Having some fun with the opposition

The silly season has officially begun: Today we received our first fund-raising letter of the 2008 presidential race, from the campaign of "Baghdad" John McCain!

When we first saw the words ENCLOSED: PRESIDENTIAL PHOTOGRAPH emblazoned across the front of the envelope in bold red letters, we thought Sen. McCain was being just a tad premature. I mean, he hasn't even been elected yet!

But it turns out that he meant this "Presidential Photograph":

The caption reads:

My friend, this photo with President Reagan is one of my personal favorites. It is my pleasure to share it with you. I thank you for your support.

Best wishes,
John McCain

Whenever we receive fund-raising letters from causes or campaigns that we'd rather drink dirty ditchwater than support, we like to return all the stuff they sent us — including the envelope it came in — and using their own postage-paid "Business Reply" envelope!

But this time we did something a little different. I didn't want to confuse Baghdad John's campaign volunteers. ("Huh? Why'd they use our return envelope to send us back everything we sent them, but with no flippin' money? Oh well ... break time!") So instead, in completely feigned appreciation for Sen. McCain sending us one of his "personal favorite" photos, we returned the favor by sending this photo to the McCain campaign (in their postage-aid envelope, of course):


Included was this brief letter of explanation:

Dear McCain Campaign:

Thank you for the photo of Sen. McCain with President Reagan.

In gratitude, it is our pleasure to share with you this photo of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) with President Reagan. Even though we live in Phoenix, AZ, we consider Rep. Paul to be our congressman. (It's a liberty thing. You wouldn't understand.)

Incidentally, we hope you'll do two things for us:

1) Next time you see Sen. McCain, tell him we said that he needs to find honest work in the private sector; and

2) consider ditching that overspending, gun-grabbing, liberty-killing warmonger ... and come volunteer instead for Ron Paul's campaign!

Yours for peace and liberty,
Frank [lastname]

"Avoiding embarrassment" vs. repentance

The disaffection most have with the war, I suspect, has to do with the sense of embarrassment with how the war is being conducted, not with that it was undertaken in the first place. A colleague of mine opined, a couple months ago, that it “would be nice if the United States could get out of Iraq without too much egg on its face.” To his shock, I replied that the United States needs to experience as much “egg on its face” as possible. Since those who orchestrated, directed, and cheered on this criminal act will never be held to account for their wrongdoing in any meaningful way, they ought to at least suffer public humiliation for their behavior. To fail to see the moral implications of what America has become, to regard the deaths of over one million innocent Iraqis – if one includes the half-million children who died from earlier U.S. embargoes on food and medicine – as nothing more than a failure of “intelligence” or “poor planning” or “mismanagement,” is symptomatic of the moral and spiritual pathology of a once-great nation.

~ Butler Shaffer

An old USAF gag

Click on the cartoon to enlarge it ...

The Marines and Army are broken ...

... now they're trying to break the Air Force, too.

Inspiring Benson

The Arizona Republic's own Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Steve Benson does Charles Goyette's radio program every now and again, and sometimes they invite callers to suggest cartoon ideas for Steve.

This one was mine:


I actually described Ron Paul as the elephant (and truest Republican) in a roomful of wannabes and pretenders who are doing all they can to simply ignore him. I mean, it just seemed so obvious! (And dontcha just love the smiley-faces on the other nine?)

Thanks, Mr. Benson!

My coins, but not my sons

A couple of years ago, our pastor preached on Mark 12. While discussing vv. 13-17, he revealed to me a gem — one of those gems that was right there in front of me all along, yet one I’d never noticed before:

Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?”

But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” So they brought it.

And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.”

And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at Him.

In contrast to the denarius, an ancient Roman coin which bore both the image and inscription of Caesar, Pastor Niell asked us, “Whose image and inscription do you bear?”

Why, the image of Jehovah, and the inscription of the Triune God, I thought. It suddenly occurred to me that, while all men bear the image of God, it is His people alone who bear His inscription: the mark or seal of baptism.

Pretty basic stuff, yes? But something worth considering the next time Caesar claims the authority to conscript citizens to murder for him. (Which claim, I'm sorry to report, I expect to be revived in the very near future.)

And so, a quick note to you who happen to occupy the chair of former Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt:

Jesus says you can have my pennies and dimes. But neither I nor my children belong to you. God gives you no authority to snatch us up, hand us a rifle, and compel us to violate the Sixth Commandment.

For “whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge” (Acts 4:19).

— • —

And incidentally, I was amazed and edified this past Mother's Day to learn that Julia Ward Howe — whatever her other theological misprisions — understood this doctrine well, as evidenced by the following excerpt from her Mother's Day Proclamation (written in 1870 in reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War):

... As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God. ...

Paul Harvey: Since WW I, "there have been no 'civilians'"

And hear this, please. In Western Afghanistan, where NATO forces are involved in some of the deadliest fighting since January, among the 136 dead this morning, suspect Taliban. But there are others — 51 villagers, mostly women and children. Might not the news media put a stop to such "pulled-punches wars" as this, if we would just desist from categorizing "civilians"? It was "civilians," for goodness' sake, who decapitated New York City. Since the invention of the aerial bomb five wars ago, there have been no "civilians."

~ Paul Harvey, News and Comment, 2 May 2007 (listen here)

It appears to me that Mr. Harvey is engaging in a loose categorization of the parties in war in order to justify his unwillingness to discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate targets in war.

While it was, in fact, "civilians" who "decapitated New York City" on 9/11, they weren't merely civilians, but members of a criminal subset of civilians known as "murderers." And the American civilians who died in the 9/11 attacks were another subset of civilians — "victims."

But if we accept Paul Harvey's specious reasoning in order to assuage our consciences re. Afghan and Iraqi non-combatants killed in the Global War on Terror, then we have no choice but to conclude that the victims of the 9/11 attacks weren't civilians, either.

You can't have it both ways, Mr. Harvey.