Jan Brewer Ain't Got Nuthin' on Texas!

Yesterday, Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona, showed herself and the Republicans of Arizona to have the moral courage of a dead fish.

After having stood up for over a week, grandstanding before a national audience while pushing a highly discriminatory law through the Arizona legislature designed to disguise itself as somehow being some sort of religious freedom law, once that bill passed the legislature and hit the governor's desk, Arizona Republicans showed themselves to have no more backbone than an octopus hiding behind an ink cloud.

Americans of all stripes piled on.  Apple, American Airlines, Yahoo, the NFL, business organizations of all types stood up and told Jan Brewer how much money and business Arizona was going to lose if she signed that bill. Social media lit up like a Chistmas tree with unflattering picture memes about how terrible the Republicans were being.

The common complaint of everybody was that the bill was WRONG.  It unfairly discriminated against not only gays, but ANYBODY the Bill's intended audience didn't like.  Single mothers, gays, divorcees, Muslims, Jews, or heck, even Blacks, were fair game, if you could claim a religious bias against that person's status - whatever that status might have been.

Yet, yesterday, when the Governor vetoed that bill, what was her excuse?  Was it a moral disagreement with the Bill's intended purpose?  Did it have ANYTHING to do with the reasons millions of Americans objected to the bill?

Shit no.  She caved because of the economic pressure.  She vetoed it because she didn't want to be the cause of her State losing billions of dollars in business and who knows how many jobs.  In short, instead of having the moral courage to either veto it because it was wrong or to stand up before the pressure of the crowd and defend her convictions, she folded like a cheap suit.

I'm sorry, but in Texas, where I come from, that wouldn't fly.  At least in Texas, they'd have the moral courage to tell Apple to take a long walk off of a very short pier.  Now, the NFL, on the other hand, would have been a whole other ball game.

Literally.  You don't screw around with football in Texas.

A most puzzling marriage...

I ran across an interesting piece today that reminded me of a very puzzling juxtaposition of ideals and values within the Republican Party that has both intrigued and bemused me for some time.

I refer to the inclusion within the very same political party of two very different groups of people.

One is the traditional conservatives.  Small government, fiscally conservative, pretty much isolationist regarding foreign policy.

On the other hand are the social conservatives - the far right wing theocrats.

Ever wonder why the same political party pushes legislative measures that require a large government presence in people's lives - banned abortions, limited or no birth control, strict control over who can marry whom, restrictions over even what sexual positions are allowed in one's own bedroom - while at the same time holding the completely opposing ideal that the government should be as small as possible - small enough to "drown it in the bathtub"?

It is a political marriage that took place forty years ago, and is now reaching the logical conclusion of that marriage - the complete and utter takeover of the Republican Party by the Dominionists.  The traditional "establishment" of the Republican Party has always been the small government crowd.  The old style fiscal conservatives.

The guys the Tea Party threw a bone to back in 2009 when they made fiscal conservatism a central piece in their campaign.  The bone that got jerked out of their very jaws in the recent cave-in on the debt limit.

But then, what are we seeing at the State level - is it fiscal conservatism?

No.  We see a rising number of very unpopular laws being rammed through State Legislatures legalizing, of all things, discrimination against gays.  (and ultimately, anybody the Dominionists don't like - divorced folks, single mothers, gays, atheists, fornicators, whatever their pea-pickin' little hearts want to label folks they hold a religious grudge against.)

On one hand, this seems insane.  It makes no sense for them to push a legislative agenda that is very unpopular to most Americans.  On the other, this represents the last effort they think they've got to push their laws while they still have the chance.  Many of them, living in their right wing echo chamber, still think they've got years ahead of them to make America a Christian Evangelical utopia. Their platitudes to their own followers that they've got a majority of Americans on their side seems to be so appealing they are beginning to believe it themselves.

But on the other hand, they are not fools.  The demographics are NOT on their side, and within ten years at the outside, the Republican Party will either have to radically change its legislative agenda or simply die.

No, that doesn't mean that Democrats will have their own way.  Conservatives aren't going away, and have no fear - neither are Conservative values.  But they will be stained by the association with the crazy theocrats for some time to come.

I think the legislative scenario in the US is going to get worse before it gets better.  The stranglehold on State and local level governments by the crazies isn't going to be broken in just one or two election cycles.  But that just means that once the American people finally get their fill of theocracy, they'll spend a lot of time in relative Opposition Hell before we trust them with that much power again.

And I hope it is a long, cold time in legislative hell.

On Facebook, it's Throwback Thursday.

Sounds kind of fun, huh?  Posting an old picture of yourself to delight your friends and family...

But I'm going to put a different spin on it today.

A bit earlier this evening, I did a bit of Internet Tube surfing, and found some interesting stuff.

The first thing I found was a story about a discovery of Neolithic tools on Crete.  This is pretty astonishing by itself, because nobody even imagined that humans as long ago as 130,000 years ago were doing any kind of seafaring, much less over an open stretch of water!  The dating isn't exactly precise, and is somewhat under heightened scrutiny, but still - Neolithic on Crete?  Pretty cool.  We might have to rethink that land bridge out of Africa thing!

The second story (leading from a link on that page) was about Polynesians canoeing around the Pacific, and finally, making it to South America about a hundred years before Columbus.  Proven by dating chicken bones, of all things!  (Did Columbus beat ANYBODY?  First the Vikings, then the Chinese...)

Sounds like humans have been seafaring for a VERY long time...

Then there was this, and it blew my mind once the time periods involved sank in.

In Israel, archeologists have excavated a cave in which they found the oldest confirmed hearth - indicating the domestication of fire - at any human inhabited site anywhere in the world.  Now, this is pretty heady stuff - they say people - like us - began using this cave as a living abode over 300,000 years ago!  A pretty fair chunk of time prior to past estimates of when we began using fire.

But that's not all.  Microscopic examination of the hearth showed that it had been used almost continuously on a rotational basis for over 200,000 years.  That's a lot of fires!

In fact, allowing generously some 40 years as the length of a generation, that is over 5 THOUSAND generations of humans who used that site on a more or less continuous basis over that period.

That's 200 times the length of the oldest known monarchy in Europe, in Great Britain.  2000 times the age of the US!!!

Now, I'm not going to get all New Agey on you.  But I think that there is growing evidence that humans were smarter a lot sooner than we have thought in the past.  But the human condition has always been chaotic.  We have fought, pushed, plotted and schemed to get for our own families, clans or tribes the best possible hunting, fishing, farming and mining grounds at the least possible cost to ourselves and at the expense of our neighbors since the very beginning.  There's plenty of bad (and good) karma to go around!

But to have found a place - near where people are supposed to have broken out of Africa - in which people lived, hunted, fished, made love, and yes, for goodness' sake, COOKED, using fire, for what has to be an amazing period of time at the same location.

Looking back at human habitations as modern archeology has located old cities, villages, and other sites of human activities from the past, it seems to be rare that we stay in the same places for much longer than a couple of thousand years.  Somehow, in the history of any particular place, someone else comes along, invades, burns the place down, and the survivors are either taken away as slaves, or if they remained free, just moved elsewhere, I guess to get away from bad memories, or to a better defensible location.

But somehow, in this one place, in an area that we think has to have been a virtual highway for human migration out of Africa, humans remained for 200,000 years, year after year, decade after decade, century after century.  Building fires, cooking their food, living the good life, making babies, for five thousand generations.

Simply boggles the mind.  Makes everything modern civilization has done over the last two thousand years look like child's play.

Talk about longevity!  We should wish to last that long!

Another Pastor Throws in the Towel.

The online support group for former clergy, The Clergy Project, consists of over 500 members as of the last update on their homepage.  It explains itself thus:

The purpose of The Clergy Project is to provide a safe haven for active and former professional clergy/religious leaders who do not hold supernatural beliefs. It originated from a growing awareness of the presence of these professional clergy and a concern about their dilemma as they moved beyond faith. 

There were three sources of this awareness and concern:

• Stories of the life experiences of former clergy that Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation has been collecting over the years; 
• A preliminary study of “Preachers Who Are Not Believers,” by philosopher Daniel Dennett and researcher Linda LaScola, published in March, 2010 in Evolutionary Psychology and The Washington Post;
• Ongoing discussions between Dan Barker and Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion” about the need to help clergy who want to leave the ministry.

