Tuesday, April 10, 2007

For the lack of gender-feminist sheriff's deputies,
girl's initiation into the art of luuuuv is interrupted

I don't understand. Eve Ensler said this was OK.

IT'S WOMYN'S EMPOWERMENT, FOR PITY'S SAKE!!!!!

Haven't these backwoods Southern bumpkins ever read The Vagina Monologues? Heard of V-Day on college campuses everywhere?

Don't they know this teen-age girl and the 23-year old high school teacher are on the cutting edge of cultural evolution, striking a blow against oppression of womyn and for the fondest X-rated fantasies of Beavises and Buttheads across the land?

Haven't these crypto-fascist patriarchal goons heard that f***ing is an entitlement -- even when you're jailbait?

Here is the account of the homophobic oppression from WAFB-TV in Baton Rouge, La.:

A 16-year-old Tara High student left a note saying she was running away. She was found leaving a teacher's apartment, according to detectives and they say both teacher and student say they were involved in a sexual relationship. This is all the result of the 16-year-old's father. About a month ago, he found his daughter's journal that detailed the relationship. Then last Wednesday, the girl left a note saying she was running away.

When the girl was found, she was seen leaving the teacher's apartment complex, Jefferson Heights, which is located on Jefferson Highway. Both the student and the teacher were questioned by East Baton Rouge sheriff's officials, and admitted to having a relationship together. The teacher, 23-year-old Jamie Lynn Armstrong, did not teach the girl. Sheriff's officials say Armstrong told them she thought the student was 17 years old, not 16.

In a statement to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office, the 16-year-old says she has visited the teacher's apartment several times, during which she and the defendant engaged in oral sexual intercourse during at least three visits. She says when she ran away from home, she spent the night with the teacher. She also says one sexual encounter occurred at the school.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Oops.

The meeting prompted a series of testy exchanges, and Imus grew visibly frustrated at times. During one exchange, Imus said he can't win with "you people." Sharpton was clearly irritated by that . . . .


FILE UNDER: Things you absolutely DON'T want to say
when you go on
The Al Sharpton Show after getting in
trouble for calling African-American women basketball
players "some nappy-headed hos," whilst your producer
saw your slur and raised you by calling 'em "jigaboos."

Dear RIAA: Bang, bang. You're dead.

It would be smashing if all you big-label chaps in the recording industry would stop suing college kids and pre-teens, stop trying to kill internet radio and just be a sport and slink away to die a quiet commercial death.

Thanks so much.

OH, BEFORE YOU GO, did you see
this in The Times of London?

A classically trained pianist turned acoustic guitar player who does not even own an iPod is heading for stardom after her homemade album topped the national iTunes chart.

Kate Walsh, 23, described as a British Joni Mitchell, recorded an album of songs inspired by her birthplace, the sailing town of Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex.

Lacking a major record deal, the folk singer recorded an album in her producer’s bedroom and made it available in digital form only. However, she soon won devotees after placing songs on her MySpace web page.

Walsh persuaded iTunes to sell the album, called Tim’s House, and last week it topped the online store’s UK download album chart, displacing Take That and Kaiser Chiefs.

Not that Walsh is a regular iTunes customer. “I don’t actually have an iPod yet,” said the singer, who was invited to perform at Apple’s main London store in celebration of her feat.

This week, the piracy-plagued EMI announced the sale of iTunes downloads without digital “locks”. Yet Walsh’s success demonstrates that talented artists need no longer rely on the music industry’s corporate giants. “I set up my own record label called Blueberry Pie and just got my music out there,” she told The Times. “It’s pretty easy. Anyone can do it. The web response is amazing. Someone I’ve never met called me ‘the new Jane Austen’.”

The hushed, homemade quality of Tim’s House reflects its birth. It was recorded at the Brighton home of Tim Bidwell, who created a sound-insulated vocal booth in his bedroom with luxuriant velvet drapes that he bought for £580 from Debenhams.

There is now an industry “buzz” surrounding Walsh, who cites Debussy as an influence and deferred a place at the London College of Music to pursue her singing career.

She said: “I was a classical pianist until the age of 18. I never thought that I could have a career as a female singer-songwriter.”

She was invited to perform at a talent-spotting convention attended by record company bosses in Austin, Texas, last month but was not impressed. “I didn’t like being part of an industry conveyer belt,” she said. “I prefer the pace of life in Brighton or in Burnham-on-Crouch.”

Although she is selling thousands of albums a week, fame is an unwelcome intrusion. “I want to maintain my privacy and I don’t want to meet my musical heroes,” she said. “It can only shatter your illusions.”

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!

Luke
Chapter 24


1
But at daybreak on the first day of the week they took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.
2
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb;
3
but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
4
While they were puzzling over this, behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them.
5
They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. They said to them, "Why do you seek the living one among the dead?
6
He is not here, but he has been raised. 2 Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee,
7
that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day."
8
And they remembered his words.
9
Then they returned from the tomb and announced all these things to the eleven and to all the others.
10
The women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James; the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles,
11
but their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.
12
But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, bent down, and saw the burial cloths alone; then he went home amazed at what had happened.

In case you were wondering . . . .

NO PODCAST THIS WEEK. Taking Easter off, and trying to shake the crud that keeps on giving.

Or taking, as the case may be. Like my voice, off and on.

