Republican Jesus Gives the Golden Rule a Rewrite

Straight Out of the Heartland

It sounds like everyone had a great Christmas in Deseret, although I'm hearing Winnie at my hometown newspaper may have fudged it a bit. From what I understand, the Jim and Starr Mitchell family accidentally put 2015 candles on the cake. There may have also been some cat involvement.

Here's how Winnie reports it:

Starr cooked a turkey and served pies. Everyone brought something for the meal. Steven and Ashley Mitchell brought the birthday cake for Jesus this year. There were also two dogs present.

Sure, the Poulsens may have the funkiest smelling pile of gifts under their tree, but, oh my heck, nothing honors the birth of our Saviour more than a nice chunk of brisket:

Orson and Jeannette Poulsen spent Christmas Eve in Salt Lake City with all but two of her children and all of Jeannette’s grandchildren. “We had a fun time,” Orson says. The couple gave gifts of packaged meat to all the adults and toys for the tots.

I gather Boyd Udy has taken up the tradition of not feeding people cursed with the names of the unheartlandishly hued:

Boyd Udy had all his children but Tyrell to Christmas dinner. “We just stayed around home and had a real nice Christmas,” he says.

Department of Book Reports: At Play in the Fields of the Lord

Peter Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord is one of those mid-20th century novels I've meant to read and never got around to doing so. Well, I've finally read it, and it was well worth the time. Matthiessen can be, at turns, a dense writer, full of metaphor, and flights of reverie, but always interesting.

The novel itself is one of the clash of culture works that abounded then, and still do. The Martin Quarrier family, Martin, Hazel and their son, Billy, are small town fundamentalists who venture to the wilds of South America to convert the Niaruna Indian tribe. who live in a remote area, but an area that the government would very much like to develop and would love to have vacated by the Indians. The Quarriers are aided by another couple, the Hubens, solidly Christian folk. Along the way, the two families encounter two American Ex-Pats, Lewis Moon and his pilot buddy, Wolf, who the local commandante has "hired" to bomb the Indians out of the area. The Quarriers set up their mission which had once been a Catholic outpost, until members of the tribe murdered the missionary priest. What ensues is chaos, clashes and the dissipation of faith.

Matthiessen has richly written characters that are not stereotypes. Each is imagined vividly and all are memorable. Lewis Moon is a "half-breed" Cheyenne, brilliant, and lost. Martin Quarrier falls in love with his environs, and the people while his wife goes slowly mad. Andy Huben, the wife of Leslie, is the object of many a male fantasy. Wolf just wants to go home to his rather beatnik life in San Francisco. All are given compelling stories to share.

Matthiessen, you may recall, is also the author of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, a non-fiction work about Leonard Pelletier, and over which he was sued by an FBi agent for defamation. He was also a founding member of the Paris Review, along with George Plimpton and the poet, Donald Hall. At the time of the magazne's beginning, he was also working for the CIA. He experimented early in the sixties with mind-bending drugs, an experience that lends to a long sequence in the novel when Lewis Moon also partakes and has visions. A very interesting man, indeed.

At Play was adapted to the screen in the early 1990's by Hector Barbenco, director of Kiss of the Spider Women. It received a mixed critical response at the time. I loved it, and not just because I got to see Darryl Hannah naked in it. The cast is terrific, with the aforementioned Ms. Hannah, John Lithgow, Aidan Quinn, Tom Berenger, Kathy Bates and Tom Waits. If you can find the movie, I highly recommend it. The Netflix doesn't seem to have it, though there are a few clips at the Imdb. The movie certainly piqued my interest in reading the book. Both achieve the level of art. Watch and read if and when you can.

Forget it, Ayn. It's Chinatown

There's a deep secret hidden somewhere behind the inscrutable facade of Chinatown. It's a dirty, grimy secret. It's a secret with unfathomable mass. It's a secret with infinite weight.

Those who deal in the trading of secrets won't find this one easily. It's housed in a building behind a blue sign lettered with gold Chinese characters and a napkin taped on a door upon which the words "phone bank" were hastily scratched by some long-forgotten wretch.

