Friday film day

pdated Update: The autoplay problem is fixed, using a different videoplayer from the Archive.

Update: My Lovely and Brilliant Wife saw this and pointed out certain... shall we say, relevancies to political events. Honest, I just grabbed it as an example of the genre. Any resemblance to current events is mostly coincidental.

Those of us over a certain age (I never thought I'd euphemize myself that way!) will remember the educational grade-school films that we usually watched on Fridays when we were too antsy for the teacher to make us do anything more serious.

The Internet Archive, where I get the full-length movies from, also has a couple of collections of those old educational films from the 40s on up into the 80s. Countless of us learned about science, history and venereal disease through these films.

These weren't videotapes, boys and girls. There was no such thing then. This was actual celluloid film, 16 millimeter, threaded* through an actual projector and shown on a white reflective screen that pulled down like a window shade behind the map of the United States and in front of the chalkboard. You can ask your parents what a chalkboard was.

The stuff we watched was often 20 years old or more (this one's from 1946, I believe), but it didn't matter, because it was a film! It was almost like watching a movie right there in school! If we happened to learn something from it, well, what the heck? In a time with three TV networks and single-screen movie theaters (and VCRs years down the road), this was a treat.

Can't you just hear the projector clicking in the back of the room, and smell the fragrances wafting down the hall from the cafeteria?



(*Yes, I was the kid who knew how to thread the projector. Surprised?)

Very gracious, all things considered

I think most everyone will enjoy this, but it's especially up Ken's alley.

"I was the white guy with the black Burrberry jacket that you demanded I hand over shortly after you pulled the knife on me and my girlfriend. You also asked for my girlfriend's purse and earrings. I hope you somehow come across this message. I'd like to apologize...

Read the whole thing here.

Via the formidable SondraK.

Oh, this'll help!

All we need is some bozo ramming his car into an abortuary so the pro-death crowd can point to how violent we are. Expect to see this all over the media for a while.

Unless it turns out that he was targeting the pro-lifers. In which case, it will be a non-event like the rest of them.

Something worth remembering

I thought this was timely, since today is the 36th anniversary of Roe v The Human Race. Three dozen years ago, the human rights of an entire class of people were summarily dismissed on the grounds that their continued existence might be inconvenient.

It looks like the next eight years will be a bad time to be unborn, or disabled, or even in the way. As the health care fields are rendered Katolischenfrei and any alternative to abortion is prevented from being offered, videos like this are likely to disappear down the memory hole. (No, it's not graphic or bloody. Just true. To a pro-abort, that's even worse.)

Avoiding Obama Derangement Syndrome

I still don't have time to get a post up about the beginning of the reign of Caesar Obama. But I do think Andy has the right idea. As much as I disliked Clinton, I thought the mouth-foaming from my fellow conservatives was unjustifiable, and it bit us in the hiney after 2000. Clinton hath deranged his thousands, and Bush his ten thousands. Andy's to-don't list is so good I'm quoting it in its entirety:

The only thing worse than bad winners are sore losers, and we’ve had enough of them for the past eight years. So with that in mind, in the wake of today’s historic inauguration, here’s my Handbook For The Loyal Opposition, 2009 edition - a “To Don’t List,” if you will. Or even if you won’t.

DON’T question the motives - question the policy. When you disagree with Obama’s policies, say so, and make it clear why. But remember that President Obama is doing what he thinks is best for the country, as President Bush did. Both men love America and want what’s best for her. End of story.

DON’T make it personal. We don’t need another Derangement Syndrome. We don’t need people doing things like emphasizing Obama’s middle name in a derogatory fashion. How anyone would think that’s beneficial to their cause, or to the country as a whole, is beyond me. Also, it’s not even clever. Neither are smushwords like BusHitler, or sillywords like Rethuglicans and Dhimmicrats. [Joel's note: I guess this means I have to give up "Kleptocrats," too. But I still reserve the right to use "Obamessiah" when the media's treatment of him so warrants.]

DON’T cozy up to and champion foreign dictators and despots. Sean Penn is an ass. No reason to be like him. ‘Nuff said. (Corollary: Don’t cozy up to and champion foreign dictators and despots and then act outraged when people question your patriotism.)

DON’T pretend you’re being brave when you criticize your government. Not while people in other countries actually, y’know, DIE, when they do that.

DON’T use the word “divisive.” At this point, all that word means is “You disagree with me,” and the English language gets mangled enough these days.

DON’T use the phrase “speaking truth to power.” EVER.

DON’T move to Canada.

DON’T say you’re going to move to Canada and then stay here. (I know it’s too late for Stephen Baldwin, but not for the rest of you.)

DON’T apologize to foreigners and say things to them like, “I didn’t vote for Obama,” or “He’s not MY president.”

DON’T say or do everything in your power to drive this country apart and then claim you want unity when it’s your guy in power. This is like the convicted felon who conveniently finds God when he’s up for parole.

DON’T call people un-American one week, and then talk about how “We are not blue states or red states, we are the United States” the next. (This rule may only apply to Tom Hanks, but I put it in just to be safe.)

DON’T automatically think people who disagree with you are stupid or evil. Some of them are, of course. But most of them aren’t, and you might actually learn something if you listen to them.

And finally, DON’T use the fact that many on the left behaved abominably for the past eight years as an excuse to behave the same way. America needs adults. And if it bothered you when they did it, it’s a good sign that you shouldn’t do it.

This week's forecast

I watched the inauguration this morning at the office. I might add that nary a phone call came in during that time, so I can only conclude we weren't the only ones.

I don't have time to post on it now, but for the time being, I stole this from SondraK. I'm sure she'll understand.

A triumphant departure

President George W Bush is heading off into the sunset tonight. He's weathered insults, death threats and mockery from his own people, the people he gave his all for, for eight years. Now he finally gets to be a private citizen again, and by gum, he's earned it.

The Anchoress has a good round-up of tribute posts from around the blogosphere. I also want to highlight (left-leaning) British columnist Julie Burchill's excellent summary of the man and the vile treatment he received.

Curiously, and somewhat hypocritically, he has been abused for both imaginary sins and real virtues.

An alleged half-wit (the kind who majors in history at Yale and graduates from Harvard) who reads two serious books a week.

A supposed Christian killjoy who has conquered a hefty drink habit. A crazed warmonger who, quite rightly, did not fight in America’s vile war against Vietnam.

Mocked for being a loyal husband to a smart, attractive wife while his priapic predecessor treated women like dirt...

A sexist, racist Neanderthal who has promoted blacks and women to heights no Democratic administration has ever dreamed of. (The mind boggles when one imagines what Bill Clinton would have tried to do to beautiful, brilliant Condoleezza Rice, but making her Secretary of State wasn’t one of them. Making her his secretary, ready at hand to sexually harass, more like.)
... [I]t was the “homophobic” dastard Dubya who, mysteriously, signed the Worker, Retiree and Employer Act which allows the rollover of pensions from a dead gay person to a partner without tax consequences — as has always been the case for straights...

The great Natan Sharansky — who learned a thing or two about humanity during years banged up in Soviet labour camps — once said to Bush: “Mr President, I see you as a dissident. Dissidents believe in an idea. They suffer a lot. But history proves them right.”

