An Email From My Buddy Marc Racicot
Um, Marc, I think I deleted your email as spam.
Because they say that, per McCain-Feingold and other campaign finance regulations, the people buying the "attack ads" aren't actually doing anything illegal. And sadly, lese-majeste just isn't being prosecuted like it should.
Damn them! It's not fair that they're trying to mitigate our $108 million advange over the Kerry campaign! Even if this isn't technically illegal, it's certainly immoral!
Hey, if they're doing something illegal, then why do you only want my cash, Marc? Shouldn't you be asking me to call the cops or something?
If George Soros compared President Bush to a Nazi, then he doesn't deserve to use his money to support the causes he belives in. Under that law proposed by Kaye Grogan (Unfounded accusations against presidents should be a felony), Soros could be convicted of a crime, then maybe we could take all his money as part of his punishment. Of course, Bush would have to prove that he isn't comperable to a Nazi first, and that might get kind of messy. But maybe you should ask for my help in getting Kaye's law passed instead of just hitting me up for donations, Marc.
You got it, Marc. While I won't actually be donating any money (due to the economy and the job situation and all), I will post your email on my blog, in the hopes that this helps the cause. 3:51:30 PM  |
World O'Crap Bookclub: Guest Book Review Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (Left Behind #12)by Tim F. Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins Publisher's Book Description Well, that's one opinion. WO'C reader Mark Salditch has another one, and he doesn't agree with that "satisfying" part. Happily, he has consented to share with us his smart (and funny) review of this, the last of the Left Behind books (until the prequel and epilogue come out). So, take it away, Mark. And thanks! Glorious Appearing, a reviewBy Mark Salditch I read Tim LaHane and Jerry B. Jenkins’ entire 12 volume Left Behind series so you don’t have to. This is it. The end of the epic tale of those Left Behind. After 11 volumes of tribulation and heavenly judgments, this is the one where the Antichrist gets his comeuppance and Jesus returns to begin his thousand year reign on Earth. As a Jewish atheist, I was looking forward to Jesus finally making the scene and seeing what the authors imagined Jesus’ kingdom would be like. I thought it would be really exciting, or at least inspiring. Boy, was I wrong. When Jesus finally does make his glorious appearing, the story falls all apart and everything gets really dull. Despite that, I’m sure this volume will sell millions of copies. For those of you living under a rock for the since 1996, the Left Behind series tells the tale of those fools who didn’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior when they had the chance and thus are not transported to Heaven when the Rapture comes. Our hero, Rayford Steele, is a pilot of a trans Atlantic 747 who is dreaming of hitting on his stewardess when suddenly a third of his passengers vanish from the plane, leaving only their Earthly possessions behind. Ray knows immediately what happened because his wife, now among the vanished, had warned him of the danger to his soul by not embracing Christ. So Ray, along with his skeptic daughter Chloe, reporter Buck Williams, and an ever changing and growing cast of born again converts who were left behind because of their lack of faith join together as the Tribulation Force to battle the Antichrist and endure God’s judgments for 12 novels covering the 7 years of Tribulation. For 11 volumes LaHane and Jenkins have been making the point that everything written in the Bible is literally true. If it says that ghostly demons riding flying, flaming hoofed steeds slay a third of the world’s population, that’s what happens. If the Bible says that the blood of Jesus’ enemies pours forth into a river 1600 furlong long and up to a horse’s bridal, so be it. However, they broke my suspension of disbelief in this volume by breaking with literalism. When the Bible says that Jesus will slay the bad guys with a two-edged sword that shoots out of his mouth, we’re told not to take that literally. This sword hanging out of Jesus’ mouth mentioned in several Bible verses is a figurative representation of the word of God the authors insist, and it sort of broke the reality they had built in the series for me. I mean I can accept when the series brings dead characters back to life (this happens several times to Tribulation Force members as well as the Antichrist’s resurrection), the magical plagues of darkness and water turning to blood, earthquakes that level mountains and all the other improbable events because that’s what their interpretation of the Bible said. But by trying to minimize the ridiculous image of Jesus walking around killing people with a sword that shoots out of his mouth and insisting that that these phrases are the only figurative part of the Bible, I felt the authors were cheating. By the way, speaking with the word of God as a super power was explored in a much more interesting fashion in Garth Ennis’ DC comic book series “The Preacher” in the 90’s. The titular character in this series, Jesse Custer (JC, get it?), super power was speaking with