From Pine View Farm

September, 2007 archive

Jena 0

The nutcases are coming out to support the DA.

From the SPLC:

As tens of thousands of people were preparing to make their way to Jena, La., for today’s anti-racism rally, white supremacists were burning up the Internet with furious denunciations, bloody predictions, promises of future violence, and calls for lynching.

“The best crowd control for such a situation would be a squad of men armed with full automatics and preferably a machine gun as well,” is how one person put it on the Web forum hosted by the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network. Added another hopeful VNN poster: “I’m not really that angry at the nogs [a recent variation on an ancient racial slur] — they are just soldiers in an undeclared race war. But any white that’s in that support rally I would like to … have them machine-gunned.”

As the rally began to unfold this morning, it became clear that it would attract huge numbers of people, perhaps even the 40,000 that some organizers had predicted. They came to protest the case of the “Jena 6,” black youths who were charged with serious crimes for an attack on a white youth not long after white teens who had targeted blacks were let off with a slap on the wrist. White supremacists reacted with a strange mixture of anger and admiration for the organizing behind the rally.

But the dominant response was violent rage. “I think a group of White men with AK rifles loaded with high capacity magazines should close in on the troop of howler monkeys from all sides and compress them into a tight group, and then White men in the buildings on both sides of the shitskinned hominids shall throw Molotov cocktails from above to cleanse the nigs by fire,” wrote “NS Cat” on VNN. Another poster fantasized about a terrorist attack in Jena today: “Wouldn’t that be sweet? Gosh darn, wouldn’t that be sweet? Good LORD wouldn’t THAT be SWeeeeEET? Boom, Boom, no more Coon! Well? A White man can dream can’t he?”

Via Pam’s House Blend.

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Drumbeats 0

Listen to the beat at Delaware Watch.

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Recycling Your Computer 1

Helpful hints from Kroll.

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Retirement 1

There used to be a radio host in these parts who was fond of saying, “You can’t retire FROM something. You must retire TO something.”

This was confirmed today by a person of my acquaintance who is so bored with retirement that he’s planning to go back to college and get his degree in history.

Among other things, he said that, “You can’t watch daytime television. There’s nothing on.”

Richard Blair has the evidence.

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54 Out of 60 0

Test your knowledge here.

Via Upyernoz (not as good as he, but still respectable).

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Swampwater 0

Brendan has an idea.

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General Pollyanna (and His Puppet Master) 0

Keith Olbermann.

Read the transcript here.

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Jena 0

There has been a lot of fuss today regarding the demonstration at Jena, Louisiana.

I heard one of the citizens of Jena (obviously white–don’t ask me how I know, I know) saying that he didn’t understand what the fuss was about.

And that, my friends, is precisely what the fuss was about.

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Baptistry 3

I was brought up in the Southern Baptist Church.

I am still very much a Baptist, though I happen to attend a Methodist church now.

Baptist beliefs are, I fear, much misunderstood, primarily due to the antics of those who call themselves “Baptists.” Heck, any group of nutcakes who wants to start up some kind of wierd little sect seems to want to call themselves “The So-and-So Baptist Church of the Such-and-Such.”

There are six basic tenets of being a Baptist. Four of them are pretty much standard Christian stuff: the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and so on.

Two of them are unique:

  • Baptism of the Believer: One cannot be baptised unless he or she is able to profess faith. In other words, infant baptism is out (sorry, Methodists).
  • Priesthood of the Believer: Though this is fundamental to Protestantism, Baptists take if much farther than anyone else. In the Baptist persuasion, the believer is in charge; the congregation is next, and so on. (I’m a very strong proponent of “priesthood of the believer,” but that’s another story.)

Furthermore, Baptists do not believe in creeds. No true Baptist Church ever repeats a creed.

For, you see, if you are repeating a creed, you are repeating beliefs imposed on you by someone else, thereby violating the principal of “priesthood of the believer.”

The little Baptist Church that I was raised in is a member of the Accomack Baptist Association, which, in turn, is a member of the Baptist General Association of Virginia (BGAV), which, in turn, is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. (The land on which it stands was donated by one of my ancestors shortly after the unpleasantness of 1781.)

The missionary who founded the church (I believe his name was Elijah Lewis, but I am far from my sources), spent large amounts of time in jail for the crime of . . .

. . . being a Baptist.

A further fundamental principal of Baptists in America is separation of church and state. This dates back to Roger Williams’s founding of Rhode Island, which he founded because he was hounded out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of his religion.

Now, of course, the Southern Baptist Convention has fallen into the hands of the pharisees.

The little church in which I grew up has trouble finding pastors because it has (gasp!) women deacons (in the Baptist Church, the Board of Deacons is sort of like the Parish Council, the Board of Trustees, and the Administrative Council all rolled into one–they are the governing body of the church)

So, where am I headed with this?

To here. Give it a a read.

And think seriously about why the Founders decreed that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.

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Moderation . . . (Updated) 4

. . . is for labor disputes.

Not for dealing with with fanatics.

Addendum:

Steve has more.

Of course, moderate Republicans are a dead breed. They died when Jerry Ford and Ev Dirksen and folks like them left positions of power (We won’t mention the sad fate of Nelson Rockefeller, who, unlike David Vitter, didn’t have to pay for it, and, unlike Larry Craig, didn’t search for it under restroom walls).

