Holy Oklahoma!

by Pa Rock
Social Observer

Certain of our fifty states are way too easy to ridicule, primarily because of the dolts that they seem to "religiously" elect to public office. Recent postings on this blog have taken Arizona to task over various absurdities (like the state’s rampant desire to have no restrictions on gun ownership, and the pervasive feeling that government should run quite well without any revenue, thank you very much!), and a nutty legislator from Missouri who thought that children who were hungry would be more motivated. (Yeah, more motivated to get out and steal food!) I have managed to ignore most of the silliness in the other forty-eight, but a barrage of recent news out of Oklahoma is forcing me to widen the loony net.

Overview: Oklahoma was the only state in the union to have all of its counties carried by McCain in the 2008 general election. And while many, though certainly not all, Oklahomans will declare emphatically that they are not racist, that is one important social component at play in the Sooner State. Southwest and south central Missouri, as well as rural western Arkansas voted for McCain en masse, as did Oklahoma. As a former resident of that three-state area, I can say without hesitation that the populace is focused on thumping the Bible and keeping the “coloreds” in their place. Many were salivating over the rumors that Obama was a secret Muslim because that provided them with a more socially acceptable reason for voting against him than the race issue would have been.

So jump to the present.

Last week Oklahoma’s senior U.S. Senator, James Mountain Inhofe, described the man who was about to become his new colleague in the Senate, Al Franken of Minnesota, as a clown. Yes, Al Franken was a nationally known comedian several years ago – and he made a very good living at it. Mr. Franken has also been a successful author, a radio personality, and, did I mention, a cum laude graduate of Harvard University. Clown, indeed!

Senator Inhofe, on the other hand, is a graduate of the University of Tulsa, without honors, and used to be president of Quaker Life Insurance Company – an organization that went into receivership on his watch. He is also one of the loudest skeptics of global warming - a position that some wags might be tempted to feel is connected to the over one million dollars that he has received in political contributions from the oil and gas industry. He also has a propensity for citing the Bible to back up his position on various pieces of legislation. Who’s the clown?

Former President George W. Bush (the dumb and dangerous Bush) gave a Fourth of July speech this week in the small Oklahoma town of Woodward. Bush, ever the patriot, reportedly spoke for a fee, though apparently no one is yet publicizing the size of the check that the good people of Woodward cut for the for the unemployed politician. Tickets for the event ranged from $25 to $500, and supposedly a highlight of the event was Bush’s retelling of some of his favorite poop jokes. One can only hope that everybody profited from the experience!

But the nuttiest thing out of Oklahoma last week by far was a resolution introduced in the state legislature by Republican (of course!) Representative Sally Kern. The overly pious Ms. Kern has submitted a proposal entitled Oklahoma Citizen’s Proclamation for Morality, a document that places blame for the economic crisis in America on the moral collapse of our nation. The mean-spirited Ms. Kern is clearly not a believer in the concept of the separation of church and state, and her contempt for President Obama borders on being savage - never mind that the economy went into the crapper under his successor, Republican George Bush. Sally Kern's wingnut manifesto follows:

We the People of Oklahoma, Invoking the guidance of Almighty God, in order to secure and perpetuate the blessing of Liberty; to secure just and rightful Government; to promote our mutual Welfare and Happiness, do establish this proclamation and call upon the people of the great State of Oklahoma, and our fellow Patriots in these United States of America who look to the Lord for guidance, to acknowledge the need for a national awakening of righteousness in our land.

WHEREAS, "It is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon
which Freedom can securely stand" (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with
human passions unbridled by Religion and Morality" (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, "Our Constitution was made only for a Moral and Religious people" (John
Adams); and

WHEREAS, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the
power of government...but upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God" (James Madison); and

WHEREAS, "Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that
belongs to us by the laws of God (Benjamin Franklin); and

WHEREAS, "God who gave us life gave us liberty and can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God" (Thomas Jefferson); and

WHEREAS, "Whether any free government can be permanent, where the public
worship of God, and the support of Religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state" (Joseph Story); and

WHEREAS, "We hold sacred the rights of conscience, and promise to the people...the
free and undisturbed exercise of their religion" (Roger Sherman); and

WHEREAS, "This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians"
(Patrick Henry); and

WHEREAS, "When you...exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be
impressed upon your mind that God commands you to choose just men who will rule in the fear of God" (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, "The principles of genuine Liberty and of wise laws and administrations
are to be drawn from the Bible" (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, the people of Oklahoma have a strong tradition of reliance upon the
Creator of the Universe; and thought secure when we have removed

WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national
moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion,
pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and
WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking
the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and

WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused
to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of Prayer; and

WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States
disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we the undersigned elected officials of the people of Oklahoma, religious leaders and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, solemnly declare that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the HOLY BIBLE; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, believers in the One True God and His
only Son, call upon all to join with us in recognizing that "Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord," and humbly implore all who love Truth and Virtue to live above reproach in the sight of God and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Almighty God; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our
Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment, and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal as we repent of our great sin.

