Happy Halloween

I like Halloween.

The EndTimes: Halloween Edition

Endtimes are near. How else would you explain this picture? As in, WHY THE FUCK IS IT SO FUCKING HOT IN LATE OCTOBER?!?!?! (On a related note, I drove to LA yesterday and it "only" took me 50 min. Who designed this city?). Clearly, the only way to explain why I'm watching the World Series and dying of heat at the same time is that anti-christ is coming soon. Which is a good thing, because from what I hear hell does not have 39B staff meetings.

Seriously though. Actually, I take theocons less seriously than neocons, partially because the former are so easily tricked by the latter. While I would defend religion as such from supposed rationalists like Sam Harris, many of these people, in addition to being gullible, also have a problem with crazyness. And when they blog, special things happen.

I spent much of my fourteenth year of life in a t-shirt that featured a picture of flying saucer and the word "BELIEVE," so I know not only a thing or two about conspiracy theories but also faith. One hardworking blogger has already rounded up many of the Obama theories that conservatives, religious or not, have concocted. And yes, the mainstream media should drop their liberal bias and report on all of them immediately.

If you are not from the mainstream media, but instead from, say, fox news, you can only lament as to what could have been, as James Pinkerton does in a recent post. For Pinkerton, the McCain campaign should have made the objectively verifiable point that Obama was pallin' around not just with Ayers and Wright, but also with another nefarious figure: lucifer. Turns out, Obama is inspired, and possibly funded - we'll never know - by the devil. Alas, if only people knew this, then surely they would not vote for him. According to Pinkerton, McCain should have dug through Obama's personal life and based his campaign on character attacks, because "that’s how you win a presidential campaign, even amidst hard times for your party." Instead, you know, RIP Lee Atwater.

Second up is some heavy investigative journalism from a woman named Flo Ellers. No, she is not on the US women's water polo team. Apparently - and this is something I did NOT know - she visited "tribal Christians" in Kenya and found that " witches, warlocks and those involved in satanism and the occult get up daily at 3 a.m. to release curses against McCain and Palin so B. Hussein Obama is elected." WITCHES!!! WARLOCKS!!! BOO!!! So what worm are these early birds trying to get? Obviously, they are "weaving lazy 8's around McCain's mind to make him look confused and like an idiot." This explains the aimless wandering at the town hall debate. Poor J. McCain. But there is a bigger point here: your friend Ameeth has once again found you a halloween costume. You could be a warlock for Obama. Just put on black face, carry a big stick, and otherwise try to look 'tribal.' But then have an Obama shirt on. It will be ironic, just like that New Yorker cover a few months ago. Wait - actually, don't do that. Just go as regular warlock.





Non-theocons are also getting in on the act. My favorite is this post, wonderfully titled "Obama Sets Up New Gestapo Agency For His Regime." It suggests that Obama will enact Dennis Kucinich's long standing dream of a police state, something of a cross between the Stasi and the SS. Clearly conservatives are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties under an Obama administration (though they do not see the irony of writing about this concern in a blog titled, for example, Stop the ACLU).

So, ladies and gentleman, cue "Love Roller Coaster" for the next Heinrich Himmler:



One wonders if this new police state will have the power to listen in on people's phone calls, read their mail, look into what books they're reading, and infiltrate their political discussion groups. Obama will probably issue a record number of secret presidential orders, and then alter the rules so that classified documents take a generation to become public. Maybe an Obama administration would give its 'unitary executive' sweeping powers to suspend habeas corpus and detain people indefinitely, set up secret prisons in former communist countries, and torture people based on techniques learned from former communist and Nazi interrogators, the whole process concluding, if ever, with show trials. To justify this he would also have to declare a never-ending war, label anyone opposed to this war as a traitor even if that meant outing a CIA agent, depend on a complicit media, and above all politicize the justice department so that what's prosecuted is not the administration's real crimes, but their opponents' fabricated corruption. This would allow him to give millions of dollars of no-bid contracts to his friends - how socialist! The American people would not put up with this, but it wouldn't matter because the Obama camp would simply steal the election with the help of the Supreme Court and/or paperless touch-screen voting machines.

Now THAT, my friends, would be the way to destroy the "fabric of democracy" and replace it with an Orwellian nightmare. But of course, such a crazy scenario would never happen. If the government and it's corporate sponsors gave itself that much power, surely these religious, gun-toting conspiracy theorists would rise up in revolt.

Right?

UPDATE

I will post the video of bill o'reilly yelling at Barney.

no holds barred god smackdown coming soon

My money's on Xenu

The Three Rs: Reading any and all (elite) media, Regulating oil and gas, and...ouR kitchen table

There is a video out there on the interwebs of Willaim O'Reils yelling at Barney Frank, lispy representative of the Washington elite, for causing Freddie and Fannie to fail. I won't post it here because he's too tiresome to watch, but essentially his message to democrat no-nothing-know-it-alls is this: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, "PLAY US OUT"?!??! FUCKING THING SUCKS!!!

I think O'Reilly was trying to play to his disaffected, conservative (reactionary?) viewers by 'stickin' it to the man' in charge, in this case Barney Frank (GET IT? I'm clever too). Because clearly Barney Frank is in charge of everything and always has been and is the sole reason for people hating politicians.

Speaking of Bill O'Reilly's disaffected, conservative viewers, did you know that around 30 million Americans are functionally illiterate? And according to the Daily Kos' "Hannah," who may or may not be one of Thomas Pynchon's writing students, the people who represent them may be too! It's a good read, one which involves fake war stories, family tragedy, disavowal of friendship, Spanish psychologists, astronauts, cause and effect, and democracy.

Speaking of people who may be functionally illiterate...teaching. As in, my students are not functionally illiterate! Yay! They are much smarter and more engaged than I expected. Teaching is not that hard. The only thing hard about teaching is the special needs website that we have to use to teach our students about "digital literacy." Except that, every time we ask the course administrators why our website lost in the internet special Olympics, they get all Sarah Palin on us and explain that we shouldn't worry about it because the students are already more digitally literate than us and will figure it out the only thing they can't do is think critically and write except you can't fix that by just having them write on sheets of paper you need to use the online tools and oh they don't work hmm well we'll just have to get back to ya on that.

But our course administrators are smart and educated and Sarah Palin seems so, I don't know, not. Therefore, it must be that neither W nor McPalin are functionally illiterate. Rather what we are seeing is a whole new emerging discourse, indeed, an entirely new epistemological frame. This week has marked the turning point in the rise of this frame, culminating in last night's debate (Adennak via Wonkette via Andrew Sullivan):