Fundamentalism and its Malcontents

“I just think Ubu Bush has the most awesomest values, dude.” - Candy Hyperdermic

Although it can argued that air may escape from various regions of the human body, there are clearly two that predominate. The upper escape, and the lower escape. All air cares about is escaping. It matters not, to the air, from which portal it makes its egress.

Or does it?

This brings us to metaphysics and navel-gazing, which is a paygrade above where we are allowed to go, and so let’s just stay superficial here, and stick to the original premise that air, regardless of its attitude, escapes our bodies. Out the mouth and nose, or out the fundament.

Those whose air escapes mostly out of the fundament, are called fundamentalists. And their flatulences can be heard cracking from AM talk radio, from santorumonious politicians, and from puppets of the plastic pulpit — the wise and holy Phatrobertson and the one they call Foolwell being chief among their head flatulators.

The mephetic phosgenes spiral and dance around their bloviant poverties and create an atmosphere inconducive to rational thought or even irrational exuberances, about which they set themselves up as killjoys, buzzkills and kindergarten teachers.

What is a reasonable hominid to do?

The New Dictation
What makes matters worse is The New Dictation. Dictators have now garnered the support of Churchianity and Big Media, and are now fascizing the bundle into a weapon hard to dodge. And yet bullshit has a way of being smelt. And lowhole flatulences are not of a different class. And this is where blogs come in. We bloggers have an opportunity to cut through the smoke, so to speak, and signal from the proverbial flames. While it lasts. Lord knows, if it weren’t for candidates having blogs, blogs might already be history. Instead, we are making history.

How to Thump a Bible
or
Foolwell’s Guide to Churchianity
In the ’60s there was an influential little book called, “Black, Like Me”, about a young Caucasian who smeared on the brownface, stuffed his pants, and wolla! An African-American! Although I believe the term was Shaft.

Perhaps it is time to put on the hingehead, constrict the lips, infiltrate a few groups, and create a series of “Fundamentalist Like Me” books. Understanding Churchianity from the inside, might be a good place to start. I was brought up in the Christian church, but what I see pullulating from the plastic pulpits is an alien creature.

Seeing Godot Out
Once it is understood what this alien creature, this Godot, is all about,
it will be much easier to see him out.

One Million Years Ago Today
One million years ago today, there was no Jesus, no Mohammed. And yet the world was able to live another million years. Will we exist a million years after?

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) The leader of Romania’s opposition party demanded Tuesday that the results of weekend presidential and parliamentary elections be annulled because of fraud and a new vote be held.

Presidential candidate Traian Basescu, who heads the centrist Justice and Truth Alliance, claimed election authorities gave an extra 160,000 ballots, or 2.5 percent of the votes cast, to his main rival, Prime Minister Adrian Nastase of the ruling Social Democratic Party.

‘’We have no doubt this is fraud … We want the immediate dismissal of election authorities,'’ Basescu said. ‘’The entire electoral process is compromised. The repetition of the election is necessary.'’

Let’s see. Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Romania. So far, since the disputed 2000 election in the US, the score is:

Exported Democracy - 1
Exported Suspected Fraudulent Election - 2

I wonder if there’s a ringer we can call up from the Bush leagues.

Carlos Gutierrez? THAT’s who President Bush has nominated to replace long-time Texas friend Don Evans as Secretary of Commerce. Gutierrez, of course, is the CEO of giant breakfast cereal maker Kellogg’s (of Battle Creek, MI).

Gutierrez seems an illogical choice at many levels. He was not a big Bush contributor, nor a “bundler” of contributions (the “Pioneers”). He was not a loyal White House staffer, of course. And mostly, his business career appears to be, well, successful. When measured against the likes of a Condi Rice or a George W. Bush, this would seem anomalous.

But then, just as the discussion turns to the possible sacking of Treasury Secretary Snow (Laura Bush promises shakeups, and Snow “has not been guaranteed job security”), it seems obvious why Bush would want to bring in a man like Gutierrez: branding and marketing. Reality just won’t cut it anymore: who better to sell our non-existent national industrial policy, or the virtues of our moribund manufacturing sector, or the sound policy value of more tax cuts while we already have record deficits than a marketing man. (Don’t worry; Don Rumsfeld’s job is safe, as anything else might be an admission of imperfection, and hence, right out.)

We’ll see. Gutierrez will have a tough job– if he actually believes that success in it involves any kind of… success. The greatest President since Herbert Hoover may well have just appointed the greatest Commerce Secretary since… Herbert Hoover.

After originally posting a links page with about 1,000 blogs mostly defined by states (see the ‘States’ tab at the top of the blog), I was inundated with over 500 requests for addition