Happy (cough, cough) Easter (HACK!).

Don Imus, c'est moi. Et toi. Et toi. Et toi . . . .

Newsweek's Mark Starr says all that needs to be said about the latest Don Imus contretemps:

What pretty much anyone watching could see in that women’s final was that Rutgers was overmatched in almost every facet of the game, except possibly grit. And it quickly became clear that the team’s frantic effort—it seemed to be trying too hard—wouldn’t be enough even to keep it close.

But Don Imus apparently saw something else. On his nationally syndicated radio show, “Imus in the Morning” (simulcast on MSNBC TV), the reigning king of the radio talk show empire revealed that instead of game upstarts, he saw in the Rutgers team a bunch of “nappy-haired hos.” Imus, much like the Rutgers team he defamed, was probably just overreaching, trying a little too hard to score with the irreverent and edgy humor that is his trademark. He may even have known, as he continued his tasteless riff, that he had crossed the line; that what he said was inexcusable, shameless, racist claptrap.

But just because it’s inexcusable doesn’t mean it’s inexplicable. And while Imus should not be spared any blame, we are undoubtedly complicit. It is our dubious taste that has spawned America's prevailing entertainment culture. We have countenanced the insult industry into which talk radio has devolved. We have allowed humiliation to become a centerpiece of network TV programming. And we encourage cutting-edge humor, without much concern that women and minorities endure most of those cuts. These dubious entertainments all share one currency: unabashed delight in cruelty and debasement. And we the audience laugh and laugh and laugh until somebody hits us over the head and we realize—or somebody tell us that we should realize—that this time it was way out of line and actually not all that funny.


(snip)

Since that is the sketchy territory where Imus has always operated with great success, he will almost certainly survive this blunder. On Friday morning he got around to the business of a carefully, crafted apology. “It was completely inappropriate, and we can understand why people were offended,” Imus said on his morning show. “Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, and we are sorry." Imus is savvy enough to offer no excuses where none would wash. But what’s our excuse? Please someone explain to me our insatiable appetite for the tasteless and the mean-spirited that assaults us every day in the guise of entertainment.

Friday, April 06, 2007

The Passion of Jesus Christ

Matthew
Chapter 27


1
When it was morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.
2
They bound him, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate, the governor.
3
Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned, deeply regretted what he had done. He returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,
4
saying, "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? Look to it yourself."
5
Flinging the money into the temple, he departed and went off and hanged himself.
6
The chief priests gathered up the money, but said, "It is not lawful to deposit this in the temple treasury, for it is the price of blood."
7
After consultation, they used it to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners.
8
That is why that field even today is called the Field of Blood.
9
Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of a man with a price on his head, a price set by some of the Israelites,
10
and they paid it out for the potter's field just as the Lord had commanded me."
11
Now Jesus stood before the governor, and he questioned him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus said, "You say so."
12
And when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he made no answer.
13
Then Pilate said to him, "Do you not hear how many things they are testifying against you?"
14
But he did not answer him one word, so that the governor was greatly amazed.
15
Now on the occasion of the feast the governor was accustomed to release to the crowd one prisoner whom they wished.
16
And at that time they had a notorious prisoner called (Jesus) Barabbas.
17
So when they had assembled, Pilate said to them, "Which one do you want me to release to you, (Jesus) Barabbas, or Jesus called Messiah?"
18
For he knew that it was out of envy that they had handed him over.
19
While he was still seated on the bench, his wife sent him a message, "Have nothing to do with that righteous man. I suffered much in a dream today because of him."
20
The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas but to destroy Jesus.
21
The governor said to them in reply, "Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" They answered, "Barabbas!"
22
Pilate said to them, "Then what shall I do with Jesus called Messiah?" They all said, "Let him be crucified!"
23
But he said, "Why? What evil has he done?" They only shouted the louder, "Let him be crucified!"
24
When Pilate saw that he was not succeeding at all, but that a riot was breaking out instead, he took water and washed his hands in the sight of the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood. Look to it yourselves."
25
And the whole people said in reply, "His blood be upon us and upon our children."
26
Then he released Barabbas to them, but after he had Jesus scourged, he handed him over to be crucified.
27
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus inside the praetorium and gathered the whole cohort around him.
28
They stripped off his clothes and threw a scarlet military cloak about him.
29
Weaving a crown out of thorns, they placed it on his head, and a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!"
30
They spat upon him and took the reed and kept striking him on the head.
31
And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the cloak, dressed him in his own clothes, and led him off to crucify him.
32
As they were going out, they met a Cyrenian named Simon; this man they pressed into service to carry his cross.
33
And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of the Skull),
34
they gave Jesus wine to drink mixed with gall. But when he had tasted it, he refused to drink.
35
After they had crucified him, they divided his garments by casting lots;
36
then they sat down and kept watch over him there.
37
And they placed over his head the written charge against him: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.
38
Two revolutionaries were crucified with him, one on his right and the other on his left.
39
Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads
40
and saying, "You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, if you are the Son of God, (and) come down from the cross!"
41
Likewise the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him and said,
42
"He saved others; he cannot save himself. So he is the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.
43
He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he wants him. For he said, 'I am the Son of God.'"
44
The revolutionaries who were crucified with him also kept abusing him in the same way.
45
From noon onward, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.
46
And about three o'clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" 28 which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
47
Some of the bystanders who heard it said, "This one is calling for Elijah."
48
Immediately one of them ran to get a sponge; he soaked it in wine, and putting it on a reed, gave it to him to drink.
49
But the rest said, "Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to save him."
50
But Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit.
51
And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, rocks were split,
52
tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
53
And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.
54
The centurion and the men with him who were keeping watch over Jesus feared greatly when they saw the earthquake and all that was happening, and they said, "Truly, this was the Son of God!"
55
There were many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him.
56
Among them were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
57
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was himself a disciple of Jesus.
58
He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be handed over.
59
Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it (in) clean linen
60
and laid it in his new tomb that he had hewn in the rock. Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the tomb and departed.
61
But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained sitting there, facing the tomb.
62
The next day, the one following the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate
63
and said, "Sir, we remember that this impostor while still alive said, 'After three days I will be raised up.'
64
Give orders, then, that the grave be secured until the third day, lest his disciples come and steal him and say to the people, 'He has been raised from the dead.' This last imposture would be worse than the first."
65
Pilate said to them, "The guard is yours; go secure it as best you can."
66
So they went and secured the tomb by fixing a seal to the stone and setting the guard.

