This Room Seats Fifty

Uh huh.

Interviews with numerous legal experts suggest that Colorado US Attorney Troy Eid misled reporters and diverged from state law when declining to prosecute any of the three men arrested in Denver for threatening to assassinate Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Eid, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006, declined to prosecute the three men on charges of threatening to assassinate Barack Obama during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, saying that the suspects were "just a bunch of meth heads" and their words failed to meet the legal standard for "true threat."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Legal_experts_question_Colorado_US_Attorneys_1031.html

Don't forget: Part of the FBI's job is to create artificial opposition. They keep plenty of "gardeners" in the pipeline.

Do you remember that Nazi parade in Orlando a few years back? Turns out that the entire thing was a creation of the FBI. Look up the court case or whatever it was. IT IS PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE THAT THE FBI FIELDS ITS OWN NAZI DEMONSTRATIONS. Why? You tell me; I'm all ears.

I suspect that the reason these "nazis" are not going to be prosecuted is because it will come to light that they are creations of the FBI.

"Ah, there you are, you little bugger! You're my offending meme in this system, aren't you?"

"Let me root around in my toolbox and apply the antidote. Sit right up here on stage, won't you?"

How about a few more just to get the day off to a good start?

"'A Jewish male is obligated to say the following prayer every day: 'Thank you God for not making me a gentile, a woman or a slave.' (BT menahoth 43b-44a).'"

"If two women sit at a crossroads, one on this side and the other on the other side, and they face one another, they are certainly witches.' (BT Pesahim 111a)."

--Both from Judaism Discovered, page 375

Are we back to witches, now? Say, do you know Pastor Muthee?

I can hear the Pharisees scream.

It verily echoes off the hills.

But it's not me they fear...

...it's their own writings.

This will be the easiest material I ever performed. All I have to do is stand here and read from their own texts.

Let's open to a random page. Ah, yes. Ahem:

"Israel Shahak states: '...the Talmud lays down (in BT Berakhot, 58b) that a Judaic who passes near an inhabited non-Jewish dwelling must ask God to destroy it, whereas if the building is in ruins he must thank the Lord of Vengeance...it became customary to spit (usually three times) upon seeing a church or a crucifix, as an embellishment to the obligatory formula of regret...'" ---Judaism Discovered, page 534.

That doesn't sound very nice. Sounds kind of hateful and intolerant to me.

Project much?

It's the age of no talking.

WITH THE presidential campaign clock ticking down, Sen. John McCain has suddenly discovered a new boogeyman to link to Sen. Barack Obama: a sometimes controversial but widely respected Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi. In the past couple of days, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have likened Mr. Khalidi, the director of a Middle East institute at Columbia University, to neo-Nazis; called him "a PLO spokesman"; and suggested that the Los Angeles Times is hiding something sinister by refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 dinner in honor of Mr. Khalidi at which Mr. Obama spoke. Mr. McCain even threw former Weatherman Bill Ayers into the mix, suggesting that the tape might reveal that Mr. Ayers -- a terrorist-turned-professor who also has been an Obama acquaintance -- was at the dinner.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103003244.html

I don't know who this Khalidi man is. All I know is that certain someones (I like kittens) are stamping their feet and holding their breath and demanding that no one listen to him because he has a handbag factory in Brooklyn Heights. ("Luxuriate in the supple skin of the SS line from Emporio Armani! It's genuine free-range Jew! ...And we're an eco-friendly company; nothing goes to waste. What we don't use for handbags goes to making our line of Semite Snacks, available in the frozen foods aisle at better grocers everywhere.")

...So, obviously, my immediate task is to listen to him. It's like ringing the dinner bell. Ding a ling a ling! "Come and get it! Yum yum!"

No one can talk now. And no one can listen to someone talk. It is forbidden! Noooooo talking! [finger wave]

Khalidi doesn't have a spy network roaming around the United States. And he doesn't cause telecommunications traffic to be routed directly to foreign intelligence services.

Will you hold your breath for as long as we talk? Is that a promise?

Now. Why do I so despise frauds?

I think I have barely spoken a word on any matter over the past five years that was not about frauds.

Why do I so detest frauds? Because they're thieves. They steal your good will.

There's a new scam at the gas station. (I suppose in the annals of scams it's not new, but it's new to me.) Let me back up: I don't know if you know this or not, but diesel fuel is the same thing as heating oil. And there are two kinds of diesel fuel: "on-road" diesel and "off-road" diesel. On-road diesel is for use in vehicles traveling the public highways and, thus, this fuel carries extra road taxes. Off-road diesel is for use in agricultural vehicles or anything else that does not run on the public highways. It costs much less than on-road diesel. People often use it as heating oil because it is precisely the same thing and it represents a smaller out-of-pocket expense to fill up a few jugs of it at the gas station than to pay the oil company to make a delivery.

Point is, people often fill up a couple of five-gallon cans of off-road diesel at the pumps down back. I know that they are using it to heat their homes.

We have a strict pre-pay policy at the gas station: You pay before you pump. This is especially true at the diesel pumps which are down back, rather than the gas pumps which I can see just by looking out the front window. But if you pick up the phone at the diesel pumps and tell me who you are, and if I know you, then I will authorize the pump and you can pay when you're done. I occasionally waive the pre-pay requirement.

