Which of the following two articles is a
joke?...And for how long?
[and
that's the only "comment" needed]
(June 7, 2006)
From
the Internet - original source unknown
Washington - With the situation in Iraq worsening, gas prices high and
a crisis looming with Iran, President Bush today swung into action with
a bold solution - a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Said
the President, "We need to define marriage the way it's always been
defined, the way the bible intended it. We will base our new amendment
on the exact words of the bible, for a stable, ordered society, just
like ancient times."
The White house released a draft of the new
amendment, outlining key points of the new bible based amendment:
1. Gay marriage will not be allowed, since there is no gay marriage in
the bible.
2. Polygamy will be legal, since it occurs frequently in the bible,
from Abraham and Isaac to Solomon's 700 wives. But only one man and
several women, never the opposite. Said Mr. Bush, "It was Solomon and
his wives, not Sheba and her guys."
3. All polygamy must involve both sexes. Mr. Bush pointed out, "It was
Jacob and Leah and Rachel, not Jake and Luke and Ramone."
4. Incest will be illegal, but half sisters are OK, since Abraham did
it.
5. Daughters can't have sex with their fathers, unless there are no men
around and their mother just died. According to Mr. Bush, "If it
was good enough for Lot, it's good enough for me."
6. If a man rapes a virgin, he must marry her, even if she objects, but
he must pay her father 50 shekels (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). As Mr.
Bush pointed out, "Private property and the free market must be as
important to us as it is to G-d."
7. If a man marries the wrong sister, he can marry the other one as
well, as Jacob did.
Upon hearing of the new amendment, Pat Robertson and
Jerry Falwell held a joint service "To thank G-d for bringing us this
holy amendment which will return us from our wicked ways and bring back
good old fashioned family values. The historic institution of marriage
as it was practiced by our forefathers must be preserved. This will
certainly spare us another 9-11, which was caused by our evil
monogamous ways."
Republicans in congress rejoiced in the chance to do
something to distract the public before the November elections.
President Bush is apparently considering other amendments which will
bring the literal rules of the bible into the constitution, such as
amendments banning pork and seafood, as well as eating meat and dairy
products at the same meal. Said Mr. Bush, "It's not up to us to
interpret G-d's word, but to follow it as exactly as it was printed in
G-d's holy English."
*
* *
From the
Dallas Morning News (reprinted on the Internet)
Goobers on Parade: Fake Christians and Sham Southerners
GOP buttons on their shirts and faith on their sleeves.
SAN ANTONIO - Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell offered a greeting to delegates
to the Republican convention. "It's great to be back in the holy land,"
the Fort Worth native said to the cheers of the party faithful. For the
4,500 delegates at last week's biennial gathering, it was both an
expression of conservative philosophy and religious faith, a melding of
church and state.
At Saturday morning's prayer meeting, party leader Tina Benkiser
assured them that God was watching over the two-day confab. "He is the
chairman of this party," she said against a backdrop of flags and a GOP
seal with its red, white and blue logo.
The party platform, adopted Saturday, declares "America is a Christian
nation" and affirms that "God is undeniable in our history and is vital
to our freedom.We pledge to exert our influence toward a return to the
original intent of the First Amendment and dispel the myth of the
separation of church and state."
At Saturday morning's prayer meeting, ministers delivered prayers,
gospel singers sang, and the Rev. Dale Young, pastor of First
Presbyterian Church in Laredo, picked up the convention's dominant
theme of immigration. "Lord, your words tell us there's a sign that
this nation is under a curse, when the alien who lives among us grows
higher and higher and we grow lower and lower," he preached.
The night before, East Texas evangelist Rick Scarborough exhorted
Christians at a "values rally" to get involved in elections. Delegates
sought him out, taking snapshots and having him sign his book
Liberalism Kills Kids.
Can I just say, as a Southerner, from a long line of Southerners going
back to the 17th century, that these people are a bunch of ignorant
goobers? Back in my youth, growing up in the most conservative,
traditional, church-going, Bible-believing, flag-waving, rural
Heartland community imaginable, these people would have been considered
freaks on the fringe, best kept under the slimy rocks they occasionally
crawled out from under.
Now they are enthroned on high, in Texas, in Washington, in the White
House, in the greasy-money media empires that belch their filth and
their perversions of faith over the airwaves and in print in a
relentless, unending stream. These people aren't Christians - imagine
using the Bible, with its constant refrain of taking in the stranger,
caring for the alien, the commonality of the human predictment (rain
falling on the just and unjust alike) as a cudgel to beat immigrants!
No, they aren't Christians, they are primitive nationalists,
proto-fascists who despise democracy and human freedom, preening in
self-regard, imbuing their own willfully ignorant, lovingly cultivated
prejudices and fears (and their squirmy, creepy sexual obsessions) with
divine sanction. They are blind guides, whited sepulchres, exalters of
the self, haters of women and traitors to the God they profess to
worship.
And they aren't Southerners either, not really. For one thing, a good
many of these "Sun Belt" conservatives are actually transplants from
outside the South, like that quintessential modern Texan, George W.
Bush, a prissy prep-school cheerleader from an old-line Yankee
blueblood family. The Bushes are about as authentically Southern as an
igloo.
But mostly, they aren't true Southerners because every true Southerner
has had to confront and incorporate the tragic dimension of the
region's horrible past as part of their own character: an inescapable
heritage that doesn't vitiate our love of the land that raised us up
but marks it and complicates it, infuses it with a humility that
acknowledges the great evil of slavery and racist violence that is
inextricably worked into the cultural soil. It is this tragedy - and
the acknowledgement of this tragedy - that makes genuine Southerness,
and precludes the kind of witless chauvinism, raging
self-righteousness, arrogant bluster and brutal condemnation of the
"Other" displayed by the Texas proto-fascists and all their ilk who
dishonor the South, again, with their bile.
There is a very real and great danger to the health of the Republic now
that these fake Southerners with their fake Christianity and fake
patriotism have been pulled out from under their muddy rocks and loosed
upon the nation by cynical manipulators in the power elite, who have
used them as blunt instruments to advance their own predatory agenda.
This will turn out to be one of the great destructive follies of the
age, comparable to the American arming, organizing, funding and
training of a transnational army of violent Islamists to bait the
Russian bear in Afghanistan. When the willfully ignorant and the
blindly self-righteous are empowered in this fashion, no one can
control the blowback or foresee what form it will take. But that there
will be blowback, that there will be hell to pay, is as certain as the
sunrise, as certain as the grave.
*
* *
Earl Doherty
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