It remains to be seen how history will deal with Dubya, but chances are its verdict will be much fairer — and thus far more favourable — from the ocean-going snobs, suck-ups to Islamic terror and all-round hypocrites who have been so eager to transfer all their own weaknesses and demons on to the shoulders of this really rather decent man.

I don't know that I'd call Bush a great president. But he was a good president, because he had that one quality that too many other holders of the office haven't.

He always put his country ahead of his own interests. He never used his office to build up political capital. He didn't compulsively check the polls before taking a stand or a position. And he never backed down to the jackals in the press.

My kids have never had a president who wasn't either a Clinton or a Bush. If the new man can do half as good a job as he did, I'll be proud of him.

Today is the last time I'll be able to say, "Thank you, President Bush."

A question for same-sex marriage advocates

Note: The issue in this post isn't religion. I believe what I believe, and other people may or may not. I'm not interested in arguing the morality or immorality of relationships. The question is meant purely as a political one. If I've caused offense to anyone over the religious angle, I'm sorry. I certainly don't mean anything unkind.

My Reverend Auntie has offered to perform wedding ceremonies for gay couples in her community against the day when the marriages can be solemnized under secular law as well. While I do believe that those relationships are intrinsically sinful, I applaud her willingness to put her clerical authority where her mouth is. Choose your battles and fight them fiercely.

As I've said before, I consider marriage a religious institution, not a government function, and I think the same legal benefits should be available to those couples as long as dissenting religions aren't required to change their own tenets regarding marriage. Which brings up an interesting question I'd like to pose, starting with terminology.

You say "marriage equality," I say "redefining marriage." Potayto, potahto, right?

No, of course not. We may be talking about the same shift in marriage laws, but the two positions come from very different perspectives. And I might add that neither of us have actually malicious motives at heart. Can we agree on that much?

Okay, so here's my question: If your purpose is to pursue marriage equality, so that people can marry whomever they choose (another phrase often used in the debate), then does it follow that you'll fight just as fiercely for these marriages as for these?

The similarities are striking. Both involve relationships that are unconventional, but are between consenting adults. (Yes, the wives in the Bountiful case were over the legal age of consent, and unlike the Arizona Strip communities, the practice is voluntary.) In both cases, the people involved say they want to have the same sort of stable family unit that ordinary heterosexual marriages have. I say they both want to redefine marriage, you say all they want is the same rights as anyone else. It's the same disagreement over terminology, but different context.

Moreover, if the sex of the participants is an arbitrary line of demarcation between a valid and an invalid marriage, isn't the quantity equally arbitrary?

Not necessarily. There's an elephant-sized difference between the two, and that's that one of them is strongly liberal and the other is strongly conservative. In fact, the Mormon Fundamentalists would agree with me that homosexual activity is a sin. They are unapologetic religious zealots. But does that mean they are undeserving of their own marriages?

So that's my question, and I'm trying hard not to sound like I'm goading anyone. I honestly don't want to come across hostile here. But I'm interested to know whether the people who fight tooth and nail for folks they approve of will do the same for folks they don't. And if you see a fundamental difference (no pun intended) between the two that I've missed, tell me what it is.

Bless me, Buck Owens, for I have snickered

I was trying to find a video of Roy Clark's indescribable performance of "Folsom Prison Blues," from the Hee Haw that Octopus Boy and I watched at about two in the morning over a bottle of formula and a bottle of Redhook ESB, respectively. Alas, that bit of finger magic wasn't to be found, but I did run across this atrocity:



I feel sort of dirty having laughed so hard, but the impressions were so cute that I just couldn't help myself.

Addendum: I still couldn't find the performance I was looking for, but here's one from 1976 that's almost as good:

Roy Clark folsom prison blues1976
by rappa1

Must resist... must resist...

Nope. Can't do it.

Spider, you promised not to do this anymore! We just can't let you out of our sight, can we?

Tattled on by Protein Wisdom.

Da Buss, St. Peter! Da Buss!

Ricardo Montalban travels in elephants at 88.

I wasn't allowed to stay up very often and watch Fantasy Island, but since I'm not Trekkie enough to think of him as Khan, the image of Mr. Roarke will always be in my head. Interestingly, Montalban thought of Fantasy Island as kind of a purgatory allegory, where people are forced to come to terms with their own flaws and sins. Not quite the orthodox take on purgatory, since not everyone there was to be redeemed, but still a very Christian take on a very worldly show.

His Catholic Christianity seems to have been more than just stained-glass window dressing. he was married to his wife for 63 years. In Hollywood! And this bit I found from a 1978 issue of People was interesting:

Montalban attributes part of the success of his 33-year marriage to adopting the rhythm method of birth control after the arrival of their fourth child. "It's one of the wisest policies the Catholic Church ever made," he explains. "The 10 days of abstinence awakens passion." Their daughter Laura, 32, is an assistant to designer Bill Blass; Mark, 30, is studying anesthesiology; Anita, 28, works in a YSL boutique, and Bill, 25, is a complaint manager for the phone company. A Catholic traditionalist ("The Gregorian chant is more beautiful than a boy and girl with a guitar"), Montalban explains of his marital vows, "I have an intellectual commitment. I play by the rules. Why say 'until death do you part' unless you plan to do it?"

How many Hollywood actors take their Christian faith (if they have any at all) that seriously? Taking a stand, even in his own marriage, for Catholic chastity would result in a blacklist today.
Faithful Christian, faithful husband, active father, hard-working actor. Smiles, everyone! Smiles!

Quote of the Day

From PJ O'Rourke:

Bringing the government in to run Wall Street is like saying, 'Dad burned dinner, let's get the dog to cook.'

This is the same man who referred to Hillary Clinton as "America's ex-wife." He's a priceless national treasure who should be preserved in the Smithsonian.

The new American buggerocracy

So apparently Rick Warren doesn't belong at the inauguration because gay people don't like him. Gene Robinson and Joseph Lowery do, because gay people like them. Homo locuta, causa finita.

When Warren was tapped to pray at the inauguration, gay people took to the streets, while liberals of all inclinations wrung their hands at the new president's tacit recognition that a Christian traditionalist is a citizen, too. Now it turns out that there's also going to be a gay clergyman there, which still isn't enough for some heterophobes to stomach. It's not enough that they be represented; the important thing is that we must not be. So does anyone care if Gene Robinson's selection is a slap in the face to the rest of us?

Apparently not. The clear implication is that gay people's feelings matter, but traditional straight people's don't.

This was the same thought I had a couple of weeks ago about the Pope's Urbi et Orbi address, which the media seemed to think was all about homosexuality. (Based on a single passing reference in a very long homily.) Diogenes hits it on the head:

The UPI story is headlined more soberly: "Pope's speech draws criticism from gays." That's accurate, at least; gay activists did indeed criticize the Pope. Still it's telling that UPI felt the criticism was noteworthy. When was the last time gay activists did not criticize the Pope? For that matter, why do we need to know what gay activists think about the Pope's year-end discussions with the Roman Curia? What did the Albigensians think of the Pope's speech? Did proponents of the gold standard have any strong opinions? UPI readers will never know.

