Arkansas Blog

I'm sure we'll have some patriotic music represented on this thread, so let's be sure to have both ends of the spectrum represented.

Jimi

Take a few minutes tomorrow to observe another whack at your freedom. Click the name......Google now has to tell the government whose watching YOUTUBE videos and when. How can I put this.....you can track my freedom loving ass straight to hell Mr. Cheney.

I'll wait until July 4th, 2009 to see if I feel like celebrating the birth of our nation....which unfortunately died of unnatural causes on January 20th, 2001.

Hugh, this should take care of both ends of the spectrum............fantastic!

Clicky

So what 4th of July celebrations are planned around the state and LR?

Must be the most beautiful, restful, awful place on earth.

click

Whilst in clicky musical mode this Fourth of July weekend, may I share the most moving version of "Amazing Grace" I've ever seen?

I detest this song from hearing it ad nauseum at WAY too many funerals, etc., over the years. It's the "My Heart Will Go On" of hymns.

Here, finally, prefaced by a fascinating explanation of its origins, is everything it's meant to be.

Dog bites whale in Alaska.. on video at my name.. at almost exactly 1 min 40 seconds.

Uh, DBI...

I hate to disappoint you in your ongoing jihad, but Vice President Cheney doesn't have SQUAT to do with a federal judge ordering Google to produce this information as part of its private, civil lawsuit with VIACOM. Seriously--do you believe half the crap you write on this blog??

Norma, I wonder if Obama ever heard music like the music of Mr. Phipps in his former church in Chicago?

Cookout at a friend's tomorrow. I'm taking sangria (2 gallons!), chocolate chip cookies, pesto potato salad. Hope everyone is safe and with people you care about this weekend.

Norma, I love that version

Thinkin' about several racks of ribs smokin' for about (secret) hours...

Someone has to...right?

Happy 4th
good read

clicky

President Cheney probably has old crazy Sumner Redstone tied up in one of his man-sized safes inside the Airstream trailer inside The Spirit of Strom Thurman airplane! He probably gets YouTube watcher's IP addresses straight to his brain via a data-port inserted under his left arm. Take all the villains from every James Bond movie you've ever watched and roll them into one and he'd still be 1/4th as evil and dangerous as President Cheney!

OK....I have to admit I'm nervous about this ruling. When I'm not blogging or cooking supper, I'm constantly searching YouTube for foot washing videos. Call me a perv, but nothing makes me breath harder than watching a good looking foot being washed. I wasn't breast fed, so that could have caused it. Maybe it was something I witnessed in the Baptist church as I was growing up...Who knows?

With my standing in Fort Baptist, I just can't take a chance that my YouTube information will get out. My god....my wife could lose her job at the 7-11 and if it wasn't for the food she stuffs in her purse when she changes shifts.....we'd be starving to death!

Last thing I need is for President Cheney to be up there flying around above my house watching me watching YouTube foot washing videos. People in Fort Baptist just won't understand! We gotta put our foot dow.....uhhh....we've got to draw a line in the sand over this one! It's bad enough President Cheney is killing all our troops and ethanolistically cleansing Iraq, listening in to my phone calls, reading my email and watching my wife shower, but tracking my YouTube video watching habits is one foot ove.....uh....is more than I can stand dammit!

Look....tomorrow is the 4th of July, the anniversary of the birth of our formerly freedom loving nation! I read today in the NY Times that some spook unit is digging up George Washington's childhood home. At a depth of 7 feet...oh..They've already found some kind of crack pipe and the most damning of all...they've found a dozen wig curlers in the cellar. I already know where this is leading.......President Cheney is blackmailing the Custis family, threatening to expose George Washington as a cross-dressing homosexual if they don't pay. Is this America?

Where we once could celebrate the 4th of July with thousands of liberties, we're celebrating tomorrow with 5 or 6 left to our name. 4 years of McCain and we'll have none! I suspect some kind of conservative tractor beam is being shot into Obama's head from that heavenly Airstream trailer hovering above us and that's the reason for his FISA vote and all that faith-based BS and now changing his mind about bring our troops home.

Remember these things tomorrow and pledge to reverse the Cheney slide in November. Those of you old enough to remember the old TV show Soap will remember Alien Burt....we've been living in Alien America. Let's get it back!

Old Blue eyes -- you mean Rev. Jeremiah Wright? The racist homophobic black church Obama attended for 20 years until the Wright Reverend's shizz got exposed in the media and Obama pulled out at the last minute, so to speak?

Yeah, I've read the full transcripts and know the Rev's shizz was taken out of context but stil: READ that shizz. Would you put money in his plate every Sunday, ""unknowingly" supporting his message for 20 years?

THAT Chicago church?

Me too.