the word of God, too. This series follows the Preacher, his hit man girlfriend, and an Irish junkie vampire as they battle the guardians of the Holy Grail and seek to discover why God has abandoned the throne of heaven. The Preacher is ultimately a much more satisfying read. And the theology in Preacher is probably more consistent too. In “Glorious Appearing,” Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist, and his followers get taught the lesson they deserve. The previous book, “Armageddon,” ended with the Jewish Remnant and the surviving Tribulation Forces preparing for the final siege of their Massada like fortress in Petra against the massed armies of the entire world controlled by Carpathia. Three of the four original Tribulation Force members lay dead or dying. “Glorious Appearing” begins with our guys in desperate need of a miracle. The miracle comes half way through this volume when Jesus finally shows up. This is the part of the story we’ve all been waiting for. It had the potential to be really dramatic but the authors blow it. The returned Jesus spouts nothing but boring Bible verse for pages and pages while dealing out Old Testament violence from the back of his heavenly white horse And the violence is extreme. Jesus is alternately dull and terrifying. If the Earth had 3 billion people when the story begins and about half a billion disappear when the Rapture happens in volume one and the various judgments kill another third and a third again and then some, there are much less than a billion people left alive on Earth when Jesus returns. Christ’s return causes the millions who make up the armies of the bad guys to burst open and their blood pours forth in torrents. People get judged and cast into lakes of fire for all eternity while others are sent to purgatory for a thousand years. Those unlucky enough to make the purgatory cut are told that after their thousand years there, then they still get to spend the rest of eternity in the lake of fire. So then we’re finally left with the everyone who opposed the Antichrist , the true believers. One would assume that these survivors would then get to enjoy Jesus’ thousand year reign on Earth, but not so fast… Jesus still has one final judgment. This time he separates the “goats” from the “sheep.” Goats are people who did not help the Jews, God’s chosen people. The sheep are people who helped the Jews. There are a lot more goats than sheep left when Jesus appears, and Jesus kills all these goats denying them paradise on Earth. Jews in the Left Behind series are odd secondary characters who exist only to fulfill Old Testament prophesies. I was particularly offended when, in an earlier volume, the books’ Jews put up a prefab Temple on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Like those steel buildings that they advertise on the Rush Limbaugh program, the next Temple will be pre-manufactured in sections and bolted together on site in no time flat in preparation for the Second Coming. What real life Jew would even consider for one second sacrificing his Pascal lamb at the altar of some bolted together trailer park Temple? What really bothered me about the book is what the world is like after Jesus returns. Besides being a pompous, boring twit meting out death and destruction to anyone who doesn’t worship him, Jesus is also a creepy guy who can read your mind and knows everything you ever did. He comes unbidden into your thoughts. He makes his believers magically run hundreds of miles at speeds approaching 70 mph so they can watch for themselves as he metes out his terrible justice on the Antichrist and his followers and then makes them sit in the desert for days on end listening to him judge everyone who ever lived from Abel, son of Abraham, on. Jesus is the ultimate Big Brother. No one has any form of privacy in his kingdom. The world that Jesus rules is devoid of evil but also devoid of free will. Ray Steele and the rest of the Tribulation survivors are not unlike the cattle after the return who line up willingly at butcher shops to be slaughtered for food. The “Saved” have no choice but to slavishly obey their intolerant God on pain of a fate literally worse than death. I’m reminded of a scene from Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore’s 1967 film, Bedazzled. Cooke, playing the Devil, is asked by Moore why he left the right hand of God and opposed his will. To answer his question, Cooke jumps up on the top of a mailbox pretending he’s God on his heavenly throne and asks Moore to worship him. Moore goes through the motions of dancing about the mailbox praising Cooke but soon grows tired of saying “You’re great! You’re wonderful and the creator of all things! I worship you!” over and over again. “Come on! Keep it up,” chides the Devil Cooke. “No! It’s boring!” says Moore. “See, that’s what I thought,” say the Devil as a way of explaining his revolt against God. Worshipping and praising this Jesus who is busy torturing and killing his enemies and reading your thoughts seems to me like everyone who made it to the Glorious Appearing has given up free will and ceased to be human. Everyone who died and is reborn when Jesus returns has a “glorified body” that does not seem to include sex organs, although those who lived through the Tribulation still have