The pope wasn't speaking to gay people at all. Let's face it: gay activists are either not members of his church at all, or they're nominal members who have expressed a refusal to adhere to the Church's teachings on chastity. In other words, Benedict wasn't talking to them anyway. Why should anybody care what they think about it?

Getting back to Barack Obama, why should gay activists be the ones to decide who should be welcome at the inauguration? At most, gay people represent ten percent of the population. What about the other 90 percent? Is he going to be our president too, or is the White House the sole property of the gay lobby? Are they seriously going to try to blacklist from public life the Evangelicals, the Mormons, the Catholics, and anyone else who doesn't sign their metaphorical loyalty oath? Gay people deserve a place at the table just like anyone else; that doesn't mean they need to own the table altogether.

Yes, we've elected a liberal president. We knew that. But does that entitle a tenth of the population to turn America into a buggerocracy? In other words, are gay Americans now the only Americans? Or do the rest of us count for something, too? It's looking like the demands for "equality" and "inclusion" were only one-way.

It's the Ramblin' Rod Show!

My post of Howdy Doody below prompted Ken to reminisce about his childhood TV icon Sheriff John. That, in turn, brings up fond memories of my own electronic childhood. (Why my generation felt so much more at home in front of a screen than in the real world is a matter for another time.)

I didn't grow up in Portland, but my hometown of Goldendale (motto: "Moo!") was a hundred miles or so upriver, so all our TV was cabled in from Portland. And the great reward of getting up and ready for school early enough was to kick off the day with Ramblin' Rod Anders. Alas, he wasn't as durable as Sheriff John, and Ramblin' Rod went to that great studio in the sky in 2002. His obituary at the Willamette Week has some good points to make about local children's television:

Locally produced kid shows have gone the way of dodo birds and Yugo cars in the years leading up to and following Rod Anders' departure from the airwaves... Meanwhile, kids are relegated to ubiquitous cable TV, with no homegrown options left. What do today's kids dream of for their 15 minutes of fame? Their own Web log? A spot goofing on America's Funniest Home Videos? My guess is that they're lost without a Ramblin' Rod on whom to project their visions of fame. He was missed before he even died.

Someone was good enough to post a clip from Ramblin' Rod during the years I and my friends watched him. Here we gooooo....

There's a simple answer for this

I don't see the ACLU setting up its own charities to take care of these people. Their only intent is to force Christians to give up their civil liberties. If the Church closes the charity, will the ACLU fill the gap? Not bloody likely.

There are atheists I respect, and I mean nothing derogatory about them here, but honestly, when was the last time you saw an explicitly atheist soup kitchen, or a Madelyn Murray O'Hair Memorial Hospice? The mandate to care for those in need is a religious one, and atheism does not in itself have anything analogous. Oh, kind and generous people can also be atheists, but I've never heard of anybody doing unto the least of these because of his atheism.

So, human toothaches at the ACLU, if you're serious about guaranteeing these people their "right" to kill, either take care of them yourselves or shut your frimpin' pieholes.

Beyond pro-life

I just read Bill's account of little Grace Elizabeth's brief time on earth. Read this first, for the background. Go ahead and read them both; I'll wait.

Back? Okay. Isn't it... well... amazing?

I love children, and I believe in the worth of all people, but Bill and Rebecca leave me humbled. Forget putting your money where your mouth is; these people put their heart and soul there, too. They have adopted and nurtured babies that both law and society have literally designated human trash. These children are like snowflakes; they should be treasured rather than just shoveled out of the way. A world filled with Donaghys would be one where the worth of a human life was never in question. Pro-life or anti-life would be irrelevant.

May God teach the rest of us to love even a fraction as well as this.

Hey, Kids! What time is it?

It's 1949, is what time it is. I know my Reverend Auntie will enjoy this, and Judy probably will too. And if my mom, who usually is far too dignified to read blogs, sees this, I promise not to tell anyone.

Newfies in Nassau

Ken posted several YouTubed versions of the classic song "Sloop John B," including one I'd never heard. It made me want to post my own favorite version, which is probably a little weird for Kingston Trio purists:

That's a group out of Newfoundland called Kilkenny Krew. They're a fairly typical example of traditional Newfie music. It's not quite Irish, and it's not quite Canadian (they would recoil even at the thought), but it's got a strong flavor of icy salt water with just a dash of belly-roasting whiskey and a strong aroma of cod. Even with the difference in latitude, this Caribbean song seems well at home with Newfoundlander sailors.

(Side note: For about half a year, Visigoth couldn't be put to bed without sitting in the rocker with me singing this at least twice beforehand.)

Montana snorkeler

With very insincere apologies to Paul and my cousin Ken.

Via Miss C.

Author! Author!

I found out today my old friend and erstwhile co-worker Brian Gawley has written a book. I guess you could say I knew him when. We used to spend long summer evenings sitting on the back deck of a now-defunct Jamaican restaurant, drinking Redhook Double-Black Stout and gently cursing the slings and arrows of an underpaid, single newsman's life.

One line I had to quote, that sounds exactly like something he'd write:

I've twice laughed in the face of death, teased its dog, and drank all its beer.

Intrigued yet? Me too. Go and check thou it out!

A good and faithful servant goes home

Fr. Richard Neuhaus now travels in elephants. May he spend eternity basking in the Lord's light and warmth.

Particularly poignant is this essay Fr. Neuhaus wrote back in 2000. I think it touches on an aspect of the faith that doesn't get talked about much. These days, we think of life and death in the same way the culture around us does: life good, death bad. But to the Christian, death is not the boogyman we fear sneaking out of our closet. It's not something to be pursued, but it is to be embraced when it arrives at God's behest, because it has no sting. Fr. Neuhaus' time was ripe, the Lord came for him, and everything worked as it should. Those who are left mourn for their loss of him, not his loss of life.

"He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." For the hopeful Christian, life and death are not opposites.

Akubra tip to Mark Shea.

In the news business, I'd better have been paying attention

You Remember 90% of 2008

You were paying attention during 2008. And you remember what happened really well. You'll be able to talk about 2008 for years to come... Even when most people have forgotten what went down.

How Much Do You Remember 2008?

I think the one I missed was about the Batman movie I didn't have time to see.

Well, we're off to a nice start

It's been a long year already, and we're only eight days into it. If 2009 was a Jewish boy, we'd be snipping off the end of its john thomas today.

Actually, it goes back a bit farther. First, the paper's webmistress got downsized in November, during the busiest time of the year, which left me the only person in the place who could take over. (With a heckuva learning curve to catch up on, let me tell you.) Then on the day before New Year's Eve, the whole company gathered around the copy machine to hear that we were getting a pay cut, a flat percentage across the board, until at least April. At that, we're better off than most other properties in the corporation, where there have been a lot of job cuts as well. We ended up having a few people laid off here, too, but mostly it's positions going unfilled. Unfortunately, that means existing personnel have to cover those jobs indefinitely. The upshot was that since about Christmas I've been doing three people's jobs, as well as my side job on weekends. And getting less money for it, as well. January being a thin time in this business in general, I'm finally getting a little time today. So what do I do? I share it with you folks. Don't you feel honored?