The Clergy Project was made possible through a donation from The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. The Clergy Project seeks ongoing donations as it expands to meet the needs of this rapidly growing community. 

The Clergy Project launched a private, invitation only, Forum on March 21, 2011 with 52 members. Currently it has over 535 members. The Forum is an on-line meeting place where former and active professional clergy can talk freely among themselves. Terry, John G, John C, & Lon are moderators; Adam, Dennis, & Terry are Site Administrators.

It is, by all accounts, a wonderful resource for current and former clergy who have gone from believers to doubters to unbelievers.  Many pastors who have realized that they no longer believe the very thing they are employed to teach are in a quandary - how does one maintain one's integrity while still providing for one's family?

Remember - Christianity teaches that the man is responsible for being the breadwinner.  HE is responsible, yet, if he continues to do the only thing he has ever been employed to do, he is deceiving the very people he is being employed to minister to!  Besides, how can one fully and adequately talk about something you don't believe?  How can you be a counselor to people when you no longer believe yourself?

It is a terrible position to be in.  The Clergy Project is just what these folks need to help.

But, how does one get to that point?  How can the most trusted and knowledgeable of the Christian brotherhood possibly fail in their faith?   Don't they know Jesus best?

Weeelll, therein lies the problem.

Don't get me wrong.  There is no one way to lose one's faith.  The ways are myriad and often convoluted, fraught with all kinds of land mines along the way.  Many people have their own unique stories to tell.

But the clergy has one fairly unique land mine that lay persons don't have to confront, or shall we say, the lay version of that land mine isn't as powerful or potent.  That land mine is the Bible itself for the layman.

For the clergy, the list is long and for some, ultimately telling.  An example of the subjects clergy are taught in seminary:

Ancient Near East History
Apologetics
Bible Hermeneutics
Greco-Roman Religions and Cults
History of Christianity
Intertestamental History and Theology
Modern Theology
Literary Criticism
Textual Criticism
Theology-Philosophy Interactions

I don't pretend to know what all of these are, much less understand what they teach!  But what I do know is that under the influence of the knowledge introduced in the above subjects, seminary students often find themselves weighing the evidence thus presented against what they are being taught to actually teach the public, and find the latter sorely lacking in integrity.

Why does this information destroy faith?  The same way as when many laypersons read the bible.  They see through the mumbo-jumbo, the propaganda and the contradictions and realize that it not a reasonable basis for belief.

Seminary students see through those subjects that the bible is not a god-inspired novel of some kind, but is a man made compendium of books written thousands of years ago, by many different people, for many different reasons, for the illustration of many different agendas.  Much of which we only partly understand, and often just don't know at all.

They realize that it is, in the end, a religious tract - or a collection of religious tracts - which is why much of it sounds to so different and often contradictory.  The proof is handed to them almost daily on a silver platter - the platter of education.

So, why do I categorize this post under Harm from Religion?

Because the seminary students who go on to graduate and become the next generation of clergy have one of two major flaws.

Either they understand the truth and press on to teach bullshit anyway or cannot bring themselves to let go of their upbringing, which allows them to go on and keep teaching bullshit - which at some level, they HAVE TO know and understand is bullshit.

Either way, they are knowingly teaching, as truth, a theology that is false and leads people to base their lives and future decisions on false information.  If they were doing that as anything but religion, they'd be arrested as con men and jailed for fraud.

This is inherently harmful.  The money they collect is taken from the pockets of people who often need it for other purposes - basic necessities, for many.  They use that money to buy property that could be used for actually productive purposes, or for political influence, and often just for big houses and fancy cars.  Sometimes, they spend it to build a television or radio empire that bilks even more money from the vulnerable.

Worse, they do it TAX FREE.  Which means that ALL OF US pay for it.  Billions and billions of dollars that we do not have, as a country, to feed the poor, house the homeless, or teach our children.

If that isn't harmful, I really don't know what else might be.

At any rate, I came to write about this because a very brave and honest guy has finally come to the inevitable conclusion of his personal journey, and published a video log (vlog) about the fact that he is no longer going to be a pastor because he in now an atheist.  His name is Justin Vollmar, and he has run the “Virtual Deaf Church" online for the past four years.

It is an interesting vlog, and I'll let The Friendly Atheist tell you about it.   Go and read, you'll be glad you did!

Rethinking the fight against racism

The gulf between being educated about something and ignorant of it is a wide one.  It makes the difference between understanding that subject and merely thinking you do because you have been mislead all your life.

I have always considered myself to be an educated man.  Of course, being educated, I do understand that there are huge gaps in that education of various kinds, where either the system I was educated in was deficient or I elected to take a particular direction to my education, forsaking those I wasn't interested in.

In other words, I always thought I knew what those gaps were, and was largely Ok with what they represented.

Boy, was I wrong!

Today, I clicked over to read an article whose title intrigued me as I saw it shared on Facebook.  That title, "What White People Need to Learn", sounded interesting, especially as I consider myself white, and am always interested in learning something new about myself.  I was to be rocked to the core by what I would read.  Its content was so different from what I thought it might be as to be shocking.

I know, overused word, but read on, you'll see what I mean.

The author, Mary-Alice Daniel, was writing the article as part of a series by women of color on Alternet.  What she had to say about the history of the term "white" as a racial descriptor should make every person who looks at him or herself that way sit down immediately and re-examine everything they thought they understood about race.

Including their own identity.

My ancestry is a mixed one, like many Americans.  My family comes from (in order of percentage amount) Germany, Scotland/Ireland, and England.  The last is a supposition, and has not been confirmed by research, yet.  I think my mother's father's family was English, but I am not sure, and don't know what kind of mix might have been on his wife's side.  Incomplete information.

So, when I read the following paragraph, it literally made me sit back in shock:

The very notion of whiteness is relatively recent in our human history, linked to the rise of European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade in the 17th century as a way to distinguish the master from the slave. From its inception, “white” was not simply a separate race, but the superior race. “White people,” in opposition to non-whites or “colored” people, have constituted a meaningful social category for only a few hundred years, and the conception of who is included in that category has changed repeatedly. If you went back to even just the beginning of the last century, you’d witness a completely different racial configuration of whites and non-whites. The original white Americans — those from England, certain areas of Western Europe, and the Nordic States — excluded other European immigrants from that category to deny them jobs, social standing, and legal privileges. It’s not widely known in the U.S. that several ethnic groups, such as Germans, Italians, Russians and the Irish, were excluded from whiteness and considered non-white as recently as the early 20th century.

Emphasis mine.   Boy, is it mine!

So, as late in history as just a hundred years ago, if not quite that far back, three quarters of my family would have been considered non-white!  No wonder my grandfather changed the pronunciation of our name to make it sound less German!

I sincerely hope that this doesn't sound like I am unhappy about or somehow dismayed about my family's status.  I am not.  It does, however, make me sit back and realize that the history I've been taught was badly twisted and edited, censored and formatted to make me think about myself, my social status, and the structure of our society in such a way as to try to enlist my wholehearted compliance with making that structure remain in place.

It was designed to make me say to myself, "Man, I am glad I was born white!" whenever I see another story about how minorities are mistreated, oppressed and smacked back into "their place".

As of today, I am no longer going to consider myself "white" inside of my own mind.  Oh, I'll still have to check the "white" boxes on forms and such.  The system I live inside of insists on that, and this late in my life, I'm not sure I've the energy to fight it on that level yet.

But, I do think it is time for this knowledge to be more widely spread, and time for the Progressives in this country to begin to use this new set of facts to where it can begin to be taught to succeeding generations.  It is valuable to know, and it illustrates things "racial" in a whole new light.

For instance:

Those who identify as white should start thinking about their inheritance of this identity and understand its implications. When what counts as your “own kind” changes so frequently and is so susceptible to contemporaneous political schemes, it becomes impossible to argue an innate explanation for white exclusion. Whiteness was never about skin color or a natural inclination to stand with one’s own; it was designed to racialize power and conveniently dehumanize outsiders and the enslaved. It has always been a calculated game with very real economic motivations and benefits.

