I marveled at an Ocean without shore,

and at a Shore that did not have an ocean;

And at a Morning Light without darkness,

and at a Night that was without daybreak;

And then a Sphere with no locality

known to either fool or learned scholar;

And at an azure Dome raised over the earth,

circulating 'round its center - Compulsion;

And at a rich Earth without o'er-arching vault

and no specific location, the Secret concealed...

I courted a Secret which existence did not alter;

for it was asked of me: "Has Thought enchanted you? "

- To which I replied: "I have no power over that;

I counsel you: Be patient with it while you live.

But, truly, if Thought becomes established

in my mind, the embers kindle into flame,

And everything is given up to fire

the like of which was never seen before!"

And it was said to me: "He does not pluck a flower

who calls himself with courtesy 'Freeborn'."

"He who woos the belle femme in her boudoir, love-beguiled,

will never deem the bridal-price too high!"

I gave her the dower and was given her in marriage

throughout the night until the break of Dawn -

But other than Myself I did not find. - Rather,

that One whom I married - may his affair be known:

For added to the Sun's measure of light

are the radiant New Moon and shining Stars;

Like Time, dispraised - though the Prophet (Blessings on him!)

had once declared of your Lord that He is Time.

Really. Anyway, Reagan cooked up the hostages deal, just to screw Carter.

Sarah Posner does a gorgeous job on Hagee, here:

http://tinyurl.com/65r2ck

Let me poke another little hole in CounterPunch. The generally excellent article by Robert Weitzel that I mentioned a few threads ago seems to destroy its own credibility here:

"The CNP was formed in 1981 as an umbrella organization to advance an ultra-conservative, right wing Christian agenda. LaHaye’s particular agenda items include replacing U.S. secular law with Old Testament biblical law and a Middle East foreign policy that expedites the Second Coming. According to the New York Times, the CNP consists of “a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country” who meet “behind closed doors at undisclosed locations…to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.” Though the membership of the CNP is a guarded secret, a list of those known to have been associated with it reads like a who’s who of Christian Zionists and neocon ideologues whose passion is to see the Middle East in flames and in chains. A short list includes: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly, and Oliver North — the guy who sold weapons to Iran using Israel as the middleman. Do not be blindsided. The CNP is a major player in domestic and foreign policy decisions and the “evil” that results."

http://www.counterpunch.org/weitzel05142008.html

-- It's absurd to imagine that hard boiled pragmatic realpolitikers waste their time discussing the dispensationalist theory of history, in either its pre-millenarian or post-millenarian variants, doesn't it? This is just like Franklin Lamb - it spoils a good argument, by embellishing it implausibly for effect.

"That G-d, for instance, isn't something that comes and goes out of fashion. That clinging to religion isn't a knee-jerk response to nativist paranoia, but is the hard work of constant faith.

"Likewise, clinging to guns isn't some weird obsession so that Bubba can hang Bambi's head over the mantel. To many gun owners, it's a constitutional bulwark against government tyranny. As Condi Rice has noted, it wasn't long ago in this country that blacks needed guns to protect themselves when the police would not."

-- Clanger number one is spelling 'God' as 'G-d', which by her own definition is about as un-American as you can get. Clanger number two is arguing that Obama shouldn't be anti-guns, because he might need a gun to defend himself against ... um ... real Americans.

I hope I didn't confuse anyone with the two cites about "G-d" and guns. On the face of it, it should be impossible to market redneck americanism as a jewish asset, and I suppose I ought to look more carefully at JWR, since I think the problem with "zionism" nowadays is not so much a problem with "zionism" per se (which used to have anti-imperialist elements) as the fact that "zionism" as a brand has been hijacked by white supremacist evangelical US imperialism, and this JWR material seems to be a sort of epitome of that.