site says, "is near at hand again."

That kind of sentiment helps explain the disconnect that has come to define popular political discourse in Obama's first tumultuous year.

A vociferous group of Americans is warning that the country is not just headed in the wrong direction -- but over a cliff. They are mainstream media commentators, like Fox News' Glenn Beck. They are religious leaders, like "Bible Answer Man" Hank Hanegraaff, who told radio listeners last month that "socialism and fascism" were "slipping quietly through the back door."

Now, if you wanted to raise money by stoking fear, you'd do so with the intent of whipping up as much outrage--and, thusly, donations--as possible. There are several things to keep in mind. First, President Obama's popularity and win at the polls no doubt stoked a lot of resentment, and much of it racial. This created a feeling among those people who voted for and supported Republicans. One day, it's 2004 and you're with the winning team and conservatism is in the ascendancy. The next day, it's 2008 and everything has crashed to the ground. Second, you add on top of that widespread unemployment and the loss of home values and retirement savings. This creates a need to replace or restore the standard of living that has been lost. A savvy person could then take the inarticulate resentment of fellow unemployed neighbors and figure out how to draw in a few bucks organizing groups designed to give these disconnected people a voice. Third, there will always be ignorant morons who want to believe anything. Remember that show The X-Files? It was awful. But, people watched it, even though the entire premise of the show was, we're going to piss you off by treating you as if you're so stupid, you can't figure out that all we want to do is put out show after show that never satisfies your desire to know what's going on, meanwhile, bend over so we can sell you crap.

Add to that another phenomenon that has happened--the demise of social and service clubs. There are definitely fewer and fewer people joining service clubs, like the Kiwanis, the Elks, the Moose, The Eagles, The Lions, the Jaycees, the Sertoma Club, the Shriners, the Knights of Columbus and--who did I leave out? The Bats? The Balls? The What? The American Legion? The VFW? The Little Sisters of the Poor? This cuts people off from being connected to communities. Say you're an out of work fellow, and you go to your VFW Hall, and, while getting drunk, someone mentions, oh, down at so-and-so's, they're hiring. So, you sober up, you put on some deodorant, you find your best T-shirt, and you go down and apply and, just like that, you're in the money. Twitter and Facebook don't really replace the Sertoma Club, to be frank about it. They just waste your time with SPAM and idiots like myself who post blog links to things we write when we're bored watching Peej clean the Czech machine guns.

What I see above is inarticulate rage. It could very well become nasty out there. Violent and hateful, or it could simmer and go on a slow boil. Hucksters, desperate people, no jobs, no connection to communities--these are all things that could create a perfect storm out there for the ignorant to thrive.

Cross posted at my home, my sweet, sweet home...

9/12 Tea Party Photo: False Image Spread By Anti-Reform Activists

STEVE EARLE - AMERIKA v6.0 (THE BEST WE CAN DO) (2002)

Well, it's September 11th, a day when we sit back and reflect on the spirit of the U.S.A.  Boy, is it hard to do that these days.

Witnessing the heckling and shouts during Obama's speech and discourse at the town hall meetings I'm just embarrassed to be faced with the rampant stupidity and moral bankruptcy that is constantly taking place all around me.

I weep for a time when ignorance and stupidity was something to be ashamed of.  Nobody wanted to be stupid but now they accuse others of being mean for saying so or even worse, are proudly stupid.  And they have the power of a vote, which encourages the lobbyists and special interests to prey on upon them, filling their heads with lies and far-fetched fears.  It's time to stop playing nice and to start handing out dunce caps and placing people in corners.

The healthcare debate is endlessly disgusting to me.  I have no doubt socialized medicine here will be terrible.  Our public school system is one example of a socialized failure.  But it's better than nothing.  Imagine how much stupider (shudder) people would be without it?  Everyone should be entitled to both an education and healthcare, regardless of who you are.  How can anyone with a sense of moral character deny anyone proper healthcare?  Talk about a death panel.  And I'm not sure which worse: Believing we don't deserve universal healthcare or believing we do but not fighting for it.  I'm leaning toward the latter and that's sad.

It stuns me that the Christians have aligned themselves with the Republican party and do not support healthcare.  Unbelievable.  The Sermon On The Mount I was taught growing up is more in line with socialism than Republicanism.  If anyone wonders why I stopped going to church some years back, well, why should I believe in something that they don't believe in themselves?

When it comes down it's a moral issue.  Fact.  Why should we help people who don't contribute to society or work hard for it?  Because we're better than that.  And when the least of our people are crying out for help turning our backs on them is something I don't understand and never want to understand.

Steve Earle's song addressing the healthcare issue has been haunting me ever since he first released it seven years ago.  The song remains the same, however, yet when I hear someone voicing what I feel in my heart on such a grand level it gives me that modicum of hope.

From his album Jerusalem.

1984 excerpt

Reading 1984 (again). On my iPod Touch (because I can). I'm going to print the slogan at the end of the page on t-shirts and hand them out to all the mindless dolts I encounter. Of course that's gonna take a lot of ink....

Sent from my iPod