I've got problems similar to yours with Obama. But they don't amount to a hill of beans next to McCain and the hypocritical Republican Christian Soldiers' ongoing attempted takeover of America.

As you may have guessed, I am not religious. I understand and love and respect friends who are. Until they insist on trampling the civil rights of people (and non-criminal behaviors) they don't like. You know. Like blacks ('member those days?) and women and now same-sex Americans.

Being non-religious and having heard "Amazing Grace" in all its god-awful permutations over the years, I just find Wintley Phipps' explanation of its origins and his ultimate performance of the hymn quite moving.

No, I am not a "wretch."

I find the constant schizophrenic Christian (religious) alternations of self-denying affirmations coupled with fealty to authority ("I'm a wretch: blind but now I see") abhorrent. "I am nothing without you, and you are everything, you man-in-a-dress-with-a-direct-line-to-God you."

Senseless.

Scientologists do exactly the same thing only the code words are different (Xenu and Engrams and Thetans) and it costs WAY more.

Then you investigate it (Religion) and discover the truth behind it / them. Which is unbelievably ancient and beautiful.

But you'll never find that in "church."

"Believing" myths are literal and therefore make YOU right and everybody else wrong is a form of psychosis. Thor? Zeus? Jesus? Mithra? Literal?

Insanity. "God told me to cast out my baby's demons so I stabbed her 107 times when she wouldn't shut up." "So I drowned my babies." "So I burnt my chldren." "So I threw them off the bridge."

Locked away for life. Insane.

Has there EVER been a case of a gay or lesbian couple doing that? I'd like to know about it.

It is also religious fascism to vote to control other Amercans' lives to conform to your religious dogma. Unconstitutional, unAmerican, theocratic at its heart.

But that's what's at stake in the upcoming election.

It's easy these days to Google the religious right's successful infiltration of government, the military branches and law enforcement. Not to mention state and federal elections, school boards and on and on.

With the Supreme Court, they REALLY ARE close to taking over our country.

Insane religious fanatics controlling America. Who'dathunk?

That's where it's at, dumplings, this election.

If it's not rigged like the last two.

Anyway, I love Wintley Phipps' version of "Amazing Grace" and I'm not a wretch and you can't make me.

Have a safe and happy Fourth and appreciate whatever freedoms and equality you have left in America.

Heh,

I got this Dominionist Theology propaganda in my e-mail. Debunked about 2/3 of it as out and out fabrication.

The Jefferson and Washington quotes set me off on a debunking spree.

Have fun with this one.

/click name

America, The Beautiful

Ray Charles,1991

(3:53)

SWEPCO's coal-fired plant in Hempstead County : maybe it's not for Ark customers after all

"Southwestern Electric Power Co. has applied for a permit to build a 29-mile electric transmission line between its planned coal-fired generation plant in Hempstead County and an electric substation near Texarkana.

Swepco wants to build the 345-kilovolt line to a site in Bowie County, Texas. The line, which could cost as much as $30 million, would run from Leary, Texas, through Miller, Little River and Hempstead counties in southwest Arkansas.

Hempstead County Hunting Club attorney Chuck Nestrud opposes the transmission line and believes it should have been part of the original application for the 600-megawatt power plant.

(remember Texas' environmental agency wouldn't let them pump the noxious fumes into Tex skies)
.
story on my name

God, Rev. Mojo. You'd think these Christians could, would, tell the Truth just ONCE!

But no.

The sappy .wav BG music pretty much said it all.

Jesus!

With the Supreme Court, they REALLY ARE close to taking over our country.<<

Peace NormaBates. Have a nice glass of chardonnay, put on Mozart's 21st piano concerto and relax.

You must keep in mind the eternal truth about religions:
The foolish find it true,
The wise find it false and
Political leaders find it useful.

Bush is a lesson in point. He's really done nothing for them but without their help he would not be president at the this time. Ronnie Floyd was truly a useful fool for Bushco until Ronnie came close to losing his tax exempt status. His deacons reigned in his pulpit politic-ing. It could costs them millions
and that
would be foolish and
Ronnie would no longer be useful.

Typical debunk I found:

FORSAKEN ROOTS claim: "John Adams, our second president was chairman of The American Bible Society"

Uhhh no he wasn't, where they got it:

REALITY: "In 1817, The American Bible Society distributed free Bibles to the crew of the USS John Adams"

/I love the internet

I cannot thank you enough, eLwood, for your caring about both my recreational substance preferences, my faith walk and musical choices.

May I say in all sincerity that I'm sticking with an 18 pack of Natural Lite, some kind bud, Richard Dawkins, lots of bubble bath and votive candles, and Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" on the iPod.

Talk about your relaxation.

You have to understand, eLwood. Chardonnay and Mozart?

Vs. cheap beer and drunken Russians?

Not when you're a slut, petunia.