Signed on the second day of July in the year of our Lord Christ Two Thousand and Nine.

Where to begin? Ms. Kern’s disgust for President Obama is evident, first-off, by the way she consistently refuses to capitalize his title. She seems to be incensed by the fact that he did not stop the government to observe the National Day of Prayer, a highly political event that was thought up by a group of rabid anti-communists just after World War II. The original intent was to quietly slip God back into the operations of American government. President Truman told the group of fascist fundamentalists who were promoting the idea that they could basically to go to hell, but they were eventually able to foist the concept onto Eisenhower. Since the 1950’s every President has been coerced into doing the bidding of this right-wing religious cabal – at least on that one special day. If President Obama can resist the pressure to give in to these intolerant bastards, more power to him!

I noticed also that Ms. Kern likes to quote the crusty old Puritan, John Adams, a man who openly yearned for a hard-ass God to be feared by one and all. Perhaps she would benefit from spending time reading some of the thoughts on religion of his successor, Mr. Jefferson. Jefferson was so distressed over what he considered to be false teachings placed into the mouth of Christ, that he wrote his own version of the Bible.

Thomas Jefferson said, “Christianity has become the most perverted system that ever shone on man. Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.” Did you catch that, Sally? The real Jesus may have been a lot more fun-loving and tolerant than the manufactured one that you worship. Maybe he was even a sexual being. Heaven forbid!

Sally, if you want to live in abject terror of a mean and wrathful God, do it in the privacy of your home, or in church – but keep your God and your religious intolerance out of government! This is America, Sally, and we have the right to believe or not to believe as we see fit. Our government is a compact designed to serve all of its citizens – white, black, brown, oriental, Christian, Muslim, Jew, straight, gay, healthy, sick, disabled, rich, poor, all of the citizens of Oklahoma, and even me!

Times are tough, Sally. Get over yourself and quit wasting Oklahoma’s money!

Water-Boarding for Jesus

by Pa Rock
Heretic

A new survey reveals something surprising about the thought processes of the highly self-righteous. (Well, it isn't really a surprise - just more of an illumination of hypocrisy.) Survey says: The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.

Religion has a long history of justifying war - and bigotry - and hate, and devout Christians in particular go through all kinds of mental contortions as they try to find ways to overlook, ignore, or misinterpret the humanist themes in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. Surely the man from Galilee didn't really mean to suggest that there is something wrong in the accumulation of wealth. (After all, is it not true that he with the gold, rules?) And of course we should all love our neighbors, unless, of course, some of our neighbors happen to be Muslim, or gay, or Mexican, or Black, or Jews, or feminists, or Democrats. Jesus wasn't really speaking about being nice to those folks, was he?

If God didn't want us to be vigilant and protect our homes, our way of life, and our racial purity, why did he bless us with guns? Our God, love him and fear him, is every bit as small-minded and hateful as we are - so it makes perfect sense that he supports the torture of lesser human beings who may be out to get us.

Jesus was about love, and so is war. It is our Christian imperative to make others see the benefits of a life in Christ whether they are open to the idea or not. Besides, it's not really torture, it's just enhanced interrogation techniques - just as water-boarding is nothing more than an enhanced baptism.

God bless America. Let us prey.

Civil Disobedience in Size Ten

by Pa Rock
Cultural Commentator

George Bush was making his Grand Farewell Tour of the Middle East on December 14th of the year just past, when the relevancy of his entire presidency and foreign policy was knocked into a cocked hat by a couple of flying shoes. He was in the middle of a large press conference in Iraq when an angry Iraqi journalist named Muntadir al-Zaidi loosed a barrage of hostile Iraqi verbiage that declared Mr. Bush to be a dog, and then he let fly with one of his shoes - and then the other. Our President, surprisingly agile - possibly due to his cheerleader training at Yale - managed to successfully duck the flying footwear. In an effort to recover some of his dignity, the President joked that he thought the shoes were a size ten.

