Afternoon at the Last Manatee Cafe*

*we changed the name because the owner doesn't drink anything but coffee.

Michael Savage , the San Francisco rightwing talkshow host,has it down on the Free Gaza Flotilla incident. The Israeli government betrayed the commandos because they didn't go aboard the ship in a group but one by one. They were only allowed to carry paintball guns. (Even though one American citizen was shot four times in the head.) Bibi was told to conduct the raid that way by none other than Barack Hussein Obama, who controls Israel like a puppet. Israeli officials should resign said Savage. The reason the raid was carried out this way was because Obama was advised by-----Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who are sympathetic to the Free Gaza movement.

More enlightened voices are emerging from Israel. Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, blisters Benjamin Netanyahu. " We haven't had anyone like him since David Ben-Gurion. He's a genuine prophet whose every prediction comes true,one after the other" he snarks. "This country now has a blind captain in the cockpit, flying his blindfolded passengers with exemplary position toward the destination he envisioned. If there had been any object of his scaremongering that has not yet been attained before this week, along came the outrageous seizure of the flotilla, and that goal too was in the bag. "

"Some 7 billion human beings (less about 5 million Israeli Jews) are wrong. ...The world is wrong and Netanyahu, with us in tow, is right. We will not lift the blockade. For four years it has yielded not an ounce of benefit, just damage, but what does that matter? Giddyup! Let's fulfill Netanyahu's vision. We'll become an even more despised country and won't have a single friend left in the world, not even the United States." Ouch.

Meanwhile up at Harvard, David Souter took aim at Tony Scalia's notion of originalist judging. "It has only a tenuous connection to reality." Souter said to the commencement audience " how egregiously it misses the point to think of judges in constitutional cases as just sitting there reading constitutional phases fairly and looking at reported facts objectively to produce their judgments." Souder went on to say that "the Constitution embodies the desire of the American people, like most people, to have things both ways. We want order and security, and we also want liberty. And we want not only liberty but equality as well." Because these desires clash, courts are "forced to choose between them, between one constitutional good thing and another one." No wonder he retired.

Novelist Stephen King described Glenn Beck as "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother."

Commenting on Glenn Beck, the Buffalo Beast makes this succinct contribution to our wisdom:

"If the dumbing down of political commentary continues along this trajectory, the next pundit to make the grade will be a hyena. Even the leather-winged shouting heads at Fox News look like intellectual giants next to this bleating, benighted Cassandra. It's like someone found a manic, doom-prophesying hobo in a sandwich board, shaved him, shot him full of Zoloft, and gave him a show. What makes Beck special, aside from appearing to have derived his entire geopolitical outlook from a five-minute segment about Iran on "The 700 Club", is the folksy "golly gee" manner in which he accuses his guests of collaborating with terrorists. At least Hannity and O'Reilly have the decency to act like bellicose pricks when they're engaging in breathtaking cheap shots."

The Associated Press reports that more than 2,000 candidates are running for Congress this year, the most ever and most as Republicans. Now that small government is dead as a Dodo after the Gulf Oil spill, people over at Crooks and Liars are saying the Republicans are now running as anarchists. How will this square with the authoritarianism of the Washington party? There's alot of truth to what they say. How can you square the teabaggers and libertarians with the authoritarian discipline that someone like Tan Man Boehner demands? I received my invitation today to join the John Boehner for Speaker Club. Meanwhile wingnut Joseph Farah is demanding a purge of the Republican congressional leadership.

Grover Norquist gave a Memorial day interview celebrating the fact that there are only a couple million World War II veterans still alive and that the "Greatest Generation" would soon be dead. He blamed them for creating the social welfare state and that it will be easier to dismantle it when they are gone. Class Act.

Bill Robinson has a great idea. His company Corrections Concepts, Inc, a non-profit organization founded by a group of Christian ministers and lay people, believes the time is now to create an All-Christian prison. He is proposing to create a 600-person facility in Wakita, Oklahoma. Wakita. about fifty miles from the Kansas border, had its fifteen minutes of fame in the 1996 film Twister.

The prison would be open to Christian inmates facing their last 12-30 months of incarceration. The inmates would work full-time at private industries that would operate within the prison and they would earn money to pay restitution to their victims and pay room and board. Apparently,this prison labor idea has been used by companies like Microsoft, Victoria's Secret, Starbucks and Shelby Classic Cars. For every job for these companies filled by prisoners , more than one is lost in the private sector.

Robinson's full plans include juvenile facilities as well as a geriatric section. The prison will be administered by Christian officials, attended by Christian guards and will adhere to Christian programming. Sounds like a job for Blackwater.

But Bill Robinson brings something special to the task. He worked for several years as an actor, writer, comedian, director and producer. He claims he revamped and sold radio stations, built and operated dinner theaters and was a partner in an outdoor advertising company operating in nine states. In 1962, he went to prison for white collar crimes, which he blamed on alcohol and drugs. He served 7 1/2 years in prison. He was born again in March 1980 and when that didn't take he made "Jesus Christ the Lord of His Life" in March 1983. Jesus called him into the prison ministry in 1984.

Apparently, many civil liberties groups have a slight problem with the whole concept, not the least of which is public funding to a specific religion. But he is trying Oklahoma. So, stay tuned.