For the record, I can't complain. I'm fortunate to have a job at all. I expect to weather this recession like I did the one in the early 90's: by being the chap who can and will step in and do anything in the place. Guys like that are always the last to be laid off.

The whole newspaper industry is in a shambles right now; comparatively, we're thriving. The conservative pundits tend to link the decline to lousy journalism, and maybe that's a factor at big papers like the NYT or the Trib. But at small papers like ours, the issue is a little more straightforward. (Cullen knows how this goes.)

See, the news isn't what pays our salaries; it's the advertising. News is just a loss-leader, to get people to read our product. (Don't tell the reporters that; they like to revel in their status as "professionals.") And who are the big-ticket advertisers? Realtors and car dealerships. Those are the businesses who buy full-page, full-color ads, or commission special advertising supplements. Unfortunately, realtors and car dealers are entirely dependent on the credit industry to be able to sell their goods. So when the banks and lenders went in the sewer last fall, their businesses followed suit. And from there, the well-known material rolled downhill to us poor newspapermen. Go on: pick up your local fishwrap and take a look at the automotive and real estate ads. Thin as sweat compared to a year or two ago. It's a temporary situation, but it's still taking its toll at the bottom of the food chain.

So working seven days a week, well into the night more often than not, has put a crimp in everything else. It's past Epiphany, and I still have Christmas presents I haven't sent out yet. Embarrassing.

Today is Octopus Boy's first birthday. (He shares it with some singer, I believe. Can't recall who.) Poor kid is spending it wrapped up like a mummy. Why, you ask innocently? Because Saturday evening the little disaster factory reached up and grabbed Drama Queen's boiling cup of cocoa and dumped it down his front. My Lovely and Brilliant Wife took him to the emergency room with second-degree burns down his chest and arm. By the time I got to the hospital (I was in Othello coming home from the side job), they had pumped some morphine into him and the screaming had subsided into a glassy-eyed look of general apathy. He's healing up pretty well, although his arm still looks pretty unhappy. Drama Queen has been knocking herself out being the perfect big sister meanwhile, even though rationally she knows she's not to blame for it.

You know, by the time you have this many kids, they might as well paint your name on a parking spot outside the emergency room. Been there, done that. I don't think there's a one of the kids that hasn't made at least one trip.

Finally, I put a list of the kids in the sidebar, so readers know whom I'm talking about. Most of the names are different from the ones my wife uses, but what the heck? It's my blog. A note on the second daughter's name: Last Christmas she got creative with the To/From tags on the presents she gave out, and mine said, "To the man with many virtuous daughters, from the one that excellest them all." (If it still doesn't ring a bell, look here.) So it's not to imply any lack of those qualities in my other girls, but just because I think it's one of the coolest things I've ever heard from a teenager. I know I've used the kids' real names on here in the past on occasion, and if some stalker wanted to piece them together, they probably could. In which case I refer them to this. I'm not worried, really.

And that's the way it is. Courage. What's the frequency, Kenneth? Good night, and good luck.

You don't go writing hot checks

down in Mississippi Alabama
And there ain't no good chain gang.
*

The least embarrassing embarrassment I've ever endured

Barack is very disappointed with me!


I only scored 27 on the Obama Test

It gets worse: I have eight children, not one of whom has ever been partially aborted and then left on a shelf to die. I can't believe he'd want to share a country with me.

Note to Judy

For the record, I'm well aware that you and your husband were lawfully married in 1967. I spoke metaphorically, and in terms my mother would have disapproved of as well. Please excuse the slight hint of Irish Spring on my breath.

And it came to pass in those days...

All the stress, all the overtime, all the lost sleep and dread of not making everything perfect in time... this is what it was all for. Well worth it.



A blessed Christmas to all!

It's too late for this year

But maybe next Christmas... if madness doesn't seize us all first!

If you wish to inspire dreams of non-Euclidean madness into all of your holiday guests, then take home this ageless, indestructible creature from Beyond the Stars. The Great Cthulhu yule tree ornament.

Sure, he'll destroy all mankind, but in the mean time you’ll get a whole house-full of fanatical cult of believers ready to do your bidding during the holiday season. By the time they clue into what’s going on, they will already be tormented by visions of this Ancient One.

I want!

You go, Dad!

Humiliate: [Late Latin humiliāre, humiliāt-, to humble, from humilis, humble; see humble.]

Dennis Baltimore Jr. was caught vandalizing school property at Long Beach's Wilson Classical High School.

He was sentenced by his dad to walk the streets of Long Beach and Signal Hill on Tuesday for five hours in two locations wearing a sign saying, "I am a juvenile delinquent who should be punished. I have wasted your tax money with dumb acts of vandalism in the public schools."

The lede asks "Cruel and unusual punishment or just good, old-fashioned discipline?" as though there were necessarily a difference. A punishment that's "usual" soon becomes ineffective, and an effective punishment requires a certain measure of cruelty. It can be overdone easily, of course, but the point is to make him really, really not want to be in that situation again.

The kid's not suffering any permanent harm. He's just learning some desperately-needed humility. My parents would have done this, too. The fact that he accepted his punishment even though he's too big to use brute force on, indicates that he's been pretty well raised so far. He did something stupid and destructive, and his dad is reacting appropriately.

I'll bet anything we don't see this kid on America's Most Wanted in ten years. Way to go, Dad!

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil

My best friend from childhood, Nate Hilman, the Greatest Photographer in the Northwest, doesn't read this blog much, but on the off chance he does:

Happy birthday, you elderly [person of irregular birth]! Now you know what it feels like to be this old! Ha ha ha... ugh! Hack! Wheeze!

Careful what you ask for

We're off to go ice skating for my Excellent and Virtuous Daughter's eighteenth birthday. So I won't be here to face the recriminations and slurs on my Christian witness that will inevitably follow from this video. Caution: Hilarious but very bawdy. You have been warned.



Hat tip - and wagging finger - to the wonderful Miss C.

Holy cow!

Two buses slid down an icy hill and are now hanging over I-5 in Seattle.

Turns out they were full of kids from Moses Lake's Job Corps center. Everyone seems to have gotten out all right, praise God, but the paper has been getting call after call about it from worried parents. Hardly surprising.

I've driven on those hills in the winter, and it ain't pretty.

Update:Here's another picture that kind of captures the topography a little better:

The weather outside is frightful

Actually, it's not bad here, but the rest of Washington got snow dumped on it as if with God's own shovel. For some reason, Moses Lake got passed over. Which kind of sucks, because I have small children, a large hill, and several saucer sleds just crying out to be combined.

Meanwhile, there's nothing like a good snowfall to bring out the Norwegian in all of us.



Uff da!

What's in a name?

I know there are a myriad comments to be made on seeing these two stories so close together, but I'm not going to be the one to make them. No siree. Not this little gray duck.

Reasons to stop bellyaching

About the incoming administration.

About the economy.

About the ex.

God's been good to us. I need to shut up and just be grateful.

