Here's what Bush said when asked his view on homosexuality in the press conference today:
Q Thank you, sir. Mr. President, many of your supporters believe that homosexuality is immoral. They believe that it's been given too much acceptance in policy terms and culturally. As someone who's spoken out in strongly moral terms, what's your view on homosexuality?THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own.
He then went on to defend the traditional view of marriage between men & women.
I just received in my in-box a note from a liberal friend that Bush responded to a question about homosexuality that, in essence, we all sin.
This is delicious loony left spin of the purest stripe. Right up there with Scalia's fake quote on homosexuals. Bingos to me-o if it takes off.
Let's play Hussein Son Bingo!
I'll start. If the "Bush's unseemly gloating" meme already started by Paul Begala takes hold for more than, say, two days, BINGO FOR ME!
I know at least one of you has a Bingo item to share. Bro.
Instead of blogging or thinking about much of anything this week, I'm in tech week rehearsals for Oliver! Anybody in the Atlanta area who reads this needs to come see the show! Brian Jones Of The Week will return sometime next week.
Tim Blair links to a particularly idiotic Bush-bashing joke:
So anyway, trailed by the ubiquitous cameras of the White House press corps, President George Bush goes to a primary school in Texas to have a "photo-op" chat to the children about this and that and nothing in particular. When he is done, one little boy at the back of the room puts up his hand to ask a question."And what is your name, young man?" Dubya asks him.
"Billy."
"And what is your question, Billy?"
"I have three questions. First, why are you president when Al Gore got more votes? Second, what is the connection between Iraq and September 11? And third, where are these weapons of mass destruction, anyway?"
Now, Blair's readers have posted a number of particularly illuminating answers to these questions, which is good for those who don't know anything about what's going on. But one thing I do know is that the people who tell this joke don't believe the questions are unanswered. They just like the nice sneery feeling they get from telling it. So why bother? It won't stop them.
I say, wait until the Democratic Convention. Then, when the speakers start putting this stuff out (and they will, no matter how effectively history has intervened), simply shrug and say, "Y'know, I always thought y'all sounded like a bunch of particularly slow fourth-graders."
Steve Hinkle tried to post a notice of a speaker for his campus sponsored group in his school's Multicultural Center.
First of all - if I'm in school, and the Student Center is not called the Student Center but the "Multicultural Center," I would expect to be hassled at every turn. Because, you see, I'm not multicultural. I'm a white guy. But I digress.
Hinkle, a white guy, was indeed hassled:
Several students confronted Hinkle and told him he needed approval from the coordinator of the multicultural center before he could post anything. While Hinkle left to investigate the claims, one of the students called the campus police department.
As you'll see in the linked story, the incident degenerated rapidly, with Hinkle charged with disrupting a student meeting.
At a hearing in the matter, the university's VP of student affairs made it clear that he was charged because of his race, his political affiliation and because some members of the campus community considered the flyers he attempted to post to be offensive:
"You are a young white member of CPCR (Cal Poly College Republicans). To students of color, this may be a collision of experience," Morton said. "The chemistry has racial implications, and you are naive not to acknowledge those."
This must be awkward for Cal Poly's legal counsel, who says:
[Hinkle] was not charged because of his political affiliation or because some members of our campus community considered the flyers he attempted to post to be offensive."
Oops! Oh well, at least the law talking guy didn't try to claim it wasn't about race.
Note: the article spells Hinkle's name two different ways. I'm going with the majority "Hinkle" which appears in other stories on the case as well.
Lileks captures my own thoughts on the current political discourse:
Anyone who says “all liberals are . . . “ and follows it with something like genetically driven to oppose the United States [like Ann Coulter] is just talking nonsense, and gives the impression that they are actually standing on their hands, and have taught their rectum to pass gas in such a way that forms recognizable phonemes.[...]So to say “left-wingers hate America!” just strikes me as fatuous drivel. If that’s the case, there’s no point in arguing about anything. To the barricades!
This is exactly why I've stopped arguing politics with my liberal friends. I'd love to argue facts with them, really I would. But they largely lack the capacity to do so. It's not enough to say, "I believe Halliburton is pulling Cheney's strings." It's, "Halliburton is pulling Cheney's strings, and your kind are too blind to see it." OK, should we discuss Halliburton, or my own detestably poor vision?
Naaah. If we're going to keep it on an infantile level, then it's poop jokes and exorcism discussions for me. Those subjects are better suited to infantile discussions.
I have to laugh at this description of the BBC from London's Times:
The Beeb has been accused of, among other matters, fanatical suspicion of the motives of those in power and unrelenting hostility towards the Conservative Party. It has been attacked for a wholesale scepticism about capitalism, combined with a weakness for quack environmentalism and health-scare speculation over hard science.
