Rudolph's Safe

Firearm Festival Ends

On the last day of firearm deer killing, a quick look at our county's best and brightest.
Michigan expected about 725,000 hunters this year. They were expected to kill just over 410,000 deer.
No word yet on how many hunters the deer bagged this year.

What the Devil is going on?

Prince of Darkness, Prince of Peace

The Christmas season is like comfort food: it doesn't have to improve or change to rekindle memories of childhood, warmth and laughter.

The songs, the stories, the family traditions inspire thoughts of love, peace and harmony.

Reflecting on the angels bidding the shepherds, "On earth peace, good will to men" a Denver family crafted a holiday wreath in the shape of a peace symbol.

Then all hell broke loose.

Some neighbors saw it as call for peace in Iraq. Well, God forbid! Apparently in Denver's rarified air, "On earth peace" doesn't mean all the earth; just the parts without a US invasion occurring.

Worse, some claimed the design was a symbol of Satan.

Wow, the iconic peace symbol, designed 50 years ago to rally support for universal nuclear disarmament, is Satan's logo? Sheesh, who knew?

That really puts a twist on the Prince of Peace stories and hymns.

Next they'll want to take "Don we now our gay apparel" out of Deck the Halls!

Well, dreams of peace have always been part of my Christmas comfort.

If that upsets you, feel free to Fa-la-la-la-la yourself.

Truth or Consequences?

Bush Court to Decide if EPA or God

Will Regulate Global Warming

Science seems to pose an extremely vexacious area of study to President Bush and his acolytes. Golly gee, there's all that new stuff to deal with. For instance, shall we study and use embryonic stem cells or just continue throwing them out? Shall we believe millions of scientist's research on evolution or rename a 6000 year old story and call it a fact?

Bush even got busted for hiring a hack to edit his reading (such as that must be) and to remove all references to global warming, lest he ever be accused of comprehension.

Imagine spending tax dollars to prevent Bush from learning something. What a waste of money.

You know, you're not stupid if you don't know the facts.

You're ignorant.

So now great minds like Justice Scalia get to rule on the possibility that global warming is an environmental problem and whether or not Bush's evisceration of the EPA was successful.

Amazingly, it's so obvious to the rest of civilization that even the companies that benefit from the creation of these gases admit that there is a problem that they not only have caused, but continue to cause.

Can't wait to hear Scalia and Thomas declare warming a non-environmental issue.

Like Livingston county's boy genius Joe Hune said at the election debate last summer, "Weeellll, that Global warming is big science...big science."

And that's the truth from Livingston County

Psychiatry and a Thousand Points of Light

America Must Embrace the Helpless

Volume 1 of Many

They often don't even know they need help.

It doesn't matter because if they ask for help they're shown a Byzantine labyrinth of agencies that refer and direct, sympathize and encourage.

For some that's sufficient. For many it's intolerably complex and bureaucratic.

But they're your nieces and god-children, your aunts and your neighbors. They struggle to find an acceptable middle ground that keeps them functioning in a society with little support to offer.

They're homeless.

They're battered.

They batter.

They're in prison.

They're in special ed or fail at mainstreaming until they're 18, then they need to learn the system.

They're in half way houses run by people who can't spell psychiatry and don't want to learn how.

We only notice when they kidnap, when they kill, when they molest.

But they're out there 24/7.

We know there are homeless, but like the hungry, that's not our problem. Or we can soothe our conscience with a can of Campbell's or a buck in the bell ringer's kettle.

It's not enough.

The irony is that it costs more not to help these people than it does to wait for them to show us their troubles, too late to trust us not to judge.

Halfway houses need to offer hope, not just a bed.

And the Joplin River of Life Ministries needs to prove to the world they had the professional clinical expertise to care for those that society was reimbursing them for before those people were killed.

Don't Know What It Is, but I Know It When It's in A Store Window

Catholics in Sexy Red Burkas

The finger waggin' Catholics are still trying to tell the rest of the county how God wants them to behave.

Course it doesn't involve loving their neighbor, helping the poor, or sheltering the homeless. At least, last time I checked all of these humanitarian needs remain unfilled.

So in the spirit of No Samaritan and Ignore Thy Neighbor, Livingston's devout have rallied against legitimate commerce.

But if those same pious individuals enjoy the speed of today's PC and the freedom of the internet, they need to know that the PC industry was driven to grow by the single largest cash cow of all PC hardware, software and web sites, pornography.

So like their Mid-East zealot cousins (different religion, same mind set) they probably need to boycott all the freedoms that they don't approve of.

Look how religious censorship has advanced Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, etc.

Could I interest you in a hot little red lace burka, ma'am?

Our President's God-Given Insights

Soul to Soul Born Again Style

Apparently our President feels more comfortable analyzing souls than winding down unnecessary wars.

In 2001, God gave him the opportunity to look into another man's soul, a fringe benefit of borning the second time, I think. Russian President Vladimir Putin was the willing patient and Bush proclaimed his vision that Putin's soul was true.

Spurred by his Presidential canonization, Putin decided to show the world his spiritual side.

