Life On The World Of The Cross

When the MSM pundicks start sniffing around this story, John McPOW may experience another, much more spectacular shoot-down crash and burn; one that will turn a war hero into a traitorous turd in one fell swoop.

McKarma may prove to be a much bigger bitch than mere payback.

For thirty years, agents of the GOP have invoked political strategeries to intentionally polarize and divide the American people, often in ways that ignore or betray the very Judeo-Christian principles John McPOW says he believes our nation was founded upon. If McPOW somehow manages to convince a majority of the American electorate that four more years of Dick-Bush policies will make this nation a better place to live, then along about the time it becomes necessary for McPOW to pardon Cheney and Bush for war crimes, the Vietnamese might decide it’s time to show Americans the thirty-two propaganda pieces starring POW Songbird; President McPOW may sing a much different tune when he is exposed as a cowardly collaborator.

We just might have to “nuke the gooks for God,” aye, Johnnie?

Yeah; stranger things have happened. But who am I kidding. This Judeo-Christian nation makes a full-time job out of looking the other way at monumental immorality and hypocritical betrayal of trust. They couldn’t begin to find the balls to look Dick-Bush in the eye and throw the bastards into prison for their heinous crimes against humanity.

And somebody will.

But it won’t be this clown.

Joshua Ben Joseph (Jesus) was born at noon, August 21, 7 B.C.

Bringing the Son of God incarnate into the world is no small undertaking. Believing it actually happened, two thousand years after the fact is an even bigger challenge. And yet, that is what is expected of us. But the challenge can be met when one has sufficient information concerning the event. From Paper 122, Birth And Infancy of Jesus, from The Urantia Book:

After a study of the special report on the status of segregated worlds prepared by the Melchizedeks, in counsel with Gabriel, Michael finally chose Urantia as the planet whereon to enact his final bestowal. Subsequent to this decision Gabriel made a personal visit to Urantia, and, as a result of his study of human groups and his survey of the spiritual, intellectual, racial, and geographic features of the world and its peoples, he decided that the Hebrews possessed those relative advantages which warranted their selection as the bestowal race. Upon Michael’s approval of this decision, Gabriel appointed and dispatched to Urantia the Family Commission of Twelve— selected from among the higher orders of universe personalities— which was intrusted with the task of making an investigation of Jewish family life. When this commission ended its labors, Gabriel was present on Urantia and received the report nominating three prospective unions as being, in the opinion of the commission, equally favorable as bestowal families for Michael’s projected incarnation.

From the three couples nominated, Gabriel made the personal choice of Joseph and Mary, subsequently making his personal appearance to Mary, at which time he imparted to her the glad tidings that she had been selected to become the earth mother of the bestowal child.

Gabriel appeared to Mary about sundown one evening, and “after she had recovered her composure”— (can you even imagine??)— Gabriel said:

“I come at the bidding of one who is my Master and whom you shall love and nurture. To you, Mary, I bring glad tidings when I announce that the conception within you is ordained by heaven, and that in due time you will become the mother of a son; you shall call him Joshua, and he shall inaugurate the kingdom of heaven on earth and among men. Speak not of this matter save to Joseph and to Elizabeth, your kinswoman, to whom I have also appeared, and who shal l presently also bear a son, whose name shall be John, and who will prepare the way for the message of deliverance which your son shall proclaim to men with great power and deep conviction. And doubt not my word, Mary, for this home has been chosen as the mortal habitat of the child of destiny. My benediction rests upon you, the power of the Most Highs will strengthen you, and the Lord of all the earth shall overshadow you.”

Whew. Take that home to hubby. “How was you day, my love?” “Oh. . . uh. . . Some angel appeared to me today. Says I’m gonna be preggers with God, soon. How was your day?”

Me? I’d be changin’ my shorts. Who the hell are the Most Highs??? How will they strengthen me? What’s a child of destiny?? And what was that about the “kingdom of heaven”??

We live in a time of such detachment from true reality that the notion of God being born as a human baby seems completely absurd. And yet, the story persists. The truth endures.

Happy birthday, Joshua Ben Joseph; happy incarnation, Michael of Nebadon; happy bestowal day, God.

L’chaim.

McCain with Lieberman and Graham, in sympathy makeup. (click)

WASHINGTON — GOP nominee John Sidney McCain appeared on the steps of the Congressional Office Building today in clown-face makeup, and sporting a new tattoo on his forehead, which reads, “POW.” The Republican candidate for president said it reminds people that he has “returned with honor” from his imprisonment some forty years ago, and that he is still reluctant to talk about it.

Asked by reporters at the scene if that sentiment might be somehow blurred by the large buttons on his suit coat which read, “ASK ME ABOUT MY POW,” the senator became visibly annoyed and said only, “Please. . . please.”