Once again, the emphasis is mine.

Now perhaps I am showing my ignorance here.  This may be something that blacks and hispanics may have intuitively known all along.  If so, if there are any who are willing to comment on this post and set me straight, please do!

[Don't get me wrong, I do understand the privilege thing, I do know race was used as such a separator - it was the loosie-goosie definition of it and how that was used so coldly that floored me.]

This is some thing we (the American people not "white folks") need to get straight, so we can begin to address the racial thing in a much better and more knowledgable way.  In recognition of that, bear this in mind from the author's last paragraphs:

My hope in writing this is that white Americans will discover how it is they came to be set apart from non-whites and decide what they plan to do about it. 

So, yes, for one month, let’s hear about white history, educating ourselves and others. Let’s expose whiteness as a fraudulent schema imposed as a means to justify economic and physical bondage. Let’s try to uncover the centuries-old machinations that inform current race relations and bind us in a stalemate of misunderstanding. Then let’s smash this whole thing to pieces.

But I'd rather this not be for just one month a year - let's make this knowledge a permanent part of our understanding of Western Civilization.  It is a critical fact that makes the whole thing make so much more sense!

Are the moral standards of America declining?

A popular complaint of Christians (and thus a standard dig at atheists) is that the moral standards of the US are declining.  Some blame it on gays, some on women's "libido", others use various other specific complaints, but since all of them are essentially Progressive Faults, many just lump it all together by blaming it all on us atheists.

The problem is, when the specific items are examined closely, often the worst places in the US end up being States and localities with heavily Christian influence.

Divorce, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, murder, assault, theft, all have a generally higher level of incidence in very religious areas of the country.

Internationally, countries (especially in Europe) with very low rates of religiosity also have very low rates of these same social problems.

Of course, without specific studies showing causality, one does need to be a bit careful about pointing fingers, so lets look at this from another viewpoint.

I think that the whole morality issue is a matter of definition.  It isn't that morals are "declining", but that the population of the US is simply changing the way we look at morality and ethics.

Cultures, as a general rule, go by sets of rules.  Those rules may be legal, they may be cultural, they may be religious.  Many of those differing categories probably meld back and forth - a religious rule may be enshrined in law, or a cultural taboo may be absorbed by religious leaders, or vice versa.  It is often hard to separate the different kinds of rules.

There is little doubt, however, that those rules often change over time.  Examples abound - here in the US, it used to be a hidebound rule that blacks were inferior to whites, and that status was exhibited in myriads of ways - riding in the back of the bus, separate drinking fountains or public restrooms, etc.

Today, such discriminatory measures are not only illegal, but are actively frowned on in much of the country as anachronisms.  Used to be, inter-racial marriages of any kind were illegal.  No more.  At one time, divorce was not only frowned upon, but was impossible to obtain in most parts of the country.  As recently as the late fifties or early sixties, an unmarried couple could not stay in the same hotel room except in certain "low rent"parts of town.  Large chain hotels/motels would not allow it.

All of those things now are not only legal, but are looked at as quaint reminders of the way things used to be, and most people don't even miss them at all.

An important recent example of this is the rapidly changing national attitude about gays and marriage.  As recently as just ten years ago, in many parts of the country (and even a few today), one could not reveal oneself as gay without severe repercussions.  The attitude of most Americans has reversed itself, and now a minority feel being gay is wrong and support the old negative stereotype.

Today, over 13 States have legalized gay marriage, standardizing what is rapidly becoming known as marriage equality.  There are numerous legal challenges to many States' bans on gays marrying, and there are indications that others may be following the early lead of that first thirteen.

Interesting how that number 13 crops up occasionally, isn't it?

It is clear that societies change over time.  Ours is no exception.  We no longer allow slavery, or indentured servitude.  We no longer throw people into prison for indebtedness (or at least not in a widespread way - a couple of States have re-instituted it in a weird modern way, but not like it used to be)

To many Americans, the new moralities are better.

Women are no longer forced to stay in violent, unwanted marriages, and can today actually be the party filing for divorce.  They can own property under their own names, hold jobs, start a company and be the boss, they can vote.

Minorities are no longer relegated to second class status, at least not legally, except in the way the justice system operates.  Yeah, we still need to work on that.

There may be a lot of Evangelical Christians who feel strongly that American morals have "slipped". That's fine, I have no problem with folks who have the ability to maintain their beliefs in the face of immense public pressure.  There is much about that to admire.

Until those old beliefs become harmful, especially to the innocent.  Or until they begin to try to make the rest of us adhere to their old belief system.  Then, there's a problem.

Message to the Conservatives that are trying to make this country stand still:

Go home.  Go to Church.  But leave the rest of us alone.  We don't buy into your bullshit.  We don't want your belief system enshrined in law, or taught in our schools, or enforced at work.  We have our own morals, our own ethics.  If you promise to keep your moral/religious practices to yourself, we promise to do the same.  Keep your religious crap outta our schools, and we promise not to teach Secular Humanism in school either.

This country has survived for over 238 years by being tolerant of others' belief systems, I think it is perfectly capable of doing that many more by maintaining that tolerant posture.

Deal?

Patriotism

Tell me, what is your definition of Patriotism?

Mirriam-Webster defines it thus:

• love for or devotion to one's country

Pretty simple, huh?  But wait...is there anything in that definition that says one's patriotic songs can only be sung in a single language?  I don't see that anywhere on Webster's page for "patriotism".

I could - kinda - understand if one were talking about a country like, say, France, where there IS a single language identified with the country, and is, in fact, mandated as such.  In fact, France actually has a government department dedicated to ensuring the "purity" of French!

But America has no such mandate, and there isn't an office in the government here - at any level - ensuring the "purity" of English!  What an impossible job that would be!   Remember, English is the language known for following other languages into dark alleys and shaking them down for loose words and grammar.  Then manages to mangle the pronunciation, meaning and usage!

So, what is going on with this anger over the Coke ad using several different languages to have people sing America the Beautiful?  You know, the patriotic song written by a lesbian?

I am not an empath, nor a psychic.  I cannot read minds.  But, I did grow up in a very conservative part of the country, to conservative parents.  I do have a good idea what is going through these folks minds, and that is pure and simple racism, or if you prefer, xenophobia.  Hatred or fear of foreigners, of people who are different.

Not patriotism.

This is a country that was BUILT on immigration.  Every single person in this country who isn't a native American is descended from immigrants.  All of our ancestors made that long dangerous trek across the oceans of this globe to land, uncertain, homeless, and often owning no more than the clothes on their backs, but with hope in their eyes.  Hope that the future they could make for themselves would ensure the welfare of their children and grandchildren.

Which, in the long run, for all of us, ensured the future of this country to become one of the beacons of liberty and the hope for a better future - beaconing to the entire world.  Read again the words written on the plaque at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

So, no, we have no right, no reason, and no call to look down our noses at anybody, no matter how long or short their family's sojourn on these shores.   We should be welcoming them, because it is the infusion of new blood, new minds and new energy that makes this country great, in wave after wave.

Irish, Chinese, Italians, Germans.  All immigrants, and all despised in their day.  All of those ethnicities have built a place for themselves in today's America.  Blacks, Hispanics, Japanese, each, in spite of the very tough nature of their past parts in the American stage play, have built places for themselves, too. Each of these ethnic groups, and dozens more like them, right up to the present day, add their own flavoring of spice to the American pot.

We call it a melting pot, but it is really more like a mixing pot.  A salad, if you prefer.

I've seen a number of Conservatives use that term derisively, as if the fact that each group having generally stuck together through the tough beginnings of their immigration here is a bad thing.

As if the English speaking folks didn't - and still do - just that!  It takes a lot of guts to stand in your racist little tribal enclave and accuse others of being racist.

No.

This country is and was built on immigration.  I welcome every immigrant.  My mind soars at the sound of every differing language, every lilt of a foreign tongue added to the music of how the English language is spoken, and every foreign word we add to our vocabulary.

Ours is a rich culture, enriched from a past jammed with the differing traditions and customs of hundreds of foreign countries and a thousand ethnicities.  It is impossible to separate the customs of this country according to the lands and peoples from which they have been drawn.

