12

5And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

 6And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

 7He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

 8But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

 9And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.

 10And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,

 11Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal       (Revelations 21)

Twelve Angry Men is an Classic of the American Cinema. This movie takes place in one of those old courthouses. We have one of those edifices up here. You walk into a masterpiece of old granite architecture with high ceilings and you can hear your steps echo. When you arrive in the main courtroom, you find yourself in a cathedral of justice; not some low ceilinged compartment like the courtrooms of today in our great metropolitan areas. It is just not right to sentence people to death in these high rise office buildings.

Twelve Angry Men is one of those gems that could be referred to as a one act play, something you do not see very often. And you can understand why the play had a good run on Broadway. You are taken into a jury room; a room with an ugly wooden table that you could find at a yard sale if it was not so damn big. It is discolored and demonstrates deep indentations indicating that it would be perfectly respectable to chisel your name into it with your lunch knife if it weren't for the fact that meals were served with plastic implements.

The script is rather quaint by today's standards. A young man has been tried for murder and the twelve jurors have seen little evidence that would indicate innocent. The vote is taken after a foreman is elected and it is 11 to 1 for a guilty verdict.

Henry Fonda plays the commie liberal who feels that it is incumbent upon the apostles appointed by the court to take some time to review evidence before putting a teen into the electric chair. Everybody hates Fonda at first because he is keeping the rest of the crew away from their appointed rounds. And the drama unfolds as one juror after another juror breaks down and accepts the golden rule of reasonable doubt. And they eventually 'solve' the crime and some of the boys actually reach a kind of epiphany before the day is done.

I watched a Russian take on this film called simply 12. It is phenomenal. Instead of a jury room these twelve apostles must deliberate in what appears to be a high school gym with a folding table.  Even though a Russian Jury needs only a vote of six for acquittal, the jurors come to an agreement that there must be unanimity in any verdict.

I was quite touched by this presentation and felt as if I had had a chance to see the Russian Soul. I mean the emotions just explode, as they say, on the screen and the gym really provides a theatre of the absurd.

The twist here is that when the vote evolves into an 11-1 for acquittal, the jury foreman cautions that the defendant would live longer in prison than on the street once the Russian Mafia discovers that there has been an acquittal and that the boy is to be freed.  You see the crime was a ultimately a contract kill and the boy was set to be the fall guy to cover up the entire mess.

And for commie conspiracy buffs, the foreman admits that he is old KGB but eventually caves into the will of the majority and even takes care of the defendant following the proceedings.

I bring these movies to your attention and recommend them highly because they delve into the question of truth and the duty to uncover the truth with the evidence available to those who are charged to make reasoned decisions in this world.  And we, as citizens have a duty, I would suggest, to make some modicum of inquiry before deciding an issue presented in our main stream media.

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Once upon a time, 1959 to be exact, a widow discovered per her regular conversations with God that the world was going to end.  This happens all the time of course throughout the globe with no real consequence. Every single year that I have resided on this planet, I have been told that the end is near.

There are millions of people in this civilized nation who believe the end is near, right now. And these people are inevitably disappointed when their predictions prove for naught. I mean people like James Watt get down on their knees every day praying for the rapture. Rather quaint really. They are usually referred to as the fundamentalist right even though every time, I mean every goddamanable time, they are proven to be fundamentally wrong; so much for proof.

Anyway, back to 1959 and Florence Houteff. Florence was a widow and a member of the Seventh Day Adventists. Much to her chagrin, the majority in her church did not feel it was time for the rapture as she had been informed. So she got a smaller following to escort her to a place called Mr. Carmel and set up camp.

In 1984 the widow Houteff discovered to her dismay that although the end was not that near for her congregation, it was extremely near for her personally. So she appointed, per more conversations with God, a fell by the name of David Koresh (aka Vernon Howell) to lead the faithful.

What follows is a story that ends up rather humorous, from a National Lampoon point of view anyway. There was much moaning and gnashing of teeth and pornographic pleadings and the firing of oozies and the deaths of members of competing factions...everything you would expect from the faithful who believed the end was near anyway.

There were probate court proceedings. There were murder trials. There was lots of press. A good time was had by all. Basically somebody named Roden who was at odds with Koresh over leadership of the chosen. I found this little gem in Wiki that is hilarious:

After the death of Lois and the probate case, Howell attempted to gain control of the Mt Carmel center by force. George Roden had dug up the casket of Anna Hughes from the Davidian cemetery and had challenged Howell to a resurrection contest to prove who was the rightful heir. Howell instead went to the police and claimed Roden was guilty of corpse abuse. By October 31, 1987 the county prosecutors had refused to file charges without proof and so on November 3, 1987 Howell and seven armed companions attempted to access the Mt. Carmel chapel with the goal of photographing the body in the casket. George Roden was advised of the interlopers and grabbed an Uzi in response. The sheriff's department responded about 20 minutes into the gunfight. Sheriff Harwell got Howell on the phone and told him to stop shooting and surrender. Howell and his companions, dubbed the "Rodenville Eight" by the media, were tried on April 12, 1988; seven were acquitted and the jury was hung on Howell's verdict. The county prosecutors did not press the case further.[7]

Without even getting into matters like ax murderers and all out wars with local police, this story really has to be relegated to that real old time religion centuries ago. Truly a lot of fun was had by all.  And God looked down and said:

HEY, THIS IS ALL GOOD!!!