Have you ever TRIED one? i'm talking about a drunken Russian.

OMG.

Another?

FORSAKEN ROOTS: "Was George Washington a Christian? Consider these words from his personal prayer book: "Oh, eternal and everlasting God, direct my thoughts, words and work. Wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the lamb and purge my heart by the Holy Spirit. Daily, frame me more and more in the likeness of thy son, Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time obtain the resurrection of the justified unto eternal life. Bless, O Lord, the whole race of mankind and let the world be filled with the knowledge of thy son, Jesus Christ."

REALITY: Washington never wrote that. The Smithsonian rejected Washington's Prayer Book as an obvious forgery. Handwriting samples provided at several web sites. In fact NOWHERE in ANY of Washington's writings or letters does he mention Jesus Christ.

I am so glad Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is suddenly getting married at 51, because he's in consideration for McCain's running mate and everybody thought he was gay for five decades.

I mean, what's he been doing? Waxing his carrot for 40 years till he met the Right One?

Hookay.

Wife-to-be Carole Rome has two kids from her former marriage. Thank God. Crist has an instant family without, you know, all that messy sex and birth and stuff, and Carole will be First Lady of Florida and Second Lady of the US if everything works out.

So yeah. I'm all believing it's taken Florida Gov. Charlie Crist 51 years of PERVASIVE gay rumors (and don't we ALL love playing the "Soiree" and "Inviting Arkansas" "Spot the Gay" Game?) to find the Right One because he's picky and suddenly happens to be considered VP for the Republican ticket.

But honey, NO straight man hits 51 without ever marrying or facing child support. Even Vic Snyder.

I'm just sayin'.

I'm thrilled for all the happy couples and their children and everything, but let's do a little Reality Check, grownups.

Happy 4th everyone!!

Checked the WaPo this morning and they had a cute blog on "How patriotic am I?".....
Readers responded and here are some.
---------------------
"I am so patriotic I ftill write like thifs in honour of the founding fatherf."

Top that, if you dare.

--

I'm so patriotic, I ritually burn English muffins.

--

that I sometimes have trouble walking.

--

I'm so patriotic that I am not voting to express my opposition to the patriot act.

--

that I wear a wig and tights around the house. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

--

Oh, wait...that's how much of a scoundrel I am.

--

My sexual fantasies all involve George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

--

I am so bloody patriotic I have been removing the made in china tags from all my american flags.

--

There's a lapel pin on my flag. I can belch the preamble.

--

I sleep with a John Cougar Mellencamp nightlight.

--

I have a flag tattooed on my arse, in case I ever have the chance to moon Bush's motorcade.

--

That I think that there are only seven and three-fifths justices on the Supreme Court.

--

I'm so very patriotic that I poop red, white, and blue.

Hey Max,

Why does the July 3rd issue include "What's Happening in May" on page 15?

ARK. BLOG: Because this careless editor failed to change the standing headline from May to July.

Cartoon. Clicky

Wesley Clark, what an idiot!

And Rev, the Patrick Henry speech is also not as she posts....

"It is in vain, sir, to extentuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

EY, I returned my debunked version of "Forsaken Roots" to the e-mail sender asking her, "why so many lies?" Her reply was short and to the point:

"whatever.."

I wonder if God counts forwarded false e-mails as lies in his "Book of Life" score card?

In perusing today's mail, found an article on ABC online by one Jan Crawford Greenburg that poses another instance of Obama flip flopping, this time on Roe vs Wade. Don't have a clue whose axe this person is grinding. The article refers to Obama's interview with Relevant Magazine and cites comments from that interview as proof of the flip. Anyone got any insight on this issue?

Have become increasingly antsy as to Obama's sincerety on liberal issues about which he spoke for at length during the fight with Hillary. Someone recently posted on this bllog about seeing Obama for what he is, a pol, ever since he started running, my thought is good for you, but being old school I like to think that when someone tells me something, especially since all we got was shiat from bushie for 7 1/2 years, then he oughtin to be running, cause what we as the electorate deserve and need more than anyhing is the unvarnished truth. It has become more like what Hillary said when down in Texas, all hat and no cattle.

Frankly wish the folks at the convention would nominate and select Al or Hillary.

See Obama: Sounding Like Thomas and Scalia on ABC online. http://blogs.abcnews.com/legalities/2008/07/obama-sounding.html

ArkansasTravler, see the link at my name for the interview with Relevant Magazine......

Lists of songs related to all 50 states noted by Andrew Sullivan in his blog yesterday at a site called Normblog. The URL for the Arkansas section is at my name. There were several Arkansas songs left off the list, but I don't have ready access to them. How about some help from the Ark Times blog readers to get more Arkansas Songs listed?

A second try for the Normblog: songs of Arkansas URL at my name.