If this is the '09 model, I dread the 2010 one

Cassandra seems to get it as regards the auto bailout. Just a link, as the language isn't universally suitable. But it's worth the click.

Submitted without comment

A jolly, red-nosed tip of the Akubra to Protein Wisdom.

Goodbye, good guy

Van Johnson travels in elephants.*

Nobody would ever mistake Johnson for a dashing leading man, but whatever character he played always seemed to me like someone I'd enjoy sitting down and having a beer with. He came across as the quintessential good guy, whether he was Bogart's not-too-bright but fundamentally decent exec in The Caine Mutiny or Gene Kelly's cynical, tippling sidekick in Brigadoon. Those two roles are what I remember him best for, but he has an impressive list of credits under his name. Time and again, he plays the second banana in an aw-shucks sort of way. (Ack! In looking at his bio, it looks like his marriage was kind of a sordid one arranged by the studio. He married his best friend's wife the day their divorce became final, and Louis B. Mayer paid off the jilted husband with career favors because the marriage enhanced Johnson's own career. Sick and shameful.)

I hope he's somewhere now where I can meet him someday and find out if he's really as nice as he came across on screen.

Cheesy Christmas Movies: Miracle on 34th Street

No, not the famous one with Maureen O'Hara and Natalie (drift)Wood. This one was a made-for-TV version from 1955, condensed into an hour-long format. I haven't seen it yet, but I will as soon as I get time. (Right now, we're decorating the house for Christmas and I just stepped away because the noise was getting overwhelming.) I notice a few familiar names in it, but nowhere near the big names the feature-film version had. Still, it's a story that could probably benefit from being condensed. Leave opinions in the comments.

This year, give the gift of Death

Murder, Inc. has gift certificates. How disgusting is that?

Although I can think of some slogans they could use:
The gift that keeps on giving makes giving obsolete.

Why share your stocking space?

From our family to your lack of one

For unto us a child is torn into tiny pieces and stuffed in a dumpster

What blob of cells is this...

We wish you a saline scalding, we wish you a saline scalding...

Or even a simple
Merry Deathmas!

Feel free to fill in your own in the comments.

What did you think she was doing?

Courtesy of Long Drink:

Giving Thanks

I didn't have time to post during our national paean to gluttony, because I was too busy, well, gluttonizing. This marks the first year that my Lovely and Brilliant Wife has hosted Thanksgiving at our house. I think that should be considered sort of a rite of passage, especially for women: the first year that you don't go to some other woman's house and partake of her meal. It's like moving from daughter (or daughter-in-law) to mother. Since it was also her first holiday with the title "Grandma," it seems fittin' for her to savor her matriarchal moment.

I took the afternoon off on Wednesday to drive over to Tacoma and get Wharf Rat, her boyfriend and the grandchild, then stop off and pickup Long Drink on the way back. That was the plan, anyway. As it happens, someone went and moved around all the roads between Seattle and Tacoma so that none of them look like they did twenty-odd years ago when I lived there. After an eternity creeping along in holiday weekend traffic and twice - twice! ending up on I-5 going the wrong direction, I finally collected up all the young 'uns and we made it back home around midnight.

(Incidentally, what's the correct way to designate Wharf Rat's chap? They're not married, so "son-in-law" is obviously out. They live together (for now, in her mother's overcrowded apartment, God help them!), so "boyfriend" or "gentleman friend" both seem too transitory. "Baby Daddy" is revolting on several levels, not least of which is grammatical. "Partner" carries the baggage of being used as a homosexual epuhemism. All I can think of is "pseudo-son-in-law." So until I get a better suggestion, PSIL it is.)

The day itself was not without hitches. The cooking had to be done in shifts, as different kids tackled different dishes. The dining room table collapsed as we were setting it (before the food was laid out on it, praise be) and had to be shored up with TV trays and a two-by-four. Long Drink (12) and Drama Queen (oh, so 13) had to be dispatched to Dollar Tree for wineglasses, as it turned out that all of ours had been broken over the last year.

But it all came together beautifully. The kids pulled it off with nary a bicker, which in our house is right up there with loaves and fishes. They pitched in on cleaning up after dinner without nagging. Visigoth (4) and Ostrogoth (2) ran out of attention span before the rest of us ran out of appetite, so I spent much of the meal corralling them rather than eating. (I actually had my big plate of turkey and stuffing for breakfast this morning.) After dinner we test-played a game that Covarr (19) bought for the church youth group, which he helps lead. And there was Christina presiding over it all with justifiable pride. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. It was like living in a Hallmark Channel special.

We've got a lot to be thankful for. Both the PSIL and I have gainful, family-supporting employment, our house is safe, everyone's in good health, and the prospects for next year are looking good. Someone online (I forget who) said they always watch "It's a Wonderful Life" on Thanksgiving rather than Christmas. It's a good time for it, especially with the economy tightening up. We may be worried about this or that, but the reality is, things could be a heap worse. This time last year, I was sure it would be by now. Thank God we live in Bedford Falls; it could so easily be Pottersville. I may not be the richest man in Moses Lake, but you couldn't prove it by yesterday.

In which vein, here it is. Replay your favorite parts while you wallow in gratitude.

More Calvin & Hobbes greatness

Two-year-old Ostrogoth has actually done this:

Book facts

As long as I'm stuck here at the paper on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for an advertising client to call me back, I might as well respond to my auntie's Book Facts meme. Seven weird, random things about my reading habits.

Only seven? Where to begin?

1. When I grow up, I want to be Harry Turtledove. I've actually started in (barely) on an alternate history novel that at this rate will be finished somewhere around the time the earth crashes into the sun. But ah my foes and oh my friends, the research is fun to do!

2. I have yet to see any part of a Flashman novel that doesn't immediately set my table on a roar. Seriously. I can just pick up the book, turn to a page, and laugh. It doesn't hurt that the author was the most painstaking craftsman of historical fiction ever to draw breath, as well as having a bawdy, curmudgeonly sense of humor. Alas that he had to stop drawing breath last winter.

3. I save my place by dog-earing the page at the bottom. I started doing in grade school that because of a librarian who would skim along the top corner of any book I returned to see if I'd been mistreating it.

4. The only Orson Scott Card book I've ever not enjoyed was Ender's Game. That's the only thing by him that most people have even heard of. Almost everything else he's written, I loved.

5. In high school I discovered Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books and became hooked. I still think they're one of the greatest unknown treasures in sci-fi/fantasy.

6. The only horror author who has ever frightened me is H. P. Lovecraft. The others might as well not even bother.

7. When I re-read How Green was my Valley, the words on the page are in English, but the ones behind my eyes are in Welsh. For a man who didn't actually speak Welsh (at least I don't think so), the author has a perfect feel for the cadences and quirks of the most beautiful language on earth.

I usually don't tag anyone in paticular, but this time I will. Kaci, Ricki and Word Girl, tell us all about it!

A little resentment, a little envy

My friends got to go out hunting this year, and I was stuck here raising kids and working two jobs. So I guess I'll have to settle for doing it vicariously:

Not with a roar, but with a whimper

I'd love to gloat over the Apple Cup game yesterday, but it was basically a matter of which team reeked slightly less. Still, we kicked the Dawgs, and that's what matters. And I can still point and guffaw at my friend Sister Mary Attila: ex-nun, rabid Husky, and now Managing Editrix at the Sequim Gazette.

