Indian Country

The other day I did something I rarely do anymore, which was to take a mid-afternoon ride to get some air and help clear my head. A hundred-mile commute tends to make optional rides less appealing, somehow.

The destination was about fifteen miles away by road, half that as the crow flies; an area that back in the day we referred to as ‘Indian Country.’ It was a crude shorthand for that transitional area between the far edge of the suburbs and the beginning of ‘country.’ It comprised scattered development and industrial parks tossed among fields of scrub and cedar, areas that had stopped being farms and pastures a while ago, but had neither reverted to the wild nor fallen to the developer’s bulldozers. My brother and I both found ourselves exiled to different purgatories in this god-forsaken wilderness for different reasons at a concurrent nadir of our careers.

In any case.

I headed out to ‘Indian Country.’

It may have been most of a decade since I rode out there; the last official record I have is from a cold December morning circa 2004, and maybe a quick traverse a year or two after. But I can’t recall any visits since we left the burbs for the hill in the woods. During that time, the crowding fields of cedar scrub diminished, displaced by more ranks and files of tract houses and strip malls of cellphone stores, fast-food drive-throughs, nail parlors, Chinese carryouts and tanning salons. Office parks, Business parks, Industrial parks—everything but real parks.

You know, every ride must have a destination, if nothing more than an apogee where you cease heading away and begin returning. In this instance, that point was a little country store tucked tight inside a dusty elbow of the road, with a meager swath of gravel outside the front porch and a little more gravel just beside for a parking lot.

When I was billeted in 'Indian Country,' I frequented this little store quite often. It was a timeless oasis smack in the middle of nowhere that sold cold beer, hard-boiled eggs, laundry soap and clothespins, acrid coffee, big sacks of no-name kibble, hunting licenses, any kind of potato chip, night crawlers, deli sandwiches, fishing tackle and live minnows from a converted set of concrete laundry sinks with a big sign overhead, warning all to not shut off the switch or else the minnows would die. The clerks were amiable and laconic, not eager to waste a word when a grunt would do or a grunt when a nod would do, and there was a dusty, sepia-toned quality about the place.

I recall it as the kind of place where you could pull a long-necked bottle of pop from a cooler of crushed ice, pry the crown cap off with the opener bolted to the counter, then stroll out to the worn front porch and sit by the sleeping hound to watch traffic drift past. A nod and a single raised finger acknowledged all who passed by. It probably was never actually like the way I remembered it, but whatever. I liked to stop there, and drop a buck of two from time to time as an investment in keeping places like it around a few more years. It was easy to find a way to make it en route from Point A to Point B, especially when I had no particular desire to be in either Point A or B.

The approach to the store had changed (heavier volumes of heavier traffic demanded such) but the joint was still where I had left it. A sportsbiker on a Ninja was parked in the lot, chatting up a girl in a dusty muscle car. A van full of dusty painters in paint-spattered white overalls pulled in, nicely crushing the safety cone posted to warn-off the ginormous pothole that now threatened the van’s rear axle. The pile of ladders on the roof clattered violently as the van pitched to a halt.

I ungeared a bit and nodded to the sportbiker as I walked to the front porch. He nodded back, sized me and Beast up, then returned his attention to Miss MuscleCar. I opened the creaky front door into a cleaner, brighter, more open, more airy, more spare…mercadito. Tienda.

Hmm. Instead of tackle, and minnows with warning signs, and nightcrawlers, I find international calling cards and Jaritos, Inca cola and pan dulces, prayer candles and sugarloaf, masa and corn husks for tamales. In the cooler beside the usual red-white-and-blue cans of mediocre domestic beers are Sol and Tecate and Corona and Dos Equis—mediocre imported beers. The clerks, who I can barely see over the top of the sparkling clean deli case, are speaking animatedly (en espanol) to the handful of customers gathered around.