Flanked by chief toadies Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham, who also wore clown-face to commemorate and honor McCain’s bold new tattoo/makeup scheme, McCain stated that his “credentials as a Vietnam era prisoner of war, in conjunction with his bold gesture towards the hapless poor, [bums?] would go along way towards negating his image with some Americans as a wealthy, angry, senile old curmudgeon. “I’m not the first POW underdog to realize that looking the part is half the battle. Drill now! Drill now, my friends!” No one had any fucking idea what he meant by that.

The attending toads took turns tonguing the microphone after McCain spoke, telling no one in particular that their “voluntary” appearance in clown face demonstrated the suckass solid solidarity of the corporate Overlords with their lackey underlings, and praised Senator McCain as a president “. . .of the people, buy by the people, and like the people.”

ORLANDO, Fla. — Little Johnnie was not wearing his “cone of silence” Saturday night when Barack Obama was answering questions for Pastor Rick. Johnnie was actually in his limo on the way to the Saddleback Church of Fiery Peril, and McCain said there “. . .just wasn’t enough headroom in the limo to wear the (expletive deleted) thing.”

Pastor Rick started by asking Little Johnnie, “Now, my first question: Was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now?”

Little Johnnie blurted out, “I was trying to hear through the wall!” The audience laughed.

Were ya now. . .

Even though Little Johnnie was supposed to be wearing the cone in the greenroom, Nicolle Wallace, McCain Campaign spokeswoman, said that Little Johnnie could not have heard the broadcast of the event, ’cause he was in his motorcade thingy, and was too far away to hear any of the questions.

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated, is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Yes, of course. A “former prisoner of war” would never be deceptive; even though ninety percent of a POW’s actions are, by design, an effort to deceive their captors of their true intentions.

But what about Little Johnnie’s pernicious aides? Not having the unquestionable integrity of a prisoner of war, they might be tempted to tune into the broadcast, and say, in prepping Little Johnnie, tell him to pay particular attention to the issues of. . .

The fact that Little Johnnie asked when they could “get back to the question of judges,” when no such question had been asked him yet, might make it seem like a person of normal integrity (read: will cheat at the drop of a cone) had been briefed about a question on Supreme Court judges. Golly. Would Little Johnnie lie in church??

Is the Pope a Catholic? Has a cat got an ass?

Does Little Johnnie wear $500 loafers?

This is loading a lot better, but if it loads slowly you may have to back-ball to keep it from re-caching. This is MoveOn’s motivational video de jure, and worth watching. Listen carefully. Act accordingly.

A number of significant economic statistics were announced yesterday: inflation hit a 71/2 year high; consumer earning power declined 3 1/2% from last year; and home foreclosures rose 55%.

Fueling these economic fires has been the soaring cost of the Iraq war and occupation.

Using credit cards, American taxpayers bought huge amounts of stock in Corporate America’s colonization of Iraq. After 5/12 years, the stock has depreciated dramatically, the cards’ principal, interest, and penalties have been reset to infinity, and margin calls are expected shortly.

Analysts following the company say the stock’s collapse is due to a number of factors: deterioration of good will in the American brand; soaring energy and consumer prices; the devaluation of the American dollar and the attendant difficulties of securing future financing; and, looming down the road, the forced sell-off of private and national American assets.

It’s like watching an economic train wreck in slow motion. But there is a silver lining. Given the huge toll that Iraq and Afghanistan has had on the Pentagon’s military readiness and the attendant deterioration of the American dollar, there’s simply insufficient political, military or financial or resources available to support the necons’ future imperial expansion plans. (Said with fingers crossed.)

The karma principle of causality continuity is…very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme. -The Urantia Book

Urantian Aborigine

The NEW YORKER cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as Muslim terrorists rekindled an old debate about satire, humor, racism, and fear. It was spun around a satirical cartoon which illustrated the lengths some human minds are willing, and able to go, to mask rather than transcend the racism inherent in their human nature.

Yes; racism is inherent in human nature; we don’t hate “others” by an act of will, we do it quite naturally. What’s up with that? Just like our mammalian ancestors, all humans beings are bellicose— exceedingly pugnacious as a rule, and with fiery tempers. Originally it served a useful evolutionary purpose when it came to survival; the more motivated monkey of the day did not hesitate to take his sundry weapons to the neighbors’ skulls and exterminate them. The species that won these battles most often progressively improved and therefore multiplied, and survived to wax fat on the land.

Soon they fanned out over the Mesopotamian peninsula, and with just seventy generations of evolution at work, they produced a singularly remarkable pair of twins, one male, one female. They had almost perfectly opposable thumbs; they walked upright. Their brains were smaller than yours and mine, but their improved intelligence propelled them into the leadership of their tribe, and their family grew to become the nucleus of the mid-mammals.