This is the power of America.  Not the great aircraft carriers.  Not the intercontinental missiles, not the economic power of Wall Street.  Not the guns.

The people.  WE the People.  Together, living each of us with our own little versions of The American Dream.

The attempts of the right wing to stop or slow immigration would be the death of that dream.  What makes this country great is the very fact that all people everywhere can, should they wish, try to come here to build their own little American Dream.  Hundreds of thousands do, every year, from every corner of the globe, from every possible ethnicity, speaking every possible language.

Yearning to become just one more of that We The People spoken of in the Constitution.  Part of that great compact.

We should be in celebration of that desire.  We should welcome them with open arms, smiling faces.

They are our future.  They are the guarantee that this country will not lose its greatness, will not lose the energy that held that compact together for two hundred and thirty-eight years.

They are us.

Mission Statement

It occurs to me that I've not truly expressed my beliefs and what I hope to show the world in my blog.

Yeah, a blog.  Everybody and his donkey has a blog.  Not a big deal.

I really don't care.  This is MY blog, and I hope to tell the world what I think about just about anything that comes to mind.  There are, however, some issues that are more important and will (have been) blogged about more than others.

Separation of Church and State
Politics
Dominionism
Religion
Atheism
Harm from Religion
Spiritualism
Science and Technology
Apple, Inc. products and similar cool stuff
Weird stuff
Secular Humanism

Now, taking this one step at a time, here goes.

Separation of Church and State

I am an American citizen.  I have spent over 40 years of my life serving the United States Government and have taken two oaths to support and defend the Constitution.  One was military - four years, and the other the civilian oath for Federal Civil Service - 36 years, all of that at the FDA.

The Constitution has as part of its first Amendment the guarantee of religious freedom.  Two clauses, one to keep the government out of religious affairs, and one to keep religions out of government affairs.  Together, they protect all Americans from any one religion (or religious sect) from dominating the government and dictating religious affairs to the rest of the country.  A clause in the Constitution itself forbids any religious test of office, going further to protect us from religious influence.

It isn't perfect, as today's struggle to keep fundamentalist Christianity from overturning the US Constitution and creating a Theocracy is proof of.  (Yes, Dominionists really ARE trying to do that.)

I am opposed to that, and am avowed to do anything I can to support separating religion from public affairs.  The First Amendment provides excellent cover for religious folks to go to church and even practice their religion in the privacy of their own lives without the rest of us interfering.  It also guarantees them the right to associate with others of like belief.

The oaths I took obligate me to protect the rights of ALL Americans, religious and non-religious, and I WILL do that, but I will NOT support anybody forcing their religious practices on anyone who does not believe.  I will also not support anybody forcibly stopping people from believing in a god, either.

Believe how you want, practice - or not - as you wish.  But you cannot use the power of the government - Local, State or Federal - to force your religious practices on the entire country.

Politics

I am pretty much an Independent.  I am registered in Maryland as a Democrat - mostly because that's the best way I see to use my vote.  I refuse, on principle, to vote for a Republican, until that party regains its senses and dumps both the religious loonies and the Tea Party extremists.  If they ever do, and become a viable party with sensible and competent leaders, then I'll begin looking at individual Republicans running for office again.

I support universal single payer health care, legalization of marijuana, reasonable limitations on firearm ownership, separation of Church and State, immediate measures to curb human contributions to climate change, a reasonable balance between human and animal habitation of our planet, strict control over our capitalistic economic system, including harsh prison sentences for economic leaders who endanger the system by emphasizing private gain, government programs to assist the unfortunate and the impoverished.

I am in complete support of full, free public education, from pre-school through four year University level.  There is nothing more critical to a functioning and healthy democracy than a fully educated and reasoning citizenry, and it is our obligation to future generations of Americans to see that they receive the full benefits of the best education this country can provide.  Nothing else is as likely to eliminate poverty than that.

I am in full support of full and complete equality of all human beings, regardless of race, sex, gender identification or sexual orientation.  Human rights are HUMAN rights, and no sub-classification by arbitrary label has the power to abrogate any of those rights, no matter what label that may be.

I also explicitly support the freedom of women to choose their own way when it comes to procreation.  Or the choice to NOT procreate.  They have the right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term or not, and in consultation with the physician of their choice, the right to end that pregnancy however is appropriate to their individual circumstances, should those circumstances demand it.

Dominionism

I have seen the evidence and firmly am of the opinion that the group known as Dominionists are determined to overthrow the United States government as a democracy and transform it into a theocracy.  I will publish and repost whatever information I see to bring awareness of them and their activities to public light, in an effort to persuade as many people as possible to oppose their lunacy.

Religion

I am a firm atheist.  I do not believe in a god of any kind, and believe that religions of all kinds represent some form of confidence game with the purpose of gaining political and economic power for whatever priestly or guiding group controls the organizations supporting worship of any particular god or gods.

While I do see the lack of evidence for a "historical Jesus" as lacking, which makes that historicity unlikely, I think that the more important point is that since there is no god, there can have been no son, so even if there WAS a man whose existence may have been overblown into legendary status, the claims of godhood cannot be true, by definition.  Ergo, stop bothering me with it.

Atheism

Being an atheist is similar to not believing in the tooth fairy.  The word defines something I DON'T believe in, not what I do.  There are other, more positive things that define my ethics and my moralities.

Harm from Religion

I believe that the widespread belief in religion brings harm to all mankind and retards our progress into the future.

It does so by causing people to filter reality through a false lens, altering their responses and making them do things which actively harm others as well as, often, themselves.  It causes people to make political decisions based on bronze age ethics and morals in an age where such practices have long been discarded as cruel and unusual, causing turmoil, dissension and violent political strife and, often, war.  It causes people to make claims on land based on ancient legends and stories backed by no more than books of dubious authenticity and provenance - claims which have roiled the entire globe with violence and untold turmoil for decades, with little possibility for any reasonable settlement.

It breaks up families, promotes child abuse, opposes public education and encourages people to blindly follow authorities who have no competence or ability to lead, and often, only lead to aggrandize themselves.

It encourages entire sects of people to disbelieve climate change based on a false sense of believing that god will somehow come back to repair the damage we have done.

Historically, it has encouraged its believers to kill those who do not believe the same as themselves, and many sects still do so today.  Many of these will kill apostates.

I could go on, but you get the gist of what I am saying.

Spiritualism

I believe that when human beings die, our personality dies with the death of the body, in which the personality resides.  There is no soul, no spirit.  No ghosts.  Yes, ghost stories may be fun, and scare the crap out of your younger siblings, but there is no basis for believing in their existence.

Spiritualism is, in short, something that resides within ourselves, and gives us the ability to improve the way we use our minds.  It helps us to balance ourselves, removing stress and tension and improving our mental state of mind.

It does not connect us to a greater power, nor does it make us one with the Universe.

Science and Technology

I believe that mankind will improve our standard of living, our health and our relationship with the rest of mankind as we learn more and more about the Universe, how it works and how our own biology works.  I encourage the continued activities of people the world over to invest in the continued and growing research and development of science and technology.

Apple, Inc. and all its products.

I love Apple.  I love its tech, I love its products.  I will occasionally talk about anything I see as cool that they  are coming out with.

Weird stuff

As knowledgeable about Science and the universe as we may be, any scientist will tell you that the whole point of science is to discover the things we do NOT know.  I like to occasionally explore the weird stuff that indicates things we may still be ignorant about.

Secular Humanism

I am at heart, a secular humanist.  This pretty much sums up what I feel.

• A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.

• Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.

• A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.

• A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.

• A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.

• A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.

• A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

Justice Dis-served.

Yeah, I know, that's not a word.  But it oughta be, doggone it.

Today, for the second time, Amanda Knox got convicted of murder.  The first was the result of the original highly celebrated trial, which was overturned on appeal.

In the US, that would have been the end of it.  American prosecutors have one bite at the apple, if the accused is acquitted, they lose, and that's it, they have no appeal.  But, in Italy, that apparently is NOT the end of it, and prosecutors can appeal an acquittal they disagree with.

