The President was here this morning and spoke to a luncheon. I wasn’t able to attend but heard it was very good.

UPDATE: Here is a transcript of the President’s speech to the NRB.

Meanwhile, Friend-of-Blather, Bonnie has posted some healing reflections on the recent atrocity in Jerusalem. Read “Finding the Quiet Center.”

I’m sitting in one of the lobbies of the leviathan Gaylord Opryland Hotel watching the toupees go by.

I’m taking the annual dose of punishment required of all who wish to particupate in the Christian media industrial complex–attendance at the National Religious Broadcasters convention.

It’s sort of like that initiation ritual Richard Harris’ character had to endure to be a member of the Indian tribe in “A Man Called Horse.” Only the ordeal happens every year.

Okay. Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic. You hardly ever get hung up by hooks through your chesty parts at these things.

Jerusalem Post: “Attack Will Be Seen in Messianic Terms”

Ben-David: “An Assault on the Heart of Zionism”

DEBKA: “Leads to Hamas-Damascus, Hizballah – or both – in Jerusalem students’ murders”

Israel Insider: “Why there’s a Hamas-Israel war.”

YNet: “Hamas Countdown Has Begun“

Here is footage no U.S. News organization has the huevos or integrity to show you. Palistinians in joyous celebration of the successful slaughter of Israeli students.

Naturally, the blame-the-victim reflex among America’s “progressives” kicked in before the blood had been mopped up off the floor.

There is a war coming, dear readers. Israel will not allow Olmert to appease and restrain much longer. In fact, the last straw may have already hit the camel’s back.

. . .if Hillary somehow finds a powerplay that gets her the Dem nomination? Pretty darned ugly if this is any indication.

When I was composing my Moses post (below) last night, James Lileks was having similar thoughts about the same time:

 . . .if Moses was tripping we wouldn’t have ten commandments. We would have three. The first would make sense, more or less; the second, written half an hour later, would command profound respect for lizards who sit on stones and look at you, because they’re freaking incredible when you think about it, and the third would be gibberish.

Never mind the problem of getting the tablets down the mountain – anyone who has experience of watching stoners try to assemble pizza money when the doorbell rings doubts that Moses could have hauled stone tablets all the way down.

Scroll down for the whole thing, here.

Here’s everything you need to know about why it was vital to cast that strategic vote for Hillary in the Texas primary this week—all bundled up in an appalling, terrifying, three minute-five second bundle.

Update: I have some additional thoughts on this video over at my “Stop Worshiping Celebrities” blog.

 

Moses was just tripping.

That’s the theory of an Israeli professor of cognitive psychology at Hebrew University who seems to see in Moses’ epiphanies some similarities to experiences he had hopped up on hallucinogens in the Amazon jungle.

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Alrighty. As the cognitive psychologists say, “Let’s explore this.”

First, let’s examine the achievement we’re trying to attribute to smoking tree bark. Moses came down from an extended mountain retreat carrying a moral code that was unlike anything previously known on earth. It was concise, revolutionary, and established an ethical foundation upon which all of Western Civilization would eventually stand.

Now, I don’t have any personal experience with psychotropic foods and snacks, but from what I’ve read, most people who attempt better living through bio-pharmacology don’t come up with “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” They come up with, “Let’s attack the neighbor’s wife because she is a bat-demon whose face is melting.”

Take, for example, author William Burroughs account of trying peyote in his book, Queer:

Horrible stuff. Made me sick like I wanted to die. I got to puke and I can’t. Just excruciating spasms of the asparagras, or whatever you call that gadget. Finally the peyote comes up solid like a ball of hair, solid all the way up, clogging my throat. As nasty a sensation as I ever stood still for. The high is interesting, but hardly worth the sick stage. Your face swells around the eyes, and the lips swell, and you feel like an Indian, or what you figure an Indian feels like. Primitive, you understand. Colors are more intense, but somehow flat and two-dimensional. Everything looks like a peyote plant. There is a nightmare undercurrent. I had nightmares after taking it, one after the other, every time I went back to sleep. In one dream I had rabies and looked in the mirror and my face changed and I began howling. Another dream I had a chlorophyll habit. Me and five other chlorophyll addicts are waiting to score. We turn green and we can’t kick the chlorophyll habit. One shot and you are hung for life. We are turning into plants.

Not exactly conducive to inventing monotheism, wouldn’t you say? But the Ten Commandments weren’t the only revelation Moses delivered out there on the plains of Moab. Moses filled the entire book of Leviticus with sanitary, dietary, health and civil laws he said he got directly from the mouth of God.

The civilizational guidelines were millennia ahead of their time and reflect scientific knowledge that wouldn’t be obtained, in some cases, until the 20th Century.That’s some mighty potent tree bark. I’ll have what he was having.

Or perhaps one athiest professor of cognitive psychology was still feeling the after-effects of some bad jungle mushrooms when he came up with that theory.

Just got an email from John McCain expressing hopes I’ll help replenish the campaign coffers.

However, my wallet will remainly cozily ensconced in my hip pocket until I see who he picks as a running mate. If it is a robust, full-spectrum conservative. . .well, then I may just open up the floodgates to my vast personal fortune. (At least to the tune of a hundred bucks or so.)

If, on the other hand, we get McCain, Part Deux; McCain Lite; Son of McCain; McCain-Robin to McCain-Batman. . . then I’ll find a good 527 organization to help or some close House races. 

CNN is calling it the Limbaugh Effect.  Apparently more than 10% of voters in the Texas and Ohio primaries identified themselves to exit polls as Republicans. You can be sure that there were many others who just didn’t fess up.

Of course, I didn’t act because of Rush. But great minds do think alike and all. . .