Department of Book Reports: There's still time to ship, but it might cost ya...

Those clever folks over at Indie Bound have written my favorite slogan for the holiday season: "Books. Because a scented candle never changed anybody's life."

It has amused me to see that giving used books as gifts is now acceptable, although bookstores are tipped to possible givers by their pleas of "Is it in pristine condition?"

The Pacific Northwest Booksellers announce the short list of nominees for the annual awards. There is an "I told you so! moment".
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella of Anchorage, AK; Spiegel & Grau,
The Art of Racing in the Rain: a Novel by Garth Stein of Seattle, WA; Harper ...earlier version
Conquistador: Hernán Cortés, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs by Buddy Levy of Northern Idaho; Bantam Books,
The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig of Seattle, WA; Harcourt, Inc.
The English Major by Jim Harrison of Montana; Grove Press
Guernica: A Novel by Dave Boling of Tacoma, WA; Bloomsbury
The Jewel of Medina: A Novel by Sherry Jones of Spokane, WA; Beaufort Books
Little Hoot by Jen Corace, Illustrator, of Seattle, WA; Chronicle Books
Selected Poems: 1970-2005 by Floyd Skloot of Portland, OR; Tupelo Press
Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska by Seth Kantner of Kotzebu, Alaska; Milkweed Editions
Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957 by Terry Toedtemeier and John Laursen of Portland, OR;
The Northwest Photography Archive & Oregon State University Press
The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life by Floyd Skloot of Portland, OR; University of Nebraska Press

As always, lovely books can be found at your favorite independent bookstore. Jackson Street Books might just have what you're looking for. If you don't see it, do ask . We have many boxes to unpack.

What's up with Winnie

From this week's edition of my hometown paper:

PROMONTORY POINTERS
Winnie Richman
Leader Correspondent
Kaye Draper and friend Kathy went to see the beautiful Christmas lights on Temple Square and at the Plaza near the temple. “We seemed to have walked a mile,” Kaye says happily, “but it was definitely worth it!” On Thursday, Carolyn Bolton had all the family to Thanksgiving dinner where everyone visited and had fun. Kaye played bingo on Saturday at her apartment complex.
Orson and Jeannette Poulsen celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary at Park City from Friday til Tuesday. Orson’s sister and family joined them and all had a great few days together. Orson and Jeannette did a little Christmas shopping and did a little work on their craft projects. “It was very relaxing; we enjoyed it,” Orson says with a smile.
[...]
Winnie served Thanksgiving dinner out of the Double S Bar Grill. “We were only 9, but everyone ate enough to delight my heart, Winnie laughs. After dinner, Winnie and sons Aaron and Lyle captured a 100-pound pig and put it in the horse trailer to go to the Bear River Animal Hospital on Friday. Pie was then consumed to fill the holes in their stomachs after all that exercise. During the pig catching, April and the kids gathered up the dishes and cleaned the table for Granny.
Clynn and Winnie would like to thank Dr. Ryan Bevan for his help with the pig. It is doing great!

COLLINSTON CABOODLE
Raina Jones
Leader Correspondent
The book group met on Dec. 2, at 7 p.m., at Suzanne McBride’s house. The next readings are the Chris Steward series “The Great and the Terrible.” These are LDS-based books with stories about pre-earth existence and then life on earth.
[...]
Sunnie and Waylon Jones were fortunate enough to go to Disney on Ice with their mom. It was a wonderful show and now little Waylon is really into Donald Duck! The show was the 100 years celebration show and involved nearly all characters of Disney from old to new. Jiminy Cricket was present as were all the princesses and princes, Nemo, Mulan, you name it! They were there. It was a fun time but the cotton candy was way too overpriced!

Of Helmets and Anteaters

Rev. John Castellani
Executive Director
Teen Challenge International

Dear Rev. Castellani,

Congratulations. It looks like one of Teen Challenge's biggest supporters, Jim Ramstad, is being considered to serve as Barack Obama's drug czar. Hopefully, he'll be in a position to mitigate some of the damage a president who moonlights as the Antichrist could do.

While scanning the intertoobs to learn more about your exciting Christ-based drug treatment program, I came across your testimony before Congress a few years back in which you discussed Teen Challenge's work with Jewish kids-- not only did you help them kick their drug habits, you also turned them into what you called "completed Jews."

I'll admit it. I was a bit confused by that term. I mean what's the difference between an "incomplete" and a "completed" Jew anyway? My first thought was that it must be a Jew who has accepted Our Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior, but then I realized it would be a violation of the First Amendment to use tax money to convert Jews, so it must be something else.

After a little bit more thought, it became obvious to me. It's all about the foreskin--well, for male Jews anyway. You were "completing" these Jews by reversing their circumcisions.

But how are you doing it? Skin grafts? Stretching? I hope not. I'd like to think that a faith-based organization like yours would employ technology derived from the study of creation science. You know what I mean. You anoint the unbeliever's little unbeliever with oil, slowly massaging it to work the anointing oil into the skin. Then you pack the helmet area with mud. After that, it's prayer time--you ask the Lord to work the miracle of Gen. 2:7 and turn the mud into flesh. Next thing you know, you're looking at an anteater rather than a helmet.

