Rudy, We Hardly Knew Ye (well, i didn't at all)

(from Welcome To Pottersville, this post concerning the religious right's attack on separation of powers and a nod to rudy giuliani who many see as a sane and centrist man):

In 1981, Gary North, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement — the openly theocratic wing of the Christian right — suggested that the movement could achieve power by stealth. “Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure,” he wrote, “and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.”
Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.
Unfortunately for the image of the school, where Mr. Robertson is chancellor and president, the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling, a product of the university’s law school. She’s the former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys and has declared that she will take the Fifth rather than testify to Congress on the matter.
The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It’s also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.
But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.” And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.
Kay Cole James, who had extensive connections to the religious right and was the dean of Regent’s government school, was the federal government’s chief personnel officer from 2001 to 2005. (Curious fact: she then took a job with Mitchell Wade, the businessman who bribed Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham.) And it’s clear that unqualified people were hired throughout the administration because of their religious connections.
For example, The Boston Globe reports on one Regent law school graduate who was interviewed by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Asked what Supreme Court decision of the past 20 years he most disagreed with, he named the decision to strike down a Texas anti-sodomy law. When he was hired, it was his only job offer.Or consider George Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web site designer to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, to leave open the possibility of “intelligent design by a creator.” He turned out not to have, as he claimed, a degree from Texas A&M.
One measure of just how many Bushies were appointed to promote a religious agenda is how often a Christian right connection surfaces when we learn about a Bush administration scandal.
There’s Ms. Goodling, of course. But did you know that Rachel Paulose, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota — three of whose deputies recently stepped down, reportedly in protest over her management style — is, according to a local news report, in the habit of quoting Bible verses in the office?
Or there’s the case of Claude Allen, the presidential aide and former deputy secretary of health and human services, who stepped down after being investigated for petty theft. Most press reports, though they mentioned Mr. Allen’s faith, failed to convey the fact that he built his career as a man of the hard-line Christian right.
And there’s another thing most reporting fails to convey: the sheer extremism of these people.
You see, Regent isn’t a religious university the way Loyola or Yeshiva are religious universities. It’s run by someone whose first reaction to 9/11 was to brand it God’s punishment for America’s sins.
Two days after the terrorist attacks, Mr. Robertson held a conversation with Jerry Falwell on Mr. Robertson’s TV show “The 700 Club.” Mr. Falwell laid blame for the attack at the feet of “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians,” not to mention the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way. “Well, I totally concur,” said Mr. Robertson.
The Bush administration’s implosion clearly represents a setback for the Christian right’s strategy of infiltration. But it would be wildly premature to declare the danger over. This is a movement that has shown great resilience over the years. It will surely find new champions.

Next week Rudy Giuliani will be speaking at Regent’s Executive Leadership Series.

F Bomb (Auld Lang Syne)

i don't like to crow. that's not me...normally. but there comes a time when i just can't keep it in. i gotta let it out. i gotta shout. i gotta strut and shake my stuff. jiggle the booty and shimmy the shake.

i'm going to see the san francisco giants play the new york yankees. did a bit of movin' and groovin', greasin' and wheelin' and shrimpin' the pimp if you know what i mean. yeah, you do. because you're sassy.

the freakin' giants are playing the fuckingyankees. to a diehard baseball fan this is nirvana. to a giants fan this is once in a lifetime plus peanuts. we've been waiting since 1962 to get another shot at those arrogant whale dorks.

and arrogant they are with the likes of derek fuckingjeter, alex fuckingrodriguez, bernie fuckingwilliams, hideki fuckingmatsui, johnny fuckingdamon, bobby fuckingabreu, andy fuckingpettite, doug fuckingmientkiewicz, jason fuckinggiambi, josh fuckingphelps, miguel fuckingcairo, robinson fuckingcano, kyle fuckingfarnsworth, carl fuckingpavano, mike fuckingmussina...and,uh, mariano fuckingrivera.

the fuckingyankees do one thing well above all others. they stack their roster with fuckingplayers. and by fuckingplayers i mean real ballfucking players. ballfucking players who are all very fuckinggood at what they fuckingdo. some of the time they fuckinggel and sometimes they fuckingdon't. derek fuckingjeter owns four fuckingworld series champion rings. and he started in fuckingall of them. mariano fuckingrivera has those same four rings. fuckingplus one or two MVPs.

george steinfuckingbrenner (owner) has a good fuckingfarm system that he treats like a trading fuckingstable. he cultivates fuckinggood talent, then trades it for a goodfucking deal. unless it is fuckingtoo popular on the block. then he keeps and fuckinggrooms it.

george steinfuckingbrenner, also, buys the bestfucking talent he can afford. every year. and since he has more fuckingmoney than any other owner he can buy the bestfucking talent. fuckingperiod. keep the fuckingones who produce each year after year and fuckingboot the ones who don't. with no fuckingfear.

so, i want to see in person my stinking giants kick the crapping crapcrap out of those damnitall yankees.

Where's Generik?

first of all, i'd like to congratulate our first guesser (mr. mintzworks) for making the brave gesture of going first. you are to be commended, sir. truly.
secondly of all mustang, it is Harry: Men's Sweaters. or should be. and it should be said with the threat of a sister mob hit behind it.
lastly, you lie, dear mr. mintzworks. you did meet generik. i may have even introduced you. but you guessed right as well and i didn't prohibit knowing what he looks like from the contest. and you might have talked for as long as it took to say hi. [editor's note: forget that last sentence...please!]
so, well done. and, actually, i'm still impressed. the fact that he's looking away should have made it harder.
so...you win, you magnificent bastard.

what you've won i hadn't thought about until now. so, let it be...
...
...
...one free admission to an imax film when accompanied by moi. any film. name the time.

[editor's note: all times negotiable, all films negotiable]

a City excursion

this is how buses are supposed to look.

calling all mustangs.
so cool i peed myself.

then the game started...
...and we surrendered quickly and quietly...
after the game we found a quiet spot where the waitress was prompt, deft and oddly familiar looking...
belly shots...that is, if her belly is up around her hoo hoos...

generic showing a bit of bling.
the post game fights began with hair tossing as a dodger fan made bad bad lovin' to a giant girl and the marines just looked on without intervening...it was close to civil war.

finally, for those of you who know generic and those of you who just met him in the above picture, it's time to play the game: WHERE'S GENERIK? he's somewhere in here, i promise. exciting prize for the person who correctly identifies his row and seat number (employees and relatives of genericbling enterprises excluded).