Month: November 2006

One of the greatest songs written in recent years: Leonard Cohen’s "Democracy," from his astonishing album, "The Future." It captures all my hopes for today. And tomorrow. And the day after that. Performed here by Don Henley.

Money quote:

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It’s coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we’ll be making love again.
We’ll be going down so deep
the river’s going to weep,
and the mountain’s going to shout Amen!
It’s coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

The "left" and "right" on the Internets: an interesting survey. Bottom line: right now, the moonbats are ascendant in passion. We’ll see if that lasts tonight. No predictions here.

It was remarkably gay, don’t you think? Here’s a much better version of the American Dad clip I posted yesterday. I should add, for the benefit of new readers, that I am not now and never have been a Republican. A conservative? Sure. Gay? Super-gay.

"There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds," – Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Wiki-bio here.

A message from P. Diddy and South Park for election day. (Some obscenities, so don’t click if you don’t appreciate naughty words.)

Another actual reader review:

I was raised in an Irish-Catholic New Deal family, was an undergraduate member of SDS in the 60s and am the least likely fan of your new book; I like adventure. And I am in the middle of reading your excellent book. Imagine my surprise as I was wading through chapter 2 on the fundamentalist psyche and realized it was the best damn description of Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalisms I have ever encountered. 

I appreciate your clarity, honesty and dedication to humane values. I have been searching for a wide ranging but common sense grounded analysis of what makes fundamentalism tick. You have taken that clock apart and put it back together. While I will mostly likely never agree with conservative politics ( I was, for more than 20 years, a legal services attorney ), you have restored my basic faith in the generic decency of most people, regardless of their political allegiance and shaken my view of conservatives as irredeemable right wing reactionaries.

This parody of the kind of ads the GOP has been running this campaign is too good to miss. Enjoy:

Helsinki, Finland, dusk.

"I think one of the biggest dangers here is solitude. Someone has to be there to interrogate and investigate every aspect of our lives," – Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler, on James Dobson’s radio show, on lessons from the Haggard affair.