Which they did, and the Italian Supreme Court directed another Appeals Court to retry the poor girl.

That court today returned a guilty verdict.

Due to the Constitutional protections against Double Jeopardy, it is unlikely that Amanda Knox will ever be extradited back to Italy to serve that time.  But, she is thereby restricted to the United States for the rest of her natural life - if she sets foot in another country Italy has an extradition treaty with, it's back to the hoosegow.  For over 28 years.   That means the entire European Union, you know.  And who knows how many others.

Given the absolute carnival her first trial apparently was, and the cavalier manner in which the Italians apparently investigated the crime in the first place, this entire ordeal has the obvious trappings of a corrupt and disabled justice system.  This second trial has the appearance of being just a sop to the prosecutors, as the justices themselves have to know that she'll never serve a day of her sentence, due to that double jeopardy thing.  Which is a complete travesty of justice all by itself.

Oh, I know, the American system of justice doesn't have anything to crow about, given the number of innocents we imprison every year.  Or out and out kill, like that poor fellow in Mississippi - or was it Alabama?  Everybody knew that man was innocent, yet they killed the poor bastard anyway.  Just cause he was black, and they could.

Which brings me to why I am writing this tonight.

The thread that connects these thoughts is that any human justice system is imperfect.  We do end up jailing innocent folks, sometimes for decades.  Fortunately, there are numerous groups in the US who work tirelessly to get new trials for people they investigate cases for and determine that an injustice has been done.  Sometimes, they even succeed.

But then what?  Oh, yeah, sometimes these guys get some kind of renumeration.  As if any money amount can reimburse you for decades of your life wasted behind bars.  But at least, they sometimes get that.

But what about the victim?  Our entire justice system is supposedly predicated on the ideal that the government speaks for the dead.  That in cases of murder, where the dead cannot speak and tell their tale, the government steps in to see that justice is done on their behalf.

Unless of course, they get the wrong perpetrator.  In that case, the real murderer walks, free and clear.  Even if some years later, the guy in prison is shown to be wrongly accused and convicted, the American justice system is not at all interested in going back to that cold case and finding out who really did it.  True, if the wrongly convicted man is freed based on the confession of the real murderer who is now in prison for life, they might go ahead and try the real perpetrator just to get the conviction on record - especially if that will prevent any kind of future parole issues.

But at no time is any case ever reinvestigated based on the desire to see real justice done.  No prosecutor's office wants to stand up in front of a judge and explain why they are prosecuting THIS guy after having wrongly convicted THAT guy 30 years ago.  Or 20, or 10.  Kinda hard to prove to the judge that, "Yeah, trust me, we might have gotten that one wrong, but we're really convinced THIS time we've got the right guy!"

So, all day, every day, murderers go free.  Walking among us.  They could be your coworker, your neighbor, your friend.  Your boss, your mailman, your car mechanic.  Or the guy that comes into your home to fix the leaky faucet or your computer.

You may be comfortable with that.

I'm not.

Where the hell is the FBI?

Did somebody, while we weren't looking, repeal the U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 115 › § 2384, which is the part of the US Code which forbids sedition and criminalizes it?

I wonder, because I keep seeing articles like the one I saw today on the web site "Raw Story", entitled, "Fox News analyst tells Tea Party group he can lead a military coup against Obama".  This is at least the second or third such story I've seen in the last six months, and it makes me wonder, if the NSA has such an ability to screen US telephone and electronic communications, why hasn't this asshole (and the others I read about) been fucking arrested yet?

Or is all that stuff about surveillance just so much rubbish?

I'm sorry about the language, but this kind of thing just pisses me off.  Ok, no I'm not sorry.  This shit makes my very blood boil.

These people are the very first to spout off about patriotism and love of country, but they are also the very first to abandon all support of the Constitution as soon as their precious conservative sensibilities have been bruised by the election (TWICE) of a man the color of whose skin doesn't fit their worldview of who should reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and whose very existence threatens their sense of power so badly it shrivels their tiny dicks.

Arrest the bastards, lock the assholes into the lowest, dankest, darkest prison we've got and weld the frigging door shut.  Then lose the key to the front door AND the paperwork recording where they got lost.

I don't care if they are former military and claim some kinship with that good old boy network.  By even talking about the possibility of taking any kind of military action against the civilian government, they lose any claim to special privilege.  They show themselves to be fair weather patriots.

Good and solid supporters of the Constitution, until it begins to protect someone they dislike or detest.  Then all bets are off and the testosterone takes over.  Like Ole Judge Roy Bean used to say, give the bastards a fair trial then bury them under the fucking jail.  Or something like that.

Aaaarrrggghhh!

Saints preserve me, I think I'm beginning to agree with the Pope!

In a recent blog post, "Popes come, Popes go", I cautioned against believing too much in the newly minted Pope's statements about how the church should pay more attention to how it cares for the poor, noting that I believe he is trying very hard to bring the flock back into the fold, so to speak.

I still stand by that post.  No matter how much sense this new guy makes in his public statements, he is still the head of the oldest and most conservative bureaucracy in the world.  He is still the monarch of one of the oldest surviving monarchies, and most definitely the only one with anywhere near absolute authority.  At least in theory.

But dang it, his statements sound so good!

The cyberwife and I were talking today about some of the recent posts we've seen on Facebook about right wing political statements we've seen, discriminatory laws we've seen getting either passed or proposed, the terrible time many people are having just staying above water on the bills, and juxtaposing all that with our own circumstances and my eventual retirement in a few years.

We are very lucky.  Lucky to be born white.  Lucky to be born in First World countries where we were able to get good educations, and have been able to help our children get well on their way to being productive adults as lucky as us.  Fortunate to have an income better than most Americans (though not wealthy, and burdened with more debt than we should).

And as a Fed, destined to have a decent retirement after over 40 years in service.  (So, don't think I didn't EARN it!)

But darn it, so damn many people who have worked just as hard as I, or harder, don't have either a decent income or are unable to look forward to any retirement, much less a good one.  Or even a half-assed one, for that matter.

We live in a house that we bought a couple of decades ago when we had three teenagers, and really needed the space.  Now, with them gone, we rattle around this house like two quarters in a can.  The technology we use to heat and cool this space ensures that we must heat/cool the entire space, regardless of how much we use.

That's not all.

In looking at our entire livelihood and lifestyle, it is plain that living in this capitalist country, in order to protect ourselves, provide for our own welfare and look out for our future, we must live in a way that is, essentially, selfish.

We live in a house that is too big.
We use too much energy to heat/cool it.
We tend to buy/consume too much food.
We use a transportation system that costs too much and uses too much fuel.

In order to protect our lifestyle, we cannot bring in strangers in frigid weather who need a warm place to sleep, because that would place our lives in danger.  The amount of money we can afford to donate to causes that help such people is, really, not nearly enough.

Why?  Because as the Pope says, we live in a country under a capitalistic system that cares only for the almighty dollar.  People do not count.  Wasted resources do not count.  There is no effective way to force this system to change in time to keep more people from dying in poverty.

We are, in short, trapped.  Like most Americans.  Trapped in a system that doesn't care about us, doesn't care about the poor or the unfortunate, or the sick or the mentally ill.  A system where only money talks.

It forces me to live in guilt, feeling that I am using too much energy and other resources (which I am), but also knowing that if I don't, I run the chance of losing all that and ending up in poverty.

And I hate that.  I want to live in a society that cares for the less fortunate.  One that provides good, solid and low cost health care for all its citizens.  One that provides a good roof overhead and three squares a day for everybody.   Someplace that will pick me up if I stumble, and gives me a way to pick up my neighbor if he/she stumbles instead without jeopardizing my livelihood or my safety.

One that doesn't tell people who need help that they don't deserve it.  A society which allows people their personal freedom to determine their own future, without coercion, without shaming, without making them feel like second class citizens.

Is that too much to ask?  Is it?

Looking ahead at 2016.

I generally hate the tendency of the press to obsess about Presidential elections, especially as early as before the mid-term election even gets going good.  It just seems so... overeager?  Too anticipatory?  Crass?

Generally, it bothers me.

