Murderous Violence

News item:

OWOSSO, Mich. — A Michigan school official says a man who was a well-known anti-abortion activist was shot and killed near a high school.

Business manager for Owosso Public Schools Julie Omer says the shooting took place around 7:20 a.m. Friday. She said police told school officials a suspect was taken into custody. No students were injured.

Michigan State Police have not officially released the victim's identity.

But Omer says police disclosed to school officials the identity of the man, who is often seen carrying signs with anti-abortion slogans. She stressed that police are not making any connection between his views and the shooting.

I wonder how much national brow-furrowing there will be about the threads of deadly violence woven through the pro-choice community? I wonder if Franky Schaeffer will bust out a lengthy apology for his new friends, the way he did for his old ones a while back?

Just One Little Question

I want the credit, as the Dustin Hoffman character said in Wag the Dog as his final minutes arrived. I actually watched a fair amount of Rainbow Brite's speech last night. I started watching shortly after arriving home from my instructional duties, along about the time Da Prez was explaining that he'd be graciously pleased to allow you to keep your present medical insurance if you're happy with it (and, I suppose, if you chose it in the first place; for most of us, our employers choose it). I kept watching (or "listening," I should say, as I was changing clothes and taking care of the other dull minutiae of my bourgeois existence) through the long list of what "shouldn't be" in America, such as going broke because you get sick; and the list of what will soon be against the law for those eeee-vill insurance companies, and a much shorter list of what will be against the law for you: failing to do business with those eeee-vill insurance companies. I didn't actually bail out until it was being explained that implementation of the all-new HealthCare System™ should be viewed as obligatory because it was so important to the late, sainted "Boozer" Kennedy -- even for the credit, that was way too much for me. Along the way, I heard about how truly eeee-vill those insurance companies really are, and how the hoped-for-but-not-really-necessary Public Option™ would keep them honest by competing with them; and I also heard about how parts of the all-new HealthCare System™ were going to be financed, in part, from fees collected from the eeee-vill insurance companies and the almost-as-eeee-vill drug companies. I also heard about how the hoped-for-but-not-really-necessary Public Option™ was going to be much more cost-efficient than the eeee-vill insurance companies, due to its freedom from "overhead" and the generally superior ability of taxfeeders to be efficient and frugal.

I kept wanting to interrupt Da Prez with many questions and an impertinent observation or two, such as the fact that the whole shape of the horrible, horrible HealthCare System under which we now labor was and is set by our supervisors, between Medicare, Medicaid, and WWII-era wage controls. But rather than a hundred questions about the details, and a hundred impertinent arguments, wouldn't it be better to ask one large and simple question: Where is the text in the Constitution that authorizes the central government to ...

Aw, never mind. What's the use in asking that?

The Word for Wednesday, 9 September Edition

The Bible (at least, the canonical Bible according to Protestant tradition) contains 66 books, and Isaiah contains 66 chapters. Whether this has meaning beyond numerical coincidence, I leave the reader to decide; I myself see no particular significance. However, with chapter 66, I have officially run out of Isaiah.

This chapter begins with what we can't, and can, do to please God:

Thus says the Lord,
"Heaven is My throne, and the earth is my footstool.
Where then is the house you could build for Me?
And where is a place where I may rest?
For My hand has made all these things,
Thus all these things came into being," declares the Lord.
"But to this one will I look,
To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word."

For the humble and contrite, the future looks good:

"Before she travailed, she brought forth;
Before her pain came, she gave birth to a boy.
Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?
Can a land be born in one day?
Can a nation be brought forth all at once?
As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons.
Shall I bring to the point of birth, and not give delivery?" says the Lord.
"Or shall I who gives delivery shut the womb?" says your God.
"Be joyful with Jerusalem and rejoice with her, all you who love her;
Be exceedingly glad with her, all you who mourn over her,
That you may nurse and be satisfied with her comforting breasts,
That you may suck and be delighted with her bountiful bosom."
For thus says the Lord, "Behold, I extend peace to her like a river,
And the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream;
And you shall be nursed, you shall be carried on the hip and fondled on the knees.
As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you;
And you shall be comforted in Jerusalem."
Then you shall see this, and your heart shall be glad,
And your bones will flourish like the new grass;
And the hand of the Lord shall be made known to His servants,
But He shall be indignant toward His enemies.

