(N.B. I am back from the road trip, the last several days of which were spent without Internet. I’m going through all the photos and will post them, as well as individual entries for each day of the trip, as soon as I’m able. Hopefully later today.)

Please check out what John Scalzi has to say about this issue:

Make no mistake that supporters of the “California Marriage Protection Act” will be voting to destroy existing marriages. Every single person who says they support this initiative should be made to understand that is what they are going to do, and be made to acknowledge that fact. Every person who is on the fence about the initiative should be made to understand that this will be the consequence. Same-sex marriage is not some theoretical construct in California; it exists. And while no marriages will end if the “California Marriage Protection Act” fails, many marriages will end if it passes.

It does not profit anyone to ignore this reality, nor to ignore the shameful irony of claiming this act somehow “protects” marriage. It doesn’t. So don’t.

California didn’t end when gay marriages became legal. The sky didn’t blow up and the earth didn’t split open and devour those whom God found out of His favour. Teh Geighs aren’t destroying the world. Don’t let this proposition destroy their right to love.

That these outrageous comments and beliefs are still confined to a small corner of the online world and haven’t been getting the kind of press that Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright has been enjoying, I can only attribute to (a) the so-called liberal media’s ongoing love affair with McCain and (b) the incredible wealth and power of Hagee’s ministry and media empire.

Money quote: “How did [the Holocaust] happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, ‘My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.’ Today Israel is back in the land … They are physically alive but they’re not spiritually alive.”

Full transcript and video (YouTube video of audio recording of sermon) after the jump.

Again he said unto me, “Prophesy unto these bones, and say unto them: O you dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!” And he spoke to them and they stood and they became an exceeding great army—meaning they physically came to life.

Now how is God going to bring them back to the land? The answer is fishers and hunters.

The answer is given in Jeremiah 16, verse 15 and following. God says in Jeremiah 16: “Behold I will bring them (the Jewish people) again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers”—that would be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—”Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them”—that will be the Jews—”from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.”

If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust… you can’t see that.

So think about this—I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who entices you with a bait. How many of you know who Theodore Herzl was? How many of you don’t have a clue who he was? Woo! Sweet God!

Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said, “This land is our land, God wants us to live there.” So he went to the Jews of Europe and said, “I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.” So few went, Herzl went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust.

Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter.

And the Bible says—Jeremiah righty?—”They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks.” Meaning: there’s no place to hide.

And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn’t write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, “My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.”

Today Israel is back in the land and they are at Ezekiel 37 and 8. They are physically alive but they’re not spiritually alive.

Now how is God going to cause the Jewish people to come spiritually alive and say, “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He is God”?

Via Bruce Wilson at The Revealer

Via TPM/Veracifier and Think Progress.

This level of disappointment is perfectly ridiculous. Both Clinton and Obama are strong on choice, strong on women’s issues, and strong Democrats. Yet the race for the Democratic nomination has gone on way too long and is, thank goodness, almost over. The Democratic Party should start to corral its support and start the battle against McCain. Clinton said today that it would be a “terrible mistake” if voters chose McCain over Obama, a muted recognition of the fact that earlier comments she made implying McCain’s preferability over Obama may not have been in the general interests of the party. And that’s what it’s really about at this point: the interests of a party that should be focussed on beating the other party. The Republican Party has been there for a while already; the Democratic Party is lagging far behind.

The astute reader will note that I have not said Clinton should drop out. On the contrary, there are several compelling reasons for Clinton to stay in the race, at least until the primary elections are over, the most convincing of which is that it would look extremely bad for Clinton to drop out and then win several of the remaining primaries, especially Kentucky, which she has been predicted to win for a long time now. However, the Democrats as a group need to focus on what is going to bring victory to the party in November, and right now that means starting to coalesce behind one presidential candidate. NARAL’s endorsement is right in line with this, as is John Edwards’s recent endorsement of Obama. And if you’re a Clinton supporter who is too affected by the sour grapes of not being in a winning position, let alone not winning NARAL’s endorsement, chill out. It’s not personal.

Real posting resuming soon! Thanks for the holiday, internet.

• Sometimes I think my viola-playing belongs in the Really Terrible Orchestra.
• Microsoft executives are not surprised to learn how awful Windows Vista really is.
• Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be nominated for Vice President and current Clinton hench-person, believes that Obama has got this far only because he’s a black man.
• Some amusing British humour about the U.S. presidential election.
• Required reading: Daniel Gordis’s most recent dispatch regarding how Hayyim Nachman Bialik would be mortified by the State of Israel today.
• Iraq really didn’t have WMDs—can you friggin’ believe it?
• Chris Beam’s excellent insight that the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal is more likely to harm the Democratic Party than Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Now I can close all those tabs, and Firefox can stop memory-leaking (ha). Hat-tips all round.

