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Human understanding of extraterrestrial geology got a boost today, as the Cassini spaceship zoomed past one of Saturn’s bigger moons, Enceladus. Enceladus is a world covered by ice that is wracked by fractures and refreezing. There have been eruptions observed on Enceladus, which some speculate come from a warm underground ocean.

A different kind of Enceladus eruption takes place from time to time back here on Earth. Enceladus was originally the name of a son of Mother Earth and Father Time, defeated in battle by the goddess of wisdom, lying underground beneath Mount Etna. The exhalations of Enceladus were said to be the source of the mountain’s eruptions.

The following is, in my opinion, the most stunning of Cassini’s new images of Enceladus. To have seen something like this back during the Voyager’s trip through the Solar System would have been unbelievable.

For more images of Enceladus, visit NASA.

I am proud to bring you this independently produced video documentary, which proves once and for all that presidential candidate Ron Paul and his libertarian supporters have been right all along about the North American Superhighway.

As this video clearly shows, there is not just one road that’s been planned along which cars and trucks can travel from Mexico to Canada, right through the United States. There’s an entire network of these roads and highways, providing a huge number of transportation routes along which people can freely travel from Canada, through the USA and down to Mexico, and then back the other way!

I got a confidential tip from a guy who lives just over the hill from where one such road has been constructed and maintained by “local” officials whose governmental positions ultimately link them to the United Nations, among other institutions.

Let scoffers scoff. Show them this video as proof of the plan to build transportation routes from Canada to Mexico right through the United States, through the sovereign territory of the USA! The NAFTA superhighway, the North American Superhighway, the North American Union - whatever you want to call it, this video provides the best evidence to date for its existence…

…which is to say…

Just as the Republican blogosphere has allowed itself to be tricked into promoting the bizarre, anti-flag, satan-obsessed, football-hating, star-fearing conspiracy theories of Celeste and Loren Davis, so too have they fallen prey to a fantasy known as USA Wake Up.

USA Wake Up (at USAWakeUp.org - no link juice for the wacko right wingers) presents a very frightening picture, just like Loren Davis Ministries does. And just as Loren Davis Ministries has fostered a frightening portrait of Barack Obama in order to achieve political ends, so too USA Wake Up has created its own frightening picture to achieve political ends.

USA Wake Up presents the following scenario: Islamic terrorists have infiltrated the United States, setting up organizations across the United States. Even a member of Congress is in league with them. Despair, America, for the terrorist doomsday is at hand!

Republican blogs have begun to repeat this message, referring people to USA Wake Up, and fretting, Whatever are we to do? The terrorists are here, all over the United States, ready to strike, and the Democrats refuse to act!

The thing is that it’s all just a fantasy. The terrorists are not here. The scenario described by USA Wake Up is not at all real. The following disclaimer is found on the web site:

“The above scenario is a fictitious representation of what could be in store for America. It is not intended to be taken as a true event (yet anyway). This fictitious representation is taken from what is actually happening in Europe, and is currently taking some root in this country. Although we have not yet reached this extreme, we could in the near future if this country does not wake up, and wake up soon.”

Apparently, Republican bloggers aren’t very good at reading. They’re spreading the “information from USA Wake Up as if it is real. Bud Simmons of the blog Thoughts of A Conservative Christian, for example, writes breathlessly that USA Wake Up, “clearly defines where the Muslims have set up Al-Queada terrorist cells in all but a few states!”

Dear me. All it takes is a calm mind to think and to read, and claims like this are easily disspelled. It’s a frightening idea to me that so many Republican bloggers aren’t inclined to think calmly about USA Wake Up, and are jumping to conclusions, accepting a fantasy as an accurate representation of reality.

Isn’t that what USA Wake Up is designed for, though? Lacking any actual sign of terrorist plots within the United States that would justify the never-ending Code Orange Alerts and the assembly of laws such as the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act that have reduced the Bill of Rights to a zombie of its former self, these Republicans come up with a fantasy of terrorist infiltration, and then act as if it is true.

The reason they do so is that they want it to be true. They want there to be terrorists all over the United States. They want there to imminent peril to American lives.

They want it because they feel lost unless they have an easily-to-define enemy. They want it because they don’t grasp the world of complexities in which constitutional freedoms actually provide better long term security than a draconian police state. They want it because they feel uncomfortable with Americans expressing dissent from government opinions. They want to go back to the days of United We Stand. They liked it when everyone in America felt afraid, because everyone felt afraid together, and all ambiguity was gone. It was a simple way of thinking about the world, and that made them feel good.

So, they’ve invented a mythology of threats that don’t exist, from Loren Davis’s absurd visions of Barack Obama as an undercover spy for Osama Bin Laden, to the 24 TV show (which would actually be rather boring if it depicted the reality of an antiterrorist agent’s life), to the pseudoreality of USA Wake Up.

If the Republicans want to live in that fantasy land of perpetual terrorist peril, that’s their right. I think it’s unwise, however, if Americans allow the Republican fantasyland thrills to determine how they vote in the presidential election of 2008. For that reason, I propose giving Republicans a separate fantasy Election Day.