The incident resulted in al-Zaidi becoming a hero throughout the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular (with shoe sales of that particular model going through the roof!), quickly disproving the CIA and Blackwater claims that we are generally seen as liberators by the people of Iraq. The famous shoe-thrower has been in jail since the incident where reports indicate that he may be recovering from broken bones and cigarette burns. A trial date is pending which could result in him being subjected to some serious punishment. Clearly Iraqi officials do not view al-Zaidi with the same adulation as do the common folk of their country!

Jump forward a couple of weeks to an orphanage in Tikrit, Iraq, the hometown of Sadam Hussein. The reason the orphanage exists is due to the abundance of war orphans. It is understandable that the city might be somewhat hostile to the country that they view as responsible for the deaths of their favorite son and the parents of the orphans.

An Iraqi sculptor by the name of Laith al-Amiri managed to raise $5,000 to build an outdoor sculpture at the orphanage. Some of the orphans even helped with the project. The result was a giant shoe sculpture on a large concrete base. The statue measured over 11 feet in height, over 8 feet in length, and was nearly 5 feet wide. The shoe itself (sitting atop the concrete base) was the size of an Iraqi sofa. It was made of fiberglass covered in copper. In a nod to the environment, not a hot George Bush priority, the giant shoe doubled as a planter for a big green bush. Iraqi government officials quickly ordered the big shoe's removal - the will of the people be damned! So much for freedom of speech - and all that jazz!

Jump across Europe and the English Channel to Great Britain. Chinese Premier Wen Jiaboa was speaking at Cambridge University last week when an audience member blew a whistle and shouted: "How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator? How can you listen to him unchallenged?" Whereupon, he took aim and threw his shoe at the premier, missing his mark. He, too, was arrested and remains in jail.

So where do fair-minded people come down on this particular type of protest? Do we label it assault or attempted assault and demand a criminal penalty? Or do we go to the other extreme and declare it a harmless act of civil disobedience? Never mind Jesus - what would Henry David Thoreau do?

My thoughts on the subject are evolving, but I feel the need to give fair warning that the older I get, the meaner I get - and I wear a size ten!

Branson Bound!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Jorge Medina is a retired Roman Catholic Cardinal from Chile whose chief claim to fame until recently was that he made the official announcement of the election of Pope Benedict XVI to the world. But being retired doesn't mean that Jorge has to stop making news.

Madonna (the singer, not the mother of Jesus) is making her first concert tour of Chile, and, being Madonna, she is salaciously stirring controversy as she struts her stuff in front of whooping and hooting South American audiences. "This woman," the Cardinal is reported to have said, "comes here and in an incredibly shameless manner, she provokes a crazy enthusiasm, and enthusiasm of lust, lustful thoughts, and impure thoughts." (Sounds to me like a man who has at least one hand in his pants pocket!)

Just for the record, Cardinal Medina made those comments during his homily at a Mass in honor of Chile's late military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who caused the deaths of over three thousand dissidents during his seventeen-year reign of terror. (Hey Jorge, what was the penance for that little atrocity?)

Also for the record, the crowds at Madonna's two Chilean concerts were huge, with some people waiting in line for up to three days for tickets.

Madonna is a now fifty-years-old, and while she still apparently has the ability to stir lustful thoughts, at least among Catholic ancients and Alex Rodriguez, I suspect that the days of her world tours are numbered. And although I've never seen her perform in person, sooner or later I will probably catch her act - in Branson!

Mr. Bush, Tear Down Your Wall!

by Pa Rock

I have used this forum to sound off on the subject of immigration several times in the past. Last November I applauded students from a Tucson high school for marching en masse from their high school to downtown Tucson in support of a classmate who was being deported, along with his family, to Mexico. It felt good knowing that young people were concentrating on things of more relevance than sports, cars, and clothing labels.

Later that month I wrote about Jesus, a young man from Mexico who was walking across the Sonoran Desert on Thanksgiving Day trying to outflank the Border Patrol. His plans took a sudden detour when he came upon a nine-year-old American boy who had been in a wreck and was roaming across the desert trying to find help for his mother who was trapped in their van. Jesus tried to rescue the mother, but she died of her injuries. That night he built a fire and kept the boy safe. In the morning he found the Border Patrol and turned his ward over to them. Jesus was promptly deported for his trouble.

This past June I wrote about the hard working Hispanics who keep the wretched "Valley of the Sun" (Phoenix and its environs) operational. If it is a dirty, sweaty, out-in-the-sun, thankless task that needs to be tackled, our Hispanic friends, documented and undocumented alike, are the ones who are out there getting it done. They are easy to demonize, but this area couldn't function without them.