Psalm 22 . . . again

EDITOR'S NOTE: We end "Psalms for Lent" this Good Friday pretty much where we began more than a month ago. Have a blessed end to Holy Week.

To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.

1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?* why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying,
8 He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts.
10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.
11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19 But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
21 Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
23 Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
28 For the kingdom is the LORD’S: and he is the governor among the nations.
29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.


* See Matthew 27:46

The highest compliment


College football will never see the likes of Coach Eddie Robinson again.

When the Grambling State University legend died this week at 88, the tributes and accolades began to pour South from a grieving nation. But do tributes mean any more than when they come from your fiercest rival?

If you truly want to know what Eddie Robinson meant to college football, to Louisiana, to African-Americans and to every American, consider that there was an emotional memorial service Thursday for Coach Rob . . . at Southern University in Baton Rouge.

YOU ASK "SO WHAT?" Here's what: Alabama-Auburn, LSU-Tulane, Texas-Oklahoma and Notre Dame-USC have nothing on Grambling-Southern in the annals of college football hate matches. (And in 1981, Tulane students broke LSU's live Bengal-tiger mascot out of his cage to roam the campus overnight.)

Honest to God, when I was in school at LSU, one guy I worked with at the local cable-TV company was a Southern alum. His wife, Grambling. The week before the Bayou Classic, they didn't speak.

So this was the extraordinary scene in Baton Rouge, as reported by The Advocate:

Powerful words flowed easily Thursday when Southern University paid homage to the patriarch of its greatest rival.

But the most powerful sound was silence when former Tigers player and current Jaguars assistant Eric Dooley tried to summon his composure after he stepped up to the microphone to talk about Grambling State University coaching legend Eddie Robinson, who died Tuesday.

“Most of the time you hear about what he meant to all the players coach sent to the NFL,” Dooley said after taking several minutes to collect himself and wipe away tears at a memorial at SU’s Royal Cotillion Ballroom. “For those who were never going to play professionally, he meant more than that. He taught me about life.

“He gave me an opportunity and I am really truly blessed to know I was coached by one of the best coaches and people of all time.”

Dooley was one of several who spoke at the celebration of Robinson’s life and about the impact he had at Grambling, in Louisiana and on young black men around the world. And Dooley’s message was clearly the most poignant.

A former wide receiver for the Tigers, Dooley recalled Robinson’s watchful eye in practice — a trait Dooley has tried to emulate.

“As a coach, I wonder how could he see everything?” Dooley said with a smile. “He would run a (pass) route for you and let you know exactly where you should be and exactly how you should get there.”

The coach Dooley works for now and called a “legend in his own time,” Southern’s Pete Richardson, also recalled his friendship with Robinson.

Richardson’s Jaguars teams never lost to Robinson, who won 408 games and six black college national championships in 57 years at the predominantly black school in a tiny north Louisiana town.

“You think an icon is not supposed to die,” said Richardson, who wiped away tears as Dooley spoke.

Richardson said the enduring message Robinson left with him and just about anybody he came in contact with was simple: “One school, one job, one wife.”

Rev. Jesse Bilberry, a pastor at Baton Rouge’s Mt. Pilgrim Baptist Church and a member of the SU Board of Supervisors, echoed the sentiments of Dooley and Richardson, calling Robinson a “coach for all seasons.”

Bilberry’s touching message typified the mood of the day when Robinson’s biggest rival paid tribute.

“I always rooted for Coach Rob to win, although I wanted to see him lose one game every year,” Billberry said, drawing a ripple of laughter from the crowd of 300.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Yelling 'rat' about McCain's 'utter rubbish'

CBS correspondent Allen Pizzey gives a proper name to political posturing and ideological spin in an interview with The Public Eye on CBSNews.com:

Brian Montopoli: It seems that some reporters, including yourself and CNN's Michael Ware, have really taken umbrage at John McCain's recent comments, essentially saying that there are a lot of neighborhoods where you can walk around relatively safely. Is it fair to say that that really sort of bothered reporters?

Allen Pizzey: Yes. It's disgraceful for a man seeking highest office, I think, to talk utter rubbish. And that is utter rubbish. It's electoral propaganda. It is simply not true. No one in his right mind who has been to Baghdad believes that story.