But this particular afternoon I’m neither hungry nor thirsty. For better or worse, there's nothing for me here this time. I slip back out the front door, hoping to not seem rude or abrupt. I really only wanted to come here and see if it still existed. It’s a touchstone; a destination; an apogee. And to hell with the ignorant, hateful people who rail against newcomers. It’s a passing of a torch, a brand new coat of paint on a long-standing tradition. I expect that under the new management, I’ll be able to count on this as a destination for some time to come.

More power to ‘em; I’m now looking forward to swinging out to ‘Indian Country’ sometime just to grab an Inca cola y un pan dulce and sit on the porch y ver pasar los coches por un tiempo.

Regional Studies

I have been reading "Night Comes To The Cumberlands," a thoroughly engrossing and disturbing study of the history of Eastern Kentucky.

The book was written by Harry Caudill and originally published in 1963. The story it told of poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and deprivation motivated John Kennedy to create the Appalachian Regional Commission to improve living conditions for the residents of the Appalachian poverty belt.

Caudill established his bona fides in the introduction, which helps deflect a certain amount of the heavy-handed approach he takes to his subject. (Caudill's tone strays to the patronizing and somewhat condescending at times, and his take on both slaves and Native Americans betrays the era from which he is writing).

But if I were to create a "Regional Studies Reading List," I would certainly begin with "Night Comes to The Cumberlands," and add:

• "Born Fighting" by James Webb,
• "Far Appalachia" by Noah Adams,
• "The Foxfire Book" by Eliot Wigginton et al, (at least the first three volumes)

The subject needs to be understood, if for no other reason than that the issues and attitudes described in this book are still very much with us today in our current political discourse. The attitudes of the earliest white settlers of Kentucky are still with us. They are manifest in a concept of 'freedom' that is defined not by "What  do I have the ability to do?" but rather "No one can tell me what I can't do."

The two approaches are clearly not equivalent; and they lead to radically different ends.

****************************************

Edit: another book I'd add to the list: "Skyland" by George Freeman Pollock, for his odd (and somewhat condescending) take on the mountaineers he encountered when building his Skyland Lodge. Skyland became the nucleus of Shenandoah National Park, which displaced those mountain families into the Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley during the Great Depression. This diaspora into 'modernity' changed the lives of the mountain people irreversibly, and not necessarily for the best. What Cryphonectria parasitica did to the American Chestnut, the coming of SNP likewise did to the mountain families of the Blue Ridge. 

I heard the news today, oh boy

I was reading an article today about fracking, in particular about the experiences of landowners adjacent to properties where fracking has taken place. Often these landowners receive no financial benefit from the sale of the gas produced there, either because of some sneaky dealing with the previous owners, strong-arm tactics by the gas companies, or simply their reluctance to sell the drilling rights. As an acquaintance used to say, "All of the onus, none of the bonus..."

One story mentioned a man who had working in one of the incidental positions related to fracking--he washed the mats that surrounded the drill sites once they were done drilling and were taken up, in preparation for trucking them to the next site.

The man developed a debilitating skin condition from having his feet in the chemical-laden wastewater, and after seeing forty doctors, was no closer to a cure or palliation. He is unable to work.

This is not even a remotely remarkable story in this day and age. But what literally made me gasp out loud was the byline of the story--Clearville, Pennsylvania.

For a brief time, a million years ago, Clearville was my mailing address. It is a beautiful area in south-central Pennsylvania, maybe fifteen miles above the Mason-Dixon line as the crow flies, not near anything in particular. It lies among the many long north-south ridges of the Appalachians as they begin the sinuous turn eastward that defines the topology of central Pennsylvania. Much of the land hosts state forests that came into being during the depression, when farm after farm failed and reverted to neowilderness. It makes for good hunting and fishing land, and as I recall, is flush with wild blueberries in the summer. It also lies atop the infamous Marcellus shale, the home of our benighted culture's mad 21st century gold rush.

Gobsmacked, I looked a little deeper into what's going on with fracking and that little slice of Pennsylvania with which I have a passing familiarity.