For the disobedient, not so much:

"Those who sanctify and purify themselves to go to the gardens,
Following one in the center,
Who eat swine's flesh, detestable things, and mice,
Shall come to an end altogether," declares the Lord.

"For I know their works and their thoughts; the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and see My glory. And I will set a sign among them and will send survivors from them to the nations: Tarshish, Put, Lud, Meshech, Rosh, Tubal, and Javan, to the distant coastlands that have neither heard My fame nor seen My glory. And they will declare My glory among the nations. Then they shall all your brethren from all the nations as a grain offering to the Lord, on horses, in chariots, in litters, on mules, and on camels, to My holy mountain Jerusalem," says the Lord, "just as the sons of Israel bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord. I will also take some of them for priests and for Levites," says the Lord.

"For just as the new heavens and the new earth
Which I make will endure before Me," declares the Lord,
"So your offspring and your name will endure.
And it shall be from new moon to new moon
And from sabbath to sabbath,
All mankind will come to bow before Me," says the Lord.
"Then they shall go forth and look
On the corpses of the men
Who have transgressed against Me.
For their worm shall not die,
And their fire shall not be quenched;
And they shall be an abhorrence to all mankind."

I am thinking that Isaiah must have known that he was recording a "hard saying" of the Lord, because he interrupts the flow frequently to insert a "declares the Lord" or a "says the Lord." He wants it to be clear to his hearer / reader that he's acting properly as a prophet: passing along what God has directly told him to pass along. Significantly, the gruesome image from that last verse of Isaiah (For their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched) shows up repeatedly in another "hard saying:" the words of Jesus, quoted at the end of Mark chapter 9.

Parenthetically: it's always seemed odd to me that Bible-skimming worldlings are usually convinced that God's a benevolent old grandpa, and Jesus a soft cupcake, and that their words of cuddly, fuzzy love are twisted by mean old prophets and apostles into the basis of horrible, horrible "organized religion." I find that the opposite is more nearly true. No one talks more, and more severely, about Hell and judgement than Jesus does. When I read the writings of the prophets and apostles (Paul comes particularly to mind here), it seems to me that they're always looking for a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. They're faithful; they do their jobs; but they often sound as though they'd like to find some way to wiggle out. And if that's the case, I certainly sympathize.

Starting next week, I contemplate changing testaments and taking up the book of James. And, as always, more Words for Wednesday can be found by clicking here.

How Many Words is a Picture Worth?

Check out an angry Fred Reed. An excerpt:

The web is covered in stink today because of a reporter for the Associated Press, Julie Jacobson, who photographed the death of a Marine whose legs had just been blown off. The kid was Joshua Bernard, a Lance Corporal of 21 years. When the photo appeared, Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense [sic] furiously tried to get the AP to quash the photo. It didn’t, to its everlasting credit.

[ ... ]

Photographs are death to a war, boys and girls. They can asphyxiate a war faster than roadside bombs can even dream. Gates does not want the sprawling somnolent inattentive beast, the public, to see what his wars really are.

In wars, there are many enlightening things to see. For example, the Marine with a third of his face and half a lung, going ku-kuk-kuk as red gunch rolls out of his mouth and he drowns in his blood. Ruined or dying teenagers whimpering the trinity of the badly wounded: Mother, wife, and water. The brain-shot guy jerking like an epileptic as he tries not to die. Ever see brain tissue from gunshot? I have. It makes a pink spew across the ground. Like strawberry chiffon.

[ ... ]

Next to keeping the public quiescent, keeping the troops (and potential recruits) bamboozled is vital. If a high-school kid saw what awaited, if he saw the cartilage glistening in wrecked joints, he wouldn’t sign.

Do I think that the press should publish such photos? Not yes but hell yes on afterburner. Every time an editor covers for the Pentagon, every time papers refuse to show the charred bodies still ... slowly ... moving, the dead children, the ... never mind. The effect is to ensure that more kids will die the same way. And the press almost always does exactly this. We are a trade of whores and shills. Except that whores give value for money. The press kills our children.

And -- let's not forget! -- other people's children, too.

