Remembering Sarah

I'm no fan of David Horowitz. I even react physically upon seeing his name. My stomach tightens, and I can almost feel my blood pressure rising. To me, he represents the worst of America, the bigotry and hatred still so prevalent here.

But he is also a person, and although I am repulsed by his world view, I mourn his loss. I did not know that his daughter died last spring. It sounds like she was an incredible woman. His eulogy for her is very moving. I urge you to read it and remember that although we may view some as monsters, we still share our basic humanity.

--The General's Inner Frenchman

Department of Book Reports: And, We're Back!

Well, we have Big News this week! Jackson Street Books has flung open it's doors once again! We have moved all the cartons of books into the house and are madly unpacking, even as you read this. You may now once again order books through biblio.com, abe.com, www.jacksonst-books.com, or by simply sending us an email to info@jacksonst-books.com And, hey! If you're going to the beach, you better stop by and see us!

While we do have 5,963 books listed, this is only about a third of the books we actually have, so if you are looking for an out-of-print treasure, or a cheap paperback copy, we'll look around and let you know if we have it. We can special order titles for you, and we will carry copies of the books that are on the General's Bookshelf. New or Used, we can get it for you.

The virtual bookstore at Second Life has been great fun and promises to be an exciting venue for show-casing authors. Dano is now DJing occasionally, and our events can be found at Thinking Liberally. Really, it's easy! If you can watch youtubes, your computer can probably handle doing Second Life, what are you waiting for? We'd love to see you there!

So, what's on your nightstand? I've been reading Wintergreen, by Robert Michael Pyle ( Houghton, used paperback $5.00 ) and his most recent award winning volume, Sky Time in Gray's River: Living For Keeps in a Forgotten Place by Robert Michael Pyle ($20.00 Signed First Edition, Houghton Mifflin) It's a naturalist's take on SW Washington, a good intro and history of our new region. I'm a native of SW WA, and my other favorites have included A Good Rain by Timothy Egan, and Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler. My question this week, what book(s) best inform where you live or would love to live?

As always, lovely books can be found at your favorite independent bookstore.

I hate it when this happens

The dialogue comes directly from the text of The Malleus Maleficarum, the Catholic witchunter's guide.

"...and the men got to shoot their guns."

News from my hometown paper:

Prop 8, The Musical

A helmet tip to Nailing Jello to the Wall.

We don't need no wicked badgers

Steve McConkey
Underground Apologetics

Dear Mr. McConkey,

The badger knows nothing of honor. It is but a squatting demon with snarling teeth, wicked claws, and a vicious, almost Benedictine (XVI), disposition.

One lies in wait just outside my compound, watching me, biding his time, looking for the perfect moment to leap up onto my secret parts and shred them into tiny, bloody, naughty bits. He hates me because I am a godly man. It is in his nature as a demon to harbor such hatred.

That is why I was not surprised to learn that you caught the University of Wisconsin Badger, Mr. Bucky Badger, honoring a...[spit]...scientist, a stem cell researcher no less, by offering him a piece of cake.

You were right to react as you did by rebuking Bucky Badger--he'd have been stoned in a more god-fearing society. But by focusing on the cake delivery, you ignored the real problem: the fact that Wisconsin chose such a wicked, wicked animal to serve as its mascot.

Forget the cake. Forget the bastard dressed in felt and foam rubber. You should be demanding that the University be rid of the badger altogether.

I've already created the perfect character to replace Bucky. I call him Ziggy the Zygote-American. Originally, I pitched him to the NRA to help them teach gun etiquette to fetuses (an armed fetus is a safe fetus). Unfortunately, they declined, but perhaps God intended that, knowing that Wisconsin would need a pro-life mascot. In any event, Ziggy the Zygote is ready and willing to serve.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Who does he think we are, milkmen?

Sometime even the best men are struck down by their own hubris.

A couple of Sundays ago, Pastor Ed Young challenged the married couples at his 20,000 member megachurch to have sex every night for a week. Yes, seven times, that's right. That's more sex than most of us get in a lifetime. (With 13 notches on my bedpost--six of which are for acts involving someone else--I'm the exception, but then, I guess that's why I'm an 11 on the manly scale of absolute gender.)

Unfortunately, it appears that Pastor Young's commitment to "congregational copulation" was a bit limp:

Mrs. Young tried to shake him awake, telling her husband, "come on, it's the sex challenge," But Mr. Young murmured,"Let's just double up tomorrow," and went back to sleep

.

"manually" or "manfully"

And was it really that much of an imposition?

An Ohio man in a high place at a conservative Christian school is accused of soliciting sex in open air.

52-year-old Robert Williams, Chief Financial Officer of Cincinnati Christian University, was arrested with two others on Saturday, said to have "manually stimulated" an undercover police officer in Mount Airy Forest. He is charged with sexual imposition.

Breshnev boogied to Marvin Gaye

Capt. Christian Biscotti
Chaplain, US Air Force
MA, Theology, Regent University
Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches

Dear Capt.Biscotti,

I just finished looking over the slideshow you presented at a recent Air Force suicide prevention seminar, and I'm very impressed. I suspect the slide comparing the United States to the Soviet Union was particularly effective. I mean who would want to commit suicide after learning we're a theistic nation and that the soviets were a bunch of damned atheists?

