Tuesday, June 29, 2010

And another great thing.......

There's another great thing about the recent Supreme Court decision(s) on gun rights: until now, our inner city neighborhoods have been shooting themselves to death in an annoyingly slow war of attrition. By arming absolutely everybody (as the Court's decisions will allow) we can elevate this tedious process to the status of a full-blown war (as in Mexico) and really accomplish some serious killing.

I thank the Supremes for affirming this enhanced access to weapons so that the fun isn't limited just to drug dealers, mercenaries, the police, and the military. Now, we can all join in!

But seriously, folks, I recognize that the God-given right to own high-tech weaponry is written clearly into our Constitution. The second amendment says, A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. For some reason, though, Constitutional scholars have argued about the exact meaning since the amendment was passed, with the word "militia" muddying up the debate by suggesting that the amendment doesn't refer to individual, private gun ownership, but rather to some sort of right to organize into...well.. militias.

And you might think that strict constructionists would have a hard time stretching the word "arms" to include automatic weapons (which hadn't been invented yet), but you'd be mistaken.

Apparently the second amendment gives us the right to own virtually anything that can be used to kill someone else. And, upon reflection, I think this is a good thing, because the avoidance of tyranny -- which gun rights advocates usually quote as a reason for the amendment -- is pretty much impossible using plain old muskets and flintlocks in this day and age when the government (the tyranny we're supposed to be fighting) has tanks, tear gas, tasers, and automatic weapons. Not to mention that they are tapping your phone and email and know what you are planning months before you do. So, being able to own an Uzzi -- and knowing that your neighbor (who disagrees 100% with your politics) has one, too -- definitely helps to level the playing field.

Monday, June 28, 2010

This just in: Sarah Palin is the Devil!

Folks, this is amazing -- it is almost as if an invisible hand were guiding my thoughts: Today I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to look into the numerological possibilities in the name Sarah Palin and look what I found out:

1. SARAH PALIN has the same number of letters as ANTICHRIST. Wow! Check it out!

2. Both SARAH and PALIN have the same number of letters as SATAN. This is really scary!!!!!

3. Every letter in her first name is the beginning of a word for the Devil. 'S' is for snake or serpent, or Satan, 'A' is for Asmodius*, the King of demons. 'R' is for Rahab*, female sea-monster or a dragon of the waters. 'H' is for harlot, which is just another word for whore, which obviously refers to the whore of Babylon, which is one of the names for, you guessed it, the Devil.

4. And, in Greek, 'palin'* means again as in "I'll be back again!"

Now I'll admit that I've never been religious before, but this is really spooky!! Please send a link to this page to everyone you know, especially the Christians, and let's hope it's not too late to save the world from this Devil in lipstick and off-the-rack clothing.

* Thanks to Joseph H. Morgan for scholarly additions from Greek and Hebrew texts

Supreme Court rules that gun rights apply locally

Who says the Supreme Court is filled with right-wing ideologues? They've just issued a ruling which trumps states' rights in favor of federal authority. I love this because it means we'll be able to count on the court -- when states start to fight the federal government over the national healthcare system -- to side with the federal government.

After all, we're talking a court that wants our government's policies to be vetted against a strict reading of the founding documents and what could be more basic and more founding than the Declaration of Independance, which claims as our inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And what is more necessary to sustain "life" than healthcare for all? QED.

I'm so relieved!!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

G20 pledges to slash debt in 3 years

Yes, folks, believe it or not, according to a just-filed ABC (that's Australian Broadcasting Corporation)story, the G20 (that's the people who actually work for the people who actually run the world) has resolved for the G20 nations to cut their budget deficits in half in 3 years. The report also says that "The leaders want to tackle deficits without stunting growth, while also clamping down on risky bank behaviour without choking off lending."

Yeah, and I want to make a billion dollars without leaving my home or getting up before noon each day. (Guess I should have been an investment banker.)

In one of those lovely coincidences that makes reading the news such fun, I also just read that the CIA has signed a $100 million contract with Xe Services to provide security services in Afghanistan. As you may recall, Xe Services is the new name for Blackwater, the mercenaries -- er paramiliary professionals -- who, no doubt among other things, were involved in a firefight in Iraq that ended up with 17 dead civilians. But, what the heck, that's collateral damage: if you can't stand the heat, get out of the war zone. I guess that changing their name worked - we the taxpayer have hired them again.

Meanwhile, back at the G20 -- and at plenty of other meetings leading up to the G20 pronouncement on deficits -- the main theme has been on how profligate governments have been in providing their citizens luxury services like healthcare, retirement pensions, and so on, big social "giveaways," which, if governments weren't saddled with providing, would free up that much more money to feed the endless-war machine and to provide much-deserved taxcuts for the rich.

The worst oil spill in US history

I keep seeing the Gulf oil spill referred to in those terms. But, since the oceans are all interconnected and, since the clean-up effort itself is causing additional pollution -- both in the water and in the air -- which itself is likely to spread far and wide, shouldn't we be calling it the worst oil spill in the history of the world?

Or are we afraid that, if we acknowledge the broader effects of the disaster, we might get sued by Mexico, Europe, and God-knows who else when our oil washes up on their shores, when our plume of smoke from burning off the oil reaches their air space?