But today, Alternet had an article by Thom Hartmann, entitled, "A Rand Paul Presidential Campaign Would Teach Americans Just How Vicious and Anti-Social the Libertarian Agenda Is", and it perfectly illustrates my thoughts on how much in a pickle the Republican Party truly is.

I won't rehash the Hartmann article, because I linked to it and you should go read it.  You should, because he's right.

Oh, yeah, the GOP survived the debacle with Goldwater.  But, in the process, it had to remake itself.  In remaking itself, it bought into a partnership that has seemed to give it new life, but has brought this country to its knees in the process.   I speak, of course, of the partnership the GOP has with the Religious Right.

Oh, one can't really blame them for it.  From their perspective, they needed to restructure the party and bring it back from the extremism Goldwater had represented to many Americans.  The Religious Right (RR from now on) had what they needed, respectability and a high number of voters, especially in the South, where they badly needed to make inroads.  It was, to their point of view, a marriage made in heaven!  Literally!

And for decades, it has worked beautifully, bringing them back to power repeatedly and helping them to convert a lot of Southern Democrats to the GOP when the conservative points of view of the RR began to make itself felt at a time when the Democrats were moving decidedly to the left with such initiatives as the Voting Rights Act and so forth.  Today, the South is a stronghold of the GOP, allied with the RR, all the way from the Federal level to the locals.  A Conservative heaven, hostile to abortion, hippies, gays, libruls, and furriners.

A huge problem of the GOP and the RR is the immense echo chamber they've erected for themselves.  With the help of Fox News as a propaganda arm, modern Conservatives can sit back and revel in the wonderfulness that is their worldview of total domination of the American Dream where a majority of Americans are both Conservative and Religious!  Rarely does the outside world impinge itself into that well armored chamber to send uncomfortable vibrations tickling the foundations.

An uncomfortable truth that they have labored to ignore for decades is the fact that a Presidential nominee with impeccable Conservative creds cannot win a national election to gain the White House.  The only acknowledgement they've made to this is to work hard to ensure that a Presidential  nominee from the left has the same handicap.  So neither major party can gain enough votes to win  without enticing the inhabitants of the political center.  This has mollified the GOP and kept them from seeing what is becoming more and more obvious to the rest of us:

Their restructuring that was intended to eject the extremists has allowed a new generation of extremists to come to the fore.

A generation whose danger to the US is even greater than Goldwater ever dreamed of being.  Heck, and Goldwater really was a patriot.  He may have seemed extreme at the time, but he was a piker compared to the Dominionists.  These new guys are NOT patriots, they dream of overturning our Democracy.

And the GOP is, at least publicly, blissfully unaware of the danger, safely ensconced in that beautifully appointed echo chamber, armored from the leftist sounding vibrations of reality.

Repeatedly, in the last election, I posted predictions that if the GOP ignores the extremist positions of the RR, that they will suffer ignominious defeat, and should they continue to persist even after that defeat, the next one will be virtually permanent.

The sad truth for Conservatives is that this country is slowly becoming more liberal.  Witness the rapid acceptance of marriage equality and the slower acceptance of the legalization of pot.  I would add in here the evidence of more and more polls showing a rapid rise of the number of Americans who are either unchurched, identify as "none" regarding religion, or simply call themselves atheists or agnostic.  There is evidence that organized Christianity is becoming less and less popular and is, in fact, liable to disappear altogether before the end of this century, at least as an organized force.

A tremendous part of the restructuring of the American political environment is a rapid growth of traditional immigrant ethnic groups.  Asians and Hispanics especially are on the rise as a percentage of the American population, and have already surpassed White Americans as the majority of live births here.  By mid century, whites will simply fade into history as just another ethnic group among many, instead of being a majority.

This will blow the GOP out of the water unless they come to their senses and completely dump the old Conservative ideals of misogyny and racism - and soon!  Already, those groups, especially the Hispanics, threaten to turn Texas back into a reliably Blue State, which is why the GOP has enacted draconian laws restricting the ability of women and minorities' access to the polls there.

The growing popularity of Wendy Davis is further throwing the GOP in that State into a panicked frenzy.

But, still, one hears members of the GOP making such absurd statements as the one recently made by Mike Huckaby regarding what he claims is the inability of women to control their libido!  I won't bother to link to it, surely you've already read about it.  Or, perhaps the recent statement by another GOPer that if he were over 50, he wouldn't need the services of an obstetrician!

Continuing to insult one half of the voting public has never been a winning strategy, and I'll bet it won't begin to be in 2014.

In short, without an immediate and complete structuring of the ideals and principles of the GOP, it will soon begin the slide into obscurity, if hasn't already.

Rand Paul, as a Presidential Nominee, will not arrest that slide, he will grease the skids!

Revisiting the Holocaust.

On Facebook a while back, someone posted a link to this web page that advertises a broadcast of a documentary made after the liberation of Europe in 1945.

The Documentary, "Memory of the Camps", was produced with the help of (among others) Alfred Hitchcock, but was put on hold by the British before it was broadcast for political reasons.  It was recently re-discovered and restored, and is set for broadcast on British television in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Europe.

The page includes a full length version of the film, and in spite of the horrific images it shows, is a must see for any thinking adult who gives a shit about the political health of his/her country.

Why?  Two reasons.

First is the lesson the film makers intended to teach - this can happen if evil isn't fought and thwarted.

Second is another one I'd like to talk about.  It is strongly related to the first, but is a bit more extensive in scope.

It is:

This can happen to YOUR COUNTRY.  It can and will happen if you and every citizen in your country do not pay attention and fight extremism at every chance and in every manner possible.

Nah, you say.  That can't happen HERE, can it?  My people aren't like that!  We'd never kill kids, never starve folks to death.  We'd never kill that many people in such a systematic way.

Huh.  Don't you just wish.  What about the USA?  The country that stands for individual freedom, for liberty and justice!

Estimates of native populations prior to 1500 CE range from as low as 7 million to as much as 54 million.  It is also estimated that as many os 50-80% of that population may have been killed upon contact with Europeans and subsequent infection by diseases they had no immunological protections against.

Native Americans were decimated by the subsequent warfare and pressure of relocation by the rapid and overpowering influx of white Europeans into the North American continent.  (This DOES include Canada!)  No reliable numbers of the affect of that on population numbers have been suggested.

But it must have been devastating.  Was that a genocide?  Or simply a conquest?  Does it matter?

The extremism manifested itself in the "Manifest Destiny" mantra that rationalized the conquest and massacre of natives on the basis of a supposed natural  inevitability of our taking the continent from those who had lived here for over ten thousand years.  That somehow, it was our "destiny" to engulf the continent and populate it.

Even if it did already have a population residing in it.

Could it happen here like it did in Europe?  Sure.  Extremism happens anywhere, and when we see headlines where American politicians justify forcibly keeping people in poverty by denying them an education or the ability to control their own procreation, it is obvious it IS happening here.

Republican Party politicians advocate policies that are hateful, discriminatory, and racist.  They advocate policies that are homophobic and misogynistic, hurting people on the basis of made up differences and ideological imperatives.

They advocate that States secede from the US in order to pursue that agenda, or at the very least, pass State laws nullifying Federal laws that set that agenda back.

Now, am I saying that Republicans WANT to take the same career track Hitler did?  That they intend to snuff out the lives of all who they see as different?  Of course not.  Certainly not the average Republican at the State or local level.  As a country, we see that as evil and bad.

But then, if you'd showed photos of the Holocaust to the average Nazi Party member in 1932, they would have thought of those photos of being the result of Communist activity.  They saw themselves as the savior party of their homeland.  Saving it from economic ruin and political suicide.  Saviors of the German way of life.  The belt buckle of every German soldier was inscribed with the inscription "Gott Mitt Uns", which means "God is with us".

Sound familiar yet?  Wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.  Exactly the same as the Republicans are today.

Saviors of America.  Defending the American Way of Life.  Saving us from economic ruin and political suicide.  Pointing at Socialists and Communists as the evil doers who threaten us.

Hitler, too, excoriated Darwin.  Hitler, too, outlawed abortion, to help continue the Master Race.  Hitler, too, was racist.  Hitler promised economic recovery and international power and respect for Germany.  Hitler, too glorified war and made military service seem desirable.  Hitler, too acted hand in hand with the economic powers of his country to put Germany on the course to war.