What we have left are great masses of the citizenry who think that the Republican Party of their youth still exists, while what they have is a party taken over by NeoCons and other Fanatics.

Oh, my God, when will this nightmare end?

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Swampwater (Updated Already–I Was on the Road All Day) (Updated Again) 0

I’ve mentioned Swampwater before. (By the way, the link is to Wikepedia–it might be interesting to investigate the edits to the article.)

Apparently they played Sergeant Rock one time too many:

The Iraqi government said today it has revoked the license of Blackwater USA, a private security company that guards U.S. Embassy personnel in Iraq, following a shootout in downtown Baghdad on Sunday that left at least nine people dead.

Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf called the episode the “last and the biggest mistake” committed by Blackwater, whose black sports utility vehicles and agile “Little Bird” helicopters escort diplomatic convoys throughout Baghdad.

He said the decision of the Iraqi government meant that Blackwater “cannot work in Iraq any longer, it will be illegal for them to work here.”

“Security contracts do not allow them to shoot people randomly,” Brig. Gen. Khalaf said. “They are here to protect personnel, not shoot people without reason.”

We shall see whether or not the Iraqi (it is to laugh) government’s declaration has any weight. (Given that the Iraqi government doesn’t even run the blinking Green Zone, let alone Iraqi, well, you figure out the odds.)

It is not good to turn over our security, or the security of our personnel, to persons who are accountable, not to the United States of America, but to some private entity who considers itself accountable to no one.

Addendum, Moments Later:

Brendan has more.

So does Upyernoz.

Addendum, Later That Same Week:

Brendan has even more and Will Bunch weighs in.

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ER 0

This article will resonate with anyone who has ever had to take a child to the Emergency Room.

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DPs 0

Yes, when I was young, that’s what they were called.

DPs.

Displaced Persons.

Now it’s more fashionable to call them refugees.

The Current Federal Administration has created a bumper crop of them in Iraq, but has failed to accept responsibility for its actions.

(And this surprise us how?)

Trudy Rubin discusses the harvest and the craven, despicable failure of the Current Federal Administration to see to the safety of those Iraqis who have aided it (emphasis added):

When President Bush spoke to the nation about Iraq last week he predicted that if American troops left soon, “Iraq could face a humanitarian nightmare.”

He’s right. Things could get worse. But Iraqis already face a humanitarian nightmare as millions of refugees flee their homes to escape ethnic cleansing. More than 2 million are displaced within Iraq, and 2.2 million have poured into neighboring countries, according to U.N. agencies. That’s around a sixth of Iraq’s entire population, many living in desperate conditions, with tens of thousands still escaping monthly.

This is a refugee crisis of a magnitude that can destabilize the entire region. So why didn’t it rate a mention in the president’s speech?

“I’m very puzzled by why it’s gotten such short shrift,” says Kenneth Bacon, president of Refugees International, one of the few international aid agencies addressing the problem.

But we know the reason. As Bacon points out, administration policy is to stabilize Iraq so refugees can go home. Meantime – with stability still a mirage – refugee flows are on the rise as the desperate run for their lives.

This refugee crisis creates a security threat to the region – and a moral challenge to the United States. Among the current and potential refugees are thousands of Iraqis who have been threatened with death because they worked with U.S. officials. Many have risked their lives to help Americans, yet the United States has been pitifully slow in helping those under direct threat. In July, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, urged the administration to grant immigrant visas to all embassy staff members in need, after nine U.S. embassy employees had been killed, including a married couple who were kidnapped and executed.

And, of course, as long as the Current Federal Administration continues to play its tune that “Everything is coming out roses!” over there, innocents will continue to die.

For a lie.

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The Candidates Debate 0

Harry Shearer moderates the first ever Silent Debate:

Words fail them.

And me.

(Actually, it’s better than the non-silent debates, is it not?)

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Where Did It Go? 0

Doesn’t matter. It was dispensed by the Current Federal Administration, so accountability, natch, wasn’t an issue.

But we can be sure of one thing. It made the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam’s palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled.

You can hear the authors of the article interviewed here. The interview is well-worth your while.

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A Day That Will Live in Infamy 0

The annivesary of the (hoick! ptui!) emoticon.

A crutch for those who are unable to express themselves with words (LOL):

It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon.

🙂

Twenty-five years ago, three keystrokes – a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis – were first used as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message by Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman, the university said.

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Airports 0

I’ve spent a lot of time in airports. I’ve spent so much time in PHL that I can tell you the names of the best restaurants in the different terminals.

There’s a queue for the loo. And it’s just sad:

When tourists ask for the bathroom in the Minneapolis airport lately, it’s usually not because they have to go.

It’s because they want to see the stall made famous by U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest in a sex sting.

“It’s become a tourist attraction,” said Karen Evans, information specialist at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. “People are taking pictures.”

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S(pl)urge 0

Upyernoz on (cough, cough) accountability. Well said.

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Drinking Liberally 0

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, just one block from South Street, 6 p. m.

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Addicted to Oil 0

Harry Shearer:

Now, what was that war about, again?

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