Chickens Of Madness Insanely Come Home To Roost In The Monkey House

First lady Laura Bush showed a home video of White House holiday life _ from the first dogs' point of view _ to a group of patients, their families and staff at Children's National Medical Center on Wednesday…

After scolding Barney for playing hide and seek with Miss Beazley's gifts, President Bush chides a contrite Miss Beazley, saying, "I understand you've been a media hound."

He patches up the dogs' differences by telling them, "You have to remember the true meaning of the holiday season."

White House holiday life?  George "Jesus Christ Almighty" Bush remembering the true meaning of the "holiday season"?  With dogs? 

What's the deal with this secular, Christmas hating Yale elitist? 

But, wait, it gets worse!

What's missing from the White House Christmas card? Christmas.

This month, as in every December since he took office, President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season."

Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas sales rather than "holiday specials" and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation rather than for "winter break." They celebrated when House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) insisted that the sparkling spectacle on the Capitol lawn should be called the Capitol Christmas Tree, not a holiday spruce.

Then along comes a generic season's greeting from the White House, paid for by the Republican National Committee. The cover art is also secular, if not humanist: It shows the presidential pets -- two dogs and a cat -- frolicking on a snowy White House lawn.

Actually, the card shows Bill Frist vivisecting the cat while Rick Santorum frolicks naked with the dogs.  All around them, hundred dollar bills swirl like snowflakes in a blizzard.

But the card does wish everyone a happy "holiday season".  Showing how much Bush and his liberal elitist White House hates Christmas.

Like Bill O'Reilly, selling his FOX "Holiday Ornaments", while battling valiantly against the forces of Soros and evil, anti-Christmas secularism, which, again, appears to be spear-headed by George W. Bush.

I could rant.  But this "War On Christmas" defies any rant.  It's so goddammed stupid, if you started mocking it, today, you wouldn't even be halfway done by the time God, Almighty blew the sun out of the sky for once and for all.

It really should be the final--and this time we're serious!--knife in the heart of modern conservatism.   I mean, if the record setting deficits of the last three fiscally conservative presidents weren't enough, if the expansive ginormous government of the last three "small government" conservative presidents weren't enough, if the total lack of accountability and personal responsibility from the last three conservative presidents weren't enough...

...and we won't even mention the entire philandering, profiteering, and prison bound conservative leadership in Congress...

...then this really ought to do it.  I mean, it really should.

The War On Christmas???

There's no War On Christmas, you fucking morons.  Not by Soros.  Not by the ACLU.  Not by your major department stores.

None.  Not now.  Not ever.  None.

The only War that's ever been waged on Christmas has been waged by Christians:

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.

The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritanism waned. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that the Devil had stolen Christmas "and converted it into a day of worldly festivity, shooting and swearing." Throughout the 1800's, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches were closed on Dec. 25 because "they do not accept the day as a Holy One." On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just 18 states.

Christmas gained popularity when it was transformed into a domestic celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly drawings, which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and swearing, but it introduced another concern: commercialism. By the 1920's, the retail industry had adopted Christmas as its own, sponsoring annual ceremonies to kick off the "Christmas shopping season."

Religious leaders objected strongly. The Christmas that emerged had an inherent tension: merchants tried to make it about buying, while clergymen tried to keep commerce out. A 1931 Times roundup of Christmas sermons reported a common theme: "the suggestion that Christmas could not survive if Christ were thrust into the background by materialism." A 1953 Methodist sermon broadcast on NBC - typical of countless such sermons - lamented that Christmas had become a "profit-seeking period." This ethic found popular expression in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." In the 1965 TV special, Charlie Brown ignores Lucy's advice to "get the biggest aluminum tree you can find" and her assertion that Christmas is "a big commercial racket," and finds a more spiritual way to observe the day.

And even if that weren't the truth, even if the obscene commercialization of the supposedly holiest day of the Christian year weren't embarrassing enough to the Christian right, you'd still think that having out of control, insane bullshitters like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and whoever else rant and rave about sinister conspiracies to attack Christmas would finally make even the most stalwart Clinton loathing individual shoot his TV set.

During "The Factor".

I mean, even if you're a right wing nut, enough is enough.