In the end, he brought ruin and disgrace and ended his life in an underground bunker at his own hand, too cowardly to face his crimes.

Is there an American Hitler?  Will there be?

Maybe not.  But, maybe so.

Is the slide into anarchy inevitable?  Are we doomed to repeat history?  Will we allow ourselves to be hoodwinked into voting for another National Socialist Party?

It doesn't have to be.

IF Americans who care go vote.  IF Americans who care educate themselves.  IF Americans - LIKE YOU - get involved.

VOTE this November.  VOTE to throw out the extremists, the political outliers who have contaminated American politics into something even traditional Republicans hate.

Throw the bastards out.  Throw them out so far they'll need to pipe in sunlight.

Vatican in trouble over child abuse again.

Here's an interesting update on the state of the child abuse scandal that has engulfed the Roman Catholic Church in recent years.  Representatives of The Holy See on Thursday will appear before a U.N. committee in Geneva on its implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in order to answer questions about the Vatican's involvement in the scandal.

The linked story at the Washington Post gives the details, so I won't go into the nuts and bolts of the issue here.   If you are interested, follow the link and read the WP's story.

What I want to talk about is this:

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Wednesday that the Holy See ratified the treaty because of its longstanding commitment to caring for children, in the fields of education, health care, refugee services and other outreach to families in need. He said that while abuses had occurred at the hands of churchmen, it was important to distinguish between where the Holy See bore responsibility and where local authorities must intervene. 

“The Holy See is not an organization in which all the priests or Catholics of the world are employees. It’s a big religious community,” he told The Associated Press. “Every member of this community has responsibilities as citizens of the country where he or she lives and with the authorities of that country.”

Emphasis mine.

And yet, to date, the Holy See has refused to encourage its bishops to report abusers to local authorities, hiding behind the lack of laws in many localities requiring such reporting.  In fact, in past cases in the US, even in States where the reporting of suspected abuse is required, such reporting has failed to take place, and the Church has often moved the abusers to new locations where they often have engaged in new cases of abuse.

This stance is outrageous!  It is widely known and accepted that the church hierarchy is in full administrative control of every priest consecrated in its name worldwide.  In fact, just recently, the Pope excommunicated a priest for his consecration of a female priest.  That is definitely a case where local "control" was jumped over and the central authority of the Pope was invoked.

The church may use legal and financial means in different countries to hide and or obfuscate the reality of its worldwide control, but the fact is, a Catholic priest anywhere in the world has to submit to the authority and control of the Pope.

The Roman Catholic Church has been and is still now refusing to respond to this worldwide crisis of the abuse of children in any meaningful way.  It has, in fact, seemingly circled the wagons and hunkered down for a long siege, apparently hoping that it can survive this by stonewalling until public attention goes away.

This very clearly signals that the new Pope, no matter how newly nice or concerned he seems to be, is still either unable to control his kingdom, or is not as concerned in reality as he would have you think from his public persona so recently scrubbed clean.  I have warned that he is still mainly concentrating on cleaning up the public face of his church for the purpose of stemming the tide of Catholics who have been running out the door, taking their money with them, and this current position of the church has not changed my mind.

In fact, I believe that one of the reasons so many Catholics are still running for the door is because of the Church's stance and reactions to this crisis.  How can one continue to support an organization which preaches the love and devotion of Christ for his people when it not only refuses to stop the abuse of its most vulnerable and youngest members, but protects the monsters who conduct that abuse - nay, even propagate that abuse by allowing them to move to new locations to seek new victims?  One that even refuses to defrock and remove abusers from its ranks!

I am convinced that the Church, at its highest levels, not only refuses to respond to the crisis in ways the public demands, but does so because it is still of the opinion that the Church is above secular law and can weather this crisis like it has weathered so many in the past.  They believe it can stonewall outsiders and just outlive the crisis.

They do have a point - this is a bureaucracy that can trace its roots back to the Roman Empire through an unbroken line of church authorities going back to the 4th century - around 1700 years!

That IS a long time, and it HAS withstood a lot of such critical problems in the past, and its international worldwide organizational reach is one reason why.  Because of the fragmentary nature of the organization of the world's political States into many separate sovereign entities, they HAVE been above secular law for much of that existence.  They think that this crisis is no different, and are depending on their international stature to continue to provide them with relative immunity based on that power and reputation.

But this crisis is different from past crises.  In the past, information was hard to disseminate.  People didn't tend to get an international sense of things, even with the new advent of TV, because that took the news media getting that sense and providing the story.

Today, we've got the Internet.

Today, information takes mere minutes to cross oceans where in the past it took hours, days, or weeks.  You've heard the old saying that bad news is all over town before good news has a chance to put its shoes on?  Today, good news doesn't even have time to turn off the alarm clock before the bad news is across the globe.

The Internet, as a global communications network, enables people to organize along lines of interest globally.  This time, the RCC is not faced with a few isolated local authorities it can ignore with impunity.  It is faced with global attention.  People all across the world are watching and evaluating the Holy See's actions and words, and if many many people don't see a marked improvement in the Vatican's position, more and more people will keep running for that door.

No matter how nice the Pope is, nor what color his shoes may be.

Witchcraft in Oklahoma. Really?

I like to think I'm generally a tolerant guy.  I strongly believe in the Constitutional right of all residents of the US to believe whatever bilgewater they want to believe, and within whatever legal boundaries society has decreed, to practice that belief.

So, to hear that there are idiot fundies in Oklahoma who believe in the existence of witchcraft doesn't twist my knickers.  That doesn't mean I won't shake my head and even publicly call them idiots, though.  (as you can see.)

What DOES get my knickers in a twist is the assistant principle (AP) in an Oklahoma school who suspended a student for 15 days for casting a spell that supposedly made a teacher sick!  THAT crosses the line between his private beliefs and his very public, governmental duties which require him to administer education to Oklahoma's children in an impartial manner regarding the religious beliefs of said students and their parents.

Now, had that young lady conducted a public ceremony witnessed by other students which was intended to be such a spell (based on some weird teenaged belief in magic - which is NOT Wiccan, by the way!) I could understand his concern for her public display of ill will towards a teacher which could be considered to be a distraction to the educational atmosphere of the school.  That would be defensible, even under the well understood scientific knowledge of today that completely invalidates any idea of magic as a real, tangible force in this universe.

Again, this idiot does have the right to believe in said magic.  After all, if you are a Christian fundie, you already believe in magic, since only magic could raise a dead person back to life, and such is the central tenet of that faith.  Oh, they don't use the specific term "magic", because it is widely known in this country that magic doesn't exist, right?  But hey, it's all semantics.  To paraphrase Heinlein, "One man's magic is another man's belly laugh"!  (ok, so Heinlein used the term "religion" instead of "magic", but you get the idea.)

Upshot here is that this AP needs to be fired.  Summarily and with prejudice, along with a bad job reference as to his inability to exercise good judgement regarding the separation of his private life and his professional life.  Not for believing in magic, but for letting that belief spill over into the life of one of his students.  Because holding a belief that such magic really is effective and using that belief as an excuse to punish the alleged magic wielder is akin to burning witches at the stake, and shows that the AP has no judgement or ability to discern fact from fiction.

I do have some questions, though.

Did the parents go through any kind of appeals process to protest the suspension?   If so, what was the response of the school district?  Knee jerk support of the AP?  Was there any attempt by the District to even look at the reason for that suspension? I assume, because the parents have resorted to a lawsuit, that any response was unsatisfactory, but the answers to those questions would surely add details to the story.

I'm going to add this to the category of Harm from Religion, because if suspending a student through the belief she had really and truly cast a spell that harmed a teacher isn't hurting someone and damaging the reputation of the school, the School District, and the State of Oklahoma, I don't know what else would.

Words cannot possibly describe my disgust, my dismay, or my utter contempt for people who either do these things or allow them to happen.

For shame!

I'm Back! (and, what about that Pope, huh?)

