"Those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint."

By Capt. Fogg

I don't have to look for evidence that the United States of America isn't united, unless you consider enraged confusion to be a uniting factor. A Pew polling report last year showed that only 34 percent of Americans think Obama is a Christian. I have no idea how many Americans like me, don't give a damn if he's a Zoroastrian as long as he keeps his scriptures under his pillow and not under mine. His religion or lack thereof is no more significant to me than his favorite basketball team and indeed the private beliefs of most of our better presidents have rarely been a factor in their official lives.

Of course those who wish to destabilize and polarize what's left of the informed electorate for reasons of partisan gain are happy to make an issue of it and for them it's indeed a game with few rules and only one strategy: attack, attack, attack. Prominent amongst that breed of snakes is of course, Fox News, who can depend on a base of religious chauvinists and racist bigots who know less about the certainties they profess than their enthusiasm might indicate.

Take the recently manufactured "scandal" about the inaccuracy of Obama's reading of Isaiah 40:31 at the National Prayer Breakfast this week. Fox Followers can't really be expected to know much about the archaeological history of Isaiah, the variations between extant scrolls or that chapters 40 - 66 seem to have been written about two centuries after Isaiah himself, but apparently they have so little regard for the knowledge of America's scholarship that they also don't expect us to remember that there are other and better translations than the King James version, some of which have incorporated what has been found at Qumran and most of all: that the original certainly isn't in English. President Obama was simply quoting the very popular New International Version. Some scandal.

One can hope that these fragments scraped from the bottom of the GOP slime barrel, indicate that the barrel is empty. Sad to say, it's very easy to make a fool of one's self in America, but it's still difficult to get Americans to notice it amidst the sound and fury.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Want some gay fries with that?

By Capt. Fogg


It's never been clear to me why people like Bill O'Reilly think about gay people so often. Perhaps he really doesn't care but he knows that those grunting knuckle dragging Budweiser drinkers and super-size fries addicts who keep him in the money do care, but be that as it may or may not be, Bill's at it again, focusing his dull perceptions and limp wit on a French McDonald's commercial. With a passionate pose he hopes will remind you of Churchill's famous "we will fight them on the beaches" speech, he assures us that such a thing will never run here. Yes, the ad features a lad whose father doesn't know he's gay. It's a bit wittier than you'll see in the US market, so perhaps he right. I just wonder why he cares so much.

"We wanted to show society the way it is today, without judging. There’s obviously no problem with homosexuality in France today”

said the brand director for McDonald's France, but there sure as hell is in the Fox Nation.

"Do they have an Al Qaeda ad?"

asked O'Reilly. Do you think he dreams about bearded gay men with AK-47's?

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Fox Nation - are you man enough?

by Capt. Fogg

Fox Nation -- do you have the stomach for it?

"It's Time to Say NO to Biased Media and Say YES to Fair Play and Free Speech."

is the curtain from behind which they spew out biased interpretations as freely as Fox News ever did. Fox Nation is a month old "Conservative opinion" site that is by their own description " for those opposed to intolerance," and of course intolerance means that gagging sound one makes when trying to swallow the allegedly conservative outrages against the misrepresentations they perpetrate -- just like Fox News itself.

"Why aren't white males being considered for the Supreme Court?"

asks this fine publication today. Of course the court always has been and still remains mostly white male, but it's good for readership to get the skinheads and Aryan nation idiots in an uproar about their being persecuted. I really don't have the stomach for it, but I'm sure they're opposing intolerance here in some obscure fashion.

"attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought [and] expression,"

are what they oppose as long as those thoughts don't include any objection to pointing an M1 Garand military rifle at Barak Obama and Jesse Jackson.
Coincidence? Only their psychiatrist knows for sure. Of course I've been thoroughly excoriated on right wing sites for suggesting that "heads should roll" in the hate radio business and it was interpreted in fair and balanced fashion that I was calling for themurder and ritual decapitation of Rush Limbaugh, so I really don't feel any inhibition in asking whether this is a subliminal thing, meant to make the bigots giggle and their trigger fingers wiggle or pure accident. It could be that, certainly and I'm being fair and balanced about it.

Cross posted from (fair and balanced) Human Voices