Those Republicans who thrill to the feeling of their fantasy that terrorists are hiding behind every garbage can across America can have their own Fantasy Election Day. They don’t need to turn out to vote on Tuesday, November 4th. They can go pretend to vote at pretend polling stations on Wednesday, November 5th. They can call it Wake Up Patriot Election Day, and sleep through the real Election Day.

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Related political gear:
- Big Brother Spy Journal
- Homeland Insecurity Organic T-shirt
- Homeland Insecurity Postcards

Republicans have begun to play dirty in their efforts to tear down Barack Obama. The latest whisper campaign whipped up by supporters of John McCain claims, based upon the word of missionaries Celeste and Loren Davis, that Barack Obama is the secret representative of a corrupt and violent political dynasty in Kenya, as well as a member of an Islamic jihadist conspiracy that plans to destroy America.

Those are intense attacks against Barack Obama, but as I pointed out yesterday afternoon, Loren Davis Ministries should not be given much credibility when it comes to matters like this. After all, Loren and Celeste Davis have said that Hillary Clinton, public education, the National Football League, and even many Christian churches are cooperating in a gigantic satanic conspiracy. I pointed to the Loren Davis Ministries web site to document that Loren Davis had in fact made these crazy claims.

Today, in an attempt to control the public relations crisis for their anti-Obama whisper campaign, the Loren Davis Ministries removed their article that claims that the NFL is part of a satanic conspiracy. Look for it, and all you’ll see now is a notice that the article cannot be found.

Unfortunately for the Loren Davis Ministries, they didn’t think through this cover up very thoroughly. They didn’t take into account, for example, the existence of Google Cache. Google Cache saves a copy of most web sites, so that people can get information even if a web site is temporarily off-line. So, lickety-split, I was able to get right to the Loren Davis web site page about the satanic conspiracy of the Star of Sirius. Almost as quickly, I saved that article as a PDF.

Here it is for you, then: the PDF of the document Loren Davis tried to destroy, in which Loren Davis writes, “An interesting thing happened during the American Super Bowl which determines the NFL Football Champion, February, 2007. The half-time entertainer had a big cloth of some kind around the stage on which he was performing. There was an appendage hanging down from his guitar. This created a silhouette that LOOKED LIKE SATAN with a forked tail, and below him showed the silhouettes of people with their hands lifted as if they were WORSHIPPING SATAN. The secular news media was even talking about this. No one should be naive enough to believe that this was merely coincidental. The world is being conditioned to fulfill Revelation 13:4, to boldly and openly worship Satan. The Bible prophesies this is coming. These are some of the signs of the times. (Matthew 16:3)”

Why would Loren Davis pull down this web site so quickly, in response to our calling attention to it? There are a couple explanations I can think of:

1. What Loren Davis said about there being an NFL conspiracy to promote satanic worship because of something hanging off a guitar during a Super Bowl halftime show was absolutely ridiculous. This claim exposes the complete lack of credibility that Celeste and Loren Davis have, and they realized that. So, they attempted to cover up the article in order to try to salvage their nasty rumormongering against Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton too - remember that they called her a socialist and satanist too).

2. They wanted to prevent the exposure of John McCain as a satanist.

Let me explain #2.

In the same article in which Loren Davis claims that the NFL is broadcasting messages for Satan, he also attacks the five pointed star. Celeste and Loren Davis believe that the five-pointed star is an ancient symbol of Satan, and so accuse any organization that prominently displays a five-pointed star of being part of a satanic conspiracy to destroy Christianity.

Loren Davis writes, “THE SIRIUS STAR is symbolized by the five
pointed star… The Sirius star is the foundation of the Baal religion of Egypt… BAAL WORSHIP, found in the Old Testament, was practiced in Egypt. BAAL comes from the word BAALZEBUB or BELZEBUB who is SATAN. BAAL WAS LITERALLY SATAN WORSHIP.”

There you have it, pretty clearly. Loren Davis proposes that the five pointed star is the Mark of the Beast, and a symbol of Satan.

Well, that’s a pretty inconvenient belief for a man who wants to destroy Barack Obama so that John McCain can be elected. You see, the logo for the McCain for President campaign has a big 5-pointed star right in the middle of it.

So, by the standards of Loren Davis himself, John McCain must be a satanist. The 5-pointed star is practically plastered all over the John McCain for President web site, so if we are to believe the conspiracy theories of Loren Davis, we must conclude that John McCain is not only a servant of Satan, but a very enthusiastic Satan worshipper at that.

Of course, I don’t believe the conspiracy theories of Celeste and Loren Davis. I don’t believe that the 5-pointed star is a symbol of Satan, and I don’t believe the nonsense that Barack Obama is an undercover agent for Al Quaida either.

There’s trouble for those who have promoted the rumors attributed to Loren Davis, however. If they say that Loren Davis is a credible source on the crazy Barack Obama rumors, then they ought to accept the silly satanic star interpretations of Loren Davis as well. If they do that, they must conclude that John McCain is in league with the Devil.

Of course, Loren Davis and the silly ditto heads who have been forwarding his rumors about Barack Obama around the Internet are supporters of John McCain. So, they can’t deal with the idea that their own favorite candidate is himself a representative of the Hordes of Hell.

