Capitalism...

I've come to view capitalism as a cancer on society. I'm not kidding.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Capitalism...

I've come to view capitalism as a cancer on society. I'm not kidding.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Try this on for size...

Listening to the President talk about wiretapping feels like haven eaten too many cheeseburgers...

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Try this on for size...

Listening to the President talk about wiretapping feels like haven eaten too many cheeseburgers...

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Local Fox Affiliate's love letter to Stormfront.org...

Disgusting.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Local Fox Affiliate's love letter to Stormfront.org...

Disgusting.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Special Guest Blogger: Uncle Larry

Dear Hippy and Hippy's Wife

While [my wife] and I were staying in downtown Philadelphia over this past weekend, I became aware that Bush would be giving yet another "Sorry we messed up but stay the course anyway" speech at noon on Monday in a hotel three blocks from ours. The rest of this account is not all that exciting - it's not like I got arrested or anything - but I'm still pumped.

The speech didn't change my plans to take the subway to South Philly that morning, but on the way back I was wondering if the station, which is directly in front of his destination, would even be open. It was, and I surfaced into the middle of a crowd of protesters. It was great! I wish I had had a sign too! But I took pictures of my favorite anti-Bush signs and their owners. Did I mention is was so great to be amongst them!

I contrast last Monday with an afternoon in 1959 when some high school buddies and I went to hear President Eisenhower give a speech at Fort Ligonier (PA). I'm sure we were rowdy and self-absorbed, but also respectful of the man and office and proud to be in the crowd. Which is how it should be - and will be again someday, God willing.

-Uncle Larry

Special Guest Blogger: Uncle Larry

Dear Hippy and Hippy's Wife

While [my wife] and I were staying in downtown Philadelphia over this past weekend, I became aware that Bush would be giving yet another "Sorry we messed up but stay the course anyway" speech at noon on Monday in a hotel three blocks from ours. The rest of this account is not all that exciting - it's not like I got arrested or anything - but I'm still pumped.

The speech didn't change my plans to take the subway to South Philly that morning, but on the way back I was wondering if the station, which is directly in front of his destination, would even be open. It was, and I surfaced into the middle of a crowd of protesters. It was great! I wish I had had a sign too! But I took pictures of my favorite anti-Bush signs and their owners. Did I mention is was so great to be amongst them!

I contrast last Monday with an afternoon in 1959 when some high school buddies and I went to hear President Eisenhower give a speech at Fort Ligonier (PA). I'm sure we were rowdy and self-absorbed, but also respectful of the man and office and proud to be in the crowd. Which is how it should be - and will be again someday, God willing.

-Uncle Larry

How Fox News Works...

Go Read This.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

How Fox News Works...

Go Read This.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Enough Unexplained Absence...

Sorry everybody, The Hippy has been derelict in his blogging duties for nearly 2 weeks. I'll try not to let that happen again.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Enough Unexplained Absence...

Sorry everybody, The Hippy has been derelict in his blogging duties for nearly 2 weeks. I'll try not to let that happen again.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Sound Familiar?

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag 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. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials

Sound Familiar?

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag 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. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials

Dubya the Movie...

It's great. Click here to watch, Dubya the Movie!

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Dubya the Movie...

It's great. Click here to watch, Dubya the Movie!

-The Oklahoma Hippy

This is funny beyond words...

This guy wants to kill all white people. His name is Kamau Kambon, and he wants to exterminate all white people.

That's pretty ambitious. I was reminded of a song I once heard. You can find the lyrics below.

Gonna Get Me a Shotgun
Performed by Garrett Morris on 24 Jan 1976 (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore)

I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see,
I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see.
When I kill all the whities I see, then whitey he won't bother me,
I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see.

Then I'll get a white woman who's wearing a navy blue sweater.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

This is funny beyond words...

This guy wants to kill all white people. His name is Kamau Kambon, and he wants to exterminate all white people.