So now we must travel forward in time to April of 1993. Wild Bill has been in office all of three months. The head of the FBI is a Bush I holdover and has been looking into these Branch Davidians for some time. . The Attorney General is Janet Reno. And all hell breaks loose and a lot of people die.

My only point here is that all of these people were nuts; out of their frickin minds. There are not twelve reasonable jurors in Russia, China or the good ole US of A who could find one sane thing about these Davidians.

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Hank Stuever wrote on the 19th:

Fifteen years ago today, Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck filled with explosives and ammonium nitrate fertilizer in front of the Oklahoma City federal building and detonated a bomb so strong it sheared off half the building and killed 168 people. History is still puzzling through the event's lingering effects.

So Timothy McVeigh weighs into all of this through a series of interviews he did before his death in 2001 and Rachel Maddow played some of those tapes. April 19th was an important date to him because of Lexington & Concord and because that was the date of the Waco Siege.

Now we on the Left have made a bit of a mistake here. We see that it's April 19th and we see men calling for the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government due to grievances they have with Afro-American Muslim Alien Presidents and commie liberals. This siege mentality leads me to think of Waco.

I mean Waco represents an enclave of anti government group fully armed and ready to do battle. But it is hard not to look a Waco in this light because these militia leaders keep saying that they are armed and ready and will not fire the first shot.

And at Waco we have a 50 day siege ending in the deaths of 76 people including 20 children. It all started in February of '93 when the Feds under the auspices of William Sessions attempted to serve some warrants.

When you think about it though, these right wing militias pray for something like this to happen to them. What better excuse to open fire on the enemy and go out with a blaze of glory?

The siege was a perfect storm for Timothy McVeigh:

In 1993, he drove to Waco, Texas during the Waco Siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers, such as "When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw." He told a student reporter:

The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.[23]

Well now I think, after careful review, that Waco and the Oklahoma City bombings do give us fair warning of things to come. The two tragedies surely seem connected with propaganda being handed out by people like Vanderboegh. And the rhetoric of the becks and the limbaughs of this world surely echo the sentiments of people like Koresh and McVeigh.

So now pretend you are a member of one of these militias or that you are beck or morris or rush or hannity or any one of hundreds of morons seeking to incite violence in this country. How do you defend yourself when words coming out of your mouth are almost word for word the same phrases that spewed from McVeigh?

Why you blame the Oklahoma City Bombing on the President of the United States. Except your Muslim Black Socialist President was only 30 years of age and:

In 1993 he joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 13-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996...

Well, in that case in this the Year of Our Lord 2010, you blame an incident that took place in April of 1993 on Wild Bill Clinton. It is the only manner in which you can place the blame for these right wing terrorist attacks upon the Democrats.

MORRIS: And let's understand what was Timothy McVeigh's motivation. God knows what was going in that crazy head of his but there's some speculation, and he himself had said, that it was the reaction to the Waco takeover. And Bill Clinton orchestrated that takeover. And in fact was so ashamed at what he did in Waco that he was not gonna appoint Janet Reno to a second four year term. And she told him in a meeting right before the inauguration day for his new term that 'if you don't appoint me, I'm gonna tell the truth about Waco.' And that forced Clinton's hand in reappointing her. So I think Mr. --http://mediamatters.org/research/201004200047

Limbaugh has repeatedly blamed Clinton for the Oklahoma City bombing. Responding to Clinton's warnings about incendiary rhetoric, on April 19 Limbaugh blamed Clinton for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. According to Limbaugh, Timothy McVeigh "was not inspoired by anybody's words, he was inspired by Mr. Clinton's deeds," including the "Waco invasion."

http://mediamatters.org/research/201004200047

These traitors to our democratic republic, these demagogues are ranting and raving about how liberals INCITE right wing militias to murder and mayhem.

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I would like to propose something. I would like to propose a procedure by which issues could be resolved. Issues like taxation, and health care and  nuclear arms and financial reform and Middle East Wars.

You take 6 democrats and two independents and four republicans--the ratio of politicians in Congress right now if you count blue dogs as independents--and you put them IN A GODDAMN ROOM AND YOU TELL THEM THAT THEY CANNOT COME OUT OF THE FRICKIN ROOM UNTIL THEY ARRIVE AT A UNANIMOUS VERDICT!!!

The end.