Turns out that fracking is all over the map there, and people getting sick from it is just the beginning. While Clearville was my postal address, the actual location was a tiny little crossroads even closer to the Mason-Dixon and farther from anything of consequence. And it turns out that little hamlet was the scene of a natural gas compression station fire in 2010 that required the evacuation of over 40 homes in the middle of the night.

My first thought was "There are actually over 40 homes in Artemas? Really?" My second thought was how heartbreaking is was that Artemas now hosted a natural gas compression station.

Even back in the day, natural gas was a thing there. There was an old capped well atop the property; locals talked about how in exchange for allowing (old-school) drilling on their property, they received free gas stoves, heat and refrigerators (yes, you can make cold by burning gas) and from time to time you could hear the sound of a drill rig off in the distance on a cool summer night.

But a compression station running 24/7, right there...that's another matter.

It was a really, really quiet place; the kind of place where airplanes were generally absent from the sky, where you heard the wind and the rain coming for minutes before they arrived, where birdsong was common and plain to hear, where a car coming along the long gravel road was never a surprise.

The two streams and spring nearby ran cold and clear. I guess that's all changed now, and that change can't ever be undone by us or our children or our children's children. I'll just try and keep it in my memory, how it was. And as much as I abhor folks who randomly quote scripture, it seems very Genesis 25:25-34 to me.

Edit: Apparently I conflated two parts of the story. The man who got sick was elsewhere in Pennsylvania; the Clearville incident involved a number of horses and other livestock who sickened and had to be put down. But the basic gist remains the same. A beautiful state is being destroyed to obtain a commodity whose price just keeps falling, just so we can ship it elsewhere in the world.

A Sense of Foreboding

I cannot help but feel an inescapable sense of foreboding. I cannot recall a time when it has been this hot, this dry, so early in the season. We have come through a winter without snow, without rain, without any real cold to speak of.

There is no leaf cover yet, so there is no shade from the harsh sun. The early plants that were lured out by the preternatural warmth are already sun scalded and bleaching. The spring earth is light and dusty with no moisture to bind it. In contrast to many Aprils past, when we wait for the damp earth to dry and warm before planting it, now we worry if what we have already planted can survive this harsh trial—a concern more common to June and July.

The trees have not come on yet. When they begin their colossal transpiration, what little moisture remains will be sucked from the ground and given to the sky, draining that reservoir to its limits. We can only hope for a change that would be both unlikely and unrealistic. Once the dry season sets in, it creates its own paradigm and relinquishes its hold only in the face of great perturbations, changes that carry their own hazards—hurricanes and tropical storms that burst themselves against the ramparts of the mountains. And the streams already run low, in April.

What we are experiencing now foreshadows a summer of heat and drought. The wider risk is of fire, both in the present and well off into the future. With some effort, we can capture the few small rains and shunt that water towards our most critical needs: the vegetable gardens, the young, unestablished trees and shrubs. But drought means that there is no rain; the small storms become smaller, fewer and farther between. We watch them anxiously on the radar, popping up nearby only to fade and dissipate before quenching our desperate thirst.

We can care for the few and the dear, but each summer of drought—and we have seen more of them than we would like to acknowledge—pushes the forest closer to the edge, to a point where something will happen that cannot be undone. Call it a tipping point, call it anything at all. But what we will see is a slow diminution, a gentle reduction in the health of the forest canopy and understory, until one day a wind comes and takes it all down in a final act of loss and destruction.

It is not hard to stand on this rocky hill with its thin mantle of dry soil, and envision the steps to a dry and wide-open future—slow decline, death, sweeping fire, rain, erosion—and what was once the great eastern climax forest of mixed hardwoods, home to deer and black bear and wild turkey and bobcat, to raccoon and possum and pileated woodpecker and ruffed grouse and green heron and box turtle has become the great eastern savannah, home to whomever is left.