So this little girl comes into the gas station the other day and says that her mommy says that she'll be right up to pay when she's done at the diesel pump. Okay. So I authorize the pump and the little girl leaves to go join mommy. Mommy pumps. But mommy never comes up to pay. So fifteen minutes later, a spitting angry Chris pays instead because Chris' boss says that diesel is always pre-pay, so, obviously, there would never be any drive-offs that the boss would have to eat. There's another forty bucks gone.

You see, Mommy's running her little scam, a scam that involves pimping out her darling little daughter.

Add that to the list of scams with which I am now well familiar.

I would rather someone say to me, "My children are cold and I don't have any money to buy heating oil." I am not a hard-hearted bastard. I will buy them ten gallons of heating oil and take them at their word that they'll try to pay me back someday. But when someone lies to me, not only do I get to buy them ten gallons of heating oil, but I also get to get lied to.

Everyone's got their sob story.

As a gas station attendant, I have several collateral duties. Did you know that? I am expected to know the directions to all points of interest within a seventy-five mile radius. And if I don't know how to get you to your destination, that's somehow my fault. And I am obligated to provide complimentary restrooms for the shuffling undead and to call a tow truck when someone's car breaks down.

I am also a bank! Now and again people will come in and say they need to get home, and it's dark and cold, and they have no money. These things are true. Some pretty college girl away from home and no money and no gas. Some elderly man who perhaps shouldn't be traveling alone. Some nineteen-year-old jarhead on leave who wants to write a check, the writing of which is in strict contravention of our policy on not taking out-of-town checks.

What am I supposed to do? So I float them a loan. I'll buy them a couple gallons of gas and ring it through as a charge with my name on it and tack it onto the bulletin board behind me. They'll thank me profusely and take my address and promise that they'll send the money, or they'll stop by this weekend to pay me.

I believe that you believe that you will do that. I will give you that benefit of the doubt. I want to believe you.

Out of the dozen or so people I have floated loans to, can you take a guess how many have paid me back?

Higher.

No, higher.

Yup: Zero.

And do you remember that old man I had living with me last winter? Some of his story just didn't seem to add up. He had every illness known to man: various cancers and bouts of vertigo and bad discs in his back and whatever all else. I half-expected him to tell me that he had ovarian cancer. But I didn't really care; he did the dishes now and again and he was fun to listen to. And I wasn't really doing anything with the spare bedroom anyway. It's not like I was really putting myself out.

But I came home one night and he was gone. This, by itself, was not odd. He had a hard time sleeping sometimes and he would just go out to the truck stop up the road at four in the morning and read the paper and chat with people.

After a day or two, I started to get worried. I actually started to expend emotional energy concerning myself with this man who I already half-knew was probably a con artist. Everyone's got to earn a living, I suppose.

After a couple days, I went downstairs to do some laundry. And I noticed that he had removed from the washer the clothes that I was in the process of washing for him. This man, who used a cane and who had one leg longer than the other and who was by no means some spring chicken, had hobbled his way downstairs to get his laundry. Well I guess he decided he needed to go. That's a fine how-do-you-do.

I'm a sucker. I always have been. And I don't mind being a sucker. I would rather be a sucker than to be a cold-hearted bastard. I might need the help someday.

And I believe in charity not because I'm a nice guy. I am not a nice guy. You need to know that. I operate strictly out of some sense of self-interest. I am doing one of two things, which one I am not sure, and which one I am not sure I want to be doing: I am either purchasing confirmation of my long-standing suspicion that every last thing in this world is a disappointment, or I am searching for that one thing in this world that is not a scam. Either way, I am willing to pay for that.

I harbor in my heart some idealized notion of humanity, wherein not every last thing in this world is a scam and wherein not every last person in this world is a con artist.

So when I excoriate frauds and con men and those with sob stories, it's because I know there's a scam coming. I know that they are predators and they seek to exploit my faith that there is something in this world that would absolve everyone of all their sins, someone whose innocence would make all the transgressions disappear.

Someone who could make everything okay simply by being genuine.

Sparklehorse - Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain

The reason why I excoriate Republicans at every opportunity--

is because they're such complete fakes.

You don't see me dragging the Dutch over the coals, do you? Or American Indians? It's because I never had anything invested in them.

Republicans used to stand for something. But they have shown themselves to be nothing but a bunch of secret queers and thieves and rubber-stampers and devout, hyper-religious con artists.

The Republican party is a cesspool of filth and fakery. Complete frauds.

"I'm not in this for naught."

Palin said that. I'm not in this for nothing.

I am not going to do this for nothing.

I do not do anything for nothing.

No, she does not strike me as the type that does. She strikes me as the type who always has a reason for doing something.

I read an article in, I think, the Washington Post yesterday about Palin's religious views and her history with her church in Wasilla or whatever and Pastor Muthee's witch-hunting rattling of bones.

I seem to recall in the article that Pentacostalism is the fastest-growing denomination and that the Assemblies of God church was a good place for an up-and-coming politician to worship.

This is all starting to make sense.

I would be very much interested to know her religious history, especially prior to her entry into politics.

If I had to guess, I'd say that this opportunistic, calculating woman joined that church solely for the purpose of lookin' all religious to the dirty-footed, "conservative" types she chose to play to.

I got your number, sister.

Why am I always so spot-on in my characterizations of people?...

Oh, uh, Mister Mukasey,

were you the best that the rabbis had to field? Because you're not doing a very good job of defending Our System of Law.

...which I have taken the liberty of examining.

Ew.