Neener neener!

Turbaconducken, anyone?

I can feel my arteries clogging just looking at the pictures.

Go Cougs!

There's a cool story about the first Apple Cup game here.

This was so much funnier before I had kids

Wharf Rat (now 20) would have done this in her childhood. Visigoth (4) has come darn close.

By way of explanation, I found a complete collection of Calvin & Hobbes for download here. I need to e-mail the excellent Marcello and thank him profusely.

Update: Speaking of Visigoth:

Is a picture of our home life beginning to emerge?

I think I'll stand over here...

... A long way away from this guy.

MÜNSTER, Germany -- Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.

So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.

Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn't portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises.

Just the name "Muhammad Sven" provokes thought. In any case, I'm glad I'm not underwriting his life insurance. Akubra tip to Damian.

We hate you because you're intolerant!

If you follow the comments at the YouTube site, you can certainly see the gay people's point. The Christians had no business going into the Castro district and praying or singing. Even if they were within their rights technically, it was just plain rude and more than a bit foolhardy. Imagine a group of, say, black kids going into a well-established white neighborhood and doing something that made their outsiderness obvious. Wouldn't the locals be justified in doing the same thing? Of course they would.



There's a commentary at Michelle's from one of the Jesus Freaks, and apparently the (remember, rightfully) angry locals threw coffee on one of them, knocked her down and kicked her. Just a friendly way of saying, "Go back where your kind belongs, breeder!"

Coffee snorter

From the inimitable Iowahawk:

In his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial 45 years ago, Dr. King said "I have a dream that one day my children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Let us now take pride that Tuesday we Americans proved that neither thing matters anymore.

Set down your beverage and read the whole thing.

Oh, to have this kind of time!

Not to mention the savvy. I can't imagine working all this out. I wouldn't embed it if I could; you'll have to go watch it all at full size. Akubra tip to Cassandra.

Bless me, Barry, for I have sinned?

Okay, I understand the new president-elect isn't behind the California prop-8 tantrums. But what with the whole Obamessiah thing and the irony of tolerant brownshirtism, this from the comments at the above-linked post was too good to pass up:

O my Obama,


I am heartily sorry for
having offended thy homosexual activist goon squad,
and I detest all my "incorrect" thoughts and acts,
because I dread the loss of business/social acceptance in such a "tolerant" clique,
and the pains of vandalism and harassment;
but most of all because
they offend Thee, my Obama,
Who are all good and
deserving of all my unquestioning sycophantic devotion.
I firmly resolve,
with the help of the queers continued patronage
to confess my doubleplusungood thoughts,
to donate as much as the gays demand of me to the next gay marriage initiative
and to amend my life.

Amen.

Two possible reactions

In a related case, a group of Christians held a funeral for a baby, born alive, and left to die on the roof of an abortion clinic. The response from the president-elect was that it was a disgusting political ploy.

Okay, so they called his attention to it intentionally to highlight his response. It was Operation Rescue, after all, and they're not known for subtlety. But what happened to the child was real, and despicable. It was completely unworthy of any civilized society.

Now, there are two possible reactions to something like this. One is to say, "My God, this murder was an abomination. Things like that must not be allowed to happen." The other is to say, "Why are you making me look at something that makes me so uncomfortable?You're only trying to make me look bad!" Guess which one Barack Obama chose?

This gives us more insight into his character than a hundred televised debates. It's not a political ploy, dammit! It's a human being! If human life is so worthless to this man that he cannot spare even a moment's sorrow, but thinks only of his political position, then he is utterly without conscience and all his charm is the façade of the sociopath.

Making health care Katolischenfrei may work too well

Ed Morrissey reiterates what I pointed out yesterday:

How serious are they? So serious that they won’t bother to sell the hospitals. They’ll shut them down and take the losses in order to prevent their use as abortion clinics. To do otherwise, the bishops stated, would be to cooperate in the evil of abortions.

What kind of impact would that have? The Catholic Church is one of the nation’s biggest health-care providers. In 2007, they ran 557 hospitals that serviced over 83 million patients. The church also had 417 clinics that saw over seven million patients. If they shut down almost a thousand hospitals and clinics nationwide, the US would not just lose a significant portion of available health care, but the poor and working-class families that received the health care would have fewer options.

Also, the Catholic Church runs this on a non-profit basis, spending vast sums of its money to ensure access for those unable to pay. That’s the kind of model that many on the Left believe should exclusively provide health care — and FOCA would spell the end of the major provider already in that model.

No doubt the left will call this blackmail, as though the only reason the Church provided health care at all were for political leverage. What the pro-aborts cannot grasp is that there are some wrongs that some people simply will not do, and that those same people do right because it is right. Some people actually believe in absolutes of right and wrong, and in eternal consequences for both. Genuine principle is so alien to the pro-abortion lobby that they will end up selling out poor people in their desperate quest to bend our faith to their will.

God bless you, Mr. Sybouts

One of my Sunday School teachers went home last week. I mentioned him in my list of things I like about Protestants. His role was to tell us stories out of the Bible, and boy, did he. Because of him and some others like him, when I needed to find my way back to the Lord, I had the scriptures to fall back on. I'm grateful.

Most of my memories of Larry Sybouts are little details. At Goldendale First Baptist Church in the 70s, we still had an old-fashioned belfry, with a thick bell rope that hung down in the narthex. Mr. Sybouts (I'm still not old enough to think of him as "Larry") used to slip back there before and after services to ring the bell. Once in a while he'd let me do the ringing. Being just a little feller, I would pull down on the rope and it would hoist me back up in the air a few feet. That was the coolest thing in the world at the time.

Mr. Sybouts' trademark was Juicy Fruit gum. He always had a bottomless supply on his person, and every time he encountered a child, out would come the pack and he'd offer us a stick. The last time I saw him I was probably about twenty. I know I was taller than he was bu then. He never even hesitated before proffering the gum.

So Lord, if You happen to see a man in a gray flat-top haircut show up at the gate and offer You a stick of gum, would You take extra-good care of him? And You might let him ring some heavenly bells. He'd love that. Thank You.

Islamic calligraphy comes in a bewildering, beautiful array of scripts. Copying the Qur’an is a sacred act, and — so I suppose — extreme calligraphic exertions are one way of demonstrating extreme piety. One of the most demanding scripts is the ghubar script — literally, “dust script” — and it requires that the scribe produce words that are as fine as hairs while still legible (on pain of eternal damnation, for distorting the Holy Book is a Mighty Sin). To an extent this sort of miniature writing had some actual functionality: sending long, compact messages to far-off lands by carrier pigeon, for example. But…

This is unbelievable. Check thou it out.

The gauntlet has been thrown

The bishops have clearly articulated the Catholic position on abortion, and it's not "nuanced," no matter what Nancy Pelosi thinks. Now we'll see if our impending president actually cares. I'm betting not. Which could have some disastrous effects, because I don't think he actually believes that the Church will have no choice but to close hospitals and charities, rather than participate in abortion. There may also be excommunications for pro-death politicians.