In lieu of the great cool forests that greeted the Europeans, where it was said that a squirrel could traverse the forest canopy from the Chesapeake to the Mississippi without touching the earth, we will bequeath to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren a vast, open grassland, a prairie spreading from the Atlantic to the Continental Divide.

I am at once glad that I will not be here to see it, and moved to grief for what we will leave behind for those who follow. 

On Caribou Barbie:

"...Palin is running for Prom Queen of America and she’s more than willing to give out free cookies (literally) to bribe the feel-good vote."   —from PoliticsUSA.com

Heh. That's funny. 

Good old H.P. also foresaw the 'Tea Party...'

...Otherwise, how could he have written this trenchant critique of the movement, 84 years ago?

“…the inability of the...mind to correlate all its contents…a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity…dissociated knowledge…such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein…either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age…a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind…This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly…with undecipherable characters…the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees…a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this…perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity. The odour arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and…a nasty, slopping sound…It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. There was some peculiarly abominable quality about them…mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror…built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars...hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene…the titan Thing…slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus…” 

—At least, that's how I read it.  

Election Day 2010, seen from three-quarters of a century ago:

"As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."

— H.P. Lovecraft, 1936

"Good Night and Good Luck"

Right now. Go buy, rent, beg, borrow or steal a copy. And watch it.

Summer Reading List

To help understand how we got here. In no particular order:

"Nixonland," Rick Perlstein. The original sin of contemporary American politics.
"The Looming Tower," Lawrence Wright. Al Qaeda without the hyperventilation.
"The Big Con," Jonathan Chait. Explaining modern snake oil economics. (Surprise: Dick Cheney was there at the creation)
"Legacy of Ashes," Tim Weiner. Why our relations with the world at large are so utterly dysfunctional.
"The Shock Doctrine," Naomi Klein. Chicago-school economics forced upon the world at gunpoint under the guise of "freedom."

"Nixonland" is particularly interesting for me because I grew up in a household that recognized Richard Milhous Nixon for the devil he was; the Watergate hearings were a seminal event in shaping my political consciousness. I've had to put "Shock Doctrine" aside several times since starting it over a year ago because what it describes is so...horrible.

Taken together, these books present a tightly woven narrative of how far modern American politics has strayed from our ideals. All these books interrelate to a significant degree. The question is if there is any way left for us to fix what has happened during the post-World War Two nightmare of American Exceptionalism.

QOTD

From Nancy Pelosi's Twitter feed:

"By August, more jobs will have been created by Obama and Dem Congress than all jobs created by 8 years of Bush Administration"

Deepwater Horizon

I have little of value to add to the discussion of the environmental devastation happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. But I find myself thinking about one little human aspect of this tragedy I have not heard discussed by anyone among the countless talking heads, hired guns, prognosticators, shills and apologists.

There is a cadre—their number now reduced by eleven—who stood briefly on the threshold of a professional and personal milestone, an achievement that cannot be diminished by what so immediately and horrifically followed. This team of people successfully drilled a hole into the earth over two miles deep, from a drilling platform floating on the ocean's surface a mile above (a total of 18,000 feet from drilling deck to the bottom of the hole) —a drilling platform held in its place only by the constantly adjusted nudges of its computer-controlled thrusters.

They succeeded. Safely. They reached the oil-bearing formation that was their target, and they prepared it for its eventual entry into production, somewhere in the near future. But then, this man...

...decided caution was a luxury BP could no longer afford, time was of the essence, and it was too expensive to delay any further. He decided—over the objections of the professionals who had, for seven long years, run the Nostromo  Deepwater Horizon without a lost time accident—to remove the drilling mud that kept the enormous pressures in that oil-bearing formation in check, and replace it with the much less dense seawater.