The Instapundit has a longer quote and even more on the BBC, but I just liked the description. So apt, so true, so guaranteed to elicit frothing denials from the BBC's core audience (in England, no doubt, but especially here in the US, over at NPR and in the Democrat Party).
This week's Brian Jones of the week is someone I've never met, but who affected my life a great deal.
One day in the early '90's, I received a telephone call at my home, an apartment on Roswell Road here in Atlanta. The man on the line asked if I was Brian Jones; I said yes. Did I live on Roswell Road? Yes. He then read a social security number to me: was it mine? Nope. He read another one: mine? I confirmed that it was mine. The man proceeded to tell me that I owed his collection company over $1,000 for a Bally Health Clubs account. I informed him, truthfully, that I had never had an account at Bally. He responded quite reasonably, asking me to keep in touch about the account.
Now, I'm the first to admit that my credit history has been somewhat spotty. I'm not ashamed of it; I've cleaned up my act a good bit since that time and even have a home of my own and a credit card. But back then I was in a constant state of worry over my credit, so I thought that cooperating with this fellow was a good idea. So I gave him my work phone number.
Next day he called me back. If I couldn't prove I wasn't that Brian Jones on the account, I would owe him the money. I went through hell, including numerous increasingly abusive calls from the collector, doing just that, and it was all wasted time.
People. Do what I did after that. Learn the federal collection laws and the law in your state. You could save yourself a good bit of embarrassment and wasted effort.
It turned out that the fellow on the line did indeed know my name and social security number, but not from any credit application. No, he had a list of Brian Joneses and their social security numbers (legally obtained) and was using them to collect on the Bally account. He didn't care that I was a different Brian Jones. He was going to hassle me for the money until I told him to leave me alone. I could have done that on the first phone call but I didn't know it. Instead, I contacted Bally and went through their customer service Hell to get a copy of the application which I used to demonstrate that a different Brian Jones, in a different place on Roswell Road, had defaulted on the account.
I encounter this person every now and then when I'm opening accounts etc. He seems to be a real piece of work. So, Brian Jones, who used to live on Roswell Road and defaulted on Bally Health Clubs, dude, you low-life sack of decadent crap: You're our Brian Jones of the week!
My father had a strange relationship with national patriotic holidays. He was born on Flag Day and used to tell us that his mother had him convinced that everybody was hanging out flags in honor of his birthday.
Then, about 13 years after his kidneys failed, he got a call in the early morning hours of July 4. A kidney was available for transplant. He & Mom rushed to Piedmont Hospital and checked in, and then...waited. The doctor was stuck on the other side of Peachtree Street by a seething mass of runners!
Hence, "Independence Day."
The transplant was a success and he had probably a couple of good years with the new kidney, but eventually the anti-rejection regime damaged his body too much. The best quality of life he had after his kidneys failed was when he was doing Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis. I think he might still be with us today if he'd been able to keep that up, but incompetent nursing staff ruined his peritoneal access site after he had bypass surgery one year, by permitting it to become infected. Dad saw it coming a mile away, too. CAPD was new to most hospitals then, and there was a briefing before he went into the surgery where he showed the necessary anti-infection precautions. The nurses, largely, slept through it. And after the surgery he woke from the anesthesia to see his dialysate draining into an open bucket on the floor, instead of the required sterile bag.
He'd been happy on CAPD, but he lost the access site shortly after that hospital experience and went back onto hemodialysis. I can only imagine the hope that accompanied the transplant, but ultimately it's what took him away, in my opinion. All because some nurses slept through a presentation.
Thanks a lot, ladies!
Somebody gave Dean a wonderful gift. I know mine is one of my most prized possessions. More even than my (sporadic) Sunday School attendance and (even more sporadic) Bible reading, this book has changed my life for the better. Look at the inclusive language, the wonderful ways in which it acknowledges that we all sin and we all are forgiven. It's just such a human book, by and for humans at their very best.
Not only do I get off tomorrow, but I'm going to sneak out early today!
I've got a play rehearsal tonight, and then get to do the parade tomorrow. My mother-in-law has invited us over to dinner, which I suppose means the kids don't get to drag us to a fireworks display. I might talk this over with the wife tonight, make sure she understands the full implications of that.
I read the newsgroup alt.religion.christian.episcopal, and the resident jokester posted the following request:
In his biography of Thomas Cranmer, Diarmaid MacCulloch talks about the angry reception given to the new English prayer book Cranmer published in 1549. The Welshmen and Cornishmen didn't speak English and didn't want to learn it and didn't want a new denomination either for that matter. They wrote a tract against the articles of faith, and Cranmer wrote a blistering response to them, but never published that response himself.Evidently in it he tells a scatological joke about St Martin and the devil. Does anyone know what the joke was?