The mid-mammals begat the Primates. After almost nine hundred generations of development, covering about twenty-one thousand years from the origin of the dawn mammals, the Primates suddenly gave birth to two more remarkable creatures, the first true human beings.

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I was at the gym yesterday when I saw the live broadcast of John McSame’s press conference, during which he made his risible pronouncement that:

[I]n the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.

In my subsequent blog, I missed this angle mentioned by Greg Sargent over at TPM (so many hard bodies to ogle, so little time):

At a press conference just now, John McCain redoubled his efforts to thrust himself into a leadership role on the Russia-Georgia crisis front, announcing that two top campaign surrogates, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are going on a visit to Georgia.

Hunter at Daily Kos picks up the ball and runs with it:

So if merely giving a speech in Germany is “presumptuous”, how freakin’ “presumptuous” is it for a candidate to send their own diplomatic team into a foreign conflict? Isn’t that, you know, a job for the President, not a candidate?

Why no outrage on this? I think it’s safe to say that if another candidate did this, conservatives would burst into flames from fury, and the talking heads would be beside themselves talking about how unprecedented it was for a candidate to inject themselves into an international crisis — politics should stop at the water’s edge, and all that. Instead, McCain is using a shooting war to buff his credentials? Seriously? And nobody in Washington sees a problem with that?

Indeed. Why is our corporatist media, who were all over Barack Obama for daring to even look presidential during his recent trip abroad, not covering this angle?

Perhaps because it would expose a fundamental flaw in their narrative of St. John, that lobbyist slaying maverick, and the role that lobbyists and registered foreign agents like Randy Scheunemann are playing in his campaign for the White House. On Tuesday, WAPO noted that:

Sen. John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Repubican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.

The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

Randi Rhodes reports that he has received an additional $600,,000 more. Recall that Scheunemann was the President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and a board member of Project for the New American Century (PNAC), responsible for pushing the country into the ruinous ruinous Iraq war and occupation.

McSame’s media enabled hypocrisy is bad enough, but more important is how such relationships work out in the real world. Case in point: emptywheel over at Firedoglake wonders whether Georgia’s aggression in South Ossetia was arranged beforehand between the White House and the McCain Campaign, using Karl Rove as the go-between. Rove was in Yalta at a conference attended by Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili a few days after Secretary of State Condolezza Rice’s [Georgia] visit:

I mean, given that Rove was talking about the upcoming election as Saakashvili was walking in the room, it sure does make you wonder whether Rove said anything to Saakashvili about how a firmer hand in South Ossetia might help Georgia ensure its strong relationship with the US going forward…

I’ll say this: the Administration is even more desperate to push back against claims that they encouraged Georgia’s initial crackdown than you’d think they would be (compare, for example, their response to claims we gave Israel the go-ahead to invade Lebanon in 2006 or bomb Syria in 2007, and their response to claims that we encouraged Maliki to crack down on Basra). There’s something going on–and given Karl Rove’s presence close to the scene of the crime, I’ve got my suspicions.

“Scene of the crime” has an additional meaning— Rove was on the lam at the time, ducking a Congressional subpoena. But I digress. Hunter gets the last word:

Honestly. Take all the worst things about the Bush administration, double them, then add Joe Lieberman. A McCain administration would be the presidential equivalent of a slasher flick.

At a press conference today meant to display John McSame’s superior foreign policy credentials, the Rethuglicans‘ reality challenged presidential candidate either had a senior moment, or he believes that the corporatist media is so in the tank for him that he is free to utter even the most egregious hypocritical pronouncements and escape scrutiny.

Case in point: the roiling Russia-Georgia war. Scolds the morally correct McSame:

“[I]n the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

Excuse me? Has our corporatist media sainted war hero forgotten Afghanistan and Iraq, the invasion of both he so throatily encouraged?

Consider also his previous pronouncement on Georgia that an editor from Wikipedia pointed out contains copious amounts of plagiarized material from the Wiki site.

Guess we know now how McSame would answer that iconic 3:00 AM phone call— frantically try to get online to access Wikipedia.

McSame improvises as an EMF burst fries D.C.’s com circuits

The response from the Obama campaign is obvious— adopt the Rovian tactic of attacking an opponent’ perceived strength. The operative word here is, of course, perceived. As this and other numerous McSame foreign policy gaffes proves, McSame’s alleged expertise is a fiction to begin with.

Should be an Obama PR slam dunk.

The Middle Class First.

Not the Red State Middle Class. Not the Blue State Middle Class. Not the Republican middle Class. Not the Democrat Middle Class. Not the Conservative Middle Class. Not the Liberal Middle Class. Not the Right Wing Middle Class. Not the Left Wing Middle Class. Not the Christian middle Class. Not the Muslim Middle Class. Not the Buddhist Middle Class. Not the Jewish Middle Class. Not the Catholic Middle Class. Not the Presbyterian Middle Class. Not the Neo-Con Middle Class. Not the Wickan Middle Class. Not the Dirty Fucking Hippy Middle Class.

