Anomalies
Catherine Bennett is amusing.
It is strange, isn’t it, to think that this fine-looking couple, recently seen experiencing spiritual ecstasy in East Grinstead, presumably believe in Scientologist founder Ron L Hubbard’s story of Xenu, the galactic tyrant who froze his victims and stored them in the Earth’s volcanos?
Yeah? I didn’t know that. I don’t keep up with Scientology (too busy keeping up with Feng shui, I guess), and I didn’t know that. The galactic tyrant! Froze his victims! Stored them in earth’s volcanoes. Very cool. Almost as cool as playing football in pyjamas with no goal and no crossbar and no hugging.
If, as Madonna says, she has been ridiculed for professing her beliefs, her best expedient would be to stop professing them, at length, to a British public that is already wearied by haranguing, complaints and demands from rival believers whose only common ground is their indifference to the fact that most other people don’t share their faith…Concerning religion, we can only hope she soon alights on the joys of trappism, and subsequently takes all the other faith communities in this country with her.
Just so. There has been a hell of a lot of haranguing, complaints and demands from rival believers lately, hasn’t there, as well as lashings of indifference to the fact that most other people don’t share their ‘faith’. We get the same thing here, of course, multiplied by approximately 500. It seems to be creeping across the Atlantic. We’re all doomed.
Was there really a time, not so long ago, when Thought for the Day, with the Rabbi Lionel Blue maundering about his mum was the most egregious irritant to this country’s non-believers? If so, it is fast taking on the look of a golden age of secularism, when one likes to think that Tony Blair, had he shared his vision of a new medieval country in which no one spoke ill of religion and where state schools would be handed to unyielding members of mutually contradictory faiths, would either have been escorted to Hyde Park Corner or locked up as a danger to himself and others.
And another thing. It’s this Lewis ‘Tricycle’ Libby thing. What’s up with that?
Mr Libby, who was chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, faces five counts of perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice…Mr Libby faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted but it is widely believed that, if jailed, Mr Libby would be pardoned by President George W Bush when he leaves office.
Is it. Why would that be? Because they’ve done it before, no doubt. Because Republican presidents have a history of pardoning other top Republicans. So…why are Republicans supposed to be the party of ‘values’ then? Seriously. I don’t understand that. Because they get all tied in knots about HoMoSekShuals but are serenely unworried about little things like perjury and obstruction of justice? Well, yes, I suppose that must be it. But…it seems strange. Even stranger than Xenu the Galactic Tyrant.
Heck, the Christian God seems far more vengeful and bloody than any Xenu. If you’ve convinced yourself that Jehova is “good” and worthy of worship, then you can convince yourself that the power of the Republican Party is worthy of any “high crimes and misdemeanors”.
Pardoning a crony who lied to a partisan investigation is a rather average standard of behaviour.
Remind me now – just who did Clinton pardon, and what were they guilty of?
As for party of values… are conservative values, imperfectly lived, that much worse than relativistic ‘if that works for you that’s great!’, also imperfectly lived??
And BTW, this pardoning is HYPOTHESISED by Bush’s opponents, assuming a HYPOTHETICAL conviction with a HYPOTHETICAL jail sentence.
So Bush vales are condemned based on his opponents estimation of future actions.
Don’t you feel a little… small sometimes?
Chrispy, you do seem awfully defensive about goold ol’ Georgie Boy. How come? Do you somehow imagine that Billy Boy Clinton would have been spared the devastating wrath of Hurricane Ophelia, had she been blogging way back then?
I read conservative centrist blogs like Instapundit and Power Line, and identify with their annoyance at liberal media self-righteousness.
Most of my acquaintence do not claim to ‘walk with the Lord’; that would be very presumptuous.
I find this talk of self-righteousness comes far more strongly from those who object to Christianity, and these (like others about left-wingers) gather up a personal stock of Pat Robertson nutty quotes and falsified Bushisms to justify their attitudes.
Karl, maybe you find Democrats in power the same as Repugs; John Pilger would I am sure.
Crispy, what the fuck are you babbling about? Do you really imagine that the left end of the political spectrum consists only of Frankens and Pilgers? How long have you been reading this blog now?
Seriously, dude. Why does even the slightest criticism of George W. Bush get your dander up so much? For a guy from Down Under, you’ve sure got a heavy emotional investment in the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
“So, to answer your question, in my leaders, I might take the slippery relativists over those who claim to ‘walk with the Lord.'”
Why choose either one, Brian? Slippery relativists are no more to be trusted than sanctimonious godbotherers. After Rwanda, I washed my hands of Clinton. Couldn’t work up any sympathy for the fucker even during the whole Monica folderol.
Guy hits on a woman in a NY bar. She, uninterested, slightly irritated by his manner, to get rid of him, says “I’m a lesbian”
He pauses, and says “Oh. How is life in war torn Beireut?”
– Rabbi Lionel Blue, Thought for Today about ten years ago, and still one of my mother’s favourite jokes. Like Catherine, I miss those days…
Kommie Karl
They’re all bastards – works for me.
Karl- I didn’t like Clinton, either. Maybe a preference for “slippery relativists” is too strong-I certainly can’t say that I prefer someone with no morals or ethics at all. Still, even though an overstatement, I prefer Clinton to the pieties of the Bush crowd.
ChrisPer: George W has certainly repeatedly claimed to Walk with the Lord. Many politicans of scary political persuasion repeatedly use religion to justify their depradations. I’m not denying that religious beliefs can be a positive force for good, as well.
In the end, Nick Stalin gets it right: They are all bad.
Rather off topic, but I’d like to draw attention to this;
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/4/73245/2559
But Don, if we didn’t allow women to catch HPV, those filthy evil little whores would continue to misbehave. Tens of thousands dying of cervical cancer every year is a small price to pay for the slim possibility that we might scare a few of these Jezebels into not dropping their drawers for every poor tempted fellow who comes along. Where are your morals, Don?
Oh, the cervical cancer vaccination thing. Yeah, I saw that a few days ago, at Pharyngula – P Z has a fine old rant about it. I found a news article and meant to post it but didn’t have time right then. Blame the hacker – the new database is horrible: it takes several minutes and several steps to get it going, and a long time between each and every entry, each correction takes another long time while it slowly loads for each of three steps, and if I leave it unused for awhile it makes me start over from the beginning. I HATE it. I miss the old one so much I cry myself to sleep every night.
Anyway – it really is unspeakable. Those people are – words fail me.