Three Christians

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Kelly Loeffler is trying to win election to the Senate seat she was appointed to earlier this year. Besides being at present the junior senator from Georgia, she is also co-owner of a women’s basketball team, the Atlanta Dream. The members of the team are campaigning hard for a candidate in the senatorial race—but it’s not for Loeffler. Indeed, they even refuse to mention her name.(1) The players are supporting the candidacy of Democrat Raphael Warnock. 

A third person in the race, a Republican like Loeffler, is Doug Collins.

Despite Loeffler’s disingenuousness and/or obliviousness (she has just denied knowing anything about Trump’s Access Hollywood tape), which is ripe for contemptuous comment, it is Collins that we focus on today.

According to Business Insider, 

At least a dozen images and videos of Collins wearing different Air Force uniforms have appeared on his Senate campaign's social media accounts.(2)

 It is strictly against military regulations if the advertisements do not make note of the candidate’s retired or reserved status and that the candidate in uniform cannot appear "as the primary graphic representation in any campaign media.” Michael Weinstein, a former US Air Force judge advocate general, stated that

Collins should have known better as a long-time military officer. . . .

What's particularly appalling is that we court-martial young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for stuff that is 1% as bad.

Collins is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves and has served in Iraq as a chaplain. 

Interestingly, our clergyman claims in an ad that he “will fight for you.” Is he going to heave Bibles at the enemy?

In response to Weinstein and his organization, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Collins campaign has claimed that the attack on his ads are an attack on “religious liberty.”

According to this Christian, then, it appears that the definition of “religious liberty”  is the right to violate the norms, standards, and regulations of the United States Armed Forces.

II

Is there anyone more hickish (is that a word?) than Mike Huckabee. Described on Wikipedia as “an American politician, Christian minister and political commentator,” Huckabee, who thinks he should be president, was once governor of Arkansas and is the sire of the notorious liar Sarah Huckabee Sanders. 

The other day, MarketWatch reported that Reverend Huckabee gleefully confessed to a felony—ballot fraud:

Stood in rain for hour to early vote today. When I got home I filled in my stack of mail-in ballots and then voted the ballots of my deceased parents and grandparents.  They vote just like me!(3)

Only kidding, said Huckabee afterwards. 

Guess that’s what passes for Christian humor in the Ozarks these days.

III

Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III has just resigned as superintendent of the Virginia Military Academy. He had served in that post since 2003. An independent investigation into allegations of systemic racism at the state-supported military college has been ordered by Virginia’s governor, who said,

Diversity is a fundamental commitment. Without this recognition, V.M.I. cannot properly educate future citizen-soldiers nor live up to its values of honor, character and service.(4)

The Institute’s history has been filled with veneration of Confederate leaders and slave owners:

Buildings on campus are named for them, and freshmen have been required to salute a statue of Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, who taught at the school before the Civil War.

Although General Peay announced efforts “to update some of the school’s traditions,” he refused to sanction efforts to rename buildings which honor Confederates. And he refused to remove the statue of Stonewall Jackson. Jackson, claimed Peay, besides being “a military genius,” was “a staunch Christian.” 

Well, that probably excuses being a slave owner and a traitor to your country.

***

(1)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/sports/basketball/wnba-loeffler-warnock-blm.html

(2)   https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ally-accused-violating-rules-about-political-ads-in-uniform-2020-10

(3)  https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mike-huckabee-tweets-about-filling-out-dead-relatives-absentee-ballots-and-key-federal-election-commission-member-doesnt-find-it-funny-11603645576

(4)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/vmi-systemic-racism.html

Anything Goes?

Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today
Any shock they should try to stem
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.

Cole Porter, 1934

*

Yes, times have changed—and it is best to take to heart the First Rule of the 21st century:

Always remember that all mics are probably hot, all cameras are rolling, and, as a corollary to the latter, everybody carries a camera.

It was unfortunate this past week that the Rule was forgotten by media figures who should have known better. 

Football announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were picked up on a hot mic mocking an air force flyover at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.

Aikman: “That's a lot of jet fuel just to do a little flyover.”

Buck: “That's your hard-earned money and your tax dollars at work!”(1)

The pair, of course, have had to do some groveling take-backs.(2)

The real victim this week of his neglect of the Rule, however, is Jeffrey Toobin, who has reported on legal matters at CNN and The New Yorker. During a pre-election role play event on Zoom, Toobin was caught on camera (let us say euphemistically) pleasuring himself.(3) Toobin has been suspended from his duties at The New Yorker and has been granted a leave of absence from the network.

