The O'Quaker Factor

http://afriendlyletter.com/

I heard about this incident on Mike Malloy's Air America radio talk show. Ironically, speaking of Quakers, 55-year-old O'Reilly just had to pay off one of his former female employees allegedly to the tune of about $4 million for continuing to "sow his wild oats" at least telephonically into her ear. Aural sex turned out to be extremely expensive and ultimately unsatisfying. Blow it out your ear, O'Lielly.

O'Reilly Settles Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

Quakers are so, so ... peaceful. Damn! There's no money to be made in that. And whoever heard of a "peace hero" running for high office?

Governors sound alert on U.S. high schools

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1269206

This comes from a discussion forum called Democratic Underground. Ironically, I learned about the site from the "Freepers" who kicked me off their site after I predicted in February 2002 that Bush would go to war against Iraq. The message from the owner of the site, Jim Robinson, called my prediction "conspiracy kookery." Other BushBots told me I ought to go to DU. At first, I thought they were threatening to fire "depleted uranium" artillery shells at me. That's what DU meant to me. But eventually I found my way there.

I am not so much a Democrat as an anti-Republican. I used to be a Libertarian and I still like Dr. Ron Paul a lot. But there has been so much "force and fraud" over the years by corporations and by our military-industrial complex (the "welfare-warfare state" as Paul calls it) that have wrecked things for so many tens of millions of Americans, not to mention hundreds of millions worldwide, that we cannot just go to a total private sector and leave all those people who have been defrauded or physically harmed to starve.

I do not think the Democratic Party will ever be viable again in this country. But for that very reason our days as a "First World" country are numbered and indeed are already over in many areas of the country.

The reason I put this link here was to show that I wasn't the only one pessimistic about our schools. It appears the alarm bells are going off all over. You know, we do not really DESERVE to be a First World country anymore as anti-intellectual as we have become as a nation. I never thought the entire country would be as proudly ignorant as the natives around here, but we have reached that stage. Nothing is based on science or reality. Everything is "faith-based." Faith is not bad. But it is no substitute for reason.

I put a new profile photo up

Here is the old photo I am replacing. It was taken on December 19, 2003, less than six weeks after I was nearly killed by an SUV while out on a leisurely Sunday afternoon stroll. I don't "stroll" anymore. I walk out the kitchen door six steps to my car door and then repeat the process in reverse whenever I arrive at work or elsewhere.

For the blogosphere record, here is what I had just written about that horrendous accident a few days before that photo was taken:


