Death to Bush!

So, to the list of impeachable offenses committed by our President, we can now add the direct violation of the Fourth Amendment through illegal and unconstitutional monitoring of individual communication by the NSA. Rather than go off on a rant about this at this time, I encourage everyone to begin every phone conversation, email, IM message, or letter with the words "Death to Bush". You may, alternately, use "Fuck Bush", or even "Assassinate Bush" -- anything that will force evaluation of your message by some secret court and unauthorized investigatory agency. As the head of the Ukrainian internal security agency once told a westerner, "I have good news, and I have bad news. The bad news is that all of your phones are bugged; the good news is that we are three years behind in transcribing the recordings." Since we're paying their fucking salaries, let the NSA bastards who collude in this unconstitutional travesty actually do some work.

Oh, the impeachable offenses so far:
1) Violation of Article I, section 8 and Article II, section 2 of the Constitution by invading a foreign country against which Congress had not declared war (alternately, if you insist on clinging to the fiction that House Joint Resolution 114 constituted such a declaration, "by failing to prosecute immediately a war that Congress had declared").
2) Violation of Amendments V and VI of the Constitution through arrest and detention of American citizens with neither Grand Jury indictment nor "quick and speedy trials".
3) Violation of Article VI by using a religious test to determine nominees to the Supreme Court, that is, that they believe that "our rights are derived from God".
4) Violation of Amendment IV of the Constitution through unreasonable search and seizures.

More expansive comments can be found here.

'Tis the season to be irrational

It's that time of year again: time for the Christian subhumans to get all bent out of shape with "Xmas" or "Holiday Trees" or the absence of an explicitly religious aspect to Christmas; for the Jewish subhumans to get all bent out of shape that there's even as much reference to Christ as there is; for the Black Nationlist subhumans to babble about Kwanzaa as though it has any relevance; for paranoid school administrators and other public officials to homogenize everything to "holiday season"; and for shameless elected demogogues to score points by complaining about that.

For those of you who assert that Jesus is the reason for the season, I would point out that the season predates Jesus, and is, in fact, the result of the 23.4 degree tilt Earth's rotational axis (although a more complete discussion of this can be found here); that as such, the winter solstice has occasioned celebrations as far back as written history extends. I would also note that the Bible describes the time of Jesus' birth as occurring either in the fall or the spring, and the reason Christmas was set as December 25th was to compete with the non-Christian and pagan winter solstice festivals. Hmm: that sounds like the charge that various Christian subhumans level against the creators of Kwanzaa.

Yes, I am stating for the record that Christmas is a made-up holiday. As though that matters. More to the point, Christmas is important and relevent precisely because our public expressions pull Christ out of it.

Only subhumans would deny that a Christmas tree or a nativity scene costs money and space. Given that, if Christmas is only about Christ, spending at any level of government to promote the holiday represents theft of money from non-believers to promote a religion in which they do not believe. If a Christmas tree represents Christ's birth, it has no place in the public space. If, on the other hand, it represents "peace on Earth", "goodwill to men" , charity, family, blah, blah, blah -- all of which are secular messages -- it's not nearly as noxious to use everyone's money to support what is kind of a pretty thing. I would add, of course, that the "Christmas" trees, holly, and mistletoe are actually pagan symbols, that "Yule" is a wiccan sabbat of the winter solstice, and any use of these things by Christians is corruption of the deeper religious significance of them -- much as Christians say "holiday" trees are a corruption of Christmas.

But why does the state say anything about Christmas at all? Many Christians own homes with lawns, on which they can place nativity scenes and crosses, so if Christians want to see evidence of their religion, they should put it on their own property: so city hall, and the taxpayer, would not have to pay for it. Schools can and should mark holidays important to the populations they serve, as sort of cultural exposure -- in a factual, perhaps even analytical way, without making a statement about the validity of the belief underlying them. There can be decorations, foods, little parties, whatever. But that can take a lot of money and time. Most schools get into trouble because the only holidays they celebrate are Christian, and maybe Jewish, ones. When I went to elementaray school, in Willingboro, New Jersey, we got Rosh Hoshannah and Yom Kippur off -- and who doesn't like vacations? Again, though, the holidays were days off, and nobody under public salary told me that I should actually observe the holidays themselves, much less believe in the underlying theological assumptions of them.

In short, "holiday" tree is not a bad compromise for what is an increasingly heterogeneous society. Christians put up Christmas trees, Jews can light mennorahs, Blacks can light Kwanzaa candles, pagans can burn the Yule log -- all in their own homes, with their own resources. When we go into the public sphere, we can appreciate the lights, colors, etc. in a secular, universal way, without the burden of one or another individual's idea of what Christmas should be.


So Blessed Yule, all. If somebody tells you you should believe something that you don't choose to, smile and offer a pleasant greeting, rather than caving in his or her skull, which would be more appropriate. Or you could choose to rant.