Now, McCain and some other senators were there on Sunday, and they claimed, "Oh, we walked around for a whole hour…and we drove in from the airport. Gosh, aren't we great, we drove in from the airport." Excuse me, Mr. McCain, you drove in in a large convoy of heavily armed vehicles. The last one had a sign on it saying "Keep back 100 yards. Deadly force authorized." Every single car that they approached or passed pulled over and stopped, because that's the way it is. When one of those security details goes by, every ordinary person gets the hell out of the way, in case they get shot.

If he did walk around that market, and I didn't see him do it, and he didn't announce he was going to do it, you can bet your life there were an awful lot of soldiers deployed to make sure that nobody came near that place. He's talking rubbish. And he should not get away with it.

AND THE RIGHT-WING ECHO CHAMBER -- taking a break from smearing CNN's Michael Ware (see for yourself what didn't happen) -- said . . . Neener, neener, cancel, cancel! Liberal! Liberal! Commie-lib bias! Bush-hater! Bush-hater! Bias! Bias!

If I could, I'd go have a
drink with Ware. Hell, if I were stuck in that hellhole watching the aftermath of people getting blown to bits every single day with no end in sight and not knowing whether you'd be next and Republican politicians saying how things were improving -- See! -- I would go have many drinks with Michael Ware.

Psalm 149

1 Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints.
2 Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.
3 Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.
4 For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation.
5 Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds.
6 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword in their hand;
7 To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people;
8 To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron;
9 To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the LORD.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Would you elect this man dogcatcher?

"I'm in the same position now that I was 12 years ago when I ran for animal-control chief -- which is, personally opposed to cutting up puppies with a chainsaw, don't like it, hate it, would advise that person to adopt out the puppies rather than kill 'em with a chainsaw, hope to find the money for it. But it is your choice, an individual right. You get to make that choice, and I don't think society should be putting you in jail."

Even a stopped clock . . .


It says nothing about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but everything about the West, that a man who vows to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, denies the Holocaust and viciously oppresses his own people is made -- frighteningly often, actually -- to sound downright reasonable by the utter hardness and corruption of Western "civilization."

And it's always our most implacable and vicious enemies who know exactly what's wrong with us when we see nothing amiss, isn't it?

ANYWAY, the latest occasion of us making President Wack Job seem a reasonable man comes with Britain's utter humiliation by Iran. And, of course, the Iranians dealt the UK -- and the Americans -- a coup de grace more strategically devastating in freeing their British hostages than if they'd done something vicious and bloody (as I'm sure the mullahs would have preferred) to those Brit sailors and Marines.

Oh yeah, here's what Ahmadinejad said to look like a regular humanitarian, according to London's Daily Mail:

He had criticised Britain for deploying Mrs Turney, mother of a three-year-old daughter, to the Gulf.

"Why was the difficult task of searching the seas given to a mother thousands of miles from home?" he demanded.

"Why is there no respect for motherhood, for the love of her child? How can you justify seeing a mother away from her home, her children? Why don’t they respect family values in the West?"

According to one official Iranian website Mrs Turney "burst into tears" as an interpreter translated Ahmadinejad’s words about her.
YEP. Iran's cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs commander in chief gets to wax eloquent -- and, really, he did -- about the sanctity of motherhood and family values, while George Bush and his Mini Me AG defend the "non-torture" torturing of prisoners at Gitmo (and everywhere else the Stars and Stripes hangs in shame) and call Geneva Convention protections "quaint."

Dear Diary: The Bilderberger conspiracy

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.


FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2002


Dear Diary,

You won't believe this. Actually, you will, being my diary and all. But I digress . . . .

The other day, the development guy -- fresh back from taking a bunch of big donors (and potential big donors) on a "pilgrimage" down to Total Catholic Radio Network's headquarters and shrine -- stopped in the production room to tell me about the trip. Particularly about this "great" presentation "Father Rafe" gave them.

You know, "standard" Catholic stuff about the move toward one-world government through history. He gave me an outline Father had put together on the subject, replete with an accounting of the conspiratorial machinations of the Bilderbergers and Masons and Trilateral Commission. (I don't know how the United Nations and black helicopters got left out, but there you go.)

The thought occurred to me that this never got mentioned in my religious instruction, or in the Catechism, or in any conciliar documents, or in most Catholic academic and social discourse . . . guess it's just special knowledge you get from Total Catholic Radio Network insiders. Anyway, he said it's interesting reading and that I ought to look it over in my spare time.

Well, I did. Enough to recognize standard wackadoodle John Birch Society boilerplate when I see it.

So, today the development guy comes back to see what I thought of Father Rafe's handiwork. Well, say I, it looks to me to be your standard Bircher conspiracy theorizing.

"But Father Rafe has been researching this for 50 years," he says.

"So have the Birchers," I reply.

What the hell kind of wacko Catholic world do I find myself in the middle of here? And THIS is the stripe of folk -- in general, I assume -- who have a hold of the reins of "orthodox" Catholic media in this country?

I keep telling my wife and close friends about the strange things going on in this peculiar world I inhabit, but no one will believe exactly how wacky it really is. They think I'm putting the worst interpretation on it. That is certainly possible, but the more and more I see, frankly, the less and less probable that becomes.