SOMETIMES things happen to us early in our lives that we can’t explain until later on.
When I was a child, I had an aunt and uncle who lived in New Orleans who were Presbyterians.
At about the same time I learned of this and what it meant, I began to be dragged along with my elders on trips to the “big city”—usually Dallas or Fort Worth.
That is where I began to see references on street signs and traffic signals to a group called “Pedestrians.”
The word was similar enough to “Presbyterian” that I actually thought these were instructions being given to members of a religious denomination. I wondered why they were being singled out like this, though.
Were they just really slow and needed signs everywhere to point them toward the correct way? Or did they have such clout with the city fathers that they rated special treatment? I noted in my little brain that there were no signs telling Baptists or Methodists where to cross the street.
As I was being raised a Methodist, I could certainly understand our omission from such VIP status, but it was less clear to me why Baptists received no favor since practically everyone I was getting to know in my little East Texas hometown claimed that as their religious affiliation in terms of the Christian faith. They were continually asking if I was “saved,” even classmates in second grade. Belinda Davis Ward will probably recall that frustrating conversation she had with me.
On a related note, I actually thought that the Baptist church was founded by John the Baptist, and I assumed that the Baptists no doubt worshipped him rather than his cousin, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I promised myself I would someday investigate this topic further if I ever tired of playing football, basketball, baseball, etc., in my off hours.
ON SUNDAY, Nov. 9, at about 2 p.m., I was completing a 6-mile walk, entering the home stretch, so to speak, on Buffalo St. near the Gilmer High School gym. I was wearing a bright orange shirt with Gilmer Buckeyes insignia on it and had just a few minutes before picked up a slash pine cone out of someone’s front yard on FM 852. I have always liked these ornamental specimens. Maybe I was getting in the holiday spirit even then.
I placed the pine cone in the pocket on the Buckeye shirt directly over my heart.
I don’t know why I did this. I also don’t know why I began altering my usual walking path down Cherokee Trace to Lake Gilmer and back a few months ago. Just wanted a change of scenery, I suppose.
I used to jog, but in recent years have switched to walking, thinking it was, ahem, “healthier” than the former pursuit. I have never seen a jogger looking happy. Usually he or she is fixed in some sort of tortured grimace. Walkers, on the other hand, often have a serene “at peace with God” look on their faces.
I like to think this is what the driver of the Chevrolet Suburban saw right before she plowed head-on into me on that afternoon, which easily qualifies as the strangest one of my life to date. However, as I understand it, she was reportedly not looking at the road at the time. What a pity. As the song goes, “Poor, poor pitiful me.”
What is ironic is that in recent years I have slacked off on my perambulations to such an extent that I have only been walking such a long distance about once a week, if even that often.
I WON’T GO into the details of what I was thinking and praying during the three or four seconds I had to contemplate what was about to be the thud of about 7,000 pounds of sport utility vehicle going 35 to 40 miles per hour in a westerly direction on an approximately 180-lb. man, namely me, going about three miles per hour in an easterly direction.
After the awful impact, though, I think I got a glimpse of Heaven. I certainly seem to have been transported to another dimension for a few moments there. I really can’t write much about this. It is too holy.
Suffice it to say that I have a much greater testimony than I ever dreamed I would have. I feel like one of the people miraculously healed by Christ in the Gospels.
I will tell you of some of my more mundane thoughts. Only two nights before, I had witnessed our Gilmer Buckeyes annihilate the Lindale Eagles, 45-0. Yes, friends, one of my first thoughts was as follows:
“Dang!” (or some mild expletive like that; when you think you are about to be killed, you tend to use euphemisms rather than profanity or I do anyway) ... “Now I will never know (unless God chooses to tell me) whether the Buckeyes won state or not.”
Actually, the first thought I had was, “My word, there is actually someone in this town who dislikes me enough to deliberately run me over and murder me!”
These two thoughts, along with the feeling that this wasn’t really happening and I would wake up from the nightmare just as I have from so many in which I am a passenger on a crashing airliner, passed in and out of my mind almost instantaneously.
THEN I commenced to praying to the Good Lord above. All I really care to say in writing about those precious moments in communion with our Creator is that I didn’t ask Him to preserve or prolong my life, probably because I long ago attempted to incorporate into my soul and spirit the words of our Lord, “He who seeks to save his own life will lose it.”
After the grille of the SUV hit me, I then catapulted off the hood and windshield and was thrown up into the air and sailed for a ways, up to 60 to 80 feet horizontally and as high as 14 feet in altitude, according to a witness. I also remember making the decision not to scream. What good would it do?
In those moments, I am firmly convinced that my guardian angel took over and made a mid-course correction in my trajectory to guide me to a safe landing in a damp ditch on some of that wonderful, cushiony East Texas sandy loam that our aforementioned pine trees love so much. (The pine cone in my pocket survived intact and I still have it.)