The chain of command who personally decided it was more cost-effective in the long run to destroy the Gulf of Mexico than it was to run the Deepwater Horizon as the professionals said it should be run would likely fit comfortably in a Ford Aerostar without so much as their thighs grazing. And you can bet not a one of them will face any personal or professional consequences as a result of their benighted cost-benefit analysis. They may face a few uncomfortable moments under the spotlights of a congressional hearing room, but their lavish emoluments will have ensured that whatever bark, it will not be followed by any bite. In a few short years, they will once again find themselves, conscienceless and blameless, atop their professions.

Yet the survivors of the Deepwater apocalypse, those traumatized and brutalized wage-slaves (yes, the same roughnecks, riggers, cooks and clerks who were held incommunicado aboard ship for fifty hours until they signed releases denying injuries or knowledge of the events leading up to the disaster) will always carry with them the legacy of that awful night. Will they be willing or able to work in their profession again? Will they be cursed by their association with this disaster? Are they marked? Will they ever be able to speak with pride of their accomplishment, of their immense achievement, without an uncomfortable silence falling across the room? Will they become demonized for the havoc unleashed by their hubris? Will anyone want to listen to their stories? Will they be believed? Will they tell their children, or their grandchildren, where those scars came from?

We do not know who the "Carter Burke" is in this case. But he surely exists in flesh-and-blood, and his real name is known to some. And yes, he is the one man who made THE one decision that, against the better judgement of his peers, resulted in this catastrophe. In a just world, that man would be found out and made to wear this event around his neck, his albatross, for all the world to see for every waking moment of the rest of his miserable life.

Addendum: The reference to the Nostromo is not quite right; it's a bit of a conflation. The crew of the Nostromo, with the exception of Ripley, were all dead. It was the Sulaco that carried the Colonial Marines and Carter Burke to their doom. But you get the point.

Devilstower nails it

"...Here's the thing about the naughts: there was nothing magic about the numbers. It wasn't because of a double-zero in the middle of the dates that we launched an invasion that's cost the lives of thousands of Americans, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and a trillion dollars plus out of the pocketbooks of taxpayers. We launched into that still unresolved idiocy because of bad policy based on the conservative philosophy of smash things first, think never. We went there because of a extreme version of American exceptionalism, one that views America as above the rules of law and exempt from questions of morality. A view that says not only if the president does it, it's not a crime, but that if America does it, it can't be wrong."

"It wasn't the decade that caused the economy to come down in tatters. It was a conservative approach to the marketplace that views government as the enemy, greed as the only acceptable motivation, and the only solution for disasters brought on by a lack of regulation as still less regulation."

"It wasn't the calendar that brought down the banks, or American manufacturing, or American's influence around the world. It wasn't the date that added torture to the list of growth industries while erasing our budget surplus."

"Don't forget the naughts, because this decade, no matter what anyone on the right might say, was conservatism on trial. You want less taxes? You got less taxes. You want less regulation? You got less regulation. Open markets? Wide open. An illusion of security in place of rights? Hey, presto. Think we should privatize war by handing unlimited power given to military contractors so they can kick butt and take names? Kiddo, we passed out boots and pencils by the thousands. Everything,everything, that ever showed up on a drooled-over right wing wish list got implemented -- with a side order of Freedom Fries."

"They will try to disown it, and God knows if I was responsible for this mess I'd be disowning it, too. But the truth is that the conservatives got everything they wanted in the decade just past, everything that they've claimed for forty years would make America "great again". They didn't fart around with any "red dog Republicans." They rolled over their moderates and implemented a conservative dream."

"What did we get for it? We got an economy in ruins, a government in massive debt, unending war, and the repudiation of the world. There's no doubt that Republicans want you to forget the last decade, because if you remember... if you remember when you went down to the water hole and were jumped by every lunacy that ever emerged from the wet dreams of Grover Norquist and Dick Cheney, well, it's not likely that you'd give them a chance to do it again."

