William K. Wolfrum Chronicles

David Beckham’s first start in the MLS saw his Los Angeles Galaxy come out on the short end of the stick against the New York Red Bulls. The ridiculous 5-4 score appeared to wake Beckham up to where he’ll be finishing up his playing days:

“It was very different,” Beckham said afterward. “I haven’t been involved in a game like that since I was 9 or 10 years old, where there were so many goals.”

Welcome to Major League Soccer, Becks.

–WKW

When you hear the term “Clergy Response Team,” doesn’t it make you feel good and warm inside? Because while you may not be ready for martial law, they are. And so is the U.S. military. So start tithing and hide your guns.

“Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared”

… gun confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced relocation. U.S. Troops also arrived, something far easier to do now, thanks to last year’s elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.

If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie “The Siege”, easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that’s exactly what the ‘Clergy Response Team’ helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.

Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff’s Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team’s mission, “the primary thing that we say to anybody is, ‘let’s cooperate and get this thing over with and then we’ll settle the differences once the crisis is over.’”

Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. “In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they’re helping to diffuse that situation,” assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, “because the government’s established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the scripture.”

Comforted yet?

Some more Sunday reading:

Finally, via Memoirs of a Skepchick, Bill Moyers says goodbye to the agnostic Karl Rove:

–WKW

Like most of you, when I take a drink of water, I’m a little disconcerted that my water isn’t adding more to the experience. It just tends to sit there in its submissive wateriness, doing little more than just basking in its own wetness. Personally, I prefer water that’s actively making an effort to enhance my water-drinking experience.

Luckily for us all, now you can get “Water with Intention.” Yes, now on the market, proving once again that a fool and his money were likely brought together by fluke happenstance anyway, is H2Om (pronounced H2 - Ohhm, you know, like the chant).

According to the makers, H2Om has taken water to the next level of waterness:

H2Om water with intention has revolutionized the bottled water industry by creating the world’s first vibrationally charged, interactive bottled water.

The people who drink H2Om are individuals who care about health, love, and being positive. People who believe that intention is everything. People who believe in the power of positive thinking. People that understand that the universe is made up of vibrations, and that even the vibrations of a single thought can effect our world.

Does that sound like you? Are you the type of person who read “The Secret” and totally lost your mind at its new age brilliance? Well than H2Om is for you. But don’t just take my word for it. A literal bevy of celebrities, including Arianna Huffington, are sucking down H2Om like there’s no Mahāyāna.

When you drink ordinary water, do you get the overwhelming sensation of gratitude? Aside from when you’re literally dying of thirst? How about prosperity? Well, H2Om comes in seven fantastic infusions: Love, perfect health, prosperity, gratitude, will power, peace and joy.

Plus, as an added bonus, once they bottle the water, they play restorative compositions of music, frequencies, and spoken word to the water. H2Om will not just hydrate you in happiness, it will super hydrate you in happiness.

So this weekend, run out and rent “What The (Bleep) Do We Know!?”, buy a case of H2Om and get your zazen on.

Or just hurl your money straight down the toilet, totally bypassing the middle man. Either way, it will be a truly enlightening experience.

–WKW

Apparently Lance Armstrong; Margaret L. Kripke, and LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., didn’t get the memo - the Bush Administration doesn’t believe in regulations of any type on anything, be in mine safety or food safety or the tobacco industry. If the free market decides that people will die of cancer, than so be it. That’s what America is all about.

President’s Cancer Panel: Cut Risks
Trio Calls Tobacco, Food, Beverage Industries “Disease Vectors” And Urges Regulation

The President’s Cancer Panel calls for U.S. leaders to “summon the political will” to reduce Americans’ cancer risks — and slams the tobacco, food, and beverage industries as “disease vectors.”

Appointed by the President Bush, the panel’s three members are cancer survivor and cycling champion Lance Armstrong; Margaret L. Kripke, Ph.D., chief academic officer at Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; and panel chairman LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., M.D., professor of surgery at Howard University in Washington.

It’s the panel’s job to tell the president how the nation’s war on cancer is going. According to this year’s report, it’s not going very well at all.

Research continues to move forward — but thwarting major progress is the unhealthy lifestyles of millions of Americans.

Individual responsibility is important, the panel notes. But the panel finds that cancer prevention efforts “are compromised by federal, state, and local policies that have decreased the availability and affordability of healthy foods, limited physical education in schools,” and created an “environment that discourages physical activity.”

Perhaps even more importantly, the panel says, are “ineffective policies” that fail to regulate the marketing practices of “disease vectors” — the tobacco, food, and beverage industries.

Mincing no words, the panel report singles out the tobacco industry as “a vector of disease and death that can no more be ignored in seeking solutions to the tobacco problem than mosquitoes can be ignored in seeking to eradicate malaria.”

