The Capitol Hill Scandal Timeline

(applicable to anyone involved in a high-profile kerfuffle)

Stage 1. Horror: "Holy @#&%! They found this out! Eek! I'm not available for comment."

Stage 2. Deny everything: "No idea. I don't know this man. I'm shocked. SHOCKED! I had no idea it was this bad. I don't remember having any conversations relating to this."

Stage 3. Blame someone: "Uh... all this is the result of the liberal bias in the media."

Stage 4. Early retirement: "Dennis, how could you?! I thought we were friends! You named your DOG after me! Asshole!"

Stage 5. Spiteful revenge: "I will fully cooperate with the investigation. In fact, I knew about all this from Day One, and I warned everyone, but they shut me out. Uh huh. And they should all resign. All of them. All of the ones who made me resign. I'm taking you all down with me, you hear me, you fuckers!"

Someone, take a flamethrower to the place. Please. Do us all a favor.

Oh yeah... and the source for McCain's comment is Fox News, no less! Wow.

My question to Clinton, though, is this: why didn't he do more to prevent the landfall of Hurricane Katrina? It is his inexcusable leniency towards gays in the military and his embrace of the tree-hugging hippies during his presidency that's resulted in God's Wrath (tm) visited upon the heathens of New Orleans. Which is fine. But! The hurricane also destroyed Trent Lott's house, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is inexcusable.

And now we find out that it was Clinton who basically gave Kim Jong-Il the green light to proceed with the nukular tests. Not only that, when Iran finally develops THEIR nukes, we'll find out that it was also Bubba's fault. In fact, that's who he was on the phone with while getting a blowjob from Lewinsky: the Axis of Evil (tm)!! He was telling them to go ahead with the nukular stuff! He was hoping, you see, that they would test their new weapons during the scandal and distract the American people. (Little did he know that nothing, but NOTHING ever distracts the American people from a sex scandal.)

Or, uh, somesuch.

Ha! I bet Hastert fell for Paul's evangelical rantings because, hey, the current leadership of the House seems to be in the same mode. Hilarity!

When it rains, it pours, indeed. I just hope this hurricane doesn't take the rest of the country down with it.

People, especially English people (if I may guilt trip 'em for a moment) readily forget that a mere century ago (a blip on the evolutionary timeline), it was the contemporaries of Darwin who were confident that a pattern of lumps on a man's head reveals his predisposition towards crime. It was the selfsame scientists who argued for the forced sterilization of thousands of Americans on the grounds that the "morons" had no right to proliferate. It was the selfsame scientists who argued for the virtues of formula as opposed to breast-feeding, leading to a generation of people with horrific allergies.

While the religious people had and will calmly and confidently kill the nonbelievers for their nonbelief, the scientists had and will cause countless deaths by confidently believing something that in the end further investigation proves false. I'm not saying science is evil. I am saying that just as religion may not find good answers to fundamental questions, scientific answers may not be so spiffy either. That is why the main tool of the modern scientist is DOUBT, doubt in the best research, doubt acquired after three centuries of horrific mistakes. Calmly and confidently stating that science rules and religion sucks is, at best, stupid.

One of these days arrogant Westerners will learn that there are different ways to express the same thing. When a brick falls on someone's head and he wonder why, oh why, it is he that is hurt, telling him about the laws of gravity is pointless: he wants none of your scientific explanation. He wants to feel better. How that is accomplished... well, that has to do with the person, wouldn't it?

I think the world would gain a lot more if Falwell and Dawkins and their ilk (oh yes, I conflate them deliberately!) would stop publishing so many books and start actually listening to what this Universe is telling them. And perhaps, with the air clear of their incessant shrieking, some of us would actually be able to listen as well, and hear for ourselves.

(I must admit, however, that even the scariest scientific nutjob is a far cry from even the most moderate religious nutjob. That doesn't alter my point, though.)