How stupid do these people think you are, Republicans?  What kind of morons do they take you for?  A War On Christmas???  These total charlatans are trying to convince you that there's some sort of holy significance between Walmart saying "Happy Holidays" and "Merry Christmas"?

It's too much.  Really.  Even for right wing lunatics.  Some things are just too stupid.  And this is one of them. 

Rubes, wake up!  These people think you're morons and, by waging the War For Christmas, you're convincing them they're right.  They're not defending you.  They're laughing at you.  They hate you.  They can't stop laughing at how stupid you are and how easy it is to manipulate you.

Terrorism lost it's terror.  And now they're trying to convince you there are evil elfs in Santa's workshop.

All the while selling "Holiday Ornaments" and sending out "Happy Holiday" cards and making videos about the true spirit of the "holiday" season.

It's funny.  I mean, it's laughably funny, but it's also depressing and annoying.  It's depressing that so many Americans are so dumb and so gullible.  And it's annoying to have to hear crazy shit like this every time Republicans run the gubment.

On the other hand, it is kind of fun to watch Bush get attacked by the same wild weasels he let loose on the rest of us.  It's kind of fun to watch Bush and the modern Gee Oh Pee squirm and wince and show their irritation and regret at empowering the stupidest, craziest, most out of control mental cases in our country.

Sure, it might fuck up Bush's holidays.  But it is making my Christmas, my liberal, secular, humanistic, agnostic Christmas kind of merry.

Comments

[Mary]

Boy, Chickens AND Midget Sex! Now your're talking. Reminded me of a guy I dated who worked for NSA. We both had high level security clearances and we were talking about our interviews prior to getting the clearance. He was actually asked, Do you have sex with animals. Say, chickens? To which he responded, "Do you know the price of a good chicken these days?" The interviewer didn't crack a smile. Merry Fitsmas!

[Ellen]

Merry Fitzmas reminded me, can we still celebrate Festivus?? I don't want to be politically correct or anything.

[cookie]

yes, we should celebrate Festivus! And I think Ricky should start us off with the airing of the greivences.

[ricky]

Welcome to my blog, Cookie. It's called "The Airing of Greivences".

[Thesaurus Rex]

Hot, damn! Well (very well) said.

[Mrs. K8]

If this isn't enough to make anyone insane, there's a story by "AP Religion Writer" Rachel Zoll about how evangelical megachurches are closing this year ON CHRISTMAS DAY.

Why?

So that the poor church staff and volunteers can be at home and enjoy the "holiday" with their families! [And open all those materialistic goodies wrapped and placed under the tree, no doubt. Or watch football games. Those video games won't play by themselves, you know.]

Here's the link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051207/ap_on_re_us/closed_on_christmas;_ylt=Amhxf1_m2ZXeBT7uy1kyG8ys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

[Mrs. K8]

Oops, thought the link would become shortened, sorry!

There's a link to the story at www.huffingtonpost.com -- lower right-hand side of the page.

[CMO]

Thanks for reminding folks about the historical record and the Puritans' actual "war" on Christmas. 2 other points to remember - first that Christmas is not even close to being the "holiest day of the year" for actual Christians of any stripe or denomination. That day is Easter. Second, and related to that, the only people that find as you rightly call it some "holy significance" in being wished a Merry Christmas are so-called Christians who never darken the door of a church, so constantly try to justify their religious impulses in the secular world with crap like this. Last point, then I'll shut up - in the Christian church right now (as opposed to the Church of Wal Mart)it is NOT EVEN CHRISTMAS yet, it's ADVENT.

[t-bone]

Early Christians co-opted pagan traditions and morphed/absorbed them into what we now equate with Christmas; the goodies, the tree, the gifts. This nonsense would be laughable if it weren't so scary how easily most people are manipulated into victimhood by the specter of the evil ACLU trying to kill Santa, Rudolph, and the baby Jeebus.

Wake me up when the "Feats of Strength" start.

[Jack O'Roses]

This is in part an "anger ploy." If we fight back hard from a place of anger, we give them evidence of what they're saying.

But we cant let it sit.

So the best thing is to ridicule it - which is a potent form of political speech they are trying to repress through proclaiming themselves as victims of the "mean" left. Who would ridicule an underdog?

I would if he were a fraud.

They are.