My right hip bore the brunt of the attack. That portion of my pelvis was broken in three places. I also broke both collarbones, three ribs and several bones in two fingers of my right hand, but who’s counting? Certainly I still have a long way to go to match Evel Knievel’s “brokenness.”
My left lung also collapsed, probably from one of the broken ribs poking into it.
My right hip still looks weird. It contains what is called in medical jargon a hematoma about the size of a grapefruit. It is not quite that large anymore. But it will be months before this mass of blood and other bodily fluids is reabsorbed into the rest of my body. It doesn’t hurt at all. But until the swelling subsides, I cannot wear normal clothes such as the jeans I usually don. You sure wouldn’t want to see me in swimming trunks either at this point.
I DO NOT really remember what the “Good Samaritans” who attended to me after I returned to earth did for me, but I now know they were, among others, Eddy Coleman (who lives nearby and heard the impact) and Johnny Collier, who was at the gym attending his daughter’s volleyball tryouts. It was Eddy who called 911 and Johnny who put his coat over me to prevent shock. I’ve also heard Johnny was of the opinion that I probably would not survive. Very understandable, if you ask me. Eddy told me he was more optimistic, though, because I was coherent, which was an indication that no serious head injury was evident.
I haven’t talked to Johnny yet, but I was finally able to visit with Eddy and his wife for over an hour on Sunday afternoon. I now understand more than ever that I owe him my life. He worked for Eastman for 32 years and told me of all the training in lifesaving measures he has both taken and put into practice over the years. If this had to happen to me, it couldn’t have happened within earshot of a more able and qualified rescuer.
Eddy was also able to calm down my mother, Sarah Greene, when she arrived on the scene looking for me more than an hour after the incident occurred. She has been through so much. These past five weeks have perhaps been even harder on her than on myself, although I don’t want to play the martyr here. I am not attempting to minimize my “pain and suffering.”
I was able to move back to my own house within a week after I was released from rehab, which is good because we were on the verge of disowning one another. If I were a married man, I no doubt would now be on the verge of a divorce. Fortunately, it is not legal for mothers to do so or I’d be worried. I went from being in critical condition to just being critical. One should not criticize one’s caregiver in the era of Dr. Kevorkian.
TO THESE two men, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart. I shout your praises from the top of my reinflated lung. God has blessed me through you. You are shining lights in His firmament.
I was apparently fully conscious again by the time the Gilmer police got there, because I remember telling the officer whom to call and the like. I also remember being loaded onto the Air 1 helicopter for the flight to East Texas Medical Center’s Level I trauma unit in Tyler. That was about an hour after the impact.
I do regret, though, not having had a copy of my health insurance policy on me that day so that I could have told the paramedics that ETMC was not in our “network” of “preferred providers” and so I would just bleed a while longer from the numerous lacerations in my face as I waited for a chopper to arrive from Trinity-Mother Frances instead.
My bad, fellows. As my friend, Gloria Lindsey McLuckie, would say, “Excuse me for livin’!”
If you think I am being sarcastic here, you are right.
From the moment I took off in the “non-preferred” helicopter until I was released from the “not in our network” rehab three weeks and two days later, I met dozens and dozens of angelic health professionals in Tyler of every race, creed, color and nationality, both male and female. It was another way of God telling me we are all the same, sinners in need of His saving grace and mercy.
IT’S A beautiful thing. Was it worth the pain I went through? Probably not. But it’s still a beautiful thing. One thing about my writing style is that you can never tell when I’m being serious. Sometimes I don’t even know myself.
I was about to say you can’t put a dollar value on what I have been going through, but judges and juries do it all the time, don’t they?
To everyone in the health care professions, you all are my heroes—from Dr. Shawn Mansour, D.O., the osteopath and surgeon who on Nov. 12 operated on my right hand (and is God good or what? I am left-handed and that hand was left totally unscathed and unharmed) to Chester Baird, the physical therapist who worked with me during the latter half of November. (Baird grew up in Hughes Springs and passes through here often on his way home to visit family.)
Fortunately, I was under general anesthesia when Dr. Mansour operated, but I remember every moment Baird “tortured” me to get me back on my feet. I’m just kidding, Chester.
There was even a Gilmer connection as our own William Bunn, an ETMC executive, stopped by my room and visited with me for about an hour one afternoon just to make sure everything was going all right. To all of you who visited and wrote me, I thank God in my prayers for you every night. I am in the process of writing as many of you as I can track down. I felt at times as if practically everyone in Upshur County was praying for me. What a privilege it is to live among such caring, compassionate people.