After a few Google searches I think I hit pay dirt (WARNING: slow-loading PDF):
The vulnerability of the mouth to demonic violation was mirrored by the vulnerability of the nether mouth. Tales of possession and exorcism through the anus were extremely common, as that of Saint Martin of Tours, who exorcised a demoniac by thrusting his fingers into the man's throat, forcing the demon to exit from the anus, leaving 'sad and foul traces behind'. ... Similarly, Protestants were fond of relating the story of how 'a famous [Catholic] expeller of devils, having cast out an evil spirit from a man in a monastery at Cologne, and being politely asked by the Devil for some place of retiral, jokingly told him to go to the Privy.
Poop jokes and exorcism, two of my great fascinations! But I digress.
I just love that phrase, "sad and foul traces." Would you believe that it exists nowhere else on the internet? Your job is to disseminate this great phrase.
I drove all the way in today. I've managed to whittle my commute down to under 50 minutes on most days. I think I've found the optimum route and it really does flow. I just wanted to get one last drive under my belt, see if it's really all that much better than MARTA.
It's nice, but I'll be happy on MARTA for a few months, I think. I'm not going to report on MARTA every day any more, unless something astoundingly awful or wonderful happens. I turn in my work parking pass tomorrow, I think.
UPDATE: No, I turn it in on Monday. I'm driving in for the 4th of July Parade and will enjoy parking downtown for that.
From a comment on Sofia Sideshow
The old American absent mindedly arrived at French customs at the airport in Paris and fumbled for his passport."You have been to France before Monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically.
The ancient Yank admitted that he had been to France before.
"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready for inspection", snapped the irate official.
The American said that the last time he came to France he did not have to show his passport.
"Impossible, old man. You Americans always have to show your passports upon arrival in France."
The old American gave the Frenchman a long, hard look. "I assure you, young man, that when I came ashore at Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day in 1944, there wasn't a damn Frenchman on the beach!"
Entering the Five Points station yesterday after work I was almost shocked to note that the fare gates, which were non-functioning on the North side last time I was a MARTA rider over a year ago, are still out of order. Somebody needs to give me a break. As a MARTA monthly pass holder, I get to walk up and slide a card into a reader on the gate. The reader is supposed to suck my card in and spit it out after reading it, then I grab the card and enter.
Good luck.
At least the readers at Five Points are covered over (with clumsily hand-lettered "out of order" signs). Most of the non-functioning card readers are uncovered, and simply refuse to suck your card in. (This happened to me at Inman Park yesterday although I forgot to mention it.) No, you poke your card into the slot where it's supposed to go, and it just springs back, refused. No reason given, no indication of any problem - you're just thrusting your card at the gate and hoping for the best. This is especially frustrating if somebody is behind you in line. Nothing like having to back through someone who's also trying to catch the train. A woman behind me at Inman Park yesterday morning actually tried her card after mine was refused and seemed surprised. I guess I don't blame her for not "studying" my experience, but life must be strange to someone who can watch me enter a gate, back out of it into her waiting arms, and then try the same thing I just did. She was kind of funny. "Oh, SHIT!" No shit. So then you are faced with a choice: move down the line of fare gates, thrusting your card at each one in turn until you find one that works, or jump the handicapped gate (which opens by a push bar.)
Attention, MARTA: Approaching a fare gate with a valid MARTA pass should not be an occasion for a sense of sinking dread. Fix your fare gates. This would also cut down on your alleged fare jumper problem. While I'm sure most of the jumpers you're experiencing are actual thieves, I and many other honest riders are in that mix simply because we have no choice or, yes, are impatient with your inadequate service at the gates. Don't expect me to play fare gate bingo, or search for a security officer to let me in when all I have to do is push that bar on the handicapped gate.
This morning I drove to the Indian Creek station, which is the end of the East Line. I got there after 8:30 or so, so I didn't expect to find a parking space close by. But I was surprised at how bad the parking has gotten: they've closed off the west end of the parking lot, apparently for construction. Dang.
The reason I drive to the Indian Creek station instead of easier-to-reach stations like Avondale Estates or Kensington is my one rule about riding MARTA: I will have a seat. My MARTA ride will be productive time, or I might as well be driving. I managed to read a scene from the play I'm working on, and I look forward to being even more productive on future rides. I wrote most of my adaptation of Tom Sawyer on the train, and also did most of my stage management script studies for Winnie The Pooh on the train.