First President Putin apparently decided that reform in the Ukraine, a former USSR state, could be postponed by poisoning the populist presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. Riots ensued, but that's why Putin and Bush have security teams, right?

Then local billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky got under Putin's skin. Deep pocketed reformers can be such a threat. So Putin had him arrested for tax evasion. Putin seized control of Khodorkovsky's gas and oil company, Yukos, and (re)nationalized it by selling it off to politically safe allies for "back taxes."

Yukos tried to keep Putin at bay with a US Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, but Yukos US assets were in Texas and Bush's Texas judges and the afterglow of Bush's soul searching killed that effort aborning.

So as Khodorkovsky's Yukos is whittled away for taxes, what possible benefit would Putin enjoy by imprisoning a reformer and confiscating his company? Maybe enriching his retirement? As his term limited Presidency ends, Putin may want to become Gazprom's CEO, giving him control of the largest energy company in Russia.

Remember how Gazprom (theoretically a private, capitalist company) shut down natural gas to the Ukraine (Yushchenko's Ukraine) last winter when the temperatures were at their lowest and Putin's leverage was at its highest? This guy really plays for keeps, take no prisoners style.

Wonder if our insightful President saw that ploy in Putin's soul?

Putin seems to tolerate criticism as well as former Russian Premier Josef Stalin. In August 2006, journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a prolific and vocal Putin critic, was gunned down and murdered in front of her apartment. The ever compassionate Putin pointed out that although her influence was widely known by Western human rights organizations, "her influence in political life in Russia was very minor."

Geez, wonder why such a pure soul would say something like that. I mean, she only documented his support of murder, rape and torture.

Which brings us to Putin's most recent exploit. Former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko has been poisoned in London. Before dying today he said he was killed under orders of President Putin. Maybe Litvinenko just couldn't see Putin's soul from Bush's lofty spiritual plateau.

I guess our born-again President has soulful insights we one-time birthers lack.

I got no glimpse of Putin's soul, but if Bush deems it true and pure it explains alot about his analytical capabilities. Remember "Mission Accomplished"?

Pilgrims, Puritans, and Hallelujah

And Now from the Wonderful People Who Brought You

the Salem Witch Trials,

Happy Thanksgiving

"The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think."
-- H. L. Mencken

A quick read from our local paper proves Mencken was right (again).

Revisionist history

Happy Thanksgivin' - Y'All

I know "Gi' me that ole time religion" is the rallying cry of the cit'zins, but they don't quite get it right...and that's the way they like it, aha, aha.

The frenzy to identify and punish illegal aliens strikes me as a bit peculiar on Thanksgiving. Apparently when you're the illegal alien your justification is...what? Doing God's work? White-man's destiny? God's will?

For a bit of revisionist history from the Plimouth Plantation (those wild eyed radical terrorists in Plymouth, MA)

Some people call this revisionist history, saying it weighs too heavily on the “side” of the Native People or that it is too controversial. I would ask those people to look back at the textbooks from their elementary school or high school—perhaps even college days. There are patterns in the historical writing. One reads all about the Pilgrims bravely crossing the ocean to found a brand new country based on freedom, then comes the Revolutionary War, and then continued building of the new country, America. Where does one read about the Wampanoag? Where does one find what was going on with them while everything else was going on? Until very recently, when it came to textbooks and historical thinking, we existed only in the 17th century—when Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn, when Massasoit befriended the Pilgrims, and the “First Thanksgiving.” Often our existence was only mentioned in our relation to (or in the service of) the English. Readers and students of history have been left with the image that we went completely away.
In point of fact, we didn’t go anywhere. And most Wampanoag People still live right here in our original homeland alongside everyone else. For us there were not always easy times or good times. There were other epidemics (after the first most devastating one of 1616-1618 in which the Wampanoag lost approximately half of our population, conservatively estimated at 35,000 at that time), wars, still further encroachment and loss of land, demeaning treatment by those of other races, and systems that worked to our disadvantage and were completely the opposite of our traditional ways. It is not always a pleasant story, but it is nevertheless a true one. It happened. And on that basis alone, the story deserves to be told.
To tell our story—to add it back into the historical record—is seen as a negative thing by some. Reintroducing what should always have been included is seen as “changing” history. We are not trying to change history. It happened. Not telling what happened does not change the fact of its happening. What we would like to change are the attitudes that keep us in that place of omission; where one part or “side” of history is perceived as the whole. It is not just a matter of Wampanoag People having the opportunity to tell our “side” of the story. It is a matter that all of us see the history of the 17th century (or of any time period) holistically. There are no sides, but only one whole story. This then is what Thanksgiving: Memory, Myth & Meaning articulates and accomplishes with sensitivity. This is what gives the exhibit its unique qualities.

So Thanksgiving day celebrates a time when our forefathers were illegal aliens, courted the locals when it suited them, then killed them 54 years later.

The Thanksgiving legacy must be...illegal aliens can wipe out a culture; be afraid, be very afraid.

It's seems to be a true paranoid celebration.

Sure's a lot easier to close your eyes, raise your head, clap your hands and repeat after me: "Gi' me that old time religion, It's good enough for me."

God bless ya'.