We Still Make Something

It appears that there's still one export market in which the peace-loving USA is very competitive:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States accounted for more than two-thirds of foreign weapons sales in 2008, a year in which global sales were at a three-year low, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

Citing a congressional study released on Friday, the Times said the United States was involved in 68.4 percent of the global sales of arms.

U.S. weapons sales jumped nearly 50 percent in 2008 despite the global economic recession to $37.8 billion from $25.4 billion the year before.

[ ... ]

The United States also led in arms sales to the developing world, signing 70.1 percent of these weapons agreements at a value of $29.6 billion in 2008, the report said.

You know, while we're at it, I can't help thinking that, if we as a nation really applied ourselves, we might become dominant in the world market for prostitution, too. U - S - A! ... U - S - A! ... U - S - A!

The Chronicles of Barack Dubya O-bomb-a, 9/4/09 Edition

Cindy Sheehan wanted to petition her president for a redress of her, and others', grievances. Check it out:

... the numbers at Martha’s Vineyard were not large. But Cindy and her fellow anti-warriors were undeterred. While I was there, she mounted a spirited march down the road to Obama’s place, no more than a quarter mile away from where she stayed. The purpose was to present the President with a poster of Cindy bearing a signed plea to end the wars. The considerable armed force at the gate and the Secret Service officers would not even bring out the lowliest of staffers to receive the poster. Clearly the message from Obama was "Get lost, Cindy." And we were quickly told to move a considerable distance down the road. At least in Crawford it had been possible to demonstrate at the checkpoint to the site – not so at Obama’s place. Thus, did Obama greet a mother whose son was lost in the wars, which he continues and enlarges by the day.

The site chosen by Obama for his vacation appeared restful, even idyllic, that afternoon though the house itself was a considerable distance away from the road, hidden from view. But the image of the "antiwar" candidate lounging comfortably by the ocean, his family nearby, while ordering the deaths, by drones and assorted other killing instruments, of people half a world away, complete innocents, unknown to this man or his advisers, was disturbing indeed. What sort of man could do this? Does Obama bring his much ballyhooed "coolness" down a degree or two for cold blooded murder? Are these wars a matter of conscience or patriotism for Obama? If that were so, does one suppose in a future imperial war that Obama will urge his daughters to volunteer to die in some Muslim land any more than did Bush offer his daughters?

But, like his role model and predecessor in office, Rainbow Brite does find time for surviving relatives of the right sort:

The Cape Cod Times reported the meeting thus:

So, yesterday afternoon, the family drove from Yarmouthport to Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod. They waited about two hours at the base. …The Obamas entered. …. President Obama called them all by their first names, Lisa said. "It was like seeing a friend you hadn’t seen in a couple months," Lisa said of the nearly 10-minute meeting. …

President Obama offered his condolences. "He told us whatever decisions he makes, he has Nick (and others serving) in mind," Lisa said. Earlier this year, Nicholas X met President Obama and shook his hand. The president gave a speech at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Shortly after, Nicholas decided he wanted to be part of the new offensive in Afghanistan, his father told the Times in July.

Lisa said her son called her right after the meeting. "He shook his (President Obama’s) hand and called me moments later and said, ‘Mom, the President was amazing, his hand was the softest thing I’ve ever touched, like a baby’s bottom,’" Lisa recalled.

She made sure to tell President Obama that yesterday, drawing a laugh from him. Lisa X said her family is "still pretty numb and raw" over losing Nicholas. But she thought of his likely reaction to the family meeting the Obamas. "He is probably laughing hysterically … and proud."

Such an account should break your heart and stir your anger at this hypocritical politician. The more so if, as one might suspect, this encounter made cynical use of this grieving woman’s trust. That soft hand of Obama’s is soaked in considerable blood now, some of it Nicholas X’s, no less than the rough hands of Bush and Cheney. Obama’s message is clear. Sacrifice your child and endure without complaint the "numb and raw" emotions that come of your grief. And then Barack Obama will glad hand you for "nearly ten minutes" and get some good press – after you cool your heels for two hours awaiting the cool, great man. But protest the senseless death of your son, and you get the bum’s rush at Obama’s gate. Thus, does the erstwhile "antiwar candidate" (How silly that phrase sounds now!) treat Cindy Sheehan whose like he once called on to join him in making peace. And the "leaders" of the antiwar movement are nowhere to be seen or heard.

You can read the whole piece here.