Just the Middle Class. First.

That’s Unity; not uniformity. That is the true strength of the American people, the backbone of our country. Because the majority of the middle class lack the political insight to see that the ruling class of this country is not them, but the wealthy corporate class, we find ourselves a nation losing a class war with the owners of her engines of wealth, whose aims and ends are not always those of highest benefit for Americans and America, or any nation of the world. Rather is their love and loyalty servile to “mammon.”

There’s a great difference between wealth which leads to greediness and selfishness and that which is held and dispensed in the spirit of stewardship by those who have an abundance of this world’s goods. But wealth is unenduring. The love of riches all too often obscures and even destroys the spiritual vision. The danger is one of wealth’s becoming, not your servant but your master.

Christians will note that Jesus never taught nor countenanced idleness or indifference to providing the physical necessities for one’s family. He taught that the material and temporal must be subordinated to the welfare of the soul and the progress of the spiritual nature.

The Middle Class of America must get itself united for change; change strong enough to change the balance of power back to the Middle man; change it controls and decides upon for the well-being of America, not the wealthy. For America; not the Red State Middle Class. Not the Blue State Middle Class. Not the Republican middle Class. Not the Democrat Middle Class. Not the Conservative Middle Class. Not the Liberal Middle Class. Not the Right Wing Middle Class. Not the Left Wing Middle Class. Not the Christian middle Class. Not the Muslim Middle Class. Not the Buddhist Middle Class. Not the Jewish Middle Class. Not the Catholic Middle Class. Not the Presbyterian Middle Class. Not the Neo-Con Middle Class. Not the Wickan Middle Class. Not the Dirty Fucking Hippy Middle Class.

The Middle Class. First. Last. Always.

That’s Barack Obama’s most powerful unifying meme, and it should be.

“McCain will make Cheney look like Ghandi” -Pat Buchanan.

“There’s a lotta people who lie and get away with it. And that’s just a fact.” -Donald Rumsfeld

McSame’s Mock Obama Strategy Under the direction of John McSame’s new Rovian campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, the attacks against Obama’s character have become so vituperative that even long-time McSame supporters like Mike Murphy and Mike Weaver are crying foul, (or at least, lame). Not only because they are damaging his brand as someone who eschews personal attacks, but because he is now telling outright lies about his opponent’s actions, like not visiting wounded troops in Iraq without camera (per NBC’s Andrea Mitchell) and policy positions like income taxes (saying Obama plans to increase taxes of people earning over $42k) and oil drilling.

While these new tactics reek of desperation, and are thus accepted by some Obama supporters as good news, there’s a method to Schmidt’s madness that reveals a far darker and more sophisticated propaganda effort at work.

In conjunction with their attempt to define Obama as an exotic elitist, out of touch with less privileged Americans, Schmidt and his cohorts are busily creating a strawman upon which to train the anger of the electorate instead of the slime who’ve spent the last eight years undermining their economic security.

I’ll be writing more soon on the psychological dynamics involved, in my review of Dr. Bryant Welch’s new book State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind. Suffice it to say that Dr. Welch (interviewed on Ian Master’s show yesterday) predicts that Obama has two weeks to mount a full-fledged counter-attack before this characterization-transference dynamic becomes irreparably hooked into the lizard brains of the average American voter.

He might start with pointing out that his wife Michelle isn’t a wealthy heiress with a Gulfstream 4 ready at a moment’s notice to fly them to any one of their eight fifteen posh residences to host another press baiting Bar-B-Q.

Wrecking the Economy The New York Times leads today with an editorial titled The Darker Outlook at Fannie and Freddie. Noting that “the companies reported even worse-than-expected quarterly results and more pain to come,” and that “shareholder value has been destroyed” (hear that, pension planners?), the two GSEs have become the poster children of the Bush Administration’s economic philosophy of unregulated corporate greed.

Notwithstanding the moral hazard of using taxpayer dollars to bail out “too big to fail” financial institutions (including most recently, Bear Sterns), looks like that’s what’s going to happen. Heck, what’s another few trillion dollars of US debt to dump on the backs of our children’s children’s children.

Once again our current generation of plutocrat robber barons have succeeded in privatizing their profits and socializing their losses. Who says the government is broken, anyway? Works for them.

The Surge Is Not A Success Crooks and Liars reports that:

A Guardian journalist returns home to Iraq to find that far from what we hear in the US, the surge has produced nothing approaching normalcy or peace, but rather ghettos seething with violence, with nothing but makeshift walls dividing the increasingly hostile warring factions.

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