Executive Branch/Legislative Branch (n): The U.S. Constitution defines the Executive Branch as the President and Vice President of the United States, and the Legislative Branch as the Senate and House of Representatives. Executive Privilege therefore devolves to the offices of the President and Vice President. However, in 2007, Vice President Cheney issued the statement that his office is not “an entity within the Executive Branch” due to his largely ceremonial position as President of the Senate. In other words, the office of the Vice President is bicameral depending on who’s subpoenaing him. Since it would be impossible to maintain the illusion of Executive Privilege were the Vice President to be actually classified as a member of the Legislative Branch, it has been decided that Cheney be considered as being of the Executive Branch Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and of the Legislative Branch Tuesdays and Thursdays, and (to quote a former statement made by Mr. Cheney to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in that august chamber) anyone attempting to subpoena him on any of those days can go f__k themselves.

Feudalism: You have two cows. Your Lord takes some milk.
Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You help take care of them and the government gives you all the milk you need.
Real-World Socialism: Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You care for the chickens the government took from them. The government gives you all the milk that regulations say you should need.
Facism: You have two cows. The government takes them, makes you take care of them and sells you the milk.
Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbour helps take care of them and you all share the milk.
Real-World Communism: You share two cows with your neighbout. You both bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the greatest “need.” Meanwhile, nobody works, the cows die of starvation and nobody gets any milk.
Soviet-Style Communism: You have two cows. The government takes all the milk. You steal back as much of the milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and then denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbours vote on how much milk should sell for.
British Democracy. You have two cows. You feed them sheep’s brains and they go mad. The government does nothing.
Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the governmt regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it takes both cows, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. It then requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cow.
Pure Capitalism. You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
U.S. Capitalism: You have no cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows because you have no cows to put up as collateral. The government then takes your tax dollars and gives Halliburton a non-bid contract to service non-existent cows in Iraq.
Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of ownership being a symbol of phallocentric war-mongering intolerance of a male-dominated past) two bovines of non-specific gender.
Surrealism. You have two giraffes. The government requires you to license your toliet seat and take banjo lessons.

Now that everyone’s comatose on tryptophan and before we all get locked into our New year’s hangovers, I thought I’d take a moment to let you know what’s coming up on I, RANTIBUS in 2009.

A series of articles documenting the real nuclear terrorist threat not mentioned in the recent “The World at Risk” report and which the Bush administration is not only not addressing, but actively helped cause.

Articles on the failure of pre-Fanny/Freddie-A.I.G. modern economics - a system not only without a soul, but more dangerously, without a clue.

The ongoing evisceration of the Bush Leg-assy.

More satirical crapola…including the continuing OBSERVER’S GUIDE TO THE RIGHT WING, the Lexicon and upcoming TAXONOMY of Right Wing Species.

Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen. We have not yet begun to rant.

I suppose most people who read this blog will probably be expecting some kind of unholy rant against the foibles and hypocrisies of religion in general. Well, not so much…

When I was a child, Christmas was a magical time of the year. The snow, the lights, and you got to have a tree inside the house. There were also the presents, (which seemed to suggest that when Jesus returns he’ll bring GI Joes) but I also recall that my family, a mix of Protestant and Catholic, always took me to church on Christmas day. Quite frankly, I didn’t understand much of it, although I did get the idea that this day was intended to celebrate the birth of a human being who was the son of God. Since I believed in God in much the same fashion that I believed in Santa Claus, this didn’t strike me as odd.

Much later, I decided that I needed to examine my beliefs and see if what I thought I believed was based on any form of reality or merely because I had been inculcated into the necessity of believing it when I was young and intellectually impressionable.

First off, I started reading the Bible again and realized that it contained many contradictions. Apart from the entire creation myth, or the fact that it was halfway through the ten commandments before God bothered to mention not to kill, the birth of the Christ was attributed to two different places. Also there was the thing that Christianity had relegated his birth to December 25th. This was odd since this is the rainy season in the Holy Land and no shepherd worth his salt would have his sheep out in the rain. It was also during the time of the Roman census which we know as historical fact was not in December.