*

But both the above cases are really minor. When it comes to trying to understand how things have changed in the 2000s, we must turn as usual to ET (the Egregious Trump). 

The Department of Justice is attempting to intervene in a defamation lawsuit filed in a New York court against Trump by E. Jean Carroll, a writer. The Department is contending that it should defend Trump on the grounds that his denial of the accusation of rape—which allegedly took place well before he became president—was “an official act because he ‘addressed matters relating to his fitness for office as part of an official White House response to press inquiries.’ ”(4)

Now to me this is a Plymouth-Rock-landing-on-my-head matter. I have racked my brain trying to remember exactly what I learned about the presidency and the Justice Department in my college Government class(5)—in which I received an “A.” I’m sure that I never nodded off and missed a lecture on how Justice is supposed to run interference for a predatory president, to the extent of covering his ass for actions decades before his term in office.

*

Excuse me, it’s time for me to crawl out from under my rock and to try to determine if indeed anything goes.

***

(1)  https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/us/troy-aikman-joe-buck-flyover-trnd/index.html

(2)  I, of course, completely agree with those sentiments. But the true inanity happens when flyovers are performed above an indoor arena!

(3)  https://www.vice.com/en/article/epdgm4/new-yorker-suspends-jeffrey-toobin-for-zoom-dick-incident

The sub-head of the article reads, “The call was an election simulation featuring New Yorker all-stars.” To show where my head was at, I read it as “erection simulation.”

(4)  https://news.yahoo.com/justice-dept-says-trumps-denial-121816984.html

(5)  That was in the good old days before Government departments pretentiously renamed themselves Political Science, thinking they could have some of the stardust of physics or chemistry rub off on them. 

What Do You See?

Maryland's Republican Gov. Larry Hogan wrote-in former President Ronald Reagan on the ballot he mailed in last week rather than vote for either President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.(1)

Let’s see what we can take away from this. 

 

First, we can note that even Republicans are allowed to vote by mail, despite the demonizing of mail balloting by Trump and his lackeys. 

Second is the admission by a prominent Republican that no GOPer with a pulse is worthy of consideration for the highest office in the land. Instead, he dug up a corpse moldering for a decade-and-a-half. 

*

The motto of my alma mater, The City College of New York, is Respice, Adspice, Prospice, which translates (for those who don’t regularly converse in Latin) as: “Look to the past, Look to the present, Look to the Future.” 

The Republican Party, unfortunately, appears to adhere only to the first part of the motto, digging up dead (bad) actors is only the latest evidence of that. The New Yorker in a recent article details how the Trump’s Secretary of Labor is systematically turning back the clock on protections for employees against hazardous working conditions.(2)

And not only the Department of Labor. The New York Times, in an article entitled “A Regulatory Rush by Federal Agencies to Secure Trump’s Legacy,”(3) cites the efforts by “a broad range of federal agencies” to send the country back in time to a more dangerous, more polluted past.

The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg has raised warnings about a new “Lochner Era” at the Supreme Court. The Lochner Era (1897 to 1937) saw the Court throw out laws on “the minimum wage, child labor or other business regulation.”(4) As David Leonhardt points out, most voters support efforts to “reduce carbon emissions sharply, strengthen labor unions, raise taxes on the rich, make college and health care more affordable,” while “conservative judges like Barrett generally do not, and they have been willing to strike down laws they don’t like.” 

So, it’s “fasten your seat belts, it’s full power backwards!”

*

The great 17th/early-18th century architect Sir Christopher Wren designed 53 London churches and St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was buried in St. Paul’s,

the tomb covered by a simply inscribed slab of black marble. On a nearby wall his son later placed a dedication, including a sentence that was to become one of the most famous of all monumental inscriptions: “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice” (“Reader, if you seek a monument, look about you”).(5)

*

What monument do we see when we look about? A nation under assault by a deadly virus (proclaimed “a hoax” by the  Republican Party’s leader); a growing threat by white nationalists (emboldened by wink-wink messages from that leader); worldwide dismay by our friends and allies, who see that leader cosy up to the planet’s worst rulers; a health care system under threat by its own government; the human rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender people being trampled, and on and on.

We look about. The Republicans look back—some even alluding to “the good old days of segregation.”(6) Lindsey Graham being “sarcastic”—har, har!

We also look forward—prospice—in the hope that we can make a better country— a better world to be our cathedral.

