K, he's got my vote

Seems some fundy-mental-ists think that Barack Obama is the Antichrist foretold in prophecy. Now I want to vote for him just to rile them up:

Very charming isn't he? Raised in a Moslem world, (Indonesia) with protestant upbringing..I'm watching him. I'm always aware when Republicans and Democates, and Independants, far left, far right, think this man is the cat's meow. They never agree on anything.

[...]

Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, born in Hawaii, raised in Chicago, was a little known Illinois state senator as recently as last year.

Now he's the states Democratic US Senate canidate, He will win, because now he is unopposed. I am watching everyone very carefully, especially since this chip is on the horizon, which I believe is connected with the mark.

The antichrist is not going to come in with devil horns on his head, and make an announcement...Hello all. I am the expected antichrist!!! I can see how people are going to be fooled when the AC does show up. He is going to be a charismatic fellow, with all of the answers for the worlds woes. Why not start in the US, since I believe that is where he is going to rise out of?? "who referred to Obama as a man who can help heal the division in our nation". Only God can HEAL our nations divisions!!!

[...]

Yes, it is uncanny the way that people are flocking to him. He has an eerie magnetism. I watched his speech, and I was almost spellbound. He said ALL of the right things. Even the tv commentators said that they had never heard such a good speech at a convention before. I'm going with my gut on this one. My sister and I both feel something "spooky" about this guy, but can't quite figure out what it is. It is odd that strangers come up to him on the street. Why would they do that, unless they were drawn to him.

You are right GodSaves, we are supposed to watch, and those that do not, aren't very bright to say the least. Jesus didn't give us His word with all of the information in it for no apparent reason...Grace.

[...]

Oh, I can see that part of the "big story". That has nothing to do with his "drawing power" with EVERYONE, even with us "whities" so to speak. When the whites start accepting a black man over a white man, and the white man has a great political career, then that is either a miracle from God, or the part of a bigger plan. Mans bigotry will never change as long as we are on this earth!!! This white man who had a great career in politics, is SUDDENLY shamed by a scandal. I think it was part of the bigger picture, so Obama will be the shew in for the Senate. By his demeanor alone, that tells me that it is a spirit of deception that this guy is operating under.

[...]

Let's just say for a moment that there was a powerfull man right now waiting in the wings to bring peace to the middle East.Let's say for a moment that I believe that a man will come.He would have to have a very great persuation on American christians and the Jews in order for the next temple to be built.

Jean Marie lestinger is a Jewish priest next in line for the Papacy.From what I've read that he has wrote,he is anxious to let the Jews have their Temple,A very Powerfull charasmatic man,A very likable man.

Just a thought,Isn't it funny also that Kerry has now found out that he comes from jewish fathers,just like Madaline Allbright found out.

I don't know if it means anuthing but it's interesting.Just like that Israelie astronaunt that died over Palistine Taxas,that Teacher in the explosion before that was Jewish also.Like 1 died trying to make it to heaven and the next died coming back from heaven in Palistine.

[...]

He may be an antichrist, if he speaks against Christ. But is he THE antichrist? find out if hes jewish or not.

[...]

I just found a post on Obamas website from a Jewish girl. Barak (different spelling) means "lightening" in Hebrew. Luke 10:18 ~ And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

I didn't even like Senator Tuvok all that much until now...

I'm Calabrese!

I was not expecting Roma to lose to Reggina last weekend, but I wasn’t all that pissed off… Reggina’s not a bad side, calciopoli notwithstanding. Which is a good thing because… apparently they are my home team!

I just learned from a relative that my maternal grandmother came over through Ellis Island. I knew they had really good records, so I went on the website (excellent resource by the way) and was able to pull up the passenger manifest. There was a ton of information there, including the town my ancestors came from. I was surprised and pleased to learn that my people are Calabrese, as I’ve always been sort of drawn to that part of Italy. My grandmother was born in Palmi in 1898, and they left in 1905 (right before the disastrous earthquake in 1908).

So now I have two paths to follow for my citizenship. My aunt is pretty sure that my grandmother didn’t get her citizenship until after 1939, which works out perfectly as my father was born in 1934. So I sent away for her estratto dell’atto di nascita and am going to submit a FOIA request for her C-records as well.

I’m excited!

De-humanisation of a generation

One of my big fears before the war was the effect it would have on the hundreds of thousands of young Americans. This video shows that effect: complete and utter de-humanisation and a descent into barbarism.