We know now that the date was chosen by the Council of Nicea in the 3rd century AD to coincide with the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, thus allowing the more easy assimilation of Christianity. Similarly, the B.C.E. - AD distinction is correspondingly arbitrary. It is believed that Joshua Bar Joseph, AKA: the Christ, was probably born during the month of June around what we would style 32 BCE.

The fact is that all religions have myths and fallacies because they were created by human beings. But that’s only really important from an historical or anthropological point of view. Religion has being used to wield power over others, but that’s the essence of politics, again, a human institution. People only have power over you inasmuch as you allow them to. Is there a God? I haven’t the slightest idea. I can’t prove it either way and neither can a Nobel-winning scientist, the Pope or the most rabid foaming evangelical rapture-struck fundamentalist. That’s why I’m an agnostic. It implies imperfect knowledge which in turn implies doubt which is essential to any intellectual or spiritual advancement.

It’s not the things we know that do us most harm, it’s the things we’re absolutely positive about that aren’t necessarily true.

Does one need to believe in the divinity of the Christ in order to validate his teachings? Not necessarily. Socrates was such a nasty old fart who pissed off the powers that be to such a degree that they conspired to try him and sentence him to death. His personality, which apparently could have done with some polish, did not detract from the logic of the dictums he espoused.  If there is any one teaching of the Christ that encapsulates all others it is this: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

All the rest, folks, is commentary. If that’s the defining element of Christianity, that alone would be enough. Pity we haven’t learned to apply it over the intervening 2000 years.

Have a good holiday season.

Christ, the (pn): (1) The title (“the anointed one,” “Messiah,” etc.) of a young Jewish rabbi, Joshua Bar Joseph, AKA: Jesus. The leader of a sect after whom a major religion is named. (2) An honorary Republican who has been co-opted in death to become the Right Wing’s official mascot, McJesus. This is peculiar since, if biblical texts are to be believed, the Christ was a kind and wise man who preached love, equality, duty to others, charity to the poor, forgiveness and acceptance, shunned violence and disdained the accumulation of wealth and possessions. In other words, his teachings stood as the very antithesis of everything the Right Wing holds sacred. (3) Someone that many of the Right Wing have appropriated as their “personal savior,” thus semantically relegating the Son of God to the status of a personal moral fitness trainer.

Christian Reconstructionism (n): The religious/political beliefs of a particular phylum of Rantibus ad Nauseum whose taxonomic classification is Talibanus Americanum. An interesting vindication of the dictum “If something ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.” Its goal is to reconstruct Christianity using much the same methodology as a previous famous reconstructionist, Dr. Frankenstein.
Formed in the early 1970’s by Rousas John Rushdoony and sometimes known as “Dominion Theology,” its modus operandi is based on Rushdoony’s book “The Institutes of Biblical Law.” Its basic premise is that biblical law as evinced by the Pentateuch, specifically Leviticus, should be the basis of all law in the U.S. It is typified by the belief in Antinomanism – ie: that one attains salvation not by good works or living a moral life, but by faith and faith alone. If this is true, then President George W. Bush is safe, at least according to his own personal assessment.
Christian Reconstructionism, as Rushdoony himself puts it, seeks to “demolish every kind of theory, humanistic, evolutionary, idolatrous or otherwise, and every kind of rampart or opposition to the dominion of God in Christ,” and to “bring the world into captivity to Christ…” Under Christian Reconstructionism, a woman would be first the property of her father, then her husband, slavery would be re-legalized, (which should effectively end unemployment) and the death penalty would be instituted for blasphemy, heresy, apostasy, homosexuality, abortion, adultery, working on the Sabbath, etc. Racial intermarriage would be illegal, although this would not preclude Christian Reconstructionists from marrying with human beings. But its basic tenet is that the world must be converted to Christianity by force if necessary, and that non-Christians would either accept conversion or be executed. Since this would involve global genocide to the tune of over two thirds of the entire human race, one might give Christian Reconstructionists a sort of back-handed compliment on being the only religious/political entity that has a real answer to the global problem of overpopulation.