The report by the Cancer Panel was immediately filed next to the Iraq Study Group’s report. The main thing this report will prove to the current batch of Republicans is this - stop sending people out to do reports.

–WKW

It’s extremely clear that many on the extreme right are convinced that Islamic extremists are heading to the U.S. in their Rowboat of Doom with the soul purpose of enslaving us all and forcing us to live under Sharia Law.

Let me counter:

Salman Rushdie is very much alive.

–WKW

Is it that time already?

It’s just work, work, work with this guy.

–WKW

Thanks to Melissa McEwan for the graphic.

Well, at least 500 Iraqis didn’t die in vain. From their deaths, more death can come, as the U.S. was using the recent massive car bomb attacks for political purposes even before the last bits of Iraqi flesh hit the ground.

‘Iraqi officials: Truck bombings killed at least 500′

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The death toll in the suicide bombings Tuesday in northern Iraq has risen to at least 500, local officials in Nineveh province said Wednesday.

Iraqi Army and Mosul police sources earlier put the number at 260, but said it was likely to rise. 320 were reported wounded.

The Tuesday truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a “trademark al Qaeda event” designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

The attacks, targeting Kurdish villages of the Yazidi religious minority, were attempts to “break the will” of the American people and show that the U.S. troop escalation — the “surge” — is failing, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon said.

The bombings highlight the kind of sectarian tensions the troop surge was designed to stop.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is predominantly Sunni, and Mixon said members of the Yazidi religious minority have received threatening letters, called “night letters,” telling them “to leave because they are infidels.”

“This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will — almost genocide when you consider the fact the target they attacked and the fact that these Yazidis, out in a very remote part of Nineveh province, where there is very little security and really no security required to this point,” Mixon said.

The massacre comes ahead of next month’s report to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on progress in Iraq.

“We still have a great deal of work to do against al Qaeda in Iraq, and we have great deal of work to do against al Qaeda networks in northern Iraq,” Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, said Wednesday.

The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Sunni extremists for the “monstrous crime.” He said a committee has been formed to investigate.

–WKW

It’s not easy being Stephen Baldwin. Mainly due to the fact that he’s, you know, Stephen Baldwin. But also due to the fact that he can’t even keep a job with Jesus - or the Defense Department. It seems the Defense Department has decided to avoid completely crapping on the Separation of Church and State portion of the Constitution. For now, at least.

‘DOD Stops Plan to Send Christian Video Game to Troops in Iraq’

Plans by a Christian group to send an evangelical video game to U.S. troops in Iraq were abruptly halted yesterday by the Department of Defense after ABC News inquired about the program.

Operation Start Up (OSU) Tour, an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among soldiers, will not be sending the “apocryphal” video game in care packages as planned, according to the department.

“Left Behind: Eternal Forces” was inspired by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ best-selling book series about the battle of Armageddon, in which believers of Jesus Christ fight the Antichrist.

The game has inspired controversy among freedom of religion advocates since it was released last year.

“It’s a horrible game,” said the Rev. Timothy Simpson of the Christians Alliance for Progress. “You either kill or covert the other side. This is exactly what the Osama bin Ladens of the world have portrayed us.”

…

OSU Tour is one of the newest members of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, which connects citizens and corporations with members of the military and their families at home and abroad.

OSU Tour’s entertainment aims to help military children and families become stronger through faith-based entertainment, according to its Web site. Sports personalities, comedians and actors, including Stephen Baldwin, make up the show.

OSU president Jonathan Sprinks in a recent press release said of Baldwin, “Since God made a difference in his life, he’s been very outspoken.”

–WKW

Not long ago, while speaking about the Iraq Occupation, a relative told me, in all sincerity, that the U.S. could no longer afford to be isolationist. I shrugged. Because that’s what I do now when talking politics with any family that’s not my wife. I shrug. And then steer the conversation to sports.

The U.S. has virtually never been isolationist in any real sense of the word. We are a dangerous, aggressive nation that has slaughtered millions and millions in the name of democracy, freedom, liberty, or whichever catch-phrase worked best at the time. But mainly, we are an empire. And we will kill any that stand in the way of our imperial goals.

And there is no error when I write “we.” Because We the People have allowed this to happen. We lost control of our government. We allowed the United States to define itself as a nation of international murders and terrorists. We have stood to the side and even applauded as our nation has attacked country after country.

And while there are plenty that protest America’s overt acts of aggression, there obviously just aren’t enough. And there isn’t enough passion in it. Because the voices for peace are easily drowned out by a government and media that believes we are a nation entitled to kill anyone, anywhere, for whatever reason, and whether those reasons are truthful or not.

Think of it - the Democratic Party allowed itself to be insulted as the party that was “weak on defense.” So now, Democratic candidates talk of how they would bring war to others, and the weapons they would use. The “weak on defense” bait has been so easily swallowed, even though the United States is anything but defensive. We are an offensive juggernaut.