That said, I think you need to make a correction to that slide. It's in the part where you list the leaders. I think you're right to list Washington and Lincoln for the US, but I have real problems with you listing Darwin, Marx, Lenin and Stalin as Soviet leaders. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about about accuracy. I don't care that Darwin was English, Marx was German, and they both died before the Russian Revolution--their evil ideas certainly made the Soviet dictatorship possible. Nor am I complaining about Lenin, he deserves to be on the list simply because he was credited for writing that song about doing it in the middle of the road.

My problem with it is that it's not all-inclusive. Where's Marvin Gaye? He probably enslaved more Russians, Georgians, Uzbeks, etc than Darwin. Certainly, more lives have been ruined by the immorality of songs like Me and Mrs. Jones and Sexual Healing than by evolution theory (Ok, I'm not counting studies conducted on the immoral practices of bonobos).

To be honest, I have to question the competence of someone who would overlook Marvin Gaye while including Darwin on a list of Soviet leaders. What the hell were you thinking? I hope you add him soon.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Kentucky Concentrates on the Important Things

Rep. Tom Riner
Kentucky House of Representatives

Dear Rep. Riner,

It's a shame that Gov. Beshear refused to follow the law and include the phrase, "The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God" in the state Homeland Security Departments annual report. I'm very worried about this. God's protected Kentucky well since you passed the bill--as far as I know, there have been no terrorist incidents in the state during that time.

But what happens now? You know, God must be very angry about being slighted in this way. It's very likely he's going to just turn his back on Kentucky and allow it to become a secular terrorist's paradise (if he doesn't just smite you all with hemorrhoids in your secret parts or kill your firstborn). Think about it. You could be overrun with terrorist secularists, or worse yet, teachers, bent on destroying the Kentucky way of life. Heck, they might even cause you to jump up to 47th in the national high school graduation rankings.

You can prevent it by filing a suit against the governor to require him to put the phrase back into his reports. You might also consider passing another bill that would make writing the phrase the only requirement for graduating high school. It's all a kid needs to know anyway, and it beats the alternative: raising taxes to pay for an adequate education.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

A little Sunday Afternoon Music

Four songs from reader Alicia Morgan and one from her husband, David. Alicia is also an incredible writer who blogs at Last Left Turn Before Hooterville and is the author of the book, The Price of Right

If the Personal is Political, is the Political also Personal?

_{Image © Austin Cline
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It was once said that the personal is political, drawing attention to the fact that issues commonly described as merely "personal" rely upon political ideologies and decisions. The reverse does not necessarily hold true: not all political decisions should be treated as personal. To be more specific, politicians should not take it personally when other politicians make political decisions that put them in difficult situations or make them uncomfortable. For some reason, though, more and more Republicans are doing just that — or at least they are pretending to do that.

I think that "pretending" is probably the more accurate description. A politician has to be a good actor (which explains why so many have found the transition from acting to politics relatively easy to make) and good politicians frequently have to make use of political theater in order to communicate particular messages. No one who manages to achieve any political office on the federal level could possibly suffer from having a thin skin, so you know they can't be very affected by criticism or even insults from just about anyone, never mind politicians from opposing political parties.

Despite this, a number of Republicans have actually tried to get the public to believe that they have such fragile egos that they are genuinely insulted by Democrats doing nothing remotely unusual or personal in politics — indeed, that they are so insulted that their work has been affected and they are unable or unwilling to work as well with Democrats. To call this petty and churlish would be an understatement. If every politician went to pout in the corner when someone from another party said or did something they didn't like, there wouldn't be enough corners to contain them all.

Who is behaving like this? Well, Sen. Susan Collins from Maine told colleagues at a prayer breakfast that she had "trouble forgiving colleagues" who helped her opponent campaign against her. Did she never help Republicans in their campaigns? Did she really expect Democrats to not want to help another Democrat get elected? Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said that his feelings were hurt because Democrats spent a lot of money to support his opponent. Did he ever object when Republicans spent a lot of money to help support a Republican candidate against a Democratic incumbent?

Like I said, the outrage of these Republicans — as well as all the Republicans who nod quietly without objecting — is more "faux" than "foe," but perhaps there is indeed some small sense in which these attitudes might be genuine. We've seen more and more over the past few years the degree to which politicians and others "inside the Beltway" consider themselves to all be part of the same clique, separate from outsiders. The strongest example may be how journalists will protect politicians from critique in order to keep them as friends and sources. Is it possible that some Republicans might expect Democratic colleagues to protect them from Democratic challengers?

It's hard to believe that might be true because it's just so incredibly absurd, but I'm not sure that it's really any less absurd than journalists protecting politicians from public critique rather than protecting the public from politicians' crimes. It's probably much more likely that Republicans are simply pretending and engaging in political theater, hoping that the public will never stop to think about how silly all their claims are. I also think we should keep in mind that whatever the most obvious motivation people may have for something, and however true it may be that this is indeed their motivation, we shouldn't forget that people tend to have multiple influences on their lives and behaviors. It would be a mistake to reduce a person's motives to just a single dimension or single desire.