This is happening now, and will keep happening for years. This is not Vietnam: "eighteen months and a wake-up." These people are being systematically brutalised psychologically, over three and four long tours of duty. When they eventually come home for good, how will they be able to re-integrate? What will happen to them?

And what will happen to America?



UPDATE: soon after I posted this video, it was removed from YouTube and the website www.theinvisibleamerican.com stopped responding.

I am very freaked out about this.

Liberal = Lucifer?

Am I crazy to think that we cannot share a nation with people like this?

RIP Baldemar Huerta

He was born Baldemar Huerta and had his first measure of success as El Be-Bop Kid, doing Spanish covers of rock 'n' roll hits in the late 1950s. But it was as Freddy Fender, the name he took in 1959 to more easily cross over to Anglo audiences, that the bilingual crooner from San Benito will be forever known.

When Fender became a national sensation with 1975's "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" topping both the pop and country charts, the Rio Grande Valley rejoiced that one of its own could go so far from the migrant fields of his youth.

OnSaturday the Valley lost its voice, as Fender, 69, succumbed to cancer at his Corpus Christi home with his family at his bedside, said a family spokesman. Fender was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in January, when doctors found 11 tumors.

Fender's delayed rise to the top had strong ties to Austin. In the late '60s, after a three-year stint in prison for marijuana possession, Fender had returned to the Valley with his dreams of breakout success broken. He got a job as an auto mechanic and took classes at a community college. But then he heard his name in a song. When Doug Sahm recorded "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" on his 1971 roots project "The Return of Doug Saldana," the track opened with a salute to the man who wrote it. "And now a song by the great Freddy Fender," Sahm said, his voice drenched in echo. "Freddy, this is for you, wherever you are."

When word got back to Fender that his old records were hip in Austin, he got in touch with Sahm, his future co-star in the '90s Tex-Mex supergroup Texas Tornados, and got booked at the Soap Creek Saloon off Bee Cave Road. When Fender arrived to see a group of longhairs in cowboy hats outside passing joints, he was apprehensive. But the show was a raucous sellout, the crowd swaying to his swamp pop "triplets" and stomping to his Chicano R&B, and Fender's musical dreams were rejuvenated.

Fender also reconnected in the mid 1970s with Houston producer Huey P. Meaux, who signed him to his Crazy Cajun label. Although Fender and Meaux originally intended to make an R&B album, the producer had found a country song that was perfect for Fender's delicate, quavering vocal style.

"I don't want nothing to do with country," Fender said when he heard a demo of "Before the Next Teardrop Falls." But after about half an hour of arm-twisting, Meaux persuaded Fender to cut it.

The single was released in January '75 and shot up the country charts, staying at No. 1 for two weeks before crossing over to the pop charts. The follow-up, a re-recording of 1959's "Wasted Days," also landed at No. 1 on the Billboard country singles chart and reached No. 8 on the pop chart.

Suddenly, the Latino ex-con was the hottest "new" singer in the country. Billboard named him 1975's male vocalist of the year. "Teardrop" was also given single of the year honors by the Country Music Association.

His recasting as a country balladeer was one of several events in a career that has taken Fender from the cantinas to the casinos, county fairs to European festivals, from the slammer to the Grammys.

"He was a pretty humble guy considering he was such a singing legend," said Austin drummer Ernie Durawa, who backed the Texas Tornados, who also included Augie Meyer and Flaco Jimenez, from 1990 until Sahm's death in 1999. "He was always joking. Like when they gave him the key to the city in Fresno, he asked if it could open the jail."

He had won three Grammy Awards, but Fender told the American-Statesman in 2004 that his proudest achievement was being named in the book "Above and Beyond" as one of the Top 100 former Marines who've conquered civilian life. Fender said he was going to buy a copy for every drill sergeant who kicked his rear end. Fender was also honored when his likeness was painted on the water tower in San Benito, proudly proclaiming itself to be "The Home of Freddy Fender."

Fender performed a career retrospective show "Freddy Fender: 50 Years Of Music," at the Paramount Theatre in April 2004, just three months after undergoing a liver transplant. Two years earlier, he received a kidney from his daughter.

"I'm not one to think like 'poor me,' " Fender said in 2004. "I've always accepted the ups and downs. Maybe I've had to start all over again a few times, but at least I'm not an old cup of stale coffee. I've had a few refills."

He didn't become a national star until he was 38, but Fender grew up fast. As a child he labored beside his migrant worker parents in the cotton fields of Arkansas and the beet farms of Michigan. Back in San Benito during the winter months, he'd sit outside Pancho Dalvin's grocery store, plucking a backless, three-string guitar.