Is that how it's done?

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Keeping Order Through Torture

The Red Guard of the Conservative Christian Cultural Revolution does not tolerate foul language in our America. Do not utter a profanity as you watch your father drown or the California Highway Patrol will beat and tase you.



Jonathan Turley:

54-year-old Maurizio Biasini went to a Mendocino Beach called Portuguese Beach with his two twin sons, Dario and Andriano Biasini, and fell into the water. The police and fire department refused to go into the choppy water as the father was swept further and further out to sea. When the sons screamed at the officers for not acting and one tried to go into the water, the police tasered one son twice. The father was lost.

The fire department insisted on waiting for the Coast Guard as the distraught sons demanded action and swore at the officers. According to one witness, it was the police that turned the confrontation into a physical matter by grabbing one son around the neck and lifting him off the ground. They then tasered one son who wanted to rescue his father not once but twice. To make matters, the police proceeded to criminally charge the son for . . . you guessed it . . . interfering with a rescue that they refused carry out.

Lobbing Minnelli Cocktails

Dr. Gary Cass
Christian Anti-Defamation Commission

Dear Dr. Cass,

Newt Gingrich is right:

There is a gay and secular fascism in the country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us.

Those of us in anti-homosexual ministries see it everyday as we are vilified for working to deny basic human rights to the unbelievers who refuse to submit to our religious laws.

Let there be no mistake. These homosexuals and secularists are no less fascist than the Germans and Italians of the last century or the radical Islamist Talabanic fascists we fight today. Their legal protests against the imposition of the One True God's will upon them is just as destructive as the institutional violence and murder unleashed by the Sharia or Nuremberg laws.

And as you point out, these infidels even go so far as to mock our Lord and Savior by allowing him to be played by a Jew in a musical that heretically chides our hatred of them.

Worse yet, this Jewish Jesus--who no doubt greets people with an anti-Christian "Happy Holidays" during this holy season--is portrayed eating the most homosexual appetizer imaginable, a shrimp cocktail. No man who is truly committed to living a heterosexual lifestyle would put such pink-fleshed evil between his lips. The very image creates wicked thoughts in a man's mind--thoughts that lead to the kind of temptation that cannot be resisted. It is truely an evil appetizer, a temptation bomb, a minnelli cocktail to be lobbed at the righteous in order to bring them to their knees.

This is the nature of enemy we fight.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Is Charter Communications in Financial Trouble?

Charter Communications has been my internet, phone, and cable TV provider for years? Up until very recently, I've been very happy with their service and have recommended them to friends. That's no longer true. 

Over the last three weeks:

• My internet has been down a total of ~4 days.
• Phone and TV have been down a total of ~2 days.
• I've been on the phone with them ~15 times.
• I've scheduled 6 technical service appointments with them (cancelled three when service came back up--I work and can't wait around for them).
• Unsuccessfully tried to pay my bill via their automated payment service 4 times.
• Tried to pay it via their live tech support 3 times without success (They were able to get their system to work the 4th time)

Right now, I'm posting from a bar, because my internet, phone, and TV are down, yet again. Tommorrow morning I'll miss a half a day of work while I wait for them to show up. If they don't fix it, I'll probably move to Qwest (although their bandwidth is much lower than what I get from Charter when there service is up.)

So what's up with Charter? I've gone years without a problem and now my service is terrible. They even have problems taking my money. 

I'm wondering if they are cutting back on maintenance because they are in financial trouble. 

Anyone else going through this?

How's Qwest's service?

Just a reminder

After reading about National Organization for Marriage Exec Director Brian Brown's latest defense of marriage against the equality menace, I thought it might be a good time to remind everyone that Brown is 110% committed to the heterosexual lifestyle. Really. He is. He's as straight as a South Carolina senior senator, that one. Really. So shut up, dammit.

Clean Creation Technology

Arthur Blessit
Evangelist

Dear Mr. Blessit,


I'll just come right out and say it. Your plan to put a cross into orbit is misguided.By your own admission, no one will be able to see it. What purpose does that serve? What is the value of a cross that can't be seen?

I want you to do something. Please go outside on Christmas Eve, the night before one of our holiest holidays,and look at the moon. Do you know what you'll see? It won't be a cross; it'll be a crescent moon, the symbol of Islam. Everyone in the Northern Hemisphere will see it. How can an invisible cross beat that?

Forget about your puny dream of launching a little girly-cross into orbit. Your plan needs to be much more ambitious if you're going to upstage the Muslims. Think big; launch a project to sculpt the moon into a giant cross.

Yes, I know it sounds too expensive to carry out, and that'd be true if you limited your approach to the use of secular technology. But you're an evangelist, damn it. You can cut a lot of the cost by employing the many faith-based technologies we've acquired from the pure research being conducted in the field of creation science.