That's pretty ambitious. I was reminded of a song I once heard. You can find the lyrics below.

Gonna Get Me a Shotgun
Performed by Garrett Morris on 24 Jan 1976 (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore)

I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see,
I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see.
When I kill all the whities I see, then whitey he won't bother me,
I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see.

Then I'll get a white woman who's wearing a navy blue sweater.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Andrew Sullivan is on the task...

I really can't say it any better than this:

SHE CALLED MURTHA A COWARD: Republican Congresswoman Jean Smith called Jack Murtha a coward this afternoon, unworthy of the Marines, on the House floor. Money quote:

The fiery, emotional debate climaxed when Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, the most junior member of the House, told of a phone call she received from a Marine colonel. "He asked me to send Congress a message - stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message - that cowards cut and run, Marines never do," Schmidt said.

She later withdrew her remarks from the record. But those words linger as a reminder of what these Republicans have become. For the record: Murtha served 37 years in the Marines, and has Purple Hearts to his name. He visits wounded soldiers at Walter Reed every week. Three years ago, he won the Semper Fidelis Award of the Marine Corps Foundation, the highest honor the Marines can confer. Every time you think these Republicans can sink no lower, even after their vile smears against Kerry's service last year, they keep going. They make me sick to my stomach.

A reader sent Sully and angry email in response to this post. Click here to read it.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Andrew Sullivan is on the task...

I really can't say it any better than this:

SHE CALLED MURTHA A COWARD: Republican Congresswoman Jean Smith called Jack Murtha a coward this afternoon, unworthy of the Marines, on the House floor. Money quote:

The fiery, emotional debate climaxed when Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, the most junior member of the House, told of a phone call she received from a Marine colonel. "He asked me to send Congress a message - stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message - that cowards cut and run, Marines never do," Schmidt said.

She later withdrew her remarks from the record. But those words linger as a reminder of what these Republicans have become. For the record: Murtha served 37 years in the Marines, and has Purple Hearts to his name. He visits wounded soldiers at Walter Reed every week. Three years ago, he won the Semper Fidelis Award of the Marine Corps Foundation, the highest honor the Marines can confer. Every time you think these Republicans can sink no lower, even after their vile smears against Kerry's service last year, they keep going. They make me sick to my stomach.

A reader sent Sully and angry email in response to this post. Click here to read it.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Save the McRib...

Seriously, save it now. If we don't save the McRib, The Hippy may have to break stuff.

Click here to save the McRib.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

Save the McRib...

Seriously, save it now. If we don't save the McRib, The Hippy may have to break stuff.

Click here to save the McRib.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

The Vatican: Intelligent Design does not belong in science class...

The Vatican Speaks. (And they've been doing this Christianity thing a lot longer than some others.)

The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

Intelligent design is not science. Let's stop pretending. Feel free to teach creationism in a comparative religion classes.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

The Vatican: Intelligent Design does not belong in science class...

The Vatican Speaks. (And they've been doing this Christianity thing a lot longer than some others.)

The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

Intelligent design is not science. Let's stop pretending. Feel free to teach creationism in a comparative religion classes.

-The Oklahoma Hippy

The Right Reverend John Shelby Spong rebukes "Crazy Pat"

This is an answer from John Shelby Spong in response to an inquiry about Pat Robertson's warning to the residents of Dover, PA that they had abandoned God.

Dear Christina,

Pat Robertson has said so many silly and ridiculous things that I wonder why anyone would pay much attention to him on any subject.

He warned Orlando, Florida, that God would send a hurricane to destroy them when Orlando's decision makers added "sexual orientation" to that city's civil rights ordinance making it illegal for an employer to discriminate against a person because of race, ethnicity, gender, creed or "sexual orientation." He suggested that Hollywood would be the victim of an earthquake because that is where Ellen Degeneres works. With Jerry Falwell he agreed that the 9/11 disaster was brought upon this nation as God's judgment for harboring "feminists, abortionists, homosexuals and the American Civil Liberties Union." He suggested that the CIA should assassinate the duly elected President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. He has said that the feminist movement is about those women who want to "leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians." The tirade of absurdities goes on and on.