At age 10, he made his first radio appearance, singing "Paloma Querida" on KGBS in Harlingen. Figuring the barracks beat the barrio, Fender joined the Marines at age 16 and came out three years later with dreams of becoming the first Chicano rock 'n' roll star. His specialty was putting the big hits of the day to Spanish lyrics, and he had a hit in Mexico and South America in 1957 with "No Seas Cruel," his version of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel."

When he signed to Imperial Records, the home of Fats Domino, in 1959, he became "Freddy Fender" after his favorite guitar. "Just think," he told an interviewer years later, "if I had been playing a Yamaha guitar, I'd be the No. 1 act in Tokyo."

While out on tour in May 1960, Fender was arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana in Baton Rouge, La., and sentenced to five years at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. After serving three years, Fender spent a couple years singing R&B in the bars of New Orleans, often bumping into the similarly life-hardened balladeer Aaron Neville. Afraid his New Orleans partying would land him in prison again, Fender returned to San Benito in the late '60s and sang in bars on weekends.

The nightclub lifestyle continued to have its grip on Fender, and in 1985 his wife Vangie dropped him off at a substance abuse treatment facility. He had been sober the last 21 years of his life. The needles he shared while using heroin had a lasting effect, however. Fender was diagnosed with hepatitis C in the early '90s.

Fender also acted in several films, including the prison drama "Short Eyes" and the 1988 film "The Milagro Beanfield War." When he auditioned for "Milagro" director Robert Redford, he was asked his acting experience. "Man, I shoulda won the Academy Award for all the stories I told my wife when I'd come home late and drunk," Fender told Redford. "She believed them." Fender got the part as the town's mayor.

He also thrived in his new role as loyal, devoted husband. Vangie Huerta, whom he divorced after getting out of prison in 1963 but remarried a few years later, remained his rock until the end.

Saturday quote game

Guess who said the following:

1. "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."
2. "I have seen the religious spirit bloom again; churches once more are crowded, the ministers of God are themselves invested with new respect."
3. "I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle..."
4. "I believe that God wants me to be president."
5. "God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know He is on the side of justice. Our finest moments [as a nation] have come when we faithfully served the cause of justice for our own citizens, and for the people of other lands."
6. "If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us."
7. "[F]reedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."
8. "Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!"
9. "God gave the savior to the ... people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save [us]."
10. "But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy & it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism & exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
11. "The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."
12. "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Answers: 1. Adolf Hitler; 2. Benito Mussolini; 3. Adolf Hitler (Berlin March, 1936); 4. George W. Bush; 5. George W. Bush; 6. Adolf Hitler(at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg held on 3 Oct. 1937); 7. George W. Bush; 8. Adolf Hitler (Nuremberg, Sept. 13, 1936); 9. Hermann Goering, speaking of Adolf Hitler; 10. Hermann Goering (in his testimony at the Nuremberg trials shortly before he poisoned himself in his jail cell); 11. Heinrich Himmler; 12. Joseph Goebbels

L O freakin L

An excerpt from an excerpt of an excerpt

An excerpt from an excerpt of They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer:

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move... it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this.

"...You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end?

"...But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was ‘defeatism.’

From here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html by way of here: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1189

Busted!

This story is excellent!

For those of you who don't read Italian... some guys on the Italian equivalent of Saturday night live busted some Italian politicians by swiping a drug test wipe across their foreheads, claiming they needed to touch up their video makeup.

The results:
24% (12 people) tested positive for cannabis
8% (4 people) tested positive for cocaine

So an incredible 68% of Italian legislators have not been wasted recently! Talk about mani puliti!!!

OK, update: story in English here.

"Chieder conto ai politici..."

Yes, I am avoiding the Foley blogstorm, thank you very much...

I found something on Reuters Italia that I'm not seeing anywhere in the US media: the boss of Google is talking about an online service to fact-check the statements made by politicians. This is a great fucking idea, and the US media are probably pissed that Schmidt is pointing out that they are not doing their job.

Anyway, it's totally blacked out in the US, so if you don't read Italian you could translate the article above or pay to read it in the Financial Times. Interesting stuff.

Roma capoccia!

Top of the table baby... Inter split one, and we're back in business!

Totti is back at the field where he broke his leg, and still not in top form, but Montella just continues to shine. I like this Aeroplanino guy! I listened to an interview with him on Rai Uno and he sounds pretty cool. So with defense still lagging, it's totally awesome to have a key forward

I don't think anybody can say Roma hasn't really worked to get to the top this season...