And it appears obvious that soon that offense will be unleashed on Iran. And many more innocents will die. And many more will grow to hate America. And the cycle will continue. Because Americans will continue to allow it. And because our leaders - for whom the word “diplomacy” is spoken with disdain and anger - know of no other way.

And if you look clearly, you will see that the government truly believes it is doing the will of the people. We the People allowed the Neoconservative takeover of our nation. And they are no fluke. They are the natural progression of things. After eons and eons of American military involvement everywhere from Panama to Palestine, we have become a people at ease with our nation’s murderous plans. The endless bursting of bombs in our name have drowned out peace, and We the People have no idea what a world without American aggression sounds like. Murder has become white noise.

Even speaking of using nuclear weapons is no longer taboo. Imagine that. Discussion of a preemptive nuclear strike on a sovereign nation is now considered serious foreign diplomacy. And those in charge see this all as validation and are able to strut about with murderous hubris. Their hunger for a militarized free-market empire is endless. We are gluttons for war and the Middle East is a virtual buffet of targets.

It’s gotten increasingly difficult to imagine those currently in charge resisting the opening to launch a first-strike attack on Iran. Followed by a draft. Followed by more war. Followed by a war economy. Followed by more war. Serial killers don’t slow down until they are forced to stop, after all. And with military bases dotting the globe, a public and world unwilling to stop them, things will continue on their obvious path. The U.S. has the largest military in the history of the planet and will continue to use it and refuse to allow the world to know peace. And We are all culpable.

The U.S. is an aggressive, warring nation. And unless something dramatic happens, and We the People force those in charge to give up the belief that the U.S. has a divine right to rain death on any nation we so please, things are going to get much worse. And soon.

–WKW

As far as soccer in the U. S. goes, something much bigger than David Beckham arriving in the U.S. to battle injuries just occurred. On the scorecard, it simply looks like this:

F Adu for A Luisao (37)

Young Freddie Adu has made his European debut for his new club, Portuguese side Benfica. The team is currently playing FC Copenhagen in the first leg of a third-round qualifier for the UEFA Champions League.

It is by no means an insignificant game, so Adu getting playing time - after just recently joining the team - is a fantastic development. It appears Benfica will take a 2-1 victory, with Adu on the field for the team’s second goal - both from star Manuel Rui Costa. Here’s hoping for continued good things for young Adu.

–WKW

“I wore him out with that stick.”

–WKW

Soon, Gen. David Petraeus will tell America that the Escalation of the Iraq Occupation has been a success.

But he won’t tell you why. CNN’s Michael Ware will, however.

“The seeds are being sown for a much broader civil war that America will leave behind.”

George W. Bush and crew are buying time by creating militias and taking the Sunni side in a civil war. But when Patraeus comes out and says that the Escalation is working, he won’t mention it. And neither will the media.

–WKW

Via Digby, here’s Rudy Giuliani in a 1994 speech where he makes it resoundingly clear - submission to an authoritarian leadership is how he believes people are truly free:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

This is why, despite his mixed conservative track record, Giuliani is the man that the fringe right are behind. The far right - which dominates the party now - wants a dictator. And Rudy is their dream candidate. And yes, this is from 13 years ago. But since when does age make people less authoritarian?

–WKW

While Brazil has proven it still has a long way to go in many aspects, it is a nation that often surprises with its progressive thinking. Especially Minister of Health José Gomes Temporão.

According to the Ministry of Health, there is one abortion for every three births in Brazil. That is a staggering statistic, especially due to the fact that abortion is illegal in this nation that has been so heavily influenced by the Catholic church.

Today, however, the state of São Paulo - with Temporão’s blessing - began a new program, where they give out the day-after pill for free in subway, bus and train stations, as well as in government clinics. All women need to receive this is a prescription from any doctor. They are also handing out information on birth control, and have been doing the same program with birth-control pills for the past month.

This is a massive step in the right direction for a nation plagued by poverty. Because while abortion is illegal, it is primarily illegal for the poor who use state-run health care. Those that can afford private health care can afford an abortion. Such is how things are in a society with mind-boggling wealth inequality. And the result means that thousands of women die annually from botched, back-alley abortions in Brazil.

This is unlikely the last we’ve heard from Temporão, however. Now he has the archaic abortion laws in his cross hairs, and he has been vocal about his lack of fear of the Catholic Church and the illogical dangers of the current abortion laws. He’s a real man of science who truly cares for his people. And poor women of Brazil are already benefiting from his hard work.

–WKW

It has come to our attention that recently a plethora of Presidential candidates and political pundits have either “mispoken” or have had their words taken “out of context.” As we always strike for accuracy, we hereby disclose these corrections from recent statements:

The editors sincerely apologize for the errors.

–WKW