Don’t get me wrong. Jews—and yes, I am one of them—worry for a living. Their history compels them to and to be always vigilant. Yet in America, where they have achieved a level of security, acceptance and power unparalleled in their history, their existential worries paradoxically seem to have grown even greater. When Jimmy Carter writes a book—a bad book, incidentally—comparing Zionism to apartheid, many American Jews go crazy. When two university professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, write another bad book—about what they call “the Israel lobby”—many Jews react as if the sky is falling.

Essentially, what’s going on is a severe overreaction to any perceived threats against Israel. Israel is equated with the Jewish people both there and in the Diaspora. Never mind that the ultra-Orthodox elements in Israel, which have de facto control over the country’s civil life, hate—to the point of considering Not Jewish—liberal Jews, or even Orthodox Jews who don’t wear the right hat. (In case you missed it, Gershom Gorenberg had an excellent piece in last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine demonstrating the extent of this ultra-Orthodox control and craziness when it comes to ‘proving’ your Jewishness for the purpose of marriage in or immigration to Israel.) Back to Miller:

This “us versus them” mentality still runs deep, and it is particularly harmful when it comes to the Arab-Israeli issue. That conflict is not some kind of morality play in which the forces of evil do battle against the forces of light. It is a conflict in which both sides have legitimate needs and requirements and do both good and bad things in pursuit of them.

This point, unfortunately, is correct in its essence. However, as we’ve learned time and time again, nuance simply doesn’t sell. And if your message is at all nuanced—not 100% rah-rah Israel, all Arabs are terrorists, etc.—then you are, by definition, an enemy not only of Israel but of the Jewish people. How pathetic is the discourse, how sad is the conversation? There is neither discourse nor conversation, because the attitude is ‘us versus them’—nuance equals betrayal.

And now, Hagee apparently believes that Jews are responsible for their own suffering and persecution:

“It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day. …

How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come … it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people.”

That was me, sorry. My personal rebelliousness and disobedience brought on God’s wrath, and made Him send John Hagee and Louis Farrakhan to earth to let me know just how bad I was for eating a California roll with real crab that one time, or for driving to Seattle yesterday on the Sabbath. My bad.

This is not a new idea, theologically speaking—the Bible provides this justification over and over when bad things happen to the Jewish people, notably in the Book of Lamentations (check out 1.8, 3.39–47, and 5.16–18 for some typical examples). However, nobody except religious nuts and douchebags takes this ‘line of reasoning’ seriously. Kingdoms and countries are always getting sacked by other kingdoms and countries. This is the human race we’re talking about, people. What a douchebag, this religious nut Hagee.

(Hat-tip: AMERICAblog.)

Update: Josh Marshall has video and analysis of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Tex.) both totally blowing it on McCain and Hagee on television today.

Edwards’ departure leaves the Democratic nomination down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which means that the Founding Fathers finally have a winner in their ‘How Long Will It Take Our Nation To Nominate A Non-White Male’ betting pool. Oh, I can’t wait to find out who is the winner. Ladies and gentlemen, George Mason of Virginia correctly guessed—two hundred and nineteen years! Congratulations, Georgey!

In related news from the world of primaries, Slate’s ‘Explainer’ column has an excellent explanation of what happens to Edwards’s delegates at the Democratic National Convention now. And it will be interesting to watch what happens with the first ever global primary for Democrats living abroad, which will be electing state-level delegates to be seated and vote at the Convention on behalf of the millions of Democratic voters residing outside the United States. This will be fascinating on both a political and a technological level: will it even ‘work’—however we define that—and what, if any, will be its long-term effects?

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the solar system, Ron Paul’s campaign is, apparently, still going strong, and America is still, apparently, deeply in love with him. In fact, he is, apparently, the only Republican even bothering to show up in some states, which shows that he at least thinks that he can reciprocate that love to large portions of the country. Just check out some of his vastly impressive press releases if you aren’t prepared to take my word for it. And from even further reaches of our solar system, Ralph ‘I-didn’t-cost-Gore-the-election-but-Bush-and-Gore-cost-me-the-election’ Nader is thinking about throwing his hat into the ring once again. (Surely it’s no coincidence, as Chris Beam points out, that this is coming to light right after Edwards, the Democrat whom Nader had endorsed, dropped out of the race.) I can only sigh and wonder who’s funding Nader this time around.

Furthermore, at least some of Obama’s appeal is tapping into the feelings of some Democrats that sure, Clinton was great, but do the people of the United States really want another four or eight years of triangulation, centrism, and the appearance of two straight all-in-the-family dynasties? Going a rather unfortunate step further, Republican author and ex-Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan suggested over the weekend that ‘Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton’ is a ’sickness’—a feeling she ascribed to ’so many people’, with no foundation at all. While she may be hyperbolic in her language, I have to wonder to what extent this issue is present and underlying much of what we’re seeing happen in the Democratic primaries, and what impact it will have on the general election come November. Expect more to be made of this as Bill Clinton’s involvement in Hillary’s campaign grows, along with his willingness to play the bad cop.

Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

This has already been kicked around by the blogosphere a bit, especially by Talking Points Memo and by John Aravosis, who rightly points out that it’s about time the media start treating Huckabee’s nutty religious views as the same sort of fair game as he seems to treat Mitt Romney’s supposed beliefs, as a Mormon, in the siblinghood of Jesus and the Devil.

But I haven’t yet seen anybody raise the question: if two gay men having sex is like a man having sex with a (non-human) animal, which of the participants in the H. sapiens-on-H. sapiens sex is equivalent, from a physical, metaphysical, and/or moral standpoint, to the non-human participant in the latter case? Follow-up question: how far removed from ‘human’, taxonomically speaking, does Huckabee intend this equivalence to extend? Surely he means to exclude things in kingdoms other than Animalia, thus permitting the usage of, say, vegetable matter in lawful sexual relations between husband and wife as God intended. I foresee some tricky grey areas here.

Oh, and one other question: if we are to take the bible at its word–you know, literally–the prohibition on bestiality would seem to apply specifically, if perhaps not exclusively, to women (Leviticus 18.23)):

וּבְכָל־בְּהֵמָ֛ה לֹֽא־תִתֵּ֥ן שְׁכָבְתְּךָ֖ לְטָמְאָה־בָ֑הּ וְאִשָּׁ֗ה לֹֽא־תַעֲמֹ֞ד לִפְנֵ֧י בְהֵמָ֛ה לְרִבְעָ֖הּ תֶּ֥בֶל הֽוּא׃

Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.

I have chosen the King James Version translation–which is close enough here to the Hebrew for my purposes–to try to reflect some of the theology underlying, as it were, the sexual philosophy of people like Mike Huckabee. What about it, Mike? Do you believe that women need to be specially interdicted from animal-human relations? Does this require a Constitutional amendment–perhaps in the same vein as an anti-abortion amendment? Why not just have a whole anti-female amendment while you’re at it? Oh wait, it’s halfway there already.

In what some party insiders are calling a Hail Mary bid to win Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton today attempted to repackage herself as a black man. … Speaking at a rally in Manchester, N.H., Clinton thanked her supporters for “keeping it real” and promoted her just-released autobiography, The Bodacicty of Hope. “This election is about whether or not America is ready to elect a black man president of the United States,” she said. “I believe I am that black man.”

As Little Buttercup once famously noted, “The poor bumboat woman has gipsy blood in her veins, and she can read destinies! … There is a change in store for you … be prepared!” And I fear that though a mystic tone she borrows, Hillary will learn the truth with sorrow. Here today, and gone tomorrow.

Yes I know—that is so!

The winners: Obama and Huckabee rightly deserve the praise for winning by such impressive margins, and at least in Obama’s case a clear front-runner has emerged and everybody else is playing catch-up. John Edwards, however, made a strong showing, and finished second—barely ahead of Hillary, but the only thing that registers with many people is the ordinal numbers in front of the names. He will definitely also be a factor in the upcoming weeks. The other clear winner is John “100 years in Iraq is fine by me” McCain, who seems to be getting a hell of a lot of media attention from various sources that for whatever reason simply love to fawn on him. He didn’t do very well in the caucuses, but he’s going to have lots of media momentum on his side.

The sort-of winners: Mike Huckabee may have won the caucuses by a 9% margin, but the Republican side is still extremely muddled. Giuliani finished sixth in the caucuses, except he had never really paid much attention to Iowa at all, and still definitely has the wherewithal to do well in many other states, especially those that hold their primary elections on Super Tuesday. The other person who had some kind of victory was Ron Paul, who managed to pull out a whopping 10%. This from a guy everyone wishes would just go away. Giuliani came in sixth with 3.5%, and he’s still getting invited to Fox News’s debate, whereas fifth-place Ron Paul is still being unceremoniously excluded. Ron Paul won’t win the Republican nomination, but be on the lookout for a possible third-party bid that could Naderize the Republican side of the 2008 elections. He certainly has the fundraising apparatus and crazy robot-like supporters—almost à la another erstwhile also-ran and his cult-like following—to make a fight of it.

The losers: Mitt Romney doesn’t come out of this looking good, but Hillary Clinton, obviously, is the big loser of the night. Her whole campaign was based on the inevitability of her candidacy, and now that approach is obviously broken and in need of some serious (and fast) rethinking. So she’s now reduced to insinuating that Obama is ‘too liberal‘ and that he has has associations with left-wing intellectuals. Err, the 1920s called; they want their rhetoric back. (Actually, it wasn’t historically just rhetoric: sometimes it was blatant xenophobia too.)

The whole primary/caucus process in the United States is silly, with various states wielding disproportionate influence. Complaining about this is old hat, however, and there’s really nothing new to be said about it. Nothing is going to change until the abolition of federalism and the recognition of all citizens of the great ‘democracy’ of the United States as truly equal—not just those who happen to live within arbitrary boundaries that for stupid historical reasons dictate that they can proceed to dictate to the rest of the country who’s going to be on their ballots in November.

So yeah, look for that.