"And they will. Given half a chance -- less than half -- they'll do it again, only worse. Because that's the way conservatism works. Remember when the only answer to every economic problem was "cut taxes?" We have a surplus. Good, let's cut taxes. We have a deficit. Hey, cut taxes even more! That little motto was unchanging even when was clear that the tax cuts were increasing the burden on everyone but a wealthy few. That's just a subset of the great conservative battle whine which is now and forever "we didn't go far enough." If deregulation led to a crash, it's because we didn't deregulate enough. If the wars aren't won, it's because we haven't started enough wars. If there are people still clinging to their rights, it's because we haven't done enough to make them afraid."

"Forget the naughts, and you'll forget that conservatives had another chance to prove all their ideas, and that their ideas utterly and completely failed. Again."

"The point of remembering bad events is to stop them from repeating. So remember, and remind others if they start to forget. Because really, this is one trip to the water hole we can't afford to repeat."

Devilstower, at DKos

Only The Good Die Young

Oral Roberts dead at 91.

Hey! That's My Congressman You're Talking About!!

"Eric Cantor as a congressional leader is a classic example of a post turtle -- you know he didn't get up there by himself; he obviously doesn't belong up there; he can't get anything done while he's there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down."

Steve Benen, The Washington Monthly

ROTF, LMAO.

TOTD

Isn't a little bit disturbing that the three leading intellectuals of the modern Republic Party—Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh—are all college dropouts?

Scary.

Euphemobfuscation:

You know, I don't ever recall being told directly that the term 'cold-pasteurized,' as applied to food, actually means 'treated with ionizing radiation to kill the bacteria introduced into the food-product we are selling you because of all the feces we couldn't be bothered to keep out as we processed it. Good luck, sucker.'

I think any product so labeled should be resolutely shunned by one and all, not so much because of the possible unintended consequences of blasting things we consume with ionizing radiation or because I am some wacky anti-radiation luddite, but because to me it simply represents bad faith on the part of the seller to try and get away with such contemptible and contemptuous sleight-of-hand.

BTW, this process currently applies mostly to meat products, but is spreading to other things as well.

Grateful for Matt Taibbi:

What this country need right now is about nine Matt Taibbis for every David Gregory:

"TARP would never have been necessary if someone, anyone who wasn’t a greed-addled incompetent like Paulson had actually been regulating the economy in the last years of the Bush adminstration. If anyone besides Paulson had been running Goldman Sachs earlier in this decade — if a person with a serious brain injury had been in his place, for instance, or a horse, or a head of lettuce — we’d all be better off today..."

On the historical antecedents of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush policy on dissent: Channelling the Greats

"We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people are wrong."

Mao-Zedong, "The Present Situation and Our Tasks" 12/25/47

From my personal copy of Mao's 'Little Red Book,' a Christmas Gift picked up in China by my wonderful niece Katie.

Here's a better idea for you, FORD

The Ford Motor Company just regrew its spine after initially caving into pressure from the lunatic fringe and pulling advertising for Jaquars, Volvos and some other product lines from gay-oriented publications. They will resume advertising in these publications which apparently help move lots of FoMoCo products.

What we really need to boycott Ford for —and I'm sure you all can get behind me on this—is their co-opting of Vince Guaraldi's immortal classic "Linus and Lucy" (now 40 years old—when did that happen?) for their goddam ad campaign.

Is nothing sacred? Isn't the true meaning of Christmas carried in those treasured lyrics?

(Oh, wait...it's an instrumental...)

Isn't it interesting...

...that the I.D.iots always frame the discussion in terms of "Intelligent Design" versus "Evolution," not "Intelligent Design" versus "Natural Selection?"

Would that be because evolution is a little bit mysterious and difficult to actually envision, while "Natural Selection," which is really what Darwin was espousing (the idea of evolution had been kicked around forever—no one had really nailed down the actual mechanism before) is plain to see everywhere in the world around us?

Why do rational people keep letting the yahoos and hicks set the terms? Take back the argument, folks, turn the tables—the real argument is between natural selection and "...pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

And for goodness sakes—why are we even dignifying their position by arguing it? Let them dry up and blow away.