It absolutely appears that I have to get out of here, but not until I have another gig. While I am here, though, I am going to do whatever I can to counteract this crap, but I feel that I'm becoming more and more marginalized every day.

I know God must have some purpose in this but, thus far, He hasn't clued me in on what it is.

Psalm 108

A Song or Psalm of David.

1 O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory.
2 Awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early.
3 I will praise thee, O LORD, among the people: and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations.
4 For thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds.
5 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: and thy glory above all the earth;
6 That thy beloved may be delivered: save with thy right hand, and answer me.
7 God hath spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.
8 Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the strength of mine head; Judah is my lawgiver;
9 Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe; over Philistia will I triumph.
10 Who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into Edom?
11 Wilt not thou, O God, who hast cast us off? and wilt not thou, O God, go forth with our hosts?
12 Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.
13 Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies.

Baghdad on the Bayou

NBC's Martin Savidge, the network's intrepid Man in New Orleans, reported Tuesday on the latest outrage in the City That We Forgot:

Since Friday, eight people have been murdered in New Orleans despite the addition of National Guard troops, state police and Federal agents. And the killing is done at point-blank range in broad daylight, leaving neighborhoods fearful and police frustrated.

What amazes even federal investigators about New Orleans crime isn't the violence, but the silence.

"A comment from an FBI agent today is that they can't believe that citizens won't say anything," New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley says.

Four men were killed Monday alone, bringing the number of murders in the city so far this year to 53. That compares to just 17 for the same period last year. Yet police are frustrated by crime scene after crime scene where many people watch but nobody talks.

"These aren't random incidents," Riley says.

Authorities say drugs and revenge motivate much of the killing.

"Enough has been enough," says Rev. Robert Brown.

Some suggest desperate Hurricane Katrina survivors are turning to drug trafficking for income.

"Of course it's going to get worse until they treat poor people better," Brown says.

But University of New Orleans criminologist Peter Scharf says the answer may be much more complicated, and so far has eluded even a beefed-up federal presence.

"Things that everyone thought would work, didn't," Scharf says.
HERE'S THE DEAL, and maybe this will make you (and George Bush) give a . . . darn about the city that was dying before the Corps of Engineers drowned it: At some point, even the hard-core gangstas and other horribly desperate people of "Da Slums a Noo Orluns" will come to themselves -- probably -- and will figure that there has to be more than this crap.

That life must have some meaning somewhere, somehow.

In our previous civilizational operating paradigm, these folks would come to Jesus and there would be a revival, and there would be hope. But as is happening increasingly in our overcrowded prisons -- and is made a more certain bet by the Christian church's embrace of relevance at the expense of Jesus Christ (Remember Him?) -- these desperate folk one day might find meaning and worth in Allah and his messenger, Mohammed.

And the imams who show them the way may not be "peace-loving Muslims" at all. They may be radical Wahabbist, kill-em-all-and-let-Allah-sort-'em-out Muslims.

And we will have Trouble, right here in River City!

With a capital "T"
That rhymes with "B"
And that stands for BOOM!

I'm just sayin'.

The change has come, Dad's under my . . . nostril?

Now, are you positive that the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards wasn't in Cannibal and the Headhunters for a while?

Or, to reference an earlier post, D-E-V-Blow. From MSNBC:

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

“He was cremated, and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,” he said, adding that “it went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

Richards’ father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.

Richards, one of rock’s legendary wild men, told the magazine that his survival was the result of luck, and advised young musicians against trying to emulate him.

“I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it’s a way of life,” he was quoted as saying.

“I’ve no pretensions about immortality,” he added. “I’m the same as everyone ... just kind of lucky.

ON THE OTHER HAND, even the depraved can be right about music. Says Richards:

“Everyone’s a load of crap,” he said. “They are trying to be somebody else, and they ain’t being themselves. Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party? Load of crap, load of crap. Posers, rubbish.”

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

The Social Darwinism Chronicles:
Life Unworthy of Medical Treatment


Frustrated by the U.S. health care system, an Oklahoma doctor being treated for colon cancer decided to write an essay for a medical journal.

But it’s not his own care that upset him. It’s the plight of the uninsured — specifically a patient of his who was the same age, had the same disease, yet couldn’t afford the treatment he got.

Today, Dr. Perry Klaassen, 67, is still working part-time in an Oklahoma City clinic, six years after his diagnosis. Shirley Searcy, his patient, died 18 months after hers.

Klaassen’s treatment included surgery two days after diagnosis and costly new drugs that have kept him going despite cancer that has now spread to his lungs, liver and pelvis.

“I received the most efficient care possible. I was 61 years old and had good group health insurance through my workplace,” he wrote in the essay.

The doctor didn’t name Shirley Searcy in his March 14 article. After all he’d been through, he couldn’t remember her name. But for days he dug through old medical files searching for her identity after he was interviewed by The Associated Press. He realized he could shine a more powerful light on the plight of the uninsured if her story could be told more fully.

And it is a story that’s far from unique. The widowed mother of eight grown children, Searcy had little money. When she began to sense she might be sick, she put off going to the doctor for a year because she knew she couldn’t pay the medical bills. Deeply religious, she put her faith in God, according to her family.

By the time she saw Klaassen, her cancer had spread from her colon to her liver. She had surgery but rejected chemotherapy.

