Huckabee's Hate Flag

Mike Huckabee, campaigning recently in South Carolina, declared that the federal government should have no opinion on decisions about state flags, claiming the matter "has no business from the president of the United States." Speaking specifically about the Confederate Flag, Huckabee said, "You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do." In other words, our nation's leader should remain silent about a long-recognized icon of hatred and injustice.

That's moral leadership?

Despite Minister Huckabee’s Christian faith, his inability to reject the Confederate Flag sent a coded message to the Conservative base meant to suggest, “I’m a bigot like you!”

Some Southerners remain incapable of accepting the defeat of the Civil War. Visit a hundred diners in the Northeast and you will never hear mention of the Civil War. But put hidden tape recorders in a hundred diners south of the Mason Dixon Line and you will capture regular comments on the “War of Northern Aggression.”

Despite the immorality of slavery, the humiliation of the South remains a smoldering insult, and some fly the Confederate Flag to vent their anger. Rather than speak about what the flag really means to them, they claim the flag represents the lost “Southern way of life” or is a "symbol of lost heritage." But what do those phrases mean - that Southerners have lost the right to sip mint juleps? Of course not. They're euphemisms for lost slavery. Southern life revolved around the economic bounty of enslaving and the social lift of belittling kidnapped Africans.

Wealthy Southerners needed slavery to maintain their wealth. And poor white Southerners needed slavery to maintain their social status. They may have been poor, but at least they weren’t slaves. So the Emancipation Proclamation and the ensuing, bitter, devastating military defeat placed poor Southern whites on a par with people previously denigrated and looked down upon, an adjustment still apparently taking place.

For decades now, the Confederate Flag has represented injustice, racism, discrimination, segregation, lynching, intolerance and inhumanity, the apparent core values of the old “Southern way of life” and "heritage." Mike Huckabee’s coded embrace of it was a grotesque and un-Christian gesture, and reveals much about his character, or lack of it.

- JT Compton
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They Keep Getting Crazier

This has been a weird, angry week in America. And it’s only Wednesday.

After shredding the Oval Office, heard shouting “I’ll waterboard those spooks if it’s the last thing I do,” tossing lamps and framed pictures against the walls, President Bush dragged himself in front of the press and declared, in his own words, (these are mine), “Any nation that wishes to produce or possess a nuclear weapon in the future should be bombed and invaded and retrofitted to protect us. The recent report that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program is exactly what I’ve been saying all along. They want to have one, which makes them the most dangerous and immoral pack of blood-thirsty terrorists in the history of the world. And by the way, I’m an incurious idiot convinced that the only people dumber than me are you, American Citizens, which gives me license to lie, twist and deceive you as long as it allows my infallible, all-knowing handlers, Dick and Josh, as well as my equity shareholders, the Oil Lobby, the Wealthy Pricks for Tax Fairness, the NRA and the Coalition for Raping our Natural Resources, to do whatever will enrich them and their CEO buddies. After all, we know that CEOs are the most important people around. If you’re not a CEO, then you’re a lazy communist who doesn't deserve to vote, much less live, unless you live to serve the CEO class, carrying their golf clubs, polishing their Bentleys, mowing their lawns, and so forth. Heck, if we prevent CEOs from trading in their ninety-foot yachts and buying the hundred-and-forty-foot models, they might lose face with their international peers, which would be your fault entirely. So I say again, bomb Iran, believe everything I say, and kiss the feet of any God-like CEO you might be lucky enough to meet before you disappear forever into a secret prison.”

Meanwhile, Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee bristled at the question asked by so many reporters, “Do you not believe in evolution?” Standing, looking toward heaven and lifting his arms in a grand, celestial arc, Huckabee replied, “Like any true Christian believer, I know the mind of the bearded man who created the Universe and now sits on a cloud, watching our every move, keeping track of who has been naughty or nice. Ignoring the horrible collision occurring in the Praxis constellation, and despite the murderous rampages of the Janjaweed in Darfur, I know God is very concerned that if we allow certain microscopic Stem Cells to be used to cure disease and decrease suffering, our race will soon be worshipping Satan, dancing naked under the full moon, having sex with multiple partners and taking His glorious name in vain. Further, He is concerned that we, his special children, have allowed our minds to be corrupted by the maggot infested, hunchbacked scientists and polluted by their logic and testing and reason and common sense. God has often whispered into my ear, ‘I made the Earth six-thousand-thirty-six years ago, just for you, my worshipers, to rape and pillage as you please, as long as the only people you kill, molest, enslave or ignore are non-Christians. And just use your eyes—it is flat. Duh.’ This I say unto you.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

- JT Compton
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