If Loren Davis were an honest Christian preacher, he’d take a look at his rantings and conclude that John McCain is indeed a satanist who wants to kill Jesus. But, it seems that Loren Davis is not an honest Christian preacher. Instead of following the logical structures of his conspiracy theories, Loren Davis just tried to shove them under the rug.

The Loren Davis Ministries simply deleted the parts of the conspiracy theory that were incovenient for the John McCain for President campaign. Yesterday, Loren Davis believed that a 5 pointed star is a sign of Satan. Today, Loren Davis has deleted that belief.

Depending on whether his original claims about the meaning of the 5-pointed star were correct, this coverup exposes Loren Davis either 1) a purposeful huckster who doesn’t believe his own preachings; or 2) a collaborator with Satan who is willing to promote a presidential candidate he knows to be an agent of Satan.

You choose which interpretation makes the most sense.

This morning on NPR, Alice White, a member of the Catholic Church expressed pleasure at the way that Joseph Ratzinger (AKA Pope Benedict XVI) is using his power to squelch dissent within the church. Her justification for Ratzinger’s campaign of intimidation: “People are killing people over tennis shoes.”

The argument that Alice White made seemed strange to me for a couple of reasons. First, her argument relies on a causal connection between the murder rate and ability of one person in the Catholic Church to tell everyone else what to think.

Second, her argument is based on a peculiar claim of fact: That “people are killing people over tennis shoes.”

Where? Where are all these sneaker murders taking place? I’ve never seen anyone killed for their shoes. I’ve haven’t even heard anybody laughed at for their shoes in maybe 15 years.

The truth is that there is no epidemic of shoe-motivated murder. People are not killing people over tennis shoes. Go to Google News and do a search for yourself. You won’t find any news stories about people killing people for shoes. That’s not because there’s a mainstream news coverup of shoe murders. It’s because they’re not taking place.

Nonetheless, Alice White is not alone in her claim that the world is suffering from an epidemic of tennis shoe homicides. It’s become a shorthand expression for adults advocating crackdowns of one sort or another to claim that kids these days are busy killing each other for their shoes. The idea is that human life has become as cheap as a pair of shoes because of the erosion of traditional authority. Too much freedom is deadly, it’s said.

It all started back in the 1980s, with a couple of isolated incidents, years apart, in which teenagers were killed, and their shoes were taken after they were killed. In these few cases, which received a great deal of publicity, the murders weren’t really motivated by the desire for someone’s shoes. The reasons for the murders were much more complex than that. Yet, people began saying that these murders had taken place only because the murderers wanted the victims’ nice shoes. The stories people made up about these two murders became increasingly exaggerated, until people began claiming that there was a crime wave of teenagers being killed just for their shoes.

The idea survived, and continues to be communicated by people like Alice White, who support crackdowns to restrict people’s freedoms. They say that people are killing people for their shoes, and so we need to submit ourselves to the authority of leaders who will tell us what to do, what to say, and what to think.

The moral of this story is pretty clear, but it isn’t the one that people like Alice would like you to take away.

Your shoes are safe, and nobody is going to die if you think for yourself.

Post Script: In a weird and twisted silver lining to the dark, Ratzinger-shaped cloud that begins this story, I came across a most irregular web site called Killing Sneakers. Killing Sneakers is one of those web sites set up by people who are fascinated with shoes to the point of fetishism. There’s nothing sexual about it that I’ve seen, but it does involve a sort of odd ritual of anti-idolatry.

The site is devoted to people who like to share photographs they take as they destroy their shoes. So, although people are not killing people for their tennis shoes, people are killing their tennis shoes. There is photographic proof.

Maybe, if they pray about it for long enough, Alice White and her ilk can come up with an argument for why the rampant destruction of shoes on the Internet makes it necessary for everyone to obey their Pope.

With the shootings at Northern Illinois University, we are sure to hear again from mainstream news personalities the old question: Why is school violence on the rise?

The answer, as always, is that school violence isn’t on the rise. Statistics show that very clearly.

There has been school violence for as long as there have been schools. Consider Hercules.

Hercules was considered a hero, but he had certain character flaws… such as having flown into a blind rage, killing his wife and three sons.

There were warning signs, early on, that Hercules was capable of such things. For example, there was the time that Hercules killed his teacher because he was having a bad time at his studies, and just couldn’t take the stress any more. The following passage about Hercules comes from the book Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton.

Great care was taken with his education, but teaching him what he did not wish to learn was a dangerous business. He seems not to have liked music, which was a most important part of a Greek boy’s training, or else he disliked his music master. He flew into a rage with him and brained him with his lute. THis was the first time he dealt a fatal blow without intending it. He did not mean to kill the poor musician; he just struck out on the impulse of the moment without thinking, hardly aware of his own strength. He was sorry, very sorry, but that did not keep him from doing the same thing again and again.

Youths have a lot of anxiety and uncertainty about themselves, are under heavy pressure to make important, life-changing decisions, and don’t know how to control their impulses very well. It’s not really a mystery that school violence is as ancient as education itself. The real mystery is why it doesn’t happen more often.