How can I leave out my co-workers here at The Mirror who took up the slack for me? Thanks, everybody. I love y’all. I know this was a real sneaky way of getting a month-long vacation, but ETMC is not exactly a cruise ship. I’ll admit there are a lot of beautiful nurses down there, particularly a former Texas Tech cheerleader I met in the trauma unit named Valerie from Jacksonville who is a sister-in-law of former Jacksonville and Texas A&M QB Randy McCown (one of whose coaches at J’ville was our own Jeff Traylor), but in my condition, I couldn’t do much more than stare at them slack-jawed and goggle-eyed. Actually there was slack all over my face. They took it up with the sutures. Otherwise I’d be even more of a “scarface” than I already am.
I couldn’t even do any heavy breathing in their presence. When you have cracked ribs and a collapsed lung, it’s all you can do to take a breath—period.
LET ME also thank the Gilmer Buckeyes for the autographed game ball from the bi-district victory over Daingerfield. Congratulations on your run deep into the playoffs. You have brought much joy to our community. We are all so very proud of you guys and for all the other Gilmer kids who supported your efforts with their own excellence in the band, drill team, cheerleaders, choir, AFROTC, etc.
Casey Driggers reportedly said that I had proved I was tougher than the Buckeyes. His grandmother, Mrs. Bonnie Stewart, called me on the day of the Daingerfield game to make sure I had heard of his witticism. I was too out of it to talk to her, but I got her message.
Good one, Casey. However, I still don’t want to get on anywhere near a collision course with you, the Dodd brothers, Jared Boyum, Brandon Williams, Drew Marshall, Fred Walker (especially not Big Fred!), etc. At this point I don’t even want to take on Michael Tucker and I probably outweigh him by 50 pounds. That dude can hit. My old bones can’t take any more of this.
I ROOMED for two nights about 10 days into my sojourn on Beckham Street with a man named Terry Howlett, who was nearly killed on Nov. 1 when a Ford F-150 pickup hit him while he was riding his bicycle near the Tyler airport. They nearly lost him a couple of times, I’ve heard. It was touch-and-go whether he would even survive the helicopter flight.
Terry is retired from the U.S. Air Force and is now associated with the Garden Valley-based missionary relief organization known as Mercy Ships. He is a friend of Butch Ragland from their joint participation in the Civil Air Patrol. He, his wife and son are members of the Grace Community Church of Tyler. I think Terry was brought into my life by the Lord to show me how much worse it could have been and how a true saint of God such as Terry bears up under such an affliction. What a witness he was to me. I love you, brother.
There was a number of fellow patients I struck up (maybe I should rephrase that) friendships with in rehab. We became almost like members of a family in some respects. I guess you could call us the “Crips,” but that name is already taken. Certainly we bore no resemblance to a street gang, although we were heavily into drugs.
You know, morphine is a wonder drug and I really appreciated the IV in my arm which shot it into me while I was in intensive care, but it really stops up the other end of the body. I’m talking about the posterior portion.
SO IT WAS on Monday, Nov. 17, after nine days of gestation in my colon, that the administration of several laxatives and an enema finally “induced labor” enough to enable me to “give birth” to a 9 lb., 4 oz. bowel movement.
It was delivered onto a cold bedpan. But it didn’t bounce. It just sort of plopped. It “hit the pan.” The proud father is a Chevrolet Suburban, but I have to tell you this definitely wasn’t consensual on my part. And I immediately put this creature up for adoption. I know. It stinks. But I just wouldn’t have been a responsible mother.
To give you an idea of how offended the witnessing nurse “obstetrician” was over my malodorous travail, the next day when I called for a bedpan, she told me, “Mr. Greene, your chart says you can now bear weight on that right leg so you will need to go into the bathroom.”
IF YOU can remember how I started out this recollection, you will recall that as a child I thought “Pedestrians” were members of a very special Christian church.
Guess what? I was right all along. God has now confirmed in my spirit that I am indeed a Pedestrian, one who walks with Him.
As Micah 6:8 says, “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
Wherever I go, try as I might to get away from His presence in my moments of rebellion and shame, He’ll never leave me nor forsake me on this walk. And wherever my footprints have disappeared as they did on that November day, there is still that other set in the sand for when He was carrying me.
You may need more proof that “His mercy endureth forever” but I am convinced. Since His “everlasting arms” literally caught me as I was falling toward certain death or, at the very least, paralysis, all I have been able to do since then is shout “Hallelujah!” and cry tears of joy.
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone reading this. May the LORD be magnified and glorified in every word I have written. We must love one another, people, before it’s too late.
WHEN YOU perceive, as I most definitely did on Nov. 9, that you are possibly living the last few moments of your life, you realize the Bible is true. It’s all been “as a vapor.” Here today, gone tomorrow.
In that moment I saw that only perfect love exists beyond this life and if you can’t love God and His creation with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength, you will not be welcome there. LORD help me, because I am sure I do not love in that manner in my fallen nature.
I don’t know about you, but it is only, as the Bible says, “Christ in you; the hope of glory” that can ever enable and empower me to love like that.
I can think of no better way to conclude than the following verses from the Word of God:
Psalm 23  [A Psalm of David.] KJV
The LORD [is] my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

