I really like this word, Pentacostalgon! I read it in an article on CNN about an atheist named Jeremy Hall who is suing the U.S. military for religious discrimination. The story has been in the news for a while, but this is the first time I ran into the word. It comes from Michael Weinstein, “a retired senior Air Force officer and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who is suing along with Hall.” In the CNN article, he says “Our Pentagon, our Pentacostalgon, is refusing to realize that when you put the uniform on, there’s only one religious faith: patriotism.” Weinstein’s term hasRead More →

According to an article on LiveLeak.com, 18 veterans commit suicide every day, and there are 1,000 attempts per month. According to a CBS news report, veteran suicide rates are twice as high as the regular population. Even the government knows that suicide rates among veterans from the Iraq war are “epidemic.” The comments on this link are depressing and sickening.

From Code Pink’s talking points about dogging Hillary re: the war in Iraq: Question: Are you doing this because she’s a woman? Are you holding her to a higher standard because she’s a woman? As women, are you going after her because she’s a woman? Answer: No. No. No. Our campaign has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman. It is about her enormous power and influence within the Democratic Party. It is about her hawk-like record. We don’t want to end up with another Lyndon Johnson—of whatever gender. Pressuring Hillary to change her stance on the war—and not just herRead More →

Counterpunch has an article today on how much money Cheney and other war profiteers have made off the Iraq war. It’s so appalling; I can’t believe that this sort of thing doesn’t make headlines in the mainstream news. For instance, In addition, Cheney’s son-in-law, Philip Perry, Cummings says, was appointed to serve as general counsel to the Department of Homeland Security, and he had been a registered lobbyist for Lockheed who had worked for a law firm representing Lockheed with the Department of Homeland Security. According to Cummings, less than a month after 9/11, in October of 2001, the Pentagon announced a $20 billion contractRead More →

Like the rest of the country, I am spending the morning reflecting on and reading about the shootings at Virginia Tech. As one article on Michael Moore’s website puts it, all the usual suspects have lined up along predictable rhetorical lines. Anti-gun control folks say that letting citizens have handguns on the college campus would have enabled students to stop the gunman before he mowed down 32 people. The logic in that boggles me. Gun-control advocates trot out their legislation. Nonetheless, even in the face of all the evidence about gun violence in America, I remain ambivalent about gun control. This is primarily due toRead More →

My colleague, Amy (shoutout to Amy), lent me her Al Franken book and I’m reading it slowly in the office during office hours. I’m still in the early pages. One thing he wrote about that I identified with was dreaming that his teeth disintegrated. I have that dream frequently myself. Someone once told me that it was a sign of stress and feeling defenseless and vulnerable, because your teeth are the last measure of protection that you have in a very primal sort of way. So, Al Franken really is running for U.S. Senate, I think (see Al Franken For U.S. Senate). In his YoutubeRead More →

Did I say yet that I really dislike Ann Coulter? I shouldn’t be giving her the time of day; she’s not worth it. She insinuated that John Edwards was a faggot, using that f-word, in her speech at the CPAC. Even some conservatives are calling her out for her statements. Interestingly, one article cites rhetorical theorist Richard Weaver’s Ideas have Consequences. I didn’t know that people still read him. In any case, I refuse to give Coulter’s comments any more space on my blog.

The word ‘democratic’ has such positive emotional valence … so they politicize it to use it as a term to describe a group of political rivals.”
“Democrat Party” is not common usage in Texas, Hart said, noting that the only people he had heard use it were “sitting Republican legislators.”

– Dr. Rod Hart, Communication Studies Professor and Dean, University of Texas, Austin,
in an LA Times article on Bush’s gaffe in the State of the Union