This country treasures the precious gift of free speech and Pat Robertson can obviously say any foolish and ignorant thing he wishes. When he pretends to speak in the name of God, however, I think his fellow believers have a right, indeed a necessity, to speak a word of judgment on his behavior since his words slander the Christian definition of God as Love, given to us first by the author of the First Epistle of John, and even more important, lived out by Jesus, who called us even to love our enemies.

I want to make only two points about this issue. First, I wonder who, other than Pat himself, designated Pat Robertson to be God's spokesperson? How dare Pat assume that the God revealed in the Jesus I serve is filled with all of Pat's peculiar prejudices. Why does he not understand that God is God and Pat Robertson is not? Why does he not see that when he tells the world with an unashamed certainty what God thinks and what God will do, he is only revealing what he thinks and what he would do if he had God's power? Pat needs to understand that he is acting out the very meaning of idolatry. He has confused God with himself.

Second, someone needs to inform Pat Robertson that the idea of God sitting on a throne above the clouds manipulating the weather in order to punish sinners is so primitive and so naïve that it is staggering to the educated imagination. It is bad enough that his mind cannot embrace the thought of Charles Darwin from the 19th century, but Pat has yet to embrace the thought of Copernicus from the 16th century or Galileo from the 17th century.

No educated person today believes that the earth is the center of the universe and that God lives above the sky, playing with low-pressure systems and planning revenge on those who are not believers in Intelligent Design. Indeed why would anyone be drawn to the demonic deity who emerges in Pat's thinking and teaching?

It is surely not a God of Love who punishes New Orleans' poorest citizens with a hurricane that New Orleans' wealthiest citizens could and did manage to escape at least with their lives, because they had cars. Did God kill the poor in New Orleans in order to send a message to New Orleans's prostitutes and those who create its raucous nightlife? Is that a rational concept? Did God cause two tectonic plates to collide under the Indian Ocean because there were some 350,000 evil people, with fully one-third of them children, whom God desired to kill in a tsunami wave? Is that how God communicates divine displeasure? Is that a God worthy of worship? Were the 3000 who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 or the 2100 members of our Armed Forces who have thus far died in Iraq during this war somehow worthy of this ultimate punishment either because of their own evil or because God sacrificed them to send a message to someone else?

Those ideas are so ludicrous as to be laughable, except for the fact that for anyone to suggest such incredible things is still painfully hurtful to those who are the victims of both natural and human disasters to say nothing of their surviving loved ones. I, as a Christian, am embarrassed by the public face that Pat Robertson puts on the religious tradition to which my life is dedicated.

I have known the Robertson family for a long time. His father was the Democratic Senator in my state of Virginia from 1946, when he was first appointed to succeed Senator Carter Glass who had died in office. He was re-elected by the people of Virginia in 1948, 1954, and 1960. In the Democratic Primary in 1966 he was defeated in a very close vote by my first cousin William Belser Spong, Jr., who went on to fill that seat in the United States Senate.

Pat is a 1955 graduate of the Law School at Yale University and received a Master in Divinity degree from New York Theological Seminary in1959. He cannot possibly be as dumb as he sounds in his wild and thoughtless utterances. If ignorance is not his excuse, then one has to wonder what motivates him. In academic theological circles he is treated as a buffoon. No one takes his thoughts seriously. It is a pity that some people do actually believe the things he says, but they are far fewer than he imagines. It is an even greater pity that the news media think that his continued utterances are worthy of any public attention at all.

- John Shelby Spong

This is my brand of Christianity. It's the Christianity of reasoned and intellectually curios minds. God blessed us with an intellect and it insults him when we abandon it.

-The Oklahoma Hippy