Think about it. If God can create man out of a wad of clay and woman out of a rib, He can build a space station, an arsenal of sculpting nukes, and the spacecraft to transport it all out of a really big pile of dirt. The only thing needed beyond that is a whole crapload of faith.

And thanks to the good people behind Clean Coal, we can find both a big pile of dirt and a concentration of faith in the same place, the national mountain top removal clean coal mining and Christian soul-saving paradise that stretches across parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. There's lots of dirt there--they've filled whole valleys with mine tailings--and there's even more God-fearing conservative evangelicals. It's the perfect place for a faith and creation based space program.

I'm sure the clean coal people would be happy to donate their former mountain tops to the project. Their environmental strategies have always been faith-based. And Lord knows, the locals will jump at the chance to prove creation science's validity. All they need is someone to lead them in prayer. You're obviously that guy.

There you have it, a plan for a project that boldly announces to the universe that Earth is a Christian planet. now, get 'er done.

Heterosexually yours, 

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Dangerous Legs

Greg Schwarber
Chief of Police
Middletown, OH

Dear Chief Schwarber,

I'm a little concerned about the lethal force policy you've instituted at your department. Specifically, I wonder if your shoot/don't shoot rules are adequate. For example, was it necessary to draw on and shoot your own leg a few days ago? Couldn't you and your daughter have apprehended it without resorting to lethal force? Wouldn't it have been better to have tased it first? That usually makes my leg comply (although I admit I use a field expedient taser I fashioned out of two fishooks and an extension cord).

But then again, I may not know the whole story. Were you wearing black pants?

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Just so wrong

Republicans Resurrecting Hoover Zombie to Deal with the Financial Crisis

_{Image © Austin Cline
Click for full-sized Image}

If history always repeats itself — the first time as tragedy and the second as farce — then conservative Republicans in America today are shooting for the heights of farce in their efforts to resurrect the doomed and decayed body of economic policies of Republican icon Herbert Hoover. No one today can seriously believe that Hoover's policies were wise or productive; on the contrary, they are generally regarded as only having exacerbated the problems, pushing America's economy even further down the drain.

When faced with the financial crisis that would become the Great Depression, Hoover naturally relied upon his ideological assumptions about the nature of national economies. He opposed relief programs designed to aid the growing ranks of the poor and supported cutting back on government spending. Even Roosevelt listened, briefly, to advisors who warned against the use of government spending to stimulate the economy or provide relief to the poor.

These moves failed both presidents. For Hoover, the lesson was too late and may never have made much of an impact given how strong his ideological blinders were. As for Roosevelt, he had a chance to reverse course and create the New Deal.

The article about Herbert Hoover in the Encyclopedia of Capitalism says:

Hoover’s failure to implement relief measures was a reflection of his personal opposition to government intervention in the economy. For example, he opposed the proposals for direct federal relief to unemployed workers; he was against such government handouts because they were in direct conflict with his belief in “rugged individualism.” He also rejected the request of unemployed veterans for immediate payment of their World War I bonuses (not due until 1945). Known as the Bonus March of 1932, the Veterans’ request of their bonuses caused trouble for Hoover and exacerbated his relationship with veterans, who had been staunch supporters of him just three years earlier. [...]

Although Hoover’s vision of the economy had served him well, the years of Depression had rendered obsolete his commitment to non-government action. The American people were ready for a change in government and in economic philosophy and they elected Roosevelt in an overwhelming victory. The Democrats also achieved a substantial majority in both houses of Congress. Thus began the era of the New Deal, a period of great transformation for the American political tradition.

Boy, this sounds awfully familiar — probably more familiar than conservative Republicans today would want to admit. The difference is between macroeconomics and microeconomics. To put it simply, what a household or business needs to do during lean economic times is not the same as what a government needs to do during lean economic times. Governments are not run like households or businesses, nor should they be, no matter how much ignorant conservatives keep repeating the idea. The responsibilities and needs of each are different and they need to be run differently.

So while it's true that a family or business needs to cut back on spending when there is economic trouble, governments may have to do the exact opposite. This may sound counterintuitive, but that's only if your knowledge and experience go no further than microeconomic issues. This is probably the case for most people and isn't necessarily a problem; it only becomes a problem when one also happens to be a politician or pundit and presumes to give advice on how the government should be run. That goes beyond mere error and moves into malpractice.

Despite all this, Republicans keep trying to foist the decayed body of Hoover's economic policies onto the nation like a zombie that's already feasted on all the Republican brains it can find and now needs more sustenance to survive. Republicans shouldn't have resurrected it in the first place, and they only have themselves to blame that the Hoover Zombie has consumed what little mental matter they had left. The rest of us need to denounce what they are doing and prevent others from succumbing to the temptation of letting it nibble on their lobes, even for a little bit.


Note: The General wants you to know that he can in no way be held responsible for the material contained in this post. I, Austin Cline, have to take sole responsibility for this sermon. The General only let me start posting here to give you a chance to find me (that, and because of those photos I have safely locked away in a safety deposit box), but after two years you still haven't succeeded, have you? Hah!