 

***

(1) https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/16/larry-hogan-reagan-not-trump-gets-republican-governors-2020-vote/3679232001/

(2) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/26/trumps-labor-secretary-is-a-wrecking-ball-aimed-at-workers

(3) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/us/politics/regulatory-rush-federal-agencies-trump.html?searchResultPosition=2

(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/briefing/amy-coney-barrett-voting-world-series-your-monday-briefing.html

(5) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Wren

(6) https://news.yahoo.com/senator-lindsey-graham-defends-reference-180323178.html

The Golden Boy

There lived in a small village in Bavaria (though some say Bohemia) a pious but penurious cobbler. After his wife died in childbirth, he raised his only child, a son, teaching him reading, writing, portions of the good book to memorize, and to follow the strait-and-narrow path of virtue that he himself had trod throughout his life. The boy was a good learner, and with his shining blond hair and good character, he was called by the other villagers “The Golden Boy.”

When he reached his majority, the son set off from his father’s home to seek his fortune in a larger world, eventually, after several moves, settling in the city of C. Because of the difficulty of travel—long distances and uncertain roads—the son returned to his home village only once or twice over the years. 

Years later, one night when the old cobbler was dozing by candlelight in his favorite chair, he was awakened by a loud knocking at the door. When he opened it, he found a neighbor, Herr H., panting and gasping for breath.

“What is the matter?” the cobbler asked.

“I have been riding all the night from the town of P.; my horse is dead on its feet. But I had to rush here to tell you of the news that was passing through the town. It seems that the people heard from a traveller from the Capital City that your son, the Golden Boy, was arrested for many murders and rapes and was sentenced to be hanged. The dreadful event is to take place tomorrow.”

Choking back tears, the old man thanked Herr H. for rushing to tell him the terrible news and shut the door behind him.

Confused and tormented, the old man did not know what to do. But finally he pulled himself together and got down on his knees to pray.

“Oh Lord, although I have prayed to thee every day of my life and have tried to follow in thy footsteps, I have never before tonight asked thee for anything for myself.” As tears cascaded down his cheeks, he continued: “But hearing the news about my son, I must ask, plead, and beg of thee, that thou grant me one favor—allow me to trade my life in place of my son’s and for me to bear his terrible fate.”

*

The old cobbler is standing outside the gates of heaven while Saint Peter examines a parchment in front of him. “I’m sorry, Herr K., but according to this document, you may not pass through the Pearly Gates. You have been consigned to The Other Place.”

“But I have lived an honorable life. I have broken none of the Commandments; I have dealt falsely with no man: I have spoken evil of none. Why am I turned away from Heaven?”

“I cannot answer that,” replied the saint. “It would be best to inquire below.”

*

The Devil stands with his back to the yawning maw of the entrance to The Other Place. “Yes, Herr K., you belong here,” he says to the frightened old man. 

“But why do I belong here? I asked Saint Peter but received no answer.”

“He did not have the facts of the case, which came directly to us. Because you pleaded to take the place of your evil son, you took on his crimes when you did so. Thus, sir, you are damned in his place. But even worse, because you pleaded to allow him to live and, therefore, to continue his murdering and raping, you are doubly damned. . . . Enter, please, Herr K.  

  

A Phantasm of Alternative Facts

For most people in the United States today is Columbus Day. For others, the day has been repurposed as Indigenous Peoples Day.  

Thus, it seems right to use the day for re-evaluations. Hence this blog post: “A Phantasm of Alternative Facts.”

*

George Washington took only a week to write “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Amelia Earhart is living in South Bend, Indiana.

Shakespeare’s plays were written by D. H. Lawrence—except for Julius Caesar, which was written by Cicero.

Michael Jackson opted for show business instead of joining his uncle Andrew’s cabinet as Secretary of the Interior.

Moulin Rouge is the color of Sarah Palin’s makeup.

Exxon is a Viking rune.

Icarus had no pilot’s license, so he couldn’t use his father’s helicopter.

Paris Hilton officially transitioned into a hotel in 2017.

Mynah birds, tired of feeling inferior, have petitioned for a name change.

A new book by a leading bureaucrat is entitled Lord of the Files.

The Titanic sank in three feet of water.

After Andrew Lloyd Webber composed “Memory,” he forgot where he put the sheet music.

Mike Pence is in for a pound.

Mike Pence’s third cousin is Miss Moneypenny.

New York Yankee players are forbidden to eat southern fried chicken.

George Bernard Shaw, Irwin Shaw, and Artie Shaw were all the same person.

Columbo and Quincy hired Hercule Poirot to discover their first names.

Tired of writing poetry, William Wordsworth opened a five-and-ten-cent store under a pseudonym.

Originally called “pollo,” polo was played in Spain with live chickens.

A failure as a couturier, Charles II of England decided to become a king.

Oh, finally—Columbus did not discover America. A stiff wind blew his fleet off course, and so he discovered Greenland.