I expect there will be punishment in store for any bishop who continues to hold to Church teaching on the matter. The First Amendment must not be allowed to interfere with the Sacrament of Abortion.

Thinking of migrating

I was considering today the possibility of moving over to Wordpress. It's not that Blogger's been mean to me or anything, but Wordpress seems to have a lot more versatility with files and widgets and photos (oh my!). But I'd hate to lose my archives and sidebar stuff, and I don't want to get into a situation where I have to spend a lot of time on blogging. (I waste more time at it as it is than I ought.)

Has anyone else ever made that move, and how did it work out for you? Any tips/warnings? Oh, and what about Haloscan comments? Will those disappear? I like having access to them all the way back to my blogbirth.

Why can't we reenact this every year?

On November 12, 1970, a whale exploded on the beach near Florence, Oregon. Hilarity and severe auto damage ensued.



No matter how many times I see this video, I still can't stop laughing at the change in the observers' expressions as they realize that large hunks of whale are, in fact, just as subject to gravity as anything else. A/T to Apoloblogology.

Just so we're clear

This is a hate crime:

This is not:


This is what awaits people who vote wrong:


Full story here. And promises of what's to come here.

I can has cornz?

The baby (somnophobic little pill) and I have been getting up several times a night, so I set "Hee Haw" to record on the DVR. He doesn't mind, and there's nobody else up at that hour to complain. So, why not:


moar funny pictures

Ignorant burbling of the day

From the AP article I linked below, proof that being an "activist" doesn't require knowing squat about history beyond, say, 1969:

"At a fundamental level, the Utah Mormons crossed the line on this one," said gay rights activist John Aravosis, an influential Washington, D.C-based blogger. "They just took marriage away from 20,000 couples and made their children bastards. You don't do that and get away with it."

Oh, really?

Dolt.

Good church, bad church

So gay people in California are cheesed at the Mormon Church for supporting Proposition 8. Boycotts are planned, and apparently there have already been protests and minor violent incidents. There's a push to get the Church's tax-exempt status revoked on the grounds that they had no business getting involved in politics.

I notice, however, that the same people who most vigorously oppose mixing religion and politics aren't calling for a similar action against the liberal churches that fought hard against the proposition. I haven't heard the gay activists calling for a single boycott or IRS audit of the Episcopal, Unitarian or Metropolitan Community churches over their involvement in the area. My UU-minister aunt has worked hard for the gay marriage cause here in Washington. I'm not on the same side, but you don't see me or any other conservative shouting for revenge on her church for taking a stand. That's what religious people do: they vote their consciences. Why hold it only against one side?

Yes! Oh, lordy, yes!

Bioegineering students in Texas are working on a beer that will fight cancer, heart disease and diabetes. The secret, apparently, is a genetically-modified yeast. Now this is what scientific research should be about.

"Honey, would you go to the fridge and get me another bottle of medicine?"

Another Obama thought

When Barack Obama was born, his parents would have been unable to marry in 21 states. The last such laws were struck down the year I was born. Yesterday he was elected president by voters who had never heard the word "miscegenation" and would have no concept of its meaning if you explained it. Yep, things have changed.

Support for the president

This may seem contradictory to what I've posted over teh last few days, but it's really not. I outlined my fears and objections to an Obama presidency. Be those as they may, the die is cast.

I was a McCain supporter, not just because he was the Republican nominee, but because I hold a high opinion of him. He campaigned like a gentleman (which may have been his undoing) and when he conceded last night, he did that like a gentleman as well. We as conservatives should do the same.

Back in April, several of us agreed to avoid certain behaviors we saw damage the Clinton and Bush administrations unduly. Now a blogger at Patterico has advice for the new chief executive and also reminds us what we as conservative Americans ought to say and do now that Obama is the president-elect:

1. We’ll acknowledge that you’re the President of the United States, that you got the job fairly and properly, and that you want to do the right thing.

2. We’ll shun anyone who believes personal harm to you is a good way to prevent your policies from coming in. For that matter, we’ll shun anyone who believes personal harm to you is a good idea for any reason.

3. We’ll try to stop the programs that look like boondoggles before they start. Once they start, we’ll try to make them work as efficiently as possible.

4. We’re not all moving to Costa Rica or anything; we don’t view this as the end of civilization. We’re going to try to make this country a better place. We’ll keep farming, working, raising families, and petting puppies. Sometimes, we’ll like you.

5. We’ll fight for what we believe is right. The free-market folks will fight. The small-government folks will fight. We’ll point out how the programs aren’t working. We’ll point out the long-term harm. And in all likelihood, we’ll try to get a viable candidate to send you on the lecture circuit in 2012.

Barack Obama is going into office with a number of handicaps. The biggest, I think, is just the temptation to abuse his popularity in the ways I pointed out below. He's also made a lot of pie-in-the-sky promises that he now has either to keep or get out of without being seen to weasel.

His lack of conscience where human life is concerned will cost him the support of a lot of Christians who otherwise might be reconciled to him. (Me among them, alas; I aim to fight him on those issues every inch of the way.) And he's going to have a very, very hard time gaining the respect of the military, because he's never served. Clinton faced the same thing and never really overcame it.

I think he got the office with a lot of dishonesty, through ACORN fraud and other machine tactics. But as the saying goes, once the ship sails, all bills are paid. Now that he's in, we need to pray for him and hope he doesn't get himself and us into any situations we can't get out of by the next election cycle. Let's not be like the Gore campaign and refuse to accept a fait accompli.

I'm pleased to see that the White House will no longer be exclusively white. I'd rather it were a conservative black man in the Oval Office, but at least that particular barrier has been broken for good.

Good luck, Mr. President-Elect.

Addendum: This is what I meant. Would that it had been said several years ago.

November 5 and Triumph of the Will

I'm sure the post below made everyone think I'm just another of those rubes clinging bitterly to God and guns, shouting "Obama=Hitler" as though it were an item of political discourse or something. On the contrary, I chose my subject matter most carefully. Allow me to clarify.

Barack Obama is not Hitler. I don't expect to see him establish liquidation camps for his enemies. I doubt very much he will enmesh us in a war to spread his brand of political and racial purity across the globe. And pace Godwin's Law, I'm not tacking the name onto him simply as the embodiment of evil.

The movie I embedded below has nothing directly to do with extermination camps or world wars, either. It's entirely positive in tone. It reflects what happened when a highly charismatic leader surfed to office on the shoulders of a throng of worshipping admirers.

When Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, the country was enmired in a depression that makes ours look tame. They were demoralized, they were anxious, and they were tired of the rest of the world holding them in contempt. The National Socialists promised law and order, economic prosperity and prestige for the nation. in contrast to his image today, Hitler was seen as a uniter, not a divider. Unlike his ally to the south, he actually did make the trains run on time. He was marvelously effective and popular to match.

Hitler's popularity came mostly from his person, not his political party. Unfortunately, that popularity was such that he didn't have to do much to squelch opposition himself. Public opinion was sufficiently pro-Hitler that it wasn't necessary to have more than cursory laws against dissent.