“She just really didn’t feel like she wanted to endure what that would cost physically or financially,” said her daughter-in-law, Karen Searcy.

Shirley Searcy died Dec. 22, 2003, about 18 months after her diagnosis.

While recent attention has focused on high-profile cancer patients like Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow, who have the means and insurance to pay for the best treatment, there are tens of thousands of tragic, unseen cancer cases like Searcy’s — people whose lack of insurance stops them from seeking care when they should.

An estimated 112,000 Americans with cancer have no health insurance, according to Physicians for a National Health Program.

And that’s only cancer. Among the 45 million Americans who have no health insurance, there are countless people with chronic and developing health problems who are risking the same kind of fate that took Shirley Searcy’s life.

Klaassen’s essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association illustrates the issue “right there up close and personal,” said editor Dr. Catherine DeAngelis.

It underscores that insurance can be a life or death issue, said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan policy research organization. “The cost of health insurance has been going up faster than people’s incomes,” he said.

U.S. spending on health care totaled $2 trillion last year and economists in February projected it will nearly double by 2016.

Said DeAngelis: “We have the richest country in the world and I think the poorest health delivery system in the developed world. It’s really sad.”

Klaassen no longer sees patients but works part-time as medical director of an Oklahoma City group that recruits doctors to give free care to needy patients.
CREATOR GOD, WE JUST WANT to praise you and glorify your holy name -- praise you, praise you, Lord -- for your daughter Shirley Searcy, who gave her life, Lord, to save us from the evil of socialized, communistic medicine . . . from the Satanic plot of national health insurance.

Jesus, we here in Colorado Springs and Washington and Lynchburg and Virginia Beach just want to glorify your holy name right now, and thank you for a Republican administration that saves us from creeping statism and thank you, Lord -- Hallelujah! Hallelujah, Lord! Praise you, Jesus! -- we just want to thank you, Lord, right now, for the meek who forswear their inheritance of the land, Lord, who sacrifice their claim on just wages or worker benefits and insurance, Lord, so your people can gather here today, coming in separate SUVs, Jesus, and listening to Your Holy Word on our individual iPods -- praise you -- all bought at reasonable prices, Lord, because the American working class have heeded your Holy Spirit, Lord, and gotten out of the way of outsourcing and Always Low Prices.

Creator God, we just thank you for this today. We just want to beseech you right now to keep the socialists away from our suburban developments, Lord, and keep our insurance covering our little blue pills, Yahweh, so that we might heed your command to be fruitful and multiply, Lord, just as soon as we've paid off the speedboat, Jesus, and as soon as the market hits the target range, Jesus. Lord, we beseech you that the earnings of our portfolios continue to increase according to thy word, and that you provide our CEOs with a bounty of desperate undocumented Mexicans plenteous as the stars in the sky, Creator God, so that labor overhead might decrease as investor value increases according to Wall Street forecasts, Lord.

Lord God of Israel, save our conservative Republican lawmakers from the abortion-loving and homosexual-kissing liberal demons who threaten our American Way of Life and the Global War on Terror by denouncing torturing those you curse until they give up where the dirty bomb is hidden, Jehovah God, and bring the A-rab hordes to put down their truck bombs and buy our merchandise, which art now made in China.

And we just pray, Lord of Hosts, that if it is thy sovereign will that al Qaida does not give up the dirty bomb location after penile hot wiring and waterboarding, Yahweh, that You will just let it blow up in New Orleans, Lord, so that it will complete thy judgment against the murderous Negroes who have not glorified Your name. Amen.

Psalm 11

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.

1 In the LORD put I my trust: How say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?
2 For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart.
3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
4 The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.
5 The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.
6 Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.
7 For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.

We are Devo.



D-E-V-O. As in devolution. Particularly cultural devolution.

To put it in a religious context (specifically, a Catholic religious context), let's see what passed for hymnody in the 12th century (as translated from the original Latin in the 17th and 19th centuries):

O Sacred Head, Surrounded

O sacred head, surrounded
by crown of piercing thorn!
O bleeding head, so wounded,
reviled and put to scorn!
Our sins have marred the glory
of thy most holy face,
yet angel hosts adore thee
and tremble as they gaze

I see thy strength and vigor
all fading in the strife,
and death with cruel rigor,
bereaving thee of life;
O agony and dying!
O love to sinners free!
Jesus, all grace supplying,
O turn thy face on me.

In this thy bitter passion,
Good Shepherd, think of me
with thy most sweet compassion,
unworthy though I be:
beneath thy cross abiding
for ever would I rest,
in thy dear love confiding,
and with thy presence blest.

Words: Henry Williams Baker (1821-1877), 1861;
after Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153);
and Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676)


NOW, LET'S SEE what passes for hymnody today:

Here in This Place (Gather Us In)

1.
Here in this place, new light is streaming,
now is the darkness vanished away.
See, in this space, our fears and our dreamings,
brought here to you in the light of this day.
Gather us in - the lost and forsaken,
gather us in - the blind and the lame.
Call to us now, and we shall awaken,
we shall arise at the sound of our name.

2.
We are the young - our lives are a mystery,
we are the old - who yearn for your face.
We have been sung throughout all of history,
called to be light to the whole human race.
Gather us in - the rich and the haughty,
gather us in - the proud and the strong.
Give us a heart so meek and so lowly,
give us the courage to enter the song.