State defies U.S. rules on grading schools

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3057839

The natives are not just restless; they are revolting. Gov. Bush's best-laid plans which he pushed Congress to enact on a federal level once he became 'preznit' have blown up in the inferior Texas schools' faces.

Public education as we know it today is more or less worse than useless. It serves as the backdrop for great athletic programs such as we have locally. That's it. The students are just props. And there aren't any jobs for which to train anyhow.

It may turn out the Mexicans, who have moved into and begun to take over this most-removed-from-the-border northeastern area of Texas in droves in the last 15 years, had the right idea. Drop out at age 12 and go to work. Of course, you then have to live 15 to the trailer the rest of your miserable lives, but everybody's got to live somewhere. Tell me they don't have "family values"? Crammed into their doublewides like sardines, they just can't help but be close.

The Voice of the White House

http://tbrnews.org/Archives/a1409.htm#001

Johnny Mathis

The Mathis Repertoire—

In his own words "I select songs that are void of protest, hate, violence, grief, and all negative aspects and choose arrangements that will make people love one another by portraying everything that is beautiful and optimistic."

--Johnny Mathis

http://www.themathischronicles.net/voice.html

A fan of Mr. Mathis writes the following:

"I might also add that there tends not to be much sex in the Mathis song; well, ok, there are a few adult-oriented lyrics here and there ("...would you like to spend the night with me..." or "giving me love, nothing denied me..." or "I remember you and me, the way it used to be, making love, waking up together...). I still say that for the most part, though, Mathis draws a rather heavy line between romance and sex, and seems to prefer to concentrate on pure, sometimes rather intense feeling, rather than the physical consummation of that feeling. I think this makes for very listenable music, music you can share with younger members of the household and not be embarrassed about it."

This famous American is a native of my Texas hometown. He will be 70 years old later this year and still looks like he's about 45. He has a new release called "Isn't It Romantic" and you can read about it here:

http://www.themathischronicles.net/grapes.html

The official site is at http://www.johnnymathis.com.

Three-year-old pine trees in northern Upshur County, Texas

This family farm produced a prolific crop of pine timber in 1997. Efforts to reforest the following spring were almost totally unsuccessful because of April not having any rain.

In February 2002, my forester, Dana Moon, and I made a new attempt to reestablish a stand of loblolly pine and it is proving to be somewhat more successful.

There are some dead spots, but if we get a really rainy year, I am hoping there will be "volunteers" spring up in those zones eventually as happened with a vengeance during the late 1970s. The dead spots coincide with where I used to see yucca plants growing, meaning that the sand there is unusually fine and well-drained and giving rise to an almost desert-like micro habitat.

The larger tree in the background is a survivor from 1998.

The Voice of the White House

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1391.htm

I have been following this blogger for a few months now. The latest report dated February 14 seems very credible. I think I know the couple from "East Jesus." They go to my church.

Wait, I just reread this. The "couple" was made up of two guys. I will not assume the worst about them as they no doubt would about others.

Iraq war a mistake? Gee, ya think?

Looking back, says Jeff McAlister, it seems war was ill-advised

This is signficant to me because Jeff McAlister is the "pro-life" firebrand son of a former longtime music minister at our local First Baptist Church, the same church at which I was practically assaulted in the choir room by two fire-breathing chorister crusaders who erupted over my refusal to bow to the Chimperor (this was on April 9, 2003, when the U.S. military staged the famous statue of Saddam falling in Firdaus Square) as they and the pastor already had, bless their warmongering hearts. I guess it didn't help matters when I compared the wild-eyed looks they were giving me to scenes from Nazi Germany and said I hoped they didn't send me off to a concentration camp.

I wish I could say all's well that ends well, but none of these matters has been resolved. I believe this entire sad chapter in our country's history will end rather badly. If I were God (or "Gawd" as many Baptists call Him), I'd be pretty pissed (that word is in the King James Version of the Bible, believe it or not But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? [hath he] not [sent me] to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?) at how My Son's teachings had been twisted into advocacy and implementation of genocidal wars for control of natural resources.

Man Tries to Toss Cigarette, SUV Ignites

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/smoking_driver

I really like stories like this. An SUV (to wit, a Chevrolet Suburban hurtling out of control at an estimated speed of 40 mph in a 30 mph zone) ran off the road and nearly killed me on November 9, 2003. Ever since then, I've experienced extreme Schadenfreude whenever SUV drivers meet with disaster.

I am also wondering how people can smoke and drive safely at the same time. It is no less frightening a concept to me than driving and talking over the cell phone. The answer seems to be "with great difficulty" in both cases.

