Are you with us or against us?

The theocrats are becoming more and more bold:

State bill proposes Christianity be Missouri’s official religion
12:28 AM CST on Friday, March 3, 2006
By John Mills, KMOV -- News 4

Missouri legislators in Jefferson City considered a bill that would name Christianity the state's official "majority" religion.

House Concurrent Resolution 13 has is pending in the state legislature.

Many Missouri residents had not heard about the bill until Thursday.

Karen Aroesty of the Anti-defamation league, along with other watch-groups, began a letter writing and email campaign to stop the resolution.

The resolution would recognize "a Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs.

The resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified recognition."

State representative David Sater of Cassville in southwestern Missouri, sponsored the resolution, but he has refused to talk about it on camera or over the phone.

KMOV also contacted Gov. Matt Blunt's office to see where he stands on the resolution, but he has yet to respond.

Do you recognize your country, Mr. and Mrs. Middle America? Can you honestly argue that we're not sliding ever closer to becoming a theocratic state like Iran?

Are you prepared to have to defend your religious beliefs, whatever they may be? Are you okay with being ostracized or perhaps even discriminated against because you don't toe a particular line of belief?

What now, chicken hawks?

From The Nation.com:

Support the Troops? Start by Listening to Them
by John Nichols

According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, a new poll shows that 72 percent of U.S. troops serving in Iraq favor complete withdrawal from that country within a year.

Despite the claims of the armchair strategists in the White House and its amen corner in the media, who suggest that calls for withdrawal represent a failure to "support the troops," the troops themselves are ready to come home.

Only 23 percent of the soldiers surveyed in January and February for the Zogby International/Le Moyne College poll echoed the administration line that the U.S. presence in Iraq should be maintained for "as long as needed."

According to the pollster's analysis, there is remarkably broad support among the troops for immediate withdrawal.

"Of the 72 percent (who support withdrawal), 22 percent said troops should leave within the next six months, and 29 percent said they should withdraw 'immediately.' Twenty-one percent said the US military presence should end within a year," according to Zogby's review of the results of the survey, which was conducted before the recent explosive of sectarian violence in Iraq.

Around the country this spring, opponents of the war are promoting local resolutions and referendums -- particularly in Wisconsin, where more than two dozen measures will be on April 4 local election ballots in cities, villages and towns around the state -- that are intended to give citizens an opportunity to call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Critics of these initiatives suggest that it is unpatriotic and anti-military to talk about bringing the troops home. They don't like the idea of letting citizens play a role in establishing foreign policy priorities.

There are plenty of appropriate responses to this anti-democratic tendency on the part of those who are more loyal to George Bush and Dick Cheney than they are to their country's Constitution and its best political traditions -- beginning with: "When we fought that revolution back in 1776, your position lost."

But the best response of all might well be to say: If you really want to support the troops -- as opposed to the Bush-Cheney administration's warped policies -- why not listen to the troops? Indeed, why not let them vote in an advisory referendum of their own on whether they think the occupation of Iraq should continue?...

Why not, indeed?

Here's the rest.

So when does the Republican mud-slinging machine start calling out our troops for advocating "cutting and running"?

Happy birthday to me

Today's my 48th birthday. I'm not upset about it, but I do miss that halcyon time when a birthday ranked just behind Christmas in the pantheon of Days That Can't Come Too Soon.

Mind you, I can't be bothered to go so far as to dread birthdays, but neither can I work up the sort of enthusiasm I used to feel for them, either -- which is a shame.

It was my 29th birthday that ruined it for me. Most people wait until their 30th to allow their angst about aging to fully flower, but I saw no reason to wait. I was such an utter mess on my 29th that my 30th was a relative walk in the park.

But since then, honestly, I've not fretted much about birthdays -- not even the milestone ones: the Jesus birthday (33), the Over-the-Hill birthday (40). Even my 50th, which is on the horizon and getting closer by the day, doesn't alarm me. They're just numbers, after all, and there's not a damned thing you can do about them -- except to stop having them, which is not an attractive option.

And I feel as healthy, youthful, and energetic as I ever did (which, no doubt, says something about my state of body and mind in my twenties and thirties), so seeing my personal odometer flip over to 48 from 47 just doesn't mean that much to me. My ever-grayer hair no doubt outs me as on the far side of 45, but otherwise, I don't think anyone would peg me as nearing fifty (he said, hopefully).

So I'm left just counting down the hours till midnight, when this "special day" will have passed, and I can enjoy 364 blissful days of not giving my (advanced) age a first -- much less a second -- thought.