3.
Here we will take the wine and the water,
here we will take the bread of new birth.
Here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
call us anew to be salt for the earth.
Give us to drink the wine of compassion,
give us to eat the bread that is you.
Nourish us well, and teach us to fashion
lives that are holy and hearts that are true.

4.
Not in the dark of buildings confining,
not in some heaven, light years away,
but here in this place, the new light is shining;
now is the Kingdom, now is the day.
Gather us in - and hold us forever,
gather us in - and make us your own.
Gather us in - all peoples together,
fire of love in our flesh and our bone.

Words and music: Marty Haugen (b. 1952)


And you know it gets even worse than this.

HOW IS IT, EXACTLY, that we have gone from mature spiritual reflection -- in an age when we were years and years from figuring out the gunpowder thing and the vast majority of Western Civilization was yet utterly illiterate -- to self-centered, self-congratulatory adolescent glop in our modern age of democracy, widespread literacy, advanced science and landing spacecraft on distant planets?

We are Devo. D-E-V-O, with pride coming before the fall.

Monday, April 02, 2007

O! What a city we have!

Omaha moon, keep shining on Omaha,
keep shining down; we'd like it if you
wouldn't shine on Council Bluffs

-- Omaha Moon from Omaha!
by Stan Freberg, 1957


OK, this article on the metamorphosis of Omaha into a "happening" place ran last Sunday (March 25) in The New York Times -- T Style Magazine to be more precise.

Now, I had heard the article was coming, and I could have linked to it, like, when it first came out but that would have been the kind of rubish hyperventilation folks who read T Style Magazine would expect from us yokels out on the prairie, wouldn't it? No . . . it is far better to wait eight days to impart the kind of nonchalance, nay, insouciance befitting creating an attitude that we really don't care whether we're regarded as cosmopolitan enough for East Coast swells.

ANYWAY, if you're not from around these parts and might have some interest in our humble city of 425,000 (and metro area of 813,000), here's an excerpt from the piece, written by Omaha native and New York literary (and public radio) mainstay
Kurt Andersen:

For the past three decades, I’d returned to Omaha once every year or two strictly to visit my parents, so my experience of the city had been pretty much limited to drives to and from the airport. But around 2003, I started hearing from New Yorkers that a kind of cultural awakening was afoot in my hometown.

Omaha?

It isn’t yet Seattle or Austin, but it’s no longer some kind of Great Plains version of Hartford or Fresno, either. “Alternative” and “independent” aren’t just marketing catchwords in Omaha. The blossoming is real and multifarious. It didn’t happen overnight. And it certainly didn’t happen as a result of any grand master plan by the city establishment. Rather, it has been the improbable result of the hard work of a few local heroes.

In 1968 I turned 14 and underwent the classic apostasy of the day, transforming from a stamp-collecting, Nixon-campaign nerd to a pot-smoking, antiwar muckraker. A certain grotty block downtown on Howard Street instantly became my countercultural ground zero. The neighborhood, known as the Old Market, was excitingly urban, with faded commercial signs painted on the sides of unoccupied 19th-century warehouses, entirely unlike my leafy “Leave It to Beaver” neighborhood. In one building, an art gallery and a head shop had opened. Next door was a jerry-built movie theater called the Edison Exposure, where that fall I saw my first art film — the regional premiere of Andy Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls.” Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and to be young was very heaven.

When I left Omaha in the ’70s, the cool shops and restaurants extended only a hundred yards from the epicenter. The toehold of hip seemed doomed to remain only a toehold. If that. In 1988, as architectural preservation had become America’s happy default mode, Omaha gave ham-fisted urban renewal one last gasp: east of the Old Market, 27 fine old buildings were demolished. I sort of gave up on the place. But during the decade I wasn’t paying attention, the tide turned. The city was persuaded not to wipe away several more blocks of warehouses south of the Old Market district to build its convention center. And in the ’90s, the area quadrupled in size — building by building, organically.

Some of my boyhood outposts of urban cool remain: the Antiquarium bookstore, Homer’s Music and Gifts, M’s Pub, the French Café (which in 1969 called itself the best French restaurant between Chicago and San Francisco). Dozens of new restaurants and shops have joined them, including the charmingly un-American bistro La Buvette and Jackson Street Booksellers, my all-time favorite used-book store in America. Soon more than 1,000 new condominiums will enter the market, mostly converted lofts, but also a handsome new low-rise development (called, inevitably, SoMa, for “south of the Market”). From one building hangs a marketing banner. “Model,” it says on the front, and on the back, “Carpe Diem.”

The main reason the Old Market wasn’t wiped away is that a single family happened to own most of the real estate. That, and the fact that the family members are not, shall we say, typical Omahans.

Sam Mercer arrived in 1866 and bought up swaths of the city. His grandson, also named Sam and now in his 80s, has overseen the family interests mainly from France. On one of his regular reconnaissance trips in 1964, Cedric Hartman, a young Omahan who had gone to New York but returned and who later became a designer, suggested to Mercer that he turn his defunct warehouses into a district of stylish shops, restaurants, theaters, apartments. Back then, that was a bizarre, visionary notion; SoHo did not yet exist.