their genitals. Children born to those lucky enough to still have the equipment get 100 years to accept Jesus or it’s off to that lake of fire for them too. The fiery judgments never end in Jesus’ millennial kingdom. Seems like Hell to me. But Satan has been cast into the lake of fire for only a thousand years as our story ends, so there will be an epilogue. I’d like to write it. In my version, a band of anti-Jesus Hell’s Angels will battle the mind controlling deity and fight for Satan’s return so that people are once again free to choose how to live their lives and get to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. Man’s ability to make bad choices is what makes us human. To be unable to make a bad moral decision removes our ability to act nobly. Any one willing to publish my series of books tentatively titled “Hell’s Angels: The New Beginning?” 2:31:41 AM |
World Religion 101: It's LSD Night in the Monkey Hut!While guest-blogging over at Sadly, No!, I've been commenting on Doug Giles' (the guy who puts the crap into craptastic) Townhall columns every week. But since Peanut and Blair have done some excellent blogging in the last day or two (and I just can't compete with them), I'm just going to post this week's Doug deconstruction here. But you'll probably like Peanut and Doug's pieces better anyway. Such is life. In any case, it's time for another episode of "Everybody Loves Doug Giles" -- this week, chock full o' the metaphors and surreal pop culture refs that have made Doug the best-loved Christian preacher/Dennis Miller impersonator working today. In today's ep, Doug has read a book by Robert Spencer, and now is all hot and bothered about Muslims. Mr. Spencer is an "Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation, " that outfit set up by Joseph Coors (and partially funded by the Scaife Foundation) to help return America "to the culture that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture." Spencer's book was published by Regnery Press, and was favorably reviewed by the National Review, Townhall, the Washington Times. Dr. Laura, etc. (but no non-wingnut venues, as far as I can tell). So, you KNOW he's fair and balanced, and is just the kind of guy a serious scholar like Doug should be consulting for info on religion. And now, here's Doug:
Because the Courtney Love National Geographic special ("Kurt Cobain Widows In Crisis") got beat in the ratings by "Queer Eye for the Survivors," and "The Love Boat Goes to Iraq to Kick Some Non-Christian Ass."
If I'm reading Doug right, he's saying that Islam has finally become of interest to some nearsighted Americans. That's because reality TV is so damned boring that it seems to be a bigger threat than al Qaeda.
Because that wet-eyed religious studies professor certainly hasn't read the Qur'an, and just got his ideas about what it teaches from other Marxist, polyester-wearing religious studies professors.
Take the box, take the box!
I looked this one up on Google, and the answer is no -- everything I read indicated that "Mujahada" means something like "warfare of the soul, in order to defeat the baser urges and achieve balance and virtue."
Yes, there is. And it would go well with Doug's "Quiznos' singing dead hamsters" brand of Christianity.
But more importantly, if Christians (like Timothy McVeigh) detest us and that for which we stand, then why -- why -- were they born here?
But ... but ... that calls into question the whole doctrine of the infallibility of Bushes! That's heresy, man!
What Doug means is that Islam just doesn't give him that "Lying about getting Davey Jones to play for the prom/making up a fake boyfriend/breaking Mom's vase/Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!/pork chops and applesauce" feeling. And that's a bad thing.
No, it's you, Amber Pawlik, Kathleen Parker, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer.
Doug, Doug, you should try reading that scripture. Here, just for starters is, Deuteronomy 7: 1-2:
Why destroy them utterly? Because they were pagans, and would lead the Children of Israel astray if not smitten good. The OT is full of stories like this. Oh, and I am not an expert on Islam, but every verse I've found cited by these anti-Islamacists to show that the Koran orders Muslims to go out and kill nonbelievers is actually about self-defense.
It's always been a metaphor for Christians, except when it wasn't, like those "embarrassments" Doug mentioned before (The Inquisition, the Crusades, the Ku Klux Klan, etc.). No so with Islam, because whenever a Muslim does something that doesn't accord with his religion, it really is in accordance with his religion, because Doug read that in Spencer's book.
7. Curtail the Bill of Rights -- we're at war with those who would change our society, so we can't worry about frivolities like freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, or due process at a time like this. 8. Put tinfoil on our heads, to protect our brains from rational thought. 9. Put up an indestructible force field at our borders, to keep out WMDs, missiles, radiation, germs, and unchristian ideas. 10. You come up with some. It's fun!
Yeah! Do what Doug says or you can't eat any of our luscious tree of America! Lather, lather, repeat. 2:13:04 AM |
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