Well, It has been a wonderful two weeks, hobnobbing with family, helping my oldest cyberdaughter care for her new twins, and generally being lazy and playing the new grandfather!  If you don't have grandkids, I recommend it!  (That requires that you first have kids.  If you haven't done that yet, I suggest you get started - fast!  Grandkids are too wonderful to miss...)

I was under the impression that coming up with a subject to expound upon might be hard to do, but fortunately, one of the usual suspects has given me plenty to talk about.

What about that Pope, huh?   Ain't he just hunky dory?  Or maybe just real cool?  These days, I hear a lot of atheists and others singing his praises and saying that it's about time someone from that ancient bureaucracy finally stood up and got people started back down the road Christ laid out for them way back when.

On that very short note, I agree - totally.  it IS about time the head of that organization got people thinking about the message of their alleged founder instead of this new fangled plutocratic message the Republicans have been spreading around.

On the other hand, I also feel like a Mac user, chanting outside Micro$oft headquarters, "As long as it takes!" referring to keeping M$ CEO Steve Ballmer on the job as long as it takes for him to finish running that company into the ground.  (Oh, yeah, I AM a Mac user, although I haven't done that particular chant in front of M$ HQ yet...)  But you get the point - as long as the Church keeps running with the GOP's plutocratic platform, the more folks will continue to leave the RCC like rats from a sinking ship, and this guy is trying very hard to turn that around.

I am glad he is saying these things in part because I think it is important that people who believe in the simple, uplifting message of love the more liberal Christian groups believe in, the better off this country will be in the short run.  The hateful message of the modern Conservative movement is bad for business, bad for government and terrible for the average American, and it badly needs to be countered by reasonable people.

But, in the long run, the more people leave Christianity, I believe the better off we will be because the more people will be using reason and science to decide public policy matters, and not an ancient late bronze age religious tract.  I mean, come on, people can be stupid enough when they ARE using reason and science - that isn't a panacea for stupidity - but once you throw in superstition and ignorance, all bets are off!

So I move forward with mixed feelings about this Pope.  On one hand, he IS a very reasonable sounding guy.

On the other, he DID excommunicate a supporter of female ordination just a bit ago.  Not exactly designed to reassure the uncertain masses sitting on the fence, trying to decide which way to lean.

My own advice:

Be happy he is making the Republicans sound like the money grubbing, soup line hating, capitalistic high rollers using $100 bills for lighting big Cuban cigars that they are!  But be aware that at the same time, that marketing largesse for the poor is tempered by the cold hard fact that it is intended to slow or stop the massive bleed-out of membership the RCC has been experiencing in recent years.

It comes with a price - toe the company line or else.  Pope Francis is not going to turn the Catholic bureaucracy around in the next 180 days, or even the next few years.  It isn't his intention!  Oh, yes, he'll get what he can for the poor he does seem to care about, but you'll notice that while he is living in a much more frugal looking set of digs than his predecessor, they haven't put any of those fabled treasures in the old digs out on Craig's List to raise money for the poor.  I'd bet dollars to donut holes that all that cash Mother Teresa sent the Vatican is still sitting in the fat bank accounts it landed in, and probably won't even raise interest money for helping the poor folks it was donated for.

If it ever does, and you start seeing entries on Craig's List for Vatican gold and art works, then you'll see me alongside you in the cheering gallery.

Until then, color me skeptical - or maybe cynical is a better word.

Free Speech and personal responsibility.

Let's examine the First Amendment, shall we?  Specifically, the part of the FA that protects your free speech rights.

This is, of course, prompted by the firing of the "patriarch" of the reality show Duck Dynasty for his anti-gay statements on GQ the other day.  Right wingers are going apoplectic over it, saying that he is being stifled from speaking out.

The first thing to understand before we even start looking at this is that the Constitution is a blueprint.  It is the blueprint for how our government is to be built and managed.  The Bill of Rights is an addition that was added a few years later as the result of a compromise that allowed certain States to vote for the ratification of the Constitution because those States were worried that the original did not specifically lay out the rights that were guaranteed to citizens and prohibited the government from violating those rights.

Thus, strictly speaking, the First Amendment restricts THE GOVERNMENT from abridging your speech.  It cannot either keep you from speaking by censoring your speech nor punishing you for speaking.  Written or spoken, it doesn't matter, and some actions are also, by rulings from the Supreme Court, considered political speech, and this also protected.

Naturally, since the government cannot restrict your speech, neither can others.

But, and this is important, YOU can.  You can even enter into a contract with someone wherein you promise to censor your public speech and actions so as to not reflect negatively on the relationship between you and the other party.  In return, you allow that other party to take certain actions against you should you violate that part of the contract.

Which is what happened to Phil Robinson.  He signed a contract with A&E, probably a standard actor's contract, and that standard contract contains a reasonable and common clause that says he must restrict his public actions and speech so as to not reflect badly upon the reputation of the show.  

He then went on ANOTHER network and violated that contract by making controversial and hateful comments that did reflect badly upon both him and the show and A&E.  Little wonder that they fired his ass.

His free speech rights are NOT being violated.  He still has full rights to speak up and say anything he wishes, stupid or not.  He just lost the contract because he opened his mouth and said something he should not have said in public.  His choice, his responsibility.

The right wing IS big on personal responsibility, isn't it?  Well, this is the result of his acting irresponsibly.  Suck it up, big guy!  Ain't responsibility a bitch?

Holidays!

Next week is Christmas and on Saturday is the Solstice.  No matter which one you celebrate (and many people celebrate both) - it is time for family and feasting and spending time watching football - or is it basketball?  Soccer?  Frosty?  I know! The Abominable Snowman!

Oh, forget it, I'm going to Portland, Oregon next week to snuggle with new grand babies and spend time with the parents I haven't seen in longer than I like to think.  So, folks, I cannot guarantee that I'll have time or the inclination to post anything.

But hey, you might get lucky and see baby pictures!  Or, I might have time after all!  I'll be back after the first of the year.

So, for those who care, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy (Merry?) Kwanzaa,  Happy Solstice, and just for grins cause I know I'm early - Happy Chinese New Year!  I know I'm missing something, so if I missed your favorite holiday this month, Happy Whatever-it-is!

Or Merry, or Great or whatever floats your boat...I hope it is just as great as you want it to be!

I'm gonna snuggle babies, so there!

It's War, I say! War on Christmas! (or not)

Every year about this time, the Fundies circle the wagons, mount the ramparts and prime the cannon, all ready to defend Christmas from the evils of the secular "War on Christmas".

This year, Fox News is doing all it can, inflating whatever little niggles there may be anywhere in the country in order to fan the flames.  The main thrust of their complaints seem to be that "atheists" want to prevent Christians from celebrating Christmas, and seem to want to attack them at any place or manner "they" can.

::Sigh::

It gets tiresome, when the people you have to battle for every concession turn your arguments around and build elaborate straw men that they can then point to and inflate their own rhetoric, inflaming their base and pumping millions of dollars into lawyers' hands in an effort to defend the indefensible.

There is no War on Christmas.  There just isn't.  There may be a few lonely atheists with an agenda that includes eventually destroying religious faith and ending the hegemony of religion over mankind, but even the most fervent of them realize that is a multi-generational fight that they will never see the end game to.

I'll even admit that I may be on the fringes of that group, as I do see religion as harmful.

But that isn't the holiday fight we wage every year.  It IS possible to see milestones along the way, and the goal of managing to enforce the First Amendment's strictures of the Separation of Church and State is one such milestone, one which we join with many Christians to achieve.

Plainly stated, the First Amendment says that the government may NOT play favorites when it comes to the authorized use of public space for private purposes.  If it is going to allow one group or religion to display holiday symbols, it MUST allow them all.

That's it.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Nobody is trying to stop anybody from displaying their beloved Christmas symbols on the courthouse square - we are simply making the point that it is not an automatic authorization, nor can it be an exclusive one.  It shouldn't be that hard to understand.

It isn't about being offended.  It isn't about countering someone else's beliefs.  It is about the government of this country, from Federal to local, obeying the law.

If anybody tries to say it's about anything else, they've got a private agenda, so you'd better start looking for what they are really after!


Now, can we go enjoy the Christmas lights?