This is where the parallels between Obama and Hitler come in. Try to forget for a moment what we know of Hitler in retrospect. To Germans of his time, he was young (only 45 when the movie was made), vibrant, optimistic. He made them feel good about themselves. He gave them hope.

Like Hitler, Obama comes to leadership at a time when Americans are hungry for a person to believe in rather than a dry philosophy. Obama has a powerful and not terribly scrupulous political machine backing him. He has no Enabling Act, but he does have a substantial majority for his party in both houses, essentially creating a one-party rule. He also has a huge grass-roots following, for whom Obama's enemies are their enemies. He also has a lot of friends in the popular media, through whose lens he looks even more like a savior. The vandalism and assaults during the campaign weren't ordered by him. They didn't have to be.

Hitler tolerated churches only so far as they played ball. The infamous Reichskonkordat, which guaranteed freedom for German Catholics, required the Catholic Church to refrain from fighting in the political arena. Most of the Protestant churches in Germany made similar agreements. Religion that contradicted the National Socialist Party was considered outside the pale and suppressed by any means necessary. Today the Church stands for human rights against the Obama platform as well. Undoubtedly lots of bishops will go along with him in support, they think, of the greater good. Bishops who haven't have already begun to see some menacing signs. If the pope attempts to discipline the dissenting bishops, he'll be painted as an enemy of America. In 1934, remember, Jews weren't yet sentenced to death. They were just unpopular and distrusted. Practicing Christians are likely to be treated that way under an Obama-Democratic government such as has just been elected.

Today, we see Triumph of the Will as a load of hooey, but in 1934, it was seen as just a portrait of a self-evident truth. That's because there were no media contradicting Hitler's version of events. Newspapers and radio stations were expected to adhere to the party line. Obama may not have thugs smashing presses and jamming radio broadcasts, but he does have the Fairness Doctrine, which his supporters are already gleefully promising to reinstate. What that promises bring is a velvet-gloved Canadian-style censorship. Look at the treatment Kathy Shaidle, Mark Steyn, et al. have received form mainstream Canadians. "Free-speecher" has actually become a pejorative up there. "Racist" is poised to become a synonym for "anti-Obama," and who wants to defend the hate speech of a racist? It won't take long, I suspect, before conservative talk radio is forced back to the shortwave bands.

Now, I don't think this is permanent. I don't think Obama could make himself president-for-life, even if he's inclined to. The 22nd Amendment may be repealed in his administration, but even so, the American electoral system isn't going to disappear under him. He certainly isn't going to ship all the undesirables off to camps and gas us to death. Any damage he could do will be temporary. But it could still take decades to mop up after, and be very unpleasant in the meantime.

Catholic Überblogger Mark Shea is fond of dividing history into two parts: "What Could it Hurt?", and "How Were We to Know?" Watch Triumph of the Will, not with hindsight, but with the optimism and pride that the original viewers felt in 1934, as they witnessed the dawn of a new, hopeful day. Then ask yourself, "What could it hurt?"

I for one welcome our new Democratic overlords

... and would like to offer this tribute to their benevolent reign.

Kalifornia Klansmen?

Via Jeff (HTBUH):
This reminds me of the Ku Klux Klan campaign against Al Smith.

But remember: conservatives are the bigots.

Ironically, there's a semi-official belief among Mormons that the US constitution is divinely inspired. Presumably this includes the Fourth Amendment. Doubly insulting.

Afterthought: from an LDS commenter at Protein Wisdom

The Church cannot ever ever ever recognize same-sex marriage. Our foundational assumptions about human nature and about God’s nature and about life after death prevent it. And the last time we were out of step with the rest of the country regarding marriage practices we were murdered, raped, ravaged, pillaged, and driven out of the country at gunpoint in the dead of winter.

So we would kind of like that to not happen again, dig?

Point well taken.

News from the home front

I've been purposely staying away from the subject of our ongoing mortgage trouble, both because I didn't know what was going to happen and because, honestly, nobody wants to read the whining. But we talked with a credit counselor yesterday, and it appears very likely that we won't lose the place. We'll wind up with some extra legal fees and such, but we won't face the impossibility of finding a rental we can afford for this size family (are you freakin' kidding?). Everyone who prayed, thanks!

We've actually been helped a lot by the mortgage meltdown this year, because currently the bank has a lot more houses than it can ever unload. There are three homes up for sale on our block alone. (As it happens, I know at least two of those aren't foreclosures, and I doubt the third is. But still...)

So we have our vine and our fig tree after all. And none shall make us afraid.

Obama's Grandma

Madelyn Dunham now travels in elephants.*

No snark on this one, if you please. A man's grandmother is sacred. I believe him when he says that his best character features were formed by her. Kids might obey their parents, but it's the grandparents they listen to.

If he's elected today, then it's sad that she couldn't be there to see it happen. She deserved to. And if he's not, then she's entitled to be proud of him anyway.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her.

Chortle!

Or should that be "siortl?"

Swansea Council contacted its in-house translation service when designing a bilingual sign barring heavy goods vehicles from a road in the Morriston area of the Welsh city.

But as the translator was not available, they received an automated e-mail response in Welsh saying: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

Unaware of the real meaning of the message, officials had it printed on the sign under the English, which correctly reads: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only."

The council took down the sign, near an Asda supermarket, after Welsh speakers spotted the mistake.

I guess bilingualism has a long way to go.

See why I love this woman?

Given the choice between despising the imperfect and embracing them, guess which one Sarah does?

NEW PARIS, Pennsylvania: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska was swiftly working the rope line at an apple orchard in southwestern Pennsylvania when she met a supporter who brought her to an abrupt stop.

Amber Brown, 23, held a poster that read, "I have Down syndrome and I'm voting for you. I'm a fighter too!"

Seeing Brown, Palin wrapped her in a tight hug.

"I love that poster," Palin said. "You're a fighter and you're beautiful."

Then Palin hugged her again. Before climbing back on her campaign bus, she circled back to Brown and hugged her a third time...

Ignoring her teleprompter, Palin gazed to her left. "I've got to make a comment about this poster," she said. "'I'm extra-special just like Trig."'

"Now what she's saying there," Palin said, "that extra chromosome that our blessed bundles of joy were born with. It's like a bumper sticker that was mailed to me from a Down syndrome group in Arizona. You know how we have bumper stickers on the back of our vehicles saying, you know, My kid's a better soccer player than your kid, and, My kid's on the honor roll and your kid isn't, well this bumper sticker says, 'We win - my kid has more chromosomes than your kid.' "

Afterward, Anita Kearns of Louisville, Kentucky, who had watched the speech with her children - Josh, 27, who has Down syndrome, and Katie, 19 - was beaming. "She stands for everything that matters right now," Kearns said. "Free enterprise, the American way, working for your family."

But most important, Kearns said, "I love that she's an advocate for special needs. It hasn't been since the Kennedys that we've heard a politician talk about it, and they talked about it in a very different way. And that was so long ago."

Yep. There was a time when 90 percent of these children weren't consigned to the dumpster. Sarah Palin is just plumb good. Which is why her opponents despise her so much.