It's an asphalt jungle out there. SUVs are the artificial dinosaurs of this age, but it's not going to take an asteroid to get rid of them, although that would work also. I'm sorta looking forward to Peak Oil and its concomitant $8 per gallon gasoline prices. The problem is that the U.S. government will take the opportunity to go ahead and neutron-bomb all the world's oilfields, seeing as how "shock and awe" didn't work too well in effecting a smooth takeover of Iraq.

"War over Oil"

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/07news01.htm

This is a very long interview, but is well worth reading. I suspected much of this to be true from the very beginning. Even as the Twin Towers were collapsing, I was saying "watch them immediately blame this on Osama bin Laden with no evidence whatsoever." Right on cue, it began happening with that evening's nightly newscasts.

The United States of America since Dec. 2000 has been descending into a nightmare. We are nowhere near the bottom of the nocturnal abyss yet. The incubi are getting ready to gang-rape at this point. Hang on. It's gonna be one helluva ride. We will all need to have faith in a Higher Power to get through it.

Have you ever thought that there is only one letter's difference between the invisible being the Muslims worship and that which the globalist kleptocratic elites venerate? One prays to almighty "Allah" and the other to the almighty "D'allah."

Pharisee Nation

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0215-21.htm

I believe more or less the same as this fellow named John Dear, which reminds me of a tractor joke.

It's not very funny, but it starts out "what did the female tractor say to the male one?" Answer: "Hold me closer, John Deere."

Agricultural humor, not surprisingly, is often "corny." I am well-versed in Aggie jokes, since I live in Aggieland North about 190 miles northeast of the actual campus in College Station. I was actually a student there for about three weeks once before a near-psychosis set in and I had to be medicated. I am not making that up.

Eventually, I returned to sanity and enrolled at UT-Austin, where I was an overly-lubricated student for about five or six years, earning two degrees and only one visit to the Dean of Students' office.

John Dear claims to be a Christian in that article. So do I. But I do not think he would be regarded as such around here. He is close to being a "terr'ist." I know down at my Southern Baptist church, I am now regarded with great suspicion.

(I have decided not to frequent its hallowed halls nearly as often as I once did. "Come out from among them and be ye separate" is what my inner voice has been saying.)

This is because of the few times I've failed to guard my normal reticence and blurted out my strong hunch, now bordering on fervent belief, that Dubya is far more likely the Antichrist than the "new, improved son of God" many of my fellow congregants seem to assay.

Dubya is the "Redneck Jesus." He's the "messiah with an attitude." He comes "not to bring peace, but a sword."

The latter seven words comprise the favorite and maybe the only quote attributed in the Gospels to the Lord of today's self-righteous warmongers who have set out to cleanse the earth of evil.

If they ever had a moment of true insight, most of them would have to commit suicide. But that's not likely to happen. One of the cool things about being a Pharisee is a complete lack of self-reflection and a total confidence that you speak for AwmightyGawd or at least that your lord Dubya does.

If their leader ever rode into Jerusalem on an ass (that's redundant, I think), his "ass" would be an Abrams tank (since we know he is terrified of riding on four-legged beasts of burden) and he'd be at the controls "kickin' ass" by firing depleted uranium shells at all the ragtag Palestinians in the Old City.

Is this Jesus?

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12228773^663,00.html

This is supposedly based on the alleged hoax called the Shroud of Turin. More recent carbon dating has lent (pardon the seasonal pun) newfound credibility to its possible genuineness.

But I don't much think The Lord looked like this at all as a boy. This sketch bears no resemblance to any of the boyhood photos of the Lord Dubya I've seen.

And here I thought the "Eye-talians" were one of our few remaining allies in The War on Terra.

I learned from this article that I am slightly taller and about five pounds heavier than whoever it was the Shroud shrouded. It took me a minute to figure this out since the measurements were given in the metric system. To be more biblically correct, they should have used "cubits" for his height. And I think the weights were in "talents" back then. That wouldn't sound right, though, to say I am slightly more talented than Jesus. Sounds too much like John Lennon.

However, I would say that--in general and on average--the population of the United States is more talented than it ever has been. Americans may in fact be the most talented tubsters on the planet. I think I've finally figured out why Rush Limbaugh always mentions his "talent on loan from God."

Welcome to my blog

It's a sunny day in the 70s here in mid-February in East Texas. So I ought to be outside. Therefore, I just wanted to create a post to say I am a blogger and have blogged. More later.