Fox (n): A predatory species related to canines, noted for its splendid coloration and its predilection for attacking creatures smaller than itself. The fox shuns confrontation and flees at the approach of larger species. Due to its devious nature and tendency to skulk, the word fox has become synonymous with cunning and guile. Given this definition, it is then entirely appropriate that Rupert Murdoch should have chosen this animal to name his “news” network

Sexual display in the female of the species also varies from class to class. Generally, however, aggressive or overt sexual behavior is discouraged unless it is being paid for. For females of the Upper class, public appearance must be what is described as “demure and lady-like,” often the very antithesis of “life-like.” This usually involves the constant display of a facial rictus known as a “smile” only by virtue of its geometry. First Ladies are said to train for this public leer by sleeping with bungee cords hooked into the corners of their mouths. This expression is often the result of cosmetic surgery whose repeated applications have left the woman in question with the facial tautness of the head of a snare drum. Indeed, it is a much prized attribute to be able to bounce a coin off one’s face in much the same manner as the trampoline-like surface of a boot-camp Marine’s cot.
It must be noted in passing that males of the Upper class can display considerable diversity with regard to their definition of attractiveness in the female of the species. This often owes nothing to prevailing concepts of physical beauty since the upper male is often attracted to women who exhibit the same attitudes and attributes as he in his never-ending struggle against secular humanism, Godless Liberalism, representative democracy, honest and open debate and rational thought. Therefore it should not be considered unusual for an Upper of the Hubris Imperium for instance, to have photos of both Ann Coulter and Linda Tripp in the bottom of his sock drawer.
(It has been remarked by several commentators that Ms. Coulter’s penchant towards fashionable emaciation has resulted in her photo weighing more than she does. This, of course, is absurd. However, from a sheer metaphorical point, her photo does actually weigh several times more than her opinions.)
It is customary among the Upper classes for the male to discard his original wife after he achieves a reasonable degree of money or prominence. The new mate, customarily at least twenty years his junior is known as a “Trophy Wife.” Similar to displays of taxidermy, this trophy too, is mounted.
Women of the Lower classes of the Right are not as obsessed with anorexia as their upper class sisters. Indeed, some examples of the phylum exhibit almost the same girth as the more substantial males. It has been postulated that foreign cars were immediately unpopular among this phylum not for any reasons regarding patriotism or “buying American,” but that it was physically impossible to fit two 300 pound people into the front seats of a Honda Civic.
Females of the Lower caste also tend to the older and somewhat dated hairstyles. Most common are the beehive and the pony-tail. In reality, these choices are predicated on practicability, being the two easiest styles to keep the hair out of the toilet bowl while regurgitating after having drunk a quart of Old Grand Dad prior to the Monster Truck Rally.
In the choice of a mate, the Upper and Lower classes share one element of commonality. The female should either come from or give the appearance, behaviorally, of having come from one particular town.
That town is Stepford.

Just like the Soon-to-be-History President, you too can have fun with words. Here’s a series of anagrams based on various permutations of Dubya.

George W. Bush - He grew bogus

President George Walker Bush - Ruthless breed, wanker, ego pig

Bush administration -This bandit is our man

Compassionate conservative - Come, vote: save a patrician’s son

Compassionate conservative - Conspire to save a vast income

President George Bush - Oh … Desert purge begins

President George Bush - He gestured! Big person!

Bush administration - Duh …I ain’t bin so smart

George Walker Bush, President of the United States of America - Damn! Result is garbage. Takes pretender to White House office

President George W. Bush - Greed rips the US - now beg

G. Dubya - Bad guy

See what fun you can have? Let’s see what you can do with Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.