Mercer’s son Mark, who had grown up on the East Coast and in Switzerland, soon moved to Omaha — temporarily, it was thought, to help get the project on its feet. Forty years later, he and his German-born photographer wife still live in the Old Market, although they keep a Paris apartment. Mark Mercer is a distracted, Woody Allenish man. He had no training in urban planning. “I did read Jane Jacobs,” he said. “It seemed obvious. But the real businesspeople didn’t think it would work.”

Hartman, meanwhile, became a renowned furniture and lighting designer. “In this deadly situation” — Omaha back in the day, he means — “you could get work done if you had an adventurous mind.” His headquarters is a 79-year-old former factory on the Old Market’s edge. “We were deadly bored with this town, and I wanted to make it better,” he said. “The Mercers haven’t messed it up. And Ree Schonlau has been marvelous.”

Schonlau, 61, grew up in a working-class neighborhood near the Old Market with dreams of being an artist. At the University of Omaha (now the University of Nebraska), she explained, “all my professors said, ‘If you’re gonna make art, you’ve gotta leave town.’ ” After spending time in New York, she returned to Omaha in 1971, leased space for a gallery in one of the Mercers’ buildings — 12,000 square feet, $300 a month — cut up her surplus footage into artists’ studios and discovered her métier: not making art but enabling it. She turned the former Bemis Bag factory into a warren of studios and invited artists from around the world to come for residencies. Today more than 600 apply each year, and the Bemis Center occupies 100,000 square feet in two renovated warehouses. It has become, in effect, Omaha’s museum of contemporary art. Schonlau now spends most of her time overseeing the business of her husband, the Japanese-born sculptor and painter Jun Kaneko. The couple are turning another building into a “creativity museum” that’s to open in 2009.

For young Americans, Omaha is probably best known as the home of a whole bunch of indie rock musicians — members of the Faint, Cursive, the Good Life, Tilly and the Wall, Azure Ray and, most famously, Bright Eyes. They play in one another’s bands, produce one another’s records and nearly all release CDs through the local Saddle Creek label. Robb Nansel dreamed up Saddle Creek as a University of Nebraska business major; it was his thesis project. He grew up in Omaha and attended Creighton Prep, the local Roman Catholic high school. Many Saddle Creek musicians, including Conor Oberst (a k a Bright Eyes), also went to Prep, as it’s called. As did the director Alexander Payne, who has set and filmed three movies here.

“We’re just sort of doing things the way we want to do them,” Nansel said. Because Omaha is a cheap place to live — a 1,300-square-foot loft in the Old Market rents for $575 a month — he and his musicians are spared the financial anxiety of places like New York and L.A. “I like to believe in the concept of putting out a record because it’s good,” he said, “not to sell records.” Saddle Creek releases six albums a year and has repeatedly turned down offers to be acquired by a big label.

And it has recruited musicians from elsewhere to join its happy few, its band of brothers. Stefanie Drootin, now 28, was on tour with her L.A. band in 1996 when their van broke down in Omaha. She started playing with the Good Life and Bright Eyes and moved in with a bandmate. The former Athens, Ga., band Azure Ray — Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink — fell in love with Oberst and Todd Baechle of the Faint, respectively, and moved to Omaha. “It was just a boy-based decision,” Fink joked.

The Internet has made it possible for people to pursue serious creative careers in a place like Nebraska, but also anywhere else. Why has it worked so weirdly well in Omaha? Beyond talent, it’s because the musicians have longstanding bonds to one another and the city. “We were all in it together,” Nansel explained, and “nobody wanted to be the first to throw in the towel.”

In short, Omaha’s cultural moment is all about the application of the great Midwestern bourgeois virtues — thrift, square dealing, humility, hard work — to bohemian artistic projects. On this, everyone agrees.

“People here do business on a handshake,” said Cary Tobin, the Bemis Center’s residency program director, who was “dying to get out of here” when she graduated from high school in 1988 but returned after living in Italy and Seattle for a decade. Sarah Wilson was the assistant music editor for Interview in 2005 when she met Tim Kasher (Cursive, the Good Life) in New York. He convinced her to come to Omaha with him to write her novel. “They are workaholics,” she says of the Saddle Creek musicians.

AND IF YOU WERE WONDERING about what audience the Times aims for with T Style Magazine, here's jes' a leeeeetle hint:

Good lodging options in Omaha are fairly limited. The most stylish place is the Magnolia Hotel, which has rooms with fireplaces in a 1924 neo-Classical-style building (1615 Howard Street; 402-341-2500; doubles from $169).

The old Aquila Court (now known as the aforementioned Magnoilia Hotel) is magnificent, to be sure. But how snobbish and particular does one have to be to consider good lodging options "limited" when, just downtown, one will find a Hilton, a Hilton Garden Inn, a Courtyard by Marriot, a Doubletree and an Embassy Suites.

And I know I'm leaving something reasonably swanky out. As I said, that's just downtown.

Good Lord.

Psalm 113

1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise, O ye servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD.
2 Blessed be the name of the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.
3 From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD’S name is to be praised.
4 The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens.
5 Who is like unto the LORD our God, who dwelleth on high,
6 Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth!
7 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill;
8 That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.
9 He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Psalm 47

To the chief Musician, A Psalm for the sons of Korah.

1 O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.
2 For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth.
3 He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet.
4 He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah.
5 God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises.
7 For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding.
8 God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness.
9 The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God: he is greatly exalted.