Once through the door, secret seekers must run a gauntlet: six flights of metal stairs, bulging trash bags, and broken pieces of furniture. At its end is the secret's sanctum, a "wide-open cavern of Chinatown despair: walls stripped of fixtures and decor, two dozen cheap, unmatched chairs thrown together for some long-forgotten meeting or class, and a soulless excuse for a bar with a BartendingLicense.com sign posted on its front."

And a cube framed with grimy plastic sheeting. From a distance, it looks like a klavern of ghostly klansman seeking warmth from a sooty fire. That's fitting, because it's the home of Ron Paul's NYC phone operation.

They call it "LibertyHQ."

It's guarded by a phalanx of gray pudgy young men armed with cellphones and the latest pocket protector technology. They are the guardians of the secret. No one gets past them. No one violates the holy of holies.

Not even a business journalist.

A helmet tip to Casac.

Heterosupremacist Birfologist Patriot or Crazy, Paranoid Lunatic?

Stephen Pidgeon is a brave man. On Monday, he stood up to WA Governor Christine Gregoire and other radical egalitarians by submitting an initiative to end their efforts to desegregate love.

It was an heroic act, one that exposes him to the full wrath of armies of secret homosexualist operatives. They'll call him a bigot. They'll search his closet. They'll oppose his will.

He understands what he's risking. He's been there before.

You see, Mr. Pidgeon is not only a valiant defender of love segregation, he's also one of our nation's most preeminent birfologists. A close, personal friend of Orly Taitz, law dentist, Mr. Pidgeon is the man who discovered that Obama traveled to a foreign Euro-South American country, British Columbia, to change his name.

Of course, communists, Islamomexicans, Hittites, and their fellow travellers immediately rose to Obama's defense, unreasonably demanding that Mr. Pidgeon do the impossible: that is provide evidence.

Still, he was not deterred. Rather than fleeing when faced with demands for proof, he risked arrest by writing a book, "The Obama Error." Here's how Amazon describes it:

Here are the facts, and here is the law. The national fabric is forever torn, and the experiment in God-breathed freedom we call America is finished. When we look back to the causes of our demise, we will most certainly find the Obama error.

Yes, he risked arrest for writing that book. According to an email published by the Free Republic, camo-clad stormtroopers from Homeland Security secured his neighborhood in March 2009 and are in the process of arresting him:

From: [email address of Stephen Pidgeon] Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 1:00 PM To: Carmen [last name withheld] Cc: [numerous recipients] Subject: Stephen Pidgeon in imminent danger of arrest by Homeland Security

I am writing this now as three black suburbans with HS personnel in camo are moving in to my neighborhood. I suspect arrest here shortly. In the event that you do not hear from me by tomorrow morning, please continue to contact by me email, as we will try to monitor. If not, contact Cesar Velasquez in Bellevue, WA (a Washington lawyer) for status.

Stephen Pidgeon

I imagine some people would look at such an email and describe the author as a crazy, paranoid, right wing lunatic, but I, like many of my readers, see the author in a different light. The man is a true patriot. He should be awarded this nation's highest commendation, the Tricorner Hat with Teabag Dangles.

Rick Perry: American Pie

Brother Rick reminds me a movie star, like one of those guys in "American Pie" or "The Hangover." That's the kind of glamour he'll bring to the White House.



A helmet tip to reader Joe.

Jesus' Commando to Target Murderous Nurses

Pastor Jonathan A. David
Glorious Praise Ministries
Houston, Texas

Dear Pastor David,

In a recent blog post, you alerted us to a great evil arising out of the nursing industry. Here's what you had to say about it:

Statistics reveal that there has been an upward spike in the incidents of depression, marital disruptions, family breakdown, parental neglect, emotional instability, increased stress, murders and other violent crimes traceable to the homes that are directly related to professionals in this [nursing] industry.

The satanic nature of nursing should not be a surprise to anyone. Throughout history, the nursing profession has been a hotbed of witchcraft. Obviously you understand that. I suspect that's why you invited famed Nigerian child-witch pricker Pastor Helen Ukpabio to speak at your church in March.

Have you considered asking Pastor Ukpabio to lead a spiritual warfare campaign against Houston's nurses while she's there? You know she'd bring down God's full wrath on the city's healers. She's Jesus' Witchcraft Commando. The wicked of Nigeria tremble when they hear her name, and those who defend child witches are quickly instructed on the redemptive qualities of the heavy steel-toed boot.

Heterosexually your,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot