New-New Orleans is going to offer “free wireless internet” to its residents.

Mayor Ray Nagin will be in Memphis this week speaking to his former constituents, and all Memphians will be listening closely to hear… how we can steal their bandwidth.

“There hasn’t been any war against Christmas — ever.”

- Boston Globe

See also: a previous Lynn quote.

Franklin Graham has an editorial in USA Today worth reading:

I support, to a degree, the notion of the separation of church and state. I shudder to think of one religion or faith ever dominating our government to the exclusion of other faiths. Even more frightening is the thought that government would ever be allowed to intrude on what is preached from our pulpits or read in our Scriptures.

But at times of disaster, at times of national tragedy, government must reach over the wall of separation and reach out to the abundant resources of America’s faith communities. Katrina presented such an opportunity.

I like the handy little sidebar on current “church-state battlegrounds.”

Here’s an article from The New Yorker on one of those “battlegrounds,” the Kitzmiller v. Dover case:

In January, the presiding judge, John E. Jones III, will render his verdict and decide whether Dover biology students will be read a four-paragraph statement casting doubt on the validity of Darwinian theory and endorsing intelligent design as an alternative.

Actually, that’s about the only sentence worth reading. So much fuss about four paragraphs “casting doubt” on a scientific theory… the sure sign of a theocracy, I tell ya! What follows is just a variation on that kind of unrealistic hyperventilation we’ve come to expect any time the subject is mentioned.

I’ve been meaning to put together a list of blogs covering Arkansas’ gubernatorial election, but that’s a project I may never complete, so for those interested, here are a few sites I found interesting.

Your first visit should always be to Arkansas Times, which also has a blog (but with a long, unfriendly url).

Arkansas Family Coalition has lots of good stuff, including a report that Hutchinson and Beebe will likely hold a debate next year. They also link to this humorous editorial on the Attorney General’s education deputy; however, I tend to agree with Beebe’s office on this one — I don’t think the courts have authority to tell the legislature how to fund education, beyond ensuring that the legislature upholds its basic duty to educate children (as is likely specified in the state constitution, given the Supreme Court’s involvement) and operates within the law. The legislative branch must not allow the judicial branch to ursurp the power of taxation.

Arkansas Watch has great stuff, but the way they post to the comments is a little confusing, and the same goes for NWA Politics.

Arkansas Truth makes me laugh.

Those would probably be my favorites, but more blogs can be found on the link page at Bullwhiz, which aggregates many of the local conservative blogs and news media, and also at The Arkansas Blog Index.

Fishkite has learned two new words, and in the spirit of this thanksgiving holiday, I’m going to pass them along to you, my cherished reader: metrospiritual and freegan.

Now that your vocabulary has been thus enriched, your life will never be the same again. No thanks necessary.

Also filed under “stranger than fiction,” today’s Sojo mail:

Reminder: Today is Buy Nothing Day! Tomorrow…

Dear Jim [I'm currently signed up as Jim Wallis, since they make you re-subscribe each time you visit the archives],

The Christmas season is always a busy one - full of competing messages that bombard you with great sales and must-buys. We at Sojourners support Adbuster’s “Buy Nothing Day” (observed on what is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year) as a way to reflect on our participation in consumer culture.

So, today, buy nothing.

But tomorrow…as you think of friends and family this season, send a great gift (at a modest price) that makes a statement! When you choose a gift from Sojourners, every purchase helps sustain our growing mission.

Today, stick it to the man and deliver a blow to the capitalist dogs!

Tomorrow, buy from us!

Good grief… sometimes the word hypocrisy just doesn’t say quite enough.

The Real Story of the First Thanksgiving
By Benjamin Franklin (1785)

“There is a tradition that in the planting of New England, the first settlers met with many difficulties and hardships, as is generally the case when a civiliz’d people attempt to establish themselves in a wilderness country. Being so piously dispos’d, they sought relief from heaven by laying their wants and distresses before the Lord in frequent set days of fasting and prayer. Constant meditation and discourse on these subjects kept their minds gloomy and discontented, and like the children of Israel there were many dispos’d to return to the Egypt which persecution had induc’d them to abandon.

“At length, when it was proposed in the Assembly to proclaim another fast, a farmer of plain sense rose and remark’d that the inconveniences they suffer’d, and concerning which they had so often weary’d heaven with their complaints, were not so great as they might have expected, and were diminishing every day as the colony strengthen’d; that the earth began to reward their labour and furnish liberally for their subsistence; that their seas and rivers were full of fish, the air sweet, the climate healthy, and above all, they were in the full enjoyment of liberty, civil and religious.

“He therefore thought that reflecting and conversing on these subjects would be more comfortable and lead more to make them contented with their situation; and that it would be more becoming the gratitude they ow’d to the divine being, if instead of a fast they should proclaim a thanksgiving. His advice was taken, and from that day to this, they have in every year observ’d circumstances of public felicity sufficient to furnish employment for a Thanksgiving Day, which is therefore constantly ordered and religiously observed.”

I’ve created a new category here at fishkite so that I can post some of the funny or stupid or profound or interesting things I often hear at work and around town.

My office is an especially rich source of materal, and a fairly accurate microcosm of the country. So let’s begin by introducing the cast. Since I might very well be fired for writing about my co-workers, let’s at least give them fake names to protect the innocent (and that would be me).

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The Corpse will be in Memphis on Wednesday signing copies of his book, “Our Endangered Malaise,” at Davis-Kidd.

When: 2 p.m. Wednesday; line forms beginning 12:45. Line tickets are required, available with purchase of “Our Endangered Values” ($25)

Where: Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 387 Perkins Ext. in Laurelwood. Call 683-9801.

Additional information: There will be no personalization of books, no signing of memorabilia, no posed photographs.

Protesting the event will be dead voters, aquatic rabbits and Americans formerly held hostage in Iran.

Carter’s central complaint these days: “religious and political conservatives have melded their efforts, bridging the formerly respected separation of church and state,” and they do not adhere to a “belief in the separation of politics and religion.”

Since Carter himself doesn’t adhere to a separation of politics and religion, we must surmise that this problem only arises when one’s politics and religious values are conservative.

It’s perfectly ok to mix the two if you happen to be John Kerry, Jim Wallis or… Jimmy Carter.

Hey J.C., J.C… won’t you sign this book for me… ’sanna hosanna, hey Superstar!

UPDATE: Add Ethiopians to that list of protestors, and this time I’m not kidding.

Rolling Stone

If you see my mascara running, it’s because I’m crying a thousand tears for Green Day’s Billie Joe, coverboy of the last issue of Rolling Stone.

Headine: Billie Joe vs. the World: Green Day’s Front Man Finds His Inner Rock God. A Story of Anger, Protest and Artfully Applied Eyeliner.

A taste:

“They don’t have the power! You’re the fuckin’ leaders! We elect these people into office! Don’t let them dictate your life or tell you what to do!” For a moment, he sounds like a presidential candidate.

That sounds like a presidential candidate, huh? Which one?

And isn’t it just so sad how Billie Joe is the only rich liberal from California who is fearlessly speaking out against this awful war to free 50 million people and emasculate Al Qaida?! Someone please pull out the world’s tiniest electric violin. If only there were a long list of elitists in Hollywood who would stand up and, as RS puts it, help “oust the country’s most powerful idiot from the Oval Office”!

Oh, and don’t forget to wake the man up “when September ends,” after we’ve immediately withdrawn from the entire Middle East, after we’ve prematurely left the new democratic governments in Iraq and Afghanistan to defend themselves, and after we’ve somehow appeased the radical islamofascist jihad — you know, once we’ve adopted that tried-and-true punk ethic of bending over for the opposition and taking it in the rear.

Which explains the eyeliner, I guess.

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