Republican candidates beckon us to the gloomy future

"Vote for Me because we are in the End Times!" That is the battle cry of several prominent Republican candidates. Matt Taibbi comments:

The Christian candidates are also influenced by rapture theology. Both Bachmann (who once led a Rapture-ready “We are in the last days” prayer ) and Perry (who famously has a relationship with my old pal John Hagee Perhaps America’s most powerful Rapture/End Times preacher) have dabbled seriously in Left Behind belief systems, under which the righteous will be whisked away to heaven just before God comes down to earth to kick ass and dispense justice to unbelievers via End-of-World troubles like wars and natural disasters. All of this helps explain why Republican rhetoric in this election season often coincides with eerie frequency with End-Times preachery. If you want to see what either of the two apocalypse-merchant wings of the Republican Party will be squawking about tomorrow, all you have to do is check to see what End Times fanatics are freaking out about today.
Rapture-talk is nothing new for conservatives, many of whom flock to gatherings where they are warned that the end of the world is imminent; I attended one of these gatherings myself--led by conservative radio talk show host "Doctor" Larry Bates. And as Max Blumenthal revealed a few years ago, prominent Republicans have long worked hard to formulate U.S. foreign policy relating to the Middle East based on End Times theology. If you're having trouble understanding the fine points of what the End Times will be, review this diagram. Or this one from Truth in Love. Or this one. It's apparently more complicated than pro football offensive play diagrams. Did I hear someone say church and state?  Amen to that!  We might not be living in the End Times, but we do seem to be living in Crazy times.

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Why do so many people hate big banks?

I have personally spoken with clients who have records showing that they have made ALL of their mortgage payments on time, yet the bank foreclosed on their home and then filed an unlawful detainer case to kick them out of their home. In two cases, the bank continued to kick the people out of the house even when the mistake was brought to its attention. We have found that, quite often, no one at the bank cares. Sometimes, not even the attorney representing the bank in court cares that there has been a terrible error made by the bank. It sounds unbelievable, but it's true. Where is the evidence that big banks break their promises, deceive mortgage customers, lose paperwork and otherwise engage in despicable behavior? Start reading this list at Consumeraffairs.com. This list contains complaints against one bank: Bank of America. Grab yourself a cup of tea before you start, because it's going to take you a long time to get through this list.

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Majestic sunset over South St. Louis

I'm a big fan of looking at clouds. While I peddled my bicycle home tonight, from downtown St. Louis to my home in the Shaw Neighborhood, I was repeated stunned by the beauty of the sunset. People oooh and ahhh at fireworks, but I don't believe any fireworks show comes close to what I saw tonight. No need to write any more about it. Instead, I'll simply paste in the gallery below (if you don't see the gallery, it's because you are on the home page--in that case, just click the title of this post and you'll see the gallery). None of these photos have been retouched in any way, other than cropping.

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Is it Spam or is it Poe?

I came back from a weekend getaway, and my inbox had a large number of messages from some group I'd never heard of, the Nation of Change. I was suspicious, especially given my recent unsolicited addition to the Christian Coalition mailing list. Also they were using an email contact that has been dormant for a decade that they could only have found by scanning whois data or buying some old spammer contact lists. I was curious enough to read one of their messages. It appeared to be some sort of addled parody of a liberal call to action newsletter. I immediately did some Googling to try to confirm my suspicion that it was a conservative group attempting to make liberals seem a) Loonier than thou, and b) Abrasive and annoying by pushing subscriptions on undesiring readers. The clearest description I found was, "Nation of Change", who are you and why are you spamming me? at the Daily KOS. In essence, this organization is a fairly new web site with stealthed contact information. They claim to be a legitimate registered not-for-profit, but one cannot look up their bona fides anywhere to confirm it. Although they don't appear to break any laws in their published documents, they do violate several BBB standards. Read the KOS article for more details. But I could not actually confirm that this is a conservative group posing as liberal in order to sow dissension and disaffection. As with religion and Poe's Law, it can be hard to tell sincere political extremism from parody. But this one trips my irony meter.

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Since we need to amend the Constitution anyway . . .

Perhaps we ought to follow the example of the government of Taiwan, and carve out two new branches of government.   In addition to three branches of government matching the American branches of the Executive, Judicial and Executive, the Taiwanese have two additional branches of government: 1. The Control Yuan is an investigatory agency that monitors the other branches of government . . . No member of the Control Yuan can hold another public office or profession while serving in the branch (according to Article 103 of the constitution), and members must be able to perform absent of partisan control or influence.  Wouldn't it be helpful to have such an independent branch of government to root out corruption and prohibit pork? 2. The Examination Yuan is in charge of validating the qualification of civil servants in the Republic of China.  Wouldn't it be interesting to see whether which of the candidates currently campaigning for President of the U.S. could pass a civil service test or, better yet, the U.S. Foreign Service Examination.

Continue ReadingSince we need to amend the Constitution anyway . . .