And in July I recounted the tale of a high school Spanish teacher who had been arrested and charged with littering for placing gallon jugs of water out in the desert along trails often used by "illegals" as they try to enter the United States on foot. Ironically, as this young man set out his life-saving water jugs, he had been picking up litter along the way!

So, yeah, I am one of those anti-borders lefties who believe we have an obligation to help all of our neighbors, not just the ones with papers or those who had the good sense to be born on the correct side of an imaginary or man-made line.

I have also been just the teeniest bit critical of organized religion in The Ramble, noting that some mighty mean people often label themselves as "good Christians," and pointing out that some churches are more focused on amassing wealth and power than they are serving the needs of the poor and the oppressed.

With my anger toward America's know-nothing (and proud of it!) racists coupled with my general disgust toward the uselessness of organized religion, I suddenly found myself broadsided by a story out of California where a church had taken a brave and unpopular stand to help an undocumented worker stay in this country so that she could remain near her young, American citizen children.

Her name is Liliana and for the past year or so has been given sanctuary by the United Church of Christ of Simi Valley, California. The Church is offering sanctuary and hospitality to Liliana and her infant son while her case is being dealt with by the Courts. Without the sanctuary, she would have been deported and separated from her husband and other two children who are able to remain in the United States legally.

Her case is representative of hardships and horrors that U.S. immigration policy forces on families. Liliana can return to the absolute desolation and poverty of the Mexican state of Michoacan and take her children with her where they, too, can live in absolute poverty in one of Mexico's poorest regions, or she can leave her children in Los Estados Unidos where they will have a chance of a decent life. It really isn't a choice. The only choice that Liliana has is to try everything in her power to remain in the United States with her children.

But then there are those "good Christians" protesting outside of the Simi Valley Church of Christ week after week - old, white, and intent on seeing that the law is enforced. What a shame they aren't focused on enforcing the Golden Rule instead of our inhumane immigration policy!

Our spite wall separating the U.S. and Mexico is coming along nicely. It's an ugly wall, as ugly as the wall that Israel is erecting to keep the Palestenians in poverty and subjugation. It's as ugly as the wall that the Russian's built to divide Berlin and cripple a nation. But more than that, it's as ugly as the souls of those who are so insistent on its construction.

When Jesus does return to Earth, my money says that he will do so wearing rags and walking across the Sonaran Desert. Of course he may have already tried that last Thanksgiving and wound up being deported!

This, I Believe

by Pa Rock

I spotted this bumper sticker on a car in Goodyear, AZ, yesterday:

Get Real: Jesus would never own a gun or vote Republican!

Isn't it strange how many "Christians" can't grasp the concept that Jesus was about Peace?

Jesus to the Rescue

I heard this story on the local news last night after spending the better part of the day driving across the Sonoran Desert. It was one of those rare incidents that brought together the best and worst of mankind into one brief bit of journalism.

Christopher Buztheitner is a nine-year-old boy from Rimrock, Arizona. His father died two months ago. Christopher’s mother, Dawn Alice Tomko, took the lad camping in a remote area of southern Arizona this past week. On Thanksgiving Day as they were heading home, Ms. Tomko misjudged a curve and rolled her van 300 feet down into a canyon. She was pinned in the vehicle, but Christopher managed to climb out and begin walking in an effort to find help.

A complete tragedy was averted when Christopher was discovered and aided by a Good Samaritan. His rescuer was Jesus Manuel Cordova, 26, of Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, Mexico. Cordova took Christopher back to the wreck and tried unsuccessfully to free his mother. She died later, still pinned in the van. Cordova gave the boy his jacket, built a bonfire, and settled in for a long night in the cold desert. When morning came, he was able to flag down some hunters and Christopher’s safe rescue was completed.

Unfortunately, the story does not have a happy ending for Jesus Cordova. He happened to be in the right place at the right time for young Christopher because he was walking across the Sonoran Desert in an effort to gain illegal entry into the United States. Christopher became a temporary ward of the state of Arizona until out-of-state relatives could arrive to claim him. Jesus was turned over to the Border Patrol and promptly returned to Mexico.

Jesus Manuel Cordova did so much more than rescue a scared youngster in the desert. His humanitarian efforts also served to remind us that we are all members of the brotherhood of man, a unique place where compassion should trump hate, where commonsense should defeat fear, and where we all should